Ina Garten

Can't stand her, but for some reason end up watching her anyway. A couple weeks ago she said something along the lines of "I need to cook nice meals so that my husband will want to come home to me after his business trips." So annoying.

There's a fantasy novel whose name I can't now recall, by a friend of Lewis's named Charles Williams, about an impending apocalypse in which the universe is disintegrating into formless chaos, and doom is averted by the act of Naming.

Not The Never-Ending Story? My memory of that is quite fuzzy, but I remember that's how the boy-hero triumphs, by Naming the Queen(?).

sj, I would LOVE to visit you East Coast-types. Just have to figure out the $$$....

Gabbo will tell us what to do...

t /Homer Simpson

I like the name Meredith.

It was in the restricted zone, however, and thus not an option for us.

The restricted zone was as follows: no names starting with M; no names starting with P (too many in Paul's family already, including the dog); no names ending in -bel, -bol, bal, or -belle.

So many names I really liked a lot were in that zone.

{{{{-t}}}}} My thoughts are with you and your family. You've been through so much. I hope you're ok.

Definitely not The Never-Ending Story, but damned if I can remember what the title actually was.

I also remember that when I raved about it to my friend Shel (who, interestingly, chose his own first name, and who just got married and is changing his last name), he said that if that was what pinged me, I really needed to read a novel by Ursula LeGuin called _______... and I can't remember the title of the LeGuin either.

I have two to-be-read lists: the list of the books that are actually lying around the house that I'm working my way through, and the list of can't quite remember but know I meant to read them eventually if I can only remember the title, but I know it was the one with the cover, by that guy.

"I need to cook nice meals so that my husband will want to come home to me after his business trips."

Yeah her interpersonal stuff is weird. I actually find it entertaining... I mock every single Food Network show and chef I watch, no matter how much I like them.

still laughs about Alton Brown making Liquid Smoke in his backyard. Dude's crazy!

It was blue, right? Ah, "I'll take you there," One of the sexiest things I ever saw was Marlee Matlin dancing to that with William Hurt in "Children of a Lesser God" Still wondered about it in an Italian place, but maybe Marlee learned to dance to it.

I don't really have a restricted name zone, but I did make my sisters promise not to use Madeline. My husband doesn't like it, so it seems I won't get to ever use it either. He, of course, favors Shazam for any child he has, which I always answer with this: "That's a great name for a DOG."

Tom would like to name our never-to-born children Influenza and Plague.

that I find this incredibly amusing is a testament to our decision to not have children.