Only doing this now because I'm up from watching my league's first All-Star victory of the century:

Day 14 - Favorite male character

That’s a burden.  It can’t be someone in an ensemble cast, or someone played by multiple actors, or, really, someone who has been killed off or whose story has been silenced by network nimrods.

With that as the algorithm, the answer becomes rather easy: Dexter Morgan.

MCH as David Fisher was my favorite male on Six Feet Under. (My long-impending bigamous marriage to Lauren Ambrose prevents him from claiming  the overall top spot for that show, but that gets us ahead to tomorrow, and that answer won’t be Claire, see Rule of Ensemble Casts above).  David had the skills, the sensitivity, and of course the gay.

You made me love you, Mr. Fisher. And then you came back, with blood slides and knives and an apartment that you would REALLY make me feel better about if you just gave up. We can rebuild him. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, straighter.

Four times now, Dex has taken us to the deepest corner of the abyss. Each season has brought us a worthy adversary, and each has ended with a mixture of pain and relief.  Yet every moment has kept us mindful of code- the capital-C one impressed on him by his non-DNA dad, and the less official one binding him to his non-genetic family, now in its third generation, that governs so much of what he does and, now, what has been done to him.

Weeks go by with Showtime sitting, unattended, on our living room set. The only importance of the 221 is 926- the day it all begins again. September 26th is also our wedding anniversary. Do not even try to attach a shred of significance to that.

Once again, do not adjust your monitor.

I saw that as the headline on Eleanor's post just now and thought she was mentioning this, but it looks like I get to pass out the good news.

Emily just got her AP scores. Which included a 4 (out of 5) in Calculus. Which places her out of having to take it at RIT and, along with some college credits she got for two years of high school French, basically starts her a full semester closer to graduation than a freshman typically is.

We are damn proud of her accomplishment. In third grade, she blew the doors off a state math assessment, and she was interviewed for a Gifted Math program at UB, but those assessments have become somewhat suspect over the intervening years as colleges are increasingly reporting that the gifted ones warn't so gifted, after all. (If you're really an academic purist, do not read this recent discussion of "holistic rubrics," which are accounting for a lot of grade inflation at the lower-grade levels).

Emily didn't get chosen for that program, and instead just worked hard, always a grade level ahead from eighth grade on, in her own middle and high school programs. Pre-calc proved to be enough of a challenge that she almost begged out, but we encouraged her to keep at it, and with a lot of hard work on her part, and seeking out extra help from her teachers, she carried the day, even if she's not supposed to carry the one anymore;)