Jessica's Friday Five: cookies, Uber item delivery, and microloans

Hi Reader,

I imagine most of you have heard about the devastation of multiple active and uncontained fires in Los Angeles this week. As Californians ourselves (we're hundreds of miles from the fires, so we're safe right now), it's not been easy to focus during a week when many of our friends are evacuating their homes, out of power, and/or supporting their people who are. If you're impacted, please let us know if there are ways we can support you specifically as a Friday Five community (just hit reply).

1. Girl Scout Cookies: Thanks to those of you who shared links of the Girl Scouts in your lives! I've pulled them together so you can go order some cookies for yourself or someone whose day you want to brighten. Feel free to share far and wide with anyone needing a little cookie love. bit.ly/2025Cookies My family did a taste test of 6 cookies earlier this week and determined that our collective favorites are s'mores, samoas, and tagalongs.
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2. Uber Courier: Last week, we had a mixup where my family was 45 minutes apart from each other, but one adult had both sets of car keys. We were preparing for the 90-minute round trip to deliver the keys when we realized that Uber has an "item delivery" service. It ended up being so helpful for us! I wanted to share this in case you ever need to move an item from one place to another but are pressed for time or without a vehicle to move it yourself. It ended up being much more affordable than I would have guessed.
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3. Kiva Microlending: Are you familiar with Kiva.org? It's a great platform that I've been using for over a decade to lend small amounts of money to entrepreneurs around the world. They also do loans here in the US now, and I'm working on funding one for my own business now. I love how the money is a loan, so the recipient pays it back, and you can re-lend it to another entrepreneur! You can search for entrepreneurs by country, topic, gender, etc. For example, you could lend to entrepreneurs in Palestine or single parents or artisan entrepreneurs. If you've got some money sitting in savings, this can be a way to allow those assets to do some good in the world and then come back to you.
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4. For Readers: If you're a reader, you might enjoy the free event Bookmas, which gives you a free fiction ebook every day from Jan 10 - 31 and has resources for anyone who is an author. Also, I rounded up my Top 10 Books of 2024 for anyone filling their to-be-read list for 2025. It includes the most professionally impactful book I read in 2024 and one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read.
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5. LEGO Magazine: We got our copies of LEGO magazine this week, and both of my kids ended up staying up late at bedtime to read them (I have a hard time getting mad about this particular way of staying up late). It's a free magazine, so sign up the kids in your life (and don't expect siblings to share; I bet you can guess how I know).

Bonus Friday Fave: We were celebrating Día de Los Reyes earlier this week and my friend Omar made fresh pasta for us. I always thought homemade pasta would be a massive production, but he had a machine that made it impressively easy (he put in flour, water, and an egg, and pasta came out!). So now, this machine is at the top of my wish list, and I feel like 2025 might be the year of fresh pasta. Do any of you have this thing and love it too?

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