Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Here's a thing about the death of your mother, or anyone else you love: You can't anticipate how you'll feel afterward. People will tell you; a few may be close to right, none exactly right.

For some Chicago expats, food is the medicine that blunts the pain of separation.

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.

Getting out of the house is the secret to staying alert through the droning hours leading up to the big meal, even if you don't go farther than 7-Eleven for another six-pack.

Do not read beauty magazines. They only make you feel ugly.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary…what ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either – your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.