I am currently eating up Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, lamenting that I will never be a chef. I wish all people could be lucky enough to be so innately suited for something as Bourdain is for cooking. Sadly, stories about accounting and insurance sales wouldn't inspire memoirs as much.

I purchased an easel, no more excuses for not painting. As much as I admire Chuck Close's self examination, I don't want to paint myself. I'd rather examine someone else. Perhaps the old man next door who never changes out of pajamas? Or maybe painting from photographs is in order.