Liz saw these on a recent trip to NYC. Damned Dollies Worth a peek…

Last night, we had dinner company. Oddly, we discussed oil from Chinese restaurants being used to fuel diesel cars. (Andrew made these wonderful soft-shell crabs on the grill and served them with a cilantro/habenero/pesto – wow!)

Even though this article from Business Week doesn’t discuss vegetable oil as a fuel alternative, it is worth a read. Alternate Power: A Change Is In The Wind

(Gas is $2.33 at my regular station. Yikes!)

All of us “in the business” knew this was coming. We’ve been talking about it for years. But this article talks specifics. Cool stuff. Cable’s Big Bet On Hyper-Targeting

In the new Fast Company, this article really caught my eye! Is Your Boss a Psychopath?

It brought back some, how should I say, interesting memories?

I drink a lot of Diet Pepsi. I remember when I thought it was gross and artificial, but after years of practice, I like it. I know some of you prefer Diet Coke. I don’t understand it, but I know it’s true. (I do prefer Coke to Pepsi in the sugar versions. Crazy, I know.)

But the Coke/Pepsi marketing makes me nuts. They spend so much money and the market shares hardly budge. But it looks like there might be a challenger on the way – one with lots of money and huge margins…. Watch Out, Coke and Pepsi — Here Comes Wahaha from Knowledge@Wharton.

Here’s a trend I have been following. Sleep is in.

I get a good night sleep about one night a month. Maybe. Usually, I sleep 2-3 hours, wake up, and then sleep a 1-2 more. Not a great plan. I’m used to it, though. This has been going on for 20 years or so. Personally, I think it’s genetic. That doesn’t make it any less annoying.

I’ve tried herbals, prescriptions, acupuncture. I would spend anything for a good night sleep, to be honest. So when I read this Entrepreneur article, Dream On! about the luxury sleep market and the huge upsurge of sleep products, I was not surprised.

From Smithsonian Magazine, Ripped from the Walls (And the Headlines)….

If you like mysteries and cop shows like I do, you’ll be gripped by this article. It begins…

“Fifteen years after the greatest art theft in modern history the mystery may be unraveling. At 1:24 a.m. on March 18, 1990, as St. Patrick’s Day stragglers wobbled home for the night, a buzzer sounded inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. One of two hapless museum guards answered it, saw what he thought were two city policemen outside the Palace Road entrance, and opened the door on the biggest art theft in U.S. history.”

It’s been said that I am a good judge of character. I can say that my impression of a person early on is frequently still the impression I have years down the road. But lately, I have thought about the error of this way of thinking.

When we moved back to the east coast from the Midwest, we chose to move to a different town than the one where I grew up – about a half an hour south to a Rouse planned community, Columbia, Maryland. I thought that it was really different from Baltimore – it was when I was a kid. Columbia was a dreamworld, where people of different cultures and socio-economic backgrounds lived together, shopped together, went to school together. A place where our children could live in diversity – in its purest form. We even have group mailboxes to ensure that we see our neighbors every day.

And it is nice. We like it. We love that our kids are colorblind. We love that the public schools are award-winning. We love the services this community provides.

What I didn’t realize is that all the people I grew up with moved here, too. So while it’s a great place for many reasons, it’s old home week at the grocery store, at the gym, at the restaurants. Really, I know people everywhere I go from my previous life. That wasn’t the plan. But there are great things about that too. I re-met my friend Laurie, who was a great friend in high school. She’s still great. And there are others. But the odd thing is that since it’s a new venue, I somehow felt that everyone got a “do-over.” So that the girls who were mean to me in high school or even jr. high get a fresh start. People can change, right?

No. They can’t. Okay, not fair. They can. But they usually don’t. I find myself sucked in – thinking that people have pure motives, aren’t catty, really care. But really, it’s more like high school than I ever dreamed. So I am working on finding our place here. Finding the sincere ones and smiling, but walking past, the insincere ones.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. (What does that mean, anyway!?)

50 Fun Things To Do With Your iPod from Kottke.org

I’ve written before about feeling a bit isolated. And though I never wrote about the horrors of buying (and the horrifying idea of publicly displaying) bathing suits, I have been talking about it a lot lately.

But today, I confirmed something I suppose I already knew full well. (I actually have never said full well out loud – and it even looks funny written down. What does that mean anyway? Is full well more well than just plain well?) I met two friends along with our seven kids at the pool for dinner. One friend I’ve known for many years (I’ll call her Matilda), the other (who I’ll call Mandy) for just a few. They are both level-headed, bright, and interesting women. And both expressed that they felt isolated and had few friends. (I would have said that both had many, many friends if you’d asked me before this…) and both commented on my new bathing suit – which I admit has a little skirt. As if that little skirt covers up the flaws. But I digress.

Now Matilda (not her real name) is tall and thin. Beautiful woman. She feels uncomfortable in a bathing suit. Mandy (right, also not her real name) is also quite pretty – more curvy – and she, too is uncomfortable in a bathing suit. Now I ask you, when is the last time a woman told you she feels beautiful in a swim suit? And why is that? Well, that’s two questions. Why don’t we feel good about who we are and how we look is one question. The other is why, if we feel so awful, do we put those darn things on and go to the pool? And then eat ice cream with the kids during adult swim?

Oh, the unanswerables. But my point here, if there was one, is that I am not alone. Well, perhaps I am, but everyone else is too.