Author: Jeannine Ouellette

I got it from my dad, this strange and incongruent entrepreneurial drive, this thirst to sell. It makes no sense for a quiet introvert like me, whose hands shake in front of groups and who cancels more social engagements than is appropriate in polite society, but it’s true nonetheless: I have a knack for sales.…

Todd Strand is in a world of hurt. It’s called Hennepin County Family Court, where he’s spent the last three chilly midsummer days in divorce trial proceedings, after almost three years of legal warfare. His personal tab—not including his wife’s legal fees—has already pushed past the $100,000 mark. Seven thousand dollars of that went to…

I like luck. I don’t understand it and can’t predict or explain it, but I enjoy courting it and can’t help believing in it. Philosopher Nicholas Rescher—author of Luck: The Brilliant Randomness of Everyday Life—contends that without luck, life as we know it would be unsustainable, that the randomness of good and bad luck gives…

I’m sorry to be morbid, but I’ve been thinking a lot about death again lately. This time, it’s the simple fact of mortality that’s got me flustered. It’s as if it never dawned on me that I won’t live forever, and neither will my family and friends. I keep overhearing people at stores and in…

In a few weeks I’m boarding a van in the middle of the night with the man I love and five of the six children we share to drive for fifteen days from Minneapolis to Lake Ontario and back again. We’re going to take the S.S. Badger car ferry across Lake Michigan, ride a dune…

Up till now, I thought I had absolutely nothing in common with G.W. Bush. Then, I was taking my daughter to the what-not shop in Dinkytown to find a birthday gift for a friend, and we saw a slew of magnets with ridiculous quotes from the prez. For example, “I know how hard it is…