Googling is so last year

Googling someone you want to date or are about to date is such a lame thing to do that I don’t even know where to start.

While it’s okay to google a prospective client or business associate or new roofer, I refuse to google a prospective date or romantic partner.

Googling someone to see what’s “out there” about them is just plain snooping. But it’s like snooping for sophomores. Fuggedaboudit. (more…)

Survival strategies of the wackiest

Oh, BIG apologies all ’round for my slacker-tude in posting (not posting actually) lately. Um, I’ve been trying (and I use that word optimistically) to figure out how to SURVIVE in a world gone mad. Yes, mad!

Damn. Is it just me or is everybody scrambling? (more…)

First date, last date? Follow my dating do’s and don’ts to make it to round two

Is anybody else out there wondering at what point it’s easier to just stay home rather than keep putting yourself “out there” first date after first date?

It’s a crazy world here in Sarasota for singles. I’m not sure what they put in the water down here, but Sarasota men, I’m sorry, have got the rest of the country beat when it comes to being deadbeat or dysfunctional dates.

I know. I know. I’m going to get blasted for being a snob and a princess and an anti-feminist and a bitch, etcetera, etcetera. But, is it too much to ask for a guy who acts like a man, and has some manners to boot? I’m pretty sure I’ll hold up my end of the bargain by acting like a woman and I pinky promise not to drink all the wine and steal French Fries from his plate. (more…)

St. Patrick is smiling on me … MC in today’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune

If you’re a daily newspaper reader and want to catch me in print … the Sarasota Herald Tribune picked up a piece I wrote about believing you’ve got the luck of the Irish … even if you’re not Irish and even if it’s not St. Patrick’s Day. You can read it at that link just provided, or check it out in print on page 8A!

And BIG THANKS to everyone who’s sent such nice emails and/or picked up my book today! You made my day!

HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY!

Magical music in the March nights

The past couple of weeks, at night, just around this time, 10:15 p.m., my home is quiet, I’ve hopefully turned the computer off, and I’m sitting, perhaps reading, or paying a bill or two, maybe just petting a cat. Winding down from the day and sometimes, and I’m not proud of this, thinking about tomorrow with a grim “Geez, how can I get everything that needs to be done, done?” kind of attitude.

But then there are these birds. (more…)

If the Red Sox can win the World Series …

Can you tell I’m pining for romance? … yet another treatise on the day I like to bash the most (but apparently love despite my bashing!).
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I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself since my divorce.

Before my marriage, I was lucky enough to have been fabulously wowed (and seriously wooed) by some outstanding V-Day efforts. Fireworks, home-cooked meals, five-star restaurants, horse-drawn carriages, mousse au chocolat and champagne, whispered sweet nothings, never better than in French ….

And most romantic of all — one Valentine’s night in Boston, (more…)

Valentine’s Day — real romance costs nothing!

It’s not because I’m divorced that Valentine’s Day fills me with a kind of internal cringing normally reserved for the sound of nails dragging down a chalk board. It’s not sour grapes or cynicism gone amuck. It’s simply that Valentine’s Day has, over the years, evolved into a competition, one that devalues spontaneity, simplicity, romance, and — I’m pulling out the big guns here — most of all, love.

Even as a child I never got into the grade school rituals of sending Valentines. You put them into little boxes and everyone ended up actually counting how many they received in some sort of twisted popularity contest. Now, as adults, it’s even worse. (more…)

The bedability of yours truly … and other factors in being a literate society

Speaking of newspapers, the demise thereof, and this writer’s potential contribution to said demise, here’s a column I wrote a year back — in response to a reader’s complaint about my use of the term — send the children out of the room for this one, folks — “bed-ability” in my column called Reality in the Age of Chick-ness.
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One reader’s trash …

I recently learned that American children might actually be reading newspapers in this country. In fact, they may be reading this very paper, perhaps this very column, this very minute. (more…)

Letter to the editors

Dear Editors

Back in the day, you’d buy the Sunday Sarasota Herald-Tribune and be assured of curling up for an hour of juicy reading, drinking one or two cups of coffee while fending off the cats who felt it was their duty to hold the paper down on the floor by sprawling languidly across it, flicking their tails with measured insouciance as you tried vainly to get to the next page.

But now, you can read the H-T faster than you can flip its pages practically, because it seems to be in a frantic free-for-all of diminishing returns on all fronts, and the major loss is to and of the reader. What papers like the H-T are missing is that people will — still — willingly pay for that experience of getting ink all over their hands and fighting the fold. But they want substance for their trouble. (more…)

Five hundred words of foreplay

This column was written back in my Pelican Press days when I’d just been given a reduced word count for the Reality Chick column … . Given the decreasing size in newspapers across the country (have you seen the Sarasota Herald Trib lately?) this column still feels germane.

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I’ve recently been given a word limit for this column. Five hundred words versus the average 700 I’ve been writing for the past year.

It’s nothing personal, my editor says. They’re cutting back the length of every column. Why? It’s the same story newspaper writers and readers are hearing everywhere: readership is down, money is tight, ad space is king. So what gets cut? (more…)