Top three headlines from the November issue of Martha Stewart Living:

“Organizing Pots and Pans.”

“Ironing a Table Cloth”

“Pantries of Maine”

2:42 p.m.

Seeing Spots

The bus posters for Disney’s new 101 Dalmations feature a bunch of puppies falling through the air. They have quizzical expressions, they’re posed in awkward, falling-puppy positions. Cute, I guess, but puppies don’t land on their feet. I can’t get those 101 sickly thuds out of my head.

EMAIL MOMENT!

To: Me

From: A friend at work.

Scenario: He asked me to introduce someone at our awards ceremony.

Excerpt:

Hi Bryan,

Normally, I’d do anything for you, but Nov. 1 is our deadline day. That means I’ll probably be at work until the wee hours of the morning and won’t be capable of waking up on Thursday. Additionally, speaking in front of large groups of people makes me want to huck.

-Maggie

M,

ok

congrats on your promotion!

And you’re dead to me.

bryan

3:35 p.m.

My Girl Scout troop leader once said that raising boys was easier than raising girls because you could let them run and climb trees without worrying that they’d hurt themselves.

2:18 p.m.

I turn 25 tomorrow. I send out thank you notes in a timely fashion, water my plants frequently enough to keep them alive, and have a 401K. At what point does one stop feeling self-conscious when walking by a high school football team?

9:50 a.m.

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten set out to see if PR flaks would tell humiliating stories about themselves, knowing that they’d be printed, if Weingarten agreed to write glowingly about their client’s product in the same article. A surprising number of them agreed.

2:35 p.m.

God, I love the Martha Stewart magazine. She writes an editorial every month in which she reminisces about Christmases, or Easters, or Summers of yore. She types out her 1,000 words, blissfully unaware that one or two paragraphs in each essay are disturbing. Here, she waxes nostalgic about her daughter’s days at summer camp:

“My frequent letters to her, she says, often mentioned misspelled words in her letters, with corrections. And there were envelopes addressed to people I thought she should write to, stamped and ready to send�these displeased her a lot, especially when they were addressed to people she barely knew.”

11:03 a.m.