Koosh update: She's back. Still sulking, but I got her to eat some tuna before she scurried away under the deck.

Last night's Hell's Kitchen was f-----' awesome. Bawling Bonnie needs to go pronto, followed closely by that one with all the hair all over the place like Cousin Itt. It's highly amusing that these two, who spent so much time putting down the Waffle House chef for her alleged lack of skills, are now getting to enjoy the full force of Ramsay wrath for their lack of skills. The way they keep flirting with GR is really nauseating, too. They seem fairly unclear on the concept of a restaurant; doesn't matter how cute you are if the food never gets to the customers. The entire competition seems to have come down to two people at this point: Julia and Rock, the only ones there who appear capable of running anything.

In other news, I can't find Koosh. When I got home last night she came out from under my bed where she'd apparently been sleeping all day after her ordeal at the vet. I tried to give her some tuna, which she refused(!) and she headed out into the backyard. That was the last I saw of her. Hopefully she's just freaked out and hiding under a bush somewhere. Complicating matters is this event in New York plus the ceiling scraping/painting project in the house. I'm supposed to take both Isis and Koosh to the boarding place tonight because I have to leave tomorrow morning. Life just doesn't get much more fun than this.

Donny Deutsch is a jackass. Just had to get that off my chest.

This morning I put two cats in crates and took them to the vet for their shots and checkups, sustaining only minor injuries.

I'm really bummed that Michael got the axe on The Next Food Network Star. It doesn't make sense; Adrian is cute and all, but he just doesn't seem to have the cooking chops to carry a whole show. Michael's failings are easier to remedy with a little coaching. We didn't get nearly enough of Paula Deen during the episode, but Sandra Lee would've been a better fit for MRE challenge anyway since it's right up her gussied-up-premade-food alley.

And, wow, Giardia can certainly be a bitch, can't she? She also appears to have stolen my mom's lemon pasta recipe, except that my mom uses gobs of butter instead of olive oil, and wouldn't use basil leaves if you held a gun to her head.

Burning question of the week: why the heck is Aaron still on Hell's Kitchen, and why is GR being so nice to him???

I've become completely obsessed with cooking reality shows, which anyone who knows me will realize is utterly bizarre. I can't cook very well and have very little interest in learning to cook well. Foodie shows usually bore me stiff, but for some reason I'm riveted by the reality shows Hell's Kitchen, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, The Next Food Network Star, and Top Chef. The first two are mostly entertaining because Gordon Ramsay is such a tremendous talent and has earned the right to scream at people. (Plus, it's the third season, for crying out loud! These people should not be surprised when he calls them f------ donkeys.) Nightmares is a fascinating look at the whole business of running a restaurant, not just what happens in the kitchen. TNFNS is fun because they're looking for entirely different criteria than the other shows and it's great to see the shiny FN stars be mean to contestants.

Top Chef is just some kind of strange psychological experiment. Compared to the other two contest shows where winners get pretty damn important prizes--their own restaurant and a shot at a tv show--Top Chef winners get some cash, a feature in Food & Wine mag (category leader only in subscription price, not readership), and a vacation. Um, why again are you putting yourself through this torture? At least this season they're not forcing crappy Sears appliances on them. The product placement on TC is really over the top, too. It's just a weird, weird show.

Mom's left behind books box count as of this morning: 8 boxes of cookbooks + 9 boxes of fiction.

I swear the women's bathroom at work has its very own Moaning Myrtle. Nearly every day there are unexplained trails of puddles and drips all over the floor (but not leading to or from devices that emit water), and the handicapped stall door has an alarming habit of swinging slowly open a minute or two after you've carefully set the latch. If I accidentally forget the door key in a stall, it sometimes falls on the floor while I'm washing my hands, reminding me to go get it. Today some very odd and unidentifiable scratching and splashing were coming out of the handicapped stall. Very mysterious!