I have the conch...for now

We had an out-of-town visitor recently, and her presence in our small house made me painfully aware of just how much television I sit in front of. Not "watch," necessarily, but just have on all the time. I need to get more books.

Anyway, when I am honest with myself, I have the television on a lot, but I actually don't watch that many shows regularly. I am trying to keep that number down, since investing in new shows requires dedicating more of my brain to names, subplots, etc. I just shouldn't have the time for that.

So anyway, my new show this season is probably going to be Lost, which has the best chances for keeping me interested. I love "stranded" stories, esp. the elements of how you would survive in a strange situation with very few tools, resources, etc. I am also a sucker for X-Files-esque monsters and mysteries, both of which are apparently going to be staples on this show. And finally, I really love the whole Lord of the Flies, create a new society, what happens when the cops are gone and there are no legal consequences to your actions, sort of story.

For now, I'm in.

I'm no Phil Gordon, part two

Okay, so after several weeks of hot poker action, and being the only one in our group not to win some money yet, I finally took home a pot at our weekend poker game! What a relief! I was really getting tired of being the guy at the table who knows all the rules, all the lingo, reads the books, watches the shows...and continuously goes home broke. Finally, the cards came my way, and I feel much better about how I played.

My biggest mistake of the night was actually against my wife. Here's the line:

I'm holding a Jack and 4, both hearts. Flop comes: Ace (hearts), Queen (clubs), and 9 (hearts). So two cards to go on the board, and a pretty good chance at the flush, right?

But I bet wrong. I should have gone after the pot more aggressively and scared everyone else out, but I limped in, slow playing it to see if I would indeed make the flush. What happened?

Turn: 9 of spades. River: Queen of hearts.

In other words, I make my flush on Fifth Street, but I also waited too long, and now anybody out there with a Queen or 9 has the full house, and I'm screwed.

And sure enough, my wife had the Queen. Probably should have gotten out, but I was pretty pot committed by then, and figured I should at least see if anyone made the boat, so I stuck around. She did. Grrrr.

Of course, she's been putting in our entry fee for the past four weeks, so since I've been playing with her money, I guess I shouldn't complain. Also, my take of the pot was enough to pay her back for the past four weeks, so I really can't complain.

I wish I had made enough to also pay off the parking ticket I got last week, the one she will now have to pay, but maybe I'll get lucky again this weekend. We'll see.

Fun with high winds

Just dropped off our good friend at the airport; she visited for the last week, and now is headed home...and straight into Hurricane Ivan. Yikes.

When we lived in Alabama in '95, we lived through Opal, and I will never forget it: amazing winds and rainfall, a solid week afterwards without electricity or phones, and the realization that I would NEVER have made it as an early pioneer without air conditioning. God bless you, Mr. Carrier!

What has been interesting about watching all of the Ivan coverage on television was realizing that I never saw any of the Opal coverage due to the power outage. I wonder if the Weather Channel guys, in their cool black t-shirts and baseball caps, were set up just around the corner from our house, and we never knew it?

And by the way, do we need an intrepid reporter to lean into the wind, get his hat blown off, and struggle to talk into the microphone every time a hurricane comes? You can't tell me some of that isn't added dramatics.

It's hard to stand in one place. We get it, already.

BETTER than flying cars!

The Jetsons promised us flying cars by now, but I think this is even better:

Netflix and TiVo are rumored to be considering teaming up and allowing members to download movies from the Netflix library directly to their TiVo box. What a world.

This, of course, means that the paltry amount of cardio I get walking to the mailbox to mail my red envelopes back will have to be replaced somehow. I must resolve to walk to the refrigerator more often, but come back with less. Balance will be achieved.

Somebody set up us the bomb

So in the spirit of my last post RE: my love of reruns, I thought I'd link to one of my favorite internet-phenomenon-from-several-years-ago and breathe a little new life into it. Come on; if VH1 can do I Love the 90s, surely I can get away this?

Seriously, this time we mean it: All your base are belong to us.

Deal with it.