Survivor: Blood vs. Water - December 11 Episode Blog Party

Oh my gosh ... this is the penultimate episode of the season! They're going to have to do some number crunching before the finale this Sunday. Did you notice that this is the first season in a long time (maybe since early on) that there was no "unseen before" clips show?

As the show airs tonight here on the East Coast, I'll update this entry with the major happenings. Refresh the page to get the latest. But, as always, the real party is in the comments area ... come join us there!

The Lovely Lifeguard Laurie has updated the blog pool --
Pool People
CIERA -- Andrea J, Karen in CA, Rochelle
GERVASE -- Jackie, Pam in NJ
HAYDEN -- Joanie, Quixotic Elf
MONICA -- Becky, KayBeeRN, Russ
TYSON -- Delee, meb

Redemption Island
TINA -- Cheryl in NC, Lynn1, Terry in TX
LAURA M -- AlbGlinka, JOKATS, rbennie
KATIE -- David, Margo, Zoetawny

Jury
ARAS -- Donna in FL, MikesGirl
VYTAS -- Donna NY, ML
CALEB -- Glenn, ORKMommy

Although my random pool pick is Gervase, I'm sort of shocked that he's still in it. I personally would like to see Hayden win. Although I don't care much for either of them, Monica and Laura M. have played incredibly strong in challenges. Tyson has been disappointing in challenges for the most part, but very astute at finding idols. It all may just crash down around him.

Survivor fans ready?

Hmm ... Tyson, thinking it will make Monica his loyal ally, tells her and Gervase that he found the other idol. It actually makes her distrust him a bit more as he held out about it.

Time for the Redemption Island duel -- Using sticks and rope to fashion a pole, retrieve keys. Probst is telling them that two will live to remain in the game, one will go home. I don't see any number crunching there, do you? Laura wins it again! Tina gets second and Katie will be heading to jury. Laura gives Ciera the clue to the hidden idol.

Ciera and Hayden both work on finding the idol. After all, it's them versus the other three. Of course, they don't know Tyson already has it.

The immunity challenge has them diving, pushing a buoy, retrieve letter tiles, solve a classic Survivor phrase puzzle. Reward has a custom dinner delivered to the winner. Ciera WINS Immunity and Reward! She can choose one person to join her for reward, goes for Hayden.

Ciera and Hayden know their only chance is to get Monica on their side. It just might work. They want to target Gervase.

Tribal Council time. The whole Monica-gate thing is discussed. Hmm.

The tally -- Hayden, Gervase, Hayden, Gervase, Hayden.

Ack. She didn't take the bait. Hayden goes to Redemption Island.

The Amazing Race: Season Finale Blog Party - December 8, 2013

Okay, it's actually going to start on time here! Woot! Tonight's two-hour season finale will have four teams whittled down to three into the final dash of the world whirlwind race. I know many don't like Leo and Jamal. But I don't mind them so much at all. It's Tim and Marie (my fellow NJ peeps) who irk me. Please don't let them win!

For those who want to know and didn't catch it, I posted the casting spoilers on next season's race. Beware, these are SPOILERS. Don't click on the link if you don't want to know. Please keep casting comments on that post -- I don't want folks complaining here about revealed spoilers.

That's because we're here to PARTY tonight! As the show airs here, I'll post major happenings in real time on this post. Refresh the page to get the latest news! But, as always, the party is in the comments area. Come join in on the fun!

Here's the latest blog pool standings from the Magnificent Margo --

Jason And Amy - Nicklepeed, PDXGranny, Brian, DLA
Leo And Jamal - MEB, Margo, Brenda, Caela
Tim And Marie - SueGee, DKNYNC, Rbennie
Travis And Nicole - Delee, Laurie, Lynn1, Merrilee

Sorry you have been PHILIMINATED
Hoskote And Naina
Rowan And Shane - ML, Becky, Cheryl in NC, KayBeeRN
Chester And Ephraim - Buzzmaam, Donna in AL, Sharon S
Brandon And Adam - Donna in FL, Monty924, Sharon
Tim And Danny - JOKATS, Dusty, Zoetawny
Nicky And Kim - Nana in NW, Jennasmom, David
Ally And Ashley - LafayetteLisanne, Jackie,Tammy

Got your snacks? Got your beverages? Let's race! Er, let's watch them race while we imbibe, that is.

Teams are flying to Tokyo and have to find their next clue amidst cat statues reminiscent of Hello Kitty a bit. Leo and Jamal got an earlier flight than the other teams.

Detour - Knock it Down or Call it Up -- they have to be a human bowling ball or call from roughly inside a fish tank. The first is one of those rather wacky Japanese game shows. The phone call bit is in a defunct phone booth turned goldfish tank.

Leo and Jamal are in the lead after the Detour, but hit their speed bump. They have to catch a fake rhino.

Roadblock - has them building robots. Gah! Marie finished first with the robots! Nicole once again is working with Amy because she can't do a task! Tim and Marie are at the clue for the Pit Stop.

Pit Stop order:
1. Tim and Marie (grr). Won a trip to Aruba.
2. Jason and Amy
3. Nicole and Travis
4. Leo and Jamal - Philiminated

At this point, I really would like a Jason/Amy win. The other two teams irk me, Tim/Marie more irksome than Nicole/Travis, but ...!

Teams are flying to Alaska, their final destination. All three teams are on the same flight.

The Roadblock is a flight task in which they have to drop flour bags onto a target from a small plane.

They have an ice expedition coming up, then have to chip a clue out of ice.Right now, Jason/Amy are in the lead, Tim/Marie quite a bit behind, Nicole/Travis struggling to get through the Roadblock. Nicole has been doing horrible at the tasks, but Travis's attitude about her doing so poorly is getting on my nerves, too.

From there, they have to paddle a kayak to an island to get the next clue. Amy/Jason still in the lead. Nicole/Travis finally made it to the ice expedition bit, but are still struggling.

The final task has them making totem poles representing the currencies of the countries in order. Amy and Jason still in the lead.

THE WINNERS ARE AMY AND JASON! Woot!

Travis is being obnoxious, Nicole is being inept.

2. Tim and Marie
3. Nicole and Travis

The outcome was as it should be given the final three teams.

Off Topic: That Was the Week It Was - December 8, 2013

Good Sunday morning to all y'all! Y'see, I've been working with someone originally from Alabama. You're lucky I'm not calling y'all "darling." As it is Sunday, this is my off television topic reflection on the week gone by in both words and photographs I've taken along the way. If you're looking for TV talk, tonight is the season finale of The Amazing Race and I'll have a blog party post up by 8pm ET for that. Plus, yesterday, I revealed the cast of next season's TAR in this post.

After I posted last week's photo post, the news came in about the train derailment at Spuyten Duyvil. As some of my Facebook friends were worried, I thought I should mention it here -- although I commute by train to work, I take NJ Transit, not Metro North. And, other than the cool name of Spuyten Duyvil (which means Spouting Devil), little in the Bronx holds reason for me to visit that area.

My own regular train line, NJT Raritan Valley Line, isn't as lengthy a trip end to end as is that Hudson River Metro North line. I have ridden that train once, but it was about thirty years ago heading into the city from the Poughkeepsie area. My regular commute train doesn't have any huge curves in it, either. We do have some gentle bends and there have been times that new engineers miss or almost miss the shorter train platforms due to going too fast, but nothing of crash or derailment level that I've ever experienced in the past ten years.

While I can tell if the train is going either faster or slower than usual, I really couldn't tell you the speed. Even going slow, we tend to go faster than cars on the nearby parallel roads. Those roads tend to be 30mph speed limits, so that doesn't say much. I don't believe that NJ Transit has had any passenger or crew deaths this year although I think I read that there have been 27 suicides with people jumping in front of trains, etc. That isn't enough to derail a train. Heck, once my train hit a car and that didn't derail it. Passengers do stand a chance of falling over during rough stops, but that's about it. I always hang onto something as the train is stopping.

I don't think my train line has that technology they've been talking about which automatically slows the train down per conditions although it's supposedly being tested on NJT. We do go over a detector doohickey outside of Dunellen which broadcasts over the walkies the conductors have. Hmm -- there's actually a very short YouTube bit on it. That detector checks the journal boxes for heat and dragging equipment to make sure a wheel isn't going to fall off or anything. I asked one of the conductors if it has ever sensed a defect. He told me every time he's had a defect, it's been a defect in the detector itself, not the train! It would creep me out if my own job had something called a "dead man's switch" -- but that's standard equipment on trains. That detects that the engineer's hands or feet (?) have dropped off the controls and stops the train.

On the whole, even though NJ Transit was SO foolish when Sandy hit (storing all the rail equipment in the flood zone), I feel safe on the trains and have faith in the quality of the equipment and the crews. I know older train cars are in use on the NJT rails, but my line is all the fairly new (some even newer as they're Sandy replacements) double-deckers. Every now and then heading into the city, I'll get the old Comet cars with the brown seats on the Northeast Corridor line. But I mainly stick to my own train line and I have no worries -- it's far safer than being in a car!

After all this train talk, it's evident that not much happened in the Life of Jackie this week, huh? True dat! Work, eat, sleep, had a stomach bug for a couple of days, icky weather going back and forth to work ... not any great photo opportunities to speak of. Today we're supposed to get a bit of snow and the cold has set in once again. At least snow will be pretty, but it's not guaranteed to be a white Christmas at all. It rarely is around here.

Anyway ... onto the photos I took this week --

Gobble Gobble!

I don't recall this being there Thanksgiving week. But it did indeed show up this past week on a porch on Berckman Street in Plainfield.

Griswolds?

While I do enjoy it, the house at the corner of Richmond and East Front is looking a bit like Clark Griswold (National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation/Chevy Chase) had a hand in it. If it seeps to the upper floors, we'll know for sure. Plainfield.

**CLICK THE 'READ MORE' LINK TO SEE THE REST OF THE PHOTOS**

The Amazing Race: Season 24 (Winter) Casting SPOILERS

Get yer spoilers here! Yep, I got your spoilers! It's safe to assume you might be a bit familiar with some of these team members as I'm making a post about it. But, if you don't want to know the cast ... do NOT click the 'read more' link.

But ... if you DO want to know who we'll be watching next season on the show, click that good old 'read more' link. You might be happy; you might not be happy. I'm not here to promise happiness, goodness and light. I'm just here to give you the skinny --

Survivor: Blood vs. Water - December 4 Episode Blog Party

Ohhh! From the promos, it looks like tonight's Tribal Council vote will result in a stubborn tie! That means all of the castaways will pick a rock, the one with a rock of a certain color will go home. Now, that hasn't been done but once before in all the seasons the show's been on the air.

In Survivor: Marquesas, Paschal English selected the Purple Rock and got the boot even though he had NEVER even had a vote in any Tribal Council at that time. I'm calling it "certain color" rather than Purple Rock (which we've referred to over the years) as it seems to me the promo is saying white. We'll see.

As the show airs here on the East Coast, I'll update this entry with the major happenings. Refresh the page to get the latest! As always, the real party will be in the comments area. Come join in with us cool kids!

Before we get started ... Lifeguard Laurie's latest pool standings are as follows:

Pool People
CIERA -- Andrea J, Karen in CA, Rochelle
GERVASE -- Jackie, Pam in NJ
HAYDEN -- Joanie, Quixotic Elf
KATIE -- David, Margo, Zoetawny
MONICA -- Becky, KayBeeRN, Russ
TYSON -- Delee, meb

Redemption Island
TINA -- Cheryl in NC, Lynn1, Terry in TX
LAURA M -- AlbGlinka, JOKATS, rbennie
CALEB -- Glenn, ORKMommy

Jury
ARAS -- Donna in FL, MikesGirl
VYTAS -- Donna NY, ML

Survivor fans ready?

Heh. Hayden mentioned that Tyson will win it all. Then, prior to the duel, Caleb called out Tyson and Gervase as liars. The duel is building a house of cards. Laura wins. Dang, she is good at challenges! Argh! Caleb was just about there when his whole stack went down. Grr. I liked him. Tina and Laura remain at Redemption. Laura decides to give the Immunity Idol clue to Ciera. Ciera keeps it this time.

Ciera reads the clue with her buddies Gervase, Tyson, and Monica. Hayden and Katie are on the outs.

Aw, Tyson cried. Too bad, so sad. ARGH! And, he found the idol!

Immunity Challenge -- Race through obstacles balancing a ball on a pole, poles get longer, then throw sandbags at target. Reward is an ice cream party.

OMG! Gervase won immunity! Is that a first or what? He chooses Monica (his closest competitor and she gave up burgers) and Tyson.

Hayden tries to convince Ciera and Gervase that they need to blindside Tyson tonight. His chances don't look good.

If Ciera was a wishbone, she would have been torn in half in Tribal, Hayden tried to convince her that she would be number four in the Tyson alliance; Tyson tried to keep her.

The tally: No idol played -- Hayden, Hayden, Monica, Monica, Hayden, Monica. It's a tie. The revote -- only for Hayden or Monica.

Re-vote: Monica, Hayden, Monica, Hayden.

Another tie, Purple Rock time! Monica and Hayden are SAFE! Ciera, Katie and Tyson draw rocks, this time it's the white rock. Katie goes to Redemption.