I wear a 7 3/8 or 7 1/2, and most women’s hats are 6 3/4, maybe 7. Men’s hats are great for casual wear, and straw hats can work—Helen Kaminski hats have fit me well.

especially if it’s smol.

Do they still take LE returns at Sears, now that Sears sold off LE?

I just finished The Woman on the Stairs by Bernhard Schlink. Wow! It’s not super long, nor hard to read, but it is rich! Deep, man!

Yeah, but the meal cost is sunk whether I show up and eat or not.

Or not even send a gift....I do prefer to send a more generous gift if I don’t have to sit through the folderol....

Family members appreciate people who come to support them in their time of loss, either their friends or the friends of the deceased. Yes, some funerals can be exercises in narcissism, but most I have attended are just an opportunity for the community to draw close around the bereaved.

Unless you make friends with a single person who marries....

AMEN! So true about all the wedding crap, too. It’s as if it’s a snowball, and everybody has to have/do everything they ever saw at anyone else’s wedding!

Ah, thanks for the clarification! My mom was on an elimination diet because of a nasty rash and could have, for example, vinegar, which seemed odd. Now I understand!

I wish I remembered this when I said we’d go to a wedding today, in town, our steamy, hot town.....I made the mistake of reading the couple’s page on The Knot. I fwowed up a bit. Lordy, I hope it’s not going to be too spayshul!

Funerals serve a useful, meaningful purpose. They are not “popular” events. No one wants to have to go to a funeral, but they do it because they know it helps those who are bereaved.

Plus, cloth napkins feel better. I hang mine to dry (I have a wall-mounted drying rack). If you pull them square and hang or lay them to dry, no ironing and not too many weird wrinkles

Pandora’s Chet Baker Radio is the thing in fancy NYC circles, I have read. I like it—nice instrumental straight-ahead jazzy stuff—no Kenny G. What you imagine listening to whilst having cocktails at the Carlyle.

But what about the MIND Diet—which I understand is fairly well validated, which recommends 5 oz of wine a day to prevent dementia?

I hate the summer, and I knowingly moved back to famously hot Columbia, SC, for other reasons. Nonetheless, I have finally figured out how to survive: before eating anything but after drinking about a half liter of water, I go for a five+ miles walk on the paved and lit path between the old canal and one of the…

If you can even come back. Planes have been unable to fly there....

Except for the football part....

I saw a Curbed post about the Novogratz home stuff Walmart is selling online—looks like the stuff Target used to sell in its stores--collaborations with Michael Graves, etc. but now doesn’t seem to much...If my local Walmart actually stocked some of the items so I could assess the quality.....

There are minimalist kitchen guides that advise people in your position---stuff like no single function tools....I am a minimalist by inclination (I have a big kitchen), and I follow a lot of the recommendations--For example, I have three knives: a chef’s knife, a paring knife and a serrated bread knife. I have a…