As I run out of things in the kitchen, I add them to a running shopping list that lives on top of my microwave. This morning the list read:

• Milk
• Honey

Sounds like a recipe for bliss.

While you wait for me to get back into a frame of mind conducive to real writing, here is a trick that I hope Pippin never learns.

Thanks, Laura, for the link.

I wish I had a piano. A stubby little baby grand with smooth ivory keys and a deep mellow sound.

I wish this piano had a house around it. A cute little two-story house with a porch and room in the yard for a little garden and bird feeders. Several bird feeders.

While I’m at it, I wish this house were also populated by my Prince Charming who, of course, enjoys my piano playing.

Well… not “dead” exactly, but not my apartment manager any more either, which is just as good. That’s right. After 7 months of making our lives miserable, the Dragon Lady has resigned her position, effective immediately. The memo from the building owner is hanging for all to see on our building’s front door.

There’s got to be a story behind this. Probably a doozy of a story, at that. … I so wish I knew the story. But like most good stories, this will be one of those that we will probably never hear.

Now the big question is, will she move away? Or will she continue to waft smoke into my living room, thump on her ceiling if I forget to avoid the squeaky floor boards, and continue to collect and spread malicious gossip (most of which she makes up) about other people in the building?

Either way, these beautiful apartments just regained their charm, and I suddenly lost the urge to thumb through the For Rent section of the local paper. Yippee!

I’ve figured out how to con my local public radio station out of an extra year of the free New Yorker subscription I got as a gift for becoming a member.

How, you ask? Very simple. They send me a new magazine every week this year. I only have time to read them once in a while and on vacations (when I try to catch up). Meanwhile, the pile of unread magazines continues to grow on my bedside table. The equation looks something like this:

x = 1/2y

Where x is the rate at which I read New Yorkers and y is the rate at which they arrive in my mail box.

So you see, NPR thought they were giving me a year’s worth of reading pleasure, but they were actually giving me 2 years of enjoyment. Mwa-ha-ha-ha.