Embarrasingly, I must admit to being a New Kids on the Block fan back in the day.  When they announced a reunion, I thought is was a terrible idea.  And unfortunately, I was right.  Sorry to say this, but this looked a little too much like men approaching a mid-life crisis desperate to recapture their youth.  Some reunions should just not take place.

The pop culture media outlets are all abuzz with the winner of the latest installment of "America's Next Top Model".  The articles abound with words like "full-figured", "plus-sized" and "big girl", but seriously, is this girl really any of those things???

Top_model3_320x240

HELL-OOOO!  This girl is a size 8-10!!!  Last time I went shopping, you couldn't find an 8-10 in the plus-sized department.  In what world does that qualify as plus-sized or even full-figured?  No wonder girls today have body image issues.

My name is Alissa and I am a HUGE Gordon Ramsay fan.  OK, 12 step moment over :-)

But seriously, I truly respect his passion for food, his drive and his commitment to cooking local.

A few months back, I ordered 2 Gordon Ramsay cookbooks from Amazon UK.  Yes, with the current exchange rate that means I paid way too much for these books, but I couldn't get them in the US and I love the recipes.  I've worked my way through so many of the recipes in the book and haven't been disappointed by a single one.  As a matter of fact, my "company's coming" signature dish is from Gordon's Fast Food cookbook (which, BTW, recently became available in the US).

So, imagine how thrilled I was to received an email from Amazon UK telling me that Gordon not only has a new cookbook, but its filled with Healthy Recipes.  

Gordon Ramsay Healthy Appetite

I was keenly interested in this book because I've been looking for healthy recipes that use whole food and local ingredients.  I am SO sick of the healthy cooking cookbooks filled with their less than healthy, chemically altered ingredients.  In Healthy Appetite, you have recipes that don't compromise on taste or flavor.  These recipes work for whatever life throws at you... a simple mid-week family meal to an elegant dinner party.

When I read the Introduction, I know that I had finally found what I had been looking for...

"Choosing the right ingredients is the core of healthy eating. It's not just a matter of selecting the leanest cuts of meat and reducing the amount of fat we consume, it helps to know which ingredients are at their peak at any given time, both in terms of flavour and nutrition.  When it comes to putting a healthy dish together, balance and moderation are key. It's not simply a matter of putting the right types of food on a plate. How the food is cooked and seasoned and how the whole menu comes together are just as important.  And I don't advocate cutting out butter and cream completely, just using a little here and there where it will really enhance the flavour of a dish." 

The package arrived yesterday and I immediately began picking out the recipes I would cook this weekend.  I promise to report back on my findings and share a recipe or two along the way. 

I'm no longer homeless and no longer disconnected from the rest of the world!! 

Its quite unnerving in this modern age to be with TV or Internet for an extended period of time.  I know, I'm lucky that I have a nice home to live in and access to satellite TV and the Internet, but to suddenly be without is a bit isolating.  At my lowest point, I sat outside a closed Starbucks with my laptop so that I could check email with my HotSpot account.

There's still lots of boxes to unpack and lots of stuff to write about.  But, for now, it just feels good to know that I am connected once again!

To be honest, I'm struggling with this situation in a local school.  I support free speech and love our Constitution, but somehow I think the opportunity to teach our children tolerance and understanding of those who are different was lost in the rush to the courthouse. 

Court OKs anti-gay T-shirt

Civil case continues to determine speech limits

The third time was the charm for a Neuqua Valley High School student who wants to express his sentiments on homosexuality by wearing a "Be Happy, Not Gay" T-shirt to class.

Neuqua sophomore Alex Nuxoll had twice filed for an injunction that would suspend the school's policy that prevents him from wearing the T-shirt.

And twice courts had denied that request.

But on Wednesday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit reversed the lower courts' rulings against Nuxoll, saying the district court must order Neuqua to suspend its ban on the shirt while the civil rights lawsuit filed by Nuxoll and Neuqua grad Heidi Zamecnik proceeds.

In issuing this reversal, though, the court basically upheld the validity of the school's rule forbidding derogatory comments, oral or written, that refer to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

"High school students are not adults, schools are not public meeting halls, children are in school to be taught by adults rather than to practice attacking each other with wounding words, and school authorities have a protective relationship and responsibility to all the students," states the court's opinion, authored by Judge Richard Posner. "Because of that relationship and responsibility, we are concerned that if the rule is invalidated the school will be placed on a razor's edge, where if it bans offensive comments it is sued for violating free speech and if it fails to protect students from offensive comments by other students it is sued for violating laws against harassment."

That said, the court determined that the T-shirt did not break the rule it upheld, and it granted Nuxoll's request for a temporary injunction allowing him to wear it.

"'Be Happy, Not Gay' is only tepidly negative; 'derogatory' or 'demeaning' seems too strong a characterization," Posner wrote. "As one would expect in a school the size of Neuqua Valley High School, there have been incidents of harassment of homosexual students. But it is highly speculative that allowing the plaintiff to wear a T-shirt that says 'Be Happy, Not Gay' would have even a slight tendency to provoke such incidents, or for that matter to poison the educational atmosphere."

The court's ruling came two days before today's annual Day of Silence, during which some students choose not to talk throughout the school day unless doing so interferes with their grades. Sponsored by the school's Gay/Straight Alliance, the day is intended to "echo" the silence that students who are gay face all the time. During the Day of Silence, students often wear written messages on shirts, buttons and stickers showing their support of peers who are gay.

This case arose two years ago when Zamecnik, then a junior at Neuqua, decided to wear her own homemade T-shirt expressing her sentiments on homosexuality. She wore it the day after the Day of Silence, which some call the Day of Truth.

The shirt said "My Day of Silence, Straight Alliance" on the front and "Be Happy, Not Gay" on the back. According to the federal lawsuit Zamecnik filed against Indian Prairie District 204's board and various district and school administrators, she was told she had to remove the shirt or leave school because some students and staff found it offensive.

Attorney Jack Canna defended Indian Prairie School District 204 against the lawsuit. Canna said that while the district would have preferred to have prevailed, he was not disappointed by the broader legal reasoning expressed in the court's opinion. Neuqua's rule was deemed valid and enforceable, and the ruling also acknowledged "the authority of the schools to control demeaning and negative speech, one kid against another," as well as "concerns about the atmosphere for learning," he said.

"It's a difficult road for these school districts and school administrators to tread," he said. "It's hard to know which direction to go, and I think some of the ruling here helps us in that regard."

Canna also noted Nuxoll's temporary injunction request was expedited, which he said didn't leave the district with enough of an opportunity to present its side of the story. He anticipates it will get that opportunity as the students' civil rights lawsuit advances.

"I think we're more concerned with presenting over the long haul the reason why District 204 and other districts have these policies," Canna said. "What is really happening in the buildings? Why it is important from an education standpoint to address civility and demeanor and the atmosphere of the building?"

Nuxoll's parents referred a request for comments to their legal counsel.

Representing Nuxoll is attorney Nathan Kellum of the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian litigation group.

"We are very pleased with the result because finally Alex will be given an opportunity to share his viewpoint on the topic of homosexual behavior," Kellum said.

However, Kellum also said he believes the question lingers of how far Neuqua can and will go to curb negative comments about homosexual conduct.

"(Alex) wants to be able to make references to scripture in supporting his reasoning that homosexual behavior does not lead to happiness, and there's a very big question as to whether he would be allowed to do that, and I think that that's something that's going to have to be flushed out by the remainder of the litigation," Kellum said.

The court recognized these desires in its ruling, and predicted that this temporary injunction will not bring an end to the students' overarching civil rights lawsuit.

"(Nuxoll) will press for a broader injunction as permanent relief, though one that will fall short of permitting him to use fighting words in his fight against homosexuality, for he has conceded that the school can ban fighting words," Ponzer said. "The district judge will be required to strike a careful balance between the limited constitutional right of a high school student to campaign inside the school against the sexual orientation of other students and the school's interest in maintaining an atmosphere in which students are not distracted from their studies by wrenching debates over issues of personal identity."

Some things never go out of style.  This is a vintage poster that was displayed throughout the UK during the blitz.

“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.”  -Erica Jong

Today's Chicago Tribune is reporting...

A cougar ran loose in Chicago on Monday for the first time since the city's founding in the 19th Century. But by day's end, the animal lay dead in a back alley on the North Side, shot by police who said they feared it was turning to attack.

No one knew where the 150-pound cat came from, though on Saturday Wilmette police had received four reports of a cougar roaming that suburb, roughly 15 miles from the site of Monday's shooting.

Whatever its origin, the 5-foot-long cougar's unlikely journey ended in the Roscoe Village neighborhood, where residents reported sightings throughout the day to the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control. Resident Ben Greene said police cornered the cougar shortly before 6 p.m. in his side yard on the 3400 block of North Hoyne Avenue.

Greene said he heard a volley of gunfire as he was bathing his 10-month-old son. His wife, Kate, ran upstairs screaming with their 3-year-old son, and they all took cover in a back room.

"At first, I'm thinking there's a gun battle in the street," said Greene, who owns a trucking company.

As the shots stopped, Greene heard the police yelling, "We got him! We got him!" He ventured downstairs and moved on his knees to the front door, where he saw police on his lawn. The officers had shot holes in an air conditioning unit on the side of Greene's house while aiming for the tan cougar, which died in the alley near Greene's garage.

Chicago Police Capt. Mike Ryan said the cougar tried to attack the officers when they tried to contain it. Police said no one was hurt and they did not know the cougar's gender.

"It was turning on the officers," Ryan said, adding that no officers were hurt. "There was no way to take it into custody."

Normally reclusive creatures, most cougars retreated to habitats in the Rocky Mountains and Black Hills early in American history. But some researchers believe overcrowding in recent years has driven the animals back east.

Two cougars have been killed in Illinois in the last decade. In 2000, a train struck and killed one in Randolph County in southern Illinois, and in 2004 a bow hunter killed a cougar in Mercer County in western Illinois.

But in the previous century, there had been no confirmed sightings in Illinois of a cougar, which is also known as a puma, mountain lion or panther. The last known appearance of the animal was in 1864 at the southern end of the state.

The Wilmette and Chicago sightings capped a flurry of recent cougar activity in the area, though no one knows if that was all the same animal. Several people reported seeing a cougar at the end of March in North Chicago, about 20 miles north of Wilmette. A Wisconsin trapper came face to face with a cougar in January, about 25 miles from the Illinois border.

That trapper said the cat bounded away 12 feet at a leap.

Starting early Monday, frightened Roscoe Village residents began calling police with reports of a cougar which was bounding over high fences in the neighborhood. Greene said his wife got an e-mail alert about the animal Monday morning through a neighborhood watch list.

Frank Hirschmann, 50, of the 3500 block of North Seeley Avenue saw the animal pass by his home.

"I was sitting on the porch, and all of a sudden he crossed the street, and hurdled a 6-foot fence like nothing," Hirschmann said. He said he then ran into his house and watched police chase the cougar on foot.

Animal control officials were not sure if the cougar was wild or an escaped pet, though they noted that it is illegal to keep the animals as pets. It's unclear how a cougar could have traveled south into Chicago from Wilmette, but the areas are connected by a Metra train route, on which the cougar could have walked, and a waterway.

Ben Greene's neighbor, Romeo Dorazio, had just gotten home from dinner when he heard about 10 gunshots.

"I knew it was really nearby. I walked to the window and saw a cougar," Dorazio said. "It was the freakiest thing I ever saw."

James Reynolds was sitting in his living room when he heard what seemed like "fireworks popping."

The 45-year-old went out in his back yard and saw a cougar attempting to jump from his neighbor's fence to his. He knew it was a cougar because he had seen it on the Discovery Channel, he said.

Officers shouted for him to go inside his house, and he saw them kill the cougar in about 10 shots.

A spokesman for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources said Monday that the state's current wildlife code does not protect cougars because they are not considered a normal part of the ecosystem here. The official said the only state regulations that might come into play would be gun ordinances, but because police did the shooting that issue is moot.

Greene said he agreed with the police decision to kill the cougar.

"As far as I witnessed, they did a pretty good job," Greene said. "Hypothetically, if there were kids in the yard and the cougar jumps in, what would the cougar have done?"

This story is just so bizarre on so many levels.  I just don't even know where to begin.

Lake Shore Drive

... would an article with the headline that includes the words LSD and Speed not be about drugs.

For the past 10 years, the city of Chicago has bumped up the speed on Lake Shore Drive (affectionately known as LSD) to 45 miles per hour every April 1. 

But, this was a tough winter and the speed limit on North Lake Shore Drive will not go up this spring thanks to potholes.

I occasionally watch "Frank TV" when I'm waiting for "Sex and the City" on TBS.  This one is classic!  Enjoy!!