Writer writing

It's been a busy week Isthmus-wise for yours truly. So check out my cover story about Madison's gay nightlife options, my regular food news column and my museum dispatch about an exhibit of ancient Roman art. Prego!

Tennessee legislature to Tennessean Justin Timberlake: Drop Dead

Ah, another reason I'm proud to be from Tennessee. This isn't up there with the great scandals that periodically make Tennessee a national laughingstock (Scopes monkey trial, etc.), but it's a good one.

So smooth

I try not to overtheorize my shaving. For years I have used simple tools and unguents to scrape the bristles from my face, products available at any drugstore. The key tool was Gillette's Atra razor blades, which never seemed quite perfect to me, but adequate. I was in denial.

For after nearly every shave, my face was a ghastly mess. I thought the carnage was normal, something every man has to put up with. I tried to make sure I had plenty of Band-Aids on hand.

But recently a new razor came into my possession, one that takes cartridges of the Gillette Mach 3 type.

I must say: They are genius.

I shave now with nary a nick or cut. I always thought the elaborate new devices the razor-blade manufacturers periodically come up with were simply so much hype, but the Mach 3 is real. I no longer dread shaving.

Gillette did not pay for this blog entry.

Don't bogart that dextromethorphan

I came down with a nasty bug on Friday, and I have been ingesting every appropriate over-the-counter medication I can find in the house. I've taken Advil for the fever and aches, Robitussin for the cough, Flonase and Sudafed for the congestion. I think all of it is helping.

By way of comparison, my loving boyfriend Ereck refuses to take much of anything when he's sick. He argues that symptoms -- fever, for example, and a phlegmy cough -- happen for reasons, and it's best to let these bodily processes work themselves out.

I should mention that I am the child of a doctor, which could be the reason I so happily turn to the meds. What about you? When you're sick with a bug, do you dope yourself up, or let nature run its course?

Peggy Lee got nothin' on me

Sorry for blog silence these two days. I meant to keep Back With Interest updated with a welter of fascinating yarns during the voting period for MKE blog of the week. But a fever and a cough have all but felled me.

Meantime, read my Daily Page post about the opening of the west side Savers thrift store.

[Insert lightbulb joke here]

There are proposals in Madison and elsewhere to replace traditional incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent ones, which last longer and use less energy. That's all well and good, I suppose, but if any of these mandated bulbs are to be used outside, policy makers should know that the new fluorescents may not be suited to the brutal winters of the upper Midwest.

When Ereck and I attended a home-buying workshop the county sponsored last summer, we received swag bags that contained, among other things, a great many compact fluorescent lightbulbs made by the manufacturer Link USA. We have used them with generally good results, except on the front porch: During periods of bitter cold this winter, the bulb we installed in the porch-light fixture didn't work. But it perked right back up during mild times, mild being a relative term when it comes to Wisconsin winters. I do notice that the box says "Minimum starting temperature: -18°C," whatever that means.

Shouldn't a lightbulb just work? Let the lightbulb buyer beware.

Thanks but no thanks for the memory

Regular readers know I'm a gadget freak. If it's small and it takes batteries, I like it. I'm talking about cell phones, digital cameras, tiny computers, MP3 players and so on, so stop giggling.

But gadget freakdom has its perils. Gadgets are easy to lose and easy to forget. From a distance they all look more or less the same. And although it's easy to carry any single gadget, they start to get bulky en masse: As a reporter I sometimes indeed walk around with a phone, a camera, a digital recorder and a computer, which is cumbersome, as you can imagine. But somehow I manage.

What's hard to manage, though, is the fact that each of these devices takes a different kind of memory. Computer memory has gotten wonderfully cheap in recent years, and generally it's easy to increase the capacity of a device simply by sticking in a new card.

But the cards come in all different shapes and sizes and prices, and there is no predicting which device takes which kind of memory. Some cards come with adapters that fit otherwise incompatible gadgets, which is nice. But an adapter is really just another tiny, valuable thing that is easy to lose.

Pictured here is a random sampling of cards belonging to yours truly: SD, Mini SD, Mini SD adapater, Memory Stick Pro Duo, Memory Stick adapter, CompactFlash and, for good measure, a thumb drive. Not pictured: an XD card. I learned about that kind the other day when I tried to put an SD card into a colleague's camera. The camera took XD memory. The SD card wouldn't fit.

Is all this clear to you? Maybe you can explain it to me.