What's the cause behind the sudden drop in gas prices? Is the economy any better today than it was 8 weeks ago? No. Is there more oil? Nope, OPEC actually has been cutting production the last 6 weeks. Are people driving less? Maybe, maybe not. But nowhere near enough to cause demand to drop so much that the price dropped by 50%.

What happened 8 weeks ago that sent the price of gasoline rocketing downwards? All through October as the price dropped, I kept waiting for a "McCain-Palin Surprise": "My friends, we mavericks have sat down with the oil companies and outlined what we were going to do to come January and working together, we were able to save Americans millions in gas costs.' But no pronouncement came.

Could it be all of President Bush's oil cronies finally saw the coming of the end of the gravy train and realized that an Obama administration and a Democratic Congress might just investigate all those record oil company profits in the last 4 years?

Naaah, that doesn't make sense. Must be something else...

Other authors we have lost far too soon this year are: Tony Hillerman, Studs Terkel, Marilyn Ferguson, William Wharton and Jacob Rosenberg.

Of the group, I will most miss Crichton and Hillerman. I was a huge fan of Hillerman's Navajo mysteries.

One (just one of many, believe me) of the reasons I'm glad I'm no longer employed at Barnes & Noble is I always felt horrendously ashamed by the corporate practice of shilling a recently deceased author. "Author X passed away last night. Please set up an endcap celebrating his life. Promiently feature book A and book B on the 'In the Media' endcap." Ugh!

Well, I'm going to try that again. I feel compelled to write for two reasons. One, because if I don't write something, I will never write something. I have always fancied myself as a pretty good writer and used to dream of being paid to write. Two, as of Tuesday, the world seems like a more hopeful place.

To catch everyone up. In the last 6 months (actually last 2 months), I have gotten married, moved and found a new job.

asuka002 and I got married on August 11th. It was the most incredible ceremony and reception. I walked down the aisle to the Imperial March and asuka002 walked down to music from Neon Genesis Evangelion. All our friends and family were there. Just a perfect day...

We moved to Worcester! asuka002 got a job working for Covidien Health, so we decided to head east. We were looking closer to where she is originally from, but settled on Worcester because it is more centrally located. We love the new place. It's a 2nd floor of a 3 family. We're sandwiched between two sets of 3 college kids, so it gets loud sometimes but nothing too outlandish. We have three bedrooms and two living rooms so we have space. But we also realized we have too much stuff. We got rid of a fair amount of junk; but you couldn't tell by the amount of boxes that are still here. We'll get unpacked eventually...

And the new job. I work for LEGO! I'm an assistant manager at one of their retail stores. It's such a great job! I love it so much! I had to bring home work with me my first night. Our holiday reset is next week and I have to build this for the reset.

Well, thats it for now. But I will be posting much more frequently now...

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We've put together a little website for Lex.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 27 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

This surprised me. I know for a fact that there is another person with my name who lives in the same town as me. I've been called once because they found his wallet at a gas station and another time when I was pulled over for a speeding ticket and didn't actually have my license on me there was some confusion because the other guy had a warrant out for his arrest.

News article.

Hello everyone!

Things have been sooooo insane and I have been in a very non-writing funk. But I hope to change that soon.

To update everyone...

• asuka002 and I are still together. In fact, we're engaged (last X-mas) and expecting a boy (Alexander in March). We are so excited and happy!
  
• My ex took Gigi to Wisconsin in June for "a few weeks" and never came back. After a few court hearings, one lawyer hiring and a court intervention, that is all settled. I will have Gigi summers and all school vacations (including Thanksgiving and Christmas). Not the best solution (I was suing for full custody) but not altogether too bad.
  
• I'm divorced (finally). It becomes official March 22, but all the court and lawyer stuff is done. I completely understand why lawyers get the bad rap they do...but if you ever need a lawyer in the Western Mass area, I would highly recommend the lawyer I had.
  
• Still at Barnes & Noble. Just started back at Modern Myths part-time for the holidays.
  

Who is this whoknowswhynot guy, you may be asking yourselves. Sorry I haven't been in LJ-land lately. Mayhaps for New Years, I 'll make LJ one of my resolutions.

Just wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and pass on some great news.

For years, the holiday season was a time of year I did my best to ignore. I just never could get into the mood; partly because of the way my life was going and partly because of retail-life. But the last two seasons have been so different and I owe a lot of it to asuka002. She has made me sooo wonderfully happy. I actually find myself not minding (and in some cases, enjoying) Christmas music. Work has been (with the exception of one a$$hole customer) actually fun and enjoyable. I find that I actually enjoy my job.

Last weekend, I asked asuka002 to marry me and she accepted! I am so happy!

The first was a commercial for Bud Light (does anyone who has a choice actually drink this?). In grainy black and white footage we see a beer concessioner walking through the bleachers shouting "Bud Light! Get your Bud Light!" The camera switches to footage of a player we're intimated is Babe Ruth. He then proceeds to point towards the beer guy and we get the famed 'Called Shot'. Baseball historians have argued it never happened or that the Babe had actually been pointing at a heckler. It is however one of the myths that the sport has.

The second commercial distressed me even more. We're shown footage of a beer league softball team choreographed with Vin Scully's amazing color analysis of Kirk Gibson's dramatic home run in the 1988 World Series. After the beer leaguer hits the ball out of the park, the actor even mimics Gibson's rounding of the bases. One of the greatest moments in baseball that I have ever witnessed has been lampooned to sell Wheaties.

What's next? Footage of Lou Gehrig gazing at a candy bar in his hand as he starts his famous "...today I consider myself the luckiest man..." speech? Or maybe the ground-ball going through Bill Buckner's legs could be used to pimp an ADD drug?