Bastet

Oh, boy. That was increasingly difficult to watch. The Satchel Paige TS made me a bit sad, the Bill Gates TS surprised me a bit, and then came the fog TS (and the wrong answer of tornado), missed DD of Nor'easter, and aluminum TS, and I started to wonder if this was going to be a bad game. Boy howdy. Priscilla was having obvious buzzer difficulties, and one time she, despite her usual frenzied pushing, didn't even get called on when she - and she alone - was trying to buzz in again after Veronica gave an incorrect answer, so I'm not sure what was going on there. Shortly after that, she got befuddled with that "city" answer for "Smith" when she finally was able to ring in after so many unsuccessful attempts. Then came Arizona and New Mexico instead of California and Texas (I cannot believe Veronica got that one wrong, too), and between the wrong answer and the stammering delivery, she was clearly in a meltdown. After that, she tried to ring in on far fewer clues, and didn't do very well when she succeeded. That was the worst attack of nerves I've seen in some time, and I hope - like the contestant with the dubious distinction of having the worst score ever at the end of DJ ($-6700 or something like that) whose interview was posted in the Media thread today - there wind up being some real positives to this experience to balance that out for her, especially as time passes. That's not how anyone wants their long-awaited J! appearance to go. Shanu had better buzzer luck and composure, but he had some pretty bad answers (FJ and quite a few others, probably even more than Priscilla), and Veronica didn't perform quite as well as she had been, either. Rough game. I can't believe that Van Gogh clue was in DJ. The Picasso one belonged in the first round, too, but especially that one.

Me too! What a cool group:

Boy, I needed that after spending so much of last night's GOAT games just shrugging at the screen. I ran the first round, and, while I bombed the Netflix category, I did well overall in DJ. I'm not good with children's literature, so I didn't think I was going to cap off a good game by getting FJ, but it sprang to mind fairly quickly. Adam Schiff was a surprising TS, especially with a picture; with committee positions in Congress, he's been interviewed/quoted regarding a pretty good number of things in the news over the years. Rio Grande and Colorado was also surprising; they were probably all trying to come up with Colorado, but no one even taking a stab at it was unexpected. The pepper tree TS surprised me just a bit, because it - like the missed DD of Sojourner Truth* - had a hint within the clue. *Which, of course, led Alex to do his "you picked the wrong one"/"the other one" routine.

My friend gave me the season five DVD for Christmas, so I now have all three Sharon Raydor years to make my Major Crimes collection complete. I finally got around to watching last night. Of course, I immediately had to watch "Red Tape". But before changing discs to watch "Strike Three", I had to watch "Walking Back the Cat" - I start laughing the moment Fritz hides Kitty's ashes in the kitchen cabinet, and don't stop until that scene ends. After ending "Red Tape" on the emotion of preparing to have Kitty put to sleep, the shenanigans with the ashes are the perfect way to begin the next episode. I love when Brenda wails that it's not ashes, it's chunks, when she complains her name was Kitty Johnson and they have her labeled as Kitty Howard, and especially when she huffs about the indignity of a plastic bag ("They put him in a plastic bag!" "Her. They put her in a plastic bag.") -- and promptly transfers the remains to some Tupperware instead. I also love when she, objecting to the idea of being "one of those women" who has her cat in an urn on the mantel, says she wants to scatter the ashes someplace Kitty loved, and Fritz asks, "Where? She was never allowed outside." And, later, when Brenda starts to fake cry about Kitty to get her way with Fritz and he tells her that's so not going to work. And when Pope suggests, "Maybe stop bringing your dead pet to work" when the ashes are still in her purse. I get a good chuckle at both. They bring it back around to sweet at the end, with Brenda and Fritz settling in on the couch to watch one of Kitty's nature videos, and we fade to black on Kitty's urn sitting on the mantel. Great send-off.

I wasn't terribly enthused about this tournament when it was announced, for reasons I can't even articulate - I think it felt forced, or something weird like that - but I've loved it from the moment it began. I wish it could have carried on (to keep enjoying, mostly, and also so maybe Brad could have finally won a match), but it was terrific. The camaraderie was as great as the play, and the experience was thoroughly enjoyable. I was well and truly wrong when I said this wasn't as exciting as the show/network wanted me to think it was upon announcing it. And James didn't win, which was a nice little bonus. It was nice that Alex noted all of their records will remain intact regardless of who wins this tournament (crazy to think that even with Ken adding $1 million to his total, Brad has still won the most money). I spent much of DJ in the first game just sipping my drink and watching. Yikes, these players are truly something special. I did keep up with them in Jeoportmanteau, which made me feel good. The TS in that round all stumped me, too, but I did get Aspen in the first round. In the second game, thank heavens for some video clues where I could come up with the response before the contestants were allowed to ring in. And I could not love the Math to Roman Numerals to Initials to Names category more; I even got Ken's missed DD of Courtney Love. I also got Lawrence Welk. But I still spent much of the game as a spectator. I really wanted an Airplane! clue, too, from the moment the category was announced. And I am also right there with everyone happy that Brad replied "Aaron Burr" as if he had a mouth full of peanut butter. I am incapable of saying his name any other way.

It's not; there are very little legal protections for animals used in filming. It's self-regulated (that whole "No animals were harmed" thing by the American Humane Association, which sounds like an objective outside observer but is not), and conduct would basically have to run afoul of general animal cruelty law.

"During this part of a military wedding, swords are drawn & the bride & groom pass through the arch" caused me to say, "Whatever it's called when they're done and heading back up the aisle." I even thought "Not the processional" and still didn't have the "Oh! Recessional" light bulb moment. I was also horrible in the TV Shows category, but I eked out a few mythology answers (religion/mythology is normally a horrible subject for me) and loved the Exchange the Vowels and Anagrammed U.S. Cities categories, so the first round wasn't a disaster, but I was probably only at about 50%. It wasn't my night, because I wasn't all that much better in DJ. I got the bobble TS, even though football made "fumble" spring immediately to mind before I remembered the category. I also got the red dwarf and bobby socks TS. Especially with the wrong answers, I thought someone was going to get red dwarf, but no surprise TS in the game. My predictive powers were in force for FJ: I not only predicted two would get it right, I predicted the wrong answer would be the UK. The wax figure clue belonged in the first round, not DJ.

Gods, yes. I learned early on to only go to those who have naturally curly hair themselves. Come on! I once, as a teen annoyed with how thick my hair was, used the thinning tool myself. I stopped when it started to make me nervous how much hair I'd removed, but looking at my head you couldn't even tell I'd done anything! I used to alternate between layers and not, because I like both looks, and then I went years without doing layers. Now it has been a couple of years with layers, so I might grow them out to change it up again.

No, that's good -- the shower rod is very common, as is a hanger at the top of a door frame.* So you're right at an ideal height. Now that you know it doesn't take long, you just need to position the bag and yourself so you can see when it's time to stop the flow -- I drew a line with a black marker each time where I wanted the fluid to stop, because I could see that easier than the blue lines/numbers on the bag. (Sorry, I should have included that in my list of tips!) It sounds like it'll be smooth sailing in no time -- Kitty Gunderson is already a champ, and now we just need her mom to stop crying. Which you'll do when you see that it's easier the second time, and easier still the third time, etc. I know you call it a total failure, but the fact is you did well for your first try. Believe me, pretty much everyone's poor cat has been stabbed multiple times in one subQ session; it will become pretty much automatic for you, but at first you are indeed going to pull the needle too far back out and have to start over. She has probably forgotten all about it by now! *When I gave Maddie fluids, I did it on her "perch" - a cat tree that put her about level with my stomach. I have a sloped ceiling in that room, so I put a nail in a beam and hung it from there in order to have it at a good height relative to where she was. I had to stand on a chair to hang it, so Maddie knew it was fluid time when she saw me go through that routine. She certainly didn't come hop up on the perch and say "let's go", but she didn't run away, either.

Kellie Martin is grating to me; she bugged me in Life Goes On (granted, pretty much everything about that show bugged me, but I kept trying to like it because of the subject matter and Patti LuPone), and went on to do the same in everything I came across her in. It's a visceral thing.

Oh, that sounds cool - I bet I would have really liked that category. Aw, thanks for trying. Hopefully they'll do it again. I suspect at least part of the problem was that they're used to hearing "old fogy" rather than "fogy", so the word alone didn't spring to mind fast enough.

I had short hair for several years as a kid, but never again. Mine is usually right about shoulder length, sometimes a little shorter, sometimes a good bit longer. My hair is naturally curly, and I refuse to have a style that requires a lot of, well, styling. Short hair would necessitate me taking actual time with it so as to not look like a poodle, and I'm not interested. The whole "no long hair after X age" thing is ridiculous.

Even I got this one - although not an IG, and just a guess that "journey" = "exodus". I was watching the national championship game, so it was another archive game for me. Which meant I had none of the visual aids in the Recognizing the Country clues -- were they highlighted country on a map type clues, or something more challenging? I got the Crystal Palace TS even without being able to see the picture, so good for me. Toothsome was a TS I'd have thought someone would get, but there were no real surprises. I liked the Tricky Clues category.

Everyone is ready in their own time, and, while it's uncommon, sometimes that time is never. When Baxter died (at 13), about six months later I felt ready, but there were a few factors that led me to decide Maddie (then somewhere around 15-16) would be happier living out the rest of her life as an only child, even though that meant I'd be cat-less when she died. When Maddie died nearly two years later, I indeed hated the cat-less house (so much I didn't even know what to do with myself sometimes), and while I wouldn't have been a bad owner by any stretch had I done it sooner, it was best to wait until my primary emotion was the longing for a new cat instead of missing the ones who were gone. And nine months is how long it took me. Some people take far less time. Some take far more. It's very individual, and none of it is wrong -- those who are ready quickly are not callously "replacing" their dead pet and those who aren't ready for a long time aren't crazy or stuck in the past.

I love the song, and the old real-life pictures, but I figured the opening credit sequence would not make the transition, due to time. I'll miss it, but at least this way it won't get stuck in my head - and my cat definitely won't miss me singing along.

Kitty Gunderson ought to have a chat with her travel agent, explaining she wanted the Four Seasons, not VCA. There are exceptions, of course, but most cats and owners get into a good routine with fluids. You'll be very nervous as first, she'll pick up on that, there may be some false starts, but keep at it and see if it becomes just a quick part of each day. If it's more stress than it's worth, though, don't beat yourself up -- she's had a long, wonderful life. But if she can indeed roll with it as a minor annoyance in her life, subQ fluids can extend that life. Some advice: - Warm the fluid, by submerging it in hot water, as that feels more comfortable to the cat as it goes in (room temperature is a good deal lower than their body temperature, so you're looking to warm it up to body temp). I use a small roasting pan, but whatever you can submerge the bag (minus the port) and the line (minus the needle - basically, keep connection points out of the water just in case) in. The time will depend on how full the bag is; a fuller bag takes longer to warm through. But we're talking 10-minute range. - If your vet's office, as most do, gave you 18-gauge Monoject needles, I strongly recommend replacing those (called "kitty harpoons" among owners) with Terumo brand 20-gauge ultra thin-wall -- they are beveled and honed in a way that goes through the skin MUCH smoother, and the design is such that even though it's a smaller needle (which is good for the obvious reason, and that the resulting smaller hole in the skin closes back up very quickly, virtually eliminating leakage concerns even if your cat rolls over on her fluid bubble), it hardly takes any longer to deliver the fluid. - The higher up you can get the bag, the better - gravity is the name of the game in getting fluids in quickly. - Consider giving treats or baby food during fluid administration; it can distract her, and possibly even make fluids something she comes to look forward to because of it. If she's too annoyed during to enjoy a treat, give her one afterward as a reward. - If your cat seems uncomfortable afterward, she may need a smaller dose of fluids; keep an eye out for that. If you need any clarification on the basic technique - making a "tent" out of the skin, inserting the needle with the hole facing up, stopping/starting the drip, pinching off the hole when removing - the vet techs should be happy to walk you through it again over the phone, or check back in here and those of us who've been there and done that can also help. Good luck!

It warms my heart to learn my advice lived on to help another cat, and it does more than that to have you keep my family in your thoughts at such an emotional time in your own life. Thank you for your empathy. You and Amber were on my mind all day Friday. I hope the end was peaceful for both of you, and I hope this weekend gave you a chance to rest emotionally. Last week was Amber's; I wanted to wait until now to expand on Chester's situation. He's my parents' cat with IBD (he's had it since they adopted him at age eight [an owner surrender at the shelter]) that progressed to small cell lymphoma. Unfortunately, it has not responded to treatment (steroid and chemo regimen) as we'd hoped -- he still has a good (often great) appetite, his stool is mostly normal, and, most importantly, he's his usual happy self, but the cancer is stealing the nutrients rather than them being properly absorbed by his body and he can't even maintain his weight, let alone put any on. He's emaciated (five pounds, with no meat on his bones, so their house is kept ridiculously warm), and his already-low lymphocyte level had plummeted dramatically at his November check-up -- the poor cat is going to die of malnutrition, even though he's eating well. I remember when my great aunt died of cancer, how much it hurt my aunt - who'd been taking care of her - to see "malnutrition" on the death certificate. It does feel like negligence for a beat before you remind yourself of the circumstances. Anyway, his quality of life is still very good; he looks terrible, but he acts not one bit differently. The rest of his organs started from a point of great health - at 14, he has the kidneys of a cat ten years younger - so for now he's hanging in very well despite the ravages of the disease. But it's not sustainable; at some point organ failure will set in, and that will be it. I'd love it if his heart gave out first, and he just didn't wake up from a nap one day, but it's more likely he will become ill from systemic organ failure. Knowing there's no fixing it, as soon as it kicks in and drops his quality of life down near the deciding line, that will be the time, before it gets truly bad. As I always say, it's the ultimate testament to how rewarding it is for pet people to share our lives with animals, because their lifespans mean we know we are signing up for eventual heartbreak every time we adopt a new one, but we do it over and over again.

Same here; normalizing, justifying, and even glorifying a range of bad behavior by the police is why I have been a fan of very few cop shows in my life (Cagney & Lacey, Cold Case, and The Closer/Major Crimes), and that this one is centered around a character who spent most of her career in IA and holds her squad to those principles is why it's my favorite. Yeah, I'm very glad they abandoned that characterization. We saw Hobbs in a handful of episodes of The Closer, and there was nothing in those to indicate she'd say hey, since Captain Raydor isn't here to stop you, why don't you coerce a confession. But we didn't really get to know her as a DA until Major Crimes, so I'm glad that when they finally fleshed the character out, they made her someone who does the job right. That this episode is an aberration helps in hindsight, but I was very unhappy the first time I watched it. Even now, though, I can barely stand to watch that scene in the gun shop. Amy was horrified by his actions and yelled at him to stop, but took no further action - either at the time, or telling Sharon afterward (because if she had, Sharon would have disciplined him, and it would have been an issue among the squad, so if the writers had intended Amy to report him, they'd have made a point of it). Which I don't really blame her for, as he (and Andrea) put her in a difficult position, and a black woman "tattling" on one of her squad mates typically does not go well, so even with Sharon in charge, there's an ingrained hesitance to go down that road. That struggle for Amy could have been a good storyline, and helped flesh out a new character in addition to addressing Julio's behavior earlier in the series, but at least once Sharon witnessed Julio's pattern of inability/unwillingness to control himself, she did something about it, and the show followed through with Julio's anger management trajectory over a long, realistic arc. So Julio's behavior was ultimately identified by the show for what it was, and his punishment for it was presented as wholly deserved. That's far better than most cop shows.

When I saw a headline about the show being revived with the original cast, I was intrigued, but quickly checked myself that the odds of a show about a group of people in their sixties, even one where the characters are pre-known to a segment of the audience, are pretty low. And, of course, upon reading, it's about the next generation, with the original cast in supporting roles. Depending on scheduling, I'll check it out for curiosity's sake, and if the difference between one generation's station in life versus the next one's is written in a way that acknowledges the positive and negative causes, and positive and negative effects, of today's thirtysomethings seeming a good deal younger, it could be a good show.

It's the only one of his films I've ever re-watched.

Coming across it while going around the dial just now, I was reminded that, while Coyote Ugly is a really stupid movie, the relationship between Violet and her dad is its bright point. Not much of a surprise, I guess, since he's played by John Goodman, but her dad is lovely (but not unrealistically) in how he wants to protect her, but wants more to support her, and won't let her use him as an excuse to give up.

Dammit! Graham no more got that first down than I did, but I knew when Seattle didn't make the two-point conversion to make it a FG game, they were not going to come back and win. I don't know who to root for in the NFC championship. If Clay Matthews was still in Green Bay, I'd probably root for the Packers, but I've always liked the Bears, so that also always feels a little weird. I love that the 49ers have Katie Sowers on staff, but, come on - I'm a Rams and Seahawks fan and I'm gonna root for San Francisco? Plus I'm still mad about Kaepernick (although that's directed at the league as a whole, not just SF). But whoever wins both championships, the Super Bowl will not contain a team I hate, which will be really nice. Even if I don't have one of "my" teams in to well and truly root for, I don't have anyone to root against, either, no one whose victory would piss me off. I will just enjoy the game.

That's nice, thank you. It's sad that the original forum was vaulted, then the entire M vault went poof during a major site update, and the majority of episode threads are not accessible via the Wayback Machine, so a whole lot of our great discussion over the years (at the time of vaulting, the forum had over 5000 posts) is lost. So, in this replacement thread, I've tried to talk about each episode as it comes up in syndication. I've pretty much covered them all now, but - to my delight - I sometimes still notice something new.

Seriously? 14-0 Texans only five minutes into the game? I have no dog in this race, so what an interesting start.

There's a lot on TV for me Saturday nights this time of year, so I'm glad this is back but it's kind of an embarrassment of riches right now; I watched last night's episode, but the late-late repeat and fell asleep somewhere in the middle. Am I correct to assume that poor dog whose owner did not spay her indeed had cancer throughout her reproductive system? As hard as it is to watch, it's good to see these stories, as it's another way of getting the word out to owners that spaying/neutering isn't just about preventing litters (wildly important on its own), but also preventing certain health problems. I have no particular affinity towards chickens, but I love how much that woman loves hers, and the way she takes care of them. The "curly hair" is indeed cute, too. Kayla is probably my favorite vet tech, and she was particularly cute with the poodle after surgery to fix his luxating patella - the way she cradled him like a baby and delighted in his swimmer paws. As always, I appreciate the existence of and publicity for low-cost clinics, but I also appreciate watching a show where the OR is one I'd gladly hand my pet over to. I wish them success with their second location, and it's impressive they did that in only four years. I zonked out right around the tattoo parlor; did Dr. Blue go through with it? His brother was pretty funny giving him a hard time about it. I also laughed at "I'll wear my best 'tea' shirt" regarding the Alice in Onederland theme party.