Eliana Osborn

In Anchorage, Alaska, there are 5 hours, 27 minutes of daylight on December 21. The good news: The numbers only go up for the next six months. The bad news: December 22 has merely seconds more light.

1. Write a damn letter.

A new, exciting trend is to have food pantries for college students. I talked to an AmeriCorps volunteer running one of these centers and she was matter-of-fact about the need — and how little is being done. Today’s college students may be young and single, living la vida loca. But more and more are what we call ‘nontraditional’: slightly older, employed full-time (or close to it), supporting a family, a veteran, etc.

Hunger for nontraditional students doesn’t mean surviving on ramen: It means they are not the only person in the household who's in need.

I’m not alone in being troubled by how people suddenly disappear in life, right? That’s essentially why the internet was created. You may have heard rumors about Al Gore inventing it for military purposes... Lies!

They were horrible.

A haircut is a whole lot cheaper than therapy or tattoos or a round-the-world plane ticket.

If you kill a tortoise, even on accident, you probably shouldn’t have children.

Ray Nagin. Yes, the former New Orleans mayor who now has a criminal record. Let me explain.

Now that I’m a mother, I’m much more sympathetic to a woman who just couldn’t take it anymore. Not saying I’d leave my kids in a parking lot and hope for the best . . . just saying that I can understand the impulse.

Perfectly Karaoke Or Lip Sync A Song: You may think this is less important than the other items on the list. You are wrong.