waiting ...

we are now in the waiting phase of mario batali's ultimate grilling challenge. i should know by thursday whether i have advanced to the semifinals.

i am very happy with my campaign, and the results that i am aware of so far. i have no idea what happened over the weekend when they went to the e-mail voting. i felt that that change may have helped me a lot, but it also seemed like a recipe for evil manipulation. and i am fairly appalled by a tactic i witnessed from one of my competitors. i just hope it didn't work for them. but, realistically, i realize that they were probably not the only one using sleazy, unsportsmanlike tactics. they were just the one i found.

if i lost because i didn't sink to that level, technically, i guess, i have to be ok with that.

i don't like to talk smack, but on a culinary level, i think my dish was the best of the seven. on a creativity level, ditto. i was a little rough in the video, but thanks to some awesome editing by pam, it was better than i might've imagined that i was capable of. and it was almost fun enough that i am planning my next video. more details on that as they come available. don't worry. no attack sites, no voting.

and, come one, i definitely had the best dish title. like it was close.

when the voting shifted to e-mail, i seemed to be in fifth, but was close to third, which is where i needed to get. i have no idea how the e-mail voting may have changed that, but i know that i ended up third in video views after a strong weekend push. my rating seemed to indicate that i was getting more bad ratings than good, which means one of two things: either america hates me, which i choose to not believe, or that the other contestants were instructing their voters to vote me down at a higher rate. which, i think, says something. (actually, it says two things. first that they thought my dish was the biggest competition, and second that they are small, small people afraid of a challenge. ha!)

thanks to everyone who voted. i will try to not put either of us through anything like that again anytime soon.