It was Friday and I was really hungry for Chinese. I innocently asked a few people I work with to go to the Chinese buffet with me.
They recoiled in horror. “You can’t eat meat on a Friday!”
“Why?” I asked with curiosity.
“Aren’t you Catholic? You can’t eat meat on Fridays during lent.”
“Oh,” I said, while I was thinking, “And why is that?” Honestly, where did that tradition come from?
I am not criticizing Catholics, or the religion. I am just curious where this rule about no meat during lent came …

By Carl Megill
First, let me assure you that I’m not going to bring this list down to the lowest common denominator with a bunch of mindless, idiotic, sexual references. If you want that kind of list, perhaps you should be reading such tripe somewhere else. Anyone can write an article that exploits sex. That’s not where this article is going. As you’ll read, all ten things that guys hate to hear in bed are all, pretty much, family friendly. Why, even Grandma could enjoy this list full of insightful and …

I have always wondered about the way people spend their Friday nights. For many of us it is the end of a hard week of working, a weekend of freedom is in sight, and the desire to let loose has taken over.
Some like to go really wild. Maybe that means dinner at a restaurant and the latest movie. Maybe that means a bar and lots of drinking. Maybe that means a trip to the ball game and then finishing off the evening on a dance floor somewhere. But the pervading …

Ok, if we have been honest, we realize that we might be driven to accumulate things, and that our closets and desks and lives seem cluttered as a result. Or maybe not. Maybe it is just me and your neighbor. So what do we do?
I know that I often wish I could start over. I remember as a kid getting frustrated with how my video game was going and jamming the restart button. I loved save points. Any time I messed up I could start the game over from …

Is your desk clean?
You have always tried to defend your messy desk by saying, “I know where everything is!” If that is true, then put those things in an ordered place. The only thing that is keeping you from doing that is…
I am the worst. My desk is a horrible mess with stacks of papers, books, unopened mail, folders, loose paper clips and a million other things, it seems. I can’t find anything when I want to. It’s always a day later when it shows up right where I thought …

Holidays seem to pass very fast.
Thanksgiving is gone. Now the shopping season is upon us. If you don’t remember that’s the holiday between Thanksgiving and Christmas that so many retail owners love. I have never really gotten much into the Black Friday buying frenzy like some people. It is a little too much pressure to buy, buy, buy, and perhaps I am just not in the spirit yet. And honestly, who wants to get up at four in the morning just to buy gifts? Who wants to stand in line …

One of my favorite places is the produce corner of my local grocery store.
Somewhere between the mounds of red tomatoes, the yellow lemons, the apples in their rows, the cabbages still wet from the mist sprayers, the leathery onions and spicy garlic, I stop and stare, slowly spinning in circles. I have always liked fruits and vegetables, raw or cooked, mixed together in juices or eaten by themselves. This is my candy store. Maybe it’s the moisture in the air, or the smell of fresh food, but I feel healthy …

Bird by Bird. This is a book for writers, but it also a book for those lovers of life. I was lost in it, loving her humorous and honest way of revealing what she has learned in her life and about writing. No writer should miss it. SC
From Publishers Weekly
Lamott’s ( Operating Instructions ) miscellany of guidance and reflection should appeal to writers struggling with demons large and slight. Among the pearls she offers is to start small, as their father once advised her 10-year-old brother, who was agonizing over …

It’s been a long time since I met a smelly girl. How do they do that? I know they aren’t born that way, but it seems that they can run three miles and still smell like flowers or fruit.
A good book is worth reading twice. And the older you get, the more it seems like the first time you read it.
Humility in the beginning keeps me from having to say I was wrong, or I’m sorry later on.
I can’t remember a hundred things I worried about yesterday, but my …

What would make you happy?
It’s a good question, worth asking yourself more than once in your lifetime. And there are million good answers.
I’ve even encouraged you to change the circumstances of your life the past two articles so that you can be happy more often. And I’ve been somewhat misleading in the process. I’ve talked a lot about finding and getting happiness, without really telling you the truth. And it’s partly because, I myself forget so often that I need to be reminded as well.
What would make you happy right …