Virginia K. Smith

Don Draper has his brooding, boozy charms, but for us, Mad Men has always been, in large part,  all about Pete Campbell.  (Trudy: Please come back!) So obviously our ears perked up during last night's mid-season premiere when Pete started complaining about losing a large chunk of his money from the McCann Erickson buyout to taxes, saying,  "To hang onto it I might have to buy an apartment building, but then I'd have to be a landlord." To which we say: Do it!

Q:  I just moved into a pre-war apartment, and the old toilet left by the seller was a Kohler and didn't flush well. I did some research and bought a low-flow, high-efficiency TOTO toilet to replace the old Kohler, but it’s been even worse. What kind of toilet might work best in a pre-war building and with pre-war piping? 

If you've ridden the subway lately—or if, like me, you recently ended up in Times Square on a weekend and had to literally wait in line to cross the street—and thought this city is getting way overgrown, you're not far off. The city's population is growing at a worryingly rapid clip.

Steal style ideas from this "soothing" Manhattan studio (Apartment Therapy)

Dealing with your building's increasingly gross pigeon problem (NYT, previously)