So adorable. How tall is she? And is she still growing?

This was the wrong year to abolish “Happy Holidays!” since Hanukkah this time around takes place from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Eve. So Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, one big smash-up of holidays.

I’ve never been to Tel Aviv but friends of mine told me about this place:

I work in book publishing and have for decades. (This is not really relevant except to say that I read for a living and read for pleasure so I do a lot of reading.) Except for the romance/YA stuff I’ve read almost every book recommended so far and they’re ALL great. Combined this is an excellent reading list.

I swear German shepherds are among the most wolfish of all the canines. Mine was the same. We had some kind of lingering cold snap years ago in New York where everything was freezing up (steam pipes, car engines, subway tracks), howling winds, it snowed like every three days, and she couldn’t get enough. Sadly I…

I will give you a nightmare scenario that I lived through. I was on a Continental flight from NYC to LAX with a layover in Denver. It was January, 1987, two days before the Giants played the Broncos in the Super Bowl in Pasadena.

You might be thinking of former Governor Eliot Spitzer, “Client Number 9" and “The Scourge of Wall Street.”

They must be weatherproof so they’d make good ponchos!

My university, which was not particularly artsy or way-out in any sense, had an a capella group that used to go caroling door-to-door in dorms. Picture the reception they received.

I too would rather fight than switch, but do they still make Benson & Hedges Menthol Ultra-Light 100s? I think the menthol aspect would make them kind of Christmas-y.

Personally, I prefer the New York to London 17-hour BOAC flights with the overnights in scenic Gander, Newfoundland.

That’s actually a good question about the unpaid overtime (if it’s true.) All my public sector friends’ time is tracked to the minute, and while they sometimes don’t get overtime there’s a record of it and they accrue compensatory time. That’s why you read about someone making $80,000 a year walking away with $800,000…

Trump famously doesn’t drink alcohol but I bet he would enjoy a good luau.

Why not both? I have a friend who is a non-native speaker of both but now he is so fluent he teaches Russian to Germans and German to Russians. He could have negotiated the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact himself.

I want Julia Roberts to adopt that slogan officially: “I am your Joan Crawford.”

No.

Oh, I’ve been to the Marriott Marquis many times (as a visitor, not a guest.) It’s fabulous but completely impractical and very 80s, although the interior decor keeps getting updated. It’s a Portman-designed hotel, so it has one of those space-hogging multi-floor central atriums with the glass elevators, and a very…

She really was amazing. She’d get these huge beasts to follow her commands by running alongside them and they were afraid of stepping on her (but not afraid of her, they were all best buddies) but then at the end of the run they’d remember that it was the ball they were after. Smartest dog I’ve ever owned, by far, and…

We had a Cairn who wasn’t too bad, but she was very territorial when she was outside. At her largest she weighed about 13 pounds. When I would take her to the dog run she would pick the biggest dogs to run with (like massive dobermans and Great Danes) and herd them. Someone would throw a tennis ball and off they’d go,…

I’m an American who grew up in our northeast. I’ve been to Toronto in the winter but I think it was relatively mild the times I went. I would huddle down in Montréal myself. I’ve been there in blistering winds and sub-zero (F) temps and thought, “This is kind of Arctic, but fun!”