Odds and the End

Odds are, you watched the Super Bowl last night. I did as well, in the comfort of our friend Jordan's apartment, which she shares with an engaged couple (I don't know who would ever want to do that). She is a Tulane alum and big Saints fan, and since neither Sarah nor I have much connection to Indianapolis, we cheered for the underdogs along with her. It was a good game, but since I had no money riding on the outcome and found the commercials subpar, I was much more attached to Jordan's barbecue shrimp than I was to the game.

On more important TV matters, the premiere of the final season of LOST has come and gone, with much ado from me and my fellow LOSTies. I won't get into the details here, because most of you don't care, and those of you who do can check out Pops' take on it at his blog. Suffice it to say that many hours were spent by my coworkers and I Wednesday morning around the water cooler combating out LOST hangovers.

Finally, I thought I'd point out what was both a fiduciary boon and culinary nightmare for me a few weeks ago. Sarah and I were at Target picking up a few items when I noticed a sign that Lean Pockets were on sale for $2. I often buy Lean Pockets at this price--2 pockets per box, or $1 per pocket is a decent deal. They are a reasonably not-unhealthy lunch in a pinch, portable and microwavable. However, I had grown quite sick of them, having indulged in them far too often in my Office at JMU (to the horror of both my palate and my coworkers' noses).

My heart rose, then sank when I examined the sign and saw that the $2 price was not for 2-packs, but rather for the family size 12-pack boxes of Pepperoni and Sausage Pockets! We had to buy them. I've been taking them in my lunch ever since. After three weeks, still about a third of our freezer is apportioned for the little pastry packets of lukewarm pizza goo. My coworkers ask me every day if I like Lean Pockets. Every day, I tell them no.

The banes of my existence.

It's been a long time comin'

Sorry, y'all, for the super-long blog absence. It's been pretty hectic with the move, then limited computer time over break, then travel, then moving in, then settling into and commuting to the new job, then having only my slow desktop with which to work.

I guess I'll begin with a random assortment of photos from the past few weeks.

Pre-move

My largest accomplishment in a year and a half at JMU, the completion of the Public Affairs break room.


My second-largest accomplishment in a year and a half at JMU, hanging Christmas lights in Rachael's office.

Break, part 1: Christmas in Carlinville

Two furry guys, Jack and Nic


Christmas lights, part 1


Christmas lights, part 2


Three Dog Day


Jack getting reacqauinted with Sarah and Grandma

Break part 2, the Second City

Sarah is almost as tall as the trees in Union Station


Vernon Hills Winter Wonderland, part 1


VHWW is a great little drive thru the park with decorations made by local senior citizens


Winnie, as is typical, being the center of attention (see next three pics as well)








Sarah is more affectionate with Winnie...


...Than she is with her aunt


Onion loaf, a necessary part of any meal at Hackney's

Post move

Our new kitchen, soon after being cleaned


Living room, soon after being cleaned


New room, finally with new bed, and clean

It was a terrific break, and it's been a terrific first week at work too. Only twice was I seriously delayed on I-91 during my commute, and only on my first day did I feel discombobulated. Now, with 97 percent of our stuff put away and after the first good deep cleaning, I am very happy to be here and enjoying a restful night. Even if it is spent watching the Golden Globes. At least I don't have to work tomorrow! :)

The Job

Since I got one pseudo-angry phone call yesterday from someone demanding details about my new gig, I will share some here. Starting Jan. 11, I will be working at a large, Hartford, CT-based nonprofit organization called the Community Renewal Team (or CRT). They have about 750 employees and serve nearly the entire state of Connecticut.

Their repertoire includes providing basic needs (such as Meals on Wheels, food banks, school lunch programs, elder services, shelters, heat assistance, etc.); financial literacy education programs; employment assistance (case mgmt., training, financial assistance, job placement, etc.); policy and advocacy; youth education and mentoring; wellness; drug and alcohol education and rehabilitation; criminal reentry; and a whole bunch more. Looking at this program list will get you started.

My job in the communications office will be to help tell the stories of all of those programs, to work with the media and other publics to help raise awareness of the organization as a whole.

The CRT is nearly all grant-funded, working with a fiscal budget of somewhere around $60 million. It is the oldest community action group in America, having started much smaller in the 1950's. That's about all I know for now. I haven't seen where I'll be working yet, but I presume I'll be in a cubicle. Wish me luck!

A Tremendous Theory

Thanks to being snowed in to my apartment all day this past Saturday, I was able to unabashedly catch up big time on my LOST re-watching. (I watched probably 10 episodes or so in one day!) Rarely leaving my couch, I finished up season three. With the LOST s6 premiere just under 2 months away now, speculation from fans and major media alike is picking up.

One of the bggest names in the LOST media world is Entertainment Weekly's Doc Jensen. Since the beginning of the series, he has offered his own thoughts on the show's future as well as shining the spotlight on some of the fan community's biggest fanatics. He just posted a new column that gets very deep into demons (or daemons, or daimons) and their possible role on the Island. I found it very dense and boring, and skipped most of it. However, he also featured an interview with an amateur LOSTie named Andrew Wilmar, aka Eye M. Sick, who has run a LOST-related blog for a while. In the interview, Jensen highlighted Wilmar's Three Black Swans theory, which he posted this past summer. And it's a doozie.

In sum, it proposes that there have been three unexpected Black Swan events that were not "supposed to happen" but did thanks to various characters, that have kept the Valenzetti equation from causing the end of the world. We've seen the first two of these events -- the Incident from last season's finale and Desmond's turning the fail safe key.

In both cases, the energy contained in the Island would lead to the end of the world if not halted in some way. In the 1977 Incident, the normal course of events would be that DHARMA's drilling into it would have unleashed the energy with Apocalyptic results, had it not been for the LOSTies and Juliet detonating the nuclear device first. Essentially the same is true when Des turns the fail safe, keeping the energy from being unleashed after Locke prevents the pushing of the button. The LOSTies and Des are the Black Swan variables that changed the normal course of events.

**This part I am embellishing a little: Faraday's mother knows this, and that is why she is so insistent on making sure Des and everyone else important back to the Island, to keep the delicate balance of the loop in place. We can postulate that Des, when unstuck in time after turning the fail safe, had the ability to change history (whatever happened, happened is wrong), could have married Penny and never gone to the Island, and therefore never would have turned the fail safe. Bam. End of the world. Thus, because of the two events, there has been a loop 27-year loop btw 1977 and 2004 going on for who knows how long (Note: The Valenzetti equation calls for a 27-year period before the world ends if not changed). That is also why Faraday's mother does not hesitate to send her son to the Island, even though she knows his end will come there at her own hand. This also adds to the 'loophole' idea spoken by the Man in Black to Jacob.

The third we shall see in the final season. It's a little too deep to try to summarize here, but it ties in my discovery of the Omega Point motif and essentially states that the two children of the Island that have been born, Aaron and Yi Jeon, must get married before 2031 to restore balance, or order, or Yin-yang, etc. to the Island, and therefore the world. I know that sounds dumb right now, but read the whole theory, and it's actually pretty amazing, when supported with evidence from events we've seen on the Island so far.

Sad News

Greta Goldfish Armstrong passed away sometime between 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 4 and 8 a.m. Monday, Dec. 7, at her residence in the James Madison University Office of Public Affairs.

Burial services took place Monday morning, at sea. She will be missed.

Memorials should not be put toward buying me another fish. Thank you.

Late Photos

So I know I'm a little late on posting about my travels and Thanksgiving weekend. Suffice it to say that the trip was terrific as was the Turkey Day meal. Aside from a minor flat-tire-at-the-Hartford-Airport snafu, most everything went off without a hitch. I flew, cooked, ate, drove, interviewed, slept, changed a tire, flew again, rested, ate, bowled, ate again, won several board games, ate again, slept, and so on and so forth. It was nice. Here are a few photos I took on my phone. The first two are repeats of ones on Sarah's blog.

One of the days, Sarah and I traveled to Brattleboro, Vermont. Read her entry for a better description of the trip. We ate at a Thai restaurant, visited several used book stores, a few thrift stores and stopped at the unhappiest place on earth on the way back. This is a picture I took too late of the "Welcome to Vermont" sign.


Sarah enjoyed her meal at Thai Bamboo.


Sarah did not enjoy my antics.


The nail which, upon entering Sarah's tire head-first, caused our flat; costing $25 to repair plus $4 for the 10 minutes we were "parked" in Bradley International Airport's garbage-riddled Economy Parking Lot D.

TV Time

So, it's been a while since I last posted, but in my defense, these have been by far the busiest weeks of the year for me at work, and I've been spending a lot of my free time exploring my new TV. It's not the snazziest, top-of-the-line behemoth I could have gotten. No, I was sensible, did lots of research and settled on a nice mid-range set. It's a 32", 780p LCD TV. If you know what that means, or care about more bells and whistles, comment and I will answer more, but since most of you probably don't know and don't care, I will leave it at that.

The one feature I wanted to highlight is that fact that it has an input port solely reserved for computers. Unfortunately, it's a VGA (15-pin) input (a somewhat outdated technology), not the best for streaming digital video, etc. My laptop has a DVI (29 pin) output port. Thankfully, my computer did come with a DVI-VGA converter, but I still had to buy a VGA cable to hook it into the TV. I ordered one, and it came last week. The result:



Having purchased a 10' cable, I can place my computer under my coffee table, run the cord along the floor and into the TV, and watch programs on Hulu with comfort. The quality is actually very good, at least from my viewing distance. However, to get sound, I would have had to buy another cable and adapter to have sound output from the TV, so instead I bought some computer speakers on sale for $5 at Target, and simply listen to sound from the computer using them. It's not the classiest setup, but it suits me. Lately, the flavors of the month for me have been "Andy Barker, P.I." a comedy starring Andy Richter as a mild-mannered accountant-come private investigator, co-starring Tony Hale of "Arrested Development" that lasted only 6 episodes; and "Kitchen Nightmares," a show where enfant terrible and uber-chef Gordon Ramsay visits struggling restaurants in America and turns them around in a week (it's disingenuously edited and probably mostly scripted) but it's still hilarious.

In other TV news, apparently AMC is planning on running a 6-episode miniseries beginning this Sunday that is essentially an updated version of the 1960's cult sci-fi classic "The Prisoner." This version stars Jim Caviezel, a favorite just sub-star-level actor of mine, most famous for playing Jesus in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," as the central character No. 6; and Sir Ian Mckellen as his nemesis, No. 2. Some other details have been modernized. Read all about it here in the NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/arts/television/11prisoner.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss