Bathrobe plus sweatpants = I must have it

Courtesy of Daily Candy, I've been made aware of "The Baresuit." (Were they trying to sound like bear suit? Regardless it looks cozy).

I might buy this for myself, or my grandmother.

It's invented in Canada, where I'm guessing they are expert at keeping warm.

www.thebaresuit.com.

Things I did not know you could do with baking soda

Courtesy of CNN:

1. Remove tape residue

Make a thick paste of baking soda and water. Rub the paste onto bits of tape stuck to windows, then wipe clean.

2. Douse flames

Keep a box of baking soda in your workshop or kitchen to sprinkle on a fire if one breaks out.

3. Zap roaches

Set out a shallow dish or bowl containing equal parts sugar and baking soda. Roaches are attracted to the sugar, but the mixture is deadly to them.

4. Spot-clean a rug

Sprinkle baking soda on greasy spots and let sit for about an hour. Scrub gently with a damp sponge or brush, then vacuum to remove any leftover grime.

5. Absorb moisture

Keep an open box of baking soda in your tool cabinet to fend off moisture that could rust saws or other equipment.

6. Keep drains clear

Once a week, pour a cup of baking soda and a cup of vinegar down your kitchen sink. It'll help keep your pipes clog-free. This Old House: Clear any clogged drain

7. Clean a shower door

Pour some baking soda on a damp sponge, wipe the door, and rinse with warm water. This Old House: Installing a shower door

8. Uncrust your grill

Sprinkle baking soda directly on an indoor or outdoor grill. Let sit overnight, then slough off the grime with a wire brush and warm water. This Old House: Grill Maintenance

9. Scrub your paws

Rubbing your hands with warm water and a palmful of baking soda will remove stubborn odors.

10. Banish book odors

Seal musty-smelling books for a few weeks in a plastic bag with baking soda sprinkled inside to eliminate mildew and odors. E-mail to a friend

J. Crew wants

Boston Globe: A Cautionary Trail

PINKHAM NOTCH - We launched ourselves off the backside of Wildcat Mountain and descended into the wilderness, leaving the chatter of skiers and the whir of the high-speed chairlift behind. We soon entered a world of pure backcountry bliss, where falling snow drifted through the trees, adorning the pine branches around us and adding more cushion to the six inches of powder that had fallen overnight.Several hundred feet and a couple of hairpin turns later, I lay on my belly, skis twisted beneath me.

Yes I want to make this

100% peta approved laser cut moose cardboard puzzle!!

Cat stowaway makes it home again

Boston Globe/AP: Seth and Kelly Levy, of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. holds their 10 month old cat, Gracie Mae at home in Palm Beach Gardens, Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2008. The cat sneaked into Seth's suitcase for a flight to Dallas/Ft. Worth and landed in Texas. At baggage claim, another passenger mistakenly grabbed the suitcase and when he returned home Gracie Mae jumped out. The traveler brought Gracie Mae back to her owner for a return flight back home, and she is doing fine.

U.S. Given Poor Marks on the Environment

NY Times: A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among the 149 countries on the list.

European nations dominate the top places in the ranking, which evaluates sanitation, greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural policies, air pollution and 20 other measures to formulate an overall score, with 100 the best possible.

'Ancient civilization . . . broken to pieces'

LA Times:

Illegal diggers are chipping away at Iraq's heritage at thousands of largely unguarded sites. The artifacts may never be returned.

L.A. Times editor fired in dispute over budget

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles Times fired its top editor after he rejected a management order to cut $4 million from the newsroom budget, 14 months after his predecessor was ousted over a budget dispute, the newspaper said yesterday.

Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

San Francisco Chronicle:

The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.

The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.

An oil quandary

Rajkanya Kawle, 11, purchased about eight ounces of palm oil for 16 rupees, or 40 cents. It's all the oil the family could afford for that evening's meal. She shares a one-room home with eight other family members in the Dharavi.

NY Times says:
This is the other oil shock. From India to Indiana, shortages and soaring prices for palm oil, soybean oil and many other types of vegetable oils are the latest, most striking example of a developing global problem: costly food.
In some poor countries, desperation is taking hold.
See Audio Slideshow.

Hull to get wind turbines off Nantasket Beach

Boston Globe says:
Sometime next year, Hull could become the first community in Massachusetts to get all its electricity from wind power.

After years of study, Hull officials are now seeking approval of state environmental regulators to install four wind turbines, each about 430 feet high, in ocean waters about a mile and a half east of Nantasket Beach.
Ian A. Bowles, the state secretary of energy and environmental affairs and a wind-power advocate, could approve the project as soon as Feb. 6 or order further environmental studies.

Abortions Hit Lowest Number Since 1976

Washington Post says:

The number of abortions performed in the United States dropped to 1.2 million in 2005 -- the lowest level since 1976, according to a new report.
"It could be more women using contraception and not having as many unintended pregnancies. It could be more restrictions on abortions making it more difficult for women to obtain abortion services. It could be a combination of these and other dynamics," said Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research organization, which published the report in the March issue of the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.
The abortion rate varies widely around the country, tending to be higher in the Northeast and lower in the South and Midwest.

The New vegan shoe line from Natalie Portman

Hosted by Te Casan, new boutique in New York City.

The stuff is gorgeous, but expensive, and doesn't always come in small sizes.
Which I find appalling because Natalie Portman is tiny like me!

Check it out here:
Te Casan dot com

RENT is closing

The upside?
At least I've seen it a couple times.
It totally sucked me in when it opened, and I largely blame it for making me the dork that I am.

But there's a definite downside to this: It could soon be coming to a high school -- or worse, a community theater -- near you.

Rethinking China's Long March

LA. TIMES: Between 1934 and 1936, more than 300,000 men and women, divided into several armies, trudged inland through a brutal terrain of frigid mountain passes, freezing rivers and marshes in search of a sanctuary to continue their nascent Communist revolution.
Only one in 10 survived. Now, seven decades later, fewer than 500 are still alive.
An integral chapter of Mao's legacy, the plot line has rarely been questioned by older Chinese.
Today, however, younger Chinese increasingly view march veterans as willing puppets of the Communist propaganda machine.

Memorializing heroic pigeons

LA Times:

Pigeons through the millenniums have acted as messengers of war. Genghis Khan deployed them in Europe in the 13th century. The first news of Wellington's victory at Waterloo came by pigeon post. And an estimated 20,000 military pigeons were killed during World War I.

Images of the long-distance homing birds that served Britain through two world wars went on auction Tuesday, fetching an unexpected $20,789 and a lot of surprised clucking.

The owner of the paintings, Jack Lovell, established secret pigeon lofts near the Dover coast in 1939 that provided 200 specially bred Belgian pigeons, of the kind depicted in the images, to the Royal Navy for deployment behind enemy lines with the French Resistance.

Horses face death over the border

Newsweek had this first earlier this year, but the New York Times outlines the tragic fate of unwanted horses in this country this week:
Amid pressure from animal rights groups, horse slaughter virtually ended in the United States last year, as courts upheld state laws banning it in Texas and Illinois, home to the nation’s last three horse slaughterhouses.
But there have been unintended consequences, including more grueling travel for tens of thousands of horses now being sent to slaughter in Canada and Mexico, where, animal advocates say, they sometimes face more gruesome deaths.

I wouldn't buy this coat

I have bought Banana Republic coats in the past. They are beautiful, well tailored and appear to be well made.
They are not.
Well, let me put that differently: their lining is shoddy, not the entire coat.
I have bought two $200 winter coats in the past four or five years from Banana. Both have fallen apart from the inside out: pockets ripping into shreds, lining seams splitting down the center, you name it.
This coat is marked down to $299 from almost $500. I can assure you it's not a good deal.

LA Times: Cue the gluttony

Several recent studies, papers and a popular weight-loss book argue that eating is an automatic behavior triggered by environmental cues that most people are unaware of -- or simply can't ignore. Think of the buttery smell of movie theater popcorn, the sight of glazed doughnuts glistening in the office conference room or the simple habit of picking up a whipped-cream-laden latte on the way to work.
To make Americans eat less and eat more healthily, they contend, the environment itself needs to be changed -- with laws regulating portion size, labeling or the places where food can be sold or eaten.

LA Times: Dengue Fever rises again?

The disease, thought to have been conquered, is reappearing in the U.S. because of increased international travel and, possibly, global warming.

Funny story of the day

DES MOINES, Iowa:

Jane Hambleton has dubbed herself the "meanest mom on the planet."
After finding alcohol in her son's car, she decided to sell the car and share her 19-year-old's misdeed with everyone -- by placing an ad in the local newspaper.
The ad reads: "OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don't love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet."

Read the rest.

From 2Jane.com:

"Give your kitchen or bathroom a stylish makeover with these Tile Tattoos by Mibo. Impervious to water and moisture, these heavy duty stickers will add life to the wettest walls of the house. No glue required for application and no sticky residue if they're removed."

4.25" squares sold in sets of 6.

They are only $16, and there are several style and colors to choose from. I love it.

Trendiness near Central Street?

This location used to be a restaurant called "Madison on the Avenue" (not kidding - keep in mind it's in Winter Hill). It is right up the street from our house, so we always were a bit disappointed that there wasn't a legit restaurant near us to go to (read: not have to take the car). When I saw this new sign up last week, I got pretty excited and told Mark we had to check it out.

LITTLE DID I KNOW THE CHEF CAME FROM GREEN STREET GRILL, OUR FAVORITE CAMBRIDGE RESTAURANT!

How do you like our old far neighborhood now??

www.highlandkitchen.com.

AIDS patients face downside of living longer

NY TIMES:

John Holloway received a diagnosis of AIDS nearly two decades ago, when the disease was a speedy death sentence and treatment a distant dream.
Yet at 59 he is alive, thanks to a cocktail of drugs that changed the course of an epidemic. But with longevity has come a host of unexpected medical conditions, which challenge the prevailing view of AIDS as a manageable, chronic disease.

Birkenstocks, cool again?

Daily Candy brought this to my attention.

I just gave away my old Birks, circa 1994.

They WERE comfy though, and I dig this
new fashionable style.

Only $69.95. Uh-oh.

LA times: "A Voice for Rural Women of China."

Fervent activist and magazine editor Xie Lihua aims to convince maltreated wives and daughters that they are men's equals.

Xie is the founder of the groundbreaking Rural Women magazine, a crucial emotional outlet for generations of peasant women. Each issue includes a lengthy series of readers' letters, a sort of chat room for far-flung villagers too poor to own computers.

Although urban women have made strides toward equality, thanks to better education and opportunities within a growing white-collar workforce, rural women are often stuck in a harsh lifestyle unchanged from an earlier era.

"I tell them their life is the equal of any man. They were not born unequal -- society made them this way," Xie said. "They just need opportunities to obtain their rights."