MON 7-23-12

A bittersweet hello from Jenny and Liz, on this, our last blog post for our BFF Rex. Why bittersweet? Because while we are so sad to say goodbye, we are also so happy that Rex is on his way home from the future (aka New Zealand), and will be back to take over here.








Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy-ish 

THEME: The Invisible Man — synonyms for "man" are found in the circled squares

Word of the Day: Anticipation

an·tic·i·pa·tion n. 1. The act of anticipating. 2. An expectation. 3. Foreknowledge, intuition, and presentiment.

• • •

Of course this word does not appear in today's puzzle, but as we said above, our BFF Rex is currently on his way home from New Zealand, and he promised to bring us presents!  And one thing we love almost as much as we love our bestie is getting presents, so the anticipation is at an all time high as we await his safe return.  (And speaking of presents, over the past four weeks we have learned that writing this blog is a whole lot more work than we had anticipated when we begged agreed to do it, and we've only written once a week.  We already knew that Rex was amazing but now that we know what it takes to keep this blog going day after day, we would like to take a moment to make a small pitch to all of you who enjoy  reading or ripping on this blog to please consider giving a gift to Rex by making a donation; see instructions on the right side of this page).

And of course, we can't see or hear the word anticipation without thinking of the this classic:

Theme answers:

• 17A.  [Equipment to help a patient breathe]  OXYGEN TANK (gent)
• 25A.  ["Sorry to hear that"]  SUCH A PITY (chap)
• 49A.  [Went to pieces]  FELL APART (fella)
• 61A.  [Vishnu or Shiva] HINDU DEITY (dude)

Bullets:

• 21A.  ["___ I care"] AS IF — This makes us think of the movie Clueless, but sadly we couldn't find the clip where Cher is walking along outside of school and some guy comes up and puts his arm around her and she immediately shrugs him off and says "eww, AS IF!"  It's really funny.  Trust us.
• 45A. [Trees that sway in a hurricane] PALMS  — Of course, trees also sway in a derecho...  (see our blog entry dated 7/2/12)
• 5D. ["Cluck, cluck" makers] HENS  — This one was a gimmee for us because Liz is the proud owner of two hens, who live in her backyard.  Chickens are pretty low maintenance, except for when they get eaten (true story) or when one gets sick and has to be rushed to the chicken hospital in a cat carrier on a Saturday afternoon, and then needs to take chicken antibiotics twice a day for 10 days even though she was probably faking the whole thing.  Anyway, here's a picture of them (Little Jerry Seinfeld on the left, Chicken Little on the right) stopping by the back door to say good morning:

• 39D.  [Rick's beloved in "Casablanca"] ILSA— For some reason, neither of us can ever remember if this common answer starts with an I or an E.  It gets us every time.  And, once again, we can't find the clip that we wanted to use for this clue, which is from one of our all time favorite movies, When Harry Met Sally, but for our Italian-speaking friends, we were able to find this:     

For those who don't speak Italian, Harry and Sally were discussing how Casablanca has the best ending ever.  And speaking of endings, this brings us to the end of today's blog.  We are really grateful for all of the support you have given us in your comments, and we're grateful to Doug and Puzzle-Girl for all their technical support.  We have had so much fun these past four weeks, because everything we do with our BFF Rex is always fun.  So, before we sign off for the last time, click on the video below to check us out, just hanging with our bestie, having fun as always.

Click here:  (the video might not be available on your iPad, so hopefully you can access it from your computer!) 

Signed, Jenny and Liz, Rex's BFFs