Bastet

I don't like eggplant, so I've never made that one, but I love Ina's spinach gratin. And since the spinach in my garden is overflowing, even for how much I regularly use, I made a batch of that gratin this weekend and took half to my parents. That means I'll be having it as a side dish for every meal this week - I normally make a half batch to share, because her portion sizes and mine are very different - but damn the calories -- that thing is good!

A daughter, Alice Christine.

The people whose stolen wallets were recovered from the victim all said they were at the convention at the time of the murder. BPD could not have possibly had time to verify this for all seven - especially as they'd just set up the notion that ZombieCon attendees won't recognize regular photos of people, just pictures of them in costume - but moves on. Only when the additional theft victim they find via the posted cell phone video says she was there do they start asking for proof. I do not begin to understand the zombie craze, but I found Frankie's enthusiasm charming. I like that he and Nina were normal together at work (other than kissing in the elevator [if they hadn't been interrupted]), and that her "why don't you want people to know?" wasn't some neurotic, insecure thing. I see zero romantic spark between Maura and Kent - plus the fact that, despite whatever "he's on loan to the ME's office" storyline I think started this all off, I believe he reports to her - so I really hope the writers don't go down the road proposed at the end of last week's episode, but I love that he's the one to whom she speaks in the most depth about her fears of losing cognitive function. And that Jane is still the one she asks to hold onto her resignation letter (make that a notification of medical leave, Maura!) and determine whether it should ever be handed in. If this is a congenital issue (exacerbated by the head trauma), might we see Hope again? Talk about someone to bond with over this. I didn't watch this series from the beginning, so I'm missing some of the Angela and Frank backstory, and thus based on this "he didn't want to me to graduate high school" storyline have to ask: Did they get married when she was in high school? Was she pregnant?

Don't ask me to make sense of Volvo's marketing, I'm just reporting it's a series of commercials and so far we have the one asked about above and the wedding speech one. For the wedding speech one, he's alone in the car, notebook in hand, and we hear him in VO. Maybe he's having a flashback. Maybe we'll find out in the last installment the daughter never should have married this guy, and Volvo is great when you need to hightail it to your lawyer's office.

It's apparently going to be part of a series with a story line. In the next one, he's preparing his speech for his daughter's wedding.

A ha! Assuming the post was describing a commercial, but having never seen it to know which one, I did some late-night googling, but couldn't find it. Now we know. (I laughed anyway because of "Sister Christian" and "home skillet," but now that I know what commercial conversation is being mocked, the faux version is even better.)

I don't know if we ever saw Blanca on the show, but what a great happy ending for a dog who didn't seem like she'd ever be able to leave VRC.

The civil suit is still pending, but no criminal charges will be filed against Toney.

Yeah, all the great reviews and my enjoyment of virtually every installment of 30 for 30 I've ever seen hadn't convinced me to watch this, but after that write-up I believe I will. ESPN's programming guide shows part one will air again Tuesday night at 7:00 Eastern.

I didn't see it, and I can tend toward the skeptical, too, but cats can manage to seriously injure themselves in a safe environment. Many moons ago, I came home to find one of my roommates' cats refusing to bear any weight on one of his legs. Of course, this was just after the regular vet's office had closed for the day, so off to emergency we went. X-rays showed torn ligaments in his knee that would need surgery, so he was sedated for the night and we picked him up the next morning to take to my vet for surgery. The doctor called after surgery to ask if we had any idea what on earth could have happened, because the damage was far worse than it had looked on x-ray and he pretty much had to rebuild the entire support structure for the knee, including making new ligaments out of tissue he took from elsewhere. He said if he didn't know me and what kind of a pet owner I was, he'd be suspicious - the cat's knee looked like someone took a sledgehammer to it. We scoured the entire townhouse, including looking under the beds to see if maybe he could have got himself hung up in the box springs, but we never figured out what the hell he did to himself. (My roommate hadn't been home, either, but even if she had I'd have been equally sure she didn't do anything to him.) I wound up not being home last night, so I still haven't seen The Vet Life. Talk of how much time they spend on The Home Life instead means I'm not upset about this, but I do hope to catch it one of these days.

The first time I went away for a month, I worried how my cats were going to react. Sure, they'd get daily visits from Grandma or Grandpa, and Grandma would spend the night with them once or twice a week, but that was a long time to mostly just have each other; I'd usually limited myself to two weeks. They were fine. They all but velcroed themselves to me my first night home, but they were fine. Every time I came home from a long trip, I think it took mere days for them to forget I'd even been gone. So I'm sure your Jinglebelle will forgive you - after some minor penance, perhaps. As a kid, we had one cat who'd bite our ankles when we returned from a trip, but then be cuddling us an hour later.

They've had a lot of more minor problems with that being a public facility, so I'm not surprised these two more serious recent incidents (the attempted attack reported above, and someone sneaking away from the tour to access a restricted area and mess with the dogs who are afraid of people, becoming belligerent when confronted*) finally forced their hand, given the security measures they were already forced to take. Even though it will be by appointment now, it's still far more accessible than the L.A. location was, or the country location is (meaning more people willing to go there to adopt, and to volunteer their time walking/socializing the dogs). So hopefully this won't be too bad for the dogs (as Tia said, they've never had a tour lead to an adoption), but it will definitely have an impact on the money they bring in, when they're already struggling. It's a shame, but they get things like people saying one of them "spoke to me through the TV," and there's no real way to screen for that. I think especially in light of that young singer being shot and killed at a meet and greet, they're tired of being spooked. *Or, you know, what the previous poster said around the same time. Sorry for the duplicate.

And she's not very good at it, but everyone else's reactions carry the scene.

I watched most of the Hillsborough episode again last night, but fell asleep shortly before it ended. Did anyone else watch to see if they added a coda about the recent inquest results?

I've never had a per diem limit, either; how does that work when the cost of a day's activities varies so much from destination to destination -- the companies just set different limits for different locations, I guess, but how to account for the fact on one trip you should be doing a fair amount of "entertaining" on the company's behalf and on another anyone you're treating is personal rather than professional? As a civil rights lawyer, I work in the non-profit world now. I have to upgrade myself to first class if I need to fly, and I'm in three-star hotels, but once I get there I have no set limit for what I spend. It's basically an honor system that I'm not going to go hog-wild, and if I did do that more than once I'm sure I'd no longer be employed. I have no inclination to abuse that system, and I've yet to work with anyone who does. When I worked in the music industry, I was supposed to fly business based on my job title, and I did offer to upgrade myself/pay the difference, but the label's in-house travel department just went ahead and booked it through and the company never asked me to reimburse. I generally only traveled twice a year, so I doubt it really registered on anyone's radar (this was back when record labels were much more profitable). Nicer hotels, but still no written limit for food and expenses, just within reason so the CFO would sign off on my expense report -- and within reason was defined more generously for a record label than a non-profit, obviously. For personal travel, I like when things are a la carte. Free breakfast isn't actually a benefit for me, since they usually stop serving it before I'm up and at 'em. Same with free wi-fi; I do very little online while I'm on holiday, so I'd rather just pay for what I use.

Oh, I'm sure they do. They've been friends for so long and both place great importance on female friendships, so I'm sure getting to do this show, with each other, is something they really enjoy. Their comments certainly indicate they do, and this a case where I believe it's 100% genuine, regardless of needing to promote the show.

Well, it looks just like Skinny and Sweet. Except for the little skull and crossbones on the label.

The one where Sherilyn Fenn bangs her stepson was just on, and I love at the end when Kyle, finally seeing her for who she is, serves her with divorce papers and when she says he doesn't know what he's doing, replies, "No, I know exactly what I'm doing. Mom."

"I cried every second that Sophie was missing. I wanted to crawl out of my skin. Sometimes I didn't realize that I'd been screaming at the top of my lungs. Not knowing for three days nearly killed me. I can't imagine this poor woman going through that for years. And letting it go on for the rest of her life? I mean, I want him dead, but you have to help this woman." She'd spent much of the episode annoying me, but definitely redeemed herself in the end. That was a great scene.

I haven't had one of those in a long time, but I used to get either that one or the chicken florentine & farfalle. But the last couple of times I had the latter, I noticed the amount of chicken had been significantly reduced. Really, Bertolli? This bag of sodium is not cheap, you can give me some damn chicken.

For me, it was Maker's Mark and checking the archive. Saloon was easy to me, given the hint about a slightly shorter French word for a more fashionable gathering, and I'm surprised two of them took a shot at it (pun unintended) but it was still a TS. But in the same word origins category, I didn't know pomander, either. I got plunder, though. I also got Bob Newhart (perhaps impressive since I originally wrote that - after another Maker's on the rocks - as Bop). I loved the category about cabinet departments, and "thespianists." I even got about half in the religious landmarks category, so clearly that was too simple for DJ. I ran the Italian food category (and now really want some gelato), and am a bit surprised by the two TS. But in an utterly stupid move I blame on the whiskey, I could not spit out rook. Yep. Chess piece with "oo" in the middle and my brain just flailed about. My embarrassing performance in the Victorian Verse category, though? I cannot blame the booze. And I apparently know little about beetles. FJ was pretty much an instaget, but considering an entire childhood obsessed with the space program, I don't think even tequila could have affected that.

Nelson Agholor is under police investigation after being accused of sexual assault.

The scene in A League of Their Own when tryouts are over, but one woman is still staring at the board with all the lists of who made a team and who was cut. The coach is getting impatient with her, telling her if she's on the cut list she'll have to leave, but one member of the Peaches realizes the problem and walks up to her, gently asking, "Can you read, honey?" Upon confirming she can't, Helen asks her for her name, then scans the first team list and points to where "Shirley Baker" is written, saying, "This is you. You're with us - you're a Rockford Peach." The two actors - Anne Ramsay and Ann Cusack - both play it perfectly, and it warms my heart every time.

Just do a search for "brownies" or "peanut butter." Clicking anywhere in the search box brings up a menu that lets you search just this topic, or you can set it to this forum to find mentions in other Commercials topics, too.

He said she isolated herself, was patronizing to Wilde, and emotionally closed off from everyone both while off camera and on. He's not particularly complimentary towards her acting style, that she uses external gestures to communicate the character's emotions rather than processing them internally and trusting it will come through, but allows that it may have been because of the director, John Stahl. His recurring complaint about working with her was that the distance she created between herself and everyone else off-screen continued while filming -- she gave absolutely nothing as an acting partner in a scene. Stahl was the other reason this was one of his least-favorite experiences out of all the films he did. Hickman thought he was going to get fired from the film; he'd never had any troubles before, but when he and Tierney were rehearsing the scene on the boat (where they're both talking facing the camera, as she puts lotion on him) he just absolutely could not satisfy Stahl no matter what he did. Stahl - who wouldn't call him by his name, only "son" - made them do it over and over, and kept apologizing to Tierney for Hickman's performance holding them up. And instead of saying, "He's doing okay" or helping to come up with what Stahl wanted, she just made it worse (he doesn't go into specifics on that). One night at the lodge, Stahl suddenly came up to him, called him by his name, and gave him a handful of coins to play the slot machines with. After giving a baffled look to his mom and Cornel Wilde - the three of them having discussed their confusion as to why Stahl was treating Hickman as he'd been - he asked the A.D. what was up. Stahl had received a telegram from Darryl Zanuck congratulating him on a certain scene with Hickman saying it was the most well-done he'd seen in years. After that, Stahl was nice to Hickman - but turned on Cornel Wilde, treating him just as he'd done Hickman (including calling him "son" rather than by his name).