Drop by the Adair household at this time of year and you're likely to find yourself following your nose to a pot of soup simmering in the kitchen. Zita Adair grew up with a mother who she said "always had a pot of soup on the stove." In those days, every bit of the soup was made from scratch right down to leftover bones set aside to be boiled into stock.

I used to refer to myself as "The last surviving dial-up customer in America." Because of where we live, we've had dial-up Internet for the past 10 years. I've been on mountaintops in Africa and lighthouses in the U.P. that had faster connections than mine. That changed last month when my husband found a workaround. It's changed my life.

Shotgun season starts in two weeks so Joe is getting excited to try his luck again and is trying to find the perfect spot. Deer meat comes in handy and can be used in many different ways. I especially enjoy homemade deer jerky and summer sausage from the meat.

My mother-in-law is in her late 70s and sharp as a tack. Like millions of her compatriots, sitting down and reading 148 pages of mind-numbing details about her Medicare prescription plan is the last thing she wants to do. But between November 15th and December 31st, that's exactly what's expected of millions of Medicare participants.

Voting last week for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, and for special elections for Congress in New York and the Legislature in Michigan, provide 2010 omens for both parties in Michigan, where hot races loom in all three categories. (Plus more from the Michigan political scene including another Levin in the wings.)

The phone rings. You recognize the voice as your nephew's. He's calling from Canada, where he says he's been on a fishing trip with some buddies. They've unwittingly caught fish on tribal land and have been arrested by authorities there. Then wants to know if you can help by wiring him money.

Throughout this year's budget battles in Lansing, lawmakers disagreed sharply over how to balance the books. But they seemed to strongly agree on this: Michigan voters would never approve any kind of open, across-the-board tax increase. Yet last week's election returns may indicate that the politicians are dead wrong.

Sigh ... Friday morning, true to form, smack in the middle of Manhattan, I managed an absolutely splendiferous faux pas, a feat I seem to repeat with depressing frequency. Jen took us, via the underground trains, to visit Roberto at his Fifth Avenue architectural firm. We'd been promised a tour, and, as architecture and I have enjoyed a lifelong romance, this expedition was eagerly anticipated.

For me, once I was able to open my mind to other ways of seeing and experiencing God, it seems I really began to know God. Once I realized that faith was something that you live, not something you define, it started to become my own.