Beware the ides of December! If you went through today not worrying about the ides of December, you’re in good shape! If you were worried about the ides of December today, you’re two days too late, as it was on the 13th.

I pulled out 58D Cutting board wood: TEAK because I got a teak cutting board a few months into the Covid pandemic. I had been using an 18″x24″ Winco cutting board (straightforward naming model WCB-1824) that I got at Chefs’ Toys. It’s really heavy but has served me well. It’s a light-colored hardwood, and I just looked up which wood it is. The result? Rubberwood! The very same wood that I had bashed in a woodworking blog post about table legs. Now that I know I have a piece of rubberwood, my thoughts about it have changed only slightly: It’s good as a hard surface for cutting things on that will be gentler on your knives than plastic will be. Had I gotten rubberwood legs for my end table, it would have bene terrible. The color wouldn’t have worked. For those who are considering getting a rubberwood cutting board, make a different choice if you have an allergy to latex. The teak cutting board I got was from Lumber Liquidators. I don’t know if it’s real teak, but the cutting board is substantially smaller, lighter and less cumbersome to wash and dry. To round out the cutting board discussion I’m having with myself, I also have a butcher block table that was made by my grandfather, back when he had a sheet metal shop in Los Angeles where he made custom kitchens. He made it for my father out of excess countertop. I think the wood is maple.

Today’s theme is newspaper puns!

20A Where one might find Boston news reporters?: AROUNDTHEGLOBE. The Boston Globe is the newspaper, and reporters are/should be everywhere to capture what’s going on so they can tell us what’s going on.
37A Where a Baltimore news reader’s desk might be found?: UNDERTHESUN. The Baltimore Sun is the newspaper there. I only know of it because it’s in The Wire. Probably won’t have a desk outdoors–especially in December–so this really only applies to the newspaper name itself and the idiom.
56A Beaten to a news scoop in Los Angeles?: BEHINDTHETIMES. Remember when the LA Times broke the Bell story? Remember when the LA Times taught us how to drive in the rain? And then taught us to drive in the rain again the following year but by video because it’s that important? I do appreciate the NYT self-own with this clue and a nod to the paper that employs lots of good people.

Finished this one in 12:49.

It bears noting that my favorite name of a newspaper is the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I can’t speak to its content, but it bears a name with no pretense. Just telling it like it is.

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