PicoBlog

I watched NBC’s Today show this week. It featured Savannah Guthrie mentioning the gallons of rosé wine that will be consumed at the Summer Olympics starting on July 29th. I started counting the number times rosé wine was mentioned and lost count! The wine was a centerpiece of each segment. While I was in Paris last summer, I made sure that I tried their rosé wines from many of the various French regions.

Spring is on the way and seasonal allergies are on the rise. Most sneezing and snotty-nosed kids can be treated for allergy symptoms with over-the-counter (OTC) medications, but that allergy aisle in Target is confusing! Here’s my short list of favorite OTC allergy medications** for your kids. Dr. Natasha's OTC Allergy Med Dosing Chart 104KB ∙ PDF file DownloadMy preferred OTC allergy meds for kids with dosing recommendations. DownloadAllergy symptoms in children are very similar to adults - runny nose, congestion, cough, itching eyes, sneezing and dark undereye circles.

While it’s certainly true that I place a personal focus on hardcore as a community, that doesn’t mean the music doesn’t matter, and in 2023, the music really took us to some incredible places. For my final conversation of the year, I enlisted the help of Touché Amoré’s Jeremy Bolm to revisit some of those places, with each of us choosing and discussing three of our favorite songs of the year—the songs that moved us the most, for any reason.

How many times have you found yourself at the end of a pizza-making night with one or two rounds of deflated, tired dough on hand? What to do? There are several courses of action, but perhaps the most delicious solution is something I’m only just learning about: the pizza sandwich. You’ll find a brief history below, and in the video, you’ll find an overview of the process as well as three ideas for fillings and two more ideas for how to salvage overproofed dough: I have my friend, Christy Alia, who shared her Ooni oven wisdom in the first Pizza Every Friday post several weeks ago, to thank for introducing me to the pizza sandwich, which sent me down an Internet/Instagram rabbit hole to learn more.

I read a lot of creative writing and especially poetry.  It helps with dry spells and also hones my writing skills by observing what it is about certain authors that strikes a chord with me.  I studied a lot of poets in my high school and university classes and I’ve recently begun to revisit some of them.  One of my all-time favorites is Robert Frost.  Frost is one of the best-loved American poets.

I spent much of past few days driving around and checking out dining patios in town. I’ve shared a few photos that I took of the most promising spots. Keep in mind these are dining patios—restaurants that are food-forward, rather than bars and beer gardens that happen to have food. (Nothing wrong with the latter—it’s just not the focus here). ncG1vNJzZmivmaO2rrvRmqWvoZyhsm%2B%2F1JuqrZmToHuku8xop2ismJp6o7HSrWSlp5%2Bgtq%2BzjJ2gp6GenHqxrdOipqxlmaM%3D

“Whirlwind is a great way to put it,” laughs Ashleigh Neville when we discuss the changes in both her career and her personal life over the past five years. Six years ago, the full-back was playing third division football for Coventry United, a team close to home where she’d just become a mum for the first time and close to her school where she worked as a teacher. So when she made the decision to ditch her comfort zone to head south three long days a week, plus matchday, for the chance to play for Tottenham Hotspur, it was a huge shift in Neville’s life, but once in which she has prospered from.

“It’s always a long story,” smiles Peter Gerhardsson, when I ask for his reflections on the recent World Cup. For many on the outside, it boils down to the month-long span of games that took place in Australia and New Zealand, but for Gerhardsson and the other 31 head coaches who had aspirations of the ultimate glory, it’s the end of a two-year cycle, or in this case a condensed one-year cycle due to the delayed European Championships.

A friend writes, about Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek: “I saw him at a Grammy nominee party once. He was by himself at the seafood buffet and I watched him go back to a solo table. Despite his power not a single industry person was trying to schmooze him. I was shocked frankly.” This image of Ek eating shrimp alone at a Grammy party is maybe all you need to understand what happened to Spotify this week.