I stepped off the airplane in South Africa, my Evian bottle empty after 17 hours in flight.

There’s a bookcase in every room of our house, from the three-shelf antique in the kitchen filled with cookbooks to the battered four-shelf unit in the family room stuffed with paperbacks. My husband collects biographies of famous newsmen. I collect Nancy Drews from the 1960s. We’ve got self-help, reference, humor, history and a smattering of fiction. Hello, my name is Saimi, and I’m a bibliophile.

Google rolled out a new initiative today that will allow humans access to all their thoughts as they think them in real time. A spokeswoman for Google said the company’s new thinking service, tentatively titled "Rodin" after Auguste Rodin, the sculptor of "The Thinker" statue, will be formally unveiled at an event in front of the Lincoln Monument next Wednesday. "I think Lincoln would have embraced this new leap forward in data collection," she said. 

In politics, what really happened isn't nearly as important as deciding what it meant. There were four prominent elections Tuesday across the country that were being used as a de facto referendum on President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority's young administration. It was a split decision. But with both gubernatorial elections going to the GOP, the Republicans certainly have a right to claim victory - even if that victory was not complete.

“You look like you’ve been chasin’ cars.” My mom once told me that after I came in from a particularly hard afternoon at play. She was big on quaint sayings that let you spit out the truth as if you were Will Rogers.

Just about everybody who owns a dog thinks his or her dog is smart. I've never really felt that way about any of the dogs I have had. They were lovable, cute, loyal, cuddly and great company, but I never thought of them as that smart. I used to tell people that I never met a dog that could beat me at chess.

Dividing the week into seven days apparently worked pretty well for the ancients, but it’s not enough for modern times. Contrary to the belief of my two teens, I was not born in ancient times, so I can’t speak from personal experience. However, I am still fairly comfortable stating that life moves a lot faster nowadays. It’s getting faster for everyone, but especially for us 40-somethings.

I stayed up really late Tuesday night reading and watching analysis of Tuesday’s off-year elections. I’ve been in so many spin zones I feel as if I’ve spent 10 ride tickets on a Tilt-a-Whirl. The bad news for Democrats in the exit polls was, as James Carville would put it, “the economy, stupid.”

“Survivor: Samoa” is as fierce and competitive as prior “Survivor” excursions, but the deception, physical demands, weather woes and short tempers seem to be at an all-time high. I know what you’re thinking: How could it get any worse?

I took a bit of flak, back in the spring, for writing that the New York Mets are the perennial little brother to their cross-town nemesis, the Yankees. But it’s true, and this season bore that out, as if such boring were any longer necessary.

When I see a bug in my apartment, or when I inadvertently walk through a spider’s web, I typically proceed through the following reactive steps: shudder, gather myself, watch for a bit and then plan my next move, which often involves the bug’s demise.

The heart of “Mad Men,” and the source of many of its greatest moments, is the off-the-charts business acumen of leading ad man Don Draper. Everything you really need to know about business can be learned watching Don Draper:

In May, I wrote a light-hearted column about swine flu. I said I felt silly for worrying about the virus and concluded that it was really nothing to be concerned about. And I think most of the world came to the same conclusion as I did. After the initial flurry of fear when the virus emerged in the spring, H1N1 faded from the spotlight over the summer as our national attention turned to more important things like Jon and Kate’s divorce.

Two months ago, police shot and killed Mark Anthony Barmore, a 23-year-old African- American man in Rockford, Illinois. 

Being a parent is about loving your child. Nurturing them. Providing a safe place to live, and food for the table. Giving them opportunities to grow, sharing in their education, teaching them values like respect and compassion. At least that’s what all the manuals say. Not that I’d know. They’re propping up the wobbly table in the basement at the moment.