It’s beautifully designed, made in Germany, has a transmission – is it a Porsche? No, it’s the Schroeder hand drill. It requires no gas or even electricity to run, it’s very smooth and quiet, and much less expensive, too.
OK, I’ll stop the comparison; it’s way too much of a stretch, but there’s something about a high quality machine that makes it a pleasure to look at, handle and use for its intended purpose. I like rechargeable power drills, too – they’re fun to use, and very handy when you have a lot of holes to drill and a fully charged battery. Some day, though, the battery will stop holding a charge or the gears will wear out, it will go to a landfill and you’ll need a new one.
After seeing the movie Hugo, I have become more fascinated with mechanical objects. You see exactly how the speed of your turning hand is multiplied to the speed of the drill bit. You’ll hear it, and feel it, too. The Schroeder hand drill will never end up being thrown away. It could be passed down to your grandchildren, or in a worse scenario, be used to rebuild the post-apocalyptic world where an electromagnetic pulse has toasted the power drills (not to mention the grid itself). OK, let’s not worry about that …
Schoeder makes two models of this for woodworking: a 1/4 drill about 9″ long with a single pinion at the bottom and a longer one, about 11″ long with a bigger chuck for larger bits. I figured bigger meant sturdier, so when I saw the large model at Sears online for just a few dollars more, the decision was easy. The smaller one is usually about $25; the larger more like $50.
A hand drill is convenient for woodworking outside or when you just don’t want to worry about recharging. It gives finer control for precision jobs. Just take it out and drill away. It’s easy and safe for children to use, too.
Let’s get it out of the way right now: you don’t need a bone folder. You could use a butter knife to do more or less the same thing most of the time, but once you have a bone folder, you won’t. Nor will you use the bone folder to butter toast. The knife will be in the kitchen, where it belongs, and the folder will be in the office. It will be right there whenever you need it.
Reaching for the bone folder makes you think of a Victorian lady or gentleman writing many letters in longhand, by gaslight, and reaching for the bone folder after each one to crease it neatly before stuffing into the envelope. You can do that, too, but I’m guessing not too many of us still write a lot of letters to people who might care about the neatness of the crease.
I got mine when I was learning the rudiments of making pop-ups. Inspired by Robert Sabuda, I tried it myself, and one of the things I found out was the importance of the bone folder in the art of mechanical paper engineering. The point on the one end is for scoring before you make a fold, and the blunt end is for creasing, flattening and burnishing. You use it all the time.
But let’s say you’re not planning on writing your own pop-up books. Why would you need a bone folder in a 21st-century paperless office, with scanners and laser printers? Well, we all know what happened to the paperless office: it’s the one we drive to in our flying cars. You’d be surprised how often you need to fold stuff, so if you have to do it, do it well. They are handy for children’s crafts, too; anything that helps children do things more neatly is always worthwhile. Finally, when packing things in boxes to ship via UPS (a very 21st century task), you can burnish the tape down tighter than ever before and really get that box sealed.
So put the butter knife back in the kitchen and pick up a bone folder from Amazon or your local art supply store. They’re cheap, too.
I have a lifelong affair with shopping. I love clothes and shoes and the anticipation of fall clothes in midsummer, resort wear at New Year’s, and spring fashion when winter’s SAD threatens to swallow me up. Salespeople … not so much. No, you cannot help me: I am self-sufficient, I know what I like and it isn’t green. Looking at this doesn’t mean I want that. I don’t know you, and I don’t trust your taste. That’s why my mother is here. Just unlock those stupid fitting rooms and stop following us all around like we fit the shoplifter profile.
See? I love to shop, but not with a pushy stranger hovering nearby. Somehow, some stores, like Nordstrom, understand this. By clever training or careful recruiting or both, Nordstrom has figured out how to send sales consultants to their floor who know when to approach me, how long to stand there and when to retreat. They gauge when I actually need unsolicited advice (rarely) and when I’m confident enough in my choices to be left alone.
Let’s assume, though, that I’m there to not just look at stuff, but maybe to buy some, too. After all, if all one did was stay home and shop through Amazon Prime, one would turn flabby and pasty white, and presumably clothes would not fit as well as they would if one actually went somewhere and tried them on once in a while. Sensing this intent is the genius of the best sales consultants. Like a potential new friend, they compliment something I’m already wearing or carrying, they suggest alternatives only after I’ve indicated some slight intent to purchase by trying things on, and they bring items like those I’m already considering, not wholly different items — “How about that dress in blue?” and not “Do you also need jeans?” — offered so I’ll spend more. If I lovelovelove something and the store doesn’t have it in my size, they offer to find it elsewhere, remind me of the free shipping that will offset my lack of immediate gratification, and process the order in less than five minutes. They will do this in a clean modern store that is tastefully decorated, and quietly accompanied by music.
Nordstrom started in 1901 as a shoe store (not surprisingly) in Seattle, Washington. They had the cool Pacific Northwestthing down nearly a century before Starbucks came along. Now you can find them in upscale shopping malls throughout most of the country. They are still largely controlled by the Nordstrom family, and they consistently rank well up in the top 100 companies to work for. Their customer service is legendary. They work hard at being easy to like, just as other stores (NM, anyone?) can be so easy to dislike for their devotion to the one-percenters and all the NON-affordable luxuries they have for sale …
Do you still need a landline? You will not die without one, but we are going to keep ours for a while.
Back around the turn of the century, when cellphones started to become the universal objects they are now, I seemed to have the worst luck trying to use one. The phone would ring in elevators, in the car with the top down, in the subway, in noisy bars and anywhere else where having a conversation right then was out of the question. Not only that, but there were some people I would rather just get a message from to return later. Or not. Even now, dropped calls are tolerated for the overall convenience.
Now, of course, phones have keyboards and everyone sends text messages instead, but I still always say, “Can I call back on the landline?” if that’s at all possible. At work, where calls between offices are on landlines (or at least on one end) and the environment is quiet, it is just so easy to hear. The 100 year monopoly of the Bell Company may have needed to come to an end, but the technology and the infrastructure were rock solid. A dial tone was almost always there with crystal clear sound on the other end and you could hammer nails with the Western Electric phones.
Those days are gone, of course. AT&T has given way to Vonage, Comcast and other VOIP systems, but phone conversations still sound better over wires. Nobody pays a la carte for call waiting and all that other stuff. You can use a device like an Ooma, port your old familiar phone number you have had for your entire adult life and pay essentially nothing every month.
So here are my three reasons: sentimental attachment to my old phone number, no dropped calls and great, easy to listen to sound. If the price is right, it works for me.
A T-amp, like the Dayton Audio DTA-100a, could be just the thing to give you big sound, if you have a pair of great speakers (or can get them from eBay or Craigslist). Consumer audio products may have reached their peak in the late 1970s, before the Sony Walkman started the movement toward small, portable music products like the 21st century iPod. A good turntable or an FM tube tuner plugged into a preamp and amplifier hooked up in turn to a big pair of AR or JBL speakers took up a lot of living space in 20th century dorm rooms (along with boxes of vinyl and later, CDs). The sound, though, was glorious: the strings, the cymbal strikes and the vocals on the high end and the bass line and drums on the low end. I suppose those speakers now are mostly gathering dust, taking up space in attics and storage lockers.
Now we listen to TV speakers, iPod docks and wireless streaming speakers from Logitech and Sonos, with Dolby Digital 7.1 and a subwoofer in the living room, if we’re lucky. However, I still missed listening to the speakers in the attic. What we need is power, and a way to connect them to the iPod or mp3 player. First, you might need something like this:
Then, you need power, 30 watts or so per channel. The old receivers had the power and quality, but they were heavy and the size of suitcases. Today, you can pick up a T-amp for about $100 and fit it pretty much anywhere.
All you need to do is connect the speaker wires to the T-amp and turn it on, then you can adjust the volume anywhere from quiet to loud to very loud to too loud, all the way to painfully loud, depending on the efficiency of your speakers. There is a very bright blue LED that I put a piece of black duct tape over; you can still see it. We have it hooked up to the audio out on the TV in the bedroom, which gets its music mostly from the little Apple TV. The Apple TV needs a screen (the TV) and only has HDMI-out, so the TV makes the conversion. The speakers also add the home theater effect to whatever we watch on TV: more bass and better stereo separation.
Plug your iPod dock of choice into the T-amp and you’ll get a roomful of sounds, some of which you may never have heard before.
I admit, I did not wake up one day and decide that I didn’t want to look at tissue boxes anymore, but the Toro tissue ring is a clean, elegant design for an object to use in the bathroom, bedroom or wherever you would keep a “box” of tissues. If you saw it on the ground or received it as a gift, you would want to keep it just for its looks. Then you buy the tissues in the usual rectangular cardboard box, open it from the side and take the tissues out and put the Toro on top. Not hard at all, just like taking anything you buy out of the box before you use it.
The weight of the ring holds down the tissues, you pull up one at a time and the next one is ready to use. The concept works well. But is it worth the $20, even if you don’t mind the looks of the tissue box you have?
It might be, for two reasons. First, it works just as well when you get down to the very last two tissues. The tissues don’t get too far down to reach and separate the way they do in a large box. Second, you can see exactly how many are left. The pile gets smaller and smaller, so you know you will need more tissues soon.
The minimalist design works for me; somehow the bathroom always wants to look cluttered, so getting rid of the tissue box makes the bathroom shelf look like it just has less stuff on it. If you really decide to go for the cardboard-free bathroom, add some Scott tube-free toilet paper to your shopping list (also minimalist, spins much more quietly on the holder and hangs on miraculously until the last, glueless square) and you’ll have the complete set. The TP will save landfill space that would be devoted to the cardboard tubes. If you’re into Goth decor or trendy Japanese products, you could also put the ring on black tissues.
The Toro ring is designed by Scott Christensen, a real industrial designer, so you can support the idea by getting it from his Web site.
There is something about invasive species that’s a little disturbing. They just don’t belong here. There’s always the possibility, however remote, that the brown marmorated stinkbug, imported from Asia, removed from its natural predators and in a new environment, will multiply exponentially, absorb stray radiation and mutate to enormous size …
… or not. They are horrifying enough the way they are now. They’re BUGS, they crawl into the house through the narrowest of cracks, and they emit that SMELL when crushed (hence the name). Last year, there were a lot of them and we were braced for the worst this year, expecting to need light traps that would lure them all to mass suicide. Alas, the traps do not work. The bugs are not smart enough to know they are supposed to be attracted to light. Perhaps if you had a swarm of them in your dark attic, you could catch some in a light trap, but that was not our situation. You just see one now and then, and you don’t want to crush and flush with a tissue and or foul your Dustbuster with stinkbug corpses. What to do?
The Bugzooka is the answer. It looks just like a child’s toy (and is actually fun to use). Squeeze the bellows once to cock it, aim it close to the stinkbug (or spider, or whatever), press the button and your target vanishes into the chamber as the bellows pop back out. It’s easy, because stinkbugs haven’t learned to run or fly away from approaching clear plastic. Once trapped, you can release them humanely outside (or not).
While the Bugzooka may not seem a sufficiently comprehensive solution — killing them one at a time, after all, can seem so tedious — it really is perfect. If you’re fortunate enough not to have an infestation, but just unfortunate enough to see the occasional insect pest, the Bugzooka is a great way to eliminate them. Since there’s no way to prevent them and no way to avoid removing them, dead or alive, the Bugzooka allows you to rid yourself of the problem without any of the unpleasantness of doing so. You won’t have to get closer to them than about 3 feet, you won’t have to smell them at all, you won’t have to chase them around, and the amusement of using it will probably distract you from the aggravation of having to deal with them at all. You might even end up wishing you had more of them to hunt.
I try not to deny myself anything, but I never felt the need for a burr coffee grinder. I’m not sure why. The conventional wisdom is that coffee starts to go stale as soon as it’s ground, so if you buy ground coffee at the store, you’re already out of luck. Although it makes you wonder why so many people would go to the trouble to brew coffee fresh with stale grounds, it does seem reasonable that freshly ground coffee would taste better. And so it does. My trusty $20 Krups blade grinder gave me the freshly ground coffee advantage – for only $20! But they say burr grinders are better, for so many reasons …
So when I got one, the perfect gift (something I wouldn’t buy for myself), I got the opportunity to put it to the test. With the blade grinder, I’d measure the beans, dump them in and then hold the button down and count to 20 while the blade spun around and made a lot of ear-splitting noise. Any more than 20 seconds and the blade would heat up and scorch the coffee, so if the coffee looked like it was mostly too coarse, then 20 more seconds or so. What could be simpler?
Not having to count to 20, for starters. Measure the beans, dump them in and turn the dial to set the number of seconds. It grinds, shuts off and you’re done. Very handy, except the number of seconds doesn’t matter that much. The setting of the burr grinders on the dial somewhere on the range between Extra Fine, Fine, Medium and Coarse determines precisely what the size of the grounds will be. So if you use a French press or a vacuum pot, you can experiment until you learn how to make the grounds the perfect degree of Coarseness to keep anything finer from passing through and leaving sediment in your cup. Once you have it perfected, you can replicate the process every time. They are higher quality and more durable, too.
Autumn is officially over in the Northern hemisphere. Even the unseasonably balmy days are gone. Today was the shortest and darkest day of the year, but we hardly noticed because we were all “having a good holiday,” just like our friends told us to. Tuesday was the first of the eight days of Hanukkah, but we know that “the holidays” refers to the two months between Halloween and New Year’s Day, with maximum intensity in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Christmas, though, is the engine that pulls the holiday train, so here are ten things we can appreciate the most about the 25th of December.
1. Food Again – Thanksgiving is all about food, lots and lots of food all at one time. Christmas, although it often includes a Thanksgiving-like turkey dinner on Christmas Day, is all about lots and lots of food all the time. Cookies, candy canes, ham, the many fruitcakes, chocolate in many forms, eggnog … I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Oh, and pigs-in-blankets at parties …
2. Presents – It’s actually kind of fun to stop and think what people would like – if you have the time. It’s also kind of fun to find out what people think you would like – especially if they are anywhere close to being right. Mainly though, it’s about giving toys to children. They appreciate everything, although perhaps not for very long. Plus we can take a turn playing with them, too.
3. Christmas Lights – I am firmly convinced that it’s no accident that these winter holidays are all about light – Christmas, Hanukkah, even Diwali, although it doesn’t get that dark and cold in India during the winter. Otherwise, we would all fall victim to severe seasonal affective disorder (SAD). For thousands of years, we have all celebrated the winter solstice with lights and warmth. I don’t feel the longing to escape to a tropical paradise until January.
4. Christmas Music – There’s Christmas music, and there’s Christmas music. There are carols you don’t need to hear for the millionth time, and then there’s that moment that you hear, oh, “The Christmas Song,” sung by Nat “King” Cole, that reminds you of how beautiful Christmas music can be. What’s really worth the effort is a quick scan of your local newspaper or a visit to a nearby church, where you might find a carol service with traditional carols sung by a choir with a pipe organ, that will remind you of the haunting beauty of Christmas music that evokes the season’s true meaning. But you don’t even have to delve that deeply. Just enjoy the gorgeous harmonies and soaring high notes of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” . . .
5. This Year, A Long Weekend — When I was younger I was disappointed when Christmas fell on a Sunday. Blue laws once kept stores closed on Sundays, anyway, so Christmas on Sunday didn’t feel any different than an ordinary Sunday, but now, when everything is always open, I can appreciate the extra holiday on Monday. Lots of people will have the opportunity to celebrate an extra-long, almost Thanksgiving-length weekend: a short day on Friday, Christmas Eve on Saturday, Christmas on Sunday that you can enjoy well into the night, and the holiday on Monday that will allow you to recover — at least long enough to start returning the gifts from the people who clearly weren’t paying close enough attention to the person you really are.
6. Also This Year, Football — And this time it’s pro football. Last weekend was an “any given Sunday” dream. Previously undefeated teams lost. Formerly winless teams won. Teams with good defenses lost to teams with no defenses. It was a football fanatic’s dream. Moreover, it set up a next-to-last football weekend where all sorts of unlikely victories could send thoroughly undeserving teams to the playoffs (where they will live down to their lowest expectations, but that’s for another weekend), and as noted above, you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy those match-ups.
7. Holiday Parties — They’re endless. You’ve spent all year trying to drop the pounds you gained at last year’s holiday parties, and here it is again, the merry-go-round of cocktail parties with your friends or colleagues who’ve finally found the time to congregate, drinks in hand. It’s exhausting, but at least you’re loved. The next time you roll your eyes as you try to figure out where you’ll find the time to go to all these parties and finish your Christmas shopping and glaze that ham and set the table, remember all the people you know — or know of, or read about — who have lost loved ones or feel utterly hopeless at this most celebratory time of year, and be grateful that you have the wherewithal to enjoy all that collective benevolence and holiday spirit.
8. Animated Movies and Specials — Who doesn’t want to see “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the 896th time? Or that Claymation special with the Heat- and Snow-Miser (for the record, “The Year Without A Santa Claus”)? They started at Thanksgiving, but by now they’re in full swing, those gaudy, goofy, corny, somewhat outdated Christmas specials (whatever happened to “The Little Drummer Boy,” anyway?) that, despite decades of viewings, first as a child and now as a parent with your own children, somehow seem timeless despite their obvious age. Animation and special effects have become much more sophisticated in the intervening years, but from my quick comparison of more recent Christmas specials to the ones from when I grew up, the storytelling has declined significantly. No matter, though; watch them all. They’re only on for four weeks or so, they’ll give you one more chance to sing those goofy songs, and they’ll give you and your kids a glimpse into your gone-but-not-forgotten childhood.
9. Trains — Max made me include this, but I’m up for it. As he has said, we have a model train that rides a figure-8 track in front of our Christmas tree. We didn’t have it before he got here, but I like it. Somehow, trains feel very Christmas-y. I’m not sure why, but ours has pine-scented steam that enhances its Christmas feel, and nearby there’s a full-size train pulled by a steam engine that takes a brief Christmas ride from its point of origin to the next town over. Christmas-themed movies have been made about trains (see: “The Polar Express”), and the chugging of a train evokes a romantic holiday journey to see one’s loved ones for the Christmas season.
10. Holiday Spirit — It’s not easily defined, but it’s the general sense of festivity and cheer that brightens most of your encounters at this time of year. Whether people celebrate Christmas or some other holiday, whether they’re friend or adversary, people just seem to be in a better mood. They greet each other more warmly, they treat each other more kindly, they respond more patiently. Perhaps it’s because they’ve had to spend all that time thinking about others instead of themselves. Perhaps it’s that the end of each year reminds all of us how quickly time passes and how precious it is. Whatever the reason, we should just revel in it. In January everyone will be their grumpy, impatient selves again despite those New Year’s resolutions vowing to be different.
While in London, I just had to go shopping at Harrod’s in Knightsbridge. Needing more, I walked across Hans Road to Rigby and Peller to check out the lingerie that bears the Queen’s Royal Warrant. While they had some beautiful things, the sad truth became clear that the Queen and I are proportioned differently — well, not entirely sad for me, but clearly another brand would be better.
Here you are again, gentlemen, lights twinkling and carols caroling, wondering what Santa could possibly bring your honey that she hasn’t already bought for herself on those weekly excursions to the mall, or that you weren’t clever enough (you little devil, you) to think of suggesting to Santa the last time the jolly old elf dropped by. What, indeed, does one give to the woman who has everything? Jewelry and furs, you say? Well, she already has those, and last year’s jewelry will be pretty hard to top. But how about … European lingerie? And when I say, “European lingerie,” I mean genuinely from the continent of Europe; please don’t go to that loud, pink, overly fragrant store at the mall with its store logos emblazoned on every item it sells (you know the one I mean), imagining that at those prices – and with those models, and those commercial voiceover accents — their garments MUST be as luxurious — or luxurious enough, anyway. They are not. European lingerie is what your honey must have — even if she already has other “fancy” undergarments, even if she thinks she isn’t a lingerie person, even if YOU don’t care what her lingerie looks like (but I know that’s not possible).
What’s so special about European lingerie, you ask? Well, as with most garments, European designers know quality. They know how clothing should fit, and they know how undergarments must be made to ensure that the clothes covering them appear to fit well. Thus, brassieres by brands like Chantelle or La Perla will provide support without wires that dig into her skin, will create a smooth line beneath even the clingiest sweater, and will perform both of these functions without excess wiring or padding and with a delicate, feminine fabric that is flattering without looking either matronly (see R&P, above) or trashy (see V.S., above). The styles most frequently displayed tend to be brightly-colored or extremely lacy or intricately patterned, all of which can be quite pretty for the woman who prefers extremely frilly undergarments, but the great discovery about European lingerie is that it also comes in styles that are basic and perfectly serviceable, but still pretty enough to make one stand a bit taller and feel more elegant without excessive detail that every woman won’t appreciate (and that won’t necessarily work under one’s every-day professional wardrobe).
Are these “unmentionables” unspeakably expensive? Well, they certainly cost more than average department store lingerie, but the purchase of European lingerie isn’t simply about spending the money. The value of European lingerie is in its high quality, invisible elegance and the confidence she projects knowing she’s wearing it. With those intangible benefits, it’s a bargain at any price.
