Christmas: Last garbage day, I walked out to the street after the pickup to bring the bins back in. Under the lid of one of the cans was a plastic ziplock bag. In the bag was a generic holiday greeting card with a picture of the garbage guy.
Two things to understand about why this is a musing. First, the town does not provide garbage pickup with tax monies. Residents have to hire a private service. Predictably, the fees go up and up. They even charge a fee because I don't do autopay (even though I pay by transfer from my account to theirs). In this era, it makes no sense to me to give a company access to my accounts without having any ability to know what their hiring practices are. Also understand that the trucks now have arms that pick up the cans. The customer was instructed to set up the cans on the street in a particular way so that the driver doesn't have to leave the truck. That means that the driver had to leave the truck to put the bag under the bin lid.
Do people really tip their garbage guy? I'm supposed to leave a check in the bag and hope that he gets it? People are getting their packages stolen from their front door all the time. What a nice thievingly holiday gift to give someone all my bank account information in a plastic bag under the garbage bin lid! Cash? That would last 30 seconds. I am curious what others think about this. And what they do.
Cookbooks: I recently bought a cookbook that received rave reviews, both as a recipe source and as an educational tome. (I rarely buy cookbooks now, and even more rarely buy one I haven't looked through first.) It sucked. It sucked because it is aimed at people who have done take-out their entire lives and are now just beginning to learn how to cook. I'm about to discontinue my decades long subscription to Bon Appetit because the editors have adopted the same focus of aiming the material at new cooks. Michael Ruhlman went to culinary school to write more intelligently about cooking, and he does. This author writes either at a completely novice level or she has never had any formal training, or has a miserable editor, or all three.
The baby sweater turned out perfectly. The commenters who talked about baby bodies were spot on. Once the sleeves were picked up and knit, the proportions were accurate. Rav link here.
I hope your holiday is shaping up in a fine manner.
