Top Chef (again): WTF was Ilan thinking with the chicken liver in the ganache. Liver truffle? Yech.

We never spoke of it.

I just bonked the hell out of my cat's head before shooting her. I think I am about to be demoted to only being allowed puppies. Or goldfish. Or a ficus. Maybe a stamp collection.

Video of icy streets in (I think) Portland: [link]

It's amazing. Accident after accident after accident. I think the first car suffered five or six different collisions - it just kept going/sliding on....

One of the childhood cats was afraid of the dark den. She'd sit on one threshold and howl (she was siamese) until a person came from one of the bedrooms to escort her across.

Mister Kitty routinely howls at 5 am. I suspect he can't see well (based on how he startles and the diabetes) and wakes up and freaks out. I don't get up mostly and eventually he makes it to my bed to sleep the rest of the morning out on a pillow.

ION, the whole loading up my music for my ipod? Still making me discover stuff I love.

Awww, what a sweet kitty story! (ETA: That's for Zenkitty, not Mr. Kitty so much--sad to hear about his vision problems!)

My father's theory of children dining was "you must clean your plate, otherwise no dessert." This, I think, is one of the main reasons I am now morbidly obese, combined with a very sedentary upbringing and naturally lazy tendencies, as well as genetic proneness to obesity through my dad's mother's side. Which makes my dad's blaming my sister's and my weight on my mom rather ironic, and really pissed me off when I found that out some 20 years ago.

Anyway, I still have a very hard time leaving anything on my plate. I'm going to replace my cheap and ugly dinner plates with some very pretty salad plates eventually--much smaller surface area, and will help me with eating smaller meals.

When I was in high school and babysitting, I had one kid who was very self-sufficiant and didn't really need a babysitter. I was supposed to watch the dog, an ancient daschund wienerdog, who would sometimes have nightmares. Her family were afraid she would have a heart attack in her sleep. I had to wake her up if she started to moan.

Allyson, I can check with my bookstore manager mom, but I'm fairly certain she is just going to confirm what everyone else has said: that news is made of awesome.

sad to hear about his vision problems!

I'm not sure if there are problems or not. Mind you, when I got him, his eyes were pretty cloudy due to a fever way back when he was a 2 yr old cat (he's 14ish.) It's also possible he's like me and easily startled, or that Devi has made him paranoid. In any case, he doesn't have any problem getting around and if it is the diabetes, he's taking it better than me (I'm somewhat paranoid.)

Oh! I wasn't going to admit this yet. I wanted to wait until I had some more evidence. But I've been doing the smaller plate thing, and it is totally working for me! I gave myself no rules, no restrictions, no calorie counting. I just use a smaller plate. I can still get seconds if I want. I find that I don't, as often as I would expect. Oh, and if I eat out, I try to split the dish in thirds, and only eat a third.

It gives me time to eat, enjoy, digest, relax. And in the end, it's a simple reduced calorie diet.

We do that too! We use luncheon-size plates and it really does work. Portion control, bay-bee!