It was on my bucket list, and I was in bit of a holiday stupor. Plus, my resistance was down. All of these things conspired to make me buy hair extensions from a kiosk at Ross Park Mall. It’s a totally new take on mall hair. The booth had hair in a rainbow of colors and lots of clips, pins and accessories to help make it sparkle, shine and stay in place. All I had to do was pause ever so briefly to see what was offered, and the helpful salesperson was glued to my side, ready to transform my short tresses into Rapunzel-like splendor. With hands flying around my head, she created a long, bouncy…

Did you see that video that went viral a few weeks ago featuring the crew from the British helicopter carrier HMS Ocean lip synching to Mariah Carey’s version of the Christmas song, All I Want for Christmas Is You? They created this video to share their enthusiasm at learning that, after 225 days at sea, they would be returning home in time for Christmas this year. They are the lucky ones. My friend Carissa will be spending this Christmas alone. Her husband, an Air Force pilot, was deployed to Qatar and won’t be back until sometime in January. She’ll have to rely on a sometimes unreliable …

  Cookies. You can run and you can hide, but everywhere you turn at this time of year the smell of freshly-baked cookies permeates the air. It’s definitely not a good time to be on a diet. As soon as Thanksgiving is over, thoughts turn to cookies and baking. I know a few people who break out the mixing bowls and baking sheets as soon as the leftovers are divvied up and sent home in care packages with overstuffed relatives. They spend the rest of the holiday weekend in a baking frenzy, making dozens and dozens of different Christmas goodies. I’ve done my share of baking over the years, but I …

This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful that I don’t have to join the throngs of shoppers waiting in the wee hours of the morning outside of Best Buy, Target, Kohl’s and other retail stores. Call me Scrooge, but I hate shopping during the holiday season. I enjoy giving gifts to my family, friends and coworkers, but I hate the hot, crowded stores and long lines. I especially dislike dealing with the frazzled nerves of other shoppers and store personnel. I speak from experience, of course. I spent one Christmas season during college working in retail. That was enough for me. It was not a pleasant …

The people who create technology must be at least one part genius, one part child and one part pioneer. How else do they come up with ideas that change the way we do things? It takes a whole lot of smarts, creativity and determination to not only identify a problem but to figure out a solution that makes life a little bit easier. The Agloves brand of smart gloves are a perfect example. They're gloves with touchscreen technology. I never realized I needed gloves such as these until I saw an ad for them online. Then I thought, “Wow, that’s so cool. I have to try those." Today’s smart phones and…

My mom likes to tell a story from early on in my parents’ marriage about how she helped my dad understand the cost of groceries. Theirs was a typical marriage for the time, when most women did not work outside of the home and the men earned the income for the household. When Dad griped one too many times about how much money she was spending on groceries, Mom decided to give him a lesson in home economics: She took him to the grocery store with her. He had no idea just how much milk, eggs, bread, meat, cheese and all the other essentials cost. Only when he saw with his own eyes the price of …

Some might call it nagging, but I prefer to call it friendly persuasion. For years I have wanted to learn the Thriller dance from Michael Jackson’s iconic 1983 video. I remember watching it for the first time with some friends from school and being blown away by not only the song but especially by the choreography. It was so cool! Back then there was no YouTube or DVR and thus no easy way to figure out the dance, short of sitting in front of the TV watching MTV for hours on end and waiting for the video to be replayed. Plus, because I’m not a dancer by training or talent, it would have been …

Ten years have passed since that awful day in September 2001. In some ways it seems like it was just yesterday and yet in others ways it seems like a lifetime since our world was changed so drastically. They say that you always remember where you were and what you were doing when major life events occur. I have to agree. I remember the details distinctly. I had gotten married four days earlier and was in the midst of trying to pack a decade and a half of my life in Chicago into myriad boxes that would be moved to my new home in Cranberry Township. My husband, already at our new address, would…

The first thing my husband said when he saw it was, “Get rid of it!” One of my friends, aghast, asked, “What is that?!” If you want to elicit a strong reaction from someone, get a tattoo. Tattoos seem to be one of those things that people love or hate, and I’ll admit that I don’t like them. With tattoos, the decisions you make are permanent. You can’t change your mind unless you want to undergo the lengthy and painful process of tattoo removal. If I’d been inclined to get a tattoo when I was 19-years-old, I would now be accessorizing every outfit I wear with a colorful portrait of Garfield …

You’re in your car, rushing from point A to point B, when suddenly a song comes on the radio that you just can’t help but love. Go ahead, sing along. You know you want to. It’s fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A. It’s fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A. They have everything that you need to enjoy You can hang out with all the boys. Some songs are just too infectious to resist. Pretty soon you’re belting out the lyrics at the top of lungs, accompanying arm motions optional. Only after you’ve performed your best karaoke version of this song do you realize that your windows are open and the occupants of the …

My friend Donna got a new computer so that she could Skype with her daughter while she’s away at college. Skype is a software application that enables you to make calls over the Internet. You can call anyone, anywhere in the world, and talk for free. One of its most popular features is video calling that allows you to see the person with whom you are conversing. They, in turn, can also see you. You just need a computer with a broadband connection, built-in video camera, microphone and speakers, or a separate webcam. For anyone old enough to remember, it’s just like what they had in the old …

I wonder if anyone really enjoys brushing his or her teeth. Sure, we like the clean, fresh feeling of just-brushed teeth and the minty flavor of most toothpaste isn’t bad, but is the actual brushing part fun? Not really. We do it because dental hygiene is good for us and our teeth might fall out if we didn’t. In my case, at least, the same applies to exercise. Unless it’s a Zumba dance class or a nice walk with my husband, I generally don’t really enjoy exercising. To be honest, I’d much rather be lying on the couch reading a good book. However, that is not the path to optimal health. …

I couldn't help overhearing bits and pieces of a conversation between two older gentlemen while waiting in the lobby at a credit union. One of the men was standing in line and the other was sitting nearby in a chair in front of a reception desk. The two men chatted back and forth for a couple of minutes before the one standing mentioned that he was 66 years old. He seemed to take great pride in this fact. The other man proudly announced that he was 92. It made me wonder how old you should be to start bragging again about your age. Children proudly hold up their hands, displaying their digits …

Are you afraid of heights or small spaces? These common phobias are just two of the many chronicled at a web site dedicated to all things fearful. There are literally hundreds of them listed by name and fear at phobialist.com. If you can’t find your phobia here, then you’re probably the only person in the world with that particular dread. A fear of the color red is called erythrophobia. Afraid of dust? You suffer from an acute case of amathophobia and would be wise to steer clear of my house as it would certainly be fodder for your worst nightmares. I recently discovered that I have a fear of…

We all serve many roles in life: father, mother, sister, brother, son, daughter, friend, spouse, coworker, neighbor and so on. Some roles are more significant than others. I fulfill a number of roles, including one that’s a little more frivolous than the others. I serve as a measuring stick. Not the kind a child uses to measure his growth or a weather person needs to measure the amount of snow that’s fallen. I’m the measuring stick by which my friends gauge how tan they are. It happens every time one of them goes on vacation. Inevitably, about a week after she returns from a trip to the beach…

My sister had days-of-the-week underwear when we were young. I was so envious of her undies with the fancy embroidery that told you which pair to wear each day. Saturday was the best because they were red. For a pre-teen, red undies were the epitome of exciting. You just knew that you were the coolest girl on the block when you wore your red panties under your clothes. It didn’t matter that no one saw them, because they were your secret weapon that meant you could run faster and jump higher, and you'd find all the best hiding places in a game of hide and seek. At least, that’s what I imagined…

We all know the rule of thumb for grocery shopping that helps to keep us from buying everything in sight. Don’t shop when you’re hungry. It’s really more of a warning: Beware hungry shopper; temptation lies within. I don’t know how many times I’ve disregarded this admonition and added unnecessary, and usually unhealthy, items to my cart as a result of shopping on an empty stomach. The same rule should apply to watching anything on the Food Network. Seeing Paula Dean add all that butter to just about everything she cooks is enough to have you dreaming of sweet, gooey cinnamon rolls and …

Hot air rises. It’s a basic law of physics. When this law happens in my home during the heat of summer, it incites a domestic war that I call “the battle of the thermostat.” He walks past the thermostat and lowers the temperature. I walk past it and raise the temperature. He lowers it. I raise it. He’s hot. I’m cold. The crux of the problem is that the main floor of our home is several degrees cooler in the summer than the second floor, even with central air conditioning. Since Cranberry’s streets are lined with two-story colonial homes similar to mine, where the living quarters are on the …

Step, step, rock step. Step, step, rock step. These are the moves of the basic jitterbug dance. Pretty simple, right? Even the most novice dancer can master this easy combo. I’m sure that’s what the instructor at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Wexford thought when my husband and I stepped onto the dance floor for a private lesson. He had no idea what was in store for him. I’ve been a fan of the ABC show "Dancing with the Stars" for years. Though I don’t usually watch much TV, this is one show I rarely miss. There’s just something that fascinates me about seeing the celebrities metamorphose…

I have a vague memory from when I was 9 years old. I remember being quite anxious to turn 10 and enter into the mysterious age of double digits. I have no idea what I hoped to accomplish when I turned this magical age, just that it had been a very long time in coming, and I was excited about it. Now that I am well into my double-digit years, a decade seems to pass in the blink of an eye. Much has changed around Cranberry in the past 10 years. Businesses, restaurants, neighbors and stores have come and gone. Land that once was open field now has been developed into housing, commercial and …