Greetings from Malaysia

OK, We're here and we're alive. Highlights from the first 1/2 day:

US Airways check-in person can't find us in the computer, even though we've already printed our boarding passes online. Eventually she prints new boarding passes and checks our luggage thru to Kuala Lumpur. We aren't very hopeful that US Airways' computer is going to get our luggage to the right place.

We call Malaysia Airlines from the gate to make sure they have us in their computer. They do. They assign us good seats and we feel a lot better as we fly to Newark.

We check in at Newark. As we pass thru security, Bernie notices that the boarding passes don't have the same seats that we were originally assigned. This means no certainty of an aisle seat. I get angry as we wait for the gate attendant for two hours. When he finally shows up, he tells us that we do have an aisle, but not the cozy aisle-and-window seats we wanted. Grrrr.

Fight to Stockholm is OK. In Stockholm we get off the plane, go thru another security check, walk down a stairway, and check in at the same gate, wait a few minutes, and get back on the plane. What was the point?

I watched 9 episodes of season 3 of House on the next leg of the flight. Since I've never seen the show before, I guess I caught up with it. I like it, though it's hard to suspend disbelief when you watch 9 shows in a row where a patient comes in with one disease and somehow ends up with a completely different life-threatening, rare disease and House diagnoses it without consulting a computer, textbook, or a different doctor.

We landed in Kuala Lumpur, and I had only managed about 2 hours of sleep in 27 hours. The bags made it, believe it or not. Aunt Annie and Bernie's mom met us at the airport and we picked up her dad and we went to get dim sum for breakfast. We checked into our hotel and I caught a 4 hour nap, while Bernie took care of her number one priority - getting her hair straightened at the mall. After that, we got dressed up and went to a birthday party for her Uncle Sam at a fancy club. I would have liked to have partied harder, but honestly, I couldn't keep my eyes open. We got back to the hotel at 11pm and I crashed hard. I didn't dream, wake up, or even turn over until morning.

We had decided to not pay for an extra breakfast buffet at the hotel, so Bernie told me to go try the one we got free with the room. It was totally amazing. They had every breakfast food imaginable, including all the Malaysian ones, of course. Dim Sum, Roti Canai, Roti Telur, Chee Cheong Fun, Curry Laksa, Fried Rice, Rice porridges, Beef bacon, Chicken sausages, Breads, Tropical juices, and Western stuff as well. After I reported back, Bernie decided it's worth paying for.

Today's activities included a quick turn around the mall in the morning. I had to get caffeine, as my addiction is not being fed properly and I'm a bit headachy as a result. We got some Red Bull at the local Jusco. Then we were picked up by Bernie's parents and we got Roti Canai for lunch. I had never tried Murtabak, so they ordered it for me and it was wonderful, but it was way too much food. We went to visit her Grandma next and some of her aunts and uncles were there as well. They had food and tried to feed us again. I'm beginning to suspect that I have a "Feed me" sign around my neck. After a short visit, we went to her Godma's house and got our briefing on Felicia's wedding and our duties. There was food there also, but I knew what we had planned for dinner so I tried to abstain. I can't resist Char Siew Paus, though, so I held myself to only one.

Dinner was an attempt to re-create a wonderful meal that Aunt Annie treated us to three years ago on my very first visit to Malaysia. We went to this restaurant that specializes in crabs. They have 32 different crab dishes to choose, and tonight, we had 30 people to feed. We had crabs in butter sauce, crabs in tomato chili sauce, black pepper crab, crabs steamboat style, and also had mantis prawns fried in cream sauce, La-la, which is clams in chili sauce, beef short ribs, and some sweet and sour prawns. Bernie and I then split a young coconut and drank the water and spooned out the white meat for dessert.

Pictures of the food were taken and I'll post them at my next opportunity, I promise. They tell me that Malaysians only eat one meal a day, but it starts at dawn and ends at bedtime. I can believe it.

Now we're back at the hotel and I'm sleepy again. I guess we'll go to bed early and get a quick start in the morning.

Big Ol' Jet Airliner...

Tomorrow is the day! This will probably be my last chance to post something before we leave. I think I'll be able to post occasionally while we are in Malaysia for the next two weeks, so keep watching this space.

I'm doing some video conversion to get a couple of movies on my Zen. I lost the program I used to do that with before when I had the computer repaired, so I had to relearn how to do it. I spent the entire evening yesterday processing and re-processing trying to get it in the correct format. Finally I got it right on my last try.

The fridge is clean, there are some workers fixing up our last house punch-list things today, and I just went out to buy another TSA luggage lock. I think we're ready to fly.

Not Spoiled After All!

Hey, the site that I went to with all the spoilers was WRONG!

Funny, they had all the pages photographed from the book, but the synopsis they posted was full of errors.

Anyway, I read 880 pages in one day and finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows around 3:30 this morning. Now I can go back and re-read it carefully.

I'll give the rest of the world a week to catch up and then I'll discuss the book here.

I will say that I liked the payoff at the end, but didn't like a lot of the buildup. There's no way they could make a credible movie out of this book, in my opinion. It's just too dense.

Yesterday, Bernie and I accomplished the following in prep for our trip:
1. Mowed the lawn
2. Edged
3. Sprayed weeds
4. Cleaned the house
5. Washed the rugs
6. Shopped
7. Made pork buns
8. Fixed my Dad's internet
9. Ripped my Cantonese lesson CD to MP3s for the flight

There's more to do today, of course.

In another note, I went to my doctor and whined about unsuccessful dieting and she gave me a prescrip for Phentermine, which I tried back during the Fen-Phen craze. This is the half of the cocktail that was determined to be safe and remains on the market today. It's also the half of the cocktail that I felt did me the most good. I started on it yesterday, and just like I remember, not only does it kill my irrational hunger pangs, it makes me feel like a normal human being with normal energy levels. When I'm taking this medicine, I'm not finishing one meal while dreaming of the next one. That's a wonderful thing.

Spoiled!

I couldn't help myself.

Really.

The local newspaper's website had the link.

It was just a click away.

I clicked it.

Now I know.

Damn.

Wish I hadn't.

T-minus 11 Days and Counting

In 11 days, we'll be on a plane for our two-week Malaysia trip.

Bernie is playing it smart and is taking a year's supply of birthday and Christmas gifts and cards, already wrapped and signed, for her family, which will save us the bother and cost of shipping stuff over there in the near future. This means I get one suitcase for my clothes and stuff, while she gets three pieces of luggage (two will be boxes).

3 to 1 really isn't that bad when you think about it. After what I learned last time, I know that we can get same-day wash and fold service for our clothes for a few bucks, so I'm only taking 7 changes of clothes with me. Plus my suit for the wedding. I should be fine.

I've got 5 books, plus the new Harry Potter on the way. Hopefully, this will get me through two 22-hour long flights. I checked the movie list for the flight over there, and I'm pretty sure I can enjoy 6 or 8 of the movies they've got on demand. They've also got the whole slate of Arrested Development, which I've never seen. Bernie will probably watch the 12 episodes of Grey's Anatomy, I'm sure. Since we're going in July and returning in August, the movie list will be different from the return trip, thank heaven. The first time I flew to Malaysia, I watched Fellowship of the Ring about 6 times after my laptop battery ran out. I think I watched it in Cantonese the last time just for a change.

We're going to try to be much more liberal with taking pictures and movies while we are there, so we should have lots of blog-fodder when we get back. I'm taking the laptop, so we should be able to post some while we're overseas.

I have a shopping list that I want to check out while I'm there. For the most part, I'm just checking prices:
1. Bluetooth earpiece for my cell phone
2. Handheld wi-fi devices
3. Pen-based graphics tablets for the PC
4. Fancy keyboards for the PC
5. GSM cell phone for a friend at work

From my experience last time, I'm going to get lots of massages at the hotel spa. The difference in currency rates makes this one hell of a bargain, and my back and neck need some serious work.

One thing that I really enjoy over there is the fresh-squeezed juices you can get almost anywhere. I'm looking forward to fresh lime juice with sugar cane over ice, and mango lassi, and young coconut water, etc.

Poor Trouble is going to have to be without us for 14 days. We've got pet feeders and visitors lined up so that he doesn't go wild in the house. I hope that's enough.

This should be a fun trip - less tourist-y, but with more time to do what we want to do. I plan on savoring every moment of it.

Order of the Phoenix

Bernie and I caught a 6:30 showing of Harry Potter tonight.

I think I enjoyed this movie the most of all of them. If you've read the books, I think you'll agree with me.

I've always been impressed with the adaptations of the books. Condensing an 800-page book to a 2 hour and change movie has got to be a tough job. This one took the cake. Some really nice surgery was done to the story and it was seamless and hit on every important point from the book.

I felt from reading the book that this story was basically only a setup for the next book. The movie did a better job of standing on its own than the book did, and gave us some insight into our main characters that wasn't present in previous movies, while giving us some nice action to whet our appetites for the inevitable big conflict to come.

My impressions from the book were that the combination of a hard life and teenage hormones had finally made Harry crack and unleash his dark side. The movie took that and ran with it. Bravo!

I couldn't help noticing all the jealous looks from Ginny when Harry was entranced with Cho, too. That'll pay off nicely in the next movie. The sneak peeks of Ginny's magical prowess were quite nice as well. My only disappointment was that Sirius didn't get a bigger slice of the action before meeting his demise. No two-way magic mirror in this movie, either, which sinks one of my book 7 theories.

On a technical note, the Thestrals were fantastic, but the giant, Grawp, and the centaurs really sucked from a CGI perspective. They were only on-screen for a short bit, however.

So far, my favorite movie of the summer. Now if book 7 would only hurry up and get here!

The Week(end) in Review

On Friday, both Bernie and I were under the weather. Both of us were a little sick on Thursday night, and I still had my headache and nausea when I work up on Friday, so I stayed home from work and slept until 2pm without waking up. Groggy but feeling better, I managed to make it through the afternoon and we went to Concord Mills mall at dinnertime and did some shopping. The Black and Decker outlet had some fine deals, and I got the hand-held detail sander I've been wanting as well as a studsensor (yes, it goes off whenever I hold it, ha ha), a hacksaw to replace my broken one, replacement blades for the hacksaw, and an item-to-be-named later because it is intended to be a gift for someone - all for 10 bucks.

We went to Charlotte's newest pride and joy, Panda Express, for dinner and enjoyed it immensely. In my previous job, Panda was my customer and I really like the company and the food they serve. I've been waiting for them to expand to Charlotte for quite some time. If you check out their link, you'll see a company that is running their business the right way.

On Saturday, we rested and spent some time with my Dad, who is alone all week since Mom went to the beach with my sister and her family. I think I got the last bit of the bug that was bothering me out of my system. We got to bed quite late because we were washing the pillowcases and forgot to dry them until bedtime. This needs clarification. We bought a set of 1200 thread count sheets and pillowcases when we got married. They are so wonderful that we refuse to sleep on anything else, and we will wash them and put them right back on the bed. Since we had forgotten to put them in the dryer, we had to wait to go to bed. Logical? Maybe not, but that's us.

Sunday we got up quite late due to the late bedtime. We followed our routine and went out to get a newspaper so that Bernie can clip coupons and look at the ads. On the way, we got lunch at Arby's and took it over to Dad's place since he was home alone again. After our visit, we went back home for a nap, ended up helping the neighbors to lift a big fountain they bought, and by then, it was dinnertime, and Dad called us and invited us to Souper Salad. After that, we came home and both of us worked on a powerpoint that Bernie needs to do for work.

Reading this over, I think this is the most boring thing I've ever posted. Next weekend, I think we'll explore an abandoned gold mine and look for the lost demon city of Azaraoth.

Independence Day

Today's July 4 cookout was the best ever!

We got ourselves up at 9:30 am and started our food prep for the big party. Bernie had a minor crisis with her ricotta-lemon purses (the fruit roll-up strips that were supposed to be used as a tie for the little crepes started dissolving) and had to change her strategy (she baked them in a muffin pan to make cups instead of purses), but aside from that, everything turned out superb.

Judge for yourselves:

The wieners, sausages, and cheeseburger on a stick










The curry shrimp with pineapple skewers











The veggie kabobs









The Char Siew Pork









The Chicken Satays (with peanut sauce not pictured)










We had about 12 people, including my parents, our neighbors, my sister and her family, and our friends Brian and Sophie and little Elise. Bernie's appetizers, desserts, and decorations got rave reviews as well, so we are quite proud of ourselves this evening. We even got everything cleaned up in an hour after the party was over!

We have lots of leftovers. Is anyone hungry?

Saturday

Incidentally, I wrote about Sunday before I had the chance to write about Saturday.

My oldest and dearest friend, Phil and his wife Selena came on down to Stallings to visit us for the weekend. They got here on Saturday for lunch and we brought home some barbeque from E.B's in Indian Trail. My folks came over and we had a long visit. Selena is an excellent tailor (seamstress?) and runs her own business on the side, so a while back I had bought some gorgeous black cloth with gold and blue chinese dragons and had asked her to make me a shirt. She brought the final product with her and it is fabulous. This is THE PERFECT SHIRT. There is no finer. And, even better, she says it was so time-consuming that she wouldn't ever want to do another one. Therefore, I have the last Hanzo sword, so to speak.

We took Phil and Selena out to our favorite Asian buffet, Tin Tin, and gorged ourselves on the saturday night specialities. Bernie loved the lobster salad and the squid, and I introduced Selena to curry laksa, which she loved. I must be getting old, because I really can't do more than two trips to a buffet any more. I got a plate of food and a bowl of laksa, and I was full. So disappointing when I'm surrounded by so much variety of great stuff. Oh well.

Today, we finished our grocery shopping for our July 4 blowout and set all the meat to marinating. (the skewers will have some flavor darn it, because we're marinating them for 36 hours).

It's been a great weekend, but far too short. Thank heaven for the holiday.

I like Ga-Ze-Bo-Ze-Bo

If you've been to Wal-Mart, or Lowe's, or Home Depot recently, and browsed through the garden center, you've probably seen those patio canopies that look a little like Lawrence of Arabia's tent.
Well, I've been coveting one for a while, since our backyard has zero shade, and today the price was right at Value City, where they had a very nice one for 50% off. My mom and dad called me while Bernie and I were taking Phil and Selena to breakfast and told me what was going on, and after Phil and Selena started back home to Raleigh, we met my folks at Value City and I basically got my birthday gift early this year.

After it cooled off a little outdoors, we put it up and it really wasn't difficult. I was prepared to throw some lag bolts into the concrete, but for now we are letting some concrete pavers hold down the legs. I'm going to have to extend the patio just a bit with a couple of those pavers, but I'll have to dig out the grass under the pavers, and there just wasn't time tonight. Overall, I'm very pleased and I'm sure it will be useful on the 4th!

Another One Of My Favorite Weekends

This weekend, we had no set plans. That's my kind of weekend. We woke up when we felt like it, did what we felt like, and still got all the chores done. And it doesn't feel like we did much of anything.


I'm sorry there hasn't been too much going on in my life to blog about lately. I'm sure things will pick up when we go to Malaysia at the end of next month.

As a reward for sticking with my blog during this time when there's nothing exciting to report, I give you all the link to Desktop Tower Defense, the most addictive web game on the internet, in my opinion.

Ottoman Empire

When we got our new living room furniture, we knew we needed something to put our feet up on. Having exhausted our ready cash, I was asked to make matching ottomans.

I made this ottoman a couple of months ago to match our new sofa. An ottoman 4 feet long would be very expensive to buy from a furniture store. I made this one for about $40. (The legs need to be painted, but we haven't gotten around to that yet)









This is the one I made this week. It goes with the armchair and has rolling casters.













Bernie wanted one with storage, and that's what she got. I'll line the interior with some cheap fabric and cover the staples on the bottom of the cushion.

'Twas a Nice Day!

• Had a pretty good day at work, no complaints.
• Got home, made chicken wings (yummy)
• Bernie and I booked our tix to Malaysia
• I paid bills and noticed I had a bunch of reward points on one of the credit cards
• Sure enough, it's enough to get two free tix to Newark for the first leg of the Malaysia trip, saving us about $400.
• Then, I log onto Fark.com, and I got my SECOND greenlight!!!!! Woo hoo!

Updates

Bernie's been stealing my thunder lately, and I just realized I haven't blogged in nearly a week!

Here's my update on life:

1. I gave blood today at a Red Cross Bloodmobile at the office. This was my first time. I had no idea you feel like crap afterwards!

2. I saw the latest news articles on "heelie" shoes. IMHO, any kid using them indoors needs to be tripped and do a faceplant.

3. Brendan's wedding was really nice and low-impact to everyone. They even said vows to the baby, which was cool.

3a. Brendan's family really has some beautiful women in it. In high school, we'd all lose 30 IQ points whenever one of his sisters was nearby. Not much has changed.

4. Bernie and I go to get the final approval for her 10 year green card on Friday. She'll get her passport stamped so that we can go to Malaysia in July-August.

5. We're really excited about the Malaysia trip now. Bert is still thinking he's going to go with us, so I'm particularly stoked.

6. Diet update: I did 4 weeks of Atkins and lost 20 lbs. I followed that with 6 weeks of Weight Watchers, and lost nothing. I followed that with 2 weeks of salads and rice cooker meals and lost nothing. One weekend in Williamsburg and I gained 5 lbs. I'm back on Atkins as of now, and can you blame me? I want 30 more pounds gone before the plane trip.

7. The auto shop next door to the office sends out special deals to my company's employees. I got an oil change, tire rotation, and car wash for $30 and I dropped the car off when I got to the office, walked across the parking lot to my building, and they were through by lunchtime. And they even Armor-all'ed the tires. Every once in a while, life is good.

8. We took apart our backyard fountain and rebuilt it last weekend, this time using concrete. It looks pretty darn good, I must say.

Crack in Crisp Form

Warning! Stay away from this bag!

I opened a bag of Flat Earth Baked Veggie Crisps this evening. 30 minutes later, I realized I was working my way through the whole bag one chip at a time. I had to get the bag away from me.

So I took it upstairs, where Bernie was on the phone with her mom. I mouthed the word "Addictive" and dropped it on her desk.

An hour later, Bernie comes downstairs saying "What have you done to me? Are you trying to kill me with this stuff? I finished the whole bag!"

I'd advise a surgeon general's warning on this bag in the future.

So How's That Anniversary Trip Going?

Today is Sunday, and we're done. It's been a nice trip, but mixed results.

Saturday:
We got up and had a free breakfast at the hotel, then went into town to endure our timeshare sales presentation to get our free tickets. My parents have a timeshare, and they made sure we were not going to say "yes" to anything before we went on this trip. We endured and kept our resolve and ended up with our free Busch Gardens tickets.

So we got into the park at 12:30. For those of you who don't know Busch Gardens, it is a theme park, and the theme is "The Old Country", or Europe. The park is divided into England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Italy, France, and "New France", which seems to be Canada although they won't admit it. We walked through the park until we ended up in Germany, where we had a late lunch at the FestHaus (various wursts and ribs and potato salad) and got our battle plan together. We went immediately to the newest attraction, the DarKastle, which is a 4-D ride in haunted castle based on Mad King Ludwig of Austria and Castle Von Schwanstein. This was the best ride of the day, believe it or not. 3-D ghosts and such menace you while the motion of the ride gives you the impression of flying and falling, etc. Very impressive.

We spent much of the day standing in line, and ended up only riding 3 more attractions. I didn't get Bernie onto the Loch Ness Monster or the Alpengeist, however, I did get her onto the Big Bad Wolf, a rollercoaster where your car is suspended underneath the tracks and flies around tight turns and makes a sheer drop toward the river. She loved it. Although she ABSOLUTELY DID NOT WANT to ride the new coaster, the Griffon, she had an unholy fascination with it all day and probably took more pictures and video of that ride than she did of anything else. Go figure.

One small disappointment - they no longer offer brewery tours. There is a little club where you can sample different beers, but you must make an appointment. This used to be the really cool interesting adult part of Busch Gardens, but now it is no more.

We finished our day at Busch Gardens at about 7pm. Neither of us felt like we could stand in line any more because our feet were so sore. Hot and tired, we went back to the hotel room and showered the grime off of ourselves. A bit later we recovered enough to seek dinner and ended up at some deli near the college of William and Mary, where we had two of the best sandwiches I've ever tasted. I had a hot Pastrami with knockwurst and provalone and Bernie had a Corned beef with salami and ham and swiss. This was a really fun day.

Sunday:
We got up and had a nice breakfast in the restaurant next door. We had tried the restaurant up the street, but it had a long line due to tables not being cleared fast enough. We looked and the bus-person was some old woman who was using the bus-cart as a walker. About 20 of the folks waiting in line all decided to leave en masse, and the old man who was running the place was tearing his hair out.

After breakfast, we went to Colonial Williamsburg and walked around a bit. We did a short bit of shopping, then went to the outlet mall and spent 2 hours. Bernie got a skirt and a sweater for her efforts. Then we went back into town and had lunch at Barret's Seafood, which is supposed to be one of Williamsburg's good restaurants. This was a total disappointment. Our waiter abandoned us after we were seated and we had to send another waitress to get him. Then we ordered, and I got crab cakes, mostly due to how good the one ordered by a person at the next table looked. It came and looked completely different, with smaller portions and the asparagus that was supposed to a side dish was mysteriously replaced with some limp broccoli. I called the waiter over and told him of the mistake and he brought me out the asparagus, which was in a tasteless hollandaise (not even a hint of lemon juice in it). Bernie had simply ordered soup and dessert, and the bread pudding she ordered was absent the chocolate sauce that was supposed to be on it. We looked at the same dessert that was ordered by our neighboring table, and theirs was larger portion, with a scoop of ice cream and had the correct chocolate sauce on it. We mentioned the missing sauce to our waiter and got "all the chefs do it a little differently" as an excuse. Well, this was a $35 lunch. What we order, we are supposed to get, and the standard should be set pretty high for that price. We left and didn't complain further, but we won't be going back there, nor will I be recommending that place again. This has not been a fun day.

So now, we're back at the hotel, and we're pretty much done with Williamsburg. I'm giving some thought to checking out early and heading home tonight so we can have a nice relaxing day at home to end the holiday. Bernie is taking a nap and we'll decide when she wakes up. We've really enjoyed being together and adventuring in a strange place, but home is where the heart is, I guess.

The Final Idol Blog of 07

I don't think it was much of a contest tonight. Jordin was much better than Blake. The songwriting contest winner was unfairly skewed towards her, but even if you throw that out, she outperformed Blake in the previous two rounds.

To start off, he reprised his previous triumph of "You Give Love a Bad Name" and I think he did it even better than his first performance. However, Jordin chose to do her new song first, and she chose a recent Christina Agulera song, "Fighter", and the combination of her performance, and the subsequent erasure of the only knock on her style, namely, that she can't do modern songs, scored more points in my book.

The second round was Blake's "She Will Be Loved" from Maroon 5 versus Jordin's reprise of "Broken Wing" by Martina McBride from country week. Blake was flat flat flat off pitch for the entire song. The judges failed to notice, so I'm beginning to wonder if the fix is in. Then Jordin did her song and she took a previous "10" performance, and topped it, bringing the house down. Second round to Jordin as well.

The third round wasn't even fair. The two of them had to perform the same song, the winner of the songwriting competition, which was supposed to spare us from the god-forsaken inspirational insipid honey-sweet mediocre ballad that Idol tortures us with every season. What a difference! We got a slightly more hip god-forsaken inspirational insipid honey-sweet mediocre ballad named "This Is My Now". Blake struggled from the first note and by the end he was just coasting to get through it. The judges were inclined to give him a mulligan, but should they? Jordin took it and, as predicted, ripped down the roof with it. She choked back tears on the last line, and darned if it didn't fit perfectly. The judges quickly reverse course and pretty much handed her the trophy right then and there.

Now for some criticism about Idol that I've been holding back all season.

Idol needs to fire the sound crew and director. The sound has stunk all season. Microphones cutting out, improper volume mix, incompetent mixing board, feedback, backup vocals disappearing...it's all happened far too often for the #1 show on television. I've felt that on many occasions, one performer has had a good performance turned mediocre by a bad volume mix between the band, the backup vocals, and the lead vocals. In the "Idol Gives Back" show, the group performance was a train wreck where the person singing lead almost never had their microphone active. On that same show, even Ryan had his microphone cut out in the middle of introducing a performer.

I don't understand why the stars that perform on results night are allowed to have monitor earphones while the actual Idol contestants don't get them. Pitch problems have been prevalent all season, and that one common (and for pros, it's essential) piece of equipment can prevent it. (Have you ever tried to sing on pitch with accompaniment when you can't hear the music or yourself?) It's crazy not to do it.

Tonight, I felt that Blake was drowned out on the last song by the background vocals, while Jordin had the opposite problem during her turn.

I've also been vastly underwhelmed by the band this season. Tonight was their worst performance all season. I heard at least twice a horn player (a trombone, I think) playing a stray note during a rest (sacrilege!!) in the middle of a song. The acoustic guitar was grossly out of tune during both versions of "This Is My Now", which contributed to Blake's out-of-tune-ness, and nearly threw Jordin off in the middle of her version. The background singers were as sharp as Blake was flat during his turn, and I don't think they all knew the words, because the chorus sounded quite 'mush-mouthed' in places.

This is supposed to be a group of professionals? I really wish I could watch the show once with my friends Ed and Jeff, because I'm sure they'd notice a lot more problems than I did.

I've also mentioned this before, but the recap clips shown at the end of the show were quite obviously not the same performances we saw live, as Jordin's tearful break in her voice was not present, and Blake's pitch was better.

OK, I've run out of gas. All in all, I think the best singer is going to win. We'll see if I get shocked tomorrow.

Heroes

Heroes, season one, is the best show ever! I'm not going to give anything away, since my father-in-law is watching it a few weeks behind in Malaysia, but the season finale was absolutely GREAT! And we get continuity going into next season, to boot!

We had a pretty good weekend. I got a new cell phone, hopefully one that won't shut itself off whenever I'm not looking, which my old one did. I helped my dad powerwash my grandfather's house, and we tried a new recipe from the Weber Grill Cookbook, which I recommend to everyone. This time we tried a marinated pork chop which was so good even my nephew who won't eat anything complimented it.

We're going to Busch Gardens this coming weekend for our anniversary. We got a deal where in exchange for enduring the timeshare sales pitch, we get 3 nights in a hotel and two entry tickets for $129. Bernie tells me she doesn't want to ride the Griffon, which is an intense rollercoaster. I agree, but she's going to come with me on the Loch Ness Monster if I have anything to say about it. I think I liked BG better than Disney (sorry, Elizabeth!) as a child. We are already 2 years married (legal papers signed on the 18th of 2005), but we treat our official anniversary as the 28th, since that was the wedding date. These have been the best two years of my life, and I don't mind letting everyone know that. I picked the right girl and I'm proud of myself for not letting trivialities like thousands of miles and a 18 months of long-distance relationship prevent me from making her my wife.

I have to tell this story before I finish tonight. My wife was talking to her dad on the phone this morning. He told her that he had been remembering the cabinet in our garage all day yesterday, which I had to re-attach to the wall while he was visiting us. He told her that it had been bothering him all day yesterday, and to please remind me to take a look at the other cabinet in our garage to make sure it didn't fall. 5 minutes after she hung up with him, I came home for lunch, opened the garage door, and the cabinet was on the floor, leaning up against Bernie's car. Luckily, it didn't do any damage to her car, and the stuff in the cabinet was all over the floor, but nothing had broken. I guess it's been attached to the wall for a year despite the screws being a bit too short to anchor properly into the wall studs. Papa apparently tapped into his psychic powers and forsaw it. He's a real-life "Hero", I guess! Too bad he couldn't call us a day earlier and say "Replace the screws, save the cabinet!".

Who's in the Finals?

Bernie and I had to watch the Idol results show upstairs tonight since we won't get the downstairs receiver replaced until Friday. I didn't realize how nice Bernie has it that she can surf and watch TV all at the same time in her office. I don't have TV in my office, now do I? Hmmmm.

Anyway, we got to see Elliott Yamin perform again. The dude has gotten a total makeover! Curly, shaggy hair and good teeth! I think if he had looked like this last season, he might have been the big winner. Anyway, his song from his new CD sounded great.

Later on, we got to hear Maroon 5, and I think I may have to buy their new CD when it hits stores. I already knew I liked their song "This Love", which Blake covered last night. Now I've heard two songs from them, and I like them both. This merits some further listening on my part.

So, by now you probably know that Melinda got sent home. It's too bad, because she's one of the best - just not in a genre that gets enough votes. Melinda and Jordin are splitting a lot of the same votes, I think, and Lakisha was splitting that group even further before she was eliminated. I guess Blake is getting the teenage girl votes, plus the "vote for the worst" votes, plus the Seattle demographic. He and Jordin are the finalists. I'm fairly certain this means Jordin is a landslide winner, as she will certainly pick up Melinda's voters. We'll see next week.

No Idol Analysis Tonight

Sorry, guys. I had my HD satellite box die on me at exactly 8pm tonight and I was on the phone with tech support for most of Idol. I wasn't paying enough attention to analyze.

I do think that all 3 singers were in top form tonight, and I wouldn't be able to rank them, as I consider tonight's performances a dead heat.

That being said, I think Blake is outta here tomorrow.