Greetings from Maine, where the wife and I have been spending the long weekend at her parents' house. The local flea markets were sadly unforthcoming with prizes for Cancel Bowl, and the moose head was way too expensive.

For those of you who may remember my mention of Cheez Waffies, I found them at a supermarket in Belfast, Maine. The first few were a little hard to take, but I think I re-acquired the taste. But I don't think I'll be pestering my local grocer to stock them.

Not too much else to report from the north country. I've actually watched more auto racing in the last 36 hours than probably in the entire year previous, as I saw parts of the Indy 500, European GP, ASA's Erie 250, and heard a chunk of the Coca-Cola 600 (yes, heard through the "magic" of NASCAR radio). Yee haw!

Now that it's aired, time to talk about my Millionaire appearance.

First, if you didn't see it, a recap. I moved through the first 10 questions pretty briskly, getting to $32,000 with all my lifelines. This took an abrupt turn with the very next question, as I was asked to give the current year in the Chinese calendar. Not the animal year but the numerical year.

I asked the audience, not expecting much, and am rewarded by vote totals for the four choices ranging from 23 to 28 percent. I then phoned a friend (who is among those at left) who wasn't able to help. As he said later, all he got were animal references and Web pages in Chinese when he tried to Google an answer. So I used the 50-50 and guessed the answer that the audience actually picked. Wouldn't you know it was right?

The $125K question gave the title of the first chapter of a non-fiction best seller, which I had to name. I had no idea, would have picked Silent Spring if forced to choose one, and would have been wrong (answer was The Feminine Mystique). I opted to walk rather than heave one up from half-court. Even for making $64,000 in about 20 minutes, I was surprisingly irritated given how well things were going. I should just have been happy at my good fortune.

Later, I thought that I may have been able to save a lifeline if I'd gone with the 50-50 after asking the audience. I'm pretty sure the $125K question can be Googled pretty easily (which I've just confirmed). Not sure I'd have done this even if I'd thought of it - I'm too risk averse to gamble in such situations.

It also turned out that the woman who went before me knew the answer to my $125K, ironic given that I knew the answer to hers (the topic of the legislation in the Schoolhouse Rock segment "I'm Just a Bill").

Getting to today, I wound up watching it down the hall from my office, with a group of co-workers and students. I was a little apprehensive about it, but it turned out OK. I didn't look too bad, though the height of the screen I got to read was low enough to display more chin than I'd like.

Oh, some of you caught the look that Sarah gave when I started talking about using some of the money to travel. She'll be happy to tell you it was a purposeful look of doubt that we'd be going to Italy or Australia any time soon. Perhaps if I'd won more money and weren't leaving Babson.

I got to watch it again later in the afternoon with some other Babson folks who couldn't see it at its local airtime (12:30 pm). Sorry to report I didn't win any more money. I also got to IM with JQ as he watched it down in Atlanta, which was kind of a surreal experience.

Should any of you be heading to the New York area this summer, I would highly recommend trying out. You can sign up on the show's website starting in June.

I don't have too much to say about Fantasia Barrino winning the American Idol crown. Of the final pair she was clearly the better performer, though that's not been a slam-dunk for victory in the past.

The show was its usual overblown nightmare. The first half-hour was kind of a pre-show thing, with Jennifer Love Hewitt hosting a "concert" where finishers 3 thru 5 performed their songs from the American Idol 3: Sucking the Life Out of Soul Classics album. Ford (as sponsor) had big logos on the stage that were occasionally visible, while a Chevy billboard could be seen frequently during performances. Money well spent.

Christina Christian from season one did a red carpet thing which suggests that she's got a future doing this long-term with E! (who, sadly, was doing their own red carpet thing).

The show itself had a bunch of performances by the final pair, a medley by the finalists (a waking nightmare preview of their concert), and songs by Kelly Clarkson and Ruben Studdard. Rather than have local Fox folks cover rallies in the final pair's hometowns, they had Kimberly Caldwell and Clay Aiken do the job. I think Kimberly Caldwell bought all of that skank that Christian Aguilera had left over.

As for the upcoming first single, "I Believe," it's pretty much the same theme as the previous songs - "look at me, I've made it after all this struggle and blah blah blah." It was co-written by Tamyra Gray, whose album finally got released yesterday. What a coincidence!

The archdiocese of Boston released the list of parishes that are slated for closure, and there were a few familiar names on the list.

Most familiar is St. James the Great here in Wellesley, which Sarah and I had been going to for a time before moving over to St. Joseph's in Needham (go figure that we found a church we like just as we're planning on moving out of the area). Kind of saw that coming given the statistical comparisons with the other churches in town.

Another with a personal connection is St. Joachim's in Rockport, which has seen a few Coens come through for baptism or funerals. It's a nice church, very New Englandy. It may stay open as a "worship space," the meaning of which I haven't quite figured out.

There's a church in Newton that my office-mate used to go to that's closing; he said they averaged about 10 people a Mass, so he wasn't surprised at all (the one time Sarah and I tried to find it we got lost, so perhaps location is an issue, too). There's also a church in Chestnut Hill that's closing whose location is such that the land alone should bring some serious coin. Probably for the best, given that a new round of lawsuits is supposed to be on deck.

My Millionaire appearance is finally airing on Thursday. Should you be interested in seeing it, check to see if it airs in your neck of the woods.

Quick sports post before I go to bed, to note three things:

1. Like the Bruce I've been pulling for Calgary, with it now being official that the Flyers are out (with apologies to Rosenberg). I think it goes back to their Atlanta days and when they had Jim Craig - I didn't follow the team, but it did make some connection. I just wish Chris Drury still played there.

2. The only part of tonight's Indiana-Detroit NBA playoff game I saw was Reggie Miller's 3. Timing is everything.

OK, only two things.

I will mention the two movies we rented this weekend, though.

First, Lost in Translation, which I don't think I fully comprehended. I liked it, but have a feeling that there's some sort of context I'm missing. I know I missed some of the dialogue when there was a lot of background noise - it's not my best hearing environment. I'll probably have to watch it again.

The other movie was The Runaway Jury, which follows the Grisham trend of changing the book around and making various characters more noble than they come off in the book. Not that it matters greatly, but it does confuse me given that the books are written at a level where they could be pretty easily converted into movies without too much monkeying around.

It was also unfortunate in that you had John Cusack, Gene Hackman, and Dustin Hoffman all vying for screen time. I think the film would have been better served if they gave more focus to the machinations with the jury, which would have removed Hoffman from the equation (nothing personal, just one too many big names).

Another problem was that for a movie about a jury, you don't get to connect with any of the jurors (even Cusack's character, really). They're dealt with in a pro forma manner, odder still given that a few of them are played by pretty well known folks (Nora Dunn, Jennifer Beals, Luis Guzman).

Given that you can read the book in pretty short order, do that rather than watch the film.

No, I don't know why I'm still up, either.

Another point from the week - Fox not learning from Millionaire where American Idol is concerned.

In the 8 hours of prime-time programming from Monday to Thursday last week, 5 of those hours were Idol-related. The final results show this Wednesday will be 2 hours, suggesting a level of padding not seen since Clorette DePasto's bra.

On the plus side for Fox, I don't think we're going to see much of the show after this week. So it's understandable on some level that they want to wring as much out of it as possible. On the other hand, this season's seen a dangerous trend in the amount of filler material shown. All we need are a couple of Fox shows to crap out (which is pretty much a given) before we get Idol specials every Monday next season.

I can't say I'd weep for Fox if they ran the show into the ground - for all my regular recaps, it's a pretty dismal exercise in both TV and music - but I fear that they'd replace it with something worse. And don't you think that they can't do it.

I've been meaning to write about this fantastic meal I had Tuesday night.

A bunch of us went to Olives in Charlestown for a birthday celebration. Olives is owned/run by Todd English, one of the area's celebrity chefs. The food has a Medeterranian flair to it (not surprising given the namesake), while the restaurant is pretty informal for higher cuisine. It has an open kitchen, too, which is fascinating (it also allowed us to see that Todd was in the house that night; among other things he appeared to be working on a dessert served in a martini glass).

The menu on the website is nothing like the one we had, but we made the best of it.

To start I had a black olive and goat cheese gnocchi with grape tomatoes which was tremendous- the sauce and the tomatoes gave this sweet tartness which cut the heavier pasta and cheese. I then had some butternut squash ravioli in a brown butter sauce which was on the house as they apparently forgot to enter an order of onion rings (go figure they mess up the easiest part of our order).

For an entree I went with a wild king salmon with an ox-tail ragout. The beef helped to draw out the salmon a bit, as it was lighter tasting than I expected (perhaps the difference between wild and farm-raised fish). It came with a potato croquette and microgreen salad, which were fine. I do find the idea of "microgreen salad" kind of funny, as it really looked like the rabbit food people often refer to when talking about greens.

Dessert was going to be hazelnut creme brulee, but they were out. I instead opted for the pineapple sorbet, which came with a pineapple compote and warm pineapple squares. That sounds like a lot of pineapple, and it was. It was kind of the ultimate palate-cleanser, as the different textures and temperatures were nice contrasts but not much of a flavor change.

All in all, I would highly recommend a trip to Olives. I don't think I can recommend more than one in a single year. At least not on my salary.

After running both Spybot-Search & Destroy and Ad-aware, I seem to have corrected the problems mentioned before. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I have some sort of adware or other thing going on my work computer.

What it does is find various words - favorites seem to include job, car, flowers, jewelry, and hotel, among others - and links them to some other page of businesses in each area. There's also a thick green line under each word to draw one's eye to it.

I'm also having Yahoo! search results hijacked a bit, with the first page being a bunch of links for companies that seem to fit the search. I don't get my actual hist until the next page. In some places, I also seem to be getting ads placed over other ad space (mostly for smoking cessation products and items that help you tan). There's the occasional pop-up, too.

I've checked in what seem to be all the usual places to kill the thing, but can't seem to get rid of it once and for all. If you know anything about this particular piece of crap, or have some general suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.

Caught up on three shows tonight:

American Idol entered its final stage yesterday by naming its final pair, Fantasia Barrino and Diana DeGarmo. Jasmine Trias, whose continued presence on the show created controversy among people with nothing better to do, was finally given the heave-ho. Her clean teen looks, big smile, vacuous facial expression and marginal singing ability all add up to a future announcement by the Disney Channel of the new series Jaz's Aloha Spirit (writers all over greater Los Angeles are now doing a search and replace on their unused Lizzie Maguire scripts).

Fantasia should win, but if Diana squeaks it out I will take one for the team and adopt her weiner dogs.

Turns out that the first single for this year's Idol was co-written by Tamyra Gray. Yeah, that's pretty much the reaction I had.

We also finally got up to date on 24. You'd think we'd have used that six week hiatus better, but this way everything is at least fresh in our memories. I just hope that next season's turmoil isn't another personal vendetta involving Jack Bauer and the Drazen family. Let's give some other band of crazies a turn.

Adding another reality series to the mix, we also took in the final half hour of Colonial House on PBS. It's pretty good, though it seems like the participants are acting more like modern folks than on some of the other shows. I thought the folks on Manor House and 1900 House did a much better job of staying in the period. It does appear, though, that things will get much more 17th century as the show continues.

The one serious problem with Colonial House is the two hour episode length. I'd agree with TV Barn's Aaron Barnhart that they'd be better off with hour-long segments.

Among other things, mid-May is when the broadcast networks do their upfronts, presentations to announce their schedules for the coming season. The hope being that, with the mix of returning shows and bright new ones, critics will praise and advertisers will write big fat checks.

To this point, three networks have presented - NBC, ABC, and the WB. While most of the new shows display originality that runs the gamut from A to B, there are a couple of new shows that caught my eye. And not in a good way.

First, there's NBC's Father of the Pride, an animated show about the lives of the Siegfried and Roy's tigers. I don't think I really need to go on, do I?

The other is the WB's Commando Nanny. This is apparently based on the real-life experience of Mark Burnett. This explains the "depth" (and illogic) of many of the emotions displayed on Survivor and The Apprentice - he learned from working with five year olds. Gerald McRaney passes on the fatigues, as he goes from being Major Dad to Rich Jerk Dad.

I was under the impression that Commando Nanny aired right after Admiral Baby.

New York City is a finalist for the 2012 Olympics, and I have to think they're the favorite. All the other finalists are European (London, Paris, Madrid, and Moscow), and three have already hosted. And with Athens hosting this year, I don't know if they'd go back to Europe so quickly.

As much of a pain as it may be to host, I do look forward to the possibility of an Olympics in a city where I know people whose floors I can hopefully crash on. I'm just going to have to bring my own food and water, as the prices will probably triple the week before the opening ceremony.

A sad note today for anyone who followed BU football (the couple dozen of us). Dan Allen, who coached the team in its playoff runs in the 1990s, died this weekend. He'd been suffering from multiple chemical sensitivity, which robbed him of most of his mobility, among other things. He spent last season coaching Holy Cross from a wheelchair, which was pretty gutsy.

His tenure at BU was odd, in that he had those two playoff years but also coached some really bad teams, too. Given that the program was cut not too long after his departure, I assume that he didn't get much support from the school to build on the successes. Others who stop by here from time to time can probably talk to this, and to Allen himself, better than I can, and I invite them to do so.

Things we so busy yesterday with us closing the college that I didn't even know that the Red Sox have now graced their roster with a divine presence. All bow your heads for Youkilis, the Greek god of walks.

I just watched the last 20 minutes of the Frasier finale (which I missed last night, and discovered on while flipping around tonight). I've not really watched the show since the start of the Daphne-Niles relationship (and even then hadn't been a regular viewer), but it seemed like a solid ending. I have to admit slight resonance with the idea of moving and starting a new chapter of one's life, albeit mine is less dramatic given the shorter distance and lack of a romantic angle.

Even for the last 20 minutes, I got to see some of what I both liked and disliked of the show - good writing that ventured into the indulgent, and misunderstandings of borderline plausibility later rectified (in this case, thankfully quickly). While I didn't feel like I'd missed anything by not watching last night, I'm happy I caught what I did.

I've read in a couple of places that Kelsey Grammer may bring the character of Frasier back at a later date if the situation is right (not sure if that's a creative or financial decision; perhaps both). It makes me think a little bit about James O'Neill, father of playwright Eugene, who made a career out of performing The Count of Monte Cristo, to the detriment of not being able to perform any other role with the same public acclaimation. You have to feel at some level like that's where Grammer is (and if so, perhaps bringing Frasier back for a nice pay day wouldn't be the worst thing). On the other hand, if Down Periscope is any indication, another decade of workplace humor and troublesome coupling may just be what the doctor ordered.

(Props to Neil Steinberg's fantastic Complete & Utter Failure for the O'Neill reference.)

Yesterday was an Afternoon of Culture, as I got to go to both an art exhibit and a music performance.

Going to the musical performance was spur of the moment, though as it was (a) free, (b) during a block of time I had to kill, and (c) out in the open on BU's Marsh Plaza, thus allowing me to enjoy the sunny afternoon, the decision wasn't that hard to make.

So I wound up listening to part of a concert by students from the Academy of Performing Arts of Detroit. It was founded by Marvin Winans, a member of the noted Winans family of gospel performers. The venue wasn't the best (they had to compete with traffic noise and the T), but they did pretty well.

The art part of things came at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where we went the exhibit Gondola Days: Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Palazzo Barbaro Circle. The Barbaro was the Gardner's home in Venice, which attracted artists like Sargent and Whistler. Most of the works were by them (and Anders Zorn, who I'd not heard of before but whose work I really liked). Monet even makes an appearance, with a work from his first trip to Venice (and Gardner's last).

Adding to the exhibit was its location, the fourth floor of the museum, which was Gardner's living space. This is the first time they've used the space for an exhibition, which is interesting even though it's hard to get much of a feel for it as living space. You do get a great view into the museum's courtyard, however.

Some of you already know about this, but now that I've managed to inform all the people that needed to know, time to get the rest of you up to speed.

I'm moving on from Babson College next month, looking to move closer to where I grew up and do something else. What that something else is I'm not sure yet - though if you've got a something else that might work, let me know.

The move is mostly personal, though there's a small professional component to it as well (mostly related to the blurry line between work and personal life when you live where you work and get calls at 3 am relative to young adults acting as such). I am really looking forward to the relocation aspect of things, especially as we'll be up there for at least part of the summer. Always nice to be near the water during the summer.

I'm not surprised that Jasmine Trias remains on American Idol while La Toya London went packing. I am surprised that there's such a deep and devoted fanbase for music sung by atonal Hawaiian teens. It would not surprise me to learn shortly after the crowning of this year's Idol that Jasmine's success is due to some sort of Internet cabal that used technology to advance her candidacy.

And if there wasn't one before, let's start one now. Take some time over the next few days to configure your modem or other software to act in an auto-dialer capacity, and then tune in next Tuesday to get Jasmine's number. Together, we can bring what appears to be America's wishes into fruition.

The really incomprehensible part of tonight's show was Donna Summer singing "Macarthur Park." Hand to God. "Macarthur Park."

On the positive side, Clay Aiken came on to sing Earth Wind and Fire's song "Fantasy" with the remaining contestants. The positive there being I remembered how much I liked the original, and that I had some free songs to use. I'm now that much more funky.

Speaking of free songs, I got a soda out of the machine in my building tonight, and it turns out to still be from the Pepsi/iTunes promotion. Remember how I never got a free song when it was still going? Now, almost two weeks after it ends, I got a code under my cap. Solid.