Today's Useless Trivia!

Did you know that you cannot leave New England via car, horse, feet, cycle (motor- bi- or uni-) or any land-based mode of transportation for that matter, and get to the rest of the continental United States without crossing a bridge?

Seriously. You can't leave without crossing a bridge. Think I'm wrong?

To the north and northeast: The St. Lawrence.
To the northwest: Lake Champlain.
Due west: The Hudson River.
Southwest: The Harlem River.
Due south: Long Island Sound.

Can't be done.

It's like we're one big, gay-marriage supporting, college-town loving, blueberry-and-potato-growing, lobster-eating island!!!

Phooey on you, Texas! If anyone should secede, we should!

Happy Earth Day

Frankly, the planet puts up with a lot, and as my mother always says about Mother's Day, "Why should I just get one day? I'm your mother." To that end, this planet is the only parent we have (that we know of), so let's make every day Earth Day! My plug is for water conservation, so here goes:

Water is the single most important resource we have. You can live up to a month without eating, but you won't make it more than a week without water. (The average is three days.) Fresh water is increasingly scarce, as the majority of it is locked up in ice.

When you flush the toilet, dump stuff down the sink, or run the tap, you're wasting fresh water. So, here are a few things you can do to help:

Decrease the nitrogen load on our fresh water supply.
Nitrogen has a systemic impact on the planet. Once introduced, it sucks oxygen out of the water, choking off the ability for phyotplankton to absorb sunlight, and in turn, that throws the food chain out of whack. So, try to buy phosphate-free everything (automatic dish detergent, sink soap, laundry detergent, etc.) There are plenty of products on the market that do just as good a job cleaning without phosphates, so make a point of purchasing them if you can.

Install low-flow showerheads and a low-flow, high-efficiency toilet.

Don't run the tap while brushing your teeth.

Don't flush if you only do number 1. (Water-based waste disposal systems have a ratio of approximatley 97% water to 3% waste.)

Try to keep your shower to four minutes or under.(Oddly, this is a long time. Try it. Put a timer in your shower. You'll be amazed.

Do not throw everything down the sink, particularly fats and oils. Either sell them off to your veggie-diesel car driving neighbors, or recycle them.

Only run your diswasher when it's really full.

If you have a garden, install a cistern so that you can use it on the plants. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just go to Home Depot, get a huge bucket, stick it under your gutter, and voila! To prevent it from turning into a mosquito pond, buy a tight-fitting cover.

If you are renovating a home, install a gray water collection system.

The Earth is a nice place. It's pretty and blue, like sapphires or those fabulous silk-satin Manolos that Big gave Carrie for their engagement.

And honestly, for a 4 billion year old, she's looking pretty good. So let's not let her go all Grey Gardens, shall we?

Do what you can to keep the Earth looking fabulous!

The One Good Makeover Show

I admit it: I love a good makeover. I won't call myself a raging beauty, but I have come a distance from my ugly duckling past. I always inserted myself into the "And then s/he turned into a swan and lived happily ever after" story. So, that's why I love What Not to Wear, because each week, I get my ugly duckling fix.

And the best part? Well, check out this in the WaPo...she says it as well as I could have: Stacy and Clinton, as snarky as they are, harsh on the clothes not the person.

It's true....never have Stacy and Clinton ever told someone they were fat, chubby, needed to lose a few, etc. They just acknowledge someone's curves, ask what that person is not happy with, and then they get to it.

I can imagine that the hardest part about the WNTW transformation is that if you've spent the majority of your life being ignored, you grow up wanting to be ignored. So, you dress like crap and hope no one notices, because typically, what happens when someone does notice is not good.

But sadly, we are visual beings and we notice appearance. But that said, it doesn't mean that appearance has to be cookie-cutter or trendy. Most former ugly ducklings I know want to maintain some kind of individualism and sense of personal style. When you've been "other" for so long, it's comforting. But as Stacy and Clinton (and Diana Vreeland, and Carrie Donovan, and Grace Coddington and many, many others) have repeatedly shown, a sense of style, when fully embraced is the ultimate method of personal expression.

The MAC Daddy of Galaxy Clusters

So, I'm sitting here, at 10 minutes to 5PM on a lovely spring day, feeling sorry for myself, and then I stumble across this, and feel stupid, small, irrelevant, and yet strangely...optimistic.....and I smiled. You can enjoy more here.

Today's 9 to 5 Image

Yep. For most of us, this is life in Corporate America.

But sometimes, if you're lucky, you get off the wheel, and a soft, kind hand picks you up, takes you out of the cage, lets you run around the lawn, then gives you a fresh piece of lettuce.

And while you're running around the lawn, the hand changes your shavings and fills your water bottle!

But most of the time, it's on the wheel, running off to nowhere.

WaPo's Givhan on "What Exit?" Housewives

I've always loved the delightful Ms. Robin Givhan's sartorial coverage for the Washington Post, and I'm sorry that she's giving it up to cover The Family O, but in the interim, we have a lovely piece by her about my newest favorite horror show.

I thought RHOC was bad, but this is just, oh, this is like watching aliens land on your front lawn, get out, and start talking to you. You're slack-jawed, frightened, yet intrigued and incredulous that something so other really exists.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Kicks Serious Tushie

This woman is amazing. Jezebel said it best: the Justice is on a "give cancer the finger" tour. (I can relate. There is only one answer to cancer: F.U. I'm not done yet.)

Read the full scoop here.