Survey question: Tipping at carside pick-up

Hey all, give me your opinion (I know you're dying to). I, the Take-out Queen, sometimes order things at Applebee's and pick it up at the Carside To Go spot. If you're not familiar with it, here's how it works: You call, you order your Caesar salad and side of mashed potatoes (which you plan to mix together when you get home - yum), you tell them the make and color of your car, you pull into one of the designated parking spots, and your food is brought out to you like at a '50s diner, sans the roller skates.

So far, I have not been tipping the person who brings me my food. I figure they didn't wait on me during my meal, and they didn't use gas and time to drive to my house with the food. I don't tip the person who hands me my burger at a drive-thru or even the person who brings me my cherry limeade at a Sonic, yet I'm wondering if I am expected to tip the Carside To Go person. What do you think?

Oscar readiness begins!

"Don't distract me. I'm sucking in my cheeks."

I have officially begun to get Oscar ready. The nominations won't be out until February, but you can usually tell which films have Oscar bait written all over them. BBC period pieces starring Kiera Knightley and Ralph Fiennes are practically tattooed with statuettes, so I went to see The Duchess at Westwood yesterday. It was very good, one of those decadent costume dramas with amazing corsetted gowns and lots of melodrama.

I do not care for any of the four principle actors, so it's quite a feat that I enjoyed the film so much. Kiera Knightley, while very talented, has always gotten on my nerves. I think it's the fact that she always looks like she's concentrating too hard on holding her cheekbones so high and making her lips so pouty. Dominic Cooper annoys me for reasons I cannot even verbalize. It is what it is. Hayley Atwell played a very tiresome character in Brideshead Revisited, and I think I just attributed that to Hayley herself, as is my wont. And speaking of actor baggage, I have never been able to see Ralph Fiennes as anything but deeply creepy. Perhaps it's the cold, ice-blue eyes, or the serpent-like gaze he has, but I suspect it's mostly to do with the fact that the first thing I saw him in, he played a Nazi. There's no digging yourself out of that hole.

Anyway, I thought the film was very good, so imagine how much more you'd enjoy it if you actually like these actors. I suspect Knightley will pull out a Best Actress nom (and deservedly so - the entire film rests on her slender, anorexic shoulders, and she owns it), and the film may also grab a Best Pic nom.

The best part of it all? Only two other people were in the theater and they didn't talk at all. Oh joy, rapture!

Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

Tim Hightower's projected Fantasy score: 20

Tim Hightower's actual Fantasy score: 4

Thank you for your evil support.

(Sorry, Scott.)

It has come to my attention that I may, in fact, be a horrible person.

I hesitate to talk about Fantasy Football because apparently I have made myself odious to some of my family members in doing so. To quote Becky, "When you talk about Fantasy Football, all I hear is 'blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.'" To further quote Aunt Linda, "It's not just that I'm hearing 'blah, blah, blah.' It's that I'm thinking, 'She's usually interesting, and now why doesn't she just shut up?'" But I cannot shut up! I am here to make an impassioned plea to my readership. All four of you. (Minus Aunt Linda, who stopped reading this seven words into the post). I need us all to pull together and put the hex on Arizona Cardinals running back Tim Hightower, the last remaining player on Scott's team and the only one who can push Scott's score over mine. Hightower is projected to get 20 points tonight, but I can't afford for him to get more than 13.

Scott has already won the Survivor competition. (Congrats, Scott.) He doesn't need to win the weekly match-up as well. Perhaps if we all send enough bad thoughts Hightower's way, he'll trip over his own feet and be out in the first quarter.

You know, I never claimed to be a decent person.

Not my best day

I hate needles. This is no secret. My dad used to have to surprise me with my annual flu shot. He'd lie in wait and when I walked in the front door and he'd pounce and say, "Get in the car," and I'd spend the five minute ride to the doctor's office trying not to hyperventilate. As soon as I was in college, I celebrated my newfound freedom by chucking the flu shot tradition and I've never looked back. Ah, glorious liberty!

Well, this year Jen has stipulated that I must get a flu shot or risk being denied the opportunity to hold my niece. (Vaccination Nazi!) And my mother has been acting as Grand Inquisitor in this whole charade, haranguing me daily about the shot because... I don't know, she thinks I'm going to not get it and then lie and say I did? I... don't know. It's a lot of pressure!

So, today was flu shot day at work. Horrid. Horrid. The conference room had the stench of a hospital ward, I can only assume from the off-gassing of the syringes and gauze. People were standing around, chatting merrily, as if we weren't all waiting around to get a piece of metal jabbed into our flesh. I stood in line, trying not to feel woozy, as my co-worker made ill-conceived blood-spatter jokes involving the show CSI. I wanted to make a few ill-conceived jokes of my own involving his receding hairline, but I am a lady.

So Mom, the deed is done. You can stop asking me about it. But I think I should at least get some extra baby-holding time for my ordeal.

Happy Election Day!

Oh yeah? Well, I’m not scared either!

So, this past weekend was Halloween weekend. Normally I would be dressing up as a flapper or as a goth girl or as Miss Hannigan in a sadly misguided outfit that ended up looking more like a prostitute dressed as a secretary (don't ask), and then heading to Harrisburg for another of my friend Melissa's legendary costume parties. But, alas, Melissa took herself and her party-planning skills to Arizona, so I decided to just watch a terrifying movie instead.

My first choice was Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 classic Jack The Ripper tale, "The Lodger." It arrived from Netflix just in time for my Halloween fright fest. Unfortunately, what arrived was actually the much tamer, much lamer 1927 silent movie version of The Lodger. Ooh, witness in terror how the wicked man wearing way too much eyeliner and rouge creeps up on the young girl as obnoxious nickelodeon music floods the speakers! Maybe he's eerily whispering to her that she has no escape, but we won't know that until the dialogue card flashes up. Whatever!

No problem, I thought. I'll move on to my back-up choice: the Italian thriller, "I'm Not Scared." Take a gander at Netflix's plot summary for this:

Michele, a 10-year-old boy growing up in a southern Italian village, discovers another youngster, Filippo, chained up inside a small hole dug in the yard of an abandoned house. Michele soon learns from watching the news that the boy has been kidnapped... and things take an even darker turn when a mysterious couple shows up claiming to be the boy's parents.

Creepy, no?

No. No, it was not creepy at all. There was no mysterious couple claiming to be the child's parents. I don't know if the people at Netflix were watching this movie and then accidentally switched to "Annie" and just didn't realize it or what. Yeah, there's a kidnapped boy and yeah, the other boy finds him, but they spend most of the film playing in wheat fields. The movie was billed as a thriller, but the title is apt: They're not scared and you won't be either.

In the end, the creepiest thing about my Halloween was the spooky music and fake fog at my neighbors’ house as they handed out candy. Maybe next year.