hollow

oh, and who's that on your avatar photo?

If you're referring to Speed Racer's avatar, it's Ellen Feis from the Apple "switch" advertising campaign from a couple of years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2-UuIEOcss

You tried melatonin?

Yep, melatonin and also all the prescription sleep medications. Nothing has worked, and those sleep meds have some unpleasant side effects. Now my doc is trying to get me to go to a sleep clinic... ugh.

I started drinking coffee when I was 3, with milk and sugar (I'd beg sips off my parents and they would give me 'coffee' that was essentially 6 oz. warm milk with enough coffee until it was brown). As I grew, the ratios swapped, and I started drinking it black when I was 10. Every day at 13. Current level of consumption has held strong for 5 years.

At least now I know my parents weren't the only ones who started their kids early on the coffee habit! My brother and I had coffee with milk and sugar starting at 3 -- only no begging involved, it was just served. Drank it daily, up to 1.5 pots a day during grad school, but when I was 25 I got the flu, and got sick on coffee (all I'd had before the flu vomiting started). Once I get sick on something, I can't eat or drink it again. So, I did the cold turkey thing while I had the flu, when I felt awful anyway.

Now, I drink 1-2 cups of tea in the morning. I have terrible insomnia, which I never had when I drank coffee. The caffeine never affected my sleep, but no matter what I do now, I can't sleep. That's a whole different thread though!

Don't dis ain't ... it has a long and storied entomology.

 

 

"...Critics say frequent use of ain

I love vegetable soup, I make it without a recipe as I use what I have available -- the base is veggie or chicken broth and canned tomatoes with a bay leaf and thyme, then I throw in whatever fresh veggies I have in the fridge and a dash of Tabasco (or similar pepper sauce). Sometimes I add pasta or rice, again, it depends on what I have available. Planning on making some soon as my husband will be traveling and I'm on my own for food.

Whatever Jennifer Lopez/JLo song in that one ad and the Beyonce song in the other ad -- neither of which I know the product for, which should say something about the effectiveness of the advertising (or my demographic)... I HATE those songs and if I'm watching live TV (ie, not on the DVR), I scramble for the mute button.

Actually, that looks more like a real tree than most Christmas trees.

 

I guess if you had to do "damage control" over the Linus speech, you'd have to do the same about the whole holiday.

Not really, there are many non-religious people or non-Christian people that celebrate the commercial holiday of Christmas. I get the day off from work (as do my colleagues in India) -- just because I'm not Christian doesn't mean I'm not going to take the day off... and give and accept presents I just don't celebrate the Christ part of Christmas, but I don't mind the fact that many people do, as long as they don't force their beliefs on me.

Try Pasta Carbonara -- but you have to have bacon and Parmesan.

Try Food TV's web site for easy recipes:

Food Network Web Site

It has a recipe from Mario Batali that looks very do-able (I am a terrible cook, so I looked for one that I could attempt if I were in your situation):

Spaghetti Carbonara

That impawards site doesn't allow external linking. I'm just saying it because I've seen their logo a lot in Now Watching - instead of whatever movie you watched.

I haven't seen this logo in this thread -- is this a broad problem? I'll link from elsewhere, I just usually look for a good image and preview to see if it works, I've had some links not allow linking, so I go to others. Any suggestions for a "go-to" site that everyone can see?

Well, Charles Schulz was a religious zealot in his 20s. In interviews later in life he said that Linus's speech represents his spiritual side.

Well, that makes sense. I'm just glad I don't have kids -- I would have had to do a lot of damage control in response to that speech. But, I guess I could have always emphasized the tree part, which was especially noteworthy this year in Seattle, as the city's xmas tree has been called "the Charlie Brown" tree by many. For an area of the country where xmas trees are abundant, Seattle got a really sad looking one... quite embarrassing. Apparently, the logger who cut the tree wasn't in the loop and cut off 1/3 of the tree's boughs, so the city had to add extra ones.

Plenty of Love for Downtown Charlie Brown Tree

Logger Didn't Know Tree Was Supposed to be Seattle's Tree

When "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was on TV last week, we watched it for nostalgia and I was surprised by how overtly religious it was -- I know it's from the late 60s, but I just remembered watching it as a kid and rooting for the poor xmas tree that Charlie Brown picked out. Years later, that's the "moral" I remember -- don't judge a tree until it's shown some love (and stolen decorations from Snoopy's dog house)

Here's our list -- I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out as it's all over the house and not in one central location. Eventually we'll find the right house and have a dedicated music room with safe wiring again (renting an original 1923 house with some scary wiring), until then, we're primarily playing the acoustics - safer all around.

Acoustic:

Seagull Folk

Ibanez AW40 "Tree of Life" dreadnought - got it at a firesale price

Larrivee custom OM-09 - bought used from a studio musician

Electric:

1966 Gibson ES-330 Cherryburst

1971 Gibson ES-335 Cherry

1985 Squier (Japanese-made Strat copy, my husband's first guitar)

???? Jackson - bought used for $75 off Craigslist

200x Epiphone DOT - project guitar that my husband is rewiring and customizing

2008 Custom Heatley guitar - luthier just got the "right" wood and is going to start building with an early 2008 completion date

Other:

Roland SX-700 keyboard

multiple amps that don't work in our current house due to old wiring (or are too dangerous to use due to potential fire danger)

Fender Hot Rod

Epiphone Valve Junior

Line-6 Pod

custom-made pedals

People use "who's" instead of "whose" far too often.

Add the misuse of "who" and "whom" to that category too!

Glad I'm not the only one who notices these grammar errors (or just plain "wrong word" instances).

A few I can add are:

its versus it's

effect versus affect

ain't

And, while I realize it's a dialect-related issue, the mispronunciation of my state, Washington -- it has no "r" in it.

A classic now showing on Encore -- not out of bubblegum yet...

Tons of classic quotes, and the best fisticuffs scene in movie history -- SouthPark even did a pretty close scene for scene homage to it

No names for ours, other than "the Seagull", "the Strat", the "330", the "335", etc. Not very creative, I guess... but it helps in explaining which guitar we're referring to

Thanks for the heads up....moving them to the top of the Netflix queue!

Second the thanks for the heads up on The Wire season 4 -- just added to my Netflix queue too

You see, I would think that the undead and a woman with a machinegun leg would be more interesting than a really safe stunt car. But Quentin's record is better than Robert's. I'm not in a rush to see either of these anyway, so I have nothing to add other than I saw part of Kill Bill vol 1 on tv the other night and I think that the volumes could easily be combined if you cut out the musically timed dramatic glares into the camera before each fight sequence, but what's the fun in that i guess.

Having seen both Grindhouse movies over the past weekend, I thought Planet Terror was better in that it wasn't boring (and had "zombies" and a woman with a machine-gun leg ). I expected Death Proof to be better, but the first half hour was so boring and had such awful acting that it felt like Tarantino was probably having a laugh at his audience's expense, and then he has a acting role and his acting is like rubbing salt in the wound. When you finally get the first "action" sequence, it's as if he's trying to make up for the painful boredom of the first 30-45 minutes (which seemed like a LOT longer), and it is a great scene... but knowing what transpires leading up to it, in hindsight, I'd fast forward... but, then maybe that action scene wouldn't be as rewarding...

Yes, I should probably clarify -- the first part of Death Proof was incredibly boring, the car scenes were good, and the rest of the movie was just plain boring (so, differing degrees of boring). It was that first part that had me wondering if I could stick with the movie... but I did.

So, I agree, the entire movie was boring, save for the kills -- I just rank the degrees of boring-ness

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals are making their way down the West coast in early January - already got my tickets for the Seattle show

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals 2008 Tour Dates

Found someone else's pic of our Seattle neighborhood in the daylight today (yes, I'm lazy, didn't bother to get the camera out for today's "snow event"):

And here's Pioneer Square (historic district):

We've had snow in Seattle since around noon PST today -- they predicted it changing to rain in the mid-afternoon, but they were wrong. No pics though, it's dark now (and still snowing). Snow in Seattle doesn't happen often, maybe once or twice a year. Stayed home all day and enjoyed the change of scenery

Here's the current weather-cam from my neighborhood - dark and snowy:

I ended up fastforwarding thru the endless blather to the kill scenes, which are indeed inventive.

I saw Death Proof last night, and wish I'd had this advice in advance. The first part of the movie, up until the first car scene was incredibly boring. Definitely Tarantino's worst so far - I don't have high hopes for his next endeavor after seeing Death Proof. And, please, would he just stop trying to act!

Watched "Grindhouse: Death Proof" last night... a disappointment, but I didn't have high hopes. A few good scenes, but overall I found it to be slow and boring. Had to re-watch Hot Fuzz afterward so I could at least have a good Friday night movie experience, even if it was from a movie I've seen multiple times.

The New York Times just published its 100 Notable Books of 2007 (both fiction & non-fiction) at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/books/re...books-2007.html (you may need to register to view, it's free)

I've found a lot of great books using the NYT list. I have lists saved back to the mid-90s for my library hold list - yes, I use the library instead of buying books, so I often request older books as the newer ones have a longer wait time.