Bastet

I love the difference between the scene with Lloyd and the baby in the middle of the night near the beginning, when Lloyd is watching Mr. Rogers shows/interviews, and the one near the end, at his dad's house. In the first, Lloyd doesn't even look at the baby (and not always because he's looking at the TV instead) - and Andrea hands the baby to him - but by the second he's fully present with him after taking the initiative to be the one to get up with him. He wasn't an uninvolved parent in the beginning - we see him changing diapers - but it was more like he was helping Andrea as the co-parent; he wasn't truly emotionally engaged as the father until he confronted all the feelings of his own childhood. Getting back to Andrea, I like the scene when Fred calls for Lloyd early in the morning and she answers. I like her childlike "Mr. Rogers knows my name!" joy alongside her very adult appreciation of Fred's understanding that Lloyd's work takes him away from the family at a vulnerable time for her (something Lloyd himself had never explicitly acknowledged).

Unfortunately, the food I fed Maddie (a Solid Gold formula) has a rather different make-up now, and is no longer low in phosphorus. This chart (compiled by a vet) shows the caloric composition - percentage of calories from protein, fat, and carbohydrates - of a wide variety of canned cat food, and also the phosphorus content. Shermie (my recently-departed "nephew" with CKD and hyperthyroidism) did well for many years on Wellness chicken paté. His kidney values escalated a few months ago, so my friend added a phosphorus binder (aluminum hydroxide). His phosphorus level indeed came down some, but she figured at 20 years old, there was not going to be time for the crappy Rx food to do any damage, and went ahead and tried him on the Royal Canin renal formula (to get truly low phosphorus, you have to use a prescription food, as it falls below the nutritional guidelines and thus can only be fed when approved by a vet). But I don't think he'd even been eating it for a month by the time he died, so the values were about the same. If it has been three years, and Onyx's kidney values are holding steady or progressing slowly, then what you're feeding is working just fine for her. But Dr. Pierson's chart I linked above provides a wealth of information about cat food you cannot get from looking at cans, or even from the manufacturers' websites. Dr. Pierson is devoted to cats, particularly feline nutrition, so her website has a lot of information and advice.

I once had lunch one table over from Larry Flynt, and he treated his server well. There, I've managed to come up with something nice to say about Larry Flynt upon his death.

That's very high protein, and fish can cause problems for cats in general (although more often with males than females) so it's best left as an occasional treat. Slow and steady wins the race; if you gradually replace a larger and larger percentage of her usual food with what you want her to eat instead, she'll probably come around.

I like John's story about the clerk doing a little dance at getting to do marriage licenses for same-sex couples. Jared's reaction when the Mary Higgins Clark answer to his missed DD was revealed, because I just knew he was going to kick himself over not thinking of her. The quiet TS really surprised me, as did cha-cha, shot in the arm, supplement, and Ralph Waldo Emerson to lesser degrees. I ran the legal, stronger, history, and Croatia categories in the first round and only missed one dance (the woah TS stumped me too; never heard of it), but missed three in What Doesn't Kill Us. In DJ, I ran math, government, and F words, but I missed some authors and sculptures and was terrible with the synonym roles, only getting three. I correctly guessed FJ, but was not at all confident in that guess.

Sorry to hear that. But with a diet change, and possibly subQ fluids at some point, you may be able to keep her healthy for quite some time. I encourage you to do your research on what constitutes a kidney friendly diet. Low phosphorus, definitively; no one questions that. But whether it should also be low protein is disputed. (The low phosphorus/low protein combo was based on research done on rats with the food then tried on dogs. Rats and dogs are not obligate carnivores like cats are.) (I did a shit ton of reading years ago when my cat Maddie was diagnosed, as my vet said she knew the prescription food was crap but didn't know enough to recommend a way of reducing the phosphorus while better meeting her overall nutritional needs, and have kept an eye on veterinary articles ever since. I am in the low phosphorus, moderate protein camp, so I prefer commercial food using quality ingredients along with a phosphorus binder [e.g. aluminum hydroxide]. Maddie died seven years later with normal kidney values, so it worked for her.) There is a lot of information out there about the disease in general, so much that in can be overwhelming. I recommend you read it in digestible chunks, but I do recommend you supplement your vet's recommendations with those of other vets and the experiences of owners. Here is a good repository of information surrounding all aspects of managing CKD. Good luck!

Wow - $400?! I can't remember the last wedding gift I gave - I don't go to many weddings to begin with (and I don't send a gift if I'm not going), and the last few were all for people who requested "no gifts, please" on their invitations - but I probably spent around $100. Curious, I just asked Google how much one should spend on a wedding gift, and this was the first result: That sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Those "anything less than $400 is unacceptable" people are crazy! And total assholes.

Same here (well, '40s -- I've never seen it done in real life, so it just makes me think of a scene in The Philadelphia Story).

Some of you probably have painful memories of the six months I spent complaining about being a maid of honor, but at least my friend was not a greedy asshole about gifts, and didn't make being a member of the wedding party a big expense. Her husband wanted to create a gift registry (where, I do not know), and she shut that down immediately - they were in their 40s and 50s and already owned a house filled with two of everything. No gifts, period, but certainly no asking for specific things. I got to pick my dress (she picked the color [unfortunately], but I got to pick the style), and that was my only expense. The rehearsal dinner was hosted, as was the spa day. She paid for the hair stylist and make-up artist. No shower, no bachelorette party. I think all that went into even that comparatively low-key production was ridiculous, but at least they understood it was their production, not something participants or guests should be asked to help fund.

All this time, he's been driven by the notion that if he can identify their killer, he can achieve that mythical "closure" people are always on about, and deliver it to his mother and sister as well. Reality is, identifying and locking up the killer doesn't change a damn thing for his family. But it destroys the killer's family. The wife and kids who came along when he was a different person are now in almost the same position the three surviving Watsons were thrust into at the same age. Y'all know how useless I find Buzz, and how lacking I find the actor's skills, but that moment when Bill Jones asks for a moment to say goodbye to his family, and Buzz nails him by asking if he gave Jay Watson the chance to say goodbye to his family is great, because it's followed by him indeed allowing Jones that opportunity. It's in syndication on StartTV and Lifetime. StartTV is currently near the end of season two, and Lifetime is about halfway through season five.

Same here. I figure the kid is one of those who likes wearing bandages whenever remotely "injured", so the mom's response to "I fell" is okay, get your bandages. Because this happens all the time, so of course she doesn't jump up and help - there's no need. Thus I love her delivery on "Take two" when the kid tries to ramp it up by saying there's actual blood this time. I get that it's a horrible commercial if you think she's actually ignoring a child in need of help to instead gaze at her cat, but since I don't, I find it funny because of her line delivery.

I've heard of it (well, to the extent I know there's a show called "Bob Hearts [rather than loves] Someone"), but couldn't tell you a single thing about it, so that one stumped me, too, as there was nothing in the clue that could have led me to it via cultural osmosis. If I was to choose a makes me sad TS for this episode, as a childhood fan of the space program, I'd go with mission specialist. But I wasn't surprised by any of the TS, so good game as a viewer. And good game as an at-home player; in the first round, I joined the contestants in failing to come up with Trappist monks and interlocking grip, and also didn't know the Spongebob clue, but I think I got everything else. In DJ, I missed two each in pairs, books, and TV shows, but ran the other two categories. And I got FJ. So it was a nice bounce back from my terrible performance last night.

The show and Alex's family teamed up to donate over 400 items from his wardrobe to a program in NY that provides professional attire to men reentering the workforce after prolonged periods of incarceration or homelessness. It was Alex's son's idea, as detailed in this article.

I'm a bit surprised no one guessed Bali as the Indonesian island, but then again I'm not - probably no one wanted to risk $2000 on a guess. The contestants certainly did better than I did tonight. I ran the b_g words, facts & figures, and forests categories in the first round, but missed two each in the other three. Okay, not great, not bad. But then in DJ, I shot right past bad into terrible. I ran only the vocabulary category, didn't correctly guess a single royal house, A Star is Born on the Fourth of July was the only movie clue where I knew both films, and I missed two or three in all the remaining categories. I had no idea on FJ. One of my worst games ever.

I'm certain I've posted it before, but since disliking potatoes is so unpopular, I'll restate it: The only way I will eat potatoes is as chips or French fries -- thin cut, crispy, seasoned and/or dipped so as to no longer taste like a potato. If I'm in a restaurant in which I've never eaten before, and decide to have a sandwich or burger, I have to look around for someone with fries on their plate so I can see if they're thin and crispy enough for me to want some with it.

There's another one where it's the middle generation couple doing the storytelling, and the grandparents' laundry is including among what they're folding. (Not the same family, another wow, there's a lot more laundry with more people in the house now, but Tide makes it okay scenario.) Maybe there's one big hamper all the household's laundry goes into, and then they take turns doing it. That's how it was when when I was growing up; when it came time to do laundry, it was sorted by what kind it was, not who it belonged to. A regular load was everyone's clothes that could be washed on regular, a delicate load was everyone's stuff that needed the gentle cycle, etc. No one did "their own" laundry, but everyone did laundry. (Now, this was a family of three, not the oodles of people making up the multi-generational households in these commercials. I'm just saying communal laundry doesn't automatically mean one person is always the one stuck doing it; it could be a chore that's rotated.)

Okay, "the legend of all legends" was my cue to change the channel. Best wishes salvaging something from this night, y'all. See you at the draft, because I'll need to avoid NFL media until then.

Gee, color me surprised that's how it ended (either that or a shitty call). "One last indignity" indeed.

There's a second "pretty sure" Tracy Morgan commercial. I got more laughs from the first one, but I like the figment of our imagination segment of this one:

Hell, during this game it's an outright necessity.

Damn. I picked the wrong time to go make another drink.

Yeah, "where all are welcome" got a big, fat eye roll from me. Yeah, I'm sure a chapel in Kansas would be quite welcoming to my atheist ass. And let someone walk in wearing a hijab and see how welcomed she is. How about you pick an actual community space for your unity talk, Jeep?

Performed by the fetus, from inside the womb? Creepy.

Yikes. Apparently Dolly Parton actually can do wrong.

And now they've brought back Shaggy's "It Wasn't Me". I am not ashamed of my love for that song. I should be, but I'm not.