Hello, neighbor! The best drinks anywhere are Cheerwine and Ale-8-1, a heavily caffeinated strong ginger ale from Kentucky. I can buy CW here in east Tennessee - when I made that discovery after moving here it was a beautiful thing. I go to Merlefest most years, and before I moved here I would always bootleg back as…

Oh, yeah, it's about as hard as life gets - for the person who's addicted and for the people who love that person. That's why it drives me crazy when people who don't act like it's a simple matter - people who say things like "How hard can it be to QUIT something? You just don't do it any more."

It's sad how many people hold to the (wrong and harmful) mindset that addiction = weakness or a failure of personal will. Once you've been up close and seen someone dear try and try to beat it (and fail and fail, too often) you know how wrong that is. But the prevailing attitude lets us get away with punishing addicts…

However long ago it was, it can't have been easy to dredge all that up, so thanks for telling it - and condolences from here too.

My heart goes out to her and their kids so much. Loving an addict means making choices from an set of unacceptable options, with lousy consequences and guilt at every turn.

Another thank you. I've seen the effects of child sexual abuse up pretty close (within my extended family), and I have the absolute highest admiration for everyone who puts up with the frustrations of an imperfect justice system and the horror of being exposed to the very worst of humanity, all to protect and advocate…

Same here. I was charmed by Annie Hall but Manhattan icked me out something fierce, and although I admired Hannah and Her Sisters there seemed to be a lot of hostility in it. (I still want that apartment, though.) But I haven't been able to bring myself to watch any of his movies since he took up with Soon-Yi.

LUCKY! Ira is my #1 NPR crush.

I used to work in the box office at the theater where they do the show in St. Paul, and although my contact with him was very minimal it was enough to confirm that he IS really smug and self-centered. It was in the era of a lot of politics between the show and Minnesota Public Radio, and some of the Lake Wobegone…

Plus I'm disturbingly amused by the fact that his name and Will Farrell's are kind of mirror images. I want them to make a movie together, or at least have an Oprah/Uma moment.

Plus wearing white to a wedding!

Yes! And you can refill them by folding up tissues. Specifically, Cool Touch Kleenex, the best thing by a million miles to ever touch my nose.

I think half the game with testing is just being mentally prepared to switch from interview mode to work mode and then back again. And you're smart to be prepping with industry lingo and tone. (Also I'm laughing at myself for "I'm do copywriting too" - my skills seem to have taken the weekend off.) I hope it goes…

My best tip: You're probably going to end up meeting quite a few people. With luck they'll hand you cards, but if not try to have a strategy in place for keeping track of names, and if possible a way to look up email addresses - or failing that, an assistant or receptionist you can call for the addresses. Then you'll…

This is how I see our lives together:

I think my sainted grandmother-in-law invented these! She and a friend of hers couldn't handle the taco shells (I'm guessing this was in the long-ago days before they had soft tacos) so they would tote their hamburger buns down to the Taco Bell down the block and the wonderful accommodating staff would load 'em up.

YES. I was just about to post a OTR Christmas song! I got to hear them play last night - they didn't do this one but did play All I Get for Christmas Is Blue, First Snowfall, and North Pole Man. Stellar.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that driving on private property as opposed to public roads is ungoverned in most places. But, hey, any excuse to kick a red state!

Nobody else is hearing "What Does the Fox Say?"

Watching this piled on the couch with my sister & cousins at my aunt & uncle's house was one of the high points of the holiday for me. My darling uncle re Ru Paul: "Now, that's what I call a TALL WOMAN."