Zeno's Bar & Grill

This is either really, really depressing, or else really good news. It depends on how good you are at dieting.

The New York Times reports on studies in monkeys and mice showing that restricted calorie diets decrease aging. Okay, that's not entirely new, we've heard it before. But this time...there are pictures. As you can see, the monkey on a restricted diet (left) looks perky and fit, the animal version of Kate Hudson or something, while the monkey who eats the average diet (right) looks more like Kate Hepburn in her declining years.

Then, there's the human--a 36-year old guy profiled in the article, who has been on a restricted diet for six years. He eats a lot of tofu, and he looks about thirteen years old, so apparently it's working. And here I was, feeling smug, after my RealAge profile showed that my RealAge was three years younger than my biological age. That's it. Bring on the tofu, I'm through with those namby pamby antioxidants and vitamins.

Thankfully, at the end of the article there are some naysayers to make the rest of us feel better. They claim the benefits may be only a 2-7% longer lifespan, or even no benefit at all.

I can't decide whether to call Jenny Craig or have another jelly doughnut.

Actually, my real plan is to make friends with David Copperfield, since he claims to have found the Fountain of Youth on his new property.

--Melanie

File this under time sink: The Lulu Title Scorer. It will tell you whether your book's title has a chance of becoming a bestseller based on supposedly scientific techniques of analysis. Ummm, yeah. Okay.

Well, apparently, it actually works: To Kill a Mockingbird got a near-perfect score. Could this be because it was part of the database that was used to create the program? Maybe we're just miffed because two of our working titles scored only 10% and 50%.

So, go ahead, check your own. Just please don't blame us when you find out that what you thought was a genius title is actually a howler.

--Melanie & Kelly

Okay, maybe it doesn't beat this. But we got an ear of popcorn from our CSA. It looked just like popcorn kernels on a cob. After a quick consult with Google we shucked it, put the whole thing in the microwave and watched the kernels fly! Much better than the movie we watched after!

--Kelly

She gets the prize for turning the dreaded "housework" into "homekeeping", which somehow almost makes you *want* to do laundry. And now Martha Stewart has a new book for Perfect Moms everywhere: the Homekeeping Handbook. Unfortunately, she's about four years too late. The gargantuan Home Comforts: the Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson beat Martha to the punch in '02.

I found the Home Comforts book, which was a bestseller, to be both fascinating and dreadful, kind of like a car wreck you can't peel your eyes from. Do we really need to read a book with chapters like "Common Laundry Mishaps and Problems," " Peaceful Coexistence with Microbes," and "Working with Household Help?" All true titles, I swear.

Well, I must have thought I needed it, anyway, since I shelled out the twenty five bucks or whatever it was to purchase the thing. I blame all the rave reviews it was receiving at the time. In the end, Home Comforts has been most useful as a writing reference for examples of obsessive housework! Plus, it'll be handy if anything ever happens to my doorstop.

--Melanie

What's a six letter word spelled A??IC? that describes my new state of mind ever since seeing the movie "Wordplay" on the plane back from London? The word is addict and the drug of choice is crosswords.

The movie is about both Will Shortz, the New York Times crossword editor, and crossword puzzles in general, which sounds stultifying, but was actually so intriguing that I have to confess I watched parts of it twice. Um, yeah. Seriously, though, I had Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp on the other channel, but the crossword people kept sucking me in.

Anyway, so now I find myself trying to match the feats of Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart, who looked oh-so-studly as they solved puzzles on camera. So far, I've successfully completed the Tuesday puzzle once, and come pretty close on a bunch of Mondays and Wednesdays (they get harder as the week progresses; I think I got about four clues on the Sunday puzzle before I gave up last weekend). I doubt I'll ever solve them in mere minutes like the braniacs who win Shortz's annual crossword competition, though.

--M?L?ANIE

I can't believe it's been five weeks! I kind of feel like when you've skipped a few dental check-ups and then you finally break down and go. I don't even have a cool reason like jetting off to Europe. I just couldn't believe how busy it was getting the kids back to school. I swear I had more time over the summer when they were both home. Plus I got sucked into the PTA vortex where few emerge to tell the tale. I love the way one of my friends put the whole PTA thing. She compared it to a mosh pit, you think you can just hang out at the edge, but the next thing you know your in the middle and helping to support the back of a sweaty guitarist. Anyway, it feels great to be back!

--Kelly

Have we been, you may ask? Ummm, well, we just needed a break, I guess. With school starting, it just seemed like the right moment.

Plus for me... answer to where have we been is: about four or five thousand miles away! My family is just back from a gigantic, eighteen day trip to Europe. It's the longest vacation we've ever taken, and that includes our honeymoon! Our friends got married in a tiny town in Tuscany called Loro Ciuffena.


After a week's worth of great food, fantastic wine and even better company (there were about eighty people who came over for the festivities), we went traveling in Florence, Venice and London.

Among other things, some trip highlights included the kids dancing to a street harpist in the medieval town of San Gimignano, a trip in the London Eye (giant ferris wheel over the Thames), and a meeting of the minds between me and my daughter with Tony n' W (now that has a nice ring to it--Tony and W's wedding or something?) at Madame Tussaud's. We even got halfway through the Harry Potter Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross train station (at least the luggage cart did.)
















--Melanie