Assume. To take. That's what it means. To take what? Well, just about anything really. To take a position. To take an opinion. To take control. To take responsibility. To take a role.

We all do our fair share of assuming. In fact, that very statement is based on an assumption. It has negative meaning in nearly all of it's guises, yet can be applied to so much of what we do on a daily basis. We all have a position, an opinion, a role and a level of responsibility in our lives, but the negativity associated with the word is based on our own perspectives.

One of the first times I took a 35mm camera in my hand it was a cold, wintery day in New England and I walked around my neighborhood taking pictures of the snowy scenery.  I was very proud of the pictures I took that day even though they were tinted a strange slate blue color and were utterly mundane.  There was just something about seeing the world around me, especially the ordinary that I see daily, somehow becoming captivating through a camera lens.

I have been crossing the Canadian/American border for 45 years.

As a kid I remember trips to the USA from Canada where standard interviews at border crossings dealt mainly with the subject of where you were going, and how long your visit would be.

Our clothes dryer died on Saturday, or at least that is when we noted the time of death.  I think the actual event occurred on Friday, but at that time we thought giving my daughter an earful about leaving the dryer running for 5 hours would somehow solve the problem.  When we finally decided to face the reality of the situation (it was tumbling clothes around, but not stopping and not drying), there were several loads of laundry awaiting our attention. 

I used to meet with a group of people from all over New Hampshire a few times a year and enjoy evenings of Karaoke and clowning at the Shalimar Pub across from Lake Winnesquam.

When I returned to New Hampshire 16 years ago, I was driving a 1978 green Plymouth Fury.  I loved that car.  It was big, it was an ugly shade of green, but it was the most reliable car I had driven since selling my 1981 Toyota Corolla 4 years previously.  My husband was a mechanic, an extremely good one, who had this annoying habit of buying junk cars, making me drive them around while he fixed them up, then selling them when they were in fine running condition.  In my 4 years of living with the man, I became quite accustomed to driving some of the most unreliable cars. The Fury was the best of the bunch, and luckily I left my husband before he had the chance to sell it. 

On Super Bowl Sunday I put on my well worn Patriots jersey expecting an exciting evening filled with fumbles, touchdowns and food.

Before marrying the missus and moving to the United States I had a lifelong preoccupation during visits to America. This was the desire to eat certain foods not available in my homeland. My cravings included Lays potato chips, Mountain Dew, Three Musketeers Bars and anything between two slices of Wonder Bread.

There have been some really good pieces in the Monitor over the past couple of months about restaurants.  With the Cat ‘n Fiddle changing hands and the new late night restaurant review series in the Monitor I found it interesting that people posting to the site were “hungry” (no pun intended) for independent dining destinations.

I used to love stuffed animals.  As a youngster, I had a wide assortment of them.  They were my friends and they all had names.  When I was very young, I had a teddy bear, a rather ugly looking one actually, whom I named Paddington, as in the famous storybook bear.  There are pictures of me in my family's collection of photographs in which you can see me carrying him.  To me, he had a life and a soul that only I understood.  All my stuffed animals did, but his personality suited me best.

Here is my question: Will the 59 car pile up on I-93 yesterday in the middle of a snow storm teach drivers that they should proceed with caution on snowy days, no matter what they are driving?  Or will DOT have to continue to defend themselves for not having every road in New Hampshire plowed down to bare, dry pavement from the moment the storm starts?