Bastet

Same here, plus I somehow have a lot of snorers in my life and I cannot sleep in the same room with that racket!

I wonder if that's unusual; a very brief internet search indicates it's common, but I didn't do a proper one. Among the couples I know, it is indeed the norm -- they have a mix of family trips (if they have kids), couple trips, individual trips with their respective friends, and maybe individual solo trips (I say maybe because it only applies to about half of them; there seem to be a good number of people who don't like traveling alone*). My parents had that mix (well, except for my dad going on friend trips; he hates people even more than I do, so he has very few friends and I don't think he ever liked any of them enough to travel with them), so that's the norm with which I grew up. *Which always stands out to me. Not as anything bad, just as so different from my own preference, as I love traveling alone most of all forms of travel. I can do a weekend trip with just about anyone I like, or an occasional week-long trip with a very short list of people, but to do that regularly, or take a longer trip, no way in hell with anyone I know.

Same here -- by the time I graduated high school, I'd been to more than half the states (and a bit into Canada, but I didn't travel farther abroad until I was on my own). I love traveling. My cat doesn't like anyone but me, so when my parents (or my friend, at Thanksgiving when my parents and I are gone together) take care of her she's quite lonely, which means I haven't been comfortable being gone more than a week at a time since I adopted her, and these days I can't go anywhere as she needs medication every 12 hours (and it can't just be put in her food), so I still have quite a backlog of places I want to explore, but I'm glad to have already been able to see more places than many people are ever able to, when I still hopefully have many good exploring years left.

"I gave up the restaurant to be with Neville" -- Yeah, which was stupid, and now you've figured that out. But Jackie as Louise's campaign helper (or, you know, "Chief Communications Officer") could turn into an amusing train wreck depending on how they proceed with this after Jackie's disastrous debut. However niche, this hardware magazine of Dan's buddy is an actual printed publication, so how can someone keeping one of those afloat today be so stupid as to just ask his friend, rather than doing his homework and asking Dan to connect him with Ben about writing this article? I know, I know, why am I looking for logic? "I did help him pay his mortgage and make him a partner in my business, so I guess I had this coming" as Ben's response to Darlene asking him to help Dan write an article he's in no way qualified to write was a refreshing acknowledgment, but then I was pissed for a while by how Dan was treating Ben. In the end, Dan submitting Ben's article and Ben getting a monthly article out of it eased my fury a bit; I hope this gives Ben a boost.

I don't like risotto; rice does nothing for me to begin with, so a rice-based dish is never going to be my thing and risotto is way too starchy for me. So I've never tried to make it, just know the basics of how it's done and that it's the kiss of death on TC. I liked revisiting the Hall of Fame, to see when risotto worked, and, yes, got a kick at the Hall of Shame, remembering when it very much did not, but they could have included more there for how many people got sent packing for that dish. I thought with the white chocolate I'd have found Amar's too sweet, even if I did like risotto, but he knows far more than me. This wasn't the most interesting episode, for lack of personal tidbits and behind-the-scenes info, but still pleasant.

Goddamn, Victoria, you go get 'em! I'm sure her being fresh helped, but she's just frakkin' good. I love whoever said "No" upon learning there's something called "petfluencers". I wish they'd always leave clues in categories like "The Kernel of the Clue" up on the screen like they did tonight (I still only got a couple of them, but I'd have had no idea if only up for the time it took Ken to read them). Like last time, I'm not bothering to track my performance, just jotting down any TS I get. There generally aren't many, as my brain is off the clock by the time this starts, never mind ends. I do know I did better overall in the second game than the first, surprisingly, but it would be more accurately described as sucking less. I only got Robert Mitchum and Virginia Woolf of the first game's TS, but I did also get the missed DD of sewing machine as an instaguess I figured was right. In the second, I only knew Martha Wash and only because it being a TS gave me extra time to come up with her last name at the last second ("Martha Washington ... um, no ... Wash!"). I didn't know either FJ.

LOL at all this baseball stuff being wasted on two cheftestants who don't watch baseball. I expected Rasika to do better here, but she picked too many things that needed longer to cook than they had available.

Whoever wrote that episode should be ashamed of themselves for its presentation of anti-depressants and those who prescribe and take them.

Ouch; tough DJ for Amy, but nice job by the new champ and at least Amy knows she's in the ToC. I'm surprised FJ was a TS. I dreaded the Batman category (I've never seen any of the films), and indeed it was a blight on my first round; I missed three. I ran "all" and got all but one each in the rest. In DJ, authors was my terrible category - I only knew Emerson (but, hey, none of the contestants did, so at least I have that). Unfortunately, it was not my only bad one, as I missed three in redone. I ran Britspeak, and got all but one each in the rest. FJ was an instaget.

I’m going to have to make something with sausage for dinner tonight. I’m glad to see Michelle back on top. Hers was the dish I most wanted to eat from her team, but I’d have devoured all of them (except I’d discard the bun on Danny’s after about two bites as there was way too much of it for my taste). Dan’s was the dish I least wanted from his team, and I thought it was going to be him going home. But Kevin, dude, it was not a cheese challenge! (And don’t make risotto.) I’m with Michelle: “Mushrooms, bacon, toast, liquor – some of my favorite things.” And Kaleena: Run about ten steps, then say “Fuck this”. And also with Savannah on not doing the dishes, because she does the cooking. I do all the cooking and all the dishes, because my cat pulls that whole “I can’t, I don’t have thumbs” thing, but if there was a human in this house whose meals I was cooking, I wouldn’t even know where the dish soap is.

Dan was definitely my least-favorite through the screen, but I guess they could argue he met the challenge more than Kevin. I think it will be Dan, though. Oh, I forgot about Savannah as a possibility, for also not showcasing the sausage enough. But I still say it's Dan.

Yay, Michelle back on top!

This was not a cheese and rice challenge, Kevin. Chorizo is my favorite of tonight's sausages, so it's nice to see that be the round where they wanted to hold up both flags. (I wanted hers a little more than his, but would have happily devoured both.)

WAY too much bun on Danny's hot dog for me, while Soo's had me drooling.

Ha -- I'm like Kaleena, too. Run about ten steps and say fuck this.

I could not love sausage more if I tried, so unless they all make terrible dishes, I am going to be SO hungry at the end of this episode.

“Mushrooms, bacon, toast, liquor – some of my favorite things.” Same, Michelle.

I understand SMH to mean "shaking my head" so I just checked two online dictionaries and they both say the same (of course, internet slang being what it is, I could probably check two more and get different definitions).

She very well could have been, as it's often turning around and doing to someone less powerful what someone more powerful has done/is doing to you, but on the other hand she may not have; I don't think getting your ass verbally handed to you by a parent for doing something awful automatically means you're also getting chewed out when you shouldn't be, or worse. Like me, most of my friends opted not to parent, but of course we have friends and co-workers with kids so we hear a lot about this. The parents are in constant struggle and discussion about what access to give, at what age, how to supervise without snooping, etc. and we child-free folks all talk about how we are so glad we don't have to navigate those waters (and how very, very glad we are phones with cameras and social media did not exist when we were teenagers).

In general, five refills of Lorazepam are allowed before a new prescription is required; more stringent authorization requirements vary based on state and provider. In CA (where I am, and I take it, although not regularly; I have a dose for when my chronic anxiety amps up and then a larger one for when it's severe), if Monk didn't take let's say half of his prescribed dose and kept hoarding it, he could believably amass that supply, but that requires him skipping doses/taking lesser doses for quite a while. I think it can be said to work within the bounds of TV, but I'd have to go back and look at the visual of his medicine cabinet, and this reunion movie wasn't worth me taking that time.

Good for Amy (although I'd have been happy to see Laura win, too). So far, we just have her and Allison as guaranteed participants in the ToC, right? And maybe the woman who won the Celebrity J! tournament (I don't know if they've said they'll again include the celebrity winner, but they should, with how she played and after inviting the previous winner)? So far, so good! Amy trying, with how she speaks, to emphasize the "S" at the end of "forests" and then saying "the plural" in the face of Ken's hesitation had me cringing for him to hurry up and accept it already. And her "themselves" answer for the only people police are obliged to protect cracked me up. A dozen TS, but I think puritanical is the only one that truly surprised me. Still an interesting game for how evenly matched they all were until Bryan's swing and miss on the DD. Pretty good first round for me -- I ran resume gaps, ends with "K", direction, and mammals (I'd have had no idea beyond "a right something" had Laura not given me whale) and got all but the Purim cookies (I was trying to visualize posts in the Food forum, as someone had recently written about baking them, but I could only get as far as "ham-something"). I missed two in songs; I got the two TS and the Lion King song, but had no idea on the recent ones. I missed three in verse, but if not for that would have had a great DJ; I got all but one each in The Gap and leaders and ran the rest (but I wouldn't have run the law category, as embarrassing as that would have been, had the airplane lavatory smoke detectors clue not been a TS -- I needed the extra time their incorrect guesses gave me to suss that one out). FJ took a while to come to me, but it finally did. I'm not sure I'd have had time to write it down, but let's just say I would have. It doesn't matter to the final result, but it's iffy Ken saying he can make out Bryan's whole response; based on what they've previously ruled as an incomplete writing in FJ, the alleged legibility of the "T" at the end of "mutant" is a stretch.

Now that was a fun way to go -- the company my dad worked for used to do that with Disneyland. And then the first company I worked for did it with Magic Mountain (Six Flags). One year, it was right before a new ride opened to the general public, so we got to go on it first. I have one friend left working for Disney (it's not the best employer in L.A. so many people don't stay long despite the perks, moving to other entertainment companies), so I could go with him to Disneyland for free, and I've given thought a few times over the years to checking it out for nostalgia's sake (something I would not pay for), but decided I don't want to. They've changed so many of the rides it would just bug me, given my purpose for being there (plus, we'd have to both take off work to go on an off-season weekday in order not to lose our minds at the crowds, so that's a pain). I went several times as a kid, and then for Grad Night when I was a senior in high school. I'm good. (I'm good on Magic Mountain, too. I still enjoyed the roller coasters in my early 20s on those company nights, but I don't think my body would at all appreciate it these days and I have no interest in finding out.)

It's not my favorite state to visit, that's for sure, but I did enjoy an afternoon in Mount Dora and a day at Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach. Orlando, meh, and the Tampa Bay area didn't do much for me, although I did stop at some cute little beach somewhere on the gulf coast I'm forgetting and had a good lunch. If it had been a longer trip, I would have spent a couple of days in Key West. I went in winter, and the weather was nice. I wouldn't want to be there in the summer; one of my friends lived there for a couple of years before high-tailing it back to CA and said in the summer she just went from air conditioned home to air conditioned car to air conditioned office or store, that's it. I do not want to be cooped up like that.

I wouldn't think so (I am always barefoot in the house, so I have not personally experienced it), so that's the other instance in which characters leaving their shoes on distracts me. I don't own any, or a robe, so that's another thing I notice (and I think it's been discussed here before) -- how many characters have robe and slippers at the ready as soon as they get out of bed. That's certainly not an only on TV thing, just another thing where it happens a lot more than I am used to seeing in real life.

A friend's husband is into Disneyland, going several times a year, and for him it's not a reliving childhood thing as he never went as a kid. (I'm not sure if he took his kids there when they were little.) He just likes it. I don't understand it, but I've talked myself out of the nasty "Weirdo!" reaction I used to have to such adults (I don't know why I was so judgmental about something innocuous).