I'm typing this in Shawnee, OK, at Andrea's dad's house as the boys watch "Piglet's Big Movie" for the second time. We retreated Friday evening for the weekend as our air conditioner broke earlier in the week & we couldn't stand the heat anymore. The AC actually went out for good on Tuesday evening after a couple of days with low freon. Luckily we already had an appt. with the heating/AC people the next morning. Of course they were only supposed to refill the freon, not fix a bad furnace unit - which meant another five days of waiting. They are scheduled to come out in the morning & get things going again. It's been a nice weekend - nice & relaxing. We basically hung out at Gary's house all weekend - venturing out a few times to go to the park, get food, go to Wal-Mart, etc. Watched the Sooners beat Oregon yesterday afternoon (go Adriane Peterson!) & watched Miss America (MA) last night (Miss Louisiana got jipped). Speaking of Miss A - Andrea & I both agree that the MA people are consistently looking for ways to screw things up. Year after year they introduce or nix something that causes the whole thing to be lessened a little. The culprits this year - oh, let me count the ways ...

• First off (and most important) - limiting the talent portion of the competition to the final two ladies? This was part A of Miss L's downfall. You can't fault her for her dancing routine - I think most people just would rather hear someone sing. Not to mention that Miss Alabama's vocal talents were minimal - she sounded good, but had an extremely limited range (sounded like she kept singing the same 3-4 notes over & over again). So 20% of the final outcome is based on the talent portion (the biggest part, by the way - 15% for the 'wear' events + 5% for the stupid quiz) - and you don't even allow the five finalists to perform & have a chance to improve their score? Come on, you've got to be kidding! Bad move #1


• Lose the quiz, already! I would have got half the questions wrong - even Miss California admittedly got lucky. It's only 5% of the score & has only been included for a few years. When Regis & Kathy Lee hosted they began it (& probably only then because of the popularity of the 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' Regis hosted game show at the time). Since we don't get to see the scores anymore (why did they do away with showing us the scores a few years back?) we'll never know, but you can't help but think that the stupid quiz helped Miss Alabama (4 ?s right) & hurt Miss Louisiana (2 ?s right).


• No big song/dance routine - instead they do these quick pre-taped intros of the contestants, half of which were not close enough to really even get a good look at them


• No final walk for the outgoing Miss America? She's another one that got shafted because of the reformat. Bad move.


• Miss Louisiana gets 1st runner up & they don't even announce it? They skip right to "and the winner is" & quietly escort Miss L off the stage?


• Miss Alabama was just plain ugly. There ... said it. Come on - I know that Miss America is touted as a "scholarship competition" & not a "beauty pageant" - but there is no way that Miss Alabama looks like a Miss America when you stand her up against the other 51 contestants!

Okay, I'll stop. Point is that the Miss America organization needs to do some serious reconsidering of the choices they are making or the pageant will slip behind the Miss USA/Universe competitions (God forbid). I'll get off my soapbox now.