Waiting now in crowd of 30 or so outside Yale Club. To reiterate: Fight on Carson Palmer, 2002 Heisman Trophy winner! Go USC!

YEAHHHH!!! CARSON WINS!!!! I’m heading back over to the Yale Club now. Fight On!!!!

At Yale Club (where Heisman ceremony is) but players already here; not much to see. May head over to ESPN Zone in Times Square.

Sean’s sister Stephanie (bottom center) and my honorary sister Kimber (far right) sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” during the Newington High School Ars Musica Chamber Choir’s performance at the Wadsworth Atheneum on Friday afternoon. Awww, aren’t they cute? :)

USC’s #1-ranked women’s volleyball team advanced to the Final Four with another 3-0 sweep Friday, this time beating #8-ranked Pepperdine by a convincing score of 30-24, 30-20, 30-17. Next Thursday (Dec. 19) in New Orleans, the Women of Troy will face the winner of tomorrow’s match between #5 Florida and #10 Washington State.

A victory next Thursday over the Hurricanes or Cougars would put the Women of Troy right where they belong: in the national championship match (possibly against the only team that beat us this year, Stanford) next Saturday, Dec. 21, also in New Orleans.

Fight on!

Whatever your opinion on the possible war with Iraq — mine wavers from time to time, but I generally lean against it (although if it actually proves true that the Iraqi government gave chemical weapons to Al Qaeda, that would change everything) — you have to admit, this poster is freakin’ funny:

You’ve got to see the full-size version to fully appreciate it, because of the funny text at the bottom, including “Osama bin Laden as the Phantom Menace.” :) For a full-size view of just the bottom part, click here.

First AOL, now this:

Woo woo! Thanks to Andrew for the heads up.

Oh, and hey, check out this wonderful picture of Trent Lott from the AOL welcome page:

On an entirely unrelated note, you gotta see this awesome new TV commercial for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers! (That version is 4.9 megabytes. There’s also a 2.1 MB version and a 1.2 MB version.) Also, if you haven’t seen the full-length cinematic trailer yet, you absolutely must!!! Note the nifty remix of the Requiem for a Dream theme. I don’t think that’s in the actual film, unfortunately. (I’m listening right now to the soundtrack, which I bought this evening at Borders.) I can’t wait to see the movie! Only 5 days left…

Ninety-nine hits in on this website Wednesday! Wow! That’s the second-most all time. Traffic continues to shatter records in My world’s new, Google-friendly era — the site’s 820 hits in the first 11 days of this month are more than the whole-month totals for every month prior to October and November. The 75 hits per day so far in December put the site on pace to easily break last month’s record of 1,800 hits. Only time will tell whether the pace will increase, slacken, or remain steady through the Christmas season.

I’ve gotten 66 hits so far today (Thursday), by the way, as of 10:33 PM Pacific time. Much to my delight, one of those came from a Yahoo search for “living room times” + “brendan loy” — the first search-engine hit for my old high-school newspaper, The Living Room Times, that I’ve gotten on this site.

Mississippi Senator Trent Lott dropped to #99 in the BCS U.S. Senate ratings Thursday, just ahead of #100 Robert Torricelli. Lott was saved from last place because of his high rating in the Ku Klux Klan computer poll. He reportedly will receive an at-large bid to the Tostitos Sayonara Bowl.

USC’s top-ranked women’s volleyball team advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament with a 3-0 sweep of #23 Michigan State on Thursday (30-17, 30-23, 30-15). The Women of Troy will face #8 Pepperdine in the Elite Eight on Friday at 7:00 PM Pacific time, with the winner advancing to the Final Four in New Orleans. The match will be televised on Fox Sports West.

USC swept Pepperdine 3-0 on Oct. 11 on the Waves’ home court, although all three games were close (33-31, 30-26, 30-28). Friday’s match will be at UC-Santa Barbara’s Thunderdome. (Pepperdine reached the Elite Eight by defeating the home team, #7 UC-Santa Barbara, 3-1 on Thursday.)

The winner of the USC-Pepperdine match will play one of four teams — #5 Florida, #6 Northern Iowa, #10 Washington State, or #25 Temple — in the national semifinal Dec. 19 in New Orleans.

The only team that beat USC this year, #3 Stanford, is also one game away from the Final Four, having beaten #13 Ohio State 3-0 on Thursday. The Cardinal will face Pac-10 foe #12 Arizona tomorrow at 9:00 PM Pacific time on Stanford’s home floor, with the winner advancing to New Orleans. USC and Stanford could play in the national championship game Dec. 21, if both teams make it that far.

Click here for the full tournament bracket. Click here for the Dec. 9 USA Today / American Volleyball Coaches Association poll, which is where I’m getting the above rankings from.

In other news, 17-year-old basketball phenom LeBron James led his Toledo, Ohio high school to a 65-45 upset win over the #1-ranked high-school team in the country in a nationally televised game on ESPN2. He will be the #1 pick in the NBA draft if he decides to go pro. This is one of those years you have to say it’s a good thing the NBA has a draft lottery instead of just giving the first pick to the worst team, like the NFL does. If not for the lottery, you could seriously see some bad teams throwing games at the end of the season in an attempt to finish last, just so they could draft the next Magic Johnson.

Back in CT!

Just landed at Cincy. Hello from Eastern Time Zone.

Crocodile Hunter movie to be shown on plane! Finally, things are looking up.

On plane. Had entire carry-on bag, including underwear and socks (packed there because suitcases were full) searched by security. Then spilled whole soda on plane just now. What did I say about Murphy’s Law? :)

In shuttle, en route to LAX. Almost forgot laptop AC power plug / battery charger! Picked it up when going back to turn off light and lock door. Eek!