Living In the World, Not on It

When went to NOAA's Web site just now, there it was: the article I'd been waiting for. That article pronouncing NOAA's thoughts on the upcoming 2013 Hurricane Season. It was there as the first item up out of several choices, unsurprisingly - a lot of us are deeply affected by this. I was thinking about it not long before, as it is windy today, quite a bit so. And it is late May - hurricane season begins 1 June. So here is the article: " In its 2013 Atlantic hurricane season outlook issued today,  NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center  is forecasting an active or extremely active season this year. For the six-month hurricane season, which begins June 1, NOAA’s Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook says there is a 70 percent likelihood of 13 to 20 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which 7 to 11 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 3 to 6 major hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of 111 mph or higher). These ranges are we...

Dum, da-da-dum... DUM DA-DUM DUM DUM DUUUUUM! Yes, I'm back with more exciting MasterChef news, this time from 24 July's Episode "Top 8 Complete" - such exciting names, don't you think? I don't, but maybe that is just me. I like the title I gave it and have faith that left to one of the three judges (or all three of the judges) that this would be great! I guess it is easier to fall back on these life-less titles, however, than to go for more enticing ones. The cooks now have to spend a night outside and come up with a dish based on what is outside and what few ingredients they get and tools as well. They get a choice of rabbit or pigeon (cough...), some vegetables. For utensils, they get one camping knife, one flint for lighting fires, one iron skillet, and a wooden spoon. Bri and Natasha are team captains. Bri has first pick and went for James. Natasha picked Jordan; Bri, Eddie; then Natasha selected Jessie. This leaves Krissi and Luca. Gordon sa...

Not yet, but this weekend I will be! Luis is so wonderful. He knows that I am crushed about not being able to get to the New York Renaissance Festival now that my car is totaled, so he is taking me there and we are going to stay in the Castle at Skylands Manor Saturday through Monday. I'm thrilled, just delighted, and he knows he is making me very, very happy. I need to get out of the house. There really isn't enough of this to make it oath posting, but I am anyway: as a testament to just how much I love my man!

Every year in September, we go through the "let's load up the TiVO with 50,000 new telly shows" game, that I intensely dislike, and Luis loves. I have my handful of favourite telly shows; that is all I need to be happy. I am not thrilled when the good ones are yanked off the air - which seems to happen all too frequently without my express  approval - and yet they keep the lowest common denominator shows on forever. It irks me to no end. But every season I end up getting sucked into a show or two, despite my best efforts to dig my heels in and go kicking and screaming into them. This season, the show I was least likely to watch suddenly shifted into high gear and I watched it - all of the first four episodes, with just one more remaining. Is the suspense killing you? Sure it it... but here goes: Almost Human . Now, I was dead-set against it for two reasons: it had that depressing and weird futuristic feel that far too many shows have these days; and I was constan...

I wrote this on 6 September of 2013, but even though I reset the date here, the damned thing set it today's date. Unreal. Well. Four contestants left. This is a two-hour episode, so we will kill off one contestant in the first hour and the next at the end of the second hour. The new season of shows will be starting all too soon, so this week and next will be the end of the show. They are currently filming the contestant efforts for the 2014 season, as we have seen the ads for the different cities they will be touring to get new participants. Now, they show a few minutes of the last episode, then give a quick snapshot of the upcoming episode. Very often they take things out of context, but this time, I think Krissy is actually threatening Jesse. We'll see. The way this will play out seems rather obvious to me. There are two mystery boxes, so it is a safe bet that with four people left, it will be teams of two. This means that the winner from the last episode will get ...

Do I agree with this? You will have to read it first and decide for yourself. I had long since made up my mind before finding this article. MasterChef Season 5 Fixed: Courtney Lapresi Won Finale After Getting Preferential Treatment – Former Stripper Favoritism BY  STORMY ELIZABETH  ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 "They say if you can’t take the heat, you should get out of the kitchen, but what if you like it hot? If you’ve been watching  MasterChef this season 5 , you may have noticed that one contestant in particular seems to  be “winning” challenges  when her dishes don’t seem to be quite up to it.  Courtney Lapresi  has been billed as an “aerial dancer” on the show. So what exactly is that, you ask? It’s a fancy word for stripper. You may term what she does as burlesque, but nekked is nekked and she takes off her  clothes  when she dances, so you have to call them as you see them. Plus is it really...

MasterChef is interesting to watch - unlike Hell's Kitchen , they are pitting people who are home cooks against each other, instead of people who (purport to) have worked in a kitchen. (I tend to doubt it; and if they did, then either 1. it was the most dysfunctional kitchen extant, or 2. they lied utterly about their title or true position. Some of the Executive Chefs that come to the show are clearly not working at their title, not producing dishes that indicate they know anything about working in a kitchen.) What makes MasterChef  unique is that these people have never had to cut their teeth on serving plates to 200 people or had to cook outside of their comfort zone. And some people actually come with some mighty strange ideas - ideas that they swear up and down worked with people they've cooked for... but clearly someone lied to them in telling the creator that it was delicious. Quite frankly, if someone served me apple pie with onions in it, I might actually have to...

That is Gaelic for "The Gift of Gourmet Sugar". I am the biggest sugar junkie you will ever meet. I don't drink alcohol, I don't inhale anything, I don't engage in the use of illegal drugs. The drugs I take legally, I dislike intensely. I don't eat fried foods of any kind. I don't care for cake, cookies (unless it is raw sugar-cookie dough - I like my raw cookie dough unencumbered with chocolate chips), heavy desserts. But man, I love, beyond all imagining, candy! Unlike my mother and many, many others, I am not a chocholic. I tolerate chocolate, and occasionally like it as a part of something specific (chocolate covered strawberries, chocolate covered pretzels). I will never eat a Hersey's Bar for two big reasons: it is shit chocolate and it is heartlessly boring. Any true chocolate connoisseur would thumb his or her nose at the Hershey franchise, followed by almost anything on the supermarket shelf names. Chocolates that are of intermedia...

Here it is, my post for today - just under the wire, but I made it! (Gasp, wheeze, cough!) Today Luis and I went to the movies. He really wanted to see Mocking Something or Other , but the seating in the Cinema Suites were filled. So we saw Big Hero 6  in the Fork & Screen theatres. We love the Cinema Suites the most: full meals, seating that is above and beyond anything one could want, no kids allowed! No one under 21, due to the alcohol they serve there. In the Fork & Screen portion of Cinema Suites, any age is allowed. The full meals are still there, the seating is above average, but in the Suites, the super-comfortable full length reclining chairs allow you to be supine if you want. Nothing beats this. As a result, we only go there, not the "theatres of the masses" with the bubblegum on the seats, disgusting bathrooms and loudmouthed morons. If you are going to the movies, do it right! Since there was no seeing the latest Hunger Games  release f...