The online weather forecast that I'm looking at says the current temperature is 48˚F. But, the service says, it feels like 47˚F.

I knew it.

The truth is, no, I didn't know it. What I knew was that the difference is ludicrous - 48, but feels like 47.

But I love that somebody came up with that.

Everyone has his or her idea of a dream job. Mine is telling others what something should be. I don't know what that job is called, but it seems to me that a whole lot of people have it.

Take recipe writers. How do they arrive at the "prep time"? I like to cook and have cooked semiprofessionally, which is to say that I have flipped burgers and thrown pizza dough and sometimes even caught it. Around the house, I love to cook. I make up stuff, but I also follow recipes. What I am trying to get at is this: I know my way around a kitchen.­ And those recipes that you download from the Internet? Let me tell you, whoever is telling you the time it should take to make them is bustin' a gut with cruel humor.

The other day, I made a dish that was supposed to have taken 10 minutes. To read the recipe, maybe. But to make the meal? If I were on a TV show and had somebody chop everything up for me in advance and set it in little bowls and had my spatula and spoon precisely where I knew they would be at all times, even when I wandered over to the other side of the kitchen to turn the radio up to hear a good song and forgot that I put my utensil there, then, yeah, 10 minutes seems more or less doable. But in the kitchen, by myself, first making a grocery list, then shopping all over town because my local store only carries stuff that people actually eat, then coming back and putting everything away and washing the vegetables, then chopping and dicing and slicing and mashing and measuring and peeling and grating and Oh, shoot, I forgot to buy cardamom, and then cooking, then, no, 10 minutes is only enough to wonder just how long I think all of this will actually take.