Disneyworld Day 3

OK, so this is going to be short as I'm tired, and no pictures because I'm too lazy to upload them tonight.

Today was yet another day of adventure, but we gave up on the whole idea of getting up early and going out to the parks. So by about 11:00am we got moving and went over to the Magic Kingdom. By we, I mean my parents and I, as Amy decided she was going to be stubborn and stay in the room and sleep. Of course, those of you who know Amy know that her stubbornness shouldn't be of any surprise whatsoever. She is reading this over my shoulder and telling me it's not stubbornness it's sleepiness... I think it's the same thing if you consider the reason she was sleepy was because she was too stubborn to go to bed when the rest of us did. :P

The weather today was probably no warmer than it's been the past two days, but it sure felt like it. Maybe it was just more humid during the day than anything else. While at the Magic Kingdom today, we had a torrential downpour (and I'm not talking Seattle rain, I'm talking BIG rain). We ducked onto the closest ride, and found ourselves taking a trip on the Jungle Cruise in the pouring down rain. Quite entertaining actually, it really made it feel like we were going through the jungle, complete with the skipper telling really bad jokes. :)

After a day filled with a lot of going from ride to ride not to get out of the rain, but rather to get out of the heat, we hopped onto the monorail and went over to the Grand Floridian resort. Shall we say, tres swank. Dinner for the four of us was $175, and of course, completely free for us as it was included as part of our package. We of course would never eat there if we WERE paying, but can't argue with free. After dinner, looked around the resort, and absorbed all of its swankness we could handle, then went back on the monorail over to Epcot. We arrived no more than an hour or so before it closed, but found just enough time to go on the Test Track ride, which is essentially what it sounds like, you ride a car through this simulated test course. After that we wandered over to watch Epcot's nighttime spectacular, IllumiNations. I reiterate my opinions from previous visits that this is indeed the best show Disney has ever created. Outstanding!

The rest of the evening wasn't much to shake a stick at. I wrote 5 postcards, am writing this blog, and then going to bed. Tomorrow's adventures (complete with pictures, I promise) will include the Disney-MGM Studios, and one of the other great Disney-created rides: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Wahoo! Off to bed. I think I'm finally adjusting myself to Eastern time... probably just in time to be forced to adjust myself back to Pacific time. Ah the joys of travel.

Disneyworld Day 2

Day 2 at WDW, our first full day, was started off with us all coming to the realization that it takes more than just one night to reset your internal clock 3 time zones away. So getting moving by 8am didn't actually happen as planned. Fortunately as it turns out, it didn't matter much anyway. Well, actually, I should back up a few hours to 2:00am. That's the time when Amy's luggage finally arrived and was delivered to the room. Of course by this time everyone was asleep... but that's the way it should be I'd guess.

Once we actually got moving we were off to the Animal Kingdom for our first day of theme park excitement. We were off to the Animal Kingdom, the newest of the WDW theme parks. (Of course, by 'newest' I mean it is about 7 years old.) While I can't say too much exciting about it, it's really not much more than a Disney-fied zoo. You do see some animals quite close, which is a nice touch. This giraffe literally walked right past our vehicle in the Kilimanjaro Safari ride (one of only a handful of actual rides at AK.)

We spent the majority of the day there before heading over to the nearby resort the Animal Kingdom Lodge where we had dinner. It was a very unique buffet which had a lot of different African food, but really quite tasty. Here's a view looking out from the AK lodge:

After dinner we headed back to our hotel with the intent to go to Epcot later this evening, but decided to just relax instead. We've got 6 more days here, I think we'll have plenty of time to see everything we want to see. That leaves me right here, blogging the somewhat eventful day and ready to get some sleep. Tomorrow's adventures are the Magic Kingdom, that scaled-down version of the Anaheim institution known as Disneyland. With a little sleep we all should be energized enough to make it through the day. :) Vacations can be such hard work...

Disneyworld Day 1

It's finally happened... I'm on VACATION! As I write this I am sitting in a hotel room at the Port Orleans Riverside resort in fabulous Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. We arrived here at about 5pm Eastern time, at which point the 80+ degree heat and 80+ percent humidity felt somewhat pleasant. Now at about 11:30pm, it feels incredibly muggy. Thank goodness for air conditioning.

Relatively few snafus on the first day of travel. Amy's friend Liz took us to the airport and we arrived there just after 7:00am. Since we had already checked in for our flight online, all that was left was to check our bags (painless), get through security (equally painless), and wait for our flight (as painless as waiting can be). Then came the 5 hour flight to Orlando. At least it was non-stop, which makes it a lot more bearable. I mananged to watch 5 episodes of West Wing on DVD on my laptop over the course of the flight and all was well. We arrived and used WDW's new "Magical Express" service that (a) takes your luggage straight from the plane to your hotel room, and (b) provides you bus transportation from the airport to your resort hotel. This turned out as painless as ever, as we checked in at the Orlando airport and our bus was immediately there ready for us to board. That timing was probably more luck than anything else, but I'm certainly not complaining.

No more than an hour after we stepped foot off of the plane, we were checked into our hotel and in our room. Of course, our luggage would be delivered a few hours later, so we went to dinner at the restaurant in our hotel. Part of the reason we decided to come to WDW at this time was the package deal they were pushing that included their Disney Dining Plan for free. Basically this means that all of our meals are paid for: a snack, counter service (food court-type) meal, and a table service (restaurant) meal each day. The dinner we had tonight included our choice of literally anything on the menu, an appetizer, entree, and desert for each person. There was so much food! We got our bill at the end of the meal... if we had actually PAID for the meal, $150.23 (gratuity included). Our cost: $0.00. None of us could even eat the dessert, so we took home two pieces of cheesecake and two slices of pecan pie in togo boxes and stuck them in the fridge in our hotel room. Ugh. I'm going to be sick on this trip, I can already tell. :P

We returned to our room after dinner, to rest briefly and check if our luggage had been delivered yet, but no luggage. They said to expect that the luggage might not arrive for up to 3 hours after you check-in, so nothing to worry about there. We hopped on the Disney transportation buses and went down to the Downtown Disney outdoor shopping area. It was nice, bought some souveniers at the mammoth World of Disney store, and browsed some of the other stores. Eventually we took a boat back up the Sassagoula River (Disney-made, of course) that connects Downtown Disney with our resort. Confident that our luggage should be in the room by now, we got to the room and lo and behold, 3 bags of luggage sitting just inside of the room. But wait... we checked 4 bags in Seattle. Something doesn't add up! Oops, Amy's bag was no where to be seen. So I head down and we talk to the bell services gentlemen, and finally one dude who knew what was going on looked it up in the computer and found that it only arrived in Orlando at 10pm. They said it frequently happens that if the plane is overweight in Seattle, they'll just start pulling luggage off to make the weight work, not that they particularly care whose luggage they pull. Most likely Amy's suitcase was pulled and it ended up on the next flight down which arrived around 10pm. Either way, Amy doesn't need to freak out anymore because it should show up at our room by around midnight. Of course as I write this, it's currently 11:56pm EDT.

Unfortunately, no really good pictures today, but expect another update in the next day or two that will contain more exciting picture updates. Until then, I'm going to try to go to sleep since I'll be getting up at about 7:30am EDT or, uh... 4:30am PDT.

Amazing Race 8

Amazing Race 8 starts tonight. In continuing my new-found tradition of capturing the ongoing saga of the Amazing Race, I've created a separate blog for it at http://ar8.universeofsynergy.com/.

Who watches daytime television?

It's interesting seeing what goes on in the world when you take a day off from work in the middle of the week. First of all, there's nothing really exciting on TV during the day... or else it just doesn't much appeal to what I want to watch. Except for The Price is Right... THAT I live to watch when I'm on vacation. :) But either way, it makes me think exactly who DOES watch TV during the day. It's pretty easy to figure out if you think about it... who else wants to know exactly what kind of people is watching TV at a certain time? The advertisers, of course! So what kind of commercials did I see? Well, commercials for toys, commercials wish spokesmen like Ed McMahon or the "I've fallen and I can't get up" or as I like to call them "scare the old people" commercials, and commercials for lawyers "If you've been injured, you deserve money, call us now and we'll get you the money you deserve."

So let's see, that gives us 3 prime demographics... little kids, old retired people, and people who don't have a job (either because they were injured, or because they're just too lazy to work). Sure, there are others like myself watching, but I'm not who the commercials are targeting. It all makes sense once you think about it, but doesn't leave me wanting to sit at home on a day off instead of just being at work.

Switching gears to Husky Football... the one week I don't actually blog about the game with my sure-fire predictions, we actually win (albeit against Idaho, who looked terrible). So I almost believe that I shouldn't make a prediction, because that way we have a better chance of winning tomorrow. The one thing that I'm sure of is that Husky Stadium will be louder and more full than it has been in the past several years. I believe that the Huskies actually have a chance of beating Notre Dame this weekend, even though I don't believe it's actually going to happen. :) Regardless, my prediction for this week is (since I always predict a Husky win):

Huskies 27 - Irish 24

What's wrong with Ocean's 11

So last night Ocean's 11 was on TV, so I watched it. Not to say I haven't seen this movie a dozen times already, so it gave me a lot of time to overanalyze how the plot at the end of the movie makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. Now I realize that creative license must be taken in order to make a movie work, and that is fine--I still think it's an excellent movie--but there are some things at the end that make zero practical sense (plausible, yes, but ridiculous) that just leave me wishing the script writers could have tried a little harder. Case in points:

1) The "pinch" they use to knock out power to the entire city of Las Vegas... but only for 30 seconds. I'm not an electrical engineer, so I won't comment on the feasibility of the concept. I bought it as face value that some device could emit an EM pulse that knocked out all electricity in the entire city of Las Vegas in the blink of an eye. What I don't buy is that it all would miraculously repair itself in a matter of 30 seconds and come back on without any perpetual damage whatsoever. Not a chance.

2) Even through the end of the movie, Benedict doesn't notice that his "double-secret vault codes" that he put in his jacket pocket are missing. He's gone to the fight, found out somebody's broken into his vault, but STILL doesn't connect the dots with his missing codes. Surely he would have needed to use the codes just to get back into his super-secure vault complex, yet he just walks right in after he knows it's been broken into. No, don't buy it.

3) The key element of the vault that lets Benedict know he's been had: the Bellagio logo on the floor of the vault entrance. This is the most ridiculous scenario I could ever imagine. First, this vault was built several years ago, (which by the way is connected to the cages at the Bellagio, Mirage, and MGM grand, which is about a mile down away from the other two, but I can overlook that), and now he has this logo put on the floor of the vault where he "had it installed last week". WHAT?!! Did he trust a bunch of construction workers to just come down and tear up the floor to put in a new logo while there was $100 million sitting next to them in the vault? Did he just happen to have decided that the solid black marble floor was not gaudy enough and he needed to put the Bellagio logo on the floor of the vault (that, as we recall, serves not only the Bellagio, but Mirage and MGM as well)? And furthermore, last week he installed it, but none of the 11 who have been watching his own vault using his own security cameras noticed that he installed this logo on the floor, which blew a hole in their plan to stage a fake heist of his vault? No. I buy this the least of all. Ridiculous.

But like I said, it's still a good movie. :)

Headlines

Other than making any comments regarding yesterday's football performance by my Dawgs --which completely blew my prediction out of the water -- I will instead practice my sports headline writing. The headline in today's Seattle Times was: "A giant U-turn for UW". This was far less inspiring than I would expect from the Times' sportswriters. Instead, I offer the following alternatives:

"A game Bear-ly worth mentioning"
"Another un-bear-able performance"
"Husky defense pleads guilty"
"California 56 - Washington hopeless"
"UW Football: 20 seconds of excitement"

OK, so my headlines weren't much better. This just in from the random fact department: UW-Cal game attendance: 57,775. Smallest crowd in Husky Stadium in 19 years. But bonus points for being a palindrome.

And that's all that needs to be said of Husky Football until next week.

Go Dawgs! Beat the Bears!

Last week's debacle in the fourth quarter against Air Force didn't do wonders for proving my prediction abilities. So this week we will try again.

I predict that Cal will succumb to the awesome forces of Husky Stadium. I predict that Cal's loss to the Dawgs will mark the beginning of the Bears' return to prominence as the perpetual bottom-feeders of the Pac-10. I predict Husky Stadium will be a thundering behemoth on the Montlake landscape. I predict that the Huskies will be victorious, and thereby secure a "no-worse-than-last-year" record for the 2oo5 season.

Therefore, my gameday prediction is:

Huskies 21 - Bears 17

Go Dawgs!

Adventures and sunburns

Well not too much of note has been happening this week... but yesterday we had a "team building" excercise at work. My team spent the entire day out on a boat crusing around. We started in Anacortes then went down through Deception Pass and back up the Swinomish Channel past LaConner and various other nice little places. It was fun, despite the fact that I got a wee bit too much sun on my head... I guess I'm just a casualty of a fun day "working". :) A few pictures I took on the trip follow.

A bald eagle standing on some mud flats we passed

Deception Pass

Houses I'll never be able to afford

Husky Football Kickoff

Well we've finally made it to that time of year again. The first weekend of the college football season. Saturday will kick off the 2005 Husky Football season, which we can only hope will be a fair bit better than last year's 1-10 season.

First, may I make a hearty recommendation for the entertaining comics (though I hear they're called "graphic novels" these days) at www.huskycomics.com. In its second season bringing high-quality Husky Football parody humor. :)

Now, this season opener for the dawgs will be an "away" game at Air Force... played in none other than scenic Qwest Field, home of the Seahawks. I honestly don't know what to expect from the dawgs this year, but I'm sure it'll be better than before. In Tyrone Willingham's debut as coach of the Huskies, I expect a stellar performance. I'm not saying I expect to SEE a stellar performance, but I expect one nonetheless. :) It'll be an exciting game to watch regardless, and all things considered, I will make this week's prediction:

Huskies 31 - Falcons 24

I'll say up front that I always predict the dawgs to win... because I've seen too many upsets to believe there's any game that we have no chance. Go Dawgs!

The many conclusions of Annie

I have been informed that I have been neglecting my civic duty to update this blog. So, apologies for the lack of updates over the past several weeks.

Last week I went and saw the Broadway touring production of Annie. I must say it was well done, the music as catchy as ever (especially with a live orchestra), and the cast was quite entertaining. The actress who played Miss Hannigan was absolutely hilarious, though had hair that made her look sorta like Ursula from the Little Mermaid... or Don King... but I digress. Of course, the girl who played Annie did yet another excellent job. And thank goodness that only for the last scene of the whole show does her hair have to look like your typical "Annie" style with the, how do you call it, curl-fro? It looks so much better short and straight like it was for the rest of the show. But I had a point for bringing this up... oh yes... the ending.

Now I've seen one other stage production of Annie a few years back at the 5th Avenue Theatre, as well as being subjected to the 1982 movie production of Annie, starring Carol Burnett at Miss Hannigan, probably hundreds of times since it was one of my sister's favorite movies to watch on video. Oh, yes, one of those that we taped off TV, so it was complete with the commercial breaks with the fabulous 80's commercials. Ah the memories. Anyway... it amazes me how they all have roughly the same plots, but they all ended differently. The one I'm probably most familiar with, the movie, is of course, dramatic to the point of insanity with Annie attempting to escape by climbing a drawn railway bridge... whatever. In hindsight, that's got to be the most superfluous use of drama I can ever imagine. The musical is much more sedate, and apparently true to the playwright's intentions. The bad people are caught without any excessive drama, only a bit of comedy. Annie isn't successfully abducted and there is not a city-wide manhunt to find her. Miss Hannigan is hauled off to jail as she rightfully should be for being a mean and evil fraud (in the movie, somehow she makes a miraculous return to good graces at the end). It just amazes me how everything tries to be over-dramatic... without needing to be so. I'm trying to remember exactly how it ended in the show I saw at the 5th Avenue, but I think it was just somewhere in between. More dramatic than the show I saw last week, but certainly less dramatic than the movie.

I'd say more, but I think that's about all I have to say about it. I guess I had expected that to be more interesting than it ended up, but that's OK. I guess I'm just out of shape after putting off my blog for so long.

Cards, cards and more cards

It's amazing how many cards people carry around with them. Membership cards, discount cards, identification cards, library cards, bank cards, useful information cards... they're all there. Everyone wants to give you a card, that you can easily stick in your wallet because it's "so convenient". Of course, the result I've found is that you end up with your wallet busting with cards that you actually use maybe once a year, if ever. Then, you've got a whole bunch of old cards that you just can't bring yourself to throw away (what if you lose your current card for some reason, you could use your expired one in the meantime!). So I have no less than about 25 of these cards in my desk drawer, because they're nice -- souvenirs perhaps -- and you just dont' want to throw them out.

What if there was a better way? I understand things like credit cards, you need those and you can't do anything about that. But what about having some sort of "Universal Membership Card" that can serve as all of your non-critical non-identification cards... you know, your library card, your AAA card, your Costco card, everything. You could have this UMC that had your name on it, and some generic UMC number. Then ANY company who wants to use it as their form of id card, can use it. Give it a barcode, magnetic stripe, the works... anything anyone could possibly want. The good thing for the user is that you can have the same membership number for a whole bunch of different things. The good thing for the companies who use it... they save money by not needing their own cards, all they have to do is link into this card that everyone has already! It's perfect!

Suddenly your 25 cards or so, drop down to maybe 5 or so (Your UMC, but along with that you still need your credit cards, official identification, etc. But not every Joe-membership-person who wants to give you a card.)

Hello world! I hereby place this idea in the public domain... someone run with it! But don't profit off my idea or I'll sue your pants off! Muahahahah!

The Lame List - 8/3/2005

In deference to Almost Live, that classic Seattle television comedy institution of years gone by, I present a new recurring segment in the Universe of Synergy: The Lame List... or, "What's Weak This Week."

* TV end-of-season cliffhangers that make you wait 3 months to find out how it ends
* Professional darts
* Decks of playing cards that don't come with jokers, or just have one
* Kathy Griffin
* Styrofoam packing peanuts
* HTML code written with FrontPage
* Split infinitives
* Credit card offers that come in unmarked, non-descript envelopes
* European date formats (dd/mm/yyyy)
* Time zones
* Phone books (printed)
* Dial-up internet access
* Pennies

If you have a suggestion for The Lame List... the comment button is below. :)

Just when you think you've seen everything...

Just when you think you've seen everything there is to see on television, you flip past FSN and what do you see? The 2005 World Series of... Darts. Yes, you heard right... darts.

Now, I shouldn't be surprised, considering I've seen everything from Scrabble tournaments, to, well, the X-Games on ESPN... and anyone who knows me knows I can't watch enough curling on TV during the winter months (thank goodness for Canadian television, eh?). But seriously, I don't think I've seen anything quite as odd and disturbing as watching tournament darts. First, it obviously is being taped in a bar somewhere in Vegas. But nothing upscale about anything, looks pretty plain and ordinary. The people are sitting at long tables, and it's not like typical sports where everyone's glued to the action... in fact, most of the people here look like they couldn't care less about it. People continue on with their conversations... the bouncer obviously removed those officials from the golf course with their big "QUIET PLEASE!" signs. "Please, talk amongst yourselves."

But I think the most disturbing part is the announcer. First, he's standing not more than 2 feet directly to the side of the dart board. And I ain't talking about any of those plastic-tipped 'el cheapo' darts... we're talking sharp, pointy, pierce-your-skull type metal darts. Good thing these guys are the best darts players in the world, otherwise I might be a bit worried. Second, his voice sounds like that voiceover guy you hear on the commercials for the monster truck rallies at the Tacoma Dome (of course, where else?)... "SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!"... but with a British accent. Go ahead and try to talk like that right now... I'll wait... ...

... done yet? Good... yeah... that's what it sounds like. Very creepy.

OK, now that I've been watching this for way too long, I'll go ahead and find something else on. Let's see... The Sixth Sense? Naww. Fear Factor? I think not. West Wing reruns on Bravo? Who can beat that!? Anything's gotta beat darts.

Apartment Living... part deux

So about a month ago I blogged about the random stuff I found down on my deck from the "crazy lady upstairs". [Apartment Living a.k.a. How to be an amateur CSI] So I'm sitting here at home on this Saturday morning and I get a knock on my door. Now, might I add this is I believe the very first time I've ever had ANYONE knock in my door... it just doesn't happen. So I open the door, and it's the lady from upstairs.

At first I was like, "ok, I've lived here for a year and a half... this is the first time I've met her... why is she coming down here now?" Maybe it's because when my friend Jonell was over here a week or so ago she mentioned "that crazy lady upstairs" out the door while said crazy lady from upstairs was out on her balcony. Who knows. We talk briefly, then I find out the real reason for her visit... some clothes that were apparently drying had fallen off of her balcony onto mine. She was really embarrassed... I was just amused. I asked her how long she's lived here... she pauses a moment and then says... "oh... about 12 years now." TWELVE YEARS?!!? Dude... this place is nice but I can't imagine living in any apartment for that long, let alone this one. I guess to each her own.

Then she tells me about how she's put towels down so that when she waters her plants, the water doesn't make all that noise as it comes splashing down on my patio. She also has explained one other mystery to me... for the last week or two I've noticed how the squirrels seem to congregate out on my patio, and I couldn't figure out why. Well, she says she feeds the squirrels... by throwing nuts down onto my patio. Mm-hmm... it all makes sense now.

Anyway... half of the mystery solved... but she's still the "crazy lady upstairs" in my book. But a nice crazy lady upstairs, I will say.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it...

OK, tonight gets an extra bonus post because I just saw a news article that completely caught me off guard. Our fine legislators in D.C. have agreed to the "Energy Policy Act of 2005". While the whole act has a lot of mumbo-jumbo about saving energy in an effort to wean we oil-guzzling Americans off of middle-eastern oil (or something like that)... the key provision that actually affects us in the real world is quite simple: to change daylight savings time from the current system (first Sunday in April to last Sunday in October), to the first Sunday in MARCH to the last Sunday in NOVEMBER.

Could this not be a more RIDICULOUS idea!? While we can thank good old "Mr. $100 bill" Ben Franklin for the idea of shifting time haphazardly in an effort to confuse people every 6 months... er... save energy, I still think daylight savings time is dumb, but support it if only because I think it would confuse people more if we didn't change the clocks anymore.

Now, if you don't immediately see the bad consequences of this, let me point out exactly why this is a "very bad idea":

1) Canada. Our neighbors to the north currently have conformed to our ridiculous practices in an effort to ensure continental harmony. If we go and start messing with things, during the entire months of March and October, crossing the Canadian border will be like changing time zones. So if it's 8:00 in Seattle, it'll be 7:00 in Vancouver, BC, and 9:07 in Boise. What a mess.

2) Smoke Detectors. We're all so used to changing the batteries in the smoke detectors when we change the clocks. You think that this works out to changing the batteries every 6 months, but if you actually pull out a calendar, the beginning of April through the end of October is actually 7 months. I guess people think batteries should last at least 7 months. But if we change things, that will be March through November: 9 MONTHS! According to the firefighters out there in the world, that's unacceptable. (I think they're getting kickbacks from Duracell, personally.)

3) Not-so-"Standard Time". So if we're on daylight savings time for 9 months out of the year... for you non-math-people out there, that's 3/4 of the year with daylight savings time, and only 1/4 of the year for "Standard" time. Now I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound very "Standard" to me... sounds to me like the standard is to have daylight savings time. Seems pretty bogus to me.

4) Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. If this goes into effect, it will take effect immediately, meaning the currently scheduled time change on October 30th, 2005 will be moved to November 27th. So if you have a flight scheduled for anytime during the month of November... when does your flight leave? Are you an hour late, or an hour early? Does your flight leave an hour later than scheduled, or an hour earlier, or do we just pretend this whole mess never happened and go with whatever the clock on the wall says? Same goes for trains, I guess, if you ride trains for any productive purpose. As for automobiles, uh... well it seems to take a rocket scientist to figure out how to change the clocks built into most car stereos... maybe that's a reason unto itself.

Of course, this all depends on President Bush actually signing this bill into law... maybe he'll be smart and... oh wait, nevermind.

Mythbusters

One of my favorite shows on TV has got to be Mythbusters. I've been hooked on this show ever since I stumbled onto one of the very first episodes several years ago.

These guys, Adam and Jamie are just great. The whole show operates on two simple premises: 1) test common myths and see if they are actually true, and 2) if they aren't true, see what extreme conditions would make them true. The first one is usually easy enough to test, and I'd guess that 95% of the myths turn out to be complete and utter nonsense. The second one usually involves making things explode, break in spectacular fashion, or a little of both.

It's funny though, the show has changed over the years. Somewhere along the line, they ran out of myths... so now they seem to do more testing of "could thing things you saw in the movies really happen? Or did they just look good on film?" These are entertaining, but they get old, just like everything else.

One other interesting thing I found out is that Adam and Jamie really aren't friends, though you wouldn't believe that from watching the show. ['MythBusters' Friendship Only Gadget-Deep - AP 4/26/2005] Apparently Jamie didn't even go to Adam's wedding because he "didn't want to". Touching. Though you can definitely tell that often they get quite frustrated with each other on the show, now I know that it's completely real.

It used to be just the two of them, but now the cast has "expanded" to include their understudies or "Mythterns" as they are often called. What a waste... all they get are the dumb myths that Adam and Jamie are too good to deal with. I think it hit rock bottom for me when they tested a myth of whether plants grow better when you talk to them than when you don't. I mean honestly, booooooooogus. I think the page at jumptheshark.com summarizes much of what I'm talking about.

I think it's the same problem of driving good shows into the ground. Like the first Who Wants to be a Millionaire prime-time series (the one hosted by Regis)... that was exciting when they had it on for limited spans of time, until they started showing it 4 nights a week and everyone got sick of it. Why can't people leave well-enough alone?

Christmas in July

What's the deal with all these "Christmas in July" sales? Not to mention those damn commercials for Sleep Country with their little jingle bells-type song about Christmas in July... it's so bad, but you just can't stop watching it. Not to mention it's the exact same commercial they had on TV last July... I guess it was so good they decided to resurrect it. Whatever.

So Christmas in July, is that really necessary? What's so wrong with having a "July in July" sale? Or here's a novel idea, an "Independence Day in July" sale. I don't get it. I mean, I know July is as far away from Christmas as you can get, but so what? I'm going to have a store and throw my own sale... I'll call it my "St. Patrick's Day in September " Sale. You get those same great St. Patrick's Day prices in the middle of September. It's perfect! Again, this deserves a big giant whatever.

In completely unrelated news... don't you hate it when you eat a sandwich made with toasted bread, like a club sandwich or something, and it just chews up the roof of your mouth. I think I have serious cuts up there... painful I tell you. But that sandwich was mmm...mmm... good. :)

That's all, I'm going to bed.

LIVE! (except on the West Coast)

Isn't it amazing how Hollywood, California is probably the television capital of the world, yet the world of television revolves around Eastern Standard Time. I don't think the majority of people on the east coast have any clue that this is the case. How does it work that all of these shows are LIVE from California... except if you're actually watching it IN California in which case it was actually taped LIVE 3-hours before you actually watch it. Having lived on the west coast all my life, I think this is probably the most ridiculous thing. Now, I know this all revolves around the almighty dollar and broadcasting the shows in the primetime viewing slots. Like the Oscars, one of the biggest non-sporting television events of the year... ALWAYS live from Los Angeles. I think they usually start around 5pm (since that's 8pm on the east coast, the start of prime time television). But I distinctly remember times when they would actually delay the show until 8pm for us west coast viewers... ridiculous! Why do I need to watch when I can just go online and see all the winners, since it already happened 3 hours earlier! Though knowing the Oscars, the show would probably start for us before the live show has actually finished.

With smaller prime-time shows, it's almost commonplace to see this happen. Take the LIVE finales of your favorite reality TV shows. American Idol, The Apprentice, or as I was just noticing the live finale of Dancing with the Stars.. all LIVE... unless your poor soul happens to reside in the fine states of Washington, Oregon, or California. I'd like to see a show Live in primetime (except on the East Coast). Then again, I think the Earth might need to spin the other direction for that to make any sense whatsoever. Something to strive for.

Apartment Living a.k.a. How to be an amateur CSI

Living in an apartment building always proves to have its interesting quirks. I consider myself pretty lucky overall. My apartment building has probably about 60 or so apartments... not that I count the rooms, but I seem to remember there being about that many mailboxes. Anyway... I live in the back corner of the building, so I really only have two neighbors that I share walls with. One next to me, and one above me. The one who lives next to me, I have never actually seen, but that's not surprising because I rarely see anyone unless I pass them in the parking garage, and this neighbor just moved in a month ago. Anyway, she seems pretty quiet because I rarely hear anything from that side of the apartment. The only problem is that whenever she uses the shower, the sounds of the water running through the pipes in the wall is deafening. When I'm sitting in my living room watching TV and the shower comes on, I literally cannot hear the TV anymore it's so loud. On the bright side, I can only assume it's just as loud when I use my shower too, so I guess I can't fault it too much. It's usually not too bad though.

Now we come to the neighbor upstairs. Again, someone I have never actually seen, but her balcony is actually directly over part of my patio. As close as I can tell, it's some old lady who lives there... and she has cats. Our apartment has a no pets, no smoking policy, yet I know the old lady who lives above me both has cats, and smokes. How do I know this? Well, how can I not. I've seen her cat both in the window sill and out on her balcony. Plus, when I left my window open the other night, I was awoken at about 6am to the sound of the lady out on her balcony talking to what I can only assume was her cat. As for her smoking, if I have the door open, I can sometimes smell the smoke wafting into my apartment, which is just FABulous, let me tell you. Though like I said, her balcony over hangs over my patio... so the result is that anytime something falls off her balcony, it lands right on my patio. She seems to have some nice flower planters on her balcony railing, which she apparently waters frequently, because I just jumped halfway out of my chair when I heard the sound of water crashing down on my cement patio. And considering there isn't a cloud in the sky and it hasn't rained for a week, I don't see much other explanation. The other day I found a lighter on the patio, she must have dropped it one day. In a case of extreme evidence seeking, I decided to dust it for fingerprints.

Of course, I must have lost my Acme Fingerprint Identification Kit, so I had to improvise. Fortunately, considering my friend Andrew is a forensic scientist, he was able to provide me with the necessary instruction. First I needed some "fingerprinting dust" (no, I don't think that's the technical term, but it works). So I didn't have any nearby, but I could use some graphite from a pencil. Of course, I learned this from an old episode of MacGyver. :) I searched and searched for a pencil by only found a golf pencil. But it sufficed, and I used the file of a swiss army knife to grind the lead down for some fine graphite dust. So far so good. Now I was supposed to have rubber gloves... oh well, I must have left them in my other jacket. I'll just try not to touch the lighter too much. I was now told that I needed a paintbrush or something to put the dust onto the lighter. Well, I found a basting brush in the kitchen, it managed to do the trick. And after all was said and done, I found nothing but a big smear of dust and not a fingerprint to be seen. Oh well, it was fun I guess.