Entertaining Friday: Things I Love
Keeping my leftover Brussels sprouts fresh in a tall vase. (Found on the stalk at Giant, of all places.)Things I don't love: realizing that the focus function on my camera has permanently gone south.

Old School Thursday: I'm the Guy Behind the Guy Day
It’s Doughnut Day today – all about alliteration and fried dough. Certainly a day we can all happily celebrate. I mean really, doughnuts. What’s not to like?In other news, today is all about the inventor. First, today is the birthday of organic chemist Paul Sabatier (1854). Never heard of him? Me neither, but his work in the field of catalytic organic synthesis lead to the margarine, oil hydrogenation, and methanol industries.Nearly forty years later, in 1893, design engineer Raymond Loewy was born. Among other things, he designed the iconic Coca-Cola bottle.Loewy and Sabatier – both guys most people have never heard of, but whose contributions have hel

Mapping McDonalds
This map is getting a lot of buzz, and rightly so. Creator Stephen Von Worley was inspired by a trip down California's I-5, when he was startled (back into consciousness?) by the appearance of a strip mall out in the mid

Anthropology, Architecture & Cooking
Question:In which discipline is anthropology more important/apparent: architecture or cooking?That's an offshoot of a conversation my sister (the architecture student) and I (the ethnographic research analyst) have been having.After watching Top Chef Masters, we were equally charmed by Rick Bayless, and loved the fact that his early career trip to Mexico was as an anthro student. It seemed like such a natural evolution - start studying the people, end up cooking their food, and teaching others about their culture, via the food. Food and anthropology go hand in hand.But so do architecture and anthro. When I was working at

Ideabook Tuesday: Interview with Alek from From the Right Bank
This week, I got to interview Alek, the blogger behind From the Right Bank to the Left Coast. She got married in Annapolis, used to live in Paris, and is now in Seattle. Given my severe francophilia, and my healthy respect for anybody who mixes straight up modern design with traditional details, I'm all over her blog.Plus, she's got the thing I want most in the world. A patio with a long table where she serves meals outside. Check out the third and fourth photos. "Jealous" doesn't even begin to describe how I feel right now: