Gabon
It's one of those countries I've heard of, but know nothing about other than that it is in Africa. A quick check tells me it's on the western coast, just below the place where the continent juts westward. This is the location for the new Survivor, and it looks daunting. I guess we would have heard if anyone was trampled by an elephant or drowned by a hippo. Last night's two-hour premiere quickly revealed a fundamental imbalance in the two teams, but it was entirely due to poor strategy on the players' parts in choosing teammates. One team was smart, the other not so much. As it turned out, the oldest male is actually a pretty good asset. Think Bill Nye, the science guy, who is also a fisherman from Maine. The oldest female, on the other hand, was a liability, and I'm surprised that it took until the second vote for her to go. The Olympic athlete hasn't proven very useful yet, either.

Unlike other years, I find that the personalities are emerging very fast. Not sure why that is—perhaps because we got to meet them for two hours all at once. The young guy on the weak team looks like a real klutz, which is odd for a professional gamer who should have high hand-eye coordination. What a bunch of snorers, too. Kudos to the guy who sacrificed his glasses to make fishhooks so they could eat. I know they're filming in high-def, but I don't have high def at home, so I'm not sure how much difference that makes. The show does seem to have a slightly different look to it.

Because of the two-hour Survivor, I had to tape Grey's Anatomy. They overlapped.

The salvage crew picked up some of the debris from our street yesterday. They sort of cherry-picked, though. They took the bundles of branches from our yard, but not the bagged leaves, for example. They took logs up to a certain size and left the rest. At least the street is looking less like a war zone. It's hard to believe that there are still people out there without power, nearly half a million of them. It's very tough for small businesses, like the dentist who has been closed for two weeks. Also tough when people on one side of a street have power and those on the other don't. The movie critic for the Houston Chronicle said he was reminded of scenes from McCarthy's The Road.

There was an interesting picture at the Chronicle online showing a bunch of cattle being herded down a major street. Some 25,000 head were dislodged by the storm. Apparently they float really well because of their four gassy stomachs. Some of them ended up miles from home, and it's a major job now to match 'em with their owners. Many died, too.

Here's my review of Jeff Lindsay's Dexter in the Dark, the third book in the series that inspired the Dexter TV series.