Random Notes

• The Silk Hat is not dead! (Though it will be minus a few antique jukeboxes.)
• I watched the Holiday Dessert special of Iron Chef America this weekend. Though there are dissenting opinions on this episode, I loved it! For once, the competitors (Cat Cora/Paula Deen vs. Robert Irvine/Tyler Florence) were less than serious, and had fun goading each other on.
• TiVo is coming to Canada. I'd love to get a PVR of some kind; it would be much more convenient than asking my computer-savvy friends to download missed television episodes for me.
• Clever gifts: a foot in the door, for those who like to throw money around, and an amazing two-in-one cake stand and punch bowl for the host/ess in your family.
• The Broadway strike is over, thankfully, meaning we'll actually be able to use our tickets to Wicked. That said, I'm now so tempted to buy tickets for The Farnsworth Invention, a new stage play by Mr. West Wing himself, Aaron Sorkin.
• Have you heard Emma Clarke's spoofs of the London Underground announcements? She's widely known as the "voice" behind most lines of the Tube, and besides having a reassuring delivery, she has a sense of humor too. Example: "Would passengers filling in answers on the Sudokus please accept that they're just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers." I hope she's reinstated after being fired for what she claims is a misunderstanding of her comments about traveling on the Tube.
• I got a new phone last week - the LG Shine. It's sleek, but wider and heavier than my previous LG, and the battery life leaves much to be desired. While I'm still getting used to the differences, I don't like the placement of the CLR button above SEND. It's a mis-key waiting to happen.