That sounds like quite the storm! Stay well, Buffistas.

Here, it's a good 26F WARMER than it was when I woke up, and yet, it's still below freezing.

It's going to be a long winter.

Ooh I think my "walk" tonight has turned into walk up to the shops for First Friday! Specifically:

I wanna go!

I love that the bad hair site recommended wigs for Nicole.

Tomorrow I'm going to go shopping with my Xmas gift certificate, and hope to get good sale deals! I also need to do laundry. I think that might be my whole plan.

Random question: I bought one of those cartons of soup. Can I freeze half of it? I realize I might not actually want to eat it four times in a row.

Stay safe, Bayistas!

I just got home. Somehow, without me having to do anything, there's a fluffy kitty on my lap....

Damn cat insists on being petted....

ION, I love this ad from the "Missed Connections" section of Craigslist:

I wish I had that conversation to do over. We met at Boulevard Tavern and we both had had a little too much to drink. After talking about bands and suggestive billboards and tattoos, we began discussing "deal breakers." It just so happened that this was a day or so after I awoke with what felt like mosquito bites on my arms and shoulders, and I told you that I thought they might be bedbug bites. You told me that you would never sleep in a bed that had ever had bedbugs or with a man who had ever slept in such a bed and I, offended, told you that I would never sleep with a woman who had ever had an outbreak of herpes. Then you stalked off, leaving me with my Blue Nun (the PBR of 2008, dawg) to wonder how an evening that began with such promise could end so badly.

OK, first of all, I got rid of most of my bedding, washed the rest in very hot water, encased the mattresses in vinyl encasements, and brought in an exterminator. He is convinced from the pattern and number of bites that it was a SPIDER that got me, not bedbugs. (As he put it, "I don't see breakfast, lunch and dinner.") It's been over sixteen days since I last got bit, and if there were bedbugs left in there, I'd have been bitten every night since and their eggs would have hatched to bite me even more. Didn't happen, so maybe it was a spider or a mosquito after all. No matter, the place has been cleaned and sprayed, so there is less chance of bedbugs here than wherever else you might choose to end up. (And, not to gross you out, but homeless dudes on the subway are always shedding whatever is crawling on their skin. I know you ride the L line, so how do you know you are not picking up bedbug eggs from sitting where a homeless dude with a filthy blanket has just sat?) As far as the herpes crack goes, I don't know if you have it or not, but I use condoms, and you could use Valtrex (R), so why should this stop us? I felt a connection with you, a real one, a surprising one. It isn't often that a man like me, grinding it out for Conde Naste with all those pretentious trust funder types living in SoHo, gets to meet a girl with your look and sensitivities. I think there is something there between us worth pursuing, and we should not let the false possibility of bedbugs or blisters get between us. Write back. I want a mulligan.

Um... eww?

[link]

And we're left to wonder why I don't get dates.

Sheeeeeit, I'm freakin' Ayla Inventer of Civilization compared to this guy.

Happy Birthday, ita!

Wait. Fred Thompson is still running for president, right? I thought that meant we couldn't see him on Law & Order? Because of equal time or whatever? Did they decide that in fact it is Fred Thompson and not Arthur Branch who is running, and that's why?

FNLdeer loward: Riggins with baby Gracie in a pink jumper. Riggins being all protective of Julie. BUT RIGGINS AND BABYFLYING.

My feet are cold even after a hot soak. It isn't even as cold as last night and I have frozen feet that are making my legs ache. I hate winter.

Ah.

[link]

Now that Law & Order co-star Fred Thompson has signaled his plans to announce his presidential candidacy on Sept. 6, TNT, which airs voluminous repeats of the show, tells B&C in an e-mailed statement that it has "no plans to alter its programming schedule."

The show is scheduled to run on the cable network 23 times next week.

Thompson’s candidacy, when it becomes official, will trigger the FCC's equal-time rule, which requires stations or cable operators that air appearances of federal candidates—even in an entertainment context—to provide equal time to other qualified candidates. Broadcast and cable networks are not subject to the requirement, but TV stations are. Although it has not previously applied to cable systems, some cable networks have reportedly taken steps to avoid triggering the rule and setting a precedent.