Somewhere in the middle of nowhere is Room 317. That’s where everything ends.

Five people will walk in. One will walk out. One will limp out. One will be thrown out. Two will be carried out. The five of them come from many places. California, New Jersey, and a few places between. What brings them there is all very different. What gets them out is pretty much the same. There will be bullets, broken glass, and blood. All of them will be changed. Not all of them will see tomorrow.

John Page has always tried to do the right thing, but others have taken advantage of his good nature and placed him on the wrong side of the gavel. Losing his job and family and being publicly smeared are more than he can handle. After selling everything worth a buck and stuffing anything needed in a backpack, John steps on a westward bus without certainty of where he is going other than to be far away from anyone who knows him. He has one plan: to selfishly forget his past and never lift a finger to help anyone but himself.
En route to nowhere, John meets several interesting people. Melissa is a single mother heading from Philadelphia to Southern California with her 7-year old daughter Charlotte. Unfortunately, one of them won’t make it home.

There’s a young couple whom John nicknames “Hoody and Bunny.” They constantly look over their shoulders and while protecting a small package. Hoody seems to have a tight grip on something in his pocket, while Bunny has eyes that plead for help.

At each stop across the country, John learns a little more about Hoody and Bunny, but none of what he learns is good. He also learns a little more about Melissa and Charlotte, but it’s a painful reminder of the child he left behind.
All of them have very different pasts that have brought them travelling in the same direction. All of them, and others, will eventually meet in Room 317 of a dark motel in the middle of nowhere. The police will be there, but they will not be of much help. Sometimes we create our own problems. Sometimes we are the only ones who can solve them.

Room 317 is a place where everyone’s mistakes collide, everyone’s history will become the present, and everyone’s life will be in the balance. Not everyone will live. Not everyone will want to.

I’m not psychic.  Nobody is.  However, that doesn’t mean it’s not fun to be a psychic.  This is about my experience working for the Psychic Hotline.  Those of you who are psychic, you somehow probably already know, so don’t bother reading.  The rest of you, well, you’ll have to suffer from your non-psychic disability and read it.

I was a chatroom surfer back in the late 90’s and early 00’s.  I spent hours at night jumping in and out of random “places” all in search of communication, someone to talk to.  I had recently separated and was en route a divorce and living far away from friends and family.  Most anyone I had known in the area was connected to my ex-wife, so it was that “choose a side” kind of thing.  Eh, it happens.  The social media explosion was roughly in stage 3 of 10, and advancements were expanding by the week.  I was in charge of technology at work, so it was my obligation to keep ahead of the curve, stay informed so I would be able to answer questions from those I was supposed to be ready to help.

Most time spent in chatrooms was wasted.  It’s not like anyone was “real.”  Most people were pretending to be someone other than themselves, which is part of the beauty of computer lives:  you can be anyone you want to be, haven’t been, never could be, or haven’t yet become.  Of all the chatrooms, my favorite was always the “psychic” rooms.  The main thing there were people either asking for or volunteering to give psychic readings.  You’d find someone in the chatroom, then break off into a private chat to participate in the personal psychic experience. 

Not only am I not psychic, but I don’t believe in any of it, and I am certain it’s complete crap.  However, I love the idea of the potential possibility of maybe-ness that people can actually have those visions.  I love stories from those who believe they can talk to the dead or have seen spirits, auras, or any kind of visible version of the non-living. 

When I volunteered to give psychic readings, it was never in a private chatroom.  I wanted everyone in the room to see what was going on.  Call me an exhibitionist, in more ways than one.  I wanted everyone in the room to see the absurdity of the activity.  When it came to the psychic readings, I didn’t even wait for a request.  I would just being my proclamation to all 20-something people in the room:

I have a vision!  Tomorrow there will be an event to behold!  There will be a great light in the sky, probably around 5, 5:30.  This great light will increase its intensity during the day, reaching its most brilliant point at about lunch, if you’re on the day shift.  Then!  This great light, after having examined us and chased away the puddles, this great light will begin its downward slide.  It will fade, little by little right up until about it’s time for World News Tonight on channel 6 (if you’re in the Philly area).  Do not be surprised if it happens again tomorrow!  If not, then I declare the likelihood of things falling from the sky.  Don’t worry.  It’s just water…

I could never tell just how many people were thinking, “Yeah, this is stupid.  I’m going to get some ice cream.”  Or, “I feel like an idiot.  For this and for not being able to help my 4^th grader with his homework.”  But that’s not what this is about.

One particular chatting night I received an invitation for a private chat and naturally accepted.  It went something like this:

Them:  would you be interested in working for the Psychic Hotline?

Me:  no, because there’s no such thing as psychic ability.

Them:  doesn’t matter.  We need people who can keep callers on the phone for a long time.  Engage them in conversation.  Keep it going because they pay by the minute.  Y’know?

Me:  I know, but it would feel weird because I’d be tricking people into something I don’t believe in.

Them:  it pays $12 an hour and you never have to leave your home.  They call you.

Me:  ok.  I’m in.

That resulted in a few e-mails to explain everything and some papers that arrived in the mail two days later.  After learning how to dial in to a phone server system and how to use tarot cards in a very basic way, I was ready to go.  Before I started, I reviewed a few other things, including a friendly suggestion that I might want to light some candles before I start.  “Why?” I wondered.  The answer was because candles are “white light” and can keep away “dark light” just in case some bad or evil forms of light entered the room while I was “reading.”  It was hard not to laugh.  However, since I was accustomed to having candles lit anyway, I sparked a couple.

I had to dial in to a phone server in order to enable my number into the psychic system.  Then, when people called in to find a “psychic,” I was in the pool of random people on call.  I lasted about a week, and – because that was about 10 years ago – I can only remember three specific calls of the many I answered, but they were memorable for a reason.

Tarot cards are very complicated, so much that I can’t remember a damn thing about them except that there’s a long and a short way to give a tarot card reading.  I was only capable of the short version, which basically had a list of characteristics associated with each card.  If someone asked you a question, you could pull a card and draw a prediction from the symbolism of the card to the situation involved with the question.  While a regular deck of cards has 52, a tarot deck has 78.  Instead of suits like spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds, a tarot deck has wands, swords, cups, and pentacles.  On one particular phone call, I was asked three questions.  Even though I rigorously shuffled the deck after each question, I selected the exact same card each time.  The mathematical chance of that happening is 1 in 474552.  That’s interesting, and it made me a little dizzy.

Another call was from a woman who wanted to know if she should take a new job she was offered.  I asked her a series of questions such as which job was further from home, the difference in pay, health benefits, hours at work, etc.  I then told her which job she should take, but my mistake was telling her how I came to that conclusion – the answers to her questions.  Her reply was, “That’s not psychic.  That’s just common sense!”  Enough said there.

Last was the reason I quit after just a week.  A lovely, elderly woman from Kansas called because it had been about a year since her husband had died.  Originally, she wanted to ask questions about him.  Where is he?  What’s he doing?  Does he remember me?  Is he waiting for me?  I don’t remember if we got to any of those questions, but I do remember having a wonderful conversation in which I asked her a million questions and she smiled a million times giving a million answers.  After a while, she asked, “How long have we been talking?”  I hesitated to answer, saying I wasn’t sure.  She then said, “Oh my, it’s been about 45 minutes.  Do you have any idea what this is costing me?”  I said, “I don’t really know anything about that part of the business.”  She kindly thanked me for talking to her and was then going to bed. 

After that, I hung up the phone, put the tarot cards back in the box, blew out the candle, and dialed the special number to disconnect my phone from the psychic hotline server.  I never reconnected again.  I also never mailed in the time sheet for the calls I took and the money I was supposed to make for my services, no matter how accurate I might or might not have been.

Trent Dilfer gave some extremely high praise for Eli Manning after the Giants beat the 49ers in a sloppy but exciting overtime NFC championship game this past Sunday.  The praise was so high, that I had to look a little more closely at Dilfer’s claims. 

“Eli Manning was as good today as you can play quarterback in the NFL.  Never was he more brilliant than on the critical downs, the third down plays that defined the game.  He was brilliant on every critical third down.  Eli Manning was as good as you can possibly be.”

Luckily, ESPN has play-by-play stats on the whole game, and they’re very helpful.

Eli ran a total of 19 plays on 3^rd down.  I’m not counting two 3^rd downs in which he spiked the ball to kill the clock.  Here’s a chart of his 3^rd down plays broken by quarter and effectiveness: 

Qtr       total         gained 1^st     failed          results of plays

1^st               5                3               2                1 inc, 1 sack, 3 complete

2^nd                   3                2               1                1 sack, 1 complete, 1 TD

3^rd                   4                0               4                3 inc, 1 sack

4^th                   5                1               4                3 inc, 1 TD, 1 short gain

OT         2                0               2                1 inc, 1 sack

Tot       19                6             13               8 inc, 4 sacks, 7 completions

Really Trent?  Brilliant?  Out of 19 plays on 3^rd down, Eli was sacked four times, threw five incompletions, and six completions.  Six of 19?  That’s less than 33%.  That is not brilliant.  Dilfer also crowed that Manning had no interceptions, but hold off there a second.  With less than two minutes in the 3rd quarter at their own 32, Manning put a ball 10 feet away from any Giant and right into the hands of not one but two SF deepbacks.  The problem was they collided, neither caught the ball, and the Giants punted.  If the collision did not knock 49er Tarell Brown out of the game and the ball out of his hands, it would have been 49er ball in Giants territory with a 4-point lead and in position to make it either a 7 or 11-point lead.  It goes down as yet another incompletion, but it was way off target and could have easily been a game changer.

The Giants two touchdown drives were at the beginning of the 2^nd quarter and early in the 4^th quarter.  As for the 4^th quarter, let’s keep in mind that the Giants had just gone 3 and out and punted on 4^th and 15 on their own 15 yard line.  It was only because the 49ers muffed the punt and basically gave the Giants 46 yards of offense, taking them from 4^th down on their own 15 to 1^st down on the 49er 29 yard line.  The only reason Manning was in position for a second touchdown was because of a 49er fumble after Manning had failed on a 3^rd and 15 with yet another incomplete pass and a sack.

Did the Giants win?  Of course.  Do they deserve to be in the Superbowl?  Certainly.  However, to call Manning “brilliant” and to say he was “brilliant on every critical 3^rd down” is just absurd.

if you have a barnes and noble nook, or other ereaders, you can have a young adult ghost story that really sizzles.  give it a peek. 

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lizzies-journal-richard-voza/1108313806?ean=2940013702448

First, let me apologize for the partial grossness of the picture.  It’s just that I’ve learned that people like pictures with blog posts.   Also when coloring.

My sister is the second most educated person – not just a woman – but person I know.  The most educated, well, she who shall not be named.  Of all the education, accomplishments, accolades, etc., the most important lesson my sister has ever taught me has to do with leftovers.  No, really.

The picture above is what’s left of the green bean casserole made by “she who shall not be named.”  I had two choices:  eat it or store it.  As you can see, I stored it.  That’s where my sister comes in.  Not just because of food but because of food storage.

After one particular thanksgiving dinner, I was helping Sis put leftover food into various storage containers.  If this were written ten years ago, I might have said “Tupperware.”  However, since then, advancements in food storage have produced better and less expensive items than anything to be called “Tupperware.”  In fact, Tupperware is now one of those words like Jacuzzi that represents a particular item while being one particular brand of that particular item that is so recognized that the brand name is used for any and all versions of that particular item.  That might be particularly annoying.

Anyway, her lesson about food storage is this:  Whatever size container you think you need for a certain leftover food item is always one size too big.  Always take a container size that is one size smaller than what you think you originally need.  When you choose that smaller container, there are two advantages at play.  First, you’re going to be right nine times out of ten.  Second, even if you’re wrong, you then have the sad advantage to eat whatever amount of food is left that will not fit in the smaller container.  Oh how sad.

So, either way, it’s win-win situation.

Yesterday on ESPN radio’s Colin Cowherd show, New England Patriots lineman Matt Light was talking about this weekend’s AFC Championship Game between his Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens.  More specifically, he was talking about 4th-year Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco’s experience in big games versus that of New England’s very veteran Tom Brady.

Matt said, “It doesn’t get any bigger than this for either of us.”  Really, Matt?  Did you forget that one of you will be playing in the SuperBowl in the very next game?  Isn’t the SuperBowl at least a leeeetle bigger than the AFC Championship?

Although some of the other 13-year olds are trying to wear heels, she’s still running around in Uggs and Chuck Taylors.

She tried softball and soccer, possibly because she knows that sports are important to me.  She didn’t last more than one season, but I’m thrilled she at least tried.  I used to pitch to her and her sister for an hour in the backyard or at a softball field.  She once took a line drive off her shin, and you could see the stitches of the ball for a week.  It was funnier than it was painful.  At softball tryouts they called the kids up to bat.  Some kids got 10, 15 or more pitches.  She lined her first few pitches back through the box, and the guy said, “Next.”  Sad, she asked, “Why did the other kids get so many more tries?”  I told her, “Because it only took three pitches for them to know you can hit.”

Theater and dance are more her thing, and she’s not afraid to sing. 

She’s not a student who quickly absorbs information and easily gets A’s.  However, she is a student who inherently knows how to learn what she doesn’t know.  She makes flashcards with her iPod.  She writes PowerPoint presentations as easily as I would write a shopping list.  She finds study guides on YouTube.  She is a multimedia kid.

You can’t knock the smile off her face, unless you’re a ghost.  She sees them occasionally, and she’s not happy about it, so it doesn’t make sense that she loves movies like The Exorcist and The Sixth Sense. 

Every Thanksgiving she tries cranberry sauce.  She never gets past half a spoonful, but she’ll try again next year.  She’ll try almost any food you come up with.  She knows that it will often taste gross, but that won’t stop her from trying.  That’s also why she loves calamari, but not as much as she loves Chinese food.

On top of all that, she’s the bravest kid I know.  she’s had to deal with things that are more difficult than I could ever imagine, and she is still smiling through it all.  I’ve never been as tough as she has been, but I’ve never had to be that tough.  Makes me feel lucky, in more ways than one.

Like how I did that?

So, look at that statuette.  Do I really need to say it?

A recent time magazine story wonders why wine and liquor outsell beer in a down economy.  They suggest that consumers are tired of the “frat-jock” advertising, but I think not.

First, we are more health conscious, and beer packs on more calories.  Second, a down economy means morale is down too. Maybe we don’t have time to sip a beer with friends after two jobs. We just want to get drunk. Fast.