What tax?

Living in Stamford puts us in what is deemed the "Tri-State" area (includes Connecticut, New York and New Jersey), so we will quite often get commercials on TV that aren't relevant for us because they are meant for people who live in one of the other states. These are generally commercials related to government/politics.

This is an example of one such commercial. Liz heard it last night and asked "Did you hear that?" I wasn't listening, so we found it on YouTube and I listened.

Watch the commercial, pay close attention to around the 7 - 9 second mark, and then tell me:

What is the first thing that Governor Paterson wants to tax?

Ummm... what...

Something seems weird at St John's Episcopal Church in Stamford. I'll let you all decide whether it is odd or not based on these photos (taken from a car on a cloudy and rainy day).

Umm...

Things I remembered/was reminded of this week

Thinking back on this last week I was reminded of a few things:

- Buffalo bites are delicious:

They are pretty much boneless buffalo wings, but cut up into bite-size pieces. I cut the chicken up, then in a bag mix flour, a little salt, black pepper, paprika and red pepper. Toss the chicken in the bag and let it sit in the fridge for 30 minutes. After that, throw them in the oven. Just before they come out of the oven make some wing sauce (hot sauce and butter). Stir them both together and serve with some ranch dressing. It's the good stuff.

- A falling tree, which we've seen a lot of lately, would really hurt:

On the way to work we drive down a (reasonably) major Stamford road, Washington Blvd. There is a river/stream that runs next to the road, where this tree fell during the big wind storm a fortnight ago. It pulled up dirt and roots with it when it fell and took out a fence. Hopefully they clean it up before softball season, because the tree crushed the right field fence, and a garbage bin, and Scalzi Park field 3 is already small enough.

- The Japanese make some truly wonderful stuff:

I saw this on Geekologie. I love the entire commercial, but especially when the dog is doing stuff on 2 legs (walking weird, running normally with a dog photo over his crotch, and the frisbee dance). Liz watched it and then staired blankly at the TV. "I don't understand any of what I just saw" she eventually said.

- South Park is freaking awesome

I'm reminded of this with pretty much every episode I see, but when they ripped off Sarah Jessica Parker, I thought it was fantastic (I can't stand looking at that woman, probably even more so than Jennifer Lopez)... and all the cartoon vomit was fantastic.

- The Clone Wars is actually good

After watching the episode last week after 3 weeks off the air I was severely disappointed. I enjoyed this week's episode though. A new character that was actually seen as a threat to the Jedi, some type of actual "war" in the show. My only complaint was that they seem so quick to kill off characters who might actually pose a threat to the heroes. Sure, it's a kids show and the heroes are going to win, but at least let some of these characters, other than Grievous and Ventress, get more than one shot at winning. I'll hold out slim hope that Admiral Trench (above) survived some how (he apparently did before, though it is highly doubtful this time). This episode was also set before all of the other episodes, so hopefully he makes some type of appearance again. But I know he won't...

- Sleeping in on the weekend is good

Enough said.

- Bacon is great

Had it for breakfast yesterday. Wonderful stuff.

First full day of Spring

I know I did a "Who" the other day, but both of these seemed timely, so I went with them. Today is the first full day of Spring here, so I want to introduce you all to the guy across the street.

Vvvrrrrrmmmm. The sound of a leaf blower roars across suburbia. It's him. It's always him. He went through his routine yesterday, but that doesn't matter. He needs to do it today. There cannot be a leaf on the lawn. Not one.

John Lawngow. Not his real name, but the name I have given him. I call him John Lawngow because his receeding hair line and hair color remind me of John Lithgow.

Really? My hair looks like that?

John has an obsession with his lawn. He will spend hours on his lawn on Saturday, making it look pristine, and then will come back out and do it again on Sunday. He will also come out and do it several times a week after work.

He seems to have a routine, or at least, this is how I have witnessed his work on the yard. First, he leaf blows. He never rakes. Following the leaf blowing, he will mow the lawn. After mowing, he puts lime in his special dispensing contraption and goes over the entire lawn. After that, he mows again. Here it is pictorially.

One of the funniest moments I have witnessed with John Lawngow was on a slightly windy day a few months ago. After having walked all around his yard for around 30 minutes, leaf blower going the whole time, he had all his leaves in a pile next to the road. Ready to blow them into the street, the wind turned, blowing leaves all over his lawn. I laughed, and so did Tiff who saw it as well, but John just shook his head and muttered something under his breath.

I figured that the snow would stop John from coming out and doing stuff in the yard, but he proved he has a tool for every job. While everyone else was out shovelling their driveways, he brought out this:

The thing I don't get about it is that it still seems to blow the snow over places you are going to need to go back over anyway. Plus, he has to push it all over the places he needs to go, just like a shovel. I guess he just saves himself the lifting.

He loves using his tools. Today, I witnessed him using his leaf blower to clean off his cars. I kid you not. I think he probably also brushes his teeth and dries his dishes with that leaf blower.

It seems though that even John has his limits, or, in fact, doesn't have a tool for every job. He paid someone to come and clean this up:

Liz saw the tree fall, as did he - he was standing in his doorway when it happened. There was only minor damage to the trunk/boot.

Why the obsession with the lawn and with his yard tools? Theories and speculation abound - he doesn't like his wife, his kids are disappointments, he likes being outside. But, me, being the responsible poster I am, I went and got the full story* - he loves the smell of lawn tool exhaust.

John's yard before being done. See the few leaves at the front of his yard - that's how you know he'll be outside soon.

John with his weapon of choice: the leaf blower.

* Of course, I made it up.

Saugatuck Falls Natural Area

We (Liz and I, and Richard and Andrew came as well) got out for our walk today, heading to Saugatuck Falls Natural Area. It was in Redding again, but a different part of town. Apparently, they aren't sure about the rules there...

Walking across a bridge, I was out in front, Andrew said "Garter Snake". I turned around and after some pointing out I saw the snake. Apparently not poisonous, it would probably struggle to bite me. Still, the snake creeped me out - I'm not sure if it is because I associate snakes with things that can bite me and make me sick or dead.

We walked along the Falls Trail, which we figured would take us to the falls. It opened up into a large field, and while I never walk with a stick in my hands I grabbed a stick and started walking. Not far along the trail I found another stick:

"I found a new stick!" (is what I was saying as the photo was taken)

Dropping the "new stick" (the big one), we got to the river and the trail wound alongside it towards the falls.

Looking back along the trail

We made it to the falls, which seemed to be more like rapids than falls. At the base of them was some still water surrounded by trees, one of which had a big strap/rope for swinging into the river. We sat around there for a while and then kept walking. The trail headed up a small hill, and on reaching the top we saw the bulk of the falls. Still wasn't a massive drop and looked like big rapids, but they were definitely falls and better than the earlier stuff.

The early falls (token slow shutter shot, I've taken a lot lately...)

Our loop back to the car took us past a vernal swamp. It caught our attention because from even about 50 yards away you could hear frogs. They stopped making noise when I got close to the pond, but Andrew pointed out a black mass on the other side of the pond - eggs. I went over and took a photo of them, they looked cool.

(Click to see bigger)

I'd certainly go back to the area in summer, the trails were good and not too hilly, and in the summer heat the shade and lack of hills will be nice. Plus the sound of the water was good to hear.

After the walk we did some grocery shopping which included some meat to grill. I made burgers, and I was happy with how they came out. I had a double, so a bit over 1/2 a pound of beef on a bun with some onions and ketchup and mustard, and topped it off with some baked beans and hot dogs. Mmmm... meat. And beans.

No Way!!!!

In The Office, they often refer to the Stamford office. We always just assumed they meant Stamford, CT, which I thought was pretty funny.

This season, they confirmed CT when one of the employees transferred there. Then, in the episode we just watched, they showed an establishing shot of the office.

THE BUILDING IS THE BUILDING I WORK IN!!!!

Based on the zoom they are about 2 - 3 floors above where I work. I thought that was cool.

End of the week...

Well, it's Friday night, and it feels like it was a long time coming. With everything that went on last weekend with the weather/lack of power it felt like we didn't get a weekend, and that the week was 12 days long. Factor in the change in time for daylight savings and it has thrown me off a little.

South Park the other night was awesome, and FlashForward was good. I was really psyched for Clone Wars, but it pretty much sucked. I liked one line in the entire episode and that was it. I was more entertained by the preview for next week. Oh well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad...

Tomorrow is supposed to be around 70F/21C, so the plan is to head out somewhere new and go for a walk. I'm really looking forward to spending some more time outside.

Time for an episode of The Office and check the cricket score before hitting the hay...

Hooray!

95 hours after the lights went out Liz and I are no longer powerless! I don't know if we are powerful or empowered or whatever, but we apparently have electricity flowing to our apartment again!

I say apparently because we haven't been there today, but Liz tried to call the apartment, and, instead of being redirected, the answering machine picked up! Therefore, because our phone runs through the Internet and the Internet is through our cable, it may also be the case that we have everything back!

On the downside of power returning, Liz found out that Audubon has power as well, so she is back to work tomorrow.

Admittedly, while I am most looking forward to warm water and stuff like that again, I will probably try and catch South Park tonight...

Happy St Patrick's Day

Happy St Patrick's Day from Tea Dog McGillicutty (and baconisgreat, I suppose)!

Tea Dog lives here at the office, on the divider between Mike's cube and mine. He came to Mike from a box of tea. After Christmas he was guarded either side, Palpatine style, by his Red Guard, who were actually chocolate Santa Clauses. Unfortunately, some time in February, the Red Guard ranks were decimated by a hungry Jim. They had sustained heavy damage in their defense of Tea Dog, one had a fractured back, the other had a collapsed skull, but still they stood tall in their foil armor.

Tea Dog's main purpose, aside from adding some character between cubes, is to show how fragile life can be. Standing atop the spinning blades of death and copper heat sink of doom (old processor cooling system), Tea Dog smiles in the face of certain disaster. He reminds everyone who walks by that a slight misstep in any direction could see you hitting those spinning blades, and even if you miss those blades, that copper heat sink is still there waiting to slice you up.

He's a leprachaun, so he's therefore Irish. He smiles a lot during a life of purpose and originally smelled slightly of tea. He is Tea Dog (T.D.) McGillicutty.

We are still powerless at home, hopefully that will change today or tomorrow... there are now less than 10% of CL&P customers in Stamford without power, so we're deep in the minority. I wouldn't care if we didn't have cable/tv, computers, internet and stuff like that for a little while longer (though there is new South Park tonight, FlashForward returns tomorrow and Clone Wars is new on Friday...), but I do miss warm water.

This morning was pretty cool - literally at the apartment (47F/8C degrees inside), and figuratively when we saw Crazy Hat Man walking down the street for the first time in a long time. He was wearing really bright shorts (I could best describe them as "Hawaiian shorts"), a just below waist length coat, and black business socks, pulled right up to the knee. He had the headgear on, of course, the bat wings I believe. He completed the outfit with a cigarette hanging limply from his mouth.

"Come out, boy! It's windy!"

- Homer Simpson, The Simpsons episode 10.17, Maximum Homerdrive

Well, what an interesting weekend, and its effects are still proving to annoy. As a result you should expect posting to be even more sporadic than normal.

Friday afternoon and night were overcast and sometimes drizzly, nothing too exciting; nothing worth writing home about. That's why I will say little more about Friday afternoon and night.

Saturday we woke up and were greeted by wind. Lots of wind that had nothing to do with the curry from Friday night. We started to get ready for the day, planning to be busy on Sunday, we figured that our best bet was to get our grocery shopping done so that we had food for the week. Then, rumble, crash, rumble! Bad onomatopeia, hence why I need to actually explain that we looked out the front window to see our garbage bins (Australian readers, think "Wizbin"-sized bins) blowing across the driveway on a collision course with the cars in the driveway! We hurriedly put on clothes that would be more wind tolerant than our pyjamas were, and gathered the bins up. We decided to put them in the garage, so that they couldn't blow away again. Opening the back door to the garage we noticed the grill (barbecue) had also blown around a lot. Not wanting it damaged we moved the car forward and put it in with the bins at the back of the garage. Collisions with flying bins or grills averted. Time to head back inside.

We took showers, which we couldn't do the day before due to lack of hot water, and found that now that we were ready to go out the wind was even worse. Not wanting to be without food, we considered going shopping. Not wanting to go outside in the wind, we considered staying home. Staying home won.

The afternoon went on, and the cabin fever quietly rose, but the wind was rising at an even greater rate and volume, so we were pleased with our decision to stay in. Looking out the windows, we could see trees swaying immensely in the howling wind and siding coming off the neighbors house.

"Ring, ring", but more digitally, if that makes sense, the phone tolled at around 4PM, the birthgivers from Australia on the other end. I talked to them for around 20 minutes, and just as I was telling them about the siding on the neighbor's house the line went dead. But it wasn't just the phone, the lights, router and modem were off, the washer (mid-load) and dryer were silent; anything powered by electricity was dead. 4:20 or so, and the power was out.

A few minutes later we looked out the front window to see a tree had fallen across the street nearby. "Could this be the cause of our power woes?", we speculated. I grabbed the camera and took some hurried pics, braving the wind outside, which was very strong. I came back in and within a few minutes a crew had arrived. They put marker cones in front of the tree, that way people would know that there was a tree blocking half the street, and left. Neighbors came to their doors to watch the excitement, none wanting to miss the chance to see what would happen next.

What happened next was silent, save for Liz's words. A tree, perhaps trying to answer the age old riddle, had fallen directly across the street, uttering not a sound as it fell. It fell straight across a parked car, damaging it minimally, but surely to the horror of the person who was watching it from their doorway. While the tree fell it took down powerlines, leaving cables (not sure if they are power, phone, cable or a combination of all of them) flapping impotently across our driveway and the street. Another crew arrived and put caution tape around the tree to the utility pole the cables were from, and then they left.

Lucky we had stayed home.

Night drew in, and we started to gather candles. The fridge bare and warming up due to our lack of shopping and power, we ate leftover curry for dinner, and mango for dessert. Succumbing to boredom, we went to bed at 8:30.

We woke the next morning, the wind subsided but still present, and an hour later than the day before thanks to daylight savings. Walking downstairs we saw that they had cut the tree blocking the road, but only so much that the road was no longer blocked. The caution tape had been ripped apart by cars driving through, and the cables still hung across our driveway and into the road and fallen tree. Looking into the backyard we saw 2 more fallen trees, propped against other trees that were stopping their descents into houses. A third tree had fallen out the front, this one had gone into a house. The gusts had apparently reached up to 70mph (112 km/h) during the night. Luckily our house had only suffered a couple of broken roofing shingles.

Given that yesterday was Barbara's birthday, we were already going out, and so we left the apartment and headed for her place. Road blockages, both tree-based and erected by cleanup crews, meant that we had to take several different streets compared to normal. We went and met Andrew and Richard and saw Alice in Wonderland (Barbara's choice). If you haven't seen the movie, and don't want to know about what happens, skip until you see the bold YOU CAN READ AGAIN!

I have some complaints about the movie. My main one is this: Why is it that the Mad Hatter, a person who makes hats for a living, beat the Red Knight, a knight for a living, in a sword fight? That doesn't make sense to me. Jack Sparrow played the Mad Hatter, so he had sword experience, but George McFly played the Red Knight, and he has experience knocking out Biff with one punch. I don't think it quite works like that though, so it should all just be character based... oh well. I guess it just doesn't make sense. Or, I wasn't the movie's target audience.

All up the movie rated a "Meh" with a shrug of the shoulders. I didn't think it was bad, but I also didn't think it was good. Perhaps it was reliant on the 3D aspects (we saw it in 3 dimensions, but only if you count time as an additional dimension to screen width and height) to carry it a little. I would rate it 4 strips of bacon out of a pack of 8. Maybe I'll start rating things I watch or whatever.

YOU CAN READ AGAIN!

We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for grocery items for dinner and lunch today that didn't require too much cooking or refrigeration, hanging out at Richard's, where he had electricity and all the perks, such as heat, that go with it, and later at Gail's house, where a gas stove was able to heat up soup for dinner.

Monday we woke up to find the power was still out and the temperature inside had dropped to around 52 degrees (~12 degrees celsius). Liz tried to go to work, but when she arrived she found out the office was closed because there is no power.

I have a couple of photos of our immediate area that I might post in a few days when we have power again, but right now I don't have any decent ones. There are plenty of photos of the damage on the Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate websites.

Work on Monday had spoiled me - hot running water, heat and light. But that all ended at 5:07, when the power to the building went out. It was restored pretty quickly though. We ended up going to Barbara's place, where there was still power, and taking showers. Showers are a wonderful thing.

Now it is Tuesday, and power is still out now, around 64 hours after it first went out. Apparently there are still 9883 Connecticut Light and Power customers suffering interruptions in Stamford alone. Other people I work with who are also affected have made calls to CL&P to see about the outage, and they've been told that they may have power restored on Wednesday evening. I don't know what the plan is for our street, and in our immediate area it is only our street - the streets either side of ours are still glowing with lights.

Finally, even though I feel like we are living in a by-gone age, I don't want the power back on yet. At least not until someone has come and taken those downed lines off our freaking driveway!

Cool product

Products like this are great, because they make me realize that there are people out there making a difference and making innovative and interesting things still.

I wonder what ply it is...

An Open Letter to TV and Movies (Crabpeople)

Dear TV and Movie People,

Jennifer Lopez was just a guest star on "How I Met Your Mother".

CBS also showed a commercial for a Jennifer Lopez movie.

Please, don't do this. Please, no more Jennifer Lopez. She annoys me.

Thank You,

Russell

P.S. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, this request doesn't apply to you. Unless it is a live action movie, then it still stands. But stuff like this is OK:

Why the slow motion stuff? It's good at regular speed...

Weekend Wrap

The weather this past weekend was even better than a fortnight (2 weeks, yes, some Americans ask what a fortnight is) ago, with sunny skies on both Saturday and Sunday and temperatures skyrocketing into the low 50s (12 - 14 celsius). Not wanting to miss a chance to spend some time outside after such a long time in indoor hibernation, we decided to go for a hike at a place we had never been before. Liz looked some places up and found Huntington State Park.

The park itself is in Redding, which is around 40 minutes drive from our apartment in Stamford. Redding sound familiar? It's where the farm is that we get our pumpkins and Christmas trees from. Huntington is around 800 acres and has several miles of hiking trails. Pulling up to the park on the opposite side from the main gates, we put on our hiking shoes and checked out the trail map. We found a loop and decided we would do that. The trails are marked with colors on the trees (called blazes) so that people know where to go. We decided to go blue, yellow, green, yellow, white then blue, which would give us a nice walk and loop back to the car. Figuring we would never remember that order/path (they were all right turns btw, except the turn onto white, which was left), Liz went to get paper and a pen. When she came back I said "Buy your groceries, you wily bastard!" Liz's response was "What?!", and I told her it again, and then noted blue, yellow, green, yellow, white, blue. Shaking her head she wrote it down anyway. While she was writing it down I came up with another little saying. It's not safe to write it online though. No-one puts bad words on the Internet.

We set off, me quoting my dirty saying, Liz shaking her head. Then, loudness! 2 horses (or ponies, not sure how big they were) steamed past us, with their rider encouraging them to go faster. We then passed another 2, slower moving, horse creatures, and thought about the dangers of what we were embarking on. Where there are horses, surely there is horse poo. Luckily, the first time, the horse poo gave us a 10 yard warning that it was there. But the not-so-fresh stuff would sneak up on us.

Following our blue trail, we came to the first intersection. Nope, that trail isn't yellow, so we kept walking. Next intersection wasn't yellow either, so we asked some passers-by for help. They told us that there were so many trails in the park that we could pretty much go anywhere and loop back to where we started. So, we turned left (we found out later our original path was right). We kept walking, finding this new trail, ironically the white trail, covered in snow. We passed a lake, then started to climb a hill. When we made it to the top we realized we had crossed the entire park, and were now at the main gate. Time to check the map again. It turned out that the map we had looked at was faded, so the colors were all messed up. No-ones fault, but being color-blind I would like to hope that I was very exempt from taking the blame. I also missed the arrows saying "You are here" because, really, who puts red arrows on a green background?!?!

The top of the park/main entrance was pretty cool. One of the Huntington family was a sculptor, and she made the sculptures that stand either side of the entrance. The first sculpture is of 2 wolves, howling to the sky:

The second is of a bear and its cubs. The bear looks over towards the wolves, with a look on its face that says something like "Yo, wolves, I hear you howling, but if you come over here I'm gonna hit you with my stick. Yep - someone put a stick in my hands."

After looking at the correctly colored map, we found a new route back to the car that would encompass many of the trails we would have originally walked on. The trails wound through trees to lagoons that were still covered over with ice and snow and along streams.

We'll definitely go back again, though next time I might take a tripod with us. We covered probably less than half the trails they have there, even though we walked for around 3 hours, which was awesome. 4 weeks ago, spending 3 hours outside would probably have been miserable.

On Saturday night Erin and John came around and we played some games and ate Mexican food. It was a fun night. Liz killed us all at Monopoly, and some fun deals were made on property.

Sunday I woke up very late for my (recent) standards at 11. Liz was already awake and doing stuff, so we decided to quickly do the grocery shopping and then head to the beach for a walk. Sure, we've been to the beach a lot before, but soon beach season will start and we won't be able to go anymore. To go to Greenwich Beach in season, you have to be a resident who has paid money for a beach card and car pass. If you aren't a resident or don't have a card, you have to buy a pass ahead of time, and I think they're something like $7/person/day, and then it's something like $25/day for your car. So, we've got to make the most of it while we can...

Leaving the beach we started following a guy, who was driving incredibly slowly. He was fidgetting in his seat, and I realized what he was doing. He was getting a comb out of his pocket. For the next 4 miles and 10 minutes, he constantly combed his hair, sometimes 2 handed, and checked his results in the rear view mirror. This even continued onto the interstate, with cars flying past him at 55+ miles/90+ kilometres/hour. What was great about him combing his hair was every time he combed a different way, the bald spot on the back of his head seemed to move and grow. It was very fixating, and we even drove out of our way to follow him and see how long it went on for, we were that enthralled.

Bald spot, highly visible.

Regardless of the traffic around him, he wanted to finish his hair.

Admiring his handywork in the mirror...

before deciding he wasn't quite done yet...

We passed him once on I-95, and when we looked at him he was the seediest looking middle aged guy you're likely to see...

Then we came home and Liz called Josh and they talked about long division.

Yep, it was a good weekend.

Oh, and The Amazing Race was on. Wouldn't you know it - bag someone out (the inept cops) and they come back and win a leg. Jet and Cord finished 4th. One of them bungee jumped with his cowboy hat on. The bungee people wanted him to take it off, but he said it would stay on - and it did. They had also never played soccer before, and chose to do a soccer challenge. They rocked at it. Funniest though was when they had to drink a boot of beer, when neither of them drink. One of them drank most of it - he's a funny drunk.

Dinner time! And How I Met Your Mother is about to start.

Second Wind

Played 4 games of Howzat while watching the Australia vs New Zealand score update...

4 games for 3 wins - I lost the first game by 1 run. In the 3rd game I scored my highest score yet - 63!!! Now ranked 6315 and level 6.

Seriously though, now, time for bed.

Go Australia!!! And go Beefprawnicans!

Useless by 9PM

This last week has felt strange. Ordinarily I am still pretty awake late at night, but this week has felt like such a long week, and as the title says, I have been useless by 9PM. It just hits me and all I can do is go to bed. But, tonight, none of that, so I'll catch you up on what has been happening.

So, what's been happening? Not much. I've been going to work and have been useless by 9PM.

Oh - I've been dealing, I believe, with a serial prankster at work. But the prankster has also been educating me in some regards, because I now know that the word for "printer" in German is "drucker".

Over the past 9 working days, one of the office printers has been configured to display menus in German, Swedish, French and Turkish. The first language wasn't so bad - after doing German in primary school I for some reason thought I had a decent chance of recognizing the word "Language" if I saw it. I dug through the menus and found it. The next day, Swedish, was more tricky, because I know no Swedish, but the menu option is in exactly the same spot. So, ever since then, whatever the language, it has been easy to change back: Menu key > Option 4 > Option 3 > Option 16.

The weather has been getting warmer, and it is about time. I think each day this week made it into the 40s (40F = ~4C), and tomorrow I think the forecast is for 49F! I think that's about 9C! Soon we should be hitting the double digits!

Last weekend I had some fun playing Howzat. Actually, on Saturday, I hated the game and announced my retirement from it. I had played about 5 games and lost most, if not all, of them. A profound inability to time the ball and competing against random strangers who were higher level than me made for a bad run of results. Sunday, however, I found myself with some spare time. After creating the new header, I came out of retirement and played a few more games. I only dropped one game all day, and included a 5 match winning streak! I unlocked the 5 match achievement, hat-trick achievement and at one stage even chased down my opponent's total (10) from 3 deliveries and earned the hat-trick of 4s achievement. I'm now level 5 and am ranked 6626 in the standings.

Before passing out we've been watching some TV online to wind down. Lately we have been getting into the US version of the Office. It is the type of random humor that I enjoy, so I have really liked watching it. 3 weeks ago also saw the return of The Amazing Race. There aren't as many teams this season that I like, mostly teams I despise, find generally annoying or just mock the entire episode. My favorite racers, and I'm putting all my eggs in one basket this season as far as liking teams goes, are the cowboy brothers, Jet and Cord. They're awesome - they have the cowboy voices and cowboy hats - everyone assumed they're dumb, but they've out-thought most teams so far and are hilarious to (cowboy) boot. I want to see them go all the way. One team I originally thought I would like I now just laugh at. 2 undercover detectives from Rhode Island who thought they would win every leg of the race have wheezed and spluttered their way to finishes nowhere near the front of the pack. For a team who built their careers looking for clues to catch criminals they have a real hard time working out what to do sometimes with clues that are directly given to them. Note to everyone: if ever you're the victim of crime in Rhode Island don't expect these cops to bust the case wide open. Unless it's a case of donuts - they seem really out of shape.

In a few weeks time I'll also be rejoicing with the return of The Clone Wars and South Park!

Now I'm getting sleepy - but I bettered last night's time by 2 hours!