Three things I'm loving this week:
1. Panera Bread. Nothing warms the belly and soul like a hot bowl of soup and Panera serves it up in a big bread bowl that you can eat when you're done slurping back the soup. (Low-carb diets be damned!) Go ahead, eat the whole bowl, afterall consuming the packaging is the environmentally responsible thing to do.
2. Handwritten letters. Aside from a paycheck, the thing I love to find most in my mailbox here at work is a hand-addressed envelope. I know it's going to contain a card or a letter from a reader and it's almost always something nice. They write to tell me they enjoyed a column or they have an idea to share in my column or just to tell me about their common experience. In the age of e-mail and twitter...when every bit of communication is fast and short, it's refreshing to get something as quaint as a handwritten letter that someone took the time to compose, address, stamp and send.
3. Easter displays. Forget robins and crocuses...the first harbingers of spring are marshmallow chicks, chocolate bunnies and plastic green Easter grass. Usually I'm annoyed by retailers jumping the season, Easter is the one exception -- spring can't come soon enough.
Three things I'm not loving this week:
1. People who think wild animals are pets...and even more so, people who sleep, bathe and share their anxiety medication with wild animals. If you missed the story, you can read all the dirty details here. I dare you make it to the end of this story without your lips curling up in disgust. No wonder that poor thing went ape-shit. I have worked at a zoo, folks, and I'm telling you that wild animals are always, always, always wild...no matter how well you treat them, how much you love them, how much space you give them or how much of the finest French wine you serve them...they will eventually go wild on your ass.
2. Furniture shopping. I am willing to pay for high quality stuff...if only I could find it.
3. HDTV. So...I gave in and let the husband buy a new TV. He hooked it up last night and I am completely unimpressed with the much ballyhooed HDTV. This is what all the fuss is about? What. Ever. At least we can get PBS again.