Bastet

Uh oh. Spoil me, please -- why was it awful? (I'd heard it was good other than Mrs. Scully, more William mentions, and "Fox." Now I'm nervous.) Kaddish, a season four episode that bores me to tears.

I've seen that, but with this house there was no longer a garage door; it was stucco (or whatever the house was made of; I didn't look all that closely) and a window. But the driveway was still there.

She's probably my favorite of the modern-era authors. Her characterization almost always rings true for me, and she does a good job trying to make sense of things in a way CC never bothered to do.

I don't know how he was acting prior to that, but watching that clip the getting up and leaving does seem like a reaction to what he'd just heard.

I still haven't watched press conference footage. I've read about it, but even though I don't have strong feelings about Cam Newton (I didn't watch him play much in college, and haven't seen a lot of Carolina games), it irks me that he has been the subject of so much bullshit complaining and now he's done something to legitimately criticize and there's going to be this attitude out there that this incident validates all the crap that's been hurled at him. So I think it was very poor form and I wish he hadn't done it. The man fought his way through a throng of people on the field to congratulate Peyton Manning (when Peyton Manning had only slightly more to do with Denver's victory than I did), and then that embarrassing display. But what I'm looking for is what he does now. Because if he gets asked about it and says it was a dumb thing to do in an emotional moment, I'll probably never give it another thought.

In the Orlando episode, I cracked up at the house where the owners had converted the garage into a kitchen ... but left the driveway leading right up to it. It looked so silly from the outside, this driveway to nowhere.

The meat I've had from Costco is really good. I mostly buy from family farms, but there are times I ignore my own rules and buy commercial meat from Costco. The pork spare ribs are always fabulous, as are the lamb chops. I've never bought beef there, as everything they have is boneless and I don't understand steak without the bone (unless it's filet mignon). I've never bought chicken, either, because I have ready access to a local chicken farm. And their frozen wild Alaskan salmon is actual wild Alaskan salmon (and very tasty). Costco has a good reputation for its products being what they're purported to be (e.g. the UC Davis extra virgin olive oil study), and for being a great taste at a great price. (I have no idea about Sam's; I won't give the Waltons any of my money.)

I am weird about popcorn, and will not eat it with anything other than butter on it. Anything else, I may love the topping on its own, but do not want it on my popcorn; the combination becomes terribly off-putting to me. It's how I am with fruit dipped in chocolate, too - I love the fruit, I love the chocolate, but as soon as you combine them I hate the result.

Y'all know my love for Brandi with an i. And Artemis really got to me, too -- the look on her face when she got into that crate in the van and plopped down. The exhaustion and relief were so evident she may as well have been wearing a flashing neon sign. This was a dog who didn't know who Tia was or where they were going, but knew without a doubt she was on her way to something better after being used up and tossed away. It was palpable. Very affecting.

This was an odd game for me to watch, as I was basically rooting for both teams but not caring who won. But that was outstanding defense by Denver, so my hat's off to them. I feel bad for Carolina; what a disappointing loss after such an exciting season. As for the much disputed catch, when I saw it in real time I thought it hit the ground between the first and second times he had it in his hands, so I wasn't surprised by the incomplete pass ruling. Then when we got a look at it during the challenge, I obviously saw that it hadn't, and it was going to come down to whether he possessed it properly once he got his hands on it the second time. My feeling was, "It's a catch, but under the stupid catch rules, it will be ruled incomplete." Bingo. I went on to other things as soon as the game was over, so I don't know what Cam did. I'm not sure I want to. And I'm not sure it matters; he'd get shit no matter what he did.

Is there a link that's working? Because that Twitter link above goes to nothing, and the link my friend sent me to the FOX website brings up "this content is currently unavailable." Of course, reading these comments leads me to believe I should just skip episode six altogether, never mind the clips, but if anyone has a good link - or a description of what happened - I'll subject myself to it. Okay, nevermind - I found it online somewhere. That was really boring and then really weird at the last second. God, I hate CC's voiceovers.

I can't begin to guess how many times I've read that story. Her case files are each good, but taken together feel very repetitive to me. I don't tend to revisit any of them. But Isometry? I probably re-read that at least once a year.

Hers was pretty much the only Mulder-centric fic I, a card-carrying member of OBSSE (rogue division), consistently liked. And I'm also still friends with someone I met through one of the XF forums back in the day, although I can't remember which one. Which is now bugging me, and I'm going to have to email her to ask if she recalls.

Guys, it is four hours until kick-off and I still have no idea who I'm rooting for. I hate John Elway. I'm an NFC fan. I'd like Cam Newton to metaphorically shove the trophy up some racist asses. I have some sort of affection for Peyton as Eli's brother and would kind of like him to go out on top, but I can't let go of the college battery he's never taken responsibility for (and which the media has consistently glossed over). My "root for the underdog" inclination towards Denver is fading because reports out of Vegas have bets shifting from a good 85% on Carolina to a fairly even split. So, the Panthers, right? But I don't "know" them. I think I've seen them play twice this year outside of the post-season. I just can't get good and fired up about them with so little investment. Makes sense, but why am I experiencing this tug for Denver? I guess because they've been so roundly dismissed in the little bit of sports media I've ingested these past two weeks. Oh, well. At least the Patriots aren't in it. It has been a very difficult week emotionally, so maybe it's good to just sit back and watch a game without really caring who walks away the winner.

Avocados are in season pretty much year-round in California, too - different varieties at different times of the year. If grocery stores hadn't created a situation in which people think the Hass avocado is the only avocado, people could be buying in-season avocados locally all year round here (instead of buying Hass all year, so that sometimes it's local and sometimes it's from Mexico or even South America). Fuerte and Pinkerton are in season right now - and utterly delicious - but, no, the major groceries are stocking imported Hass. So I haven't seen the ad, but I'm preemptively annoyed by it.

I hate potatoes; the only way I will eat them is as french fries, and only if cut so thin and cooked so crispy - and dipped in ranch dressing - they no longer taste like a potato. Or as a flavored potato chip. But baked, roasted, mashed, anything that actually tastes of potato? Nope. I have spent my entire life dealing with, "Really? You don't eat potatoes?!" Yes, really. There are lots of things I love that other people don't. I manage not to find this shocking. Different strokes and all that. I just go to my parents' house to watch the Super Bowl every year; none of us will do the SB party thing, due to the high risk of annoying people who are there for the food and beer rather than the game and will thus chatter through it. So, smaller portions of each, but we still do quite the selection of snacks: shrimp cocktail, chicken wings (baked parmesan and herb wings this year), stuffed mushrooms (stuffed with spicy Italian sausage this year), veggies and a dill dip, a cheese, salami, crackers, and olive platter, spinach, artichoke & cheese dip with pita crisps, and I think chicken tenders, too (similar flavor profile as the wings). One cat might steal a shrimp and the other might nab a wing, but they generally remember their manners. We used to have a cat who'd steal broccoli, and loved the dill dip. If she had thumbs, I'm sure we'd have found her perched on the table, dunking a spear of broccoli in the dip.

That was funny. In the end, it put me in three cities in northern California (when I'm in Los Angeles, which is also where I was born and raised), so it was close, but along the way there were so many questions when it had no ever-loving idea where I was. And I'd move from one side of the country to the other from question to question. Entertaining. My real answer to some of these is that sometimes I say this, sometimes I say that. Especially the one about trucks carrying freight -- I'd say semi, 18-wheeler, big rig, or maybe even one or two others. Oh, look -- it isn't the same 25 questions every time, so it's interesting to take the quiz more than once and see how the results change. It still put me in northern CA for two cities, but now Salt Lake City, UT is my third. I wonder how many variations there are ... I can waste some serious time on this. Hee ... now it thinks I live in New Mexico.

Ooh, I do. I love chicken wings just about any way, but one of my favorites - and what we're having this year - happens to be baked rather than fried. (It's not a health choice; they're dipped in butter and then coated in a mixture of parmesan cheese, herbs, and spices.)

Aren't Syzygy and Fight Club the only comedic episodes Chris has written? If so, he's 1-1 with me, because I love the former and don't even bother to watch the latter. But I have yet to hear a single positive word about Babylon ... although I'm not out there looking; I see what's posted here or emailed to me by a friend who, I think, reads XFN. It doesn't sound good, at all. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. But I'm pretty much expecting to walk away from this revival just watching the Were-Monster over and over. And over.

I was reading through old posts in this thread (yeah, I'm weird), and because I've recently been paying far more attention to VRC in real life/time (rather than just on the show) because of Tia's injury (Lucky continues to help her recover, and, yes, she's coming out of her hair being laid up), a couple of things jumped out at me ... Right now, they adopt out about 50 dogs per month. (And yet still have so many coming in that they have at least 300 at any given time.) Back in Agua Dulce, when the show was in its infancy, they adopted out maybe five per month. Standard procedure is to transport multiple dogs at one time to their new homes in the same general area -- they've recently done a run to California, and one to Florida, for example. And, also, remember that the trips we see on the show are paid for by production; it's not extra money out of VRC's coffers to make a trip with just one dog. (In normal situations, out-of-state adopters bear the cost of transport for their pet, and doing it in bunches lessens everyone's share of those costs.)

I remember discussing XF (and the soap opera I was watching at the time, heh) on the Prodigy bulletin boards in 1994 ('92 or '93 for the soap, then XF when I started watching in season two). And my first foray beyond Prodigy to the world-wide web was to atxf (alt.tv.x-files newsgroup), where my ass was parked immediately following each episode for several years. Then I ventured into the burgeoning world of fanfic (atxfc and then the archives that started popping up - Tinman, Sparky's, and, of course, Gossamer), downloading stories onto a disc to read later, because our dial-up modem was so slow. Oh, and I think in the very beginning of Prodigy we only had a certain number of minutes per month. Good times. Oh, and Prodigy gave you a random username made up of letters and numbers (I think you could later change it to something of your own), and mine had XF in the middle of it. It meant nothing to me when we first signed up, but after I started watching the show, I was ridiculously stoked. And other posters on the XF bulletin board were jealous. Ha.

I had fallen asleep during halftime the year of the "wardrobe malfunction" and woke up (in a recliner, so staring at the TV) right as he exposed her breast. So I'm in that semi-confused state where asleep transitions to awake, and wondering, "Wait, am I looking at a nipple right now?" I was at my parents' house, but they were both out of the room, so I had no one to ask. So I wasn't entirely sure what had happened until I heard about it after the game. I usually skip the national anthem (I saw Whitney Houston's performance, thankfully, and will probably watch Lady Gaga as I think she has a great voice, too) and the halftime performances are just background noise as I'm milling around. I remember when the performers were college marching bands, and being kind of "what are they doing at a football game?" about it when New Kids on the Block performed. I could never have imagined what was to come. I remember U2, Michael Jackson, Madonna, a Motown gathering, the Rolling Stones, and Springsteen, but just to say I remember they have done halftime shows; I don't specifically remember anything about the shows. Oh, and Beyoncé.

Oh, I think she'll do another six if they can work out the timing (and, yeah, pay her fairly). I just don't see her leading the charge to get it done; I think it will be like it was for these six, CC and DD persuading her and her saying, fine, if everything falls into place I will be there. My main curiosity is whether CC is going to try to get Fox to agree to a third film or stick with another limited-run series. And whether Fox is going to try to get them to do 13 episodes instead of six (DD and GA said no way we're doing 13 when talks began for this revival, so I don't think they'll want to do it now, either). Fox is likely waiting to see if the ratings hold.

My Super Bowl pet peeve is Super Bowl parties. I will never, ever attend one. (I go to my parents' house to watch the game with them -- and munch on all the good food.) It's always a bunch of people who are there for the food and the beer, with the game being secondary; half of them know nothing about football, so there's a bunch of talking during the game ... hell no.

I vaguely remember that one; it's from the Agua Dulce days, when Tia still did dog training. So the dog had been brought to her for evaluation, and Tia basically said it was an ingrained mental problem, not a behavioral problem that could be trained away.