Bastet

I agree that's the point of a wedding. I don't agree it's true of a reception (but omit expensive, as that's not necessary). I think any time you host an event, you should be a host. What that means varies by event - what it's for and when/where it's held - but I'd no more have people over to watch a football game without offering soda, beer, and snacks than I'd put on a Saturday night wedding reception without providing dinner and a bar. Or anything in between. (And, of course, the flip side is most people attending will bring something in appreciation, again appropriate to the scale of the event, but that's beside the point for me.)

PUSH PRESENT?! It's not just that I want to know who comes up with this stuff and how it becomes A Thing, I want to know who names them. Now, yes, if I'd just expelled a human being from my body after spending nearly a year gestating it, I'd want something from my partner - namely, significant time spent taking care of the baby now that it existed as something he can do his share of caring for, unlike when I was necessarily the one doing all the work and suffering all the consequences because it lived in me. Not a piece of jewelry handed over in the delivery room.

Yeah, on its own, the second part of what she said is awful, and it would have been much better to say "sometimes other people win" or "sometimes you have to accept that someone else won" or something like that. I don't know anything about her, so maybe the "let" was literal, and she's a total jerk, but maybe it was just awkward phrasing. Coming right on the heels of the first part of what she said, which sounds like nothing other than a way of saying, "it's okay, Daddy has won plenty of times, and hey, isn't it kind of nice that these guys won for the first time in the team's whole history," I tend to think it's the latter.

The bride is having someone do our make-up, because we never wear make-up and thus don't have any, and would probably not apply it very well if we got some. She decided she wanted to wear light make-up for the pictures since we might wind up a little red and glistening from an outdoor summer wedding, and I debated for a while whether I wanted to give it a whirl as well, and am leaning towards it. But she's going first, and if whomever she hires turns out not to understand the concept of restraint, I'm skipping it. I think she's having someone do her hair, but I don't need that - I "do" my hair by rinsing and conditioning it, running some gel through it to keep the curls from frizzing, and letting it air dry. And she's including manicures/pedicures as part of the spa day we're doing in lieu of any sort of bachelorette party or bridal shower, but otherwise I'd be doing that myself. She looked at a bride's checklist on some website, and could not believe all the stuff it was recommended that she do -- she's doing something in the neighborhood of 10 percent of all that (which is still double what I'd do). We didn't even know what some of the things it referred to were!

I agree wholeheartedly with these. I do not understand the cake thing, at all. I've only seen it happen in real life once or twice, though, and not in a long time; it's more a TV characters thing to me. And no bar, or a cash bar? Get out of here with that nonsense. I think it's tacky to invite people to a party at your house and not provide a reasonable array of food and beverage options. So to ask them to attend a wedding and skimp out being a proper host is baffling to me. I've only been to one wedding reception that didn't offer at least wine and beer (most have been open bars), but I've heard stories. In better wedding news, in a couple of months I'm going to the tasting with my friend and her fiancé - she's a vegetarian, so she can't try most of the things they'll be choosing from, and he has an incredibly pedestrian palate, so she wants me to sample everything, too, so they wind up with the best menu for their guests. I know there will wind up being two salad options and three entree options, but I can't remember how many side dish options, and I'm not sure how many there are to choose from to get down to those; I love food, so what I do know is I'm looking forward to eating my way through the offerings.

I don't normally watch any of these animal bowls other than a couple of minutes here and there since I spend the day watching the Super Bowl, but since that one was on the day before, and was about older dogs, I checked out a bit of it. I'd like to watch on mute, because the cheesy announcing and music annoy me, but then I'd miss the dogs' stories. That TD scoring machine was the one from Villalobos Rescue Center (the rescue featured on Pit Bulls & Parolees), right? He was really cute.

He's not famous enough for them to show him - it was people like Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez, Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton, and Bradley Cooper who got air time.

Are they lines for your phone and/or TV? Here those are overhead, but I know in many places where they are buried instead, they are buried really shallow like that.

Even prepared for its existence by your post, seeing the "ways to family" commercial yesterday caused me to scream, "Family is not a verb, morons!" at the TV.

I love the whole thing, but if I had to pick a favorite part, that might be it, because he completely channeled Jennifer Grey in that moment. That was, by a country mile, my favorite of the commercials I saw during the game (I'm often up restocking my plate during commercial breaks, so I didn't see them all). I also loved the one where Keegan-Michael Key translated:

Ugh. I'd rather stare at my wall for an hour, so I should just skip it, but it will probably have some great acting by GA, so I'll probably suck it up. And maybe I get lucky, and it's nowhere near as bad as I think. (I know, I know - no one hurt themselves laughing now.)

I think it would only be rude if the couple got ticked when most people declined, having other plans for their money and vacation days. I figure some who have destination weddings do so in part so they can fulfill their supposed obligation to invite certain people, knowing they won't actually show up -- win/win.

I had no idea an Eagles victory could make me this happy, but I'm fucking thrilled. That was a great game; if I actually liked the Eagles, rather than just rooting against the Patriots with every fiber of my being, I'd be almost as euphoric as the two times the Giants beat them.

We're getting at least one more season; season five was recently confirmed. But why would Sol want to go back to Frankie in terms of marriage or a similar partnership? He's gay, and he's not in love with her. He loves her, he likes (hell, adores) her, and they've settled into a great relationship, texting about their silly TV shows and talking to each other like the friends and co-parents they are. They'll always be family, but they're not spouses/partners. They have in the time since the divorce basically rebuilt the parts of their former relationship that were true once the sting of discarding the part that was a lie faded, and are who they should be to one another.

I saw one of those years ago, and it introduced her gorgeous mother, which I thought was a hilarious mistake -- gee, do I think it's this magical melon being hawked responsible for Crawford's looks, or the luck of good genes?

The wedding in which I will reluctantly be the maid of honor this summer is a fairly simple one (at a local country club, so largely self-contained; they need a photographer, a cake, flowers [the venue staff will transfer what they have at the ceremony to the reception tables, so that's what they're going to go with] , and to provide the music [they know a piano player who'll provide background music during dinner, and then they'll just pop an iPod into the venue's stereo system], but everything else is part of the package) and the bride's requests of me are as well - pick a dress, spend a spa day with her and her sister (the other bridesmaid) the day before, come to the rehearsal that evening (and, if I would please in order to help keep her sane although she'll completely understand if I develop a convenient brief malady, attend the rehearsal dinner with her family and the groom's family after that - I'm going, but possibly with a pill on top of the wine), endure the wedding and photos, and do my part at the (open, top-shelf included) bar at the reception to make sure they hit the minimum they had to agree to in order to get Saturday rather than Friday night), and I cannot imagine being part of something fussier. They got engaged in '15, bought a house in '16, picked a date and venue summer of '17, and then jack all has happened until recently. And all that consisted of was picking her dress, starting early in case she had trouble finding something. I think she's getting ready to send save-the-date emails, and then invitations next month or so. The rest we'll do in April, and then turn up at the ceremony in June. It's all more work than I'd put in even if I did ever get married (not going to happen), but so much simpler than so much of what's out there. An old friend of mine, whom I generally only see once a year as part of a group, is a wedding planner/coordinator/whatever, and her stories blow my mind. It's not really a peeve if I'm not involved, and even then I'd have had the option to bow out - you do you, as they say - but that's what the conversation made me think of.

I liked tonight's special; animal rescue shows are a genre where clip shows don't bother me. I swear, they could include Cheech and Chong’s story in every episode, and so long as it included the shot of them comforting each other in the shelter and the paw on Tia’s arm to say goodbye when Cheech got his home, I would never get sick of it. And yep – anything Jethro. I can’t imagine living with that dog, but I’m glad to “know” the person who does and thus get videos and stories of him. I remembered every dog by story, and some by name, upon looking at the pictures. And, of course, I was like Tania – if Brandi with an i hadn’t been in the bunch, everyone who wrote in would have been dead to me. Roxy Mama as number three surprised me, and I spent the commercial break scrambling my brain to come up with who could be one and two. Because her reunion with her owner was The Ultimate Moment for me. A snarling dog who can only – and barely – be handled by Tia, transformed in a waggling, wiggling, trick-performing love by seeing her momma, a year and a half later? I’m glad they’re still together, because I read a couple years back that Roxy was sick and undergoing significant diagnostics. I liked Curtis’s story, and he certainly had a gross injury, but he went from the hospital to the tech’s and never left. Wonderful recovery, and him rolling around with her at the office and then later with her son at home – testament to how they bounce back, emotionally - was sweet as hell. And deformed puppy Blanche toppling over then straightening out with those colorful casts? Cute indeed. But Roxy Mama is my number one. Gilbert loving the truck, Vlad’s smile, Charlie Brown being Rita in dog form, Lacey – dumped for getting on the owner’s bed – being welcome to roll around on the bed of her new home - Pierre as the Yankee Poodle Dandy ... so many good memories. With Pizza they showed the funny moment when he peed on Louise and Tia almost peed her own self laughing, but I’d indeed put him on the sweetest list for the full-body wiggle when his owner opened the motel room door. Nice montage of cute Earl moments, too; he indeed has had many. And Sui’s visit with his mom. I liked their “Christmas” dinner from the picture, yes, but her first visit was the best. I hate public proposals (actually, I don't understand proposals, period), but I do love Tania’s “What are you doing right now?” when Perry starts taking a knee.

I think the dynamics of their prior marriages come into play - Robert and Grace had their own interests, but Frankie and Sol did almost everything together. Robert and Grace didn't have a good marriage, while Frankie and Sol did (you know, other than that whole thing where the husband is secretly gay and in love with someone else). So there can be a tendency to think doing things separately indicates a problem. Especially in Sol, who spent so long having a spouse who liked the same things he did. To me, the solution to this "problem" (which is not, to my mind, a problem per se in the first place) is to learn how to enjoy doing things alone or doing them with the people in your life who also enjoy them/meeting new friends who share those interests. So, yeah, I thought a leap to "well, how 'bout an open marriage?" was quick, because in those therapy scenes, the writers conflated the "we like different things" issue with the "because we were closeted for so long, and then married each other, there's a degree to which we're like high-school sweethearts who married without ever dating anyone else" issue that didn't get addressed in the same way.

Oops, I thought I was in another episode's thread.

I don't either. It's not annoying to my ear (or eye), but I prefer "died" for the accuracy and clarity. I truly love this.

And when Jake got a turtle, she moved down a spot. That line made me laugh in the midst of feeling sorry for her. As Brock said, at his house she could be the kid she's entitled to be, instead of being regarded as the second adult (ahead of her sister and brother-in-law who actually were adults) in the household as she was at Reba's. I appreciated the position that Reba was in, in that she knew she shouldn't be bailing Cheyenne and Van out all the time but feeling like she couldn't let them fall on their asses because of Elizabeth. And I understand her being sad and even hurt that one of her kids no longer wanted to live with her. But I thought she was out of line in her reaction to Kyra requesting it and Brock saying yes. That's her father, it's a better home for Kyra, and they're just around the damn corner -- don't treat it as a betrayal. I loved Kyra sticking to her guns and handing over her key. Reba came around, obviously, and she may even have apologized to Kyra (in that family therapy episode with Martin Mull?), but I don't think she ever did to Brock.

When my friend and I were feeding my "nephew" novel proteins (venison and rabbit, like you) to check for a chicken allergy, we found treats made of freeze-dried venison liver (that's the only ingredient) and of freeze-dried rabbit (rabbit meat and rabbit organs). Or maybe it was this brand for the venison liver. Anyway, you may want to try. Shermie wasn't overly into the freeze-dried, even if we rehydrated it, so it turned out that for a treat we just made a little ball of his (pate) canned food and offered that like a treat and he was thrilled.

Ugh, yes. You hack at something difficult to cut through, you're called a hack if your writing sucks, or you hack into a computer system you're not supposed to access. But bleating about a "life hack" because you've come upon a technique that makes performing a task easier? No. Go away.

One of my favorite holidays. :-) We'll munch on dill dip with assorted raw veggies, parmesan and herb chicken wings (baked), sage sausage balls, spinach balls, shrimp with horseradish cocktail sauce, and an assortment of cheese, crackers and salami.

I think Becky Howser, M.D. was a nice illustration of how getting a college degree and what having one meant was largely a foreign concept to these people - something they saw on TV, not in the lives of the people they associated with. Becky started talking about going to college, like she'd originally planned to do, and said she might want to be an EMT, physical therapist, or something like that, and in Mark's mind that translated to she was going to become a doctor and leave him. And then everyone snowballed it from there. I'm so glad they had Lecy for that episode, and there was some good stuff building with Becky's discontentment, but then they couldn't get her for the Disney World episodes, and we were back to Sarah's unambitious version of the character.