CritterKeeper

"We live in a world where lemonade is made from chemicals, and floor wax is made with real lemon."

Blame Tedd, it's standard procedure.

That stage of a cold when your nose starts to peel

I've done it two ways. First, I have a little 7" portable DVD player which turned out to be able to play both Region 1 and Region 2. It also has a dock for my video iPod, something I haven't seen before or since (and the fact that it's a "video iPod" probably narrows down the dates....). Second, there are some DVD players which block other regions at a software level, rather than hardware, so if you can find the right button combinatin online, you can unlock them. When I've seen videos played on NTSC TVs that way, the picture sometimes looks a little off, but by no means bad enough to be a problem, and sometimes it's perfect.

Eh, everyone claims to be a Sith Lord. No one ever admits they're just a Sith Peon.

My garden. So far, I've grown grasses, flowers, bushes, and a tree, as well as attracting turtles, a bird, a deer, a snake, and some sort of ferret-like creature but with a skinnier neck. And, for some reason, a desk with an owl sitting on it.

Dark chocolate Hershey's Kisses.

Speaking from the doctor's perspective, your first statement is likely *far* more accurate than your second. I don't have an exhaustive mental catalog of how much each medication costs, and even if I did, prices change as patents and competitors come and go. If our animal hospital carries something, I probably have a general idea whether it's cheap or expensive, but anything I have to write a prescription for, I probably really *don't* know how much it costs. Happened to me with my M.D. once, too. He gave me a prescription, and when I went to get it filled, it was something like $250. At the time, I was on an insurance where I paid everything up front, and then hoped to get reimbursed later. So, I did what I tell clients to do, I called him up and told him the problem. He gave them a prescription for something else, a little older but just as effective for what I needed it for, for less than a tenth the cost. I know that isn't always an option, but it is a lot more often than people realize. And he, too, had had no idea there was that big a difference in cost. (As for having money, vets have always had it a lot harder than M.D.s, but from what I've heard about student loans, malpractice insurance, and the costs of running a business, a lot of them aren't nearly as well-off as past generations of physicians were....)

Well, one did take place before the other. Maybe after she cooled down from her annoyance, and thought about it, Susan asked her mother about relatives, and wound up meeting her cousins and spending time with them, especially holidays. That could be the case whether adoption ever came up or not.

Our local public library has an extensive DVD collection, including both popular movies and more obscure, PBS specials to the latest HBO dramas. It's quite popular. There are also those little Red Box stations at drugstores and groceries which charge a dollar a night. That happens to be the late fee for the library's DVDs, so I sometimes tell people who mention renting from RedBox that I get the same deal, except the first week is free! (Often the first three weeks unless it's new stuff....) And, as I said, there's a Family Video near here which seems to be doing quite well. I'm a little surprised the On Demand and streaming services haven't offered any of the extras that are on the DVDs, but I suspect it's in the contract for the DVD releases that such material be restricted to their format, as a way to get people to buy the DVDs. And it works, too -- the main reason I buy DVDs these days is for the extras, going so far as at get Doctor Who DVDs from the UK because they have more commentary tracks than the American releases.

No way! Elliot is not exactly a good liar, and Susan knows him pretty well. He'd give away that he was hiding *something* by his guilty behavior, and then Susan would have it out of him before Nanase and Diane got as far as the Pompoms' living room!

Besides, I still pass a large Family Video every time I visit my doctor's office. Unless there is a highly localized time warp, that would seem to run counter to the claim that such places don't exist beyond 2012.

It's actually a Doctor Who quote. Back in the days of Patrick Troughton's Doctor travelling with Jamie and Victoria, there was an episode where the Doctor and Jamie were searching for a missing Victoria. They were supposed to find some discarded item, I forget if it was jewelry or a scarf or somesuch, and Jamie remarks that it's Victoria's. Well, apparently on one take during filming, instead of the intended prop, the actor pulled out what I have only ever heard described as "a pair of furry knickers." And made the quoted exclamation. I can only imagine how long it took to get the crew to stop laughing long enough to resume filming. :-D

"These are Victoria's, I'd know them anywhere!"

What do you do to season it? I know the general idea of making soup/stock/broth, but the important details always seem to be assumed you already know them.....

Bob Newhart routine about toupee

Have you tried GoodRx.com? I've had several clients find much cheaper prices through them, and one of my own prescriptions is less than half what my insurance would charge me if I use their "coupon".

Yes, but my point was that it's a spell which allows her to summon more than one magical object at once, without needing to have an original object in a chest to make a duplicate of, and she's had it since she Awakened. The next level up for the hammer spell might include summoning objects other than hammers, or it might be creating hammers which are good for more than one hitor do more serious damage. The next level for the summon-copy-of-any-object-in-marked-trunk spell also could expand to include modifying the objects or creating more durable copies (which actually has already happened with the fairydolls, but that's peanut-butter-in-chocolate interaction between spells....).

*plants boxes of tissues all over the site*

That's a great idea! Given how the summoned copies of weapons and fairydolls are different from the originals, it does make me wonder what migt be different about the summoned copies of her spellbook, though. Brownie points for the Real Genius reference! :-D She already has! When she was awakened, she gained the ability to summon various hammers, no magic chest needed. I would expect that spell to improve with use, perhaps adding in various tools or making the hammers more durable. Susan's chest has various tools (I think a crowbar was mentioned) as well as weapons and fairydolls. Diane might wind up summoning something other than weapons. Imagine if she could summon her makeup and not have to carry a purse, or make a magical copy of the latest fashions without having to buy them, or summon high-tech gadgets like an iPhone or Android tablet. Weapons don't really reflect who Diane is, but plenty of other things might. Whether such spells generally start out summoning magical copies of specific items from a magic container at a distance, or whether they might sometimes start out with small, simple objects from scratch or copies of items right in front of them, is as yet unknown.

The first example doesn't count, that's the dress Nanase chose for Ellen to wear at Grace's birthday party. Ellen was blushing like mad, clearly not comfortable with the look, when she first appeared wearing it. This is quite possible, but I don't think it's anything sinister. I think it's more the way people in general tend to adapt to the situations they find themselves in. We're wonderfully adaptable, which is part of how we've spread across the planet into every environment, and people can travel around the globe into a completely different culture and still find themselves feeling right at home after a while. Elliot has adapted to the situation he found himself in; no intent on Magic's part is needed.

Wicked

A very manly shrubbery?

A transformer destroyed by squirrels, causing a blackout

The trouble with deciding to label Elliot at this point is that right now, being female is tied up with having special powers. He's reached the point where he's able to admit to himself that he loves being a superhero-female, but we really don't know for sure to what degree he'll like being a girl when being a superhero-male is just as easy to become, with just as many magical advantages. For Elliot, right now, being a girl is superior for too many reasons that don't actually have anything to do with being a girl, for him to really know yet whether the 'girl' part is a factor or not. It will be interesting to find out. Maybe Elliot will discover a fondness for being a girl based on the same power-tripping "great big tease" reasons Tedd had expressed for wanting to be a sexy female in earlier stories.