Tuesday nights are officially booked

I thought the two-hour premier was a fine return to form for The Amazing Race. Not just from the unwatchable monstrosity that was The Amazing Race: Family Edition, but from the lackluster seasons that preceded it, too. My big complaint was that the casting had become quite tame, and it was hard to tell the teams apart because so many were young, white, blandly attractive "dating couples." So I was happy to see the mishmash of folks they brought together this time. Hippies! Nerds! Psychos! More like the classic seasons of TAR that hooked me on this show years ago. And it was great to see the teams being forced to navigate such a huge foreign city right off the bat. Anyway, so much happens and there are so many people running around in the early episodes I always have a hard time getting much of a read on the teams. And it takes a few eliminations before I start feeling like I really care who loses. But here are a few observations:

• It's not always obvious which Detour task will be more time consuming. But as soon as I heard that tonight's choice was between BUILDING a frickin' MOTORCYCLE and flying in a helicopter, I thought the right choice was obvious. Come on--unless you're a mechanic, you're a fool to even try messing with an engine. So I don't have a lot of confidence in the long-term viability of the teams that chose that one.
• I usually don't root for racers who shriek a lot. And when garden-variety shrieking is augmented with shrieking to Jesus for help and shrieking to no one in particular about how she's gonna pee her pants, it's pretty much settled that I'm not rooting for the Glamazons to stay on my TV for long.
  
• The Cute Older Couple is a stock element of this show. And the couple's stock line is that they're going to use their wisdom and experience to gain an edge on those foolish young 'uns. The Cute Older Couple then proceeds to make mistake after bonehead mistake as they fall far behind their younger, stronger, less dumb competition. It happens so often you'd almost think it's scripted. Fran and Barry, thanks for playing along. Sheesh.
  

Earthquake!

Our old house rattles whenever a big rig drives along Main Street, and when the shaking started last night around 8:30, that's what I thought was happening at first. But house kept shaking and it quickly became obvious that it was an earthquake! We got a decent shaking, but no damage was sustained at our house or anywhere else. Our pictures even stayed on the walls.

Survivor: Dropping The Deuce

Kudos to Sally--who seems pretty bright and pretty athletic as well as just pretty--for saving her own neck last night. I like it when the person on the chopping block shows some fight. But clearly the play of the game goes to Bobby for literally sh*tting all over his tribe's plans for the reward challenge bounty. It's not often you can say that someone "literally" did this or that and be using "literally" literally, rather than figuratively. For example, I could say "Astronaut Dan looks like he's literally falling apart out there" if I wanted to abuse the term in the manner that has become all too common these days. But Bobby, well, our man did indeed sh*t all over those plans to turn the outhouse into a storage shed. Literally.

In the meantime, yoga-addled Courtney may be an Evil Hippie, but she's been fierce in the challenges that involve swimming. Gotta love that. And no one can stir up trouble around camp like an Evil Hippie (remember Kimmie the Militant Vegetarian from "Survivor: The Australian Outback"?). Gotta love that! I mean, who else is going to provoke a fight by doing yoga in an improvised Zen garden (next week's preview). It's a job that calls for an Evil Hippie. Given all the drama, I predict the alliance in this tribe will split and a power struggle will determine whether it's Evil Courtney or Crazy Shane that goes home before the merge. That's assuming a) the tribes don't get re-scrambled before the merge, and b) Terry's tribe can pull it together to win an immunity challenge.

Other notes:

• There's no such thing as "the Final Five" (sorry, Ruth Marie).
  
• Yes, Terry's super-duper, and the fact that he found the immunity idol means he'll be around for awhile. But the most dominant players don't often win.
• Danielle believes there's an Emmy category for "Best Supported Actress" and is hoping for a nomination.
• Cierie's funny.

Only four more sleeps until The Amazing Race!

Thai food with MaMa

My mom flew out for a visit this week, braving the not-so-frigid Ottawa winter for some quality time with the grandkid. Since it was her birthday last week, last night we ventured out to celebrate. At a restaurant. With Henry. Taking a toddler out for dinner is always a dicey proposition, as anyone who's been in a restaurant at the same time as a toddler can probably understand. The fact that he was throwing a minor tantrum before we wrestled him into the car didn't bode well for the excursion. But sometimes it pays just to grit your teeth and carry on. He'd calmed down completely by the time we got to the restaurant and sat in his high chair the whole time, so we were able to enjoy our meal.

And enjoy it we did. We went to Nokham Thai, a little place in a strip mall out in the west end of the city that has a good rep. It. Was. Good. Really good. On par with our all-time favourite Thai place, Sa-Bai Thong in Madison. Well, I thought it was on par with Sai-Ba Thong. Tom put it a definite notch below, but he concedes his view may be coloured by nostalgia. At any rate, we'll be going back to Nokham. Even Henry liked it--chowed down on chicken satay and ate a bite of he spicy beef salad. Go figure.

We've tried four different Thai places since we moved here and liked all of them. Yay! We really missed having good Thai food when we lived in Richmond, where the Thai is sub-par (sorry Thai Diner fans). We lived on the stuff in Madison. We may go back to our old ways.

Survivor update #3

Not much to say about last night's show. It was your basic paint-by-numbers pre-merge episode with zero suspense at tribal council. However, I did enjoy the immunity challenge immensely because it was so brutally primal. I'm sure it was just a coincidence that the first group of contestants in the sand wrestling contest were the women, three of whom were wearing skimpy bikinis. Yep, pure coincidence. When I saw the first group line up I thought, "um, Cirie's got this one." Anyway, I thought Misty's strategy for success involved playing dumb, keeping the fact that she's a freakin' Rocket Scientist under wraps, and pretending that she found the immunity idol. That didn't seem to last long. And the fact that she looked like she was stricken with some bizarre medieval pestilence probably undermined her ability to play cute with the younger boys. So, adios Misty.

If I were the blonde (Sally?), at this point I'd ally with Ruth Marie and try to convince the older guys to change their alliance and pick off the young guys before the merge. It's the old, "who do you want to go up against in individual challenges--a strong man or little ol' me?" tactic that works because it's true. But these people never listen to me. . .

Some random updates

• I'm officially registered for the half-marathon on May 28. Details here. I've been running fairly regularly since January, including hour-long runs on weekends, but now I have to ramp up my training schedule significantly.
• My plan to feed Henry leftover casseroles for lunch fell flat. The Kid was not interested at all. So we're back to the short order cook routine, trying to find something--anything--he'll eat on a given day. Lately I've been playing that classic toddler game known as Hide The Vegetables in the hopes that he will digest some vitamins every now and again. I've had success with pumpkin bread and carrot-zucchini muffins. I've also found that I can hide all manner of things in hamburger, which Prince Hal will usually eat. Spinach, red pepper, wheat germ, egg, carrot--if it can be pureed, it's going in the burger.
• Tom and I have abandoned the vague plans we had to do substantial renovations to this house. We don't plan to stay in this place for long (it's too small), and we're just not convinced it would pay off when it comes time to sell. I've noticed a couple houses on the market in this neighbourhood that are similar to ours in size and have been extensively renovated, with price tags to match. They're been sitting for months. Bottom line, nothing we could do to the kitchen and family room would change the fact that the house is narrow, the layout is limiting and the second floor is a strange collection of cramped rooms with low, sloping ceilings. So we'll restrict our efforts to simple, inexpensive redecorating projects like painting and updating the lighting fixtures rather than tearing out walls and installing new cabinets.

Survivor commentary

Are you a survivor? Let's find out. Consider this scenario:

Q: On the eve of tribal council, you are informed that either you or another tribemate of similar age, gender and physical stature will be sent home. In reaction to this troubling news, you would

a) Quietly band together with the other would-be loser and approach the two young women in the ruling alliance about switching their votes. Suggest that perhaps they should rethink their strategy of hitching their wagon to a certified nutbar who's going through extreme nicotine withdrawal and has already threatened to quit the game and a flake who kept their "secret" alliance secret for all of three hours. Point out that the women currently outnumber the men and they could solidify this numeric advantage by ousting the lunatic.

b) Quietly shed a few sad, sad tears and blame your demise on the fact that the cool kids don't like you.

A: Let's just say that one of these strategies might keep you in the game for more than 6 days. The other probably will not.

Yes, that was a pathetic display of passivity on the part of the older ladies last night. There are times in the game when the numbers are against you and there's just not much the targeted player can do to prevent the inevitable. Last night was not one of those times.

Ottawa Fashion Week

Quite the look, no?

Survivor: Exiled with the oldies?

I tuned in to the new season of Survivor last night. I don't watch every season of the show because I think it's getting a bit tired, but when it's good, it's still very entertaining. The twists they've rolled out for this installment sounded interesting. Overall, I enjoyed what I saw. The four tribe, "older men/ younger men/ older women/ younger women" format is a good way to shake things up and should create an interesting dynamic in the early episodes, which are usually pretty dull.

But about those "older women": I was looking at the cast bios on the CBS Survivor website (yes, I'm a big TV nerd) and noticed that of the four "older" women, one of them is less than a year older than me, and another is only 32--two years YOUNGER than me. So there you have it. I'm officially old, at least by reality TV standards. Does this mean I have to start wearing purple?

If that wasn't bad enough, the 32 year-old dude is grouped with the "younger men." Hrrumph. I'm off to burn a bra or something.

Melterlude

The big winter festival kicks off tomorrow, and today it is. . .raining. Pretty hard. We're in the midst of one of Ottawa's mildest winters in decades. Needless to say, this puts a damper on outdoor winter fun--literally! Since the festival runs throughout the month of February, I guess there's still a chance the weather will turn cold again and we'll be able to visit the playground made out of snow and the snow sculptures and all that good stuff. But today, it doesn't look good.