Kate the Great

Patti Smith's "Land" and Millennium are insane together. Brilliant and terrifying use of music. I saw it when it aired and it still hasn't left me, and I didn't even watch Millennium all that much, either. On a lighter note, the Jay Mohr-helmed "Action," although short-lived, had the perfect Warren Zevon theme song:

Late to the party, but allow me to introduce you to FATAL. https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml (Review NSFW but only text; game seemingly NSF life or sanity. And man, I assumed D&D was the game...)

I am conflicted about Moftiss: I love BBC Sherlock (though the third season was weaker than the first two), but Dr. Who does nothing for me at all (I miss Christopher Eccleston, and Tennant to a lesser extent, but never watched the show thoroughly after Eccleston's season). I like all the cooking competition shows on Food Network (though I hate Alex Guarnaschelli and Melissa d'Arabian and many other judges!).

Maharincess, in my experience, having started with crochet and moved on to (about 90%) knitting: knitting has more of a learning curve in the way you hold the needles, but once you develop that muscle memory, it's much faster than crochet. The one thing you can't do is knit very small circumferences in the round without the use of doublepoint needles or a method called "Magic Loop," so in that way it's not as versatile as crochet.

I think it was Wisdom Panel. It was a Christmas gift, so I'll have to ask my dad tomorrow to be sure. They didn't get it 100% certain, because dog breeds aren't brightline rules, but they got it to enough certainty that I'm pretty sure that's what she is, considering her looks, disposition, et cetera. She had a couple of other teeny tiny strains in her DNA, but I'm not sure what those were.

bosawks, I liked it before the edit. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!

She does have a separate entrance in the back. And yes, I feel weird about the guests, especially as they're random guys and not one steady boyfriend or something. I should have had a written lease but I wasn't expecting this given past roommates.

Thanks! Yeah, she was advertised on Craigslist as a 30-lb. 'beagle mix,' but doesn't look beagle-y at all. Everyone guessed everything from Rottweiler (because of the coloring) to collie to German shepherd and back, so I had her DNA tested the second Christmas I had her, and Lancashire heeler, Lab, and boxer are the matches. I'm not sure how, considering Lancashires are rare, but apparently that's what it is most likely to be (and she does look like a giant-sized version of them, if you Google.) She has heeler smarts, boxer bounce, and Lab friendliness, so as long as you are prepared for high energy (and I was, as my parents have Chesapeake Bay retrievers), she's a good girl all around. And yup. My kitty (Mookey, domestic shorthair), I'd had since she was five, so she was already well-established as queen of the roost when Nessa came. Fortunately, she's declawed on the front paws (not my doing, and I would never, as it's amputation, but she was before I got her), so she can smack the dog around if the dog gets to be too much for her, and I don't have to worry.

My kitchen is being remodeled and we removed the (cheap, non-historic) cabinets on Thursday to replace them with lovely vintage metal ones. Check out this wallpaper (two different kinds!): http://imgur.com/a/EdXrL It's not really salvageable, but it's definitely a time capsule. Does anyone have any ideas on how I might use either of these wallpapers in a way that wouldn't keep their ugliness in full force but would still honor the history of the house somehow? I was thinking of maybe papering a drawer or two on the inside with them but don't want to ruin the metal either.

I am an experienced knitter and crocheter who is just learning how to sew on a sewing machine! (I can handsew.) I went to my first class last Wednesday and found a used full-size Brother machine (http://smile.amazon.com/Brother-Everyday-stitches-including-Buttonhole/dp/B000EOX28E/) on Amazon for $45. I hope it works! (I know it's not as good as a real machine, but I wanted to figure out what I needed versus what I wanted at a low price point before investing in a Viking or something.)

This is my nearly five-year-old Nessa. She's half-heeler, quarter Lab, quarter boxer, and loves everyone, especially if they provide chin rests. I adopted her at two and a half a few Christmases ago, and she is the smartest dog in the world (of course!). Special interests include: greeting everyone on a walk, wanting to be the neighbor kids' BFF, posing for photos, having a mega-crush on her "granddad" (my father), and pining after the newly reappeared ice cream truck. I'll take a picture of my 16-year-old kitty when she wakes up! She sleeps a lot, and is on lots of medicines, but is still able to tell the dog to "Back off, kid," which is always entertaining. Luckily Nessa is submissive where kitty's concerned.

Thanks! Some good advice. The thing is that all this stuff is stuff I haven't encountered before. This is my first house as an owner/"landlord", and the last two girls were "ghost" roommates, so I didn't encounter noise and random dudes and whatever. And we otherwise get along. She has a good sense of 'let's be friends as housemates but not be too much in each other's business,' which is important, and we can talk pretty reasonably together. It's just this is kind of inconsiderate, and I hadn't seen it coming (she moved in in late January, so we're still trying to find one another's rhythm for the long term.) I work from home, which is why I'm constantly aware of this, and why it's reached this frustrating point already. When I had roommates before who were loud and noisy twentysomethings, I also was a loud and noisy twentysomething. I don't expect her to be quiet as a mouse, but I also don't want to be constantly thinking, "Oh, that's roommate's music... at 12:45 AM! Oh, hey, strange guy I've never seen before from New York City! Yeah, totally cool that you can crash at my house." One of the things that's going in in the current kitchen remodel is a door between the staircase (behind the kitchen) and the kitchen. Would it be too much to put a lock on it and lock it after midnight? She has a microwave, sink with running water, fridge, cabinetry, hotplate, and slow cooker upstairs -- so no need to be cooking overnight.

This is my roommate, not family, but close enough. I can't vent on Facebook, because she'll see it. I'm in my mid 30s, professional. She's early 20s, premed, from NYC. We're in a suburban area of Albany. I own the house. She has the upstairs and I the downstairs. There is a staircase but no door separating us, and we share the downstairs kitchen. She has a small Pullman kitchen, separate bath, bedroom, and living space upstairs. My previous two roommates (both now graduated) have never had noise problems. I can hear her TV as loud as mine when in in the living room. She plays music loud enough to hear the lyrics downstairs too. I know it's her and not me because I've never had a problem before. Things are that loud until midnight or 1 AM, and start again just as loud at 7. This messes with my sleep schedule, obviously. She has different guys here every weekend and they stay from Friday through Monday. I don't mind overnight guests but they overstay their welcome. This isn't a flop house. Also, her guests arrive at odd hours (like just now at 2 AM, and she turned on all the outside lights that shine into my bedroom to let them in, waking me up, and then "forgot" to turn them off again.) Lastly, the guest's car is parked behind mine in the driveway, blocking me in until who knows when tomorrow. Or, rather, today. This has happened several times before. She does not have a parking space in my driveway, as she has no car. I have told her about the noise multiple times, but not the guest situation. I don't want to henpeck, since I theoretically don't mind if she has people over, but this feels like it's starting to be rude, if it hasn't been already. She's a nice person otherwise, and I don't want to drive her away, especially as she's paying half of the mortgage with her rent, but I don't know what to do. Advice?

This should have been a no-winner episode. All of the tattoos were flawed in some way or another, but of course, the drama of Cleen winning the skull picks next ep cannot be denied. And a sausage-fest reigns again (pun not intended). I'd say I'm shocked, but I'm not. It's a shame, given that Megan is a competent tattooer and her errors were no more or less than Sausage's, just a different kind. I won't say her elimination wasn't deserved, but her undeserved prior appearances in the bottom, and Nunez's odd gunning for her, seem to have led to a loss of confidence. Hoping Jime, Jesse, James, or Anthony wins it.

Oliver Peck (who else?) dinged someone's tattoos tonight as being "unprecise." Dictionary.com (because I'm lazy) states that's an acceptable form, but I'm pretty darn sure Oliver meant "imprecise."

Sarah's tattoo was hard to look at, but Cleen's Ronnie Rayguns looked like Lou Ferrigno. And with "It's a great tattoo; screw the canvas jury" and his unreadable tattoo in the flash challenge that mystifyingly won... I still wish he'd pack his bags. The showrunners can only edit what you give them, dude. For all Sarah got the boot for darkening Clinton's portrait, not a word about how dark Anthony's George Washington was? I like him and think he's a talented artist but the portrait, while an attractive drawing, looked nothing like Washington whatsoever. And why couldn't anyone choose an obscure president? I mean, I would be hesitant to get anything political inked on me anyway because politics can change, but... wow, you like George Washington/Abe Lincoln? What a surprise! That is so unique!

(ETA: Misread.) A rare compliment for behavior (!) for HK donkeys: I appreciated that the Red Team, upon receiving their jackets, kept their cool in the kitchen, shrieking only a little, and then took them to the walk-in and screamed out their excitement in there. The Blue Team already knew they lost, but the Red didn't rub it in their faces. That was nice to see.

Before I forget: knitter update! JoAnn's or Michael's or Hancock Fabrics (going out of business, crafty people! Get the discounts while they're hot) had Isaac Mizrahi yarn on sale for $3.49 a skein this week (though I forget which it was, since I saw it online). Given my disdain for his 'tude about "sale racks" last episode, I laughed and laughed. Keep in mind, an equivalent quantity of even the cheapest wool (Knitpicks, let's say) would be $6.00 easily. He is selling the Big Macs of the knitting world, and sneering at Five Guys and Smashburger-level quality.

Admittedly, I did wonder about this. It reminded me of Keith the Thief during Jeffrey's season, who stole patterns from books he brought in, left the show for a night, et cetera. I'm guessing maybe Ken had some sort of anxiety attack or breakdown and the show is doing the dignified thing (for once) and not showing it, but that's just an unsubstantiated guess.

What the hell was Alyssa wearing? Fish scale chainmail couture! Sam seriously has to go go go. Layana wasn't long for the show, but wow, Georgina saying "We all believe in Sam, but he has to get it together" smacks of, as others have said all the time, favoritism that's incredibly unearned. And given Ken's having taken a few levels in maturity between his season and this one, Sam saying that Ken is a "diva" is rich. Ken is trying, for all his flaws and prickliness. Sam hasn't matured one bit.

Being an attorney and a liberal, I of course have a serious hate-on for Nancy Grace (and the fact that my mom is a Southerner of Nancy's age makes her cornpone affectations even worse). She's so easy to imitate that I have to believe Betty basically self-sabotaged, because otherwise she seemed totally set up for success. Bitchy personality to bitchy personality, and even the sharpness of both their faces would have made the Nancy-sucks-a-lemon sneer totally doable.

Speaking as a knitter: Isaac was sneering about "sale racks" like his yarn isn't under $10 a pop at my local Michaels, and made of cheap, splitty acrylic to boot. (Not that acrylic doesn't have a place, mind you, but...)

I stand corrected, sorry! I knew the Peter-denying-Jesus part, but it just seemed so... watered down in their staging somehow. I'm not saying we needed Mel Gibson-level violence, but it felt very sanitized. I knew they didn't, say, jump the Roman soldiers, but I think there's a happy medium there. Taken strictly as a narrative, the story lost narrative tension there in a big way that I don't think is lost in the Gospels.

Step 1: Have a dick. Step 2: Be a dick. Voila, you're an Ink Master. There were two talented female artists in St. Marq's season that made it much farther than he did: Katie and Duffy. I'm shocked (not at all shocked) that he was asked back over them. I know Cleen is a good artist, but his personality is just such a turnoff that I find myself rooting against him by default. Matti is a nonentity; I remember his hair and that's it. Sausage maybe deserved to be asked back given his placement in his season. But Jime is the first one I've felt wholeheartedly deserves another shot (as do James Vaughn and Sarah, but Jesse falls into the Matti/nonentity box for me). I'd have liked to have seen Halo (S4) or Jamie from Sarah and Jesse's season get another shot, too. Especially Jamie, as he was eliminated solely based on the guest judge's negativity about Jamie himself not having any tattoos. Re. the current episode: it feels like the judges have their usual sexist bias. Megan's was a lot of blue, but there were several others worse than hers, and she certainly didn't have the worst tattoo last week. I wish they finally could come to grips that women can be decent tattooers too.

Pretty clear bottom group, which was nice for once. I thought when they assigned groups that the genres were mistakenly assigned; I'd have put ChiChi/Naysha/Derrick as Team Party and the New York Dolls Queens as Team Punk. But I was pleased that the New York team and the team of Kim Chi/Robbie/Naomi (did we get a single confessional from Naomi all episode?) acquitted themselves well. With all the geometry for Team Synth, I found myself comparing it to Square One's Angle Dance. Tell me it's not apropos: YMMV, but I thought the lip sync was pretty anemic -- and "Call Me" is a song they could have done a lot to, unlike the Ariana/Demi/whatever song du jour..