I went to Lake of the Ozarks this weekend with my girlfriend. It was a perfect weekend to visit her dad. The weather was great and there was a lot of action due to the Shootout being a couple miles from his cove.

The weekend was a relaxing time where we ate a ton of food. We got the same delicious pizza on Friday night that we got last time we were down in which I ate twice as much as I should have. We had a huge fried fish dinner Saturday and I ate KFC buffet for lunch on Sunday. I have been wanting KFC for weeks after passing it numerous times on my various weekend get aways. We also had B&G’s both mornings. Needless to say, I got to hit the gym hard this week…lol.

We went fishing Saturday morning. We at least cost something this time but no keepers. I caught a small 12″ bass that was a borderline keeper so we threw it back. We hung out in the cove most of the afternoon but did go for a boat ride. We hit up one other cove and looked at the race. The picture above is a picture from pretty far away. There was a no wake zone forever so we did not go all the way down. There was a huge amount of boats if you can not tell. We were told that it might be the busiest weekend on the lake. All I can say is that I want a boat on the Lake more than ever. I just love going for boat rides. I can so see myself owning a place down there in 5 years.

True Blood was very interesting Sunday night. I almost felt like that could have been the season finale. That seems to be True Blood’s thing. I am pretty sure that I remember them bringing a conclusion to the major plot line right at the beginning of the last episode last season. This time they just did it at the end of the second to last episode. It’s going to be a slow next episode in my opinion but a very good season so I am happy.

This was definitely a weekend where I did not get any sleep. I feel like I might have gotten a total of 8 hours between Friday and Saturday. Very disappointing since I was just coming off a sinus infection in which I was feeling very exhausted.

I went to the Cards game on Friday night. The Cards were in a huge slump and totally at the wrong time. The slump did not end for us this game either. The highlight of the night was my friend Matt eating a bacon wrapped hot dog covered in baked beans, fried onions, and pickle spears. It was pretty funny watching him eat it for the mere fact that he told us that he was cutting high sodium items out of his diet earlier in the night. We left the game a little earlier since we saw the storms rolling in so watched the rest of the game from Paddy O’s basement. The place was not as packed as normal after the game. I am guessing because of the storm front. The people who did not show up were smart because the rain and wind was pretty bad. Basically everyone under the tent got a little wet.

I woke up bright and early Saturday morning for a friend’s wedding in Muscatine, Iowa. It was for one of my friend’s from Wash U and I was really looking forward to hanging out with the group. Thus we made the 4+ plus hour trip in the morning rather than go up the night before like some of the group did. We arrived around 1 to play a little Uno and have some tasty beverages from Mike’s new employer before going to the 5Pm wedding. The wedding was pretty cool. The reception was awesome. The food was great….had a terrific piece of steak and chicken. I also loved that there was both a live band and a DJ so there was a good mix. The band even mixed in some Katy Perry so they knew what the kids liked…lol. The band also played till 1AM and they had a midnight snack of pizza planned at midnight which was awesome. A bunch of the wedding party went back to my room after the night to indulge in a fine selection of more pizza, Taco Bell, and McDonald’s.

Not much happened on Sunday. Got back in the early evening and watched some TV and caught up on the DVR. I watched Big Lake and wasn’t impressed but I will still watch a couple more episodes to give it a chance. True Blood was awesome as it always is. A little disappointed that there is only two more episodes left. It seems like the season just started. I also watched the Big C. It was entertaining and will make my tv viewing lineup.

• I am really torn about getting a new Blackberry. The Torch obviously has to be better than my first generation Blackberry Bold 9000 but the idea that it is not on the 1 GHz processor level and updated screen is not very appealing for a phone that I will probably have for another 2 years. I might hold out to see if Blackberry makes any new releases for the Bold.
• I think I am at the point where I am going to buy a media server. I want to be able to play music on my home theater system from my PC. Know of any good ones? I am tired of listening to my PC two rooms away when having parties.
• I have another weekend of being out of town. I am really looking forward to hanging out with the Wash U crowd for Ann’s wedding but also really want to sleep in since I am recovering from a sinus infection. Unfortunately that is not possible.
• I do not know what to think of the Cardinals. They seem to make a lot of costly errors, their hitters are not dependable (besides Pujols and Holliday), and the relief pitching is very shaky. I do not think we can rely on Wainright and Carpenter carrying us in the playoffs (if we even make it there).
• This summer’s cable show TV lineup has been pretty good. True Blood has been pretty awesome. They really made this year interesting although it is a little more disturbing than past years. Entourage has also been good. Throwing as many celebrities as they can in an episode seems to work. I am also interested in seeing the storyline for Weeds this series. Looks like they are moving again based on the Series opener.
• Lost Season 6 comes out next Tuesday. It is supposed to have a lot of extra scenes for the last episode. I’ve already moved Disc 5 to the top of my Netflix queue.
• Am I going to buy Halo Reach and Civilization 5 in September? I have not been playing games at all since coming back from Chile but I know I am getting Civ 5 and will be playing it a ton. I will only buy Reach if a bunch of my friends do so I can play them online.

I was sick this weekend so sort of laid low. I went to Molly’s for my grandmother’s bday on Friday evening then made my way back to my place to relax. Molly’s new expansion was interesting but I was not impressed with the food. I can not see me going back. I closed on the night with some GTL action on MTV (aka Jersey Shore).

Saturday was the Kick Ball for a Cause tournament. I was not looking forward to it at all. I was feeling horrible and  it was supposed to be 100 degrees. I was also told that this team had never won a game in the last 2 or 3 years so did not know what to expect. Needless to say we were awesome. I set the bar high by scoring our first run by kicking a home run. I also made our team’s only double play so I called myself the MVP. My girlfriend even drove me in on a homerun so I was impressed. We won our first four games and advanced to the playoffs. We had a big inning in our first playoff game and won. We lost in the semi-finals. It was our first game on a dirt infield and our players were having troubles adjusting. We made a ton of errors and none of our good hitters could make contact. It was sad to lose but we were all feeling pretty bad after being in the heat for so long. I actually wouldn’t mind playing kickball again. It was really fun. We tried to watch Hot Tub Time Machine that night but it froze up after 5 mins on Charter on Demand and never worked that night.

We finally got to watch Hot Tub Time Machine on Sunday. It was funny but I thought it got good reviews and can not see how that is possible. Besides that, I did not do much. Ran some errands, made some delicious sirloin kabobs, and watched my Sunday night TV shows, along with catching up with 3 weeks of weekend wrap ups.

• I have not played video games since I came back from Chile almost two months ago. Pretty odd considering I was addicted before I left.
• I can not get on top of my DVR situation.  I have my DVR 75% full which is about 900 GB. I have complete seasons of Chuck, Dollhouse, Tudors, Flash Forward, V, and probably others. I have over 5 episodes each of Simpsons, Parks and Recreations, The Middle, American Dad, America – The Story of Us, and many others.
• I do not know what to think about this shift from the Big 12. I thought it was a money issue but I read last week that MU has gotten around $22 million a year in the Big 12 revenue sharing program where the Big 10 programs get 20 million. Doesn’t make sense. It sounds like the whole league could fold if MU and Nebraska leave which is eerie. I read a stupid article yesterday that said KU and K State would be out to dry. Both are major sports programs so I am sure they will have no problem finding their way into a strong conference.
• I love that I somehow got new HD channels with Charter. I believe 6 in total. Comedy Central is huge and the Disney channel is not bad. Bravo is also a big one even though I do not watch any shows from there. My girl friend can now watch Drop Dead Diva in HD on Lifetime now too.
• I had a brief stroll down Wash Ave last night and saw a lot of development started back up again. The market that was started before Culinaria opened looked to be going again and almost finished. There is also a convenient store next to Lucas Park being built. Copia looks to open any day and the Vodka bar next door to Copia is open.
• The Lakers Celtics series is pretty good but I think the referees are deterring from the game. There has been a lot of missed calls in terms of fouls….more than normal on both sides. It seems life refs automatically call a foul if the player falls down but don’t call one when players get whacked in arm. The 2  minute replay review needs to be looked at because the Odom-Rondo reversal was ridiculous. Rondo fouled Odom (and it was easy to see) on a rebound that made Odom knock the ball out of bounds. The refs originally called it Lakers ball and reversed. Obviously he would not have knocked it out of bounds if Rondo would not have knocked is right hand off the ball.
• Looking forward to Vegas. More and more people keep signing up plus I can’t wait to hang out with friends I have partied with in a while.

Its hard to believe that there will be no more Lost in my life. I did read one article on CNN that said the DVD for season 6 will have 20 extended minutes of the season finale but I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere else. I actually did not have great expectations going into the finale based on how this season has progressed. I was pleasantly surprised by this finale and not for the reasons I thought I would like the finale. There were no real mysteries about the show solved like time travel, special people, why the island has magical power but they did answer what the flash sideways are which blew my mind (after I realized what happened).

I was really amazed by the first two hours. I had constant chills throughout the first hours because I never expected to see a lot of the old characters and then also see them reunite in their special way. The writers handled this beautifully and helped cement it as the best show ever. I was confused with the last minutes as I couldn’t figure out why they were all going to the Church (and how they knew to go there). I then realized that was the same Church as the Lookout where Mrs Hawking was. I thought they were going to do some weird time travel again to the island. Alas, I was totally wrong. It wasn’t till the show was over and I had a friend explain it to me to understand what went down. In the end the island was not purgatory (like people had speculated since season 1) but instead the flash sideways were. What through me through a loop was the flash sideways timeline but it was arbitrary since people in that timeline died and lived different lives outside the island but then all came back to the flash sideways in the end.

Alot of what happened even was a little expected like:

1. Hurley being the next #1 after Jack. I thought this all along (or at least the last several episodes) since his character did not make much sense for how much they focused on him. I at least thought he would be the new Richard.
2. That Juliet was Jack’s ex-wife in the flash sideways. There was a reason why they waited till the last episode to show her identity.
3. That Juliet was going to be the doctor that helped Sun after she was shot. I was expecting this because I was expecting something worse since she was shot in the stomach. Who better to help than the baby expert.
4. That the final scene would have Jack laying in the same patch of bamboo as the opening scene of the series. It just seemed sensible knowing that the bright light was so close.

What I did not forsee:

1. The meaning of the flash sideways — everyone dies but they don’t have to die together.
2. That everything that happened actually happened (i.e. time travel and alternate timelines, the incident (which I assume the nuclear bomb blowing up was the incident), and so on.
3. Ben being the new #2. I was expecting Ben to be the new MIB especially when he was helping to lower down Jack. There was a lot of similarities to the scene with Jack and MIB lowering down Desmond.
4. That all the characters like Rose, Bernard, Vincent, Shannon, Boone, and others would be in this episode.
5. I knew Jack was going to be laying in the bamboo patch at the end but I did not know how or why. I was just hoping that the episode was not going to end the same way as it started ….ie a time loop where it is all played out again.
6. The high Christian context. Jack was basically Jesus. Someone even made the point that he was stabbed in the same place Jesus was as he was carrying the cross.

What really confused me:

1. The last scene of the plane crash on the ocean. I believe this was to show us that they still always crashed but what threw me through a loop was that we never saw the plane parts in any of the island scenes the rest of the previous episodes after the pilot. It made me think that the Ajira flight crashed too.
2. Jack’s son—Both his mom and dad did not belong in this timeline so how did he even exist? Or more importantly why did he need to exist? Did it make Jack a better person and have more meaning so it didn’t make him the druggie alcoholic he was in the flash forwards?
3. The Aaron and Walt storyline in the early seasons. The only thing I can think of is that it somewhat relates to how Jacob and MIB were chosen as candidates at a young age so maybe Jacob thought he also needed a young kid as a replacement. With that said, I do not think this is the case and it really came down to a storyline where the writers went in a different direction and just hoped we forgot about it.

In the end, Lost was about two things: redemption and emotional connection. The writers used all kinds of crazy story lines and mythologies to get to the end point which confused people (including me) but it made a fantastic story and emotionally ended the show on a hight point for me.

It was a pretty jammed pack weekend for me that was a lot of fun. Friday was the first Cards game I went to with the “boys.” I say that in quotation marks since only one guy was there. It amazing how much changed in two years thinking how we had 5 seats in the Bank of America club which was a blast. Needless to say the game was very fun and the Cards won so it was a plus. I met some other friends at Paddyo’s and did a little dancing. It was a good night.

I went to the Mt Pleasant and Sugar Creek wineries on Saturday. I will have a more detailed post about this later in the week but Mt Pleasant was a big disappointment while Sugar Creek was awesome. The wine was great, the weather was perfect, and we had a lot of fun. Plus, I did not get sun burnt or even red.

I put on my domesticated hat on Sunday and did some grass cutting and yard work in the blazing sun and heat (supposedly it tied the record for St Louis heatwise). I got some errands done and then settled down to watch the best TV shows ever….Lost! I am amazed about the show the more and more I think about it (which is a lot). I will have a separate post about it later in the week too. I missed the Lakers game and they lost (is that the theme of this paragraph?).

Here are my thoughts on Lost and my experience as we hit the stretch run for the final episode.

I first started watching Lost right before the second season started. My friend Matt kept telling me that I needed to watch this show. Especially since I was depressed that HBO’s Carnivale was not picked up for a 2^nd season. Carnivale was the first show I really got extremely into and read a lot online about theories and what not. So I downloaded (I know but this was before they were online) the first season of Lost and watched all the episodes straight in 3 days while I was on a business trip. I was addicted and could not wait till the second season.

The first two seasons of Lost were the best for me. It took two seasons to get a full understanding of the main characters back stories and see how everything was related. All the other seasons are just filler now that I see how the series is ending. The reason I say this is because it seems like the writers kept throwing out more and more questions which seem like they will never be answered. I know I hate to think this but the show would have been perfect in 3 seasons. Going into this last season, I was expecting it to be jammed pack with action and finally understanding what was going on with this island. Instead, the writer chose to continue with a lot of fluff and give half answers. I may seem upset and I am but I have come to the reality like many other Lost followers that it is not the intention of the writers to provide answers. Instead they want to focus on the theme of redemption. It a great storyline but it makes it seem like a lot of the episodes and what we thought we major occurrences and plotlines were worthless. This is why I think the show would have been better in 3 years. The Lost blogs keep referencing the idea that the 1^st season was written so the show could have ended hitting the writer’s storyline if it wasn’t picked up for a second season. I agree that it is possible after looking at some of the facts.

Even though I am complaining about the ending, I am going to be so disappointed to never have Lost again in my life. I know that sounds creepy and weird but I have never been into a show this much. It is the one show that I have to see as soon as it is on. It is also a show I spent countless hours reading about online and discussing with my friends. This is why it is the best show ever! The downfall of the show is that you basically can’t start in the middle thus why viewer ratings went down every year (even though I did convince two coworkers to watch all the episodes in a couple months before the start of this season…and they loved it). It is also another reason why the show should have only been 3 seasons.

And one theory that I can’t wait to find the answer to about the show is why the island was sunk in the beginning of this season. Everyone has speculated because the people found a way to kill Flock, MIB, or whatever you want to call him. The last episode gave a new possibility that the MIB can use Desmond to destroy the island. Is it possible that Lost could end with a sad ending?…I hope not but Carnivale did which made we crave it even more.

I can’t wait till Sunday and dreading it all at the same time!

Overall a pretty quiet and relaxing weekend as planned. I stayed in the night Friday with the girlfriend to relax, drink some Chilean wine, and catch up on the DVR. We also watched the Hurt Locker. It was okay but I have no clue how it beat out Avatar for best picture.

I went to Becki’s graduation at the Muny for her Webster MBA. It was an interesting ceremony since it was an overall Webster ceremony then the B school ceremony. Needless to say it was a long day in the cold breeze. Plus I got sun burn. But it was worth it and I am proud of her. I made a brief appearance at Milo’s Tavern on the Hill for a friends 30th bday party. We played some Bocce ball and ate some pizza but made it an early night and passed out as soon as I got home.

Sunday was another lazy day. We watched some TV, went and visited my mom’s grave site, and then went to my grandmother’s for an awesome turkey dinner.

BTW, I see no end in sight for my DVR. It is about 70% full with shows I have never watched which estimates to probably about 50 hours. I just keep finding programs to watch. I just started watching Fringe but have not started anything this season from V, Tudors, Flash Forward, Southland, Dollhouse, and probably others. I also just starting watching America – The Story of Us which is pretty good. I haven’t played COD in over a month too. Pretty odd since I was extremely addicted before I went to Chile.

Wow! My head is spinning from that amazing episode. Now that is a Lost episode we know and love. We had not seen that in the first 3 hours of this season but they did need to build the stage. This episode did not answer a lot of question but at the same time led us down the path to them.

• Who was that young boy? I didn’t have a clue the first time but he did look like he had blood on his hand. The second time I saw him and he started talking about rules and I immediately thought it was a younger Jacob. What really blew my mind is thinking that is Aaron or maybe Jacob and Aaron are the same people.
• Aaron and Jacob being the same person hit even closer to home when the new Locke said to Sawyer that “Of Mice and Men” was before his time. It came out in 1937. Isn’t that after his time if he was on the island at the time of the Black Rock? This made me think of weird time loops.
• The Numbers and the list was party explained which I did not expect. What I missed was that each character they named from Oceanic crash had one of the numbers: 4-8-15-16-23-42. That is quite interesting. Interesting omission was Kate.
• I loved Locke being a substitute teacher in the “present” day. It really rounded out his story. He went from being a guy feeling sorry for himself for not being able to fix his situation to actually genuinely helping others by teacher the youth of America.
• Looks like Alpert has been a pawn all along which was sorta verified earlier. He is more of an executive assistant for the leader.
• Looks like Ilana knows a lot more than everyone else. Could the fake Locke been the cause of her hospital flashback with Jacob? He knew she would be a problem so he tried to change things? If Jacob can leave the island, why cant fake Locke?
• I have no clue who is good and bad but it almost seems like it doesn’t matter. I don’t think there will be a straight answer and it will be up to the viewer to make their own decision based on the outcome.
• I do not think that Sawyer does want to leave the island (or at least not in this way). I think he is doing what he does best …. playing a con on Flocke (fake Locke). There is no way they could make Sawyer a bad guy again after his character progression in the last 10 or so episodes.
• I loved seeing through the “eyes” of Smokey
• I wonder why Flocke is stuck in Locke’s body according to Ilana. Is it because he broke a rule or does the “island” need to reset for him to change back or take another form?

Have anything other theories that I may have missed or comments on my thoughts? As always, I would love to hear them.

Update 1: I totally forgot to mention another huge point. Why Locke is in a wheelchair in the flash-sideways if his fiance mentioned his dad in a “favorable” tone  when talking about eloping to Vegas. How did Locke become paralyzed? Obviously, he was not pushed out of a building by his dad this time.