#evan phillips

You have to be really special for Justin Wrobleski to want to put his arm around you for a photo.

Either that, or he was too sauced to realize what was happening here:

As always, I am in awe of Colin's enterprising spirit! With a family of eight and prices rising every day, a little extra cash is never unwelcome. He's really been pushing himself to meet our needs in that regard. While he's still on the typical business management track during the days, every night for the past month he's been hard at work creating an advice course for Christian family men; specifically, Christian men who want to boost their earnings and career potential. He has so much valuable insight with regards to the corporate world and the real estate world, too, now that we manage three(!) rental units. (Yep, we ended up closing on that renovated old home just a little while ago.) It's pretty scary to owe this much money to the bank, but Colin's assured me it will turn out just fine.

After Colin finishes up with one last bit of fine tuning, he plans to sell this course across the internet and within our church network. I can't pretend to know what in the world he's talking about most of the time, but I'm just grateful that he's providing!

(L-R: Lauren (15) holding Evan (4), Lucy (12), Pastor George (42), Pearl (36) holding Ethan (0), Justin (10) and Ellen (7) Phillips)

Speaking of our church network, I feel so grateful to be part of this beautiful faith community. Our former pastor was a great guy, but unfortunately, his father-in-law got seriously sick, and for the sake of his wife he decided to move his family back to Willow Creek. The new man in charge, Pastor Phillips, is a real mover and shaker. He's been making some noise about getting a group together to promote Christian values and encourage likeminded families in their walks with Christ, but it hasn't gained a lot of traction yet. Whether that works out or not, we couldn't be more grateful to know his family.

New Season

It’s a game show where teams from various universities across the Earth-controlled territories compete in a quiz show with questions from various academic disciplines. Most people find it quite dry, so Phillips was very surprised when he learned Mal was a fan. Despite the fact that he dropped out of uni at 19, Mal’s been a firm fan since he first watched it with his mum as a kid. Now he says the main entertainment comes from watching Naomi answer the questions faster than the “posh twat sitting at the buzzer”. It gets a bit competitive when Captain Osman joins in - Naomi has a slight edge with the maths and science questions, but Osman always wins the music and pop culture rounds with no real competition (we can’t blame Naomi too much for this, seeing as the last movie she watched was an adaptation of Cinderella when she was 5 and a half). 

Phillips gets to show off a little - he was actually on University Challenge, as captain of his institution’s team. Naomi’s eyes go wide with wonder at his achievement. He tells her not to get too excited, his team got knocked out in the first round, but he did get to sit in the captain’s chair and be the posh twat pressing the buzzer. Immediately a million questions follow - what was it like? Was the host nice in person? Did he feel nervous? She’s not an easy girl to impress, so he’s pretty chuffed with himself. 

“Makes me wish I’d gone to uni,” she says, more casually than ruefully “Being on University Challenge sounds like fun.”

Suddenly, Phillips is reminded that Naomi has no formal education. No degrees, no doctorates, not even a high school diploma. While he was sharpening his mind in the safety of the finest institutions in the galaxy, Naomi was being hammered into the tip of the spear of humanity’s defenses, her natural intelligence and curiosity directed towards one purpose and one purpose only - war. 

As he watches her scribble words faster than he can think on a datapad to solve the anagram round, he imagines an alternative reality - one where she is the posh twat sitting at the buzzer on University Challenge, smugly poised to answer before the host can even finish asking the question. He can see it so clearly - competing with her for the highest scores in the class during undergrad, staying up all night working on their master’s thesis’s together and supporting each other during their doctoral defenses. He wonders what she would have studied, if she had been given the choice? Maybe astronomy, or even engineering with a side of astrophysics? It wouldn’t matter the field though, she would be dominating it. She’d be a damn near celebrity in whatever academic circle she chose. He’s sure of one thing at least - here in this reality, there’s a discipline missing decades of possible advancements, there’s an institution missing a University Challenge trophy, there’s a family missing a wall of diplomas, all courtesy of Catherine Halsey and her Spartan programme.

It’s been a stressful few weeks, what with the aforementioned child kidnapper-come-war criminal’s arrest, the bombshell of Naomi learning about her birth family and the mind-bending terror/excitement of his upcoming trip to Sanghelios, so much so that he doesn’t even realize he’s crying until his vision blurs and Naomi’s answers are just wobbling points of light swimming in his eyes. 

“It’s just not fair,” he says by means of explanation, his voice sounding small and pathetic in his own ears “You should have got to be on University Challenge.” 

She gives him a small smile, and suddenly he hates himself viciously, because in those uncharacteristically soft grey eyes he sees compassion for him, when the agony and outrage is rightfully her’s in the first place. 

“I bet I would have won,” is all she says.

Anyhow, I started to feel somewhat guilty. Of the Kilo Five team roster, Devereaux and Phillips are canonically confirmed to have started dating. Vaz and Naomi are obvious. So doesn't it seem like a little bit of overkill to add Serin and Mal to the mix? That makes the entire team romantically involved with one another.

But then another thought struck me. Kilo Five was hand-picked by Margaret Parangosky, CINCONI and veritable adopted mother of Osman, herself. They weren't chosen from ONIs existing black-ops teams, they weren't chosen from a pool of volunteers, they were plucked out of their various assignments and professions, told "Your new job is to destabilize the Sangheili culture," and offered no opportunities to refuse. (Because I mean c'mon... who is going to look Margaret Parangosky in the eye and tell her 'no'?)

So, if Parangosky chose this specific team, it must have been because she knew that they would work well together. She must have known that they would work so well together that feelings would inevitably get tossed into the mix. She must have known.

Which leads me to this conclusion: Everyone's favorite combination Boogeyman-Murder Grandma, Maggie Parangosky, deliberately chose this team because she was playing matchmaker for her favorite daughter, Serin.

And that is the official party line to which I shall be sticking.