secnarf

As much as I have a hard time wrapping my head around the one-year timeframe, I loved this episode. I thought the entire cast did a great job, and although initially I did have a bit of a hard time remembering who was who, it got much easier once they separated out. It got really misty in my living room towards the end of the episode. Kennedy McMann especially did a fantastic job, and that storyline hit fairly close to home for me. This episode was a real highlight of the season, and IMO among the strongest in the series. Every story line was spot on. I do wonder if we will ever see Ace's mom before the series is over.

For FJ I said The Gambia but I didn't think Spanish was an official language there - the part of the clue about mainly being located between 1-2 degrees led me to a country that is "short" in the North-South sense, and The Gambia fit the bill there. It is, however, a bit too far North.

2/5 this week.

I think FJ today was incredibly easy with no time limit and a pencil/paper (or calculator). They even told you how many Roman numerals there were, so you knew if you had forgotten one. Doing it within the time limit, in your head, (and for the contestants, with the pressure of being on stage during Final Jeopardy) was the hard part. I got it juuuuuust in the nick of time.

I feel odd speculating, as she is a fictional character, but I would say that it was Hal telling her it was fine to let Ethel compete because she wasn't going to win anyways. I think Alice wanted to spite him. Possibly a side of having a soft spot for Ethel, or the prize money - Alice is Ethel's guardian now, I'm not sure if that comes with some financial responsibility for her/her future.

Aww @AgentRXS I'm so sorry for your loss.

We did lots of x-rays for Echo - they weren't normal but weren't diagnostic. Apparently lung cancer isn't always visible on chest x-rays. The last x-ray she got, at the specialized vet centre, they also initially told me there were no lesions/masses and that it wasn't cancer because cancer would have progressed in a year. The next day I was called back because under the fancy lighting they saw a faint shadow that looked like it could be a mass, and that's what we decided to biopsy. There are reports in the literature of not being able to see lung cancer in cats on x-ray but shows up well on CT.

I was actually telling a friend about watching the ISS as it was built during the commercial before FJ. Needless to say, it was an instaget for me.

I haven't had pet insurance in the past, but I do now. For my childhood cat, we didn't have pet insurance and didn't need it. She lived til age 18 and a half, and it was really only in the last year that she had medical issues, and they weren't crazy expensive or anything. For my first cat, Echo, I didn't get pet insurance. She died a year ago from lung cancer. I spent the entire year preceding her death chasing a diagnosis, which finally came 365 days after the first vet appt for this issue. Part of the delay was COVID/workload related, but a big part of it was also that we were doing things in such a stepwise approach, treating all of the things it "could be" rather than springing for a referral and CT earlier. And then even when I got the referral, I ended up opting for a less expensive lung biopsy, but was extremely worried she would get a pneumothorax (a possible complication) because a chest tube and overnight hospital stay would likely would have been upwards of $10000. Anyways, the day I took her for the biopsy, she reacted badly to the sedative and they couldn't do it. That day, we also found a metastatic lesion on her toe (lung digit syndrome). It was formally diagnosed as lung digit syndrome four days later, and she died four days after that, euthanized emergently after developing saddle thrombus as a cancer-related complication. If we had diagnosed her a year earlier, she could have had surgery to remove the lesion and survived. Not that that would have been cheap either. Even if I could afford treatment, nobody wants to drop several thousand dollars if it's not necessary and there is a cheaper option - and often the drugs are cheaper than the diagnostics, so we would just try different treatments. I did do the math on Echo afterwards, and with the expenses I paid just in her last year, it was roughly equal to how much I would have spent on insurance over the time that I had her (almost 10 years). However, if I had insurance, I would have gone for more expensive tests sooner that might have allowed a diagnosis in time to save her. So now for Ginny and Luna, I got pet insurance mostly for the peace of mind and impact on my decision making, so that cost isn't as much of a factor and we don't need to waste so much time trying different treatments. I also opted for a relatively high deductible ($700) because I can afford that for sure, and it's really the ++ expensive things that I want the insurance for. So I pay $20/month/cat (Canadian dollars). This is Echo, the night before she crossed the rainbow bridge. She was the best cat ever.

I missed this - who did he blackmail and with what? I was somewhat distracted during this episode. I was meal prepping while watching, and my knife slipped around halfway through, stabbing my hand (between the first finger and thumb) and I had to pause watching to go get stitches.

1/5

I just watched the last four episodes - have been finding it more of a chore to watch. It's not terrible, but not anything I look forward to watching. The best part of the no-phone episode was Bye Bye Bye at the end - I haven't actually heard that song in a good long while! I have never been able to re-watch HIMYM after the finale, so I honestly don't know if it's just my perspective that has changed as the years have gone by, or if it's this show. It has some funny one-liners and I do sometimes laugh out loud, but I find it hard to relate to any of the characters, despite being in a similar life age/stage as them, whereas I was quite a bit younger while watching HIMYM.

I've really been wanting to watch this again. It's unfortunately not on Roku for me (maybe different in Canada?)

I really like having the answers there! However, this week I got a big fat zero. Donuts all around.

I was initially debating between Rwanda and Burundi for FJ, before realizing it was probably a country further south. I then spent the rest of the think music debating Lesotho vs Eswatini, and picked Eswatini. If nothing else, I should have figured J! would be unlikely to use Eswatini because a lot of people don't know about the name change and still call it Swaziland, and that could introduce extra confusion into FJ.

Finally finished the series. My overarching comment is the same as it was at the beginning - it is way too soon to do the 2010s. For earlier decades, they could explain the context of events in history and how they mattered today. Now, not only are you trying to explain this to an audience that very recently lived through all of these events, but you don't really have the perspective of how it fits into history because it *isn't* yet history, really. IMO, the episode on 2020 merely indicates that they know they cannot do a 2020s series (at least, not for another seven years) and didn't have the self-restraint to pass up the opportunity to discuss all of those events from 2020. They even ventured into January 2021. For me, it also puts the previous decades series in a bit of a different light, as it is a lot easier to be aware of the biases of the showrunners when I have such clear memories of the events being discussed, and don't always agree with their viewpoint. The most obvious examples, for me, come from the music episode and how much of that episode I just couldn't relate to at all.

2/5. I have an abundance of strawberries and am making some mousse to share!

3/5 ** - I started the week out strong, faltered on Thursday (could not pull Monroe's name out of my head), and then hadn't the foggiest idea on Friday.

Matt & Sam's hug made it to the finals of the Primetimer awards! You can also vote for Celebrity Jeopardy, Jeopardy, or Jeopardy Masters in the favourite reality TV show category (you must pick one!)

I surprised myself and even decided that the object in question was probably 9x5 feet. I too said ping pong and am marking it correct.

My immediate response to FJ was Dolly Parton...then I paid more attention to the word "entertainer" and thought of Oprah...then decided she is too rich for someone to give her money to donate to buy cars for her audience ;) So luckily switched back to Dolly Parton in time.

2/5

I said Ilya Kuryakin and was SURE I was right. Alas, no. But it was the first thing that occurred to me and I didn't even continue to think of other possibilities.

That one of the movies was Grease was an instaget for me - I couldn't tell you why the year Grease came out has stuck in my mind so much. I wasn't even born then, and in most cases I'm lucky if I can get the decade right, but it was almost a reflex that 1978 = Grease. It then took a little bit to dredge John Travolta's name up out of my brain. I didn't know or care the second movie, since I was so sure Grease and therefore Travola was correct.

I often wake up part way through the night - though typically go back to sleep shortly after - and I found this article fascinating: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep