has anyone else noticed that rachael ray of the food network seems to have...created her own personalized sign language? i always thought she used her hands excessively when she spoke, but things have gotten totally out of control.

This is pretty great.

Also: this.

both via bb

Tonight we buy the booze. This is tricky: how many people are too cool to use evite? How many will decide to come at the last minute? And how much will everyone drink? In the past we've budgeted around 4 drinks per person and done pretty well — everyone is generally pretty far over or under that number, but it averages out. But it's hard to say how much of that is owed to planning and how much is thanks to fortuitous booze delivered at the last minute by gifts of wine, roving gangs of Latvian friends, and lucky Budweiser truck accidents. It might be time to bump our allocation up.

The restaurant where Charles works is donating a case of PBR, but at the moment that's all the serendipohol we're counting on. Good rules of thumb are welcome. Also, if anyone has developed a serious drinking problem over the past year, let us know in comments

the wrens are playing the norris university center in evanston in february.

uh.

pause to reflect on the stupid-headedness of this. 1) there are approximately 2 billion awesome music venues in chicago proper. 2) northwestern undergraduates, the main chunk of the people who will actually be attending this concert, seeing as the rest of evanston is made up of retirees and no one from chicago will want to take the el for 30 minutes up to evanston in fricking february, do not know how to have fun. 3) the closest approximation to the norris center is newcomb hall at uva, or any other student center at any other university ever - that is, there is a. a food court b. a bank c. a post office d. a bookstore e. that is all (ok, i am exaggerating, there is probably a room around there somewhere large enough to accommodate a concert, but still).

as much as i love the wrens, i do not think i will choose to pay money to watch them play next to the sbarro stand.