Several magazines run profiles of celebrities. The ones I enjoy the most are the ones with pictures inserted in the interview showing answers to the questions about prizes and artifacts that the subject loves, idiosyncratic things like a photograph, or a toy with some personal significance, or a useful tool that has outlived its usefulness, or some new gadget that particularly appeals - you know what I mean. I find I think of those things quite often when I am using one of my favourite things and I'm going to list some of them (we love lists don't we?)

I have a wonderful bed table. It's not for the side of the bed, it's for across the bed. It's a queen-width table on casters that straddles the foot of the bed until I want to slip it up across my knees and it becomes a desk for me to work at. I write on my little Mac on a small hard plastic lap desk but all my papers and equipment are in easy reach on my sliding bed table. I love it and I use it every day, and night.

I have a favourite omelet plan, the only Teflon thing I own and I love it. I learned how to make omelets, finally, by watching a new chef at the omelet table in the Paradise Hotel in Nassau, as he ruined several efforts. I learned by seeing what he was doing wrong, but closer to being right than I had ever been. My pan is from the Jamie Oliver collection, and worth it.

I have a Hugh Jackman figure as Wolverine from the X-factor movies. I've never unwrapped it. I am told that such toys become collector items if they remain unwrapped -i.e. - unplayed with. I really don't want to play with it but I keep it on display in my living room because I like it. I prefer Hugh Jackman as a song and dance man; Wolverine is a bit over the top for me, but he's nice to have around.

Have you ever found an instant favourite? I just did. You must know that I like things tidy (except my papers; I always have trouble with them). I have soft-sided boxes that fit into my clothes drawers to hold underpants, silk undershirts, pantyhose, and so on, and plastic baskets to hold tea bags, or hair stuff (combs, elastics, etc.), small lazy Susans, cupboard shelf size to hold small dishes in the cupboard and various sauce bottles in the fridge. So when I received from my artist granddaughter two specially home-made cylindrical cloth "jars", stiffened at the rims to hold them upright, I was so pleased to get more storage equipment.

How does that saying go? "A place for everything and everything in its place." I wish.

It used to be a tradition, or warning, I'm not sure which, about writing your thank-you letters after Christmas. It was supposed to be good luck to finish them before the new year. The younger you are, the less you'll understand what I'm saying.

I grant you, I'm a nut about thank-yous, rabid, you might say, and out-of-sync-with the times. Yes, well, I'm not the only one who buys the beautiful hasti-notes the Metropolitan Museum of Art sells in their gift shop, and online, which is how I get them. It's all very well for a number of people who grudgingly acknowledge that there is something to saying thank-you and who therefore write e-mail thanks. Better than nothing, often necessary usually useful. But....

I slide into a permissive attitude and sort of accept the grateful e-thanks I get, and I have developed a kind of grade system for the expressions I receive - on a score of 1 to 10, 10 being the best. That has enabled me to compromise and award a good e-thanks up to a 6, but no higher. Still, I knew I was waffling. Then I came across a guest column in the National Post, written by Ted Bishop, the author of "The Social Life of Ink" (Viking Press), and I backed up to my original stiff-necked stance. Here's the first line of his article:

"Graydon Carter, editor of "Vanity Press", sends most of his advertisers handwritten thank-you notes every month: 'Well, wouldn't you want to be thanked if you were cutting a $100,000 cheque?' Clearly a texted 'Thx!' doesn't cut it."

When my husband died, I hung out my shingle as a free-lance writer and tried to write everything in order to make a living for me and my kids. For one assignment I had to interview June Callwood, whom I had never met. She was generous with her time and information and I wrote her a thank-you letter. She wrote me back! She said she had never been thanked for an interview before and she really appreciated it.

Well, you know what they say about the pen, mightier than and all that. Just saying.