Category Archives: My Life

8th annual LRT Bowl Pick ’em Contest!

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Above: Me at LSU-North Texas with Ross Lancaster, and at Washington-Colorado with David Kreutz. It’s college football bowl season, and that means it’s time for the 8th annual Living Room Times Bowl Pick ‘em Contest! The contest is now underway. If you entered my 2010 or 2011 Bowl Pick ’em contest(s), you can log in with the OfficeFootballPool.com username &… Read more »

The Elf on the Shelf

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Our “Elf on the Shelf,” Gatito (name explained here), re-emerged over the weekend after 11 months in a drawer at my office at the North Pole with Santa, and has begun his daily Christmas-season routine of observing the girls, flying to north each night to give a naughty-or-nice report to the Big Guy (little Orwellian surveillance tool that he is),… Read more »

Best. Election. Ever.

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Barack Obama re-elected, and by a comfortable margin both electorally and popularly. Nate Silver, and the concept of objective facts, vindicated against the Right’s ritual denialists. The Democratic Senate majority, which seemed doomed a year ago, expanded. Marijuana legalized in Colorado. Gay marriage legalized at the ballot box in Maine, Maryland and Washington (and an anti-gay marriage amendment defeated in… Read more »

Enter my Third Quadrennial Electoral College Contest!

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[NOTE: In addition to entering the contest, please bookmark my Liveblog, Livechat & Live Results page, then come back Tuesday for election results and contest results!] With less than three weeks until the presidential election, the polls are open for my quadrennial blog contest to see who can best predict the Electoral College outcomes! It’s time to start playing with… Read more »

Welcome, Bailey

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Meet the latest addition to the Loy family menagerie: Bailout #PANIC Loy. “Bailey” for short. 🙂 Bailey is an 8-week-old yellow lab puppy from Joplin, Missouri, who we adopted yesterday through the Rocky Mountain Lab Rescue. She joins our three cats (Toby, Sasha and Butter), four chickens (Belle, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Briar Rose) and two fish (Goldie and Romney). And… Read more »

Go west, young man

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The Transit of Venus is just hours away (it starts at 4:05 PM MDT and goes until sunset, which is around 8pm), and while I didn’t take that flight to Tucson, I have decided to drive three hours west, into the Rocky Mountains, to find a better viewing location. Actually, I’ve already found it: a field near St. Vincent’s Church… Read more »

My other solar eclipse

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I wrote last night that the only solar eclipse I’ve ever seen was on May 10, 1994, when I caught a brief, unsafe, naked-eye glimpse of the partially eclipsed sun, perhaps 40% or 50% covered, looking out a bus window in Virginia during a school trip. But I belatedly realized that’s not right: I also saw, from the road in… Read more »

Recalling my one brief (unsafe) glimpse of a solar eclipse, 18 years ago

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Tomorrow, America will experience its first annular eclipse since May 10, 1994. Weather permitting, I’ll get to see it as an 85% partial eclipse in Denver — the second solar eclipse I’ve ever witnessed, and the first since (again) May 10, 1994. It will also be the first solar eclipse I’m witnessed safely, with proper eye protection. On May 10,… Read more »

Oscars Live Chat 2012

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By popular demand (by which I mean Becky said I should do it), I’ve set up a Live Chat for tonight’s Academy Awards after all. More on that in a second, but first, join my 8th annual Oscar Pool! The ABC broadcast starts at 5:00 PM Mountain Time, the actual awards at 5:30 PM, but you can start chatting whenever… Read more »

Very, very belatedly: Oscar Pool 2012!

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I’ve very, very late to this… so late that it’s already Oscar Day on the East Coast… but it’s time to (quickly!) sign up for the 8th annual Living Room Times Oscar Pool! Frankly, I completely forgot until late in the week that this was coming up, and then I was too busy to get it set up, until tonight…. Read more »