Buffett's annual letter

O'Hair My O'Hair

I'm very excited. I just got my hair cut in a bob! It's so fun to feel my hair bounce and touch my ears, face, and neck. Lightness, airiness. Even though I just moved to Frederick in August, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find The Hairdresser, I actually found her at my first appointment. Okay, so I didn't just find her like a needle in a haystack. Downtown Frederick has lots of nice hair salons and they measure up online with good reviews about their services. Even though my salon, as I now identify O'Hair, was not on some of the mainstream hair salon sites, it had some really good clues that it would be The Place. First of all, it was downtown, near Market Street on Church Street. Very classy location in downtown right next to a homemade soap store, and it is in a restored building that is, well, really cool. To add to that, it had Bumble and Bumble hair products, which are, well, the best hair products in my opinion. Not that I have done extensive objective research, but what girl has not tried a menagerie of hair care lines? Even a girl that doesn't have the words highlights, lowlights, and toners in her vocabulary probably has done a fair share of drug store surveying to find the right shampoo, conditioner, and hair gel combination to produce a style - even if it is the bed-head greasy look.

So if I could shout it from the rooftops (and not scare people), I would cock-a-doodle "O'Hair, Megan; O'Hair, Megan" with gusto. Obviously it can be harder to find just the right stylist, so I am very happy my search for the hair dresser did not actually lead me to Whitman-ia because my hair looked bad. And for that, I certainly have a little reason to celebrate.

O'Hair my O'Hair! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won

I'll interject that the prize would be, of course, a perfect bob.

WetNoz

So Coco has been having an anxiety attack all this week. Last Sabbath, on the way out the door with his pointy-toed dress shoes, Carl stepped on her food dish and broke it. So all this week we've fed her out of a plastic container and she looks nervously at her food, shifts in reverse and backs away as if crunchies monster was going to eat her. I tried to help her by standing by her and petting her. The only thing gained by doing this was that I could observe her heart thumping like a jack rabbit running in the Appleton's pasture as Andy was driving by in the Explorer trying to hit them. No such drama in our kitchen was happening, except in Coco's little nervous mind. By Wednesday, still not having eaten more than a hand-fed kibble, it was apparent she was not going to start eating again. She started becoming extra depressed and lethargic and I knew I needed to find her a replacement bowl for her precious kibble. Of course, having looked at a pet store and Target, I could not find a bowl that would meet her safety requirements. In the pet store, they had only fancy painted ones that had metal liners. As everyone knows, metal liners can creep out and crawl across the floor and nip at little doggies in there beds at night. Target only had plastic ones and that clearly won't do for our little doggie. So, I went to Two Paws Up, a local pet boutique in Frederick and found just the bowl for Coco FiveStarFido - Zen Dish now not only does this dish have the perfect name to market to Coco...it has a treat spot by the bowl so if she gets scared, she starts to smell the wonderful aroma coming from her treat and will get reined in by it. So far (since yesterday afternoon when I found this little treasure) she's eaten two meals! That's two more meals eaten than the rest of the week - Sabbath to Thursday. Hope this keeps up after she gets used to eating a treat at each meal...

Totally loving this lamp...

Birds Nest Hanging Lamp

I love these lamps! I think they would be so great in a play room or nursery.

Airport Run

I just took Christine and Eric to the airport. That was the first time I drove to BWI directly and the first time in awhile that I've driven in "snow flurries." I much prefer them (referring to the flurries, not E and C), to rain. Although, driving in 28 degrees doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy. Especially when my iPhone was turned off by the phone company because my family on the opposite coast forgot to pay the bill. So I had to memorize the route and stay confident that I was going the way that I had memorized. I have a tendency to try to talk myself out of a route I could have recited 10 times in a row without flinching before I got to the final exam on the road. I'm now at home with my fabulous baby boy who is using me as a jungle gym at the moment and his little monkey paws are freezing. Maybe I should go turn up the heat. Radiant idea.

We had record-breaking snow this past weekend in Frederick. It is so amazingly beautiful. My parents were here over the weekend; what are the chances my dad would be here for this beautiful natural wonder? Perhaps not as unlikely as it would seem. Last time he was here, for the same amount of time (3-1/2 days), it rained the entire time he was here. The clouds rolled in, the rain started to fall on my way to the airport to pick him up, and then rolled away on my way home from dropping him off. At least this time it was snow and much more of a winter treat. I'm loving the snow. Coco has to plough through it to make her piddle and is learning that it is worth it.

To Spontaneity!

Tonight having been marketed as rather cold, I suggested to Carl that we should stuff the baby in his blue snow suit, and then into the Ergocarrier and get a latte in town. When he got off work, that plan sounded like a great way to start the evening before coming home for pizza. Pizza is our regular Thursday night supper. I had already started to thaw our homemade dough in the fridge so that we could roll it out, put our tomatoes, cheese, and parsley on it before baking it in our oven. Before the cooking began, we piled on several layers before going into the dry cold to get our lattes. It was cold when we left, and it got colder as we made the turn around the corner onto East Street as a wintery wind wrapped its icy fingers around our stiff bodies, still not warmed from walking. By the time we reached Patrick Street, not very far really from our little rowhouse, we had decided that we were not going to make it to our lattes, at least not without a nice hot meal in our tummies. We stopped, grateful to ourselves for both agreeing on the matter of eating out, at Quynn's Attic, a place I would suggest is romantic, warm (key for us), and offers very tasty dishes. Although we had no food for Brent or toys, we managed to eat a meal without too much yelling (by Carl, or Brent, or myself), our house keys got lost only three times (twice in Brent's snowsuit), and we finally found a restaurant that is just "it" for us downtown. Having been on a quest as it called for such important matters, we are delighted that this search has given way to a successful discovery. Success having been measured in Carl's opinion that "we" could not have cooked our meals better at home. Because why would we go and pay for a meal somewhere else if we can cook it better in our own kitchen? I would like to parenthetically suggest that criteria omits the important detail of the efforts "we" make in the kitchen and whether that really should not be taken into account when rating another person's dish - "yeah, it wasn't great, but then when I'm just sitting here on my duffle rather than peeling and chopping and roasting and steaming and baking and then clearing and scraping and washing and rinsing and dishwashering...actually it tastes amazing here at Macaroni Grill!". HOWEVER, I do totally agree that it is not satisfying to pay for a meal in a restaurant that is less yummy than one eaten at home. Quynn's delivered and now we have a place we can comfortably and happily suggest when we have relatives and friends come visit us and want to see and taste the best of Frederick. We are starting to enter the realm of really "knowing" the area. Ahh that makes me happy.

http://www.quynnsattic.com/