St. Claire

She's only assumed dead. The helicopter either went down or disappeared, and bodies of the people onboard were never found. So many viewers have been bracing for when she reappears.

There's a new Toyota commercial (Avalon, maybe?) where the first person they show using the car has her cargo area full of knitted stuff to go yarn bombing. It was one of the only cool portrayals of a knitter on a commercial; usually we are the punchline for being old fashioned and boring (or for giving our loved ones ugly gifts).

There goes my dream of seeing him guest on NCIS in a storyline with the medical examiner. RIP, Agent Solo.

I love my George Foreman (I got a small one in the aforementioned family Christmas gift bag), but that sausage cooker is out of my price range. I use it for meats, sandwiches (poor man's panini press!), quesadillas...I will say that it was worth so much more to me than a bunch of single-use pieces.

Oh, you just gave me the perfect grab bag offering for the family party! Now all I need to do is convince my husband NOT to grab it, lest it share space in the cabinet with the doughnut press and the Perfect Pancake.

Her hair and her clothes make her look like a little girl playing dress up with Mommy's work clothes. Maybe I've just become a judgy old lady, but in my day we tried to look polished if we wanted to speak to the boss about a raise or promotion. I used to be super annoyed by this until I realized how few people pay attention to multi-ingredient medications. There was a rash of acetaminophen overdoses a few years back because folks would take multi-symptom cold medicine and also take Tylenol, not paying attention to the fact that the painkiller in the multi was the same active ingredient as the brand name painkiller they were taking. [The blank looks I get when I call drugs by their generic names is priceless; I'm both a cheap person and also a stickler for copyright, so I generally take store brand ibuprofen instead of Advil.]

My cousin named his first son Isaac Galileo. His younger son is Felix Mandela. I love my cousin, but...yeesh.

OMG, I am so happy that you all have the same kind of questions as I do about that damned song. My family has been ridiculing me for years for overanalyzing it.

Five or ten years ago, AARP officially changed its name to the letters (i.e., no longer AARP standing for the name American Association of Retired Persons) in an effort to seem more youthful and I think having a "fun" and "hip" pronunciation is the next step. The first step was the change from the magazine being Modern Maturity to being My Generation around the time that The Who starting hitting retirement age. 50 is the 30, or some such nonsense. (50 will always be 50. I'm freaking worn out at 45, but I know 65+ year olds who are way more vibrant than I am.)

The talk of who is on the DVD made me pull out one of my favorite programs (Sports Night) to examine both the DVDs and to ponder on the show's diversity. The DVD box includes the six ensemble cast leads (I don't know if that's the right way to phrase it- ensemble leads- but basically the stars whose names would be on the opening credits as opposed to the closing ones). Five are white, one is Black. Robert Guillaume is probably the biggest star of the six at the time; this is pre- Six Feet Under Peter Krause and a pre- Desperate Housewives Felicity Huffman and a pre-Good Wife Josh Charles. The three cases within the box have two cast members each- Krause and Charles on one, Huffman and Guillaume on one, Sabrina Lloyd and Joshua Malina on one. So, a whole lotta whiteness. I never really thought much about the show's overall diversity when I watched it, but there are some recurring characters of color for whom their color is not a THING. In fact, one of the tech guys (Dave) was a white guy in the pilot and replaced by Jeff Mooring for the remainder of the show's run. Kim, the production assistant, is played by Kayla Blake. There are some storylines and one-off lines that tap into Isaac being black, but mostly he's just Isaac, the boss for whom the showrunners have huge respect and the network less so. The managing editor of this sports show could well have been a white guy, but having Robert Guillaume in the role means you can have lines like "Danny, you know I love you, right? Because of that I can tell you this- no rich, young, white guy ever got himself anywhere with me comparing himself to Rosa Parks" or "Casey is out with Pixley? Do you suppose the two of them could be any more white?" or the brilliant speech he gave in Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee when he spoke about the Confederate flag.

It reminds me of Schoolhouse Rock, when we would Unpack [Our] Adjectives.

I know a lot of people that scoff at them, saying that only old people get shingles (thus the "get this if you are over 50!" thing is a scare tactic). I counter with the fact that I had my first shingles outbreak when I was 32, within months of my aunt (late 50s at the time) getting it, as well as my Nanna. So, not just for old people.

I completely agree about the pinkwashing. I refuse to give money to anything that has been temporarily pink-ified during October unless I know that the money is going to research and treatment, none of this "it's for breast cancer awareness!" crap. We are painfully aware. I give to the Cancer Society, or to clinics and hospitals that are treating people, but not to random fundraising campaigns in which a pink ribbon has been stuck onto everything. I will mildly defend the fundraising minimum mentioned above, since that is not in relation to Race for the Cure (i.e., the single day, short distance events), but rather for the multi-day Komen event that includes the organization providing meals, medical assistance, mobile shower facilities, etc. I did the Breast Cancer 3-Day when my son was a baby, before Komen took it over (long enough ago that the fundraising minimum was only $1200 or so), and there was a lot that went into making sure we were able to walk the 60 miles that we'd committed to. When I did it, there were also very specific local breast cancer charities benefiting from the funds we raised (e.g., funding for mobile mammograms and treatment assistance for low income areas in our community).

I see that my CSI:NY crush, Eddie Cahill, is returning to my TV screen tonight in "Conviction." I don't know if the show will be any good, but I'll tune in for a few episodes just because I like him.

Wait, there are still people who pay their bills by putting checks into the mail?! That's just crazy talk! (Kidding; I know it's not obsolete, but it seems as though almost everyone I know has moved to online banking and can go years on one pad of checks.)

I want to see a TV show set in, like, Hagerstown or Crisfield or St. Michael's, just to show that MD is not just Baltimore (I don't think I've ever seen the DC suburbs of MD represented on TV, unless Scarecrow and Mrs. King was MD instead of NoVA).

"Pumpkin spice" is lovely in various fruit-based baked goods (I mean, it's just cinnamon with some ginger, nutmeg, and cloves- it's pretty much spice cake seasoning for people who don't want to measure from 4 separate jars) but it's just gotten out of control.

My first Breakfast Club chuckle was when the John Kapelos character referred to Saturday detention, but I thought it would be a one-time shout out (like "Gibbs has his own Ducky" when the Jon Cryer doctor was doing surgery). When they hauled in the basket case for questioning, I figured it was a theme. I guess this means there is at least on John Hughes fan among the writing staff. Nobody better forget Emily Fornell's 16th birthday.

Nope. I remember It Takes Two (as in "to make things go right," not "to tango) being a thing when I was dating my college boyfriend (so, somewhere in the 1989-1991 timeframe). Laurie was born in 2000.

I was watching some episodes On Demand that I missed on first airing, and heard that Jack does a lot of voiceover work. When I looked him up on IMDB and told my kids that one of the panelists was Irving on "Phineas and Ferb," they started paying attention while each spoke- when Jack gave an answer, my daughter was all "OH MY GOSH, he does sound just like Irving!"

My favorite part of that commercial is that the neighbor sends the dad's letters over the fence via paper airplane instead of just bringing the box to the house.

I don't know if it would happen when the battery dies, but some cars will set off an alarm if you use the key to unlock after having locked with the remote. I found this out the hard way when getting ready to go to work early one morning and unlocking my husband's car to leave something in the console for him. I suspect my neighbors were not pleased.

This is exactly the type of scenario I was coming here to post as being a better writing option. Alex can still have anger management/impulsive violence issues, but not in a way that makes him so glaringly irredeemable. That beat down went beyond "aggravated assault" all the way to "attempted murder." I never thought I'd find myself saying this, but I loved April in this episode. OK, her "the Kepner name means..." speech went a tad long, but I like how she stood up to Catherine being so overbearing without resorting to hysterics. I liked her messing with Catherine a little about the baby's last name. Catherine bugs the bejeesus out of me with her assumptions and pretensions, so April put her in her place nicely. Also, Harriett is a perfectly good name, and the book really was good.

"Accidentally? Did you fall or something?"

It's a thing, but a fancy one. I've only been to one restaurant ever that did a foil sculpture for me, and it was one of those places with the "place the napkin in your lap" level of customer service. Give me the Ale House and my insulated paper boxes any day!!