Una Sera Con Margherita Vittoria

Last night I ate dinner at Da Danilo, a traditional Roman trattoria that makes what’s supposed to be one of the city’s best spaghetti alla carbonara. (It is very good.) I arrived just about 9:30 to find Margherita Vittoria waiting for me. Now, she was not actually waiting for me, per se. In fact, she …

Q&A: Roger Dawson, Power Negotiator

A couple of weeks back I wrote about the difficulties I’ve had with my hard-bargaining little boy. I wondered if I would have more success hoodwinking JP if I employed the techniques of a master negotiator. So, I sought out a master negotiator. He’s Roger Dawson, the founder of the Power Negotiating Institute, author of You Can Get …

Big Preg Takes ’Em All On

Big Preg over at Accidents Will Happen pivoted off of our Babies-in-Bars dust-up and wrote a fantastic essay on Parentitlement. In a handful of linked arguments, she adds more thought to the subject than a thousand screaming monkeys (I include us in that) scared up last week after the CNN.com story. A vignette: Children are …

“Io Sono Casalingo.” (Cue Laughter.)

As part of my top-secret, undercover assignment here in Italy, I have to repeatedly lie about my work. That can be easy in certain parts of Europe, particularly France, where asking “What do you do for a living?” is considered the least imaginative question possible. Indeed, friendships and even marriages last decades with neither participant …