Bastet

I agree with that peeve, even from the other side. I am a "maybe" by nature for a lot of things, because I have to be in the right mood to be sociable in a group; I'm almost always happy to be with one of my close friends for dinner/drinks or a movie night in, but ask me if I want to go to a party or group outing and it's going to depend on mood, and I won't know in advance how I'm going to feel when the time comes. (And if my depression and anxiety is more than its usual mild state, it is even more up in the air; I may find the thought of leaving the house dreadful.) But I am also well aware that I cannot leave people hanging. If it's something important, I will commit to being there, regardless. If it's not important, but something where, logistically, I can't wait until the last minute to decide, I will usually say "probably not, but if it works out, I'll join you" (where that wouldn't be an issue, of course) or commit and then stick with it. Only if it wouldn't matter whether I'm a late addition/absence will I be a maybe.

Oh, thank the TV gods -- the "SKYBOX TICKETS?!" episode is starting right now.

Ha - Taylor actually taking Brenda up on her offer to eat the birthday dinner Pope brought her, and Pope's face as he watches him prepare to dig in, is funny.

Peter looks great in those glasses. On a far less shallow note, that was a really good scene, and I'm retroactively annoyed they cut it. Not only is it good on its own, but it's odd to cut an actual scene with Eriq LaSalle at that point in the series! I remember that Cleo was weird about Elizabeth, so it's nice that she hung back and gave them the moment together they deserve.

If it comes up in conversation that the cat is not chipped, you may want to suggest she ask the neighbor who is keeping an eye out to take some of the flyers (this is assuming she made flyers, of course) to nearby vet offices -- if someone finds and captures the cat, they may take her there to be scanned for a chip (I know you said she left info with the local shelters, some people avoid shelters, at least initially, and thus head to a vet's office for scanning). That way, even though the scan wouldn't find anything, the staff would recognize the cat from the flyer and would have your friend's contact info that way. Maddie did not like noises from above, either. She was incredibly chill, but three things scared her (and sent her under the bed) -- thunder, fireworks, and a plane flying over while she was outside. And with the first two, she would wait 20 minutes past the last thunderclap/explosion to make sure it was truly over before coming out. And you could set your watch by those 20 minutes; it took me a while to notice the pattern, and then it was plain as day.

I always wonder about that, too. I only use mine to go to bed, but I live alone, so I have free run of the house -- I don't ever need to escape to my bedroom to do something I'd normally do in another room (e.g. read, work, exercise, eat) because that room has people in it and I want to do whatever I'm doing alone. So wanting space for a mini living room, or library, or kitchenette, or whatever in a bedroom is odd to me - it seems like square footage that would be much more useful in another room of the house, like the living room or kitchen (or, as you said, kid's room, since they actually do a bunch of stuff other than sleep in their bedrooms) - but maybe if I had a different lifestyle, it would matter.

I feel your pain. Before I replaced the original (single pane) windows with triple pane and installed air conditioning, there were miserable summer nights it "cooled off" to only 98 degrees in the house. There were several times I had to dunk us all (the cats and myself) in cool water and then rely on the fans to let us drift off to sleep before we heated up again and couldn't. When it's brutally hot, it pains me to think of the people who don't have AC or can't afford the electric bill to run it. It's hard to function at those temperatures!

Because there are egg yolks involved? (That's my reasoning, anyway; I loathe yolks -- one of those "hated it as a kid and hate it just as much to this day" things. Which I was not forced to eat, because I hated them that much.) Right? If I make it to 90, I'm existing on a diet of sour cream & onion chips, vodka, whiskey, bacon, and cheese - with ice cream for dessert. (I like a lot of healthy stuff, and if I still do then, I'll eat it, but I won't give a moment's thought to nutrition or balanced meals if I want to eat a vat of spinach, artichoke, and cheese dip with tortilla chips three nights a week.) If that means I die at 91 instead of 93, but enjoyed the hell out of my last year, I'll be thrilled. (Hell, I may very well do this if I make it to 81, never mind 91.) Really, once you've made it that far, just live every day in whatever way makes you happiest, and unless it harms someone else, screw it.

Chips are my weakness, and I have absolutely no ability to portion control with them, so I don't buy chips; I just gorge on them when offered elsewhere. If I was going to buy the variety pack, though, most of them sound worth trying, and several of them sound really good -- the Cajun, fried pickle ranch, and chile con queso ones (even though that last one is described as Tex Mex inspired and I hate Tex Mex, the flavor combo sounds good for a chip). I love crab cakes with Old Bay, but the crab spice flavor doesn't sound good as a chip. Same with the lobster roll flavor. But I'd try them. Along with the Thai sweet chili and pimento cheese. But deep dish pizza sounds awful, and not just because I hate deep dish pizza -- it's basically just pizza sauce flavored chips, and I don't like traditional pizza sauce all that much (I usually get mine with olive oil, pesto, or alfredo sauce instead), and definitely don't want it on a chip. Blech; that sounds as gross to me as ketchup-flavored chips.

Is there a neighbor who can continue to look for the cat after your friend leaves? It seems to go one of two ways - the cat just shows back up and meows at the door, or you find her/him hiding somewhere (usually fairly close by, although some are found a surprising distance away). You rarely hear about a lost cat responding to being called for and just running up to the owner who is canvassing the streets. So if your friend isn't going to be there, I hope someone who will can continue the search, and continue spreading the word to other neighbors to be on the lookout for a cat hiding in their garage, in their bushes, under their car, etc. If someone is moving into the house right away, has she been able to tell them about the missing cat, and ask them if she can leave behind a trap (baited with something that smells familiar, since it's a cat who's not normally outdoors - e.g. a blanket the cat naps on)? I'd be going out of my mind in her situation; my sympathies to her! Baxter got out once (well, they both did [pushed out a window screen], but as soon as I came home in the wee hours, Maddie was meowing at the door to get in, while he was nowhere to be found) and it took me about two hours to locate him (next door, hiding in a bush; my flashlight caught the reflection off his eyes). Just in those two hours, I was about to hyperventilate.

I really like Lucinda Williams, especially her self-titled album (that, as the write-up notes, saw a good half of its songs covered by other artists) and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. I still play the hell out of the latter - the title track, Concrete and Barbed Wire, 2 Kool 2 B 4-Gotten, I Lost It, Drunken Angel ... I don't think there's a song on there I don't like. LeAnn Rimes, not so much. Great voice, but I don't sense much emotion behind it, and something about her bugs the shit out of me to the point of distraction, yet I can't even explain what it is. I don't think I've heard much of her stuff beyond the debut album other than that awful song from that awful movie (Coyote Ugly) and her version of How Do I Live.

Yeah, that must be one of the many ways in which it's hard to hit on the right balance as a parent. Because "I hate broccoli" and "I hate vegetables" are two different things. The latter? Too damn bad; you need vegetables as part of your diet (and, seriously, in the large variety of tastes falling under the category vegetable, you hate them all?). The former? Okay, then when we're having broccoli, you can skip the vegetable for one night. It's the in-between where I'm sure it gets "fun." I wasn't a picky eater (or was I not a picky eater because I wasn't allowed to be - it's a chicken/egg thing, I think), so it wasn't much of an issue when I was a kid. My mom definitely was not making me something different, but I didn't necessarily have to eat everything that was served. The things I well and truly hated, I was allowed to skip, and the stuff that I was just "aw, man, this?" about, I had to eat a little bit of. For example, if we had pot roast, I had to eat some of the meat, but could skip the potatoes and carrots that were cooked with it, and that's when I'd just eat extra salad and veggies to fill me up. And when my mom was making a main dish I didn't like, she'd make sure to combine it with a veggie I loved, and vice versa. For example: "We're having pot roast" would be followed by "and artichokes" before I could get my face too scrunched up about having to eat pot roast. (My mom's favorite meal, and something I have not consumed once in adulthood [and never will, unless I have the misfortune to wind up a guest in the home of someone serving it - but I'm still skipping the potatoes at least]. I suspect a mix-up at the hospital.)

No, I don't really have a favorite character until Sharon comes along, other than Brenda. In these early days, I really liked Brenda for the most part, generally liked Gabriel (until the Daniels mess; I can't remember when that happens), and low-key liked, or maybe wanted to like, Daniels (I wish she was better developed) and liked Tao, with him probably growing on me the quickest, but I didn't love anyone (other than Brenda - and Fritz - with some reservations) in the early years. By the end of the series, Sharon was my favorite, Brenda a close second, and it's a bit up in the air from there; by that point, I like them all - even Pope, definitely, and, yeah, I guess, even Taylor, despite the self-serving aspects of them. Provenza and Flynn made numerous sexist and homophobic comments, and any time a victim or witness in the first two seasons (thus far) happened to be gay, they referred to him as things like "gay boy" and overall expressing discomfort with the fact the man happened to be gay. That's not failing to be "politically correct," that's defining someone by their sexual orientation and speaking of it disparagingly. I love when Brenda first encounters Sharon, and Provenza gives his history with her by saying that in response to him and his then-partner engaging in misogynist behavior - a word they had to look up - she sent them to X weeks of sensitivity training, and Brenda says, "That was a complete waste of time." Brenda had their number; I'm certainly not going off canon in describing their bad attitudes at this point in the franchise - one of the fundamental themes of season one was the squad made her life difficult on multiple fronts (not just how they responded to her, but how they were in general) and then ultimately pulling together. (Speaking of that, I love Pope giving her a gift [necklace?] as apology for how difficult things have been in the job he recruited her for/maybe, kind of, hopeful "I'm getting a divorce" overture while Fritz is waiting in the wings, heh.) Flynn runs to Taylor with any little negative tidbit he learns, they're all doing their jobs but looking forward to her falling on her face, etc. It's a wonderfully-awful working environment for our protagonist that comes together with time - yet she doesn't just roll over until that happens. She calls their shit out for shit. The guys - Tao and Gabriels to only a mild degree - are jackasses when Brenda first joins the LAPD, and I like the balance the show strikes in showing that some of the squad's reaction is reasonable "Who is this outsider coming in at a rank she hasn't earned?" resentment and suspicion, and some of it is sexism. The first season plays out nicely, with them all getting to respect each other as detectives if nothing else, making the season finale's coming together well earned. It's a nice trajectory, and it carries on, unfolding at a nice pace. But, damn, when I revisit these early years after having followed most of these people for another nearly 15 years and having their end points much more present in my mind, it's astounding how I feel about them at the end versus how I did at the beginning. A sure sign of good writing and acting, because despite the wild difference from A to Z, because of B through Y, it makes perfect sense.

The oldies but goodies work on me -- I just watched the trailer in the first post, and yelped when the babysitter re-opened the closet door and Michael was there. I saw the original and almost all the sequels; I never saw part III (since it had nothing to do with the rest) or Resurrection (I just couldn't with the live internet show thing, and then I heard about Laurie dying and was firm on taking a pass), but I saw everything else up through H20 -- which I trekked to the theater opening week to see because Laurie was back. As I will with this one. The only ones I remember details about are the original (one of my favorite horror films) and part IV (love the ending), but I guess I won't have to undertake a marathon re-watch to refresh my memory if this one is going to throw them all out.

I have two or three stuffed animals with sentimental value, but they're in a storage box in the garage (because I don't like the look of them as part of a room's decor, not because I don't think anyone should have them out past a certain age), so I should just donate them like I did with all the rest way back when so some kid can use them. (I had a huge box of them in my closet as a kid, so there were a lot. Ridiculous, really [but one of the cats loved it; she used to sleep on top of them]. But I just picked one to sleep with each night, or some to play with, and then put them back - I never really decorated with them, so it's just a Me thing, not an age thing.) The last time one of these "Women Over X Age Shouldn't Do/Have" lists came up in discussion, the list was littered with stuff like dead plants, worn-out shoes, and expired sunscreen. Huh? Shouldn't everyone toss that stuff? Why just women, and only of a certain age? (I know, because we live in a sexist and ageist society. These clickbait articles are just so blatant about it!)

Yeah, I would certainly say Ron Silver had a distinctive speech pattern, but not that he had a NY accent (or an accent strongly typical of any other city/region, either, but definitely not NY).

Oh boy, I hate The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A. with a passion (I also hate her Funny Face), but I love '80s Ladies just as strongly. LOVE it. I like Younger Men,* Hold Me, I'll Always Come Back, Do Ya and several others, too, but '80s Ladies is a fucking anthem. And I just like Oslin, period - the stuff she wrote her songs about, her videos, the whole thing. It was nice having someone like her so prominent in country music for a while. And '80s Ladies winning Song of the Year at the CMAs, meaning a female songwriter had finally won, and for a song celebrating not just women, but women "of a certain age"? Hell, yeah! *I love the story noted in the write-up about trying to get that song on the radio:

I believe you, because unless you never showed up or participated, I don't know how else it would be possible to get a D in gym.

I confess I wouldn't drink Bud Light unless I was about to die of thirst (I hate light beer, period, and find that one particularly blech), but when I know a friend prefers something specific, I make sure to have it on hand even if it's not something I drink. You specifically ask about Bud Light and they lie about having it?! Rude, no matter how much better they believe their offerings to be. I have a friend who loves Jack Daniel's whiskey. I have Maker's Mark, Woodford Reserve, and/or Knob Creek at any given time. I don't dislike Jack, but I can't imagine wanting it when any of those are available (especially when someone else is buying), but, hey - that's her favorite, so I make sure to have some when she's coming over. I don't tell her I do and then try to make her drink something else!

They - including your boyfriend (is this the same guy who didn't buy you a Christmas present and then drunkenly threatened to break up with you?) - are guests in your home. Why are any of them making comments on what food you graciously prepare for them? I know opinions vary on where to draw the line between "I'm not running a restaurant; you eat what I cook" and "Everyone has stuff they don't like, so I'll make extras so the meal appeals to everyone" when it comes to the family one is cooking for day-to-day, but this is just utter shit as a guest. And incredibly disturbing as an indication of what is going on during that poor girl's daily meals at home. She should NOT be allowed to refuse the balanced meals she needs and then get rewarded for it with more crap! The crap has a place in all our lives (unless medically prohibited), but in moderation and as part of a generally nutritious diet. She's being failed, yet you - the one with the least ability to do anything for her - are the only one who seems to realize that. It's sad.

I knew Zelda was a goner. :-( I don't for a moment criticize their decision to try the surgery, even at Pol rather than at a more specialized hospital, but in hindsight I do dearly wish they'd euthanized the poor girl, so she'd have died surrounded by her family rather than alone in a cage. This show can be hard to watch (I really have a hard time with some of the farm practices), but I appreciate that they show the good, bad, and ugly. I love the Dr. Jeff show, too, but that one is edited almost exclusively towards the success stories; death is a big part of practicing medicine, and I appreciate this show including that. And, yes, Dr. Pol's pure delight in the face of the cuteness that was the kitten was adorable! I also laughed out loud at the look on Tom's face when he got placed in a cage in preparation for an enema, and even harder when he then promptly pooped in the litter box they'd provided him -- no enema, thanks. I'd have recommended psyllium (unflavored, unsweetened) before jumping to Miralax, because the latter has extra stuff you may not want a cat consuming (generally not an issue other than in cats with kidney disease, but still - natural is always preferable to synthetic, and fewer ingredients preferable to more, since everything has side effects), but it was cute that the cat and the owner took the same poop juice. And I liked the ram who initially refused to move after his horn was trimmed. I positively adored the couple who stayed up all night with their fish hook dog to make sure the hook didn't get caught on something and cause more damage (I wonder how far away the nearest 24-hour vet is, that it's not a realistic option), and that the man took the day off work so he could just relax and recuperate with his dog.

Ha! "Did you try turning it clockwise?" "I've never seen a clock, mate; I don't know what you're talking about."

They also all remember their SAT score. Even if high school was 40 years ago, they went to college and graduate school after that, and have been working ever since. Although now completely irrelevant to their life, if the subject comes up, they can rattle off that long-ago score. No one ever says, "Um, I don't remember; I remember getting accepted to all the schools I applied to, so I guess it was good." For some characters, it makes sense -- someone who was obsessed with getting into a prestigious university, spent months on end preparing for the SAT, took it multiple times to see if they could score even higher, etc. is going to have that final number stick in their mind -- but not all of them.

My mom is like me, and likes the smell of coffee but not the taste, but my dad drinks coffee (black). He doesn't feel any effects from caffeine, though (and has no symptoms if he goes without it); he just likes the taste. It takes a lot of caffeine for me to feel anything. I stay away from large doses of it now, as I said, but I once took a caffeine pill to stay up all night writing a paper, and, boy, I felt that. But when I used to drink soda, or caffeinated tea, I never felt a thing. My best friend doesn't like coffee, so she'll drink a Coke to "wake up," but it never had that effect on me.

Ha! And also a good point. I don't drink coffee (I like the smell, but hate the taste), and I have PVCs (heart arrhythmia), so I don't consume much caffeine from other sources. I have two friends who suffer withdrawal symptoms if it gets too late in the morning and they haven't had coffee, because their body needs that caffeine every day. How is this not a problem?