At the risk of being indelicate, I need to gush about a product I just discovered

As I mention all the time, I've been going to an isolated island in The Bahamas for the last couple of years, and I'm headed back there in a couple of weeks.

I'm fortunate in many ways, and one of them is my great friend JD. JD's who got me hooked on Cat Island in the first place and I owe my recently acquired love of flying to him too.

This is JD's plane. It's a single prop, four-seater. It's stable and powerful and handles like a sedan. It's a great plane and one of my life's great joys is to buzz around in it. This is also the plane we fly to Cat Island.

We fly directly from here and it's a two-and-a-half to three hour flight. Here's where the indelicacy comes in. Either I have the most efficient kidneys on the planet or I have a bladder the size of a peanut. Or both. Four-seater airplanes don't come equipped with heads and when the urge strikes and I'm 10,000 feet above the open Atlantic, I have no option but to hold it until we land. Few things unsettle me more than a full bladder and no way to relieve it. Before too long, water bottles and travel mugs start to look like viable means of alleviation.

We've been back often enough that Mr. Gilbert, the kind soul who works in the immigration trailer at the airfield in Cat Island, knows to let me rush past him to get to the bathroom before he stamps my passport.

Anyhow, when JD and I flew over there a month ago, we were equipped with a new tool that I lack enough superlatives to describe. It's called the Travel John and here's a video that describes how it works.

Oh how they work and thank God for it. After one use I became their biggest fan. These things are fantastic and I can now say without hesitation that I will never set foot on a small plane without a supply of Travel Johns again.

Where the Sweet Olive Grows

My former next door neighbor Brandon moved to New Orleans a year-and-a-half ago. In leaving, he managed to leave both my neighborhood and my life noticeably impoverished. The man can cook like no one I've ever met and if that weren't enough, inside of him lurks a the best story teller I've ever known. The man can spin a yarn out of thin air while whipping up a batch of Hoppin' John so good it will bring tears to your eyes. In New Orleans he's found a home to say the least. If nothing else, New Orleans is a city where fine cookery and fine story telling are still held in high esteem and he fits right in.

In Brandon's mind and in his words, a mundane task like grocery shopping becomes an epic story of the triumph over hardship. A cab ride through Faubourg Tremé becomes a myth to rival those of the Ancient Greeks. Two days without air conditioning in the stifling heat of a Louisiana July becomes an opportunity to share a recipe for the wild bananas that grow in the Delta.

I've been begging him for years to please write down his stories and at long last he's started a blog. I get lost in his posts, really. Brandon's a gifted, natural writer of rare talent and New Orleans is a richer place with him there.

And now, thanks to his blog Where the Sweet Olive Grows, the world can be a richer place at the same time. Give him a read if you're looking for a chance to daydream about city that exists on the fringes of myth to begin with.

See what Delta can do

In January of '09 a couple of people started a conversation in my comments section about pull out sprayers. In the course of that exchange, the great Laurie Burke from Kitchen Design Notes brought up Delta's new MagnaTite™ docking system for pull outs. That little pearl of wisdom led to my post on 16 January, MagnaTite Docking from Delta. I pride myself on being up on the latest and greatest innovations in my industry, but I have to say that the MagnaTite™ system caught me by surprise.

I dug around a bit and as I was writing that original post everything I read and learned led me to the conclusion that Delta was really onto something. I was impressed then and I remain impressed now. It's a great idea and I can't believe no one's ever thought of this before. Kudos to Delta for being the first.

One of Delta's models, the Pilar, is a particularly well-designed faucet and it features the MagnaTite™ system. The Pilar also features Delta's Touch2O™ technology, and that's another triumph for Delta. I'll write more about Delta's Touch2O™ on Monday.

For now though, the Pilar is all I want to write about. I'm really struck by this faucet. I mean, look at it. It's really beautiful and elegant. Ordinarily, I'm all about Kohler if I'm in this price point, but the Pilar is making me re-think that single handedly

Clearly, I'm not alone in this appreciation of Delta's Pilar. In the last month and a half, Delta has won two industry awards for it and the Pilar deserves every accolade it gets.

The first is an MVP from Building Products Magazine. Delta's MVP was one of 21 products honored across eight categories relating to home construction and renovation. The second award is a 2009 Stevie^® in the “New Product or Service of the Year – Manufacturing” category at the 7th annual American Business Awards^sm, held in June 22. These awards add two more voices who have joined the chorus of praise for the Pilar. Keep it up Delta, keep up the good work.

By now, I'm sure you've seen this new TV spot from Delta introducing their Touch2O™ technology. Tune in Monday and I'll explain what it is, how it works and why it's so cool. Oh and by the way, that's a Pilar in action in this ad.

Oh Decorno, I covet your vacation

Speaking of vacations, the Lady Elaine, who writes the terrifically funny blog Decorno is a week into a three-week trip to Italy. She's filing the occasional dispatch and her offering from this morning sums up everything I love about Italy. Elaine's currently in one of the five villages that make up The Cinque Terre where she's rented an apartment.

I leave for 6 days and you guys let Henry Louis Gates, Jr get arrested at his OWN HOUSE? Seriously, guys. WTF?

Because I am paying like 80 billion euros a minute to be on this computer, I could only skim the details, but jesus h christ.

Anyway - that makes me angry just thinking about it, so I need to move on. Let's talk about me.

I was supposed to go to Lucca today, but the woman who rents her apartment to me, Louisa, shook her head disapprovingly at me and said in mostly Italian with enough hand gestures and serious looks for me to translate exactly what she meant to say, which was approximately, "Oh, but it's molto caldo (so hot!). The Lucca people, they come here now, to the sea. Too hot in Lucca. You go in May." And like the 3 nights before, I humbly ask if I can stay again and she smiles broadly as I produce my euros and she says, "Ah, si, va bene." And that is how Louisa gets me.

Louisa is living high on the hog now. MY HOG, I may add. The day I arrived tough winds blew apart a few of her potted plants. The next day she came to my (her) white-washed apartment and showed me a new cactus she bought to replace one of the old. She was beaming. And then the next night I saw her walking with her old friend, going to dinner. To dinner! With my fat euros in her pocket. And then yesterday she warned me that today she would be gone mezzo giorno and that she was getting her throat checked. After a long mutual mime-attempt at understanding one another, we managed to act out that she has lesions on her throat and would be heading to La Spezia to have it checked out. She would be getting "exams" and doing "exclusions" (ruling things out, I think she meant). Look at her. Flush with American money, she's splurging on exploratory surgery. The nerve.

Every time she comes to see me, she looks out the window with me, at the tower, and the pink and yellow and pastel green buildings with the laundry fluttering underneath windows and she beams, saying to me, "It's special here," like she needs to make sure that I understand just how great it is to be here, in this town, in this house.

I do.

If you've never spent any time soaking up the wit and wisdom of Decorno, waste no more time and head over there. The woman sets the standard.

Vacation time's coming and I need some guest bloggers

I am going on vacation in a couple of weeks. A proper, week-long vacation where I'll be completely unplugged and unreachable by any body's who's not within shouting distance. I cannot wait. In the meantime, I have a weeks' worth of slots open for guest posts. Anybody interested in taking this baby for a test drive?

I'd like for a post to appear every day that I'm gone, but no single guest blogger needs to write any more than he or she wants to. This is all casual and low-key, all I ask is that you stay on topic more or less, steer clear of religion and politics and not be too obvious if you're plugging a commercial interest. Usable, interesting and amusing are the key words here.

If you're interested, drop me a note and let me know which days you're interested in covering. I don't even want to know what you want to write about, just when. The days I'll be gone are from the eighth through the 16th of August. C'mon, you can do this!