and now, things get interesting

Last night after a long DR session, Elissa came out and pulled Aaryn aside asking if she'd be up for an alliance. The idea was they'd get Aaryn off the block and repl-nom Amanda. Aaryn, naturally, jumped all over it. However, she did drop a few hints to McCramanda. They also had a late night player pick, and Amanda ended up as a picked player. This of course led to lots of whispered conversations that anyone but Amanda had to win it.

Amanda got suspicious with all the whispering and got into a shouting match with GM about how shady she is, cozying up to Elissa this week after trashing her last week. Elissa was so wound up about things that she couldn't stop laughing. She had a literal spit-take, and basically laughed in Amanda's face all night.

They went off behind trivia for an early comp (the HGs weren't even out of bed when the trivia kicked in), probably to avoid a repeat of last year's Zingbot heatstroke. The HGs have been predicting Zingbot all week, and for once they were right. We haven't heard much about what ole ZB said, other than that he called Andy a floater. (And there might have been one about Judd's bear shirt being more popular than he is.)

Since it was the one thing most of them didn't want, it's not too surprising that when they came back the POV was dangling around Amanda's neck. Amanda's only had a few days of not being in total control of the game, but she wasn't enjoying it. And she's thrilled to be back in the power position.

Elissa's regretting telling so many people about the b-d Amanda plan, and trying to figure out who should go up in the repl-nom position. The leading contender at the moment is Andy. It's not entirely clear who would go if it's Aaryn vs. Andy, and McCramanda are working hard to get GM up instead. While I would have loved to see Amanda vs. Aaryn on Thursday, Andy vs. Aaryn accomplishes the same thing: everyone has to pick a side.