on the woodside.: *economic futility.

People keep telling me it's Friday the 13th, which is weird because I haven't fallen down once today. Then again, that could be because I haven't been in a sufficiently crowded/humiliating environment as yet.

This week's finds are more functional than usual. Maybe I'm in a hardworking mode. Or maybe two appointments with a pricey plumber have conspired to make me slightly more invested in utility.

I don't even know exactly why I like this. I get the impression that it won't do any better a job at obliterating potatoes than would an average potato masher. But I do. Love is blind.

This is my forum, so I'll be as irrational as I like.

Oh! See here? Nothing pretty about this. Granted, you could probably pull your oven rack out with a fork. Or a potholder. Or a dish towel.

But a) one would not have a tool SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS PURPOSE (which we know I love) and b) one would be inclined to burn oneself. Or so I hear. Also, if you're the potholder is busy with the task of pulling out the oven rack, what are you going to use when you yank the rack too far and the casserole dish goes sliding toward your knees? Hm? That's what I thought.

I have documented my love for Snapware here, but our resident food editor turned me on to these as an alternative.

Same premise, but glass. Apparently she has some cockamamie theory that it's a "bad" "idea" to encourage the microwave to leach plastic toxins into your food. Whatever you say, JDR.

I'm not a smoker, but I collect vintage ashtrays (current count: 1). I especially like this smiley one.

Look at the indentions on the bottom lip for accommodating side-by-side ciggies! Ladies and gents, it's almost Valentine's Day. Give your loved one some pulmonary disease this year.

News flash: I am anal-retentive. So even though I reside in year-round squalor, I still can't bear slicing bread where I just chopped tomatoes, or corralling tumbleweeds of scallions. Which is why I need this.

Think of all the tidiness! And it's bamboo, so ... Earth-friendly! Al Gore, you are welcome.

I really have no defense for my love of this. Or, even more specifically, this.

It's a chicken. It's buttery yellow. I swoon.

Because my weirdness is well-documented, I'm not ashamed to admit that I like this because I've always had a bizarre fascination with the remembrance candles in Catholic churches.

You know the ones—like these. They're just haunting and lovely. And I'm a sucker for anything en masse.

It's dark on the Woodside. There's no sparkly chandelier to break up the expanse of shadow between the sofa lamp and the bar spotlight. (Most-used areas get illumination priority.) But the scale of the space doesn't really accommodate an over-dining-table fixture. I'd love to rig some sort of candle situation out of this.

Yes, I get that lighting candles and then hanging them AGAINST A WALL might be ill-advised considering my propensity for accidental arson. But I love the idea of being able to make the space glow with something that stays tucked out of the way. Not to mention the birdcage concept, which has always been one of my favorite girly obsessions.

One year, for some gift-giving occasion, I summoned up all my cool points and asked for a salad spinner. Two days later, I dropped it in the kitchen, spewing lettuce from baseboard to a-c vent and breaking the spinning apparatus in the process. My salad spinner no longer spins. Aren't you sad for me? You should buy me this.

Bamboo—again, sustainable. And it has a pull string like a child's toy, ~~guaranteeing~~ making it 15% less likely that I will screw it up.

Of late I have been lamenting the state of my dining table/chairs, which basically serve as an airstrip for crap. I don't eat there, I never entertain, and the whole setup is taking up valuable floor space I could be using as a tiny bowling alley. Or for this.