So I thought I would just get started on looking through a few photos from 2007...and then I ended up spending the rest of my day selecting, editing, uploading and laying out a years' worth of photos. Please tell me I'm not the only one who can suddenly get seized by a new but not really necessary project and then at the end of the day wonder why exactly you decided to spend all those hours on it?

2. punctuation= x-rated? I almost didn't post that picture of the bread semi-colon yesterday. This didn't occur to me, pre-baking, but when I took it out of the oven, I suddenly became afraid that it actually looked like a you-know-what. But with only one of those other you-know-whats.

3. Sore throat=end of the world. Or so it seems to my oldest today. She came home from school complaining about a sore throat. (I know, second week of school and sick already). And I just can't seem to find anything that will make her feel better. I've given her Tylenol. I've given her cough/cold syrup. She refuses to drink tea or hot water with lemon and honey. We tried a chloraseptic throat spray and she hated it. Any other suggestions on easing sore throat pain? Because I am going to go absolutely crazy if I have to listen to the whining much longer.

4. Pioneer woman cake=too buttery. I made a yummy apple upside-down cake from Pioneer Woman Cooks the other day. It was really, really good, but after a little reflection, I've come to the following conclusion: it was actually a little TOO buttery. That's sacrilege, I know, to say a dessert was too rich and good. In general, I'm a person who likes rich desserts. I am of the opinion that if you're going to have dessert, just have dessert. Low-fat, low-sugar stuff just isn't the same. But in this case, I really think decreasing the butter in the pan by half a cup or so would have allowed more of the fresh, apple-icious taste to come through and improved the overall flavor.

5. Pop = bad. I think I'm going to have to give up soda. Lots of people have told me it's bad for me, and expensive, and even people who drink only diet soda still gain weight, and on and on, but I resisted. But then my dentist told me this week that yes, I really ought to lay off the soda. So I'm finishing the store-brand diet cola currently in my fridge, and then I'm saying goodbye.

6. Re-writing a previous article=harder than it sounds. An editor asked me a few weeks ago to re-work some of what I had written for an article earlier this year into a new article for a different publication. I said yes, thinking it would be so easy. The work was already done! I did a couple new interviews and am now attempting to write the thing. And you know what? It's hard! Because I already covered this same ground before, and I put thought into figuring out the absolute best way to organize this information. And now I have to come up with a new, but still awesome, way to write this same article. Apparently I only have a certain amount of creativity in me, because everything I can come up with is pretty much exactly the same as what I already wrote before.

7. Etiquette=dilemma. Imagine the following: you have been working on making a gift for a friend. You are 95 percent done with your work on this gift (which is a surprise for the friend). During an unrelated conversation, this friend happens to mention that she already has SEVENTEEN of this particular item that you have been working on. NOW what do you do? Not give it to her after all? Or give it to her even though you know it's probably the last thing on earth that she needs since she already owns 17 of them?