Remember school? Remember pop quizzes and multiple choice tests and essay exams? And remember how, after the teacher had distributed the stapled papers, and everyone had concluded conducting their preliminary flip-through, the classroom would become intensely quiet; the sounds of 20-odd students reading the same instructions and questions silently, in different ways, the scritch-scratching of so many pencils, the rubbing and brushing of an errant eraser, the creaking of a old radiator, and the teacher ...

Two weekends ago (I think?) I touched down in Phoenix, took an uber to my hotel, and exited from the car into the lobby of the Camby Hotel. Probably because the reservation had been (most kindly) made by one of us that wasn't me, I was entirely unprepared for the design game this hotel is playing. I humpty dumpty-ed my carry-on through the lobby, trying simultaneously to take it all in like the kids in ...

Despite the fact that I often talk in airy-fairy, follow your intuition, listen to what your gut tells you, cultivate a relationship with your belongings terms, there is an element to all this that's undeniably grounded in tangibility and quantity. It goes like this: if you continue to add things into your space and life, without making the time to edit out the extraneous, you are going to end up with a chaotic environment. It ...

When space is limited, it's often the case that the first thing to get nixed is a table, and, in particular, a dining table. After all, there's bound to already be a couch present; that combined with the right seating position and a coffee table is all the table and chair a small space dweller can reasonably rationalize (or fit). Except, even small space denizens like to feel civilized, from time to time. They'd like ...

Over the weekend, my best bud's mom (herself, a dear friend) and I were reminiscing about the recent past, and in particular how and why I made my way to Seattle. She told me that when she had raised concerns about the move, my pal responded by saying only, "I trust Annie." I was retroactively touched by the profundity of that statement. After all, it takes a person of real grace to trust others (who’ve demonstrated ...