Still Nothing Regarding Cold Fusion

Because I write about residential building for a living, I get to read the New York Times Home section for work. It normally doesn't have a lot that applies to my particular subject niche, and today was no exception. Of course this doesn't mean that I navigated away from the page when I realized it had nothing to do with what I should be billing my hours to. No, my attention was captured by an article about women who leave their partners and spouses for the hot contractors who they've hired to work on their homes. The article opens with a tale of woe told by a man jilted 12 years ago for the man he hired to renovate his colonial farm house. It didn't offer specific details, but the description of the geographical region in which it took place sounded familiar, so I shot an email off to my mom asking her if she knew him and had any good gossip.

Her response was appropriately hilarious in only a way that my mom can be. Her answer was yes, she does know him. He owned a house (the one described in the NYT article in fact) several miles down the road from ours. She then went on to portray his personality and looks in a less than flattering light. The high point of the email however (and the one that followed) was a commentary on the leading contractors in our town (all five of them--this was a town of 1,200 people, mind you) and who was hottest, who was a hippy burnout, who remained faithful to his wife, etc, etc. It seems that the topic of hot contractors in small New England towns has been debated for quite some time.

All this has made me incredibly nostaglic for the Pioneer Valley. I've always regarded myself as a city girl at heart, but today the fantasy of moving back home to the woods, renting out an old farm house like the one I grew up in, and shacking up with a hippy carpenter is incredibly appealing. The last time this happened I instead read The Quality of Life Report and that snapped me right out of it. So until I manage to unearth my copy, do not be surprised if I go missing. I'll be chilling out in my renovated farm house, baking whole wheat bread and throwing back microbrews with my gorgeous contractor boyfriend.