Survivor recap

Just finished watching the Survivor finale and wow, that was different. First of all, congrats to Tom for becoming the first player to win by being a strong competitor since Ethan in Survivor: Africa. I mean, the guy was just a challenge machine. No matter what the competition, this dude could do it. Need to run with eighty pounds of weight on your back, he’s your man. Need to digest a large number of partially developed chicken eggs? You can count on him. Need someone to lie and break alliances at will? The fireman from New York will do it with style. I’m really happy that he won.

The more interesting thing is Ian sacrificing himself in the final three challenge. After standing on a buoy clutching a pole for eleven hours, he decided that his integrity mattered more to him than a million dollars and he volunteered to step down in order to secure his friendship with Tom. That may be the first time in the history of reality television that someone made a noble move. I’m happy that he doesn’t regret his decision and that he realized that, at some point, there is more to life than winning a game. He also put together a heck of a game. I mean, when they do All-Stars 2 look for Tom, Ian, and Stephanie to make the cut.

Otherwise, not much is really going on. Spent a good portion of the weekend cleaning up the apartment. You know there isn’t much going on with your life when you decide to take a few hours to reorganize your bookshelves. It’s actually a pretty challenging situation. See, I’m the type of person who has an alphabetized CD collection, lovingly documented in a spreadsheet including breakdowns by genre and year of release so if I want to listen to Alt Rock from 1993 I can use filters to select the exact disc that I’m looking for. But my book collection is a scattershot affair.

Plus, I’ve got bookcases in every room and some books, well, aren’t of the highest quality. I mean, you can’t put Ulysses next to your collection of Dilbert cartoons. So I have to organize the collection by author, by hardcover and make sure that people will see a copy of The Da Vinci Code so that when they look at my collection there is at least one title that they recognize. There is one thing that I like about doing this, I’m proud of the fact that I have such a large library that this is actually an issue. So few people read anymore and I’m happy that I’m one of the few people left who has numerous floor to ceiling bookshelves.

That’s about it. Congratulations to all of the grads out there. This weekend marked the tenth anniversary of my college graduation. Yes, ten years ago someone actually signed a piece of paper saying that I was qualified to be an electrical engineer. I don’t know what they were thinking. That said, I don’t know what I was thinking either. I really wonder how many people actually end up doing what they went into college thinking they were going to be. I always knew that I was going to change my mind a half dozen times in the process. To me, that is what makes life fun. There is so much to learn, why confine yourself to one field.

The five random CDs of the week:
1) Gram Parsons “GP / Grievous Angel”
2) Steve Earle and the Del McCoury Band “The Mountain”
3) Kelly Hogan “Because It Feel Good”
4) The Handsome Family “Live At Shuba’s Tavern”
5) Kelly Willis “Reason To Believe”