Do placebos really work against illness? And if they do, who really cares if they’re a placebo? I’ve been reading a Nancy Drew book to Abby and Katie every night; last night we finished The Secret of Mirror Bay. The question posed above sounds like a question for Ms. Drew (avoiding all questions of equivalent …

Is the plural of cord cord or cords? If you know, let me know. Meanwhile, a cord is a tight stack of firewood that is 4’x4’x8’, or 128 cubic feet. Growing up in southern Idaho, we’d burn about six cord(s) a year to keep the house tolerably warm. The first year Jess and I were …

Last year Jess bought an expensive set of stuff-on-a-pole gimcracks— window squeegee, light bulb changer, that kind of thing. I tried using the squeegee on the window exteriors last year, and it wasn’t pretty. The fly specks had been drying there all summer, and they were impervious to all my window-cleaning efforts; and the sponge …

Having the day off on Monday, I bowed to the wishes of the local trail guidebook and lit out for the abandoned lookout tower atop Berray Mountain. I also bowed to the wishes of Emma, who’s always spoilin’ for an adventure; Becca, who’s always willing to go along; and their friend James, who was dying …

Noodles the cat turns her back on some of this year’s onions, just like many a child. I grew up with onions in my food, so I like them. Jess didn’t discover cooking with green onions until she married me, and now she’s a devoted fan. (Thus the next generation is unwittingly drawn in to …

Next time I build a shed (which will be next spring; I have to redo the wood shed before it collapses under its own ugliness) I’ll do it like this. The bike shed, so named because we prefer to store bikes and other outdoor miscellany in a shed rather under (or next to) a tarp …

I like heading in to the mountains in autumn. The crowds are gone (I’m not counting the hunters), the mosquitoes are gone, the water is low if you have to cross it, the mist has moved in, the colors are glorious, the days are warm, and the nights aren’t too cold. I recently took Emma, …

Well before I learned that the state would not allow me to teach my own child to drive, I was teaching her to drive. To calm your nerves, for a few mornings she drove from home to seminary, which is held in the church in town. The roads are mostly deserted, and the speed is …

We went out in the front yard yesterday and took family pictures, just like we did last October. We took pictures of everybody individually too, and will get them printed out nicely at Wal-Mart for $2.84 each. That saves us about $15 a pop over school pictures (saving us $60 for our school age kids …

I don’t think I’ve ever posted a picture of the inside of the greenhouse, at least once it started making things green. Here you see the wraparound shelves made of office light fixtures; Emma and I completed the shelves on the right after I wrote about them, but Jess found to my consternation that not …