- The other day I was flipping channels and I happened to stop on this celebrity poker thing on Bravo. One of the contestants was this lady that looked really really familiar. She was about 50-something years old, kind of loud and annoying, and I couldn't figure out who she was. I watched for about 10 minutes agonizing about where I knew that face from, until finally it hit me - it was Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). It was such a wave of shock when I realized who it was, because I've pretty much only seen her in the Star Wars movies as this young, skinny, beautiful girl. And here she was, playing in some lame celebrity poker game, with a wide grandma body and wrinkly grandma skin, acting crass on top it all. All I can say is, the years and aging really took its toll on her. The experience totally shattered my lifelong idolization of Princess Leia and even made the original Star Wars movies seem a little less sacred to me. I don't know what I was expecting, for the Princess to never get old, but still.

- Another channel flipping experience was last night when I turned to ESPN2 and they were showing Sportscenter highlights in Spanish. I thought it was a joke at first, but apparently it was actually a shared broadcast from the new "ESPN Deportes" channel. Since I only know about 5 words in Spanish (I took Japanese and German in high school and I don't remember much of either of those either), and half of the words I know are curse words, I couldn't understand anything that was going on. It was really trippy to see all the familiar ESPN format, such as the Bottom Line, all the stat graphics, and even the NBA promos, except with Spanish words instead of English everywhere. One thing I noticed was that there were a lot more highlights of soccer and not that much of NFL playoffs. Also, I thought it was especially funny that for the NBA commercials, all they kept showing were clips of Eduardo Najera. He must be some sort of god in the Spanish speaking world.

- Over the weekend I bought the extended DVD sets of Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers. It was a lot harder than expected to find the first one, but after checking Best Buy in Darien, Wal-Mart, Target, Hollywood Video, and 2 different Cockbusters, I finally got it at the Best Buy in Arlington Heights. After watching the first one, I must say that it was well worth the $30 and all the hassle of finding it. Even though it was so long, I think a lot of the extended scenes helped the whole series make a lot more sense for me. I'm definitely looking forward to watching the second, and of course I will have to buy the third when it comes out.

- I'd like to take the opportunity to vent about one of the things that pisses me off the most in traffic - people driving slow in the left lane on highways. A couple weeks ago Chras was telling me about how Illinois police are gonna start ticketing people for clogging up the left lane, and I think that's long overdue. In my opinion, it doesn't matter how fast you are going, if someone is going faster and approaching from behind, you better find a way to get to the right so he/she can pass. Personally, I don't care if I'm going 85 or 90 in a 55 zone, I always move right to let people pass if someone's going faster behind me (and then I speed up and try to follow him as a speed shield, of course). If everyone would just follow the simple concept of "Slower traffic keep right", I bet it would seriously save at least 20% cumulative travel time for the general driving population. And it would probably save a good deal of accidents that happen when people are forced to pass on the right. Everytime I get stuck behind one of these white minivans or beat up old Ford Escorts in the left lane, driving under the speed limit, and the right lane is open but 5 cars are tailgating him in the left, I want to stop this person, pull him out of his car, and kick his ass. I'm not even that road-ragey of a guy, it's just that I can't understand why people can be so stubborn and stupid about driving slow in the left lane. There's no excuse, I say.