Random bullets of Thanksgiving break

In the face of others' excellent posts this week on anonymity in blogging, "why I blog," selflessness in academe, conference presentations, and other topics (go read them--lots more on the sidebar!), here are short snippets from the last few days.

• A tip for editors: if you ask me to review something and return my report electronically, when I do so, please, please take 2 seconds to hit reply and say "Got it--thanks!" Don't turn me into an e-mail stalker ("Did you get the report I sent on X?"), or, worse, a borderline obsessive type who sends a paper copy just in case.
• Naps. Is there any pleasure as great as dutifully trying to read a dull but necessary book, getting sleepy, and realizing that, for a change, you don't have to make heroic efforts to keep awake but can just go ahead and take a nap instead?
• Food. jo(e) writes about her mother baking cookies and making doughnuts. We all like to bake in my family (my sister does pies, while my forte is cookies and cakes), but no one but my mother makes doughnuts, and she makes them only when there are enough people around to eat them quickly--not much of a trick given our large extended family. She'd get out an ancient deep-frying kettle with a cloth-covered electrical cord--yes, that's how old it was; I think the patent number was "1"--add the shortening, and plug it in. The ancient kettle was retired a few years ago for one with some of these newfangled things called "safety features," but the doughnuts are still great. They taste best when someone drives to the cider mill and gets a few gallons of fresh-pressed local cider while the doughnuts are frying. Cold cider. Hot doughnuts and doughnut holes. Enough said.