Sorry, y'all, I feel like I only come on here to whine these days, but: Ugh, we're getting scary tornado warnings for tomorrow. I HATE TORNADO WEATHER. And M is flying to Chicago right now, through what looks like some pretty nasty weather, and he won't be back until Saturday, and I feel like I should do something to prepare for possible tornadoes but I don't know what. Supposedly we'll be getting the worst of it around noon tomorrow, when I'll be at work and Rose will be at daycare. Neither building has a tornado shelter or basement or anything like that. I hate feeling like there's nothing I can do to protect either of us. And I hate that M is away, not to mention in the middle of what is probably a very bumpy, nerve-wracking flight. UGH.

Happy picnic, David. And tell JenK we miss her! Is she still nursing in obs, or is she working in another specialty now?

Jen's still doing Labor and Delivery. She and her boyfriend, Matt (who moved out from Boston to be with her) bought a house last year not that far from where Consuela lives in the East Bay.

She's making good money, and likes her job and they're doing a lot of home renovations. She started a new drug regimen for her MS, which has the two virtues of being more effective at slowing the lesions than Avonex and having no side effects. The downside is that it has a higher mortality rate. But she seems to be doing fine on it.

We snagged sandwiches at the fancy Haight Street Market and sat on a bench in GG Park and talked for a couple hours until she had to go off to work, and I had to go see Emmett's game.

Those silhouettes are specific rappers, right?

Yes, but I don't think that has enough context to be meaningful to the poster--maybe they're all immediately recognisable and it's my lack of knowing a fucking thing is more an issue than anything else.

Wiki says pesto means anything made by pounding, so probably anything herby/leafy with olive oil and some cheese?

Well, Wiki might have an opinion, but what does Hec say?

I love the boundaries that make food meaningful--a co-worker told me that I'd love these African fries way more than my weekly garlic (and parsley and parmesan) fries from around the way, and by the time he was done I asked "So Masala Fries are french fries on which you put anything you like, and they taste way better than fries on which you have not put the things you like?" "Yes?" "Okay, then we're good."

His definition totally includes the garlic fries anyway, since masala means either spices or mix (if he's not going to be specific, I can posit no interpretation strongly) and cheese was in his sample description.

But Masala fries will blow my mind! Specifically!

(Phase 2 of making it not worth his while to have brought it up will be seeing how much I can appal him with theoretical recipes--I love officially sponsored antagonism. We're the department running joke).

I...I actually know a couple who met via a third-party spreadsheet

I made a spreadsheet that won an improv tournament. If it can do that (read: I can do that) love is nothing. We were (at that time, harrumph) the shitty little brats that quantified the important components of an improviser and an improv group, graded every performer who came across our stage, and then assembled the group that most closely fit our model by suggesting to them it would be really neat if they put on a show in their uncle's barnentered that lineup in the upcoming tournament. We had graphs and everything (that they never saw). I eventually told Colin what we'd done (like, five years ago), and he was totes chill. And, honestly, the fact that I was also a judge was the fairest thing ever, because I needed to vigorously road test my theories.

But...we lost the spreadsheet. Hell, Windows wasn't even at version 3 yet.

I COULD HAVE RULED THE WORLD!!!!

("So what's your role in the troupe?" "I, uh, quantify?" "God, you're the coolest one here")

(I am nostalgy because I grabbed a pair of indoor pants and realised I've had these since university (these, specifically, are part of my first tae kwon do uniform. That's October 1987. I have no idea where the shirt that says "What Up Slut" is from, tho.)

Kate, bathtub, blankets. Daycare has a protocol, as does your work.

I too have a visceral lizard fear of tornados, and I don't even live in tornado country! Been through a few rounds in MN on summer vacation, but even so, never really that near. But the fear lives. And my brother's family has come way too close in Bama.

So just...hear your fears. And let them go. There really isn't anything you can do beyond what you've done.

Thanks, sara. You're right -- there are a few things I can do, and I'll do them. Everyone here knows the drill. I will still want to drive to Rose's daycare when the sirens go off, though, just to be there with her. I probably won't do that, but honestly, I'm glad to know it's an option. And I'll feel better, too, once I know that M has landed, in an hour or so (insh'allah).

Good luck to your brother and his family. I'll be thinking of them too.

My brother was the idiot out on his deck while his family sheltered in the basement and a tornado took out a lot of houses a mere mile away. They didn't know that until later, in his defense (though not in defense of his ignoring the warnings. To their neighborhood, it was just a thunderstorm and winds.)

PJ's gone and picked up the kids when the tornado threat is bad,even sometimes discovering in hindsight, they moved to worse danger(actually, I think my brother did it once, and found himself caught in traffic heading into one, so he's all fuckit now . ) It's an option, but with this particular natural disaster, still a crapshoot. You do what's good for the heart. Everything else is not on you.

Yeah, I'm a bit blasé about tornados having grown up where they are, but don't go on the road! Bad plan.

Earthquakes freak me out way more. No warning!

Lee, WRT basenjis and cats...I think the issue is that basenjis are cats. In dog form. Remember the dogs in the elk? One was Gus Pong and other was Jake, a basenji. They are a primitive type dog and might have more of a prey drive than most.

I miss you people. I wish my life were open to more mellowness. But right now it's shit. Shit with a side of pooh.

meara, pretty much. Give me hurricanes. Fine, whatever. But the earthquake here? Lizard brain FREAKED OUT. So did the rational one.

Does anyone know anything about the Da Vinci drama (not the coroner kind) coming on Starz? And does anyone know enough about actual Da Vinci to estimate the bullshit quotient?

There's been some worry at Afterelton because both Goyer and the lead are being very cagey in answering questions about the character's sexuality. At the very least he's been made a rakish ladykiller despite zero historical evidence of Leonardo ever being romantically interested in women, and I suspect that if they were going the Captain Jack Harkness route we'd have had it confirmed by now.

Also, I don't recall reading anything about the real Leonardo going through a sword-wielding action hero phase in his younger days, though of course he had an extremely wide range of interests.