A couple of months ago I went on new insurance. For the first time ever, I was asked to get prior authorization from a doctor to get a prescription. It was a hassle, especially for something I've been on for a while, but I worked through the morass and got it done.

Fast forward to earlier this week. I've changed insurance again, and wouldn't you know it, the folks at Blue Cross Blue Shield want another prior authorization. Remember this is for:

* The same medication
* At the same dosage
* And the same instructions
* From the same doctor
* On the same prescription
* At the same pharmacy
* For the same condition
* (Which is chronic, by the way)

When the revolution comes, you can bet that BCBS will be among the first against the wall.

Playing as The D.J. Schepker Experience, we managed to bag our second win at bar trivia last night (we named ourselves after a friend who plays on another team, who finished third last night but are also in the Tournament of Champions). Nice to have a $20 tab for four people.

We only missed two questions, so I've thrown in three of the more challenging ones to round things out:

Who won an Oscar for her 1990 portrayal of Annie Wilkes? Kathy Bates (Greg) - for some reason I focused on the first name and came up with Susan Sarandon, who of course played Annie Savoy in Bull Durham, not the psychotic fan in Misery. This was actually part of a bonus where we got the other three actors for their Oscar-winning roles (Randle McMurphy, Ben Sanderson, and Leticia Musgrove for those who want to play along in the comments).

Who was the first female hip-hop artist to earn a gold record? MC Lyte - apparently it was that song about rocking your body and/or the party.

Name the five US states that border only two other states. Delaware, Florida, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Washington (OTC) - The question was originally the four US states, as they'd forgotten about Washington. Thankfully, they remembered, as we included the Evergreen State over South Carolina. You'd think having been there recently I'd have gotten it; my argument is that we were on the coast and not up in the part that we thought might touch Tennessee.

The lead-in to the question noted the only US state to only border one other state. I'll put that out there for extra credit. Maine (Scott) - Bordering only New Hampshire, of course. Sorry to say that the wife wasn't there for the home state shout-out.

Calamine is an ore of what element? Zinc (Scott) - we had no idea on this one, though we tried to concentrate on what might be "soothing" elements. Which is a category they never really cover in high school chemistry. One of our team had the idea that because calamine lotion is pink, and Pepto Bismol is pink, the likely candidate was bismuth. His logic trumped our wild-ass guessing, even if it didn't lead to the correct answer. As it was, we never even wild-ass guessed zinc.

I won't even try to explain Allyson's comment regarding zinc, as you had to be there. Though I'm sure fans of The Simpsons will understand the reference, as far as that goes.

Who became the youngest winner of the Australian Open women's singles title when she won at age 19 in 1991? Monica Seles (Greg) - OK, this wasn't particularly more challenging - the person who came up with her did so pretty quickly - but there was a lot of geography and I wanted to mix things up. It did confirm that my base of tennis knowledge has eroded badly.

Sign that your fantasy football team is going to lose: in between rushing for three TDs, an oppenent's running back finds the time to throw for a TD.

After a triumphant start, the Chapman St. Ghettoz are 1-2. Fantastic.

I have similarly sanguine feelings about today's doubleheader between the Sox and the Jays. While it has the propensity of being a momentum-giver, losing both could suck all the air right out of the city. I know, a happy thought for a Tuesday morning.

Thought this was an interesting statement, made by a current Harvard undergraduate regarding content on The Facebook:

"You can't be responsible for what you're saying at all times in your life."

If this isn't a future President of the United States speaking, I'll eat my hat.

(For those of you unclear on The Facebook: back in the day, most schools put out a facebook, where they printed a picture of yourself that you sent them and listed where you were from and your interests, usually deep things like "people" and "travel." The Facebook is a website which more or less does the same thing on a nation-wide basis, giving students the ability to post a variety of information, which sometimes gets the student in trouble.)

I will say that I agree with this student to the extent that, as what's posted there can be ephemeral, it may not truly represent who the student is. However, I do not agree that I shouldn't hold someone responsible for what they put in print. If you bother to put something on-line in your name, it's yours, even if you were joking. Problem is that, in cyberspace, no one can hear you be sarcastic.

The student was also concerned about university officials using the site for informational purposes, which I'd counter with the idea that if you don't want to get pinched for doing something, it's probably in your best interest not to post pictures or a blow-by-blow account where anyone who knows about the site or Google or something can get at it.

I recently finished Brave New World, a book that I'd picked up once or twice in high school but never read. I can safely say that I didn't miss much. The world A.F. seemed much too much like a caricature, and I don't think the ending could have been more heavy-handed.

And while it doesn't strike me as a book commonly assigned in high school, it did make me wonder what books that are commonly read in high school that I missed. For example, two books that everyone in my high school seemed to read other than the classes I was in were The Red Pony and The Yearling. I'm told by the wife I didn't miss anything with the former, the merest thought of which sends her into paroxysms of disgust.

In any event, I'm giving you all the chance to shape my reading list.

Simply comment with the name of the best book you were assigned to read in high school. By "book" I include books, plays, and poetry (collections, epic, and otherwise), and by "assigned" I mean either what you think it means or a book you chose but got credit for reading (my sophomore year we got to choose books, but had to run them by our teacher first).

To help narrow things down, these were among the works I read in high school:

The Odyssey, The Iliad, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Pride and Prejudice, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Babbitt, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Crime and Punishment, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Man and the Sea, The Chosen, The Sound and the Fury, Treasure Island, The Scarlet Letter, Catcher in the Rye, The Sun Also Rises, Dandelion Wine.

Since then, I've read The Great Gatsby, some other Sinclair Lewis stuff, and a whole raftload of Greek drama and other classical bits.

So, based on that, recommend away!

If you thought you heard a lot of screaming, or felt a disturbance in the Force last night at, oh, sometime between 10 and 10:30 pm EDT, you can probably trace it back to the Red Sox losing 7-4 to the Devil Rays, a result that sent the Sox from leading the AL East to out of the playoffs (if the season ended yesterday).

I thankfully avoid most sports media (Cooch notwithstanding), so the Red Sox Nation suicide watch that must surely be going on does so without me. Given how the team has played this season, what disappointment I'd feel if they didn't make the playoffs is tempered by the season-long display of inconsistency. It's not like you couldn't see this coming.

Besides, it's all working out as MLB planned, what with the three game series against the Yankees to end things. It could turn out that we'll win the AL East after all and somehow banish the Yankees from the playoffs.

Not that I'm expecting it. But it could happen.

The Patriots, on the other hand, are a cause for concern. They did not look good last week, and have to play Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Atlanta over the next few weeks. Most of these games take place on the road, to make matters worse. It would not be surprising if this team is sporting a 2-4 record at some point. It would also not be surprising if they then finished the season 12-4 or 11-5 and get into the playoffs.

The current offensive coordinator by committee will take its fair share of heat should the losing come to pass, but given how the defense let Jake Delhomme connect on a number of what can only be called eephus passes, you have to look over there as well. Mostly at the defensive backs, who are awful young. Super Bowl or no, they're still learning, and while you'd expect them to make more mistakes in big games, the idea that they'd play back to the mean over a number of games makes sense.

Only a month or so before I can start kvetching about the Bruins and Terriers. Things go right for the Sox, I can complain about all four in one post. That should drive off even the most persistent reader.

A return to bar trivia tonight, as Everybody Loves a Cane made a slight improvement on the last time out with a second place finish. As with last time, here's a sampling of the questions we didn't do so well with:

In the summer of 1941, what country became the first to use frogmen to fight an opponent? Italy (OTC) - Italian frogmen apparently took on the British, who were our guess after we summarily dismissed the French as a little on the nose. This was the first question of the night, which made for an inauspicious start.

What nationality has produced the greatest number of Nobel Prize winners? - USA - One of us said Britain, one said Germany, and I said the USA. So we played 3 Answer Monte by writing an answer each on an answer slip and had the fourth person pick. Unlike the popular hustle, where you win the first time to get sucked in, we did not find the lady, so to speak.

Rome and what four other European capital cities are spelled with just four letters? Riga [Latvia], Bern [Switzerland], Oslo [Norway], Kiev [Ukraine] (OTC) - we got the first three, as I had a brain fart and thought Minsk was the capital of Ukraine (it actually being the capital of Belarus). I threw out a guess of Baku, which is the capital of Azerbaijan. For what it's worth, they are in the European qualifying group for the World Cup. Had I only been able to make that argument last night.

What city in the Po River valley is known as Italy's food capital? Bologna (Ted) - we went with Parma, given the ham and the cheese (it's also the home to Parmalat, they of the frightening shelf-stable milk). Not sure if it's really in the Po valley, though. It's in the neighborhood, but none of the maps I've seen make it clear to me if it's in the valley or up in the hills.

Not sure if Bologna deserves this given what its self-named luncheon meat has become, but I suppose it's not their fault.

What US state has had its capital move the most - 12 times? Texas (Greg) - we were leading going into this question, which was the good news. The bad news is that we had no clue about this question. We did mention Texas, but then again we named about 20 of the states. We settled on New York and Georgia, flipped a coin, and guessed New York. We bet the minimum, thus only losing one point, but were passed by a team that got the question right and finished in second place.

As for the capital moving, Texas apparently had several temporary capitals when it became indepdendent. Which makes me wonder about the construction of the question, as I can't remember it verbatim. Not sure if they worded it such that it would allow for moves when Texas wasn't a US state.

We're recently returned from Hilton Head (well, we got in very early this morning, but you get my idea), and for you, a recap.

Saturday we drove to Hilton Head, which isn't as bad as it sounds given that there were seven available drivers between two cars. We spent the early part of the trip getting info about Hurricane Ophelia (which was then looking like it was going to hit somewhere in South Carolina), shifting later to baseball (the dreaded Y@nkees, given where we were going through).

We tried to stop for the night in Petersberg, Virginia, which proved problematic as NASCAR was up in Richmond. Rather than pay $159 for a Residence Inn or $90 for the shabbiest looking Days Inn I've ever seen, we continued down to Emporia, Virginia, where we found somewhere whose price to shadiness ratio was better.

Sunday we completed our drive, though not without getting lost a bit thanks to a missing street sign. We stayed at a timeshare that's part of the Port Royal Plantation, one of several former plantations that now serves as a resort, most often for golf. The timeshare is crammed into a lot on the plantation property, and is probably the least inspiring place we've stayed on one of these family vacations.

We noticed early on that navigating Hilton Head would be difficult, given that all the signs for businesses are at street level, of moderate size, and mutely colored. If you're into forest green, shades of brown, and gray, Hilton Head is the place for you. Also, most places are off the street, so you more often than not see where you need to go when you are right on top of it. Thankfully, the main roadway gives you ample opportunities for turning around.

Didn't do much upon arrival, just settled in.

Monday continued the settling, at least for me, as most of the group went shopping or played golf. I considered the latter, though it was for the best that I begged off - turns out the course had water on pretty much every hole, and I'd likely have lost a good dozen balls if I'd gone out.

Had dinner at the Hofbrauhaus, which I chose for the novelty if nothing else. Food was pretty good if a little pricey (another theme of Hilton Head), and sadly we were too early for the live music.

Tuesday was our day trip to Savannah, a city of considerable beauty and charm... located downwind from a paper mill.

We took a trolley tour around the city, which wasn't particularly edifying. It's really a city that calls for a good walking tour, especially if you have an interest in architecture or like to tour houses. The most instructive thing we did was go through the Savannah museum at the tourist info center and see their short movie, which suggested that James Oglethorpe learned the value of diversity - just well after his actual death.

Returning to Hilton Head, we went miniature golfing for some reason.

Wednesday started with a kayak tour in what the locals call a creek that is actually an inlet. We got to see dolphins (which I missed, lagging behind), oyster beds, heron, and various other fauna. It was a good way to spend part of the morning, and I never even felt like I was going to flip (the kayaks being smartly weighted to make capsizing nearly impossible).

In the afternoon I finally got out on the golf course, which I was going to recap Couture-style but can't get the table to display here properly. Suffice it to say that I was many, many shots over par. Even so, I did manage three legitimate par opportunities, none of which I converted (worst being a par 3 that turned into a 6). I can drive pretty well, have no feel for my irons or wedges, and apparently need obstacles to putt with any accuracy.

Thursday saw a lazy morning lead to a trip to Harbor Town and the Hilton Head lighthouse. Harbor Town is located in the Sea Pines Plantation, which costs $5 a car to drive into (a fact not noted in either of our guide books, underscoring the uselessness of both publications).

The lighthouse was underwhelming; rather than being built for the usual lighthouse purpose, it was constructed in 1969 to attract pleasure craft into the harbor and its shops. Those shops are priced for people who can afford to spend time cruising in pleasure craft, looking for marketing-constructed lighthouses to entice them.

This was easily the worst tourist-related outing we had all week.

Friday was even lazier than Thursday, as the heat continued to climb (into the high 90s). I passed on both shopping and the driving range, and didn't do much of anything except hit the library to check my email and such (not a bad library, but a little under-air conditioned for my taste). We had a dinner of trademark-dodging at the Pasta Garden and the Marble Slab Creamery (though the websites suggest that Marble Slab predates Coldstone).

Saturday we drove home in one shot, which I wasn't crazy about but the sister-in-law and her boyfriend had to get back as they had Sox tickets for today (which isn't exactly working out for them, as the A's are currently leading 12-3).

The drive home was about as interesting as the drive down. The Carolinas are incredibly boring, with only the South of the Border billboards to break things up in their inane and vaguely racist way. Virginia isn't much better, but you do go through Richmond and skirt Washington DC.

Maryland reminds me that I have to apologize to Delaware. While their $7 in tolls is a lot for the 25 miles or so you drive on a round-trip drive along I-95, Maryland whacks you for $5 when driving northwards. At least when you get robbed of $6 on the George Washington Bridge, you get to actually cross the bridge and feel like you've paid for its upkeep and the view of the city. The Maryland toll just feels like you're lining the pocket of various elected officials.

New York's stretch of I-95 is the worst of the lot, from the congestion to the absolutely screwed up roadworks that have been going on for at least a decade between the Cross-Bronx Expressway and the New York Thruway toll. Complain all you want about the Big Dig, it's at least made obvious progress. The roadworks in New York just look like they've been moving lanes around on a whim.

Anyway, we got back very early this morning, and are happy to be back, work tomorrow notwithstanding. I don't forsee us going back to Hilton Head any time soon.

I've been away for this long, and all you're getting is talk about football? I'd be pissed, too. Sorry, Greg.

* As happy as I was that the Pats won their opener, I hope they're not going to look that sluggish all season, especially during this opening part of the schedule. Too early to panic, but I would like to see them get Dillon more running room.

* I got killed in both of my cut-throat games on the opening weekend, as I went with Denver and St. Louis, figuring that playing Miami and San Francisco would be the shortest routes to wins. Whoops. Even worse is that St. Louis was my pick in ESPN.com's eliminator game, meaning that I managed to get knocked out even earlier than last season, when I took Green Bay in week 2.

* I did manage to win my first FFL game of the season, which means I've already gotten 25% of my win total from last year. I managed to overcome my application of strategery that resulted in Curtis Martin starting over Deuce McAlister, which was pretty lucky.

* On the college front, it would make some sort of sense in the season where I've put Notre Dame on personal probation that they'd open the season 2-0 and crack the top 10. I think that's too high too quickly, and their game against Michigan State has classic let-down potential. A week too late for Craig, though.

* Though I suppose Craig was somewhat pleased to see Ohio State lose at home to Texas. In the back of my head a USC-Texas tilt for the national title seems pretty likely, though the Big XII title game is usually ripe for an upset (as Texas should know, given their upset of Nebraska back in the day).

* I was mildly irritated that that team from Newton moved up in the rankings after beating BYU and Army. Not the most challenging start, really, though probably a smart one given that they get to jump right in with Florida State as the welcoming committee to the ACC.

* Can someone at Temple finally give in to reality and drop their program to 1-AA? Please?

I really don't have much to say, but figure it's been a while so I should at least check in.

The long weekend was a little shorter for me, as I had to work on Sunday given that upperclasspeople were coming back. Turns out those that did didn't want to rush their student service needs, so it was pretty quiet and I got out early. So I can't complain all that much.

Saturday was full of domestic minutae (oil change, shopping for odds and ends), while Labor Day was actually pretty labor intensive (cleaning prior to having houseguests). Did get the chance to go to New Hampshire to visit family for a while, which was nice. It was a beautiful weekend, which I sadly didn't get to enjoy as much as I'd like.

Undoubtedly, it'll snow next week.

I've been trying to follow the aftermath of Katrina, and have come up with two conclusions regarding the death and destruction:

1. It's everyone's fault.
2. It's no one's fault.

I mean, when you have a Category 4 storm hit levees that are meant to withstand up to Category 3 storms, all of the planning in the world may not help you.

And while I'm leery to wade into the rush to judgement, I do think that having a FEMA director with qualifications somewhat more in line with emergency management than being an executive in the International Arabian Horse Association would be a good idea.

So for all my inability to name all the Whig presidents or figure out the length of a regulation bowling alley, I did get some news this week regarding my ability to answer questions: my MTEL results.

Communication and Literacy Skills

Reading Subtest

Miniumum Passing Score: 70
My Score: 97

Writing Subtest

Minimum Passing Score: 70
My Score: 97

Health Education Subject Test

Minimum Passing Score: 70
My Score: 100

While I liked the twin 97s, I did feel like I'd done well on that test. The 100 on the health test, though, that surprised me. I know the tests are scaled, but I didn't figure on that.

Interrestingly, when each test was broken down into specific areas, the area where I did the least well was on study skills. Which seems appropriate, given that mine deviate pretty broadly from what everyone is told to do. But they work for me, and I suppose these results underscore that.

This all leads to the "now what?" question, which is a good one. I do appear to be qualified for an initial licence (which requires passing the tests and having a BA), but I'm not sure what I'd do with it, especially as I've just started something that, so far, I like. Something to think about.