Friday Reading Group

It's Memorial Day weekend and if you live in New York, or I suppose any part of the northeast, that means it's planting weekend. It's a pretty well known guideline that no matter how warm your month was, most people won't plant their gardens and flowers until this weekend. We made that mistake last year and a late frost killed the herbs and flowers we bought. Live and learn.

We're celebrating the holiday in all kinds of random and non-related ways... I got a sassy new short haircut, we enrolled Charlotte in a 2 year old program (2 mornings a week) that will start this fall, and B's best friend arrives from Chicago today. Of course, there will also be the golf, the BBQing, and the playing outdoors.

If you didn't take today off to extend your holiday and you're still at work, here are some good reads to get to 5pm a little faster. (A side note to the great emails I've received with ideas for Friday Reading Group - thank you and I'm not ignoring you. I just don't want to link to anything I haven't read, so if you haven't seen your link here it's only because I haven't read it yet)

• Mindy Kaling, writer and actress for The Office, has a new book coming out this fall which the New Yorker says "... really, really strikes a chord with the demographic she's writing for, which is the demographic just below Tina Fey's (i.e. unmarried, babyless women above the age of sixteen and under the age of thirty)." Is this the year of the funny woman? I'm loving all of these smart, funny books and movies by women!

•  This is awesome. Someone out there is going to be on the receiving end of this project one day, I just don't know who. Bribes accepted.

•  5 Experimental Features You Should Enable in Google Maps. These look SO great. Especially the "What's Around Here" feature, that's exactly what I wanted when we moved to town and I had no idea what businesses were in a 5 block radius.

• Totally in love with this practical but designy idea for an entryway. Seriously, one of you has to do this and send me pictures. I'm a renter, so it's not in the cards for me just yet.

• I'm not going to say much about this article because it's one of those things where I'll sound anti-American and I don't mean to, it's just that other countries do this SO MUCH SMARTER than we do. Why is America the No-Vacation Nation?

Friday Reading Group is a weekly series where I help you procrastinate by offering various links from around the web. Help support the cause - email any good articles, pictures, or videos you find to sanders492[at]yahoo[dot]com with Friday Reading Group in the subject line.