Bastet

I'm so happy to have this show back. A little nervous for how they're going to cram in the major storyline, given the probability this is the final season (maybe the long delay was partly a result of real-life issues, but the timeslot certainly suggests the network is not overly invested in this show), but excited. I wish USA had re-aired the first two seasons so I could have refreshed my memory (but since it can barely be arsed to air this season, I'm not surprised); I remember I love it, and several reasons why, but a lot of past scenes are lost to me. "I need a moment, I'm sorry" when the self-defense instructor learns of the relationship between Maggie and Emma was my first favorite moment and that was only a minute in. The high-pitched "Jurassic Park!" was another one. And "Why didn't you guys just go [mimics Home Alone poster]?" An entire episode about romantic relationships/lack of romantic relationships is never my cup of tea. But Mark reassuring Emma about the changes in his body was so cute and sweet. Maggie leaving out a cheese platter to make Emma vulnerable to another strike was a great ending. And I'm just so happy the show is back. But I wouldn't have led with this. I was much more into the second episode. Yay, Birdbones! I was excited about this episode from the moment I got a glimpse of her. She totally would fall for a pyramid scheme -- and Emma totally would fall for Brianna (I don't know the character's name, but the actor plays Brianna on Grace & Frankie)'s challenge. I love seeing Emma and Birdbones team up together, despite the Mark history, because everyone handled things the right way when it comes to one relationship ending and another relationship beginning with no overlap, out of respect for everyone involved. So refreshing. "Body be bangin' and, P.S., a mind to match" was lovely. Birdbones' pyramid takedown was even better. Also Dress Barn. And "Someone must have called in a tip." Loved it. Maggie's co-worker looks like a younger version of Alton Brown. "You look like Lisa Rinna" cracked me up. The actor playing Birdbones' first customer appeared in one of my (many) favorite episodes of Cold Case, so I'm glad to see from the promo she'll turn up again. I'm so happy to have this show back.

Good for you; I, too, would be afflicted with an acute case of fuck you. Because it doesn't matter who planned any of this shit (and, seriously, three [or four, really] gatherings on top of the wedding itself?!); they're about the bride, and, for this post-shower party bus thing, she knows who was unable to travel to the other party, so she should have made sure invitations were extended to those people.

Seafood salad tacos; I love the cool filling/warm tortilla combination. And a jicama salad with lime-cilantro dressing as my side dish.

Yeah, I'm perfectly willing to believe the actors genuinely thought it would be improperly distracting and that's why they declined to appear, I just disagree that it would have been; I find the characters (especially Doug, but Carol too given how much of a friend to her Mark became) more distracting in their absence. That panning shot of mourners instantly resulted in a "Where the hell is Doug?" reaction that lingered a lot longer than a "Hey, it's Doug!" reaction would have. I would have liked them to be seen standing at the grave with the others, and that's it -- no need to include a later scene of catching up on life in Seattle with the twins, because that would interrupt the flow, but just showing us that yes, they came.

Well, the establishment's computers would house that data, and the municipality could require annual reports, or the right to audit the data in the event traffic becomes an issue. But I doubt most cities would bother with such detail; it would be more likely to have a general traffic clause, with any specific (e.g. average wait time) rules coming from the corporation (as its way of complying with the city's regulation). (And I really can't imagine a state bothering to legislate such a detailed requirement applicable to all drive-thru establishments in the jurisdiction, but, I'm not going to hop on Westlaw to check, either.) I've been skimming, so I don't even know what the peeve was that started this speculation. My peeve for the day is me, choosing to read a story I knew full well was going to make me cry and put me in a contemplative mood that is not conducive to getting back to work just yet. (Thus, I'm here, trying to give my brain a little break.)

I could envision a city enacting a requirement like that (for okaying a drive-through establishment) on traffic abatement grounds.

Riley is scared in the carrier and car, and I have no idea which would upset her less -- a long car ride that's quiet and just with me, or a much shorter plane ride that's filled with strangers (and altitude changes) and bookended by airports. I tend to think she'd do better in the car, but I really don't know.

Do you make them in advance (a few hours) and refrigerate them? That seems to help. I still sometimes have a couple fall apart on me when I flip them, but I'd rather have that than crab cakes with too much binder, so I've learned not to grumble when it happens. Someone once told me she first cooks hers in the broiler, to brown the top, then puts them in a pan to fry the bottom (thus never having to flip), but I've never tried that.

Adding that all up, it seems quite tacky -- she wants you there for the one event that is all about giving her presents, but not for either of the events that are actually about socializing with friends.

It's hot, and I'll be having a fairly filling lunch, so I'm just going to make a simple ceviche salad for dinner -- ceviche shrimp over butter lettuce with avocado and scallions, and a little extra cilantro (lots of cilantro in the ceviche marinade).

I like my cocktails with ice, too, but when I'm in countries where they don't serve their drinks with ice, I just drink things I like neat instead (it's easy, because it's not the liquor I dislike at room temp, it's the mixer, so I just get rid of the mixer). When I get home from a European trip, I'm always happy to have ice and wash cloths again, but I don't hunt them down while I'm gone.

Yeah, he fueled her delusions of where they were in that relationship, so he's just as much to blame for them. I think this is another instance where those crappy movies he watches forming his knowledge base comes into play. If he's used to watching characters make goopy pronouncements of eternal love after 90 minutes and thinks that's real, then the rainbow moment makes sense. And if he then goes home and talks to his dad, who tells him, um, no, you don't run around exchanging I love yous after three dates, and finds out, no, you can't date around if you've committed to being someone's boyfriend, breaking up with her also makes sense. The problem is that any of this was news to him, but one of the parents made a great point about that general issue last night -- normally, when they are taught a life skill, the immediate next stage is to implement it and that's how they truly learn. With sex, that's not how it works, so the information isn't really staying in their brains. So, it's the same thing with dating -- they can be told how such relationships work, but if that's just an abstract conversation about something that may happen in the future, it doesn't stick the same way it does when one of them is actually in a relationship and gets told the same information. This is as inappropriate as whatever happened to make Cristina so ashamed of looking at porn, so I shouldn't have laughed, but learning that Kris had told Megan she was allergic to dick in the hopes of keeping her off one cracked me the hell up. I also got a legitimate laugh out of Steven claiming watching porn was sex education and the teacher saying, "Um, not necessarily." But, on the whole, watching that sex ed session was uncomfortable. As noted, Megan is the only one who had retained any basic knowledge of what vaginal intercourse is (and none of them knew that vaginal intercourse is only one form of sex), and some of them carried such guilt about their perfectly natural, healthy curiosity. It was also the most glaring example yet of how child-like these adults' brains are in many respects -- that was like watching a group of 12-year-olds blush and giggle about this mysterious, naughty thing called sex that people have. No wonder their parents are all terrified, because they're so vulnerable to being taken advantage of.

Here, the cheapest place to get good, fresh crab meat is Costco. It's pretty much half what you'll pay at a fishmonger ($20-ish per pound versus $40-ish).

Same here; they did such a good job replicating other elements, all of which make me smile (and I merely like the film; I'm not a huge fan), but completely blew it on the main character's hair. It's all I can see. (It doesn't help that I find his hairstyle really ugly, but it's the "Um, that's not what Ferris looked like" that bugs me.)

Riley ate an eight-inch length of stretchy ribbon intact (it was folded in half). Thankfully, while I didn't catch her before she swallowed, I did catch her immediately after she'd done it (she'd pulled it out of a bag, and I came in just as it disappeared), so I was able to induce vomiting (with hydrogen peroxide) and get it right back up. I am very stingy in when I'll induce vomiting rather than taking a cat to the vet, because of the potential problems - this was only the second time in my lifetime of cat ownership; the first being immediately after consumption of a little bit of a toxic plant - but it was a scenario where that was a reasonable option, and it worked beautifully. I gave her about half the dose for her weight, it worked in just three or four minutes, she only threw up twice (got the ribbon out in one, then followed with some foam), and she was cuddled up with me, purring, about five minutes after that. No side effects whatsoever -- no blood, no further nausea, no appetite issues, nothing; she just looked at me like, "Well, that was unpleasant; moving on ..." Baxter - my boy who had the proclivity for one-in-a-million incidents and illnesses - once choked on a five-inch blade of grass, and in the back-and-forth air flow of choking, sucked it up into his nasal cavity. I didn't know any of this at first, just that he was gagging repeatedly, yet his throat was clear. So off we went, and an x-ray showed this skinny length of something from his nose down just to his throat. While the vet was in the next room looking at that x-ray and contemplating sticking a scope through the poor guy's nose, Bax sneezed, and this thin green thing shot about an inch out his nose, then went back in except for about 1/4 inch. I grasped it and gently pulled, and out came the five-inch blade of grass, thankfully intact. Sedation and scope averted, and the vet and I each had a good chuckle. It was one of Baxter's cheapest vet visits.

Crab cakes here, too. With roasted asparagus (drizzled with olive oil infused with garlic and rosemary) and a slaw made with two kinds of cabbage, carrots, celery, corn, scallions, and dill.

The actor who plays Chuny played a small role in an episode of Major Crimes, and the first time I watched it, I didn't recognize her or even have a "Where do I know her from?" moment. But when I watched it again after being immersed in 15 episodes per week of ER, as soon as she opened her mouth, I said, "Chuny!" My favorite Chuny moment is when she dumps Mark by using the same line on him he'd been preparing (based on advice from Doug) to use on her. Bingo. She accepted (after some disgruntlement) that he wouldn't take a job with better pay and better hours because he was passionate about the work he was doing at County. Then she accepted that he wouldn't move to accommodate this fantastic opportunity of hers. So he needed to accept that she wasn't going to turn down a federal clerkship to, yet again, put his career above hers. And, eventually, he did, and they made it work for a while; their careers (meaning their desires, ambitions, and passions) were finally equally valued. But, ultimately, it was too late. They'd married young, and partly because they felt like they should -- they'd been dating a while, their parents wanted them to, etc. They loved each other, but it ran its course. Even the affair could have been organic, although still a shitty thing to do, but I hate it because they wrote her so one-dimensionally after that, to prop him up.

I remember the needle story; it happened shortly after the cat was adopted (years ago). Hello, I am your new kitty - and I will now require thousands in emergency vet bills.

That was my original peeve on this issue -- wanting them to mix it up, and say something personal to their lifestyle rather than just parroting a phrase. "This is a nice-sized dining room for dinner parties." "That cozy sun porch would be perfect for when it's my turn to host book club." "This deck would be great for barbecues in the summer." "We could make turn the basement into a cool hang-out space and have people over to watch the game." "Can't you just picture having game nights here?" Stuff like that, rather than an endless loop of "This would be great for entertaining."

It takes two people to chop those vegetables.

I agree completely, and I resented that they made her a cheater, well, even more that they lost any semblance of realistic, layered storytelling from that point on when it came to their relationship; until then, it had been a much more interesting story. It was Mark's turn for so long he took it for granted that her career would yield to his any time there was an impasse. He shouldn't have needed her to hit him over the head with reality, but he did eventually wake up and they were making it work with them being based in two different cities. Then she cheated, and things weren't interesting any more after that, because instead of being two real people it was the main character and the woman who did him wrong.

YES! Then I will have at least one episode to love, and the season will be worthwhile no matter what crap CC churns out. I hope he's not curled up in the fetal position somewhere, freaking out over how little time he has versus the time it normally takes him, but it's all about me, so -- get to writing, Darin.

I don't understand anything else as a matter of routine, because I don't get leaving the lid up to begin with (and if you're going to lower the lid, of course the seat is going to go with it). But I'm not bothered by the commercial in which the husband/father laughs about the fact he occasionally does otherwise on purpose just to fuck with his family -- they seemingly leave him to do all the driving, and then completely ignore him so they can listen to whatever they want in their own heads but he's stuck with a big ball of silence for however many thousand miles. I am in no way in favor of people constantly being up each other's butts, discussing every detail of their lives, or otherwise not enjoying the freedom to spend part of a road trip in their own head. But, as presented by this commercial (in which, of course, women suck and kids are also fuckwits), they all not only leave him to do all the driving but spend their whole time as passengers engaged in solitary pursuits rather than popping up regularly to help him retain concentration on the seemingly endless highway. So good on him for occasionally fucking with them in harmless ways; the retaliation is passive-aggressive, so there are better ways, but I'm not fired up about it.

I love what's-left-in-the-fridge salads like that (or quesadillas or casseroles made the same way).

Congratulations, @theredhead77