Sometimes, for grins, when I do a Google search, I click on "images." I find it fascinating to see what comes up. Searching my wedding anniversary date so I could include something "fascinating" on a card for my husband (we just celebrated #14), I got 16,800,000 hits, including a drawing from an amateur astronomer's club of something related to the planet Jupiter (honestly, I couldn't figure it out!)

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Don't assume that Big Box stores have the best prices. The toner ran out on my friend's laser printer at home, so he went to his neighborhood big-box store (happened to be Micro Center; he lives in Minnesota) to get a new cartridge.

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As I write this, I'm feeling very old and very young at the same time. My #2 stepdaughter just graduated from high school.

She was three when I met her. I'm having a tough time reconciling the fact that she is so grown up, and yet I don't feel like I've aged at all (well... not nearly as much as she did).

In addition, there are other emotional transitions in our home right now. My #1 stepdaughter is turning 20 (such a big number!). And my #1 daughter, age 11, will soon be going to sleepaway camp for the first time.

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I never thought of myself as a “foodie” until I heard Ruth Reichl interviewed on NPR 12 years ago. I was very pregnant, and often enticed by foods I'd never found before appealing! A former restaurant critic for The New York Times (now editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine) Reichl was being interviewed about her then-new book, Tender at the Bone. I mentioned it to my husband, who bought it for me, and I read it while on maternity leave -- aloud to my infant daughter -- savoring every word. (To learn more about Reichl and her books, go to http://www.ruthreichl.com .)

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I get to meet experts in all walks of life every day... the world's finest doctors... lawyers... accountants... kitchen remodelers, chemists, economists, internent consultants.    I ask them probing questions... and many of those questions lead to stories that you read in our publications.   I love doing what I do!

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