Pallida

I was trying to figure out if Gregory and Janine would have to report something as mandatory reporters for Alex. I also hope Janine sticks with the district so she can make PSE changes. I know it feels less personal but the reach and potential for impact is so much higher.

When I started my master’s program, I didn’t have guaranteed assistantship funding for the year and I was nervous about cost of living in a new state. I took out 4k in private loans “just in case” and it accrued 500 in interest between August and December. I paid that off in December and decided I didn’t need a buffer. Even though I knew interest would accrue immediately this was just way beyond my expectations.

Probably because it didn't produce enough drama? So silly.

This episode could have been so many episodes. As an anthropologist (with multiple graduate degrees - but I haven't slammed my car into any talking head neighbor's vehicles), I always take it personally when my field gets used to denigrate education. I'm pretty sure I understand how society shafts people better than FoxNews folks, and I can back it up with research. The public service loan forgiveness program is a shitshow. I'm holding out hope that it still exists when I have my 10 years done, but I'm still nervous. It took over a year for a loan servicer to respond to my inquiry about payments not counting, and it was some fluff non-response. I still have no clue why they weren't counting, but I'm fairly certain it's because things got murky when my loans got transferred around amongst loan servicers and because I was making income-based repayments when I was making very little money, so the payment amounts were very small when counted against each individual loan. Thankfully, the Biden administration implemented a waiver and payment count adjustment that fixed whatever issue I had that the loan servicer couldn't figure out: https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/education-department-announces-permanent-improvements-public-service-loan-forgiveness-program-and-one-time-payment-count-adjustment-bring-borrowers-closer-forgiveness?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term= I also wish more attention had been paid to the skyrocketing cost of housing, especially in college towns. I've lived in the same apartment since 2010 (ha, I thought I'd leave after finishing my program, oops?) and my rent has doubled in that timeframe. No improvements to my apartment at all, but ya know, an annual increase adds up. Around here, unless someone wants to live with too many bodies to a place, it's easily $700/month for one bedroom in shared housing. Folks need to stop thinking that loans are only going to tuition - trying to survive in college is way more than just tuition. The cheapest dorms are $7500/year for triple occupancy. I did that one year and it was absolutely horrible for my introverted mental health. This does not include the meal plan which is another couple thousand.

Kat is insufferable. The pond doesn’t work in annual cycles - if it wants her to go back to help Jacob recover, she could have still taken care of her current time responsibilities and gotten back in time. I wish the writers had made it more that she just couldn’t focus.

In this episode, I realized Q looks like Phil and Lil from Rugrats. I didn’t love her look as much as the judges - the ripped fishnet and shiny panty just didn’t work for me with the rest. It felt too cliche.

I bet Sheldon would even love making a spreadsheet of what trains/routes are safe at what time! Or how many routes he can take if he's only allowed 2 hours a day or 10 hours a week or something.

I agree with this but also want to add that Mary completely squashes Sheldon’s social intelligence development. Her “little boy” isn’t learning how to function in the non-academic world like his age peers because he is incredibly coddled. His time in the dorms was an important start, but a teenager not being allowed to take public transportation on his own is absurd. (Maybe the trains aren’t public? But same idea.)

Being the nerd I am, I found the final episode fascinating because of the consequences of an inherited topic. I am bad with names but the guy stuck with fashion icons had several people touching him who would be chosen by the randomizer if he went back to the floor, including one who could only challenge him. That had to affect the decision to keep dueling. I am going to agree with the statement above about handing the win over by picking fashion icons instead of international foods.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Morphine in the first episode, but when she looked ready to throw down for Amanda in Untucked, my opinion skyrocketed.

I don’t think there’s scoring exactly. It’s who runs out of time first is out. The loser most likely named fewer things but I can see it possibly being equal if someone has to pass and the other person is just slow to answer.

I am not a fan of “look at me” personalities but at least Ashley is self aware about it. Her cake did look fabulous and she used the chocolate melts effectively in contrast to Kevin’s non pariels (sp?). Thank goodness for no twists.

I was rather annoyed by all the sweet potato contributions. They aren’t potatoes dang it! I was hoping Sharrod’s donuts would work out because I’ve had potato flour donuts that were delicious. They don’t taste like potatoes but I’d rather people use potatoes and have it not be a flavor than to use a different plant family that is way simpler. I was also annoyed by the missing apostrophes on the signs. I was glad the winner didn’t have that issue.

I figured Sampson was getting social security survivor’s benefits. I’m gonna hand wave how much it would be based on how young his wife would have been. Doesn’t Dhan have a partner? I thought the early Zeke/Dhan stuff was more about team building and the thought they could help each other cope better through their traumas.

I’d much prefer if they did things like sage as a challenge ingredient from the start of the challenge rather than a twist. This would give the bakers a chance to plan their flavors around the ingredient and we wouldn’t get winners who use it as a garnish.

Cristy is making me think of the anxiety mosquito from Human Resources. But her spikes were really fun to look at!

Are you my mom? 🙂 I showed her a picture of the sourdough bread I picked up from the farmers market and she asked where the butter was on the slices. I like dipping bread in saucy foods (including salad dressing), so I also don't need my bread to have added flavor, but I also don't need butter because of that.

I think Paul was very intrigued by the flavors that Abby tried to deliver but she consistently didn’t put enough in or didn’t put other things in (salt?) to make the flavor more pronounced. Her concepts were great though!

Merriam Webster considers skipping the first 'r' to be an acceptable pronunciation: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/turmeric Language is fun!

I think there’s a lot of subtlety in Reservation Dogs that outsiders miss, and I love that about the show. For all people, moving away, especially chasing economic opportunity, dramatically alters the support network and possible safety nets. Within the show, we see the kids screwed when their car is stolen away from all of their possible supports. Back home, when Elora needs a car to see her dad, she has people to ask and has support. Sure, new support networks can be built but that takes time and may not happen if one is an outsider. We see in this show the power and strength of maintaining that network regardless of other conditions. The network is still there even when a person moves away, but what they can actively do changes. Many of the show runners have actively worked to promote indigenous causes through media and other activism. This supports their personal communities as well as other indigenous communities, even when they’re not currently living locally. They want their cultures to thrive in spite of what mainstream America and the white gaze try to do them.

I wonder if the bigger safety concern with the kitten was that if it got spooked by falling, it'd dash to who knows where on the set. I almost wondered if they drugged the cats to make them not want to run around and explore. I had a kitten who dislocated her wrist as a kitten under 6 months old, and that was a pricy surgery and required a followup surgery to remove the pin that set things once it was healed because there was a possibility her body would eventually reject it out. If that happened, there was something we could do at home, but I didn't want to have that be an option. (Happy to share the specifics but thought I'd be more vague for those who may be squeamish). The "entrepreneur" guy is tiresome, as is the singing. Maybe I just don't like big personalities? I also agree the "paint can" was 3 walls and boring.

I think that plus unreasonable time limits are issues.

I know Watson and Crick but my brain shortcircuited and I said Lewis and Crick - maybe they explored the continent while deciding on the double helix!

Hollie sounds a lot like Claudia O'Doherty (Jillian on Killing It on Peacock) and it keeps confusing me.

I think I'm annoyingly fixated on the wildfire portrayal. I've gone to Reddit to see further snark/commentary, and someone there claimed to be a lifelong Californian and appreciated that the intensity of going through a fire was shown, and I'm trying to figure out the divergence of opinions. I grew up in CA and my family still lives where the Tubbs fire occurred in 2017 (my family was all good, but my brother has friends who lost their homes), and I now live in OR and was in communication with a friend who was actively going through the Almeda fire in 2020 and who is STILL working on recovery efforts in the community. Maybe I'm just too close to the topic, and I'd love to hear if others thought it was a good portrayal of wildfire and community fear. Acting like Hope would know more about evacuation plans than CalFire was so frustrating! All they had to do was say that the town plan was to help vulnerable people in "get ready" zones and it wouldn't be Hope is the Hero garbage. A wildfire like that wouldn't be contained enough in 24 hours for evacuees to then go back to their homes like they seemed to portray. Time is weird in Virgin River though, so maybe I misunderstood that. Assuming that the river was absolutely going to prevent fire was naïve at best. That river isn't that wide, especially by the bar, and part of the reason that the West coast fires spread so far is because winds pick up embers and blow them across distance. Is it less likely to jump? Sure, but to be soooooo shocked that it jumped was just silly. I don't know enough about air water brigades to know if random community members could just go wild and dump water without coordinating with CalFire, but it seems implausible. I realize this isn't specific to this episode, so I apologize if I've gone off topic too far.