Check Out What's New at Free Rice!

Update! Free Rice, one of the easiest and surely one of the most fun ways to help end world hunger, has added all sorts of new games to their site! Now you can quiz yourself on your mastery of French, art history, chemistry and other subjects while your time and attention makes a contribution to the UN World Food Program.

My friend Sal says:

Check out www.freerice.com.
Harvard & the World Food Program at the UN partnered up and bring you a site where you can learn/refresh your skills in math, art history, language learning, geography, chemistry & vocabulary.
Every right answer donates so many grains of rice to the WFP. It really piles up quickly!
If you miss an answer, the question keeps appearing (RANDOMLY) until you get it right. New neural pathway development programmed in.
And there are progressively difficult levels for each subject.
I am all about the art history currently.
I think you'll enjoy this and the reward is more useful than a stuffed animal made in China that you might win at the county fair.

Matthew Weiner's Mad Men Is The New Sopranos

A charismatic, secretive lead character, highly skilled in leadership and creative problem solving with a complicated family history that continues to give him pain. Has an older daughter and a troubled relationship with his son. A chronic philanderer who works sporadically to maintain the trust of his faithful wife, but fails her continuously.

The wife is admired in their social circles and comfortable with the material wealth and status afforded by her husband's success. However she cycles through loneliness at his neglect, forgiveness, admiration and angry betrayal.
The protagonist has a special relationship to a young woman with whom he is not romantically involved. This young woman retains an endearing innocence despite her role in an amoral business.

Plot attention given to the poor judgment of young Catholic priests and the deference paid them by their adoring congregations.

A supporting cast of riotous bumblers who reveal the occasional heart-breaker of a back story themselves.

The Girls' Playdate Went Long So Randy and I Had Margaritas

The website Sexy People may be intended for snarky mocking, but every time I visit, I see another face that is almost someone I loved a long time ago. I ache with nostalgia. Earnest, trusting faces - it just slays me. This girl - I ran on the playground with her; this boy, I had a crush on him. I know these people. (Well, not this guy.) Here is the family who came over one Thanksgiving - the man said strange things that were supposed to be funny and the grownups laughed but I just ran out of the room to play with their kids in the basement.

My latest piece on Chicago Moms Blog, called "Clutter, An Appreciation (See Footnote 1)" has been picked up for syndication by McClatchy-Tribune! I'm thrilled, but a little apprehensive (Speck in the milk!) that if published, my clumsy joke about verbal clutter (Extended footnotes, ha ha ha! A cluttered post about clutter, get it?) will not survive editing.

MGMT will be guests this season on Yo Gabba Gabba!! If you missed them before, please click here and GET YOUR WILD ON MY FUZZY FANTASTIC SPACE CHILD!!!!!!!!!

Click here to be haunted. "Please Read the Letter," from Allison Krauss and Robert Plant's album Raising Sand, produced by T-Bone Burnett.

"Please read the letter, I wrote it in my sleep. With help and consultation from the angels of the deep."

Someday We'll Go All The Way!

Sing it, Chicago!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAREST HUSBAND

you and me babe

love you now and forever and ever more

Calling All Lovely Things

Oh I'm so happy this evening worked so beautifully. Self-consciously whimsical events usually made me shudder but Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who conceived the yellow umbrella playdate, and Steve Delahoyde, who documented it, really made something great happen. I'll leave it to you to debate if the video makes the event or the event made the video. Next question, does the video get all the best moments or was there much more wonderfulness?

I'm all inspired to send Amy something good - how about you?