Saunas are for the young, old, daring and the bored in the middle of the winter. It feels so good to get warm in zero and below temperatures, with 10 to 12 feet of snow and more slowly falling out of the sky. It's time to fire up the sauna. In our case in our younger years, we had a sauna cabin that had to be fired up (Bob's job) about two hours before you could shed all our clothes and enter into the steaming good smelling cedar room. There was a small one-man Jacuzzi tub in the corner.

Paramount Pictures
2 hours, 13 minutes

Buzz, in this day and age, is inevitable and, for a movie of any scale, omnipresent. It's unavoidable, and I, being and unabashed movie lover, often get swept up in it just like anyone else.

My brother, Jim Conforti, and his wife, Donna, of Sound Beach, New York, know that I love to bake, eat and write about cookies, so they sent me several photos of their church’s December 3 Cookie Walk. A part of Port Jefferson’s First United Methodist Church’s annual Christmas Fair for the past 19 years, this year’s Cookie Walk earned the church more than $1600 for the 230 pounds of homemade Christmas cookies baked by church members and youth.

It includes doctors, teachers and entrepreneurs. Redoubt Chamber Orchestra's "An Evening of Christmas 2011" is a reflection of the Kenai Peninsula's community, said Maria Allison, orchestra member.

"The community is in the orchestra, and it's nice for people that come to the concert to see their neighbors and friends play (music)," she said.

The orchestra's Christmas concert is scheduled for Dec. 16 at 7 p.m. at Kenai Christian Church. Musicians will play Christmas tunes, as well as a Hanukkah piece and jazz arrangements -- both new features of the annual concert.