Mary Phillips-Sandy

Cashier: That be all?
Me: Yes, thanks.
Cashier: These are two for $2, you know.
Me: Yeah. I saw.
Cashier: So you want a second one?
Me: No, thanks.
Cashier [brief pause for befuddlement]: But they’re $1.50 each. You can get two for $2. It’s cheaper to get two.
Me: But I only want one.
Cashier [longer pause, pondering how this idiot in [...]

Developments in the burgeoning Portland* blogroll, of which this Nut House is** a part: a tempest flares and is calmed (?) over at the anonymous Point (who is this fractious critic?). Meanwhile, someone or something who is obviously (?) a pseudonym is reviewing baked goods on the city’s preeminent music blog (??). (Related, will I [...]

All day long people have been chatting and Facebooking and Twittering and starting phone calls with discussions of the rain, and yet no one has taken the initiative to flap-ball-change down the street, at least not in Portland, at least not that I’ve seen.

…there was a Bavarian immigrant’s dry-goods shop in Montgomery, Alabama.
Reading such things makes me wonder: Decades from now, will upstart politicians deliver a variant of John Edwards’ “I Had a Mill” speech, only substituting “investment bank” for “mill”?
My father worked 120 hours a week, fighting his way up the ranks from analyst to associate to [...]

Mary Phillips~Sandy has a certain flair.

…would be “everything makes me angry.”
Only misspelled. And with six exclamation points.

I’ve had it three times in the past six years. Irregular intervals.
No, no reason, really. Just one of those little statistics I have filed in the back of my mind.

If new home construction is down and print is dead, we could be facing a serious tree surplus before long.

Don’t be catty with people who post New Year’s resolutions a week after the new year starts.
Don’t be catty with people who post New Year’s resolutions for you. They are just trying to be helpful.
Get a library card if you don’t have one. Use it! Also, have a conversation with the librarians while you’re checking [...]