Mary Phillips-Sandy lives here.

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1. If you stick your hand into a bag of frozen blueberries because you are too lazy to find a spoon, your bepurpled kunckles will cause people to think “something happened” (other than laziness). 2. Me: “Are you using that?” She: “No, it just won’t stop. I pressed the handle a moment ago and it’s [...]

Train ticket to Cairo, found in a Michael Cunningham novel rescued from a stoop box in Brooklyn. (Verso: “Train No. 916, Car No. 6, Chairs 29/30.”) Scribbles on Working Assets notepaper, found in an otherwise forgettable book defending New Urbanism. From the Portland library. Pictoral ode to Newsies, found, marvelously enough, in a volume of [...]

This is a concept I’ve been thinking about for several years, and given modern technology it seems like something that should be possible: an ever-changing map of a city marked by smells, not street names, although I suppose you’d need an underlying street map to make annotation easier. This morning, for example, I bicycled along [...]

Many, many thanks to Kristen Iskandrian (“Going to Georgia”) for letting me (“Going to Maine”) know that this exists: a Google map depicting every place ever mentioned in a Mountain Goats song. For some breathtaking fact-check work, be sure to click on the comments tab.

Put your phone on silent. Keep it in your bag or in your pocket until you need to make a phone call. Advanced version: turn off the phone. Think a blazingly accurate and devastating thought about someone more successful than you. Do not type it on the internet. Make a cake. Not easily-shared, single-serving cutesy [...]

I had another one of those moments this week, where someone made reference to a popular television show and I looked like an idiot because I was unfamiliar with said television show — “George Jefferson? I haven’t met him,” those were my exact words, and they were met with incredulous laughter. Parents: you may think [...]

The scene: Hannaford. Also known as “Hannafuhhd.” Or “the grocery store.” The players: A woman, 40s-ish; her teenage son; an Unrelated Observer. All are in line (also known as “on line”) at the checkout. Son: Hey, we forgot something. Be right back. [Son dashes away and returns moments later with a box of granulated sugar.] [...]

1. Today I missed New York, specifically the feature that allows you to enter a zen-like trance by walking 30+ blocks to a distant subway stop before heading home. Driving past a series of exits on 295-South is not the same. 1a. I promptly forgot about the city when I got back to Portland and [...]

I went to the cell phone store yesterday because I had an hour to spare after a meeting got canceled, and because I was a year overdue for an upgrade, and because sometimes a lady simply needs to upgrade herself. Now, as a few of you know from tedious personal experience, I don’t do casual [...]