Dear Network Executives At the Food Network: You think you are tricky marketing "Tasty Travels with Rachel Ray" to get on the bandwagon and give her yet another show, but I'm on to your duplicity.

All you did was take all of her $40 a day segments and mix them up, layer a new 30 second intro of her introducing the new mix of the same tired old $40 a day video clips we've been watching for the last couple of years, do some new voice overs and wa-la, people like me get sucked into seeing the same show AGAIN. And really, what's with the Award Show? Cheese is a foodgroup NOT a required genre. Granted you still are the network that I gravitate to now that I have cable tv again however sincerely I have several peeves (in no particular order):

You had that big "be the next food network star show" and the first season winners get a lame show called the Hearty Boys and regulated to Sunday a.m. from 7:00 - 7:30. How can they win the prize and only have one 1/2 hour of programing - unless maybe they are on during the day?

Enough with the food network marathon challenges. That cereal sculpture one at the mall of america gave general mills some good exposure but it was painful tv to watch.

Bobby Flay needs to get over himself already. Throwdown is interesting when it's not so overedited and scripted. (although boy I might just have to order one of those devils food juniors chocolate cheesecakes...mmmm)

What happened to Tyler Florence? Was he too busy creating the Applebee's menu and decided to not renew his contract? (I'm still not that big a fan of Applebee's. Went there for dinner the other night and it was just sort of blah.)

I can't watch Giada anymore now that a coworker told us he thought she was HOT. Just the idea of him watching the food network alone was kind of mind boggling however he even knew her name.

So I flipped channels tonight and also have come to the conclusion that I'm getting old. I don't know any of the music on MTV and I used to LOVE to watch road rules and real world but sincerely those whiney youngsters need to get a job in the real world and stop mastering the INFERNO. Do they even play videos on MTV anymore? Do kids nowadays even know that MTV stands for Music Television?

Mom got some of her test results back today and has to go into the doctor tomorrow. Sounds like her medication might need re-adjusting and they will just monitor the other symptoms...but we'll know more tomorrow. They leave Thursday for their vacation to Arizona and Las Vegas. I hope they have a good time. Mom's worried about the snow/windstorm Chicago is expecting.