Aww, I am jealous!

Since Leon is friends with Ankur, he got to meet Wes and Cher today. They're in Berkeley to cast season 3 of "Beauty and the Geek." They even approached Leon about it, but being married makes him ineligible.



So for those of you who didn't watch the show, Cher won with her partner Josh (not pictured). That's Leon next to her and Wes, the "geek" boyfriend she met on the show. Ankur is in the foreground.

They scheduled interviews that they'll hold tomorrow. Go Cal!

I wish we had taken a camera to last night's "Beauty and the Geek" party, because I thought it'd be cool to get a photo of Ankur standing next to the TV while he was on screen. But it's just as well, because there were at least 35 people there, and we were crammed into a space that might have comfortably accommodated ten--tops.

Some people actually stood for the entire show, which must have sucked. Fortunately, Leon and I arrived early enough that we had good seats in just about the only corner of the room that didn't look like a pile of overlapping body parts.

Anyway, if you watched the show, you know that Ankur's team was eliminated in third place, which is not too shabby. He had sort of led Leon to believe he finished in second place, so we were a little surprised by the results. But it made us all the more pleased that we got to watch an episode with him while he was still competing and during which he provided a lot of interesting commentary about the other contestants.

(Most of that commentary centered around how the team of Josh and Cher was putting on a big act for the cameras, complete with scripting out what they would say in their testimonials and producer interviews.)

Oh, and a gaggle of about six girls showed up, and no one knew who they were. They eventually confessed that they knew Ankur through MySpace and they wanted to have their pictures taken with him. "Wow, you have groupies!" someone remarked.

But in lieu of posting pictures from last night (since none were taken), here is one of the better shots from several weeks ago. A group of us went into San Francisco and saw an improv group; Ankur ended up on stage. So that's him with a blurry improviser.

I felt my first earthquake yesterday. It was a 2.9 and about 2 miles Southeast of Berkeley, so not very exciting. Except that it kind of was. I felt our apartment building shake a little and it sounded like something exploded outside.

Leon also felt an earthquake yesterday, but his was earlier in the day and farther away. Actually, he didn't even feel it. He just saw the blinds shake and checked online if it had been a quake, which, obviously it was.

According to some little map/graph online, the chance of this area being hit with another earthquake soon has increased dramatically, and I'm a teensy bit scared that something traumatic is going to happen. I don't actually think there will be a huge earthquake any time soon, but I do worry somewhat about things that could kill me before I'm ready. Like electrical storms. Or Ephedrine.

Anyway, tonight we are going to watch "Beauty and the Geek" with Ankur. He's been hosting parties throughout the show's run, but we haven't gone to any of them, partially because some of them were hosted during the repeat Wednesday broadcast, partially because the parties were co-hosted by the sister of another one of the "Geek" contestants whom we didn't know, and partially because TiVo allows me to watch an hour-long program in about 45 minutes, whereas going elsewhere to watch the show would turn it into at least a 90-minute ordeal. I tend not to be a fan of ordeals.

But this will be one of our last opportunities to watch the show with Ankur--we're down to just three teams, as I'm sure you all know. And he is still a contender! So, obviously, he has a decent chance to win this thing. Go him!

I also met him for the first time about six weeks ago and there are photos from that evening, but they haven't made it online yet (and supposedly are really blurry), so no posting them yet. But he seems like a really awesome guy.

I just lost an entry. I hate that!

MIS wanted to log into my computer and I was hastily closing windows…and there it went. I'm not going to take the time to rewrite it, so I'll summarize.

knows , who is appearing on . They both attend .