Bastet

I liked Harper. My favorite, by far, of Carter's girlfriends/potential girlfriends was Maria Bello's character, Anna, but I liked Harper, too. And the one played by Julie Bowen, but they made her a sacrificial lamb to the stupid Carter/Lucy thing.

Yes, that's right - when Roseanne walks in for her meeting with the principal after the school photo incident, she does say, "I'm Rebecca Conner's mom." I love that episode so much, I can't pick a favorite moment, but right now "We're all fingers over here" is what's jumping out at me.

There is some horrible stuff happening in a number of shelters in the hurricane's path and surrounding areas that I don't want to repeat, but there are also shelter workers (which sometimes means one person for an entire county) doing the very best they can with about two dimes to rub together and not much more in the way of supplies. There are also rescue organizations and other volunteers banding together to get as many out as they can. Chewy.com is working through its Dallas warehouse to get food and supplies to rescues and is even providing rescue referrals to people calling their customer service line asking how they can help. Wings of Rescue is working with HSUS and various local responders; they have planes standing by in El Paso full of crates and supplies to drop off - and will pick up unclaimed animals who were already at the shelters and relocate them to a network of no-kill shelters throughout the U.S. for adoption. That way the local shelters have more room for the animals that will be coming in during/after the storm, and those animals will remain local for their owners to find them. (Some shelters are euthanizing the pets that have been sitting there unclaimed in order to make room for the influx, so this is an important service.) This Facebook Group is where a number of small, local organizations and people are connecting to coordinate and provide help; you can read along to see who's doing what and maybe jot down some organizations you'd like to donate to.

Did we ever hear her referred to as Rebecca? It's possible her name is Becky; I have a friend Jenny who is not a Jennifer. And when Becky went through the phase of not liking her name - because it sounds like a chicken noise - she didn't switch to going by Rebecca instead. So maybe Becky is her name.

That's fantastic, @MargeGunderson! It makes me smile to read about a cat who's had 21 great years - and counting.

Mostly I remember it being a pleasant surprise to learn D.J. stood for David Jacob rather than Dan Jr. (just personal preference; I don't like kids being named after their parents). But, for specific incidents of "David Jacob," I remember at the spelling bee and when he and Roseanne were playing hide and seek. I had a vague memory of him once being called just "David," so that must be the one mentioned above, with Darlene telling him to help with the dishes.

He was practically the same color as his coat! And he was as delusional as he was orange; no one who has opted for that tan and those teeth should go around declaring himself so attractive other people are intimidated by it. I was thrilled to see him go first, even though he was the only one who made something remotely resembling an appetizer.

An update on Summer (via an email from my friend who read it on the VRC Facebook page): She had 10 great months with her family before passing away.

I don't love corn the way most people who like corn love it. That first, farm-fresh corn cob of summer is tasty, yes, but I just don't share the same level of excitement most do. I could have corn on the cob once or twice per summer, and enjoy it each time, but have that be plenty for me. Maybe it's the starch; I tend to either not like or be ambivalent about starchy vegetables. I like corn more than carrots or most winter squashes (the starchy vegetables I like or am ambivalent about, with the rest generally falling into the don't like category), but I'm not at all in love with it.

Other than the props actors and producers took home with them after the show wrapped, it's going to be pretty hard to track stuff down (if it even still exists somewhere), but they can always have recreated the stuff that's really important. I wonder if they'll have the same couch, or a new couch but that same throw blanket. Maybe the old couch will be at one of the kids' houses. I think the chicken shirt will appear at least once, and I think the omnipresent corn and Godzilla will again be omnipresent.

I'm the opposite: I'm one of those who delights in this time of year when I can walk into the backyard and pick a delicious tomato to make a BLT sandwich, a caprese or other tomato salad, or just slice, season, and eat, but I don't care for tomato-based sauces on my pizza or pasta, marinara as a dipping sauce, etc. Or for cooked tomatoes in general, really. (Hmm, I just thought about the fact tomato is botanically a fruit, and I hate cooked fruit.)

Cagney and Lacey used to regularly meet in the women's restroom at the precinct; behind the scenes, they called it "The Jane" and on the show, if Mary Beth said, "Conference, Christine," that meant meet me in the bathroom so we can talk. They were the only women on the squad, so it was where they could talk in private. My So-Called Life set a lot of scenes in the girls restroom, which was a pretty accurate reflection of high school.

Seth DeValve's wife (who is black) wrote a great piece pushing back against the media attention painting him as "some sort of white savior to a movement that was started and has been carried on by black football players for about a year now." It's well worth a read; here's an excerpt:

Life on Mars - I don't like the way they wrote Hoynes out, and, in my continuing dislike for the Andi being pregnant with twins storyline, I don't like Toby reduced to eating a salad he hates because that somehow will persuade his ex-wife to remarry him

Yeah, she didn't bug me until that one.

My objection to this show is that it's populated by people faking their cooking skills and tossing out sound bites in the hopes of launching some sort of entertainment career, so I figure that watching professional entertainers who might actually be amusing would be better. And, this time, I know who all but one of these people are, which is rare (it's Sean Lowe I had no idea who he was, and Perez Hilton I only know by name, but I know - basically - what he does). And I even like some of them - Nora Dunn speaks her mind, Melissa Peterman was hilarious on Reba, Carson Kressley was good on Queer Eye, etc. I still forgot it was on until nearly 20 minutes into the late airing, so I missed a good portion, but I watched. They really weren't much funnier than the wannabes (which may be why they're on a fourth-rate show like this, I know). And this version of the show seems to suck as much as the regular version. Yet, somehow, I can see myself watching on nights I happen across it while going around the dial when nothing else is on, which is higher praise than I can give the regular version (where I only watch the final episode, in order to see the food once they've admitted they can cook). It's such an amateur cooking show cliché to stick them with live lobster, and I think it's tacky at best to act like people are ridiculous for not knowing how to go about dealing with that, plus you set up a situation in which inexperienced cooks are going to torture those poor animals. And the faux drama over someone being eliminated with an even number of contestants was also annoying. In the first 20 minutes I missed, did we learn what charities they're each playing for, or are they saving that for the next episode (which would be further evidence of the stupidity of pretending someone was going to go home)?

Woo! This makes two days in a row that Riley has been acting 99% normally (and the one percent is me supplementing her food/pampering her with it because I want to wean her back into our regular routine rather than just saying, "You're good now; go eat" and risk a setback). That makes almost two weeks of steady improvement, with no setbacks - by far the longest we've had a constant upward trajectory since this all started - and these final normal behaviors that have returned in the last two days are things I haven't seen in two months. I don't know what the hell was wrong with her, but she seems to have come through it. Here she is ignoring my foxtail warning - I was out in the unfinished area of the yard, which is filled with foxtails, and tracked a bunch of them inside as I came through the door. As I went to get the vacuum, she ambled in, thought, "Oh, sunshine!" and plopped down. So I had to shoo her away, check her thoroughly (those things can do MAJOR harm to animals), and then clean up her morning sun spot. (And, yes, that's bird shit on the outside of my door; the mockingbirds have strange aim and I have to clean it weekly in summer; I haven't gotten to it this week.)

Asparagus is one of my favorite sides to go with crab cakes.

It varies by state, but there are several reasons for quitting that allow the employee to collect unemployment. Almost all states allow for unemployment benefits in the event of "constructive discharge," which is the case bilgistic will make.

This is the season she started to really bug me the first time around (now, I'm more annoyed with the little things in earlier seasons than I was the first time, because I know what's coming). There was a lot of "Shut up, Donna" grumbled at the TV.

They didn't skip any during the first rotation of seasons one through six, and I didn't see any posts about them doing so on the second rotation. You may be thinking of the Tuesday night or Saturday marathons, because, as far as I know, the weekday airings go in order, without skipping.

Debate Camp - I think my groan when Toby said Andi is pregnant with twins caused detectable seismic activity. Plus, Donna is an idiot. Election Night - Donna's idiotic vote trading thing (which, of course, winds up introducing the awful Jack Reese storyline), plus other things I don't like, namely Andi's pregnancy and Will Bailey.

According to House Hunters, all couples brush their teeth at the same time, because the buyers are constantly on about needing two sinks in the bathroom. I wouldn't care if a partner needed to come in the bathroom while I was using it, but I wouldn't want one routinely in there with me. That sounds like being stalked in your own home.

This mac & cheese episode - in which they had to use mac & cheese in all three rounds - just re-aired tonight, which was my first time seeing it, so I searched for commentary and only found this and one other post. I had the opposite reaction, appalled that she could have blown him and the other contestants out of the water - not just in flavor and execution, but the creativity underlying the three dishes - in the first two rounds, yet gone out because her dessert was delicious but missing ingredients. Nine times out of ten, I'd say someone who left two basket ingredients off in a round should be the one to go in that round, certainly, and I think it's significant enough that even with her overall performance versus his, it should have been a discussion. But her food was so much better than his, and everyone's, that I can't stomach handing him the win. (If they - as I think they should - made omitting a basket ingredient an automatic disqualification, I'd obviously feel differently, but that not being the case is the muddled monster they created long ago.) If I was him, I'd be a bit embarrassed to win that way.

It's kind of surreal watching them dissect last night's speech, knowing that at the time the show was filmed, they had no idea the lunacy and lies on tap in tonight's speech, which they'll have to cover tomorrow. It's nice seeing Sen. Klobuchar on here, even in a short interview; was she a last-minute substitute?