Some people bring home magnets, key chains and maps from their travels; I bring home accessories. Floral scarves, beaded headbands, colorful hats, kitschy coin purses. But more than anything else, I bring home jewelry. Not crazy, need-a-bodyguard, can’t-check-my-luggage jewelry. Fun jewelry. Some of my frill is extra, but most of it isn’t; some of it…
Strawberries may grace the supermarket produce aisle all year round, but the juicy, brightly colored varieties that come around in late May and June are almost a different species, altogether soft and delicate and needing to be devoured as quickly as possible. You can smell their floral, candylike aroma at the market before even laying…
Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited. These days, I am largely unemployed. Normally, I am on the road, speaking at colleges and universities and other organizations — but during a pandemic, proximity is a…
Chiedza Mushayamunda and Matthew Hooker went through “a range of emotions,” as Mr. Hooker put it, when they realized their long-planned May 30 wedding would have to be severely downsized because of the coronavirus. The wedding was to have taken place at the Millennium Center in Winston-Salem, N.C, with more than 200 guests, including family…
Steve Burke saw Lillie McDonough walk into the bar where he was playing bass with a Rolling Stones cover band in 2014, and he was hoping she was the woman he had been told to look for. Ms. McDonough’s uncle, who had been impressed by his playing days earlier, sent her to meet him. “She…
Morgan Clark walked into the bedroom of his fiancé, Elizabeth Reilly, on March 18 and found her sobbing. The devastating effects of the coronavirus forced the couple to move their originally scheduled wedding date up to March 22, from May 8. And they had to change the location of the church, from the Incarnation Anglican…
Mary Noelle Guido and Nicholas Raymond McMurray realized they were Buckeyes through and through when they met in 2014 at a rooftop party in Washington. They grew up 30 minutes from each other in Ohio — she in Brecksville and he in Euclid — and both graduated from Ohio State cum laude. He also went…
Dr. Ellen Panzer and Alan Schwartz were married May 19 in the parking lot of the Monroe Township Municipal Courthouse in Monroe, N.J. But as the bride noted, “In our minds we were already married, we just needed to make it official.” Dr. Panzer, 59, a sports physician for New York City high school sports…
The very misstep that everyone in the electronic age perhaps fears most — sending a message to the wrong recipient — is what brought Victoria Herrmann and Eli Keene together. Both were working at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which is based in Washington. She was a junior fellow in the energy program, focused…
Caitlin Ashley DiLena’s exposure to anything Swedish was once limited to trips to Ikea, the Swedish Chef muppet character, and the Swedish princess cake segment on “The Great British Baking Show.” This was before she matched with Nicklas Alexander Ansman Giertz on Tinder in May 2018, and then met him a couple of weeks later…