Not a whole lot to report on today.  Work, as it had been, was busy.  Amanda was feeling munchy after work so she picked up a pizza from Elizabeth’s Pizza at Market and Kerr for dinner.  She’d talked to Jessica at some point and they decided that at some point on Saturday they’re going to go get pedicures while me and Ben go do something polarly manly.  Ben called a bit later and joked that they were going to have to cancel for the weekend (since they’ve had to postpone this visit many times due to this, that or the other).  In actuality he called to see if we wanted to go see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End this weekend.  I think we’re going to see it on Sunday.

Other than that we watched the season finale of Law & Order: SVU.  It ended on a downer.  Ludacris was found not guilty of a double homicide; Finn, played by Ice-T, had his character questioned for having tested positive for drugs due to a contact buzz while undercover; Elliot Stabler’s daughter was arrested for a DUI that was previously swept under the rug; Olivia Benson was being questioned for giving money to a formerly-suspected felon (her brother); and the Captain was being questioned about all the mess in his division.

After that Michael went out to look for Mooo!, who, as she often does, escaped from the backyard.  In fact, a few nights ago she was accidentally left outside all morning, only to be found on the front porch by Amanda the next morning.  That’s the thing- when she gets out she generally stays very close.  While Michael was looking up and down the street for her in his car Amanda and I put Bruce on a leash and walked around to look for her.  We got no further than just past the mailbox when I saw Mooo! crouching behind a bush, getting ready to stalk Bruce.

American Idol’s 2007 season finale came on shortly after that.  Jordin Sparks, shockingly, won.  Honestly I was a bit let down by this 2007 American Idol season finale.  They had a few segments that called up fun things from the season, like Sanjaya singing You Really Got Me to Steve Perry’s guitar.  They even had that freaky crying girl in there.  Really though, throughout the whole song the main thing I was thinking of was green-red green-red, green-red green-red, green-red green-red, green-yellow, green-yellow green-yellow, green-yellow green-yellow, etc.  That’s You Really Got Me in Guitar Hero-ese on easy.

Last season each of the top contestants got paired up with a big-time singer.  This time they had a couple group songs, but they only had pairings like that for Blake, Jordin, sort of Sanjaya and Melinda.  By the way, if Melinda Doolittle doesn’t get a record deal of some kind, there should be a full criminal investigation somewhere.

I’ve decided over the course of the season that I like Ryan Seacrest.  He doesn’t take himself or the show too seriously.  Last night he was discussing with Paula Abdul an accident she had where she allegedly tripped over Tulip, her chihuahua.  Paula basically said it was a nasty spill but that she was okay.  I think Ryan asked about Tulip and Paula said the dog was okay too.  Ryan then said something to the effect of “You heard it here, folks: the bitch is fine.”  I thought that was great.  Sure, it was probably scripted, but still.  There have been a lot of times throughout the season though when he just says things that are sort of self-reflexive jabs at the show itself.  He seems like he’d be alright to hang out with.  About a season ago I thought he was something of a douche.

I wanted to go ahead and watch the season finale of Lost, but I know Amanda wants to too.  I might sneak an early peak at it though, because between small group tomorrow and Ben and Jessica coming for the weekend, I don’t know if we’ll have time to watch it Friday or if we’ll have to wait until Monday.

After Amanda went to bed I watched this week’s Sopranos and Entourage.  Two Sopranos episodes left.  I stand by my assertions that in and of themselves, the episodes are fine, but they’re not end-of-a-groundbreaking-series-great as they should be.  I think Chris Banks had a great idea in that the season should have started with the death of Tony Soprano and then worked its way to that moment.

After that I played some Halo 3 Beta with Michael Mercer, my live-in brother-in-law.  We had a few good games but then lost the last three, the last two by smallish margins.  I decided to come up here while he decided to stay up a bit more and play some Guitar Hero II.  He does well on all of the songs on his first try, which sucks because I just can’t be better than him at any video game.  Of course, in my defense, Michael does play real guitar in real life.

Zach Dotsey