They Can't All Be Winners

Spies has been down a couple of times in the last week. Actually, it hasn't, but its connection to the outside world - courtesy of AT&T - has been, from what I've been told. This has been an obstacle to writing a journal entry this week, although truthfully the fact that I've spent the last three evenings trying to catch up on last season's television - 24 and The West Wing - has something to do with it, too.

I'm up to 9 pm on 24. The 6-7 pm installment ended on one of the few high notes of the series. It made me realize that one of the things I don't like about the series is that it focuses too much on making you jump and squirm, and doesn't give you the big payoffs to make you feel that it was worth it. So this is fine if you like to jump and squirm, but for me all that stuff is just set-up to deliver the payoff. Hitchcock understood this. The creators of 24, for all their cleverness, don't seem to. So I will definitely not be following the series to its second season.

I also watched the season premiere of Enterprise last week, which will be the last episode I (with malice aforethought) watch. At the end of the resolution of last season's cliffhanger I thought, "Yup, that's pretty much what I expected. No surprises, no exciting revelations - no excitement at all, in fact. And the usual tedious platitudes at the end." Like every other Star Trek series dating back to 1987, it doesn't take risks, it doesn't develop characters, it doesn't understand plotting or tension. It's the science fictional equivalent of Muzak. A pity, really.

Anyway. That's television. I'm sort of looking forward to Birds of Prey this fall, but don't have particularly high hopes. But maybe it will surprise me, like Smallville has. I might also check out Firefly (I missed the series premiere last Friday), though it, too, sounds like pretty generic scientifiction. (Keep in mind that I measure SF TV not necessarily against other SF TV, but against SF novels and short stories. Or at least comic books!)

On to sports: I had a mixed week in my football leagues. I scored a ton of points in my head-to-head fantasy football league this week, but I faced the only person in the league to outscore me this week, and so I lost and my team fell to 1-2. Bummer dude.

On the plus side, in my two football pools I picked all 14 games correctly this past weekend. One of my pools has been going since I was in grad school (since 1992, I think) and I'm apparently the second person ever to do that. Woo-hoo! Not that I expect to be able to keep it up.

And, this is the final week of baseball season. I'm not going to win anything in the league this year, although Subrata - blast him - looks like he'll win the "most improved team in the second half", even though his team has been bad overall compared to mine. Doesn't he know he can't win anything unless I win something too?? Well, six months until draft day. I love draft day.

In the real world of sports, the New England Patriots are 3-0, though they have a tough game against San Diego coming up. And the Athletics and Angels have clinched postseason berths today, so the A's will face the Twinkies in the first round, while the Angels will face the Yankees. The A's I think have a good chance to dismantle the Twins in short order (the Twins have a raggedy pitching staff and so-so hitting), while the Angels will probably go down against the Yankees unless their contact hitters manage to tee off the Yanks' aging pitching staff in a couple of games.

The Giants are still fighting for a wild card spot in the National League, though the way the Diamondbacks are collapsing (their best hitter is out for the year with a separated shoulder) they might actually claw their way to a division title. The NL crown is completely up for grabs, since the Braves have poor hitting, the Cardinals have injured pitching, the Diamondbacks have poor and injured hitting, and the Giants and Dodgers are both old and kind of patched together. I guess I'd put my money on the Braves, but not with a lot of enthusiasm.

Last Saturday Debbi and I helped my friend Syd move across the bay and into his fiancee's house. She has a lovely, large house over there, its main drawback being it's in the East Bay. It was a pretty lively time, meeting a bunch of Syd's gaming buddies, carrying furniture, and eating pizza. It's kind of fun to help people move once in a while; I enjoyed helping CJ and David move a couple of years ago. I don't want to do it every month or anything, though.

I think Syd is still kind of shell-shocked by it all. I remember that feeling.

Sunday Debbi had a splitting headache all day, and we mostly sat around watching football. I'm not sure what was up with it, whether we didn't have enough to eat or drink, or what. On the bright side, I bought a leg of lamb and made my yummy lamb in yogurt sauce dish, which is my favorite of the Indian dishes I made. As always, it lasted for several days afterwards.

I see Peter Gabriel has a new album out. It's been, what, nine years since his lamentably poor Us (Gabriel should try to avoid writing tracks about personal relationships)? Which in turn came six years after the mostly-ridiculous So (aargh, that awful track with Laurie Anderson!). He hasn't produced a really good album since 1982's Security. I kind of shudder to think what this one will be like. Well, that's why there are used CD stores.

Lastly, now that all of my big events for the month are over, I've started biking to work more regularly. In fact, I've biked in three times this week, and will bike in again tomorrow. It's a bit over 8 miles each way, so I'll log nearly 70 miles this week alone. Not bad, huh? I need to take my bike in for its free 200-mile tune-up, too.

I've been exploring some alternate routes to get to and from work this week. The route I took this morning is good in some ways, but I have to bike along the busy and bike-lane-less El Camino Real for half a mile, and then make a horrible left turn onto an expressway later on. The simplest route - by which I mean the one I figured out by looking at a map - seems to be the best, overall, though it does have a few more lights. I have a third route which is somewhat longer, but which is more scenic, so I tend to take it on the ride home when I have more time.

I've also started lifting weights at the gym after I get in. It's tough to motivate myself to lift weights after 35 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, but I at least want to keep doing my abdominal and lower back exercises. With all this, I still manage to get to the office by 9:30, and often earlier.

So I'm feeling pretty happy with this. Hopefully I'll soon see some results in terms of being thinner and/or lighter. And ultimate frisbee starts next month, so that will be a different sort of exercise each week. (By the way, they still have some openings for women in the league, so if you're near the South Bay and want to spend a couple of hours running around a field chasing a frisbee one night a week, consider signing up!)

And that, I believe, constitutes an entry. More this weekend, I hope...