The Ravioli Has Moved

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Mormor

What makes me the happiest is knowing that you finally are where you always wanted to be: with Morfar.

That, and knowing that you lived your life to its fullest, for as long as you possibly could.

Thank you, always, for:

• making me feel like a Slalom champion in Are
• Swedish summer golf rounds
• baked chicken with cheese
• chocolate cookies
• your fantastically, whimsical and ever-so-confident approach to clothes
• warm water with honey
• cheese and crackers before dinner
• in your own way, always pushing for family
• stressing the importance of comfortable shoes
• morning gymnastics, long before yoga was cool
• buying organic before anyone else knew what it meant
• your elaborate lunches
• driving me to golf camp and making sure I had a friend before you left
• always being so, so happy to see us
• being my very own, special Mormor

I'm sure we'll play another round someday.

Air Claim

Turbulence aside, I'm not much of a flyer. In my fantasy dream-world, every location on the planet is accessible by car. Or train. Bus would even be fine.

Anything but that giant bird in the sky.

No matter when I travel, I always get stuck on the "flight-attendants-please-take-your-seats-due-to-choppy-air" route. And despite being ipod-equipped and in possession of a dramatic page-turner, I'm anything but relaxed.

Though all of a sudden it seems that those in charge of puddle-jumping might be on to a new concept: air ownership.

Seriously. At least 20 minutes prior to landing, someone proclaims throughout the plane: "Thank you for flying with us. And welcome to [insert city name]." Evidently, city residency now includes the thousands of feet of vast blue sky, hovering above.

Which is great news to me. I assume that means we'll have floating townships in mere decades. Followed by a fancy, new high-tech way of commuting, sans airplane wings.

Old School

Two things:

1. I used the phone book the other day. Despite my super-fast Mac and having "the world at my finger-tips," flipping through the Yellow Pages still won the race. And while I did for a split-second marvel at the very out-dated-ness of that behemoth directory -- it worked. Like a charm.
2. Yesterday, I spoke with the nicest man in America. Theoretically he was a customer service rep for a card company, but he was just way too friendly, polite, and helpful to be anything run-of-the-mill. He even called back a few moments later, to revise the previously agreed upon $-total, and chit-chat about the beauty of the Sierras.

Learnings: Letting your fingers do the work is not such a bad slogan after all. Playing nice pays off -- which is probably why sharing toys in the sandbox continues to be our kindergarten mantra.

The List

1. Yoga, three days per week.
2. Make tarragon-and-grainy-mustard crusted rack of lamb.
3. Purchase more wine from ACME.
4. Design thewineplanet.com.
5. Update Out of the Frying Pan.
6. Buy as many books as possible by Anna Gavalda.
7. Send a 'reader's tip' to Cooking Light, have it published and win a Capresso coffee maker!
8. Try not to purchase any more PJs.
9. Buy more PJs.
10. Train the dogs to not jump on exciting, new guests.

Piper-Lame

I was pretty excited at first.

Since 99% of my shopping is done online, hearing the news of Piperlime -- the newest addition to the GAP family -- was a definite highlight.

Side note: not that anyone could compete with Zappos, but still, a little green-hued variety can never be bad -- or so I thought.

Today, I got the following enticement in my inbox:

"As one of our best customers, Banana Republic is pleased to let you know about a special sale from Piperlime, a fresh new online shoe shop from Gap Inc."

Cool, I thought. I'm totally in need of a new pair of Uggs. Pink or chocolate.

The actual email (the part above was just the intro) continued to promise things like free standard shipping, easy returns and brands galore. So I clicked. And realized that the "website is temporarily closed?"

Um. Isn't that the point of web shopping? 24/7, 365? Clearly, the pipers have some development work to do. Like building a fuctional online presence.

Tidbits

It seems that fans of list-mania must adore the month of December. Books, music, quotes -- everything has a top-10. I'll happily join the band-wagon-crowd, mainly because snippety blurbs are so much more appealing for the mind to digest.

And so, without further ado:

1. A college whiz kid -- with an uncanny knack for the failures prevalent within the TSA -- created a Northwest Airlines boarding pass site. And although not possible to board simply by presenting his home-made concoction, it did get scores of people through security. Scary? A bit. But more insightful, really.
2. British psychologists briliantly tested the "honesty" of their fellow co-workers. Above the "help yourself to a cup of joe, but please leave 50 cents in the jar" sign, they added a pic of a watchful eye one week, and a soothing flower bouquet the next. Evidently, even the idea of being fakely watched compels us toward truth. Caffeine-addicts were twice as likely to deposit the half buck when watched by paper eyes.

Nice to know that some people still wear their thinking caps.