Alright already, stop your nagging. Chowflap took a little holiday vacation but now it's back. And here's a rambling Larry-King-esque post to prove it to you.

The crib bumper project is moving along nicely. I am at the final assembly stage.

Brick walkway freezes before sidewalk surface. Ow.

Brasserie 40-A is a very good restaurant.

On my walk to work today I passed what looked like a giant, glistening eelskin laying on top of a bush. Upon further inspection it was revealed to be a forest-green scarf encased in ice.

Seven-year-olds think I am an artistic genius.

The meat bastilla pie at Amanous is very tasty but sits like a lead brick in your (okay, my) stomach.

Just after recovering from eating the meat pie, it is not wise to then have a BLT with fries at 2 in the morning.

Salon.com is losing me. I've been a subscriber for a couple of years but recently I've been feeling alienated. Firstly, Anne Lamott drives me up a frickin' wall. I can't wait until her son turns 18 and sues her for destroying his privacy. Then they gave a glowing review of In America, which I went and saw and do not recommend (there were some beautiful sequences, but also some inexcuseably cliched parts), and their movie reviewer slammed Cold Mountain because there weren't enough black people in it (haven't seen the movie,and it may be awful; but there weren't any black people in the movie because it was about poor white people in the mountains, where there simply weren't any black people. Slamming a movie for this makes me embarrassed to be left-wing). I dunno, maybe the love affair is over and it's time for me to move on.

I'm not making any difficult New Year's resolutions. The only one I know I want to do for sure is to try to get to work closer to on-time. Today I got here before 9:30. This is progress.