For the first time, I watched American Idol from start to finish this season. I'm not exactly sure why I chose to do so this time around, having never done it before, but it was enjoyable. Naturally, I hoped that rocker Chris Daughtry would win...come on, the guy had my vote as soon as he busted out Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive months ago. But I actually think he might be better served in the long run by not winning, since now he can simply be himself as opposed to "American Idol Chris Daughtry." As for the final trio: Elliot Yamin had no appeal for me, I didn't understand the love the judges heaped on him all the time, and I was happy to see him go. And the much-debated final matchup of Taylor Hicks vs. Katharine McPhee? Ehh. Whatever. I don't see myself buying a CD by either one. McPhee is adorable but her stage presence can be pretty non-existant, whereas Hicks is a strong but goofy showman but only when singing some Joe Cocker or Michael McDonald-type cover song.
Last Comic Standing returns to NBC and I'll once again be doing recaps for it on Reality TV Calendar. I've always enjoyed the show despite the occasional controversy and the often-mediocre comics selected. I'll have recaps of every episode on the RTVC site...warning, the site has gotten a little pop-up happy as my tireless editor, Ron Lemon, has tried to make the place profitable. If you want to check it out, I suggest a browser like Mozilla that can painlessly nip those annoying pop-ups in the bud.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Sunday, May 21, 2006
AZ wrap-up
So where were we? Ahh yes...Kyoto. It's a Japanese hibachi restaurant in Scottsdale, but we certainly don't go there for the food. The place has become a Loop institution because of the atmosphere and the sake bombers. For the uninformed (or, more likely, the mature), doing a sake bomber consists of pouring yourself a shot of warm sake, dropping it into a small glass of Japanese beer, and downing it. Repeat several times for a guaranteed good time.
So there we were at Kyoto. We actually had a reservation that they immediately honored this time around, so there was no need to impersonate the Oakland A's pitching staff (a story from not too long ago that most of you have heard). It was a rare Thursday evening Kyoto appearance, and the weeknight call seemed like it might affect our mojo. "Let's take it easy tonight," said my friend Erik, who had early meetings the next morning...and then he sauntered up to the bar and ordered five sake bomber set-ups. Easy, indeed.
It actually was a fairly reserved evening as far as Kyoto nights go. The majority of the rest of the weekend was spent at the AVP beach volleyball tournament, as Erik's company, Crocs, recently became the title sponsor. Now this was quite a set-up. Crocs had a double-wide makeshift luxury box looking over the court, complete with food, drinks, and couches. We had a blast hanging out the entire weekend watching Olympic gold medalists Misty May and Kerri Walsh decimate their competition. I think Beth got a little tired of my temporary crush on Walsh, but come on, she's a 6'3" Amazon goddess who also happens to be really cute.
The Arizona trip concluded with a stay at the Hyatt Gainey Ranch for Beth's Jackson-Lewis legal conference. Great resort, with beautiful grounds, a bunch of different swimming pools, and tons of other luxurious amenities. There was even a casino night event, and despite our success at the tables we came up empty in the raffle, crushing our hopes of winning the iPod nano on display. All in all it was a wonderful trip, but we were definitely ready to sleep in our own bed back home.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
A Red Sticker?!?
Beth and I quickly boarded our plane for the flight from Dallas to Phoenix, situated in adjoining middle and window seats. Despite not having the exit row, I thought that sitting by the window with my bum knee on the window side would afford me enough room to be somewhat comfortable.
I was wrong.
Things started badly and got progressively worse. The seats were tiny--the smallest that I've been on in a big plane in a long, long time. And wasn't American the airline that recently made a big deal about adding room to all of their coach seats? If so, then all I can say is, umm..."liars." But since we boarded so close to take-off time, I figured that at least we'd be in the air and on our way soon.
Once again, me, all kinds of wrong. First we're informed that one of the air conditioners is broken. This, while we're sitting in the full plane, on the runway, in Dallas, on a 90 degree day. Awesome. So they get to work doing whatever it is that they do...which doesn't exactly involve fixing said air conditioner. They mess around for a while...and a while longer...and a while longer. Some other minor problem comes up, and they mess around with that. We've gone from ready to go, to half an hour on the ground, to an hour, to an hour and a half and counting, and then we get held up by the red sticker. Or, more accurately, the absence of one.
Apparently, when mechanics work on anything on an airplane, they have to mark the area in question with a red sticker. "It's just like something you'd get at Office Max," the pilot explains, trying to placate us after what has now been two hours in our broken-AC sweaty death box. "Well, the sticker is gone. Either it blew off or...we lost it. So...if we find it right away...maybe it just fell off on the ground...then we can take off any minute now. If not, then it will take a little while longer."
I assume he managed to get all of this out with a straight face. A red sticker?!? Nice to know that airlines are using such high tech repair indicators in this post 9/11 climate.
Anyway, eventually, thankfully, we got off the tarmac and into the air. The flight itself was fairly uneventful, aside from the shooting pains in my knee. Upon landing, we see that our bags immediately arrived at the baggage claim at the same time we did. Good karma after the bad flight, maybe. So we grabbed them, hopped onto a shuttle, and quickly picked up our rental car and made our way down to our hotel in Chandler right across the street from the mall. Dinner with the Bladers at The Cheesecake Factory was exactly what we needed--specifically, a couple of Malibu Coladas each.
On Thursday, Beth went in to do her teaching for work and I happily hung out at the hotel. Read the paper, caught a little sun at the pool, and perused the mall for a little bit, including checking out the newest made-up breed of dog at the pet store. Has anyone ever heard of a "Valley Bulldog?" I certainly hadn't until I saw this British Bulldog-Boxer mix. Very cool mutt. The relaxing day was just what I needed after the travel nightmare that came before it. It seemed like things would continue that way, with a nice, mellow Thursday evening, until I spoke to Shaw B.
"We're going to Kyoto tonight," he said...
I was wrong.
Things started badly and got progressively worse. The seats were tiny--the smallest that I've been on in a big plane in a long, long time. And wasn't American the airline that recently made a big deal about adding room to all of their coach seats? If so, then all I can say is, umm..."liars." But since we boarded so close to take-off time, I figured that at least we'd be in the air and on our way soon.
Once again, me, all kinds of wrong. First we're informed that one of the air conditioners is broken. This, while we're sitting in the full plane, on the runway, in Dallas, on a 90 degree day. Awesome. So they get to work doing whatever it is that they do...which doesn't exactly involve fixing said air conditioner. They mess around for a while...and a while longer...and a while longer. Some other minor problem comes up, and they mess around with that. We've gone from ready to go, to half an hour on the ground, to an hour, to an hour and a half and counting, and then we get held up by the red sticker. Or, more accurately, the absence of one.
Apparently, when mechanics work on anything on an airplane, they have to mark the area in question with a red sticker. "It's just like something you'd get at Office Max," the pilot explains, trying to placate us after what has now been two hours in our broken-AC sweaty death box. "Well, the sticker is gone. Either it blew off or...we lost it. So...if we find it right away...maybe it just fell off on the ground...then we can take off any minute now. If not, then it will take a little while longer."
I assume he managed to get all of this out with a straight face. A red sticker?!? Nice to know that airlines are using such high tech repair indicators in this post 9/11 climate.
Anyway, eventually, thankfully, we got off the tarmac and into the air. The flight itself was fairly uneventful, aside from the shooting pains in my knee. Upon landing, we see that our bags immediately arrived at the baggage claim at the same time we did. Good karma after the bad flight, maybe. So we grabbed them, hopped onto a shuttle, and quickly picked up our rental car and made our way down to our hotel in Chandler right across the street from the mall. Dinner with the Bladers at The Cheesecake Factory was exactly what we needed--specifically, a couple of Malibu Coladas each.
On Thursday, Beth went in to do her teaching for work and I happily hung out at the hotel. Read the paper, caught a little sun at the pool, and perused the mall for a little bit, including checking out the newest made-up breed of dog at the pet store. Has anyone ever heard of a "Valley Bulldog?" I certainly hadn't until I saw this British Bulldog-Boxer mix. Very cool mutt. The relaxing day was just what I needed after the travel nightmare that came before it. It seemed like things would continue that way, with a nice, mellow Thursday evening, until I spoke to Shaw B.
"We're going to Kyoto tonight," he said...
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Moved in
Wow, a month between posts is pretty sad...but it has been a crazy month. We moved into the house on April 21. Technically, the move started much earlier than this, thanks to the generous loan my parents made to me in the form of "Gus the Bus," their beloved Ford Expedition. Thanks to having Gus for a few weeks, I was able to pre-move a bunch of stuff to the new house. Then a very solid trio of movers came on the 21st and finished the job, doing all of the heavy lifting...literally.
Getting everything turned on and working at the new place was easy enough but there were other tasks that took much longer. Right when we bought the house we decided to renovate the entire master bathroom, ripping out the old sink, vanity, cabinets, floor tile, and shower. To this day, the job still isn't done. The new tile is in and the new tile shower is finished as well and it all looks great, but we are still waiting for the arrival of our custom vanity cabinets and a new heavy duty glass shower door. My dad was a huge help with all of this, doing what work that he could and advising me on other stuff. I'm absolutely clueless about all this kind of work, but thanks to him I'm now a little more well informed.
Despite the fact that we just moved in, Beth and I are already out of town in Arizona. She had a couple of work trips that we were able to combine into one big visit and I happily agreed to tag along. Our flight left Little Rock at about 1:15 on Wednesday and everything seemed to be going well. Beth was running a little late after heading into the office for a few hours of work but we still had plenty of time to drop the dogs off at Aimee's house and head to the airport. There was no line at all for the skycap, who checked our two enormous suitcases and printed our boarding passes on the spot. Unforunately we were too late to grab exit row seats, something I always arrive absurdly early to secure thanks to my ample size and gimpy knee. But we had a middle and a window next to each other. The first leg was on a puddle jumper apparently designed to accomodate Hobbits somewhat comfortably. I know I've ranted about these planes before but this one seemed smaller than ever. However, it was just a quick up-and-down flight to Dallas to grab our connection. Once on the ground in The Big D we hopped onto the monorail which dropped us practically right at our next gate, where our flight had just started to board. The timing was pefect. Everything was going great.
Or so we thought...
Getting everything turned on and working at the new place was easy enough but there were other tasks that took much longer. Right when we bought the house we decided to renovate the entire master bathroom, ripping out the old sink, vanity, cabinets, floor tile, and shower. To this day, the job still isn't done. The new tile is in and the new tile shower is finished as well and it all looks great, but we are still waiting for the arrival of our custom vanity cabinets and a new heavy duty glass shower door. My dad was a huge help with all of this, doing what work that he could and advising me on other stuff. I'm absolutely clueless about all this kind of work, but thanks to him I'm now a little more well informed.
Despite the fact that we just moved in, Beth and I are already out of town in Arizona. She had a couple of work trips that we were able to combine into one big visit and I happily agreed to tag along. Our flight left Little Rock at about 1:15 on Wednesday and everything seemed to be going well. Beth was running a little late after heading into the office for a few hours of work but we still had plenty of time to drop the dogs off at Aimee's house and head to the airport. There was no line at all for the skycap, who checked our two enormous suitcases and printed our boarding passes on the spot. Unforunately we were too late to grab exit row seats, something I always arrive absurdly early to secure thanks to my ample size and gimpy knee. But we had a middle and a window next to each other. The first leg was on a puddle jumper apparently designed to accomodate Hobbits somewhat comfortably. I know I've ranted about these planes before but this one seemed smaller than ever. However, it was just a quick up-and-down flight to Dallas to grab our connection. Once on the ground in The Big D we hopped onto the monorail which dropped us practically right at our next gate, where our flight had just started to board. The timing was pefect. Everything was going great.
Or so we thought...
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