Bastet

I had it on in an adjacent room, but was organizing my linen closet in the hallway, so I was only listening. I quickly asked my cat, "What the hell is happening right now?" and went in to take a look. I got a gander at the way the shouter had written his name, rolled my eyes, and went back to my project. He didn't ruin the game for me, but he's ridiculous and I hope he's gone soon. I hope whatever contestant coordinator let him on the show is gone soon, too. "Africa" as a category ticked me off -- African what? Would we get a category called "North America" or "Europe" instead? No, it would be "North American Geography" or "European Geography." It's like on TV shows when characters travel to a country in Europe, the country is specified, but characters visiting an African country are just said to be "going to Africa." Speaking of African countries, I knew Uganda, but was not surprised that was a TS. Word of mouth as a TS, however, did surprise me. Henchman, too.

A glove. In that same episode, what does Jackie say when her drunk self falls down?

The ages of Dorothy's kids were ridiculous even at the time. We learn in the pilot that she had a shotgun wedding and was married for 38 years. To meet Kate in the very next episode and have her be a decade too young means there had to be a much older kid out there somewhere (which could make sense at this point of only a little information; one could easily imagine a history in which there's the not-yet-introduced first child, and Kate is the second child, so much younger than her older sibling because Stan and Dorothy married young and thus waited until they were older and more secure before adding another child), yet it's only season two - by which point we've heard numerous other references to the my husband left me after 38 years/I got married because I got knocked up backstory - when Michael is introduced, and he's around the same age as Kate. Dorothy getting married because she was pregnant and being married for 38 years were two of the only things the show remained consistent on, and they were mentioned often. So for the kids to be so young was noticeable even during the original run.

That was a bit of a dick move to his family, but, then again, they've pulled some dick moves on him. But a graduation ceremony is as much for the graduate's family as it is for the graduate (assuming they're in the graduate's life, of course). It was no financial hardship for them to put Carter through med school, no, but they still did. And his parents aren't the best at showing it, but they do love him and they're proud of him. And then there's Gamma! But he just left them all sitting there? We hadn't yet met his parents at the time, and didn't know the degree of dysfunction, so back then I thought it was rude to deny them the experience of seeing him graduate. Looking back, knowing all the Carter family drama, I still think he should have gone, but it doesn't bother me like it did initially.

W is for the wallet-sized prints Jackie wanted of Bev's mug shot

U is for the quaint little humpty dumpty uniforms Rodbells said the servers no longer had to wear -- a fact Leon chose not to share with Roseanne and Bonnie

Every once in a while, I forget however many years of evidence to the contrary and think this show - celebrity or regular - might not suck as much as I think it does and watch an episode. This evening, I was lying on the couch not feeling all that well, not liking anything that was on, and decided to watch this one. I always have unfounded high hopes for the celebrity editions, since everything is so fake - I talk myself into thinking professional performers will elevate the material, but it never happens. And, yep, it was the usual crap. It's episode two, so we're supposed to believe these folks still can't distinguish their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to cooking, and yet this is a great time to have them prepping all manner of seafood? And, oh fucking please with the "who goes home?" challenge -- the teams are lopsided, but I'm supposed to think there's any suspense as to which team will lose a member? Like producers didn't tell Bronson to put 743 hot items into his dish so, surprise, he goes home and Oscar stays, despite the latter making the very sauce - oh, I'm sorry, plus some diced peppers - he'd just been taught to make when the challenge, with its pre-cooked shrimp, was basically to make a "personal take on" sauce. With how few episodes of the series I watch, it's crazy how many times I catch Anne shutting down some idiot man calling her "baby" or something similar. I love it every time, so I don't even care if it's as staged as the rest; the more calling that shit out is out there, the better.

Something with andouille sausage (I'm still mulling that over; maybe just sausage and peppers as I think I have half an orange pepper and half a red), a steamed artichoke (dipping sauce will be mayo/sour cream mixture with garlic, lemon zest, and a pinch of cayenne pepper), and a spinach based salad, with other ingredients to be determined by what I have left in the crisper. Now I'm tempted to use the sausage to make stuffed artichokes, but I already made the dipping sauce. Oh, well - next time. I always have artichokes when they're in season and I'm never without at least one type of sausage.

This one hasn't proven to be an unpopular opinion among those I know who watched it, but glancing at the show's threads, it's sure unpopular there: I am not surprised Everything Sucks! was canceled after its first season; I don't know what kind of viewership numbers Netflix's business model would have deemed necessary to continue on with it, but I'm not surprised it didn't get it, because despite some strong moments, it was generally pretty blah. It started out decently, petered out a bit, strengthened for a promising episode or two, and then faded again. The adult characters weren't all that interesting, and Kate was the only one of the teen characters who was the complete package: well-developed, well-acted, and interesting to watch. Luke was played be a good young actor, but was an annoying character, an entitled little shit I kept wanting to punch. His friends were caricatures, not characters. And don't get me started on the drama club kids; Emaline got better in the second half, in the beginning watching her and the boyfriend was like watching an unintentional parody.

Last week's episode was repeat in the time slot immediately before this new one, so this episode will probably repeat right before next week's new episode. And maybe randomly during the week; they did that a lot with the first episode and reunion. Check the TLC website.

That made me do a double-take, too, so I looked it up, and it was a surrogate who gave birth. Her kids are crazy far apart - one born in the '80s, one in the '90s, and then one in the '00s (and apparently another one, too, per the above post).

They were shiny brass or semi-shiny brass (something much brighter than antique brass, but I can't remember any more specifically than that), and I found them godawful ugly, so while the new ones are not something I'd have picked either, I thought they looked better than what was there before.

No, that was a joke.

But not boys, right? And that doesn't tell you something about referring to adult women as girls?

After you pop them? They weren't deflating them, they were stabbing them. Yeah, Genevieve said something along the lines of, "That better be back for the reveal." It would suck to keep the room intact, and then after the homeowners had seen it, announce that X,Y, and/or Z items were coming out due to budget. The "designers pay overage [but understand they can go over by $30, not $300]" scenario seems more likely, and jives with the "it's for the party fund" thing Paige spouted in the past, but they've also claimed Paige makes them remove stuff to get to budget, so who knows. Vern pulling stuff out of his warehouse of goodies to use without counting against the budget in the past, much to other designer's consternation, plays into this as well. Again, who knows - the statements from the show's own people have contradicted themselves as to how budget busters are handled.

That's probably the result of using different cameras this time around; the increased mobility means it's not as important for her to keep them in place during the reveal. She does still have to corral them somewhat - and pull their hands down when they hit/cover their mics while flailing about - but there's better coverage than in old school episodes. I liked both rooms, for the most part; a few things in each I'd change if it were my room, but nicely pulled together on the whole. That nook in the one bedroom is just utterly wasted space to me -- I don't want my bedroom containing more than a bed, TV, nightstands, and dresser(s), as everything else happens in other rooms -- but it was there, and something needed to be done with it. I'm still not sure what the purpose of it was, other than to lounge on that bench and read, but she gave them a good start on making it functional. (Did they have kids, so that they may need to hide in their bedroom to read, watch TV, and otherwise do stuff they'd otherwise do in other rooms if the whole house was theirs alone?) Vern using the exercise ball to make the yarn lights amused me, since that technique was used on old episodes with balloons, so he just spent extra money unnecessarily -- although maybe not, if he was set on them being that size; do balloons come that big? It used to be - at least some of the time - that when the designers went over budget, they had to pay the overage out of pocket, which went into the party fund. This time, Gen had to take something out of the room to get it down to budget. They always claimed that's what happened, but we'd see in the pre-reveal interviews that designers were over budget and that didn't happen, so it's a bit of a jumble as to what actually happens.

I've been dithering a bit on what to make for dinner, and I may change my mind yet again by the time I go to cook, but I think I'm going to make baked salmon (with a dill and garlic sauce), roasted asparagus, and a bitter greens salad with lemon vinaigrette (I already have the vinaigrette made, and lots of bitter greens, so that will definitely be the side salad - the rest may be subject to change).

Normally, my windows are open pretty often, but obviously when I adopted Riley I had to take a good amount of time to observe how she was with the screens to see if I could resume that habit, so her first summer my electric bill was astronomical - I wasn't yet comfortable leaving the bedroom windows open overnight lest she suddenly get screen-happy when I was asleep, so I'd turn the AC on in there some nights, which is something I normally never do (I don't have heat or air on overnight). Thankfully, it turned out she thinks screens are as impenetrable a barrier as glass (which is really good, because I have retractable screens [with casement windows] - I don't like the look of screens, not to mention cleaning them, so I have the kind that only need to be pulled down and snapped into place when you need them - so they're easy to get out of if one tries), so even when there's a bird outside or a critter in the tree, she doesn't try to get out. I was quite relieved to see that, as I was really going to miss fresh air if I had to keep the windows closed! She half-heartedly tries to follow me outside sometimes, but in general she runs away from an exterior door when I open it -- with how scared she is of new things (I had to introduce the house to her one room at a time, after all, and it was months before she roamed it comfortably rather than just staying in the office or bedroom), I think the outdoors is a big, unknown "room" to her and she's afraid of it. Works for me!

I just got in on the reveal portion of an episode where Hildi and Vern each did rooms totally not to their tastes (or mine) because they knew what the homeowners wanted. Paige asked, "What show am I on?" and that's how I felt looking at Vern and Hildi in those finished rooms (Vern said, "I feel like I'm sitting in another designer's room"). Now there's an episode that opens with a segment in which Paige surprises one of the homeowners at work to notify him he'd been selected for the show (the neighbors already knew) -- is that something they did for a while? The opening titles aren't anything I recognize, either, so this must be after I quit watching with any regularity. Oh, and there's also a segment where the neighbors working on the rooms show the designers ideas they have -- colors, fabrics, layouts, etc. Very different!

Well, that's a problem across TV - it's quite a microcosm of society's colorism problem, so lighter black skin prevails on screen, especially among female characters. I liked the relationship between Benton and Corday - as did Eriq La Salle - but I'm glad La Salle put the kibosh on it for the reasons he did. And they did write the relationship with Cleo better than they had the ones with Jeanie and Carla, so that was good, but Michael Michele only had chemistry with the kid playing Reese - the rest of the time, she was just sort of there. So, even though a better relationship on paper, the Benton/Cleo relationship wasn't a very interesting one to watch.

I'm not sure; I bought and unpacked them a while ago, but just got around to installing them yesterday. I got them at Costco, but I'm not sure if it was its brand (Kirkland) or another manufacturer's. A neighbor walking by while I was working on them recognized them as being from Costco, so maybe Kirkland -- she said her parents have some from Home Depot that only worked a short time, while the ones they have from Costco have been going fine for 4-5 years now. I always have good luck with stuff from Costco, especially its own brand; Costco has a reputation for doing it right, whatever "it" is (along with treating employees well, so I'm a happy customer all around -- so long as I can shop in the middle of a weekday, because I can't deal with the crowds otherwise).

When simple projects aren't. I decided to spend an exciting Friday night cleaning/changing the filters in my ductless AC/heating units, since I'm long since done with the heating portion and want to have everything clean when it's time for cooling. I opted to start in the game room, and, while I had the ladder out, decided to first change a burn-out bulb in one of the overhead fixtures. The fixtures are a right royal pain when you need to change a bulb, because there's a glass shade that fits inside a metal "cage," and that combination screws into the base plate in two places, and you have to remove the combo to access the bulb. I knew this going in, but they're pretty because the cage is a cool design, and I needed six and was on a budget back when I did the room. I took the screws out and the shade/cage wouldn't detach by hand; the odds of it falling down while I darted into the (attached) garage to grab a flat screwdriver were slim, but it's glass, so -- one screw back in to hold while I get the tool. Loosened with the screwdriver, removal was no problem, but it turned out the bulb didn't just burn out, it popped out of its base and was hanging by a wire. Thankfully, this one of the six is near the pool table light, and, while that's on the same circuit as the overheads, it's on a different switch, so I could just switch off the overheads and still see to grab the base with pliers and remove (sometimes I wish for a third arm, usually to hold a flashlight). All that to change a light bulb! So I'm just now getting started on the filters. But that was balanced out by the fact I put some solar lights alongside my front walkway, unsure of whether they'd get enough sun during the day to charge - due to a tree, most of them would only get sun for half the day - but even with just a short time to charge (and during filtered sun - at best - hours), they're glowing away out there right now.

As someone who, despite enjoying a good deal of musical theatre, only loves a handful of movie musicals (and likes only another handful or so more), I too am a bit baffled by this exclusion. (It has the distinction of falling into my "love" category, and I even have it on DVD.) It's not shown very often, and this would have been the ideal time to include it.

Fantastic!

So employees are not just supposed to skip the perfume, but also go hunt down unscented hair spray, lotions, and deodorant and buy all new toiletries? And visitors will be sniffed before being granted entry? I don't think so. They went on to keep it reasonable, but that part of the memo was just plain dumb.