today's life snapshot

+ as happens every friday morning around 4:30am, i awoke to the sound of my trash being taken. only, in my haze of semi-consciousness, i realized i never put the trash out. so for a second i said “oh well”, then i said “wait, its doing to be 80-90 degrees for the next week, do i really want nasty old trash bags festering in my garage for 7 more days?”. So i jumped out of bed, threw on some shorts, and ran outside with my trashcan in tow. I think i startled the trash guy, who seemed happy just to see any sign of life at such a god-awful hour. we exchanged a few pleasantries, he emptied my trash can, and i went back to bed. took me a half-hour to fall back asleep though, as the adrenaline rush of trying to catch the garbage man in the middle of the night was pretty effective in waking me up.

+ random thing i thought about today: does anyone remember that candy “Bit-O-Honey”? i hated it for 2 reasons. 1) i didn’t like it. and 2) at the summer camp i went to, Bit-O-Honey was in the vending machine at slot D1. The skittles were in slot D10. On more than one occasion i went to buy some skittles with my precious change that i had brought, and hit the “D” and “1” keys preparing to hit the “0” key next to secure my “D10” selection. Only i would always forget that there was a “10” key to hit, and so the machine would assume that i wanted “D1” and as i was hitting the “0” key in vain, the vending machine would laugh at me and spit out Bit-O-Honey. Like i said, it happened more than once, which is my fault of course…and i had to eat it, i mean i couldn’t waste 65 cents. Man, i hated Bit-O-Honey.

+ The LOST Season finale was amazing. I didn’t see the end coming at all. I have a few thoughts regarding where things are now that we are at the halfway point, in terms of seasons. (in actuality there’s been 72 hours f LOST on so far and only about 48 hours left, so we’re more than halfway now)

  1. I’m pretty sure there’s some time travel that’s going on here. So throw out the “the writers said it can all be explained”. what they actually said was “it can all be explained by pseudo-science” and as we know, time travel can sort of be explained with physics…but that doesn’t mean it can actually happen. So yeah, i’m pretty sure Desmond’s flashes and dream sequence were time travel somehow, just not sure yet how far it reaches. Did Jack and Kate get rescued and come back in the present day (december 2004) or did they come back to life before the crash (jack says to kate “i’m tired of lying”)? maybe they were able to right the wrongs they had done. maybe jack was able to keep his dad from dying (which would explain the references to his dad in the finale) and kate was able to restrain herself from blowing up her stepdad (which would explain why she wasn’t in jail in the finale). Who knows, maybe the musician who programmed the Beach Boys code into the Looking Glass, maybe that was Charlie himself who programmed it in at some other point in time?
  2. i wondered if the black powder around jacob’s house was what the smoke monster looks like when it is dormant? maybe jacob’s spirit takes that form when it wants to. at other times it looks like walt or a black horse? i’m quite positive that the walt that appeared to Locke in the finale was the smoke monster. was it also jacob? not sure…don’t think so, but not sure.
  3. the person in the coffin? here are my guesses in order of what i think is most likely. someone we don’t know yet, james ford (aka sawyer), john locke, juliet, ben, or alvar hanso. ok, just kidding about that last one.
  4. don’t be so sure that season 4 will pick up where season 3 ended. (btw, the flash forwards were to april 2007 as confirmed by the newspaper clipping…that is 2.5 years forward from the current island date of late december 2004) . they might not revisit the future for a while still. remember, season 2 ended with penelope getting word that they thought they found the island, but that whole story didn’t even come into play until late in season 3. and even then it wasnt a major storyline.
  5. the finale’s awesomeness confirmed once again that this is the best show on tv. great acting, superb writing, unpredictable twists, and amazing characters. bravo, LOST. bravo.

+ just booked a nice hotel in rehoboth beach, DE for two nights in June. Pretty excited about that. It will be the 2nd annual Allain family beach vacation with the 4 of us. We had such a great time last year, that we are all pumped to do it again.

+ I’ve had the new Caedmon’s Call CD, Overdressed, for over a week now and I’ve got to say that they have delivered in a major way. Derek is back with the band for this project and subsequent tour (and maybe after that as well) and it’s great to have him back. It’s also great to have Andy Osenga still with the band and bringing his ‘A’ game as well. This is quite the all-star lineup they have now (including Randall Goodgame’s writing, Cliff and Danielle’s great vocals, and the usual cast of characters on the other instruments – you know who you are). I’ll have more of a review of the album after a bit more listening. I’d also like to tell the story of when i found out that Derek was coming back and how i couldn’t tell any of the fans for a while, because it’s sort of interesting if you’re into CC’s music too…so keep a look out for that post. If i’ve piqued you’re interest, the album comes out on August 28th. You will be able to pre-order the CD in a few weeks online, and the pre-order version will include 2 bonus tracks (which are very solid).

+ speaking of great new music, my friend Jeremy Casella has released an AMAZING album called Recovery this month. I can’t say enough about how much i love this disc. He’s a uber-talented singer/songwriter who writes songs that are anything but your typical singer/songwriter type stuff. The tracks are chock full of his superb vocals, cool string arrangements, some electronica, great percussion, stirring lyrics, memorable hooks, and melody lines that will get stuck in your head for days. He worked with some talented people on this project (Monroe Jones, Matt Slocum, Ken Lewis, et al) and it shines through. Take a listen to the tracks on his Virb site and see if his music is up your alley…if so, go ahead and buy the disc. You’ll be treating yourself to some great tunes and you’ll be supporting a guy who’s trying to make a living and support his family by creating art that is overflowing with truth and beauty. There’s even a great 8-minute video of the making of the album on Jeremy’s website that the Portland Studio guys put together…worth a watch for sure.

+ Got me a Samsung BlackJack the other day. It was refurbed, so with my work discount it was $49.99, which isnt too bad. Not sure that i’ll get the data plan yet, but even for texting and calendaring and phone calls it seems like a pretty cool device…we’ll see.

+ Gotta stain my deck sometime this month. Not really looking forward to that, but it’s gotta be done.

+ Going to the dermatologist in a few weeks to get some moles looked at. I’ve had more than one person tell me that i need to get them checked out, so i guess i should. It reminds me of one of my favorite one-liners of all time from Seinfeld when Kramer is posing as a dermatologist in order to get a picture of George’s boss with his shirt off. When his credentials as a skin doctor are questioned, Kramer pretends to have many years of experience and says “I’ve seen moles so big, they had their own moles. Freckles that covered two men.” If that don’t make you laugh, well, you don’t know funny.

+ Finally, it’s a strange feeling going into this weekend’s series with the yankees. After these 3 games, we won’t see them again until late August. There’s no urgency on the part of the Sox to try and sweep, as there usually is…in fact, i’d be ok if they only won 1 game of the 3. With the yankees this far back (13.5 games…ha!), it just feels different. Will i be watching every game? of course. Will i be upset if they lose any of these games? You bet. Few things are more constant in my life than my hatred for the Yankees. But even if we do get swept, we still have a double digit lead. So the worst-case scenario isn’t so bad. The Sox are just playing great ball right now, and it’s been fun to watch. The starting pitching has been great, Youks and Pedroia have been hot lately picking up the slack for Lugo and Manny who’s hit better of late as well), and there’s a sense that this team knows how good it is. It’s really enjoyable to watch. And if we do take 2 or 3 of these games this weekend…haha..that will be so sweet. can’t wait.