Rose's Cantina

Aside from nearly losing my two front teeth during a dog walking accident, it's been a ridiculously wonderful Christmas for me. It began with the acquisition of the Christmas pug, Sophie Tucker, who, as we speak, is engaged in a heroic battle to the death with the gynormous Finnigan. Sophie weighs less than four pounds and most of it is teeth. She spent the last four days sweeping the kitchen floor while attached to my suede slipper. The last two pugs on my watch, Gordie and Ming (he of the preent, she of the past) were kind, sweet, woo-wooing little dogs. Sophie is evil. Aside from tormenting the deserving-of-torture 90 pound Finnigan, she has already caused a major rug calamity after diving through the air, like some kind of Wallenda, from Scott's chair to the table and toppling a rather large glass of Merlot onto the beige carpet. She considers herself an indoor girl and, while she grudgingly squats for a pee outside, she also has managed to find crannies about ...

Dear Air Miles: Thank you for embarrassing us at the grocery store. We were soooo excited that we were able to redeem our Air Miles at Metro, the nearly 3,000 Air Miles I've carefully accumulated at the Liquor Barn, by buying bad Chilean wine. We got to the checkout only to be told that we had no cash miles. "What do you mean no cash miles?" I asked little Elliott at my neighborhood store as the woman behind us hurrumphed while putting her groceries back into her cart to go to another line. "Nope," he shrugged. So our dream trip to Metro turned into a fiasco. This was a big deal for us. When you're like me and you don't get paid for nearly three months because you work at a magazine that pays on publication every other month, sometimes you have to live on fumes. We'd allotted our remaining funds to go to a wedding tonight and expected to be able to buy our groceries on our Air Miles account. We had to scramble. Our food went on our cred...