A bunch of us gathered over at Lil’ & Geoff’s place to watch the first season and the season premiere of “The 4400,” another entry in USA Network’s pantheon of sci-fi-ish television shows. The basic premise is that four thousand four hundred people went missing over the course of half a century or so, and they all came back in spectacular fashion at one time… but for each of them, no time seems to have passed. It’s at least a bit about how people plucked from their lives can feel disjointed when reinserted to mainstream humanity, but it’s a whole lot about why these people were chosen, and what effects their actions have from the time of their returning onward.

Did I mention that some, if not all, of them exhibit “powers” of one kind or another?

I can wholeheartedly recommend watching the initial two-disc DVD set. I’m not so sure about the new season, given a couple of the changes. They dropped the stellar Peter Coyote as the boss of the show’s two government-agent leads (yes, we did make at least one Mulder & Scully joke). In the process the agency went from the good old DHS to a completely forgettable generic agency name that… well, I’ve completely forgotten. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was because of USA Network’s concerns over how the DHS was portrayed in at least one episode. Hmm.

At any rate, we had a good time, which is almost guaranteed when you gather the members of that household together with Lyse and Mari. And we all ate more than was good for us. When will we ever learn, eh?

The weather has returned to late-spring normal, thank goodness. I may be able to sleep comfortably tonight.

I certainly hope that’s so, anyway. I still have a very full schedule tomorrow, including a trip to work. Go, me.

So let’s follow the numbers. On Sunday, the high was about 65. It was a bit warmer than that on Monday, right around 70. Today it hit the 80s. Tomorrow we’re to see 90 degrees, then again on Friday. Saturday it’s supposed to drop to the mid 70s, and on Sunday they’re calling for… about 65.

My body reacts poorly to drastic shifts in temperature, regardless of the direction of change. I fully expect for the next few days to be rather unpleasant, to put it mildly. Bah.

I suppose I should just be thankful that there are still some cool days ahead before summer lands on Portland for good and all, eh?

I discovered something this evening. If I’m going to watch something with my kids, sometimes it makes sense to bring something I can watch with one and something else I can watch with the other. For instance, tonight I watched a Nova program (about the Archimedes palimpsest) and two episodes of Tsubasa Chronicle (about a boy trying to rescue the pieces of a girl’s memory).

It shouldn’t take genius-level deductive reasoning to figure out who enjoyed which.

Mind you, I got a kick out of both shows, so it’s all good. I still really need to catch up on my anime viewing so I can watch more of the same stuff they’re watching, though. (Yeah, yeah, I know. Only so many hours in a day…)

Alexander’s prize for being one of the top picks in his school’s science fair was a pair of tickets to this afternoon’s Portland Beavers baseball game. We turned it into a bit of a father-and-son outing, traipsing through the rain to the MAX station, buying food at the vendors, and climbing up into a relatively uncrowded portion of the station with a good sidelong view of the action.

And then came time for the singing of the National Anthem. The PA system at Civic Stadium… I mean PGE Park… isn’t the greatest in the world, which meant that we missed the introduction of the Anthem’s singer for the day. We could only tell that it was a youngster of some sort. “This will be cute,” I thought to myself.

I was wrong.

Oh, it was bad. Beyond bad. The kid had Celine Dion pretentions with Roseanne Barr singing talent. At first people were smirking. After about thirty seconds, most everyone around us was giggling, cringing or both. Me? I was struggling to keep from howling.

Allow me to illustrate. The poor kid apparently labored under the mistaken notion that all instances of the letter “a” should be pronounced long, which turned “The Star-Spangled Banner” into “The Stare-Spayngled Bay-ner.” I swear to you, this is the gods’ own truth. I heard it with my own, tortured, bleeding ears.

Once the song (and the crowd’s laughter) subsided, Alex and I looked at one another in disbelief. I said to him, “You know, that’s pretty much got to be the high point of our entire afternoon. It can’t possibly get any better than that.”

I was right, as it turns out. The visiting team vaulted into the lead right off the bat, as it were, and then during the top of the 6th the rainclouds arrived, sending the players scurrying for shelter. We chose that moment to bail for warmer and more entertaining locales.

You know what the really sad part of this is? Somewhere, a bunch of people are telling that kid, “You did great! That was wonderful!” Wow.

Well, Sis has had her baby girl, one Judy Ryoko Ball, so that makes me an honest-to-goodness uncle. I know, I’m just as shocked and amazed as you are. Still, a big congrats goes out to John and Christine on their new blessing. (And by “blessing” I mean “bundle of joy and trouble.” Heh.)

Judy missed sharing a birthday with her maternal grandfather by just a single day, too…