Edna Crandall

Ugh, the grossness of Brandon's "I don't want to see you strip now that I acknowledge you're a person" is just the worst.

Had my birthday dinner tonight at Juniper & Ivy (Blais's restaurant in San Diego) and it was really great. Our server was awesome. We had a starter, toast, two small plates and two desserts. Starter - San Diego Figs, "ritz" crackers, whipped marscapone, walnut butter and figs. Really great mix of sweet/salty/savory. Toast - Carne Crudo Asada, carne asada seasoned beef tartar with sunny side up quail eggs. Way bigger than I expected, large rustic bread slice and 4 quail eggs. My husband loved this and wants to try a riff on it for breakfast. Kale Caesar - baby kale, duck confit, duck fat croutons, and parmesan/black pepper dressing. the croutons were just on the edge of too salty for me, but worked well with how rich the rest of the salad was. Duck was perfect and not too fatty. Lamb shoulder with roasted parsnips and fig reduction - rich and amazing. Husband wound up getting more because I just can't eat the texture of the really fatty pieces. Lemon Meringue - lemon tarte with marshmallow ice cream and pomegranate. Not flavors I would have ever thought of putting together, but really surprising and delicious. Marshmallow ice cream might be my new favorite. We were waffling between this and the yodel and our sever suggested this one based on the ice cream and the fact that it's seasonal. Glad we went with her call. Birthday dessert - chocolate mousse with salted caramel sauce and coconut sorbet. standard, but perfectly made. Drinks and wine were tasty as well. We already want to go back - excited for our next special occasion. Also wanted to add that we've eaten several times at current contestant Chad White's sadly now closed restaurant Comun. Was one of my favorite places to eat in town and had a great taco Tuesday deal. Unfortunately, it had a bad location for what they were trying to do (the whole block had decent to good restaurants that have already closed). I still need to make it down to TJ to his restaurant La Justina. He is the sweetest guy, and I hope for good things for him in Spokane.

Lina's like a prayer look at the baptism -- perfect.

Liv's Face Off reports just keep getting better. This week had two gems, the inspirational ringtone for Ben, and the house cats made up as jungle cats idea. So good.

My favorite thing was probably the gnome cop saying "tell it to the adorable owl we dressed as a judge"

Yay, Grunion! When I first moved to San Diego I was invited to a grunion run, and to my eternal shame I said "like in 90210?" And I was with Kelly in thinking grunion were made up by dudes who wanted to get girls down to the beach after dark until I finally saw them in my 3rd or 4th year going. They're super weird. I still can't believe Brandon gets away with talking to his parents like that. They'd still be finding pieces of me if I'd tried that crap.

Also from Central CA, and went to Santa Cruz in the summer. I'm in San Diego now, and familiar with the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club (both as a college student being told to GTFO their beach and as a guest of one of my bosses). It claims to be "one of California's only private beaches" but they only own out to the mean high tide. It would make more sense for the West Beverly kids to belong (or have their parents belong) to one or two of the Country Clubs in Beverly Hills. Brandon could have been a pool life guard at a country club. Plenty of class issues for him to bray about.

Tara is right that in general California beaches are all public property. Even private beach clubs can only claim as far out as the mean high tide. But rich people in SoCal are always trying to restrict access and claim beaches are private when they aren't. I thought Dylan's suggestion at the Dr's office that Brenda get on the pill was fine. I was offered the pill the first time I went to the gyno as a teen without even asking for it. Stupid sexist letter writing campaign.

Yes, I think if you're going to argue that Gene (or whoever) isn't the Pierce you have to come up with a substitute Pierce. And if you can't come up with an argument for why another character is less essential than Gene, he's the Pierce for sure.

The first time I heard Steve's adoption confession to Brandon I thought he was going to tell him he'd found out he was secretly related to Kelly, because it's otherwise a pretty weird response to being asked why he's being such a dick to Kelly. I kind of like my version better.

"Don't make fun of him, he's had a hard life" Brandon, have you ever been a child? You don't give the other kid's details of sad kid's shitty life when telling them to be nice to them. That's just ammunition.

Yeah, I went to a very diverse CA public high school too. All the rich kids took fancy prep courses. My English class studied SAT words my entire junior year and it was a pretty competitive thing (I went to a smart kid magnet school). A few friends got perfect scores, and there was a dude in our group who was real mad about getting 1570, so we called him 1570 basically forever (like, still doing it at the 10 year reunion). I only took it once and was happy with my high 1400s score. Got me into the UC of my choice. But there were kids in my grade who got 1500+ and retook chasing a perfect score. Their scores are REALLY bad for rich white kids. Really bad.

Same. I looked at husband and said "is she dressing like a Nazi on purpose?" I usually don't care what the contestants look like, but an SS cap is a bit much. Piling on the Nora love. Great attitude + talent, A+ in my book.

For a while it was the Puppy Bowl V, but that was lost in a DVR meltdown. In general I'm a watch and delete sort of person, the DVR is for storing shows you have not yet watched.

Who keeps Oreos in the fridge? Or cookies in general.