I hate cooking.  It’s the whole organizational aspect of it–you have to have the green pepper chopped up and ready to go once the garlic has softened, you have to stir-fry it for five minutes (God help you if you skip out to pee and come back a minute late), and when you’re done you have to clean up the mess.  Pass.  For our first few months together my roommate thought I was a druggie because I hardly ate anything–until she discovered I think cooking takes too much work.

So why did I think it would be a good idea . . .

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As you might know, my name is Kris. And I’m a guy. It’s short for Kristoffer. (Actually, if you’re reading this, you most certainly know these things unless you are very unobservant, as 110% of people reading this are either a friend, relative, or both.)

But I just found something out — Kris is a girl’s name.

A big part of my job includes inviting people to speak at conferences. And nobody knows who the hell I am. Here are some recent e-mail replies I’ve gotten (rest assured, I do sign my e-mails with my actual name, “Kris”).

This one . . .

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A few friends of mine recently started a food club of sorts—a casual excuse to get together and investigate Latin American restaurants in the Twin Cities. One of them actually came up with a great title for the collective: Friends of Latin American Nourishment or FLAN. My husband and I went to the first “meeting” at the Puerto Rican restaurant Puerta Azul in St. Paul (great title—I think it means Blue Gateway) and though the food itself was a little disappointing, it reminded me, as eating out always does, what a complex beast food can be.

. . .

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Hooray hooray! Lamont won! So happy.

My favorite quote out of the losing Lieberman camp, so far, is the “Team Connecticut” line. I’ve never laughed so hard while retching. Lieberman to supporters as he conceded defeat:

“As I see it, in this campaign, we’ve just finished the first half and the Lamont team is ahead. But in the second half, our team, Team Connecticut, is going to surge forward to victory in November.”

Any predictions about that? I think, after some very vocal bad-loser grumbling for a while, Lieberman will quietly bow out. The Dem establishment has to support the Democratic . . .

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