I am from the U.K. but now live in Crete, Greece. It is a beautiful place to live, with wonderful people. The view from my village. The view from my dentists waiting room. No. I do not trust the banks at all. For example, I have both a euro account and a pound sterling account with my local Greek bank. When I need funds sent over from my U.K. pension, I instruct my U.K. bank to send sterling to my local sterling account. I then transfer some or all of it to use into my euro account, WHEN THE EXCHANGE RATE IS ADVANTAGEOUS. The last time I did this the money did not turn up. My U.K. bank swore that they had sent it. It had certainly left my U.K. account but had not arrived in my local sterling account. Weeks later, it was found in my euro account at a very, very, poor exchange rate. But how had it got there? This was a different account number which I had never given to my U.K. bank. It turned out that my U.K. bank was not allowed to transfer my money directly into my local bank. Apparently, it has to go through a middle bank. Why? I don't know. The intermediary bank was Deutsche bank. Deutsche bank stole some of my money by forcing my local Greek bank to give them my account number for my euro account so that they could change my sterling into euros at a very poor rate and then pocket the difference. The day the money was put into my euro account, my Greek bank was offering 1.20 euros to 1 pound sterling. Deutsche bank changed it at 1.15 euros to 1 pound sterling. That is a big difference when it was thousands. After many weeks of expensive telephoning and trips into town to my local bank, I finally got some of it back from Deutsche bank. Not all of it , but it had made me so ill, I just gave up. So, Deutsche bank stole....my local Greek bank should not have given them my account number information.....so no, I do not trust any bank. Daisy

I have posted this link before, to Pete Wells' hysterically funny "Nibbled to Death" column in the NY Times (he's their primary food critic). What you won't find in the original article is the followup he did a couple of weeks later, saying that he had never had such a heavy and overwhelmingly positive response from readers. There were 248 Comments. I read most, not all of them. The following are the ones I found the funniest: Reader comments to Wells' column: - "Rodger Lodger" A couple of years ago I ate Per Se's tasting menu. I recommend it as a technique to get Guantanmo detainees to talk. - "TonyaNew York" I went to Atera and this is my yelp review: I feel like all the people who like Atera are the same people who saw "The Master" and pretend like it was a good movie. It's pretty to look at and you go in not knowing what to expect, but with high expectations. However, in the end it's boring and you have no idea what the last 2.5 hours were really about. Then you try to make sense of it all, try to interpret what it all meant (because there must be a reason everyone likes it) and finally give up because you realize nothing is wrong with you, and that when it comes down to it, it just sucked. The service was awesome and the space was fun and the courses were plenty. But the food was not good. There is nothing enjoyable in eating what seems to be the contaminants of the soil in your garden. I felt like we were on candid camera and any minute someone was going to come out and say JUST KIDDING !! Don't eat that dirt, you silly goose. - "CAS115" Thank you for this! I recently had a celebratory dinner - a tasting menu, of course- at one of these restaurants, where my partner and I found that we did not get to talk to each other for more than 5 minutes at a time until the end of a 2-hour meal. We were constantly interrupted by a phalanx of servers who were intent on explaining our meal to us, negotiating complex serving rituals, making sure our table always looked immaculate, and asking us how it was. The food was great, the service impeccable. But the dominance of the food and service sadly made us feel like we, as people, and our desire to connect to each other, were unimportant. It was more like attending a performance than sharing a good meal with someone you love. - "Jen in Astoria" I've had the good fortune to have many different tasting menus at some very good places in NYC, including Aureole, Del Posto and WD-50 (all for very special occasions). However, I agree with the general tone of the article. These tend to be REALLY expensive, and at the end of the night you have no recollection of what the standout items were. I see these adventures as just that--an adventure not a meal. At least at Del Posto, I was full afterwards. While the tasting menu at WD-50 was fun--along with the backstage tour that Wylie Dufresne generously gave my group--I admit that after our dinner party broke up, I slunk off into the bowels of the Lower East Side for noodles because I was starving and tipsy (the wine pours were generous but the portions were not). The tasting menu at Aureole was "just right," I wonder if it still is (did that back in 1996). What made it work? It was really more of an extended meal and not a "teeny tiny eensy beensy 247 "stains and crumbs" on 247 plates" affair. If I recall correctly, it was 8 or so plates paired with 4 wines (split into bunchings of 2), and a dessert trolley with just-right-sized dainties to go with an espresso. There was no time limit or other obnoxiousness, and the service was the best I've ever encountered before or since. Let me also add that someone else has always paid for these tasting menus, which perhaps takes some of the sting out of the experience and expectations. - "Nomadsheart" Reading Mr. Wells' comments, I wholeheartedly agree. Chef's tastings have run amok. Chefs are too willing to create the obscure and the wonderously beautiful at the expense of the diner. I am of the school in which the meal is about the diner and not about the chef. A tasting meal has indeed become an endurance test; if there were a German word for this, it would be "Makenziebutthürten", which indeed it does. A great meal is a combination memories of conversation, friends, location and food; tasting menus are more often about worshiping the craftsmanship of the chef. I have indeed experienced a moment at Daniel's in NYC (years ago) at which Daniel himself came to my table and asked me what I would like to have and how much time I had. It felt as if he cooked for my pleasure and it made him happy. We had a true tasting - 15 courses - that felt like a wonderful afternoon with a friend avoiding a blizzard outside. His hospitality and the graciousness of the moment linger with me; the courses do not. Dining should not be about the "experience", just as wine should not be about drinking "only Parker's 90+s". Let's put the joy back in our food and remove the collective mentality of Chef Trophy Hunting. - "Beatrice" I worked in fine dining restaurants for 8 years, and I worked for some of the management groups mentioned in the above article. Let me tell you - the food in those restaurants is no better than a great, reasonably priced ala carte restaurant. What you PAY for in those restaurants is the precision in the execution of the food - which is unrelated to the actual flavor of each component. If your basil is a perfect half-inch chiffonade, it doesn't actually TASTE better, but it is more precise. Ultimately, if you're looking for a sky-diving equivalent to eating (essentially eating as novelty) then you HAVE to remove the actual element of expecting to be full. No one sky-dives and expects feel rested when they get to the bottom - the point is to THRILL. Go ahead with the tasting menus - but remember that they aren't there to make you full, and the food isn't actually any better. It is more precise, it's there to amuse, to THRILL and for it to be an unusual once-in-a-lifetime experience. It's unfortunate that we may be losing great ala carte meals to this profit-driven trend of creating tasting-menu only restaurants. But as all things - this trend too will pass. - "moretolifethanfoodearth" No problem. The rest of us can eat cake. Here is a link that might be useful: Pete Wells: Nibbled to Death

Even before Jen posted this, I was telling my husband about hearing it and being sad that I missed seeing Sedaris in my backyard. Then he suggested maybe we could do a road trip to catch another performance. He was probably thinking a place like D.C. I said well, I have checked the schedule and he'll be in Australia in January. I may have overplayed my hand. I think I'll recheck the schedule and see if there's a city - with a sports team - that we haven't visited and see about a weekend away. Unfortunately, we've already been to Dallas but I suppose we could repeat, we had a nice time.

I once got a call from my then-husband's cousin, who we rarely heard from. She says her name, and as I'm running through everyone I know by that name trying to figure out which Allison it is, she's talking and talking and I'm feeling more and more panicked. I finally figured it out more than a minute into the call. I work in a research field where we often have to do telephone (or other) surveys. In the interest of karma, I try to respond to other people's surveys when I can. I don't get a lot of charity calls, and when I do, I am very good at saying no. Most of them are from organizations I have a connection with (like my alma mater). The do not call registry seems to take care of most (but not all) the commercial calls. Now I just point out that I am on the list and that they are violating the law. They hang up. Political calls are fun. The faux surveys with the leading questions, followed by a fundraising pitch. You can have fun with those.