Two tips: first, check out a pair of Aura

Not a big problem during the hot summer on the East Coast, but keeping butter out in a "French butter dish" or a butter boat chilled by water evaporation gives you spreadable butter all the time. And your butter is room temperature.

The Union Plus prepaid debit card savings account through Working America, featured in the New York Times last November, is absolutely the way to go. 5.1% interest up to $5000, fully insured. It's hands down the way to go. Check it out on the NYT Web site from 11/12/11.

I'm a little surprised by all the negativity on Spotify. They may need to refine their Android app, and I'm sure they will, but they do one thing very well: letting you listen to a lot of commercial music, wherever and whenever you want. I listened to the new Springsteen on the first day.

Excellent post, but here's my $.02. A great vintage turntable may NEED a preamp if the receiver doesn't have phono inputs (most newer ones don't), but they're not that expensive:

Certainly with vinyl all the music is there - and some people just prefer the "warm" sound of analog. You can go to a used record store and get an entire album for $1 or $2. Use software like Audacity and you can "rip" high quality, lossless digital tracks to take anywhere. You still have the LP as backup.

Airplay on a DIY board? This could be the next step in multimedia home networking! The Apple TV 2 is small and cute and all that, but it's tough to pry the box open ...

I, too, really liked the physical copy - the art, the lyrics and the "CD-quality" music. But I found myself ripping them anyway in order to have the music more available. And, you're right, live music is the best there is.

I definitely love Spotify enough to subscribe. The bitrate is higher, you can use it on your phone and it's been unlimited all along. What else can we do, go back to buying CDs? In a store?

Two sets of headphones and a wearable HDTV? Hmmm, perhaps we do need to work a bit on our social skills ...

I'll have to try that. Bigelow Chemist makes some great stuff. I mostly MWF (from Scotland) in the winter for moisturizing and Proraso (from Italy) for its cool menthol in the summer.

Good point on the blades. Surprisingly enough for something so simple, blades vary widely in sharpness, quality, durability, etc. Lots of places recommend that you order an assortment and try them all to see what you like best. They are made in all sorts of interesting places: Japan, Israel, Egypt, Russia, Turkey and…

diggity's right - Feathers are about 2 for a dollar. There are other brands of DE blades that are cheaper, but of course they're not Feathers.

Not much I can tell you, that's for sure. I like Mitchell's Wool Fat soap and I'm looking at a nice pottery scuttle to keep everything warm and toasty this winter.

You can get a Gillette Fat Boy from Ebay (built like a Mack truck and adjustable,too) and sterilize it with Barbasol. Then add Japanese Feather blades at about a dime each. They are surgically sharp steel, the sharpest in the world. The best shave in the world, and fun, too.