Life Style & Travel

UNITED STATES—While Audi has always been considered the standard bearer of interior design, their exterior designs have not always progressed without hiccups. Case in point: the Audi TT. With its low to the ground, love-it-or-hate-it hunkered down stance, the TT was Audi’s first attempt at a compact sports coupe. In order to minimize the risk involved in entering a new...

UNITED STATES—Just like meals, snack times deserve full devotion and relaxation. Make them sacred. Practice making them free of distractions, which produce distracted coffee-drinking and distracted nibbling. Divided attention splinters satisfaction. But whatever we do intently is by nature more satisfying. “Snacking on knowledge” is a little treat I hold out for myself right after a snack. It bridges that...

UNITED STATES—The fingers of the bearded guy in the driver's seat fondled the gold chain. Mary Reno's heart clenched. She stood, knees trembling in the gutter. Mary blurted out, "The chain means a lot to me. My dog found that." The guy's nervous hands and eyes kept probing the gold chain. He let out a sigh. "And I lost my dog,"...

UNITED STATES—There was a manly surrender in heading back on that freeway from the Westside. The phantom set of keys that would let Irma into her new quarters might be on the bed stand where she'd housesat near downtown. They might not. My job was to flush thoughts of defeat out of my head and drive. We got through the...

UNITED STATES—Early spring bloom is best. That is simply how the schedule of the majority of flowers works. The priority of flowers is pollination. Pollination is necessary for the production of seed. The production of seed and any associated fruit takes time. Seed, whether contained within fruit or not, then disperses before winter. After soaking and chilling through winter,...

UNITED STATES—Crazy thing. One of the residents of Manhattan Place recognized a woman who’d left a deposit on a room I had shown. The woman had been a mental patient four years earlier. Now this great tenant, Dee, who recognized she didn’t want to live in our house any more. Go ahead, tear me apart: gain one loony and...

UNITED STATES—“AMGeez that’s a lot of torque” was the first thought that wailed through my mind like an air raid siren as I fishtailed out of the paddock and into pit lane. “I’m going to have to show this thing a lot of respect.” This thing was the C63 S AMG, the latest monster created by the mad scientists...

UNITED STATES—All the wrong plants get shorn. Mow, blow and go gardeners are known for shearing everything that they can reach into creepy and unnaturally geometric shapes, usually flared out at the top, and bulging obtrusively into otherwise usable space. Yet, functional formally shorn hedges are passe and almost never shorn properly. First of all, a formal hedge should be...

UNITED STATES—The advent of the chain store, Long’s, just a block from his Main and East Lake corner, caused my dad a great deal of worry. His confrere, Harry Johnson at Steinhauser & Eaton got a chuckle out of his anxiety, mimicking my dad: “The sky is falling, Long’s is coming.” It was this big, uncontrollable, nameless, faceless thing coming...

UNITED STATES—Thanksgiving is less than a few days away, and for those hosting the feast of all feasts, they are likely, if they haven’t already, planning their list of items to prepare. So let’s take some time to discuss the importance of the side dishes. Yes, many speculate that the turkey or the big bird is the most important,...