Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Finals are Over!

My first final was actually last week on Thursday for my ancient philosophy class. It focused almost entirely on Aristotle’s Ethics, which I found to be quite interesting. I still do have a paper to write for this class, but I had been putting it off until my finals were done, and now that they are done I really don’t have too much motivation to write it, but I’m sure once I sit down and get on a role the paper will just flow out of me faster than I can imagine…or at least I hope it will. Anyhow, this final I think I did very, very well on. I’m pretty sure I got only a couple wrong at most. I knew my stuff for this one.

Now onto my next final, astronomy. I had this one bright and early at 8 am Monday morning. I spent all day Sunday curled up in my bed or curled up on a couch with books in my hands studying for all of my exams. I didn’t think that that was enough so I also got up at about 4:30 am-ish Monday to study even more before my exams. I really don’t think it helped too much. I’m probably just going to take my astronomy class pass/fail so all I had to do was get like a 60 on the final to come out ok. If I somehow managed to whip out a “B” or better on the final, then I’ll take the grade. We’ll see how it worked out when grades come out.

Later on Monday I had my computational theory final. I had really been dreading this one because I knew it would be hard. As much as I enjoyed this class and the concepts that we covered, this class sure wasn’t easy at all. Coming into the final I was getting an 86 so I had to get about a 75 or better to keep a “B” going in the class. I don’t know if I quite pulled that off or not as the exam was pretty hard, but not so hard that I couldn’t handle most of it. I really hope I did well on this exam because it would be so nice to get a “B” in this class because I don’t think I’ll be getting a “B” or higher in my other computer science class for the semester, algorithms.

Well, since I brought up algorithms, let’s talk about that final a little bit. I had that exam from 5-7 pm yesterday, which was by no means fun. There were a couple of problems on the exam which I knew the final answer for, but I didn’t remember the steps of how to do it, and that is what he is really looking for, so I’m sure I didn’t do too well on those problems. I’m hoping that I do manage to do moderately well on this final because then I will not have to finish the last project I was working on. The project is frickin’ baffling and I don’t think I could finish it without a great amount of time and effort that I just don’t have right now. I might just have to settle for the first “C” I’ve ever gotten in a class. I really wouldn’t want that to happen, but I suppose I can’t go through college without getting at least one “C” for something. I just really don’t have the motivation to try and teach myself the stuff for this last project, program it, test it, and write up a lab report. Besides, I have that philosophy paper I have to think about and get done as well and I have a lot more motivation to finish that.

Well, now that my finals are over, guess what I get to go do today? SEE THE TWO TOWERS TONIGHT!!! Oh my goodness, I am so looking forward to this. I’m going with Kristin to get tickets early right when the theater opens so that we can get in and see it tonight. If we can’t get tickets, I think I might explode and kill someone because I’ve waited a year to see this movie, dammit, and I want to go see it tonight! After the movie, I think I might head out to the Red Carpet in St. Cloud to unwind with Chen, Vu, and Johnny. They’re having the dueling pianos and Chen has told me many times that they are great so I’m anxious to see them. I might not go, though, if Johnny or Vu doesn’t come with because I’m not really much of a bar person, but I’ll go to celebrate or chill with people I usually don’t get to see at the bars. Johnny never goes so that’s really the main reason I want to go (no offense Chen, but I see you every day since I live with you).

Saturday, December 14, 2002

I Love Being Lazy

It may be finals week (or at least the pre-final study days) right now, but even though it is I’m doing a lot more socializing and non-school related stuff than I should. I guess I don’t really function well until a deadline is looking me square in the eye and threatening me that I won’t be able to beat it. I have two finals on Monday, astronomy at 8 am and computational theory at 2 pm, and one final on Tuesday, algorithms at 5 pm. After that I’ll be done for the semester even though I’ll be up here until Friday because I have to work at the prep school. It’ll be nice, though as I’ll have the days to just veg out and relax knowing that I don’t have anything else hanging over my head. That is always such a relieving feeling to have when you know that the pressures of deadlines, tests, papers, presentations, and all that jazz have been lifted up off of your shoulders. It’s like I’m able to breath fully again. I’m so looking forward to it, but until Tuesday night I still have that extra weight on my shoulders.

Yesterday, which was our official study day here on campus, was the perfect relaxation day for me. When I went to bed last night I fell asleep content, relaxed, happy, and not worried about a thing. Needless to say, when I woke up this morning the realization of what I had left to do before finals slapped me in the face again, but that’s besides the point.

I started off by getting up around 9 yesterday (early for a day off, I know, but I have a hard time sleeping in). I went and registered for a job fair in the cities, dropped off my resume with the on-campus interviewing office, set up a meeting with a career counselor, changed my graduation date to December of 2003, filled out all the forms for my philosophy major, got it approved by the head of the department, talked with my ancient philosophy professor about my paper, grabbed a quick breakfast and went back to my room……….all before noon. Talk about productivity! After I got all of that done I knew that the rest of the day was going to be a nice, no-work day.

I went shopping in the afternoon with Kristin to finish off our Christmas shopping for the year. I’m done, and I think she’s pretty close, which is good since Christmas is fastly approaching. On a whim, while we were in B Daulton Books, I picked up “The Abolition of Man” by C.S. Lewis. It was recommended to me by T-Rob, my philosophy professor, and remembering that I decided I’d pick it up and try to read it over break (it’s a short read so I should finish it in a day or two). After shopping we went to see Star Trek: Nemesis (mom and dad, I hope you guys don’t read this). The reviews made it out to seem like it was going to be a so-so movie, but I really liked it. It was easily on par with First Contact.

The thing that amazed me so much about the movie is all of the philosophical topics it managed to touch upon. Topics such as genetics vs. environment in social development, inequality in intellect & the possibility of changing them, cloning, and some other smaller topics. I would love to have a philosophy discussion session with some of my professors over this movie and what it brings up. For being a stupid sci-fi movie, it was deeper than I expected, even if it was somewhat clichéd in how it brought up some of the topics. Even if you aren’t a Trekkie, go see this movie because it is just great.

After the movie I was treated to a wonderful home-cooked meal at Kristin’s house by her family. It tasted so good to have something to eat that I didn’t have to cook myself or that was microwaved. As much as I love to cook, it is still nice to have a meal you don’t have to cook occasionally. We chilled at her place for a bit and then she had to head off to work and I went home to finish off the relaxation process of the day.

I got home, went over to Jeff’s for a bit since he was on duty and I hadn’t visited him for a while. When I got there he surprised me with a wonderful Christmas gift—a monkey bobble head! It’s frickin’ sweet cause it’s one of those monkeys that wears a fez and had the cup for money. Jeff, you made my night even better than it possibly could be! Thanks, dude. When I finished visiting with Jeff, I went home, talked with the apartment-mates for a bit, did a little reading, and then peacefully drifted into sleep. Why can’t every day be just like that?

Wednesday, December 11, 2002

I'm a Champion!

Yesterday was a pretty low key day. I had class and work in the morning, just like any other day, and then went lifting like any other day. A good portion of the afternoon was spent philosophizing over Aristotle and his ethics as I have a test on it tomorrow that I have to take. I am pretty sure that I have most of it down, but I’m sure that I’ll look it over a good amount later tonight and tomorrow morning. I want to do really good on it as it is one of only three things we’re graded on in this class. I’m always a little bit wary when a class is graded on a small amount of things because if you have a bad day or somehow screw one thing up, your grade is severely hurt.

After a good amount of reading over Aristotle’s Nicomachaen Ethics and taking a quick nap I sat down for a little different type of philosophizing—watching the Simpsons. I am always amazed by this show and the sheer amount of small in-jokes, layers of humor, and social commentary. My mommy called in the middle of one of the episodes, though, so I wasn’t able to fully focus on the television, but I’ve seen every episode more than once so it was no big deal. Besides, it’s always nice to talk to the parents every now and again. My mother informed me while we were on the phone, and I had also been told this a couple of days ago by my dad, that my little brother, Ryan, had just gotten his own four wheeler.

Monday, December 09, 2002

Gambling My Money Away

What a weekend, what a time. Let’s just start by saying that there was not a whole lot of sleep had over this last weekend (this seems to be a recurring weekend theme, doesn’t it?). It all started back on Friday. Let’s reminisce back to that day, a long 62 hours ago.

The day started like any other with classes and work and then a nice long run in the afternoon. Friday night I took Kristin out to Cold Stone’s for ice cream since she’d never yet been there (and she lives in St. Cloud, nonetheless!). I love eating at Cold Stone’s and I could probably live off of their ice cream. I don’t really vary what I get when I go, it’s usually French vanilla ice cream with cookie dough and chocolate chips mixed in…mmmmm…so good! Anyhow, the ice cream was good and after we finished we went back to SJU for the Johnnie/Bennie showdown. It was supposed to be like a take off of Double Dare or other challenge games like that, but we had no clue what was going on during the entire thing since we were sitting way in the back and the microphone system wasn’t working. It looked like it might have been fun for the people in it, but we were just thoroughly confused most of the time. The rest of the night we just watched Amanda play video games and hung out. It was a really fun night.

Saturday I got up pretty late, about noon-ish. Burns was nice enough to cook breakfast so we were all treated to a nice pancake breakfast meal. John also brought over some banana bread which I’m sure everyone enjoyed, it’s just I’m not a banana bread fan so I didn’t really have any. In the afternoon we had a special weekend frisbee practice because Katie had a couple of girls up to visit who are possibly going here next year and who play ultimate. She wanted to show them our team and have them play a little with us to show what type of people/team we were. It was a pretty fun time even though a group of soccer people took half of our track space that we DID reserve. We’re just too nice of a team to kick them off like we should have. Oh well.

Saturday night Vu, Chen, John, and I all took off for Mystic Lake Casino down in the cities. I needed to get to the casino. I hadn’t been there since summer and I missed playing blackjack. We started off at the blackjack tables and Vu got up about $90 within a half hour. I was also up about $50, but I kept playing alongside Chen while Vu picked up and left for the time being. I managed to whittle my winnings away back down to breaking even. We wandered around for a while then and got all the free pop we possibly could before we decided we’d try our chances at Bingo for a while. Of course none of us won at Bingo either, but it was fun for the time being. After Bingo it was time to go hit the blackjack tables again. Vu managed to pull off winning another little load of money and ended up winning a total of $115 by the end of the night. Chen and John were both down about $30 or $40, I think, by the end of the night. I left only being down $3 so I basically broke even. We then ate with Chen’s parents at the little diner they had there and then headed back to Chen’s place for a little rest before we headed out early in the morning.

Sunday consisted of me trying to get a little sleep in the morning and then I got up to go shopping with Erica in the early afternoon. She had to pick up a sweater for her mom and I needed to finish some of my Christmas shopping. We also had lunch/supper at Fazzoli’s, my absolute favorite fast food restaurant. I love how you can get a plate of spaghetti and unlimited breadsticks for $1.99. Yummy. When I got back home I tried to study my philosophy, but it didn’t work so well as I would frequently nod off and then wake back up knowing I had to be studying. I finally got fed up with it and just slept for like an hour before the Vikings game. I was so mad that we couldn’t pull off the upset. After the game ended I headed off to disc practice and then to bed. Now the next couple of days I have to focus on getting an algorithms project done, studying for a philosophy exam, writing a philosophy paper, and studying for my other finals. It’s gonna be busy so forgive me if I don’t get a lot of new posts up. I know all you other college kids understand.

Friday, December 06, 2002

Uggghhhh... Work

Do do do do, do doot doot do doot do……don’t recognize the Catina theme from Star Wars, because that’s what that is and that’s what I wake up to on my alarm clock occasionally like I did this morning. Today was different, however, in that I really really didn’t want to get out of bed. As I turned my alarm off I rolled back over in bed and planned on falling back asleep and just forgoing attending work this morning. As I lay there, though, the guilt of knowing I’d be skipping work weighed in on me so I drug myself out of bed and came this morning. I was starting to regret it because I know how much I would have enjoyed that sleep, but then as I was checking some of my news sites I came across the NBA standings up until yesterday. This made my day because right now, our NBA champions, the LA Lakers, are 7-13. Guess what else? They’re also in LAST place in their division. Oh, how I love to see that. In case you don’t know, I can’t stand the Lakers, Shaq, Kobe, Fox, or anyone on that team. It’s about time they got put in their place.

Now I also saw something very disturbing to me as well this morning. As I was waiting for my computer to log me on (it takes 5-6 minutes to log me on, no joke) I was checking out the Scheel’s ad because it was one of the few things to look at that was sitting at my desk and I got to the section for hunting equipment. There was your usual things advertised—gun bags, ammo, scopes, and other accessories, but also in that section was a little baby dressed up in cammo gear. What the hell? Why would you have a baby in the same section of an ad alongside .50 caliber guns? If we see a baby next to a hand gun are we more likely to buy it? “Aww…what a cute baby. Oh, and he’s next to a shotgun. I really should pick one of them up for my baby sometime.” I don’t get it. All it accomplished for me is making me go “Oh my God, why did they do that.” I think if I ever did want to buy a gun I’d be even less inclined to buy it from them.

Anyhow, yesterday seemed to go by unnervingly quick. I had work and classes in the morning and after I got back from classes I read and listened to some new cds all afternoon. I don’t know where the time went. Usually I get tired when I have to read for more than like 45 minutes straight, but I managed to go all afternoon. After I realized that my afternoon had flew by I made myself some food, watched the Simpsons, and then headed down to the Palestra to do some lifting for an hour or so. I’m still in the process of losing my Thanksgiving pounds (along with other various pounds I had put on before break). After lifting, I played some disc for a while and then headed home and watched the T-Wolves game with Megan. She didn’t have any homework to do so she was hanging out at our place when I got home.

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

Not Enough Sleep

Ok, if this thought seems extra random or incoherent it’s because I only got a little over 2 hours of sleep last night. I stayed up WAY to late watching tv with Kristin and my roommates. For once it was I that was the last person to go to bed instead of the last. I am so looking forward to 1:00 when my classes are done today so that I can go home and take a nice, solid, quality nap.

Anyhow, yesterday I took care of almost all of my Christmas shopping for this year that I hadn't already done. At this time of year I have kind of a love/hate relationship with shopping. I have a blinding hatred for crowds, and this season is the worst time for them. I usually try to go on off days and times to avoid people during this season, so that is why I went yesterday on a Tuesday afternoon. There were still utterly too many people around for my tastes, especially too many stupid people. One thing I noticed while shopping at Walmart is that shopping is a very elitist activity. As I was walking through the aisles picking up what I needed I noticed something. Other college students, mainly those who were male, and most men in general, were polite and made room for me to get around while they looked and I returned the favor as well. Now if I were to encounter a woman in an aisle instead of moving or saying excuse me or anything they would just stand there and ignore me and I would have to just sit there for them to move on from where they were or go around. Also when I would come to an intersection in aisles, men would kindly let me through and I would do the same—I think it’s a male understanding of sorts—we know that this is a dreaded time for us all so we try to help each other through. Women, on the other hand, would just walk right past me, cutting me off and caring less that they were being impolite. Do they all just think that since I’m a male college student that they can just ignore me and inconvenience me? I guess they do, unfortunately.

Now on the flip side, we have my love of shopping during this season. Mainly I love it because I get to go out and try to find the perfect things for my family and the people I know. I always hate getting gifts, but I love giving them. I managed to pick out Christmas presents for both of my grandmas, my mom, my dad, and a few friends yesterday. This also leaves me short on the money now, but that’s fine with me because I know it was money well spent.

On an unrelated note, the Rogue Squad played last night in the first round of the playoffs. Could we win our first game of the season to keep our season alive? Could we really do it? Are you kidding? Of course we couldn’t, winning just isn’t in our vocabulary. We’re like Wimplow from Kung Pow in that we think losing is winning for some reason. It seems like we approach every game by using the “our groin to their fist” maneuver. Oh well, I didn’t really care too much. I had fun and that’s what it’s all about for me during intramural season. Come tournament time, I’ll be hard-core and focused completely on winning, though, so don’t worry about me getting all girly in my sporting attitude. The game was also a lot of fun as Karl, Jeff, Jared, and I put on face paint before the game for intimidation’s sake. Pictures of us can be found here. We looked sweet.

After the game I watched Lilo & Stitch at my place. Great movie. Highly recommended. Go buy it on dvd now and watch it…………so what’re you doing still reading, go watch it—you won’t regret it.

Monday, December 02, 2002

Thanksgiving Break = Me + 5 Unneeded Pounds of Laziness

Man, it’s been a bit since I’ve put up something new. Sorry for the long drought, but I was on Thanksgiving break and away from my computer. I tried to type out my thoughts and post them via telepathy and telekinesis, but neither one worked out quite so well for me. So would you like a run down of my break? Would you really? No? Well, you’re going to get it anyways so live with it. Let’s start with Tuesday.

Tuesday I headed down to the cities to visit Brittany, a friend from St. Thomas. I got to see her very spacious and exquisite apartment. I’m so jealous of the great amount of space they have there. Two levels, four bedrooms, a huge living room, fireplace and nice and clean, just like most girl apartments are. She also had a lovely and cute little dog that I so enjoyed playing with. I really love animals of any kind and I so much miss not being able to have pets here in our apartment besides my fish. As soon as I get my own place I’m going to have either a cat or dog……or maybe both. I just love the companionship of animals, and it felt nice to see my pets at home this weekend as well, but I digress. I hung out with Brit and her roomies for a while and then we went to go see The Ring. This was such a good movie and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good scary movie. It’s not perfect, but it is so much better than most of the crappy horror movies that have been put out over the last few years. After the movie, Nikki came over and we just chilled for the rest of the night.

Tuesday night I stayed at my uncle Dave and aunt Melissa’s place in Apple Valley. They have such a nice place and I can only hope to have such a nice place some day. Dave, along with my little cousins, Alex and Thomas, woke me up bright and early at 6:30 am to say hello. Alex and Thomas had to go off to day care and I just chilled at their place while I chatted with Dave and watched sportscenter. I was going to go to the Saliva concert at the Quest that night with my brother and some of his friends, but the show ended up being sold out so I just headed home to see the family a little early and go to our Wednesday night church service.

Thursday was Thanksgiving Day, of course, so what did my family do? Cook a turkey and all the fixings, silly. We had a wonderful day to just ourselves. We had a big meal, watched some football, went to Die Another Day (with Karl, our neighbor, Sheryl, a good friend, and her cousin in tow), then came home and relaxed and went to bed. It was a wonderfully relaxing day and I’m telling you, I needed it.

Black Friday. Was I stupid enough to go shopping on that dreaded of shopping days? Well, of course I was. Me and my two brothers were outside Best Buy at 5:15 am waiting to get in on some monster deals. We ended up making a good haul. My brother, Randy, got some speakers and a new hard drive for his computer. My other brother, Ryan, got Grand Theft Auto. I made a nice little haul and got myself one of those nifty portable DVD players, a new hard drive, some cdrs, and some DVD’s for my parents to give me for Christmas (I know that it’s kind of sad that I pick out some of my Christmas presents, but my parents think it is better than them buying me something that I don’t want or need). I’d wanted to get a portable DVD player for so long and I finally managed to get one. I was SO happy! The rest of the day consisted of me hanging out with my family and then watching Kung Pow! with my mom and dad that night (let’s just say my mom didn’t care for the movie so much).

Saturday was more hanging out with the family and also with Sheryl and Daniel for a little while in the afternoon. It was good to see them again and catch up. Later that night Randy left to go to a wedding reception, Ryan left to visit friends, and my mom left to go to a concert with my grandma, so it was only me and dad left at home. Since we didn’t have much to do, we broke into the DVD collection and broke out Pi, a movie we knew the rest of the family wouldn’t really watch, so we figured it was our chance to watch something a little different. I absolutely love this movie and it must have been the third or fourth time I’ve seen it. Anyone who is interested in math, conspiracies, insanity, reality/unreality, and thinking should definitely see this movie. I cannot recommend it enough to you. Anyhow, after that Ryan came home and I spent the rest of the night playing NFL Blitz and Demolition Racer with him on Dreamcast. Fun times.

Sunday was church and then the drive back to school. I got back, unpacked, did some running (I have to lose the poundage I amassed during break), and then went to visit Nicole and Amanda. More fun times. Then I got up this morning and had to go to work and classes……fun times had ended. Well, it’s not all that bad, I guess. I enjoy my classes that I had today. I guess I just didn’t like waking up early and going to work again. Oh well. I have to get back into the swing of things quick, though, as I only have two weeks until finals and I’ll be having three cumulative ones so I’ll need to start riding the study horse soon. Well, that was what went on while I was gone. I hope this extra long thought (for those of you that made it all the way to the end) was able to make up for the days of no updates.

Monday, November 25, 2002

Woken Up

Well, this post is coming to you as I try to stay functioning this morning because of a hefty lack of sleeping last night. For some reason it was one of those nights where you just can’t sleep and instead just toss and turn trying to get comfy and make yourself go to sleep while not succeeding at all. I finally managed to nod off around 3 am or so and then you can only guess what happens. Someone calls at 4 am just to be stupid (and yes, I will kick your ass later on—Hank). I couldn’t really get back to sleep so I am in the process of hardly functioning right now. Holding my eye-lids open right now is a workout in itself so maybe I won’t have to go lift later……naw, I better so I don’t get any fatter.

Friday night we had a few people come hang out, which turned into a bunch, which turned into a bunch of people really drunk (all together a great amount of alcohol was consumed at our place Friday). It was really fun, though, except as the night started to wind down and people started passing out……I mean, “going to bed”. I ended up staying up and taking care of one particular person and then sleeping on the floor next to her to make sure she made it through the night ok. Just call me mommy Rick.

Saturday morning, we all rolled out of bed nice and late. After everyone was up, Chen and I cooked a nice homemade breakfast for everyone that consisted of pancakes and hash browns. Once we started getting down to the end of the pancake batter we decided to use up all that was left to make one uber-pancake. It actually turned out pretty sweet, although it did take two of us with spatulas, working in tandem, to flip it over. We all decided that doing breakfast on the weekends is going to have to become a trend, but I’m going to suggest someone else do the cooking occasionally.

Saturday night we had a big party at our place for Erica’s birthday (pictures can be found here). There were about 70 people invited so I was expecting it to be a ginormous party with an overload of drunk freshmen showing up, but we actually only had about 30 or so people come over. It was pretty packed in our place, but at least there wasn’t an overabundance of drunk kids like I thought there would be. I hardly knew many of the people there, as you will be able to tell from the pictures. The place cleared out around 11, though, as most everyone went over to the pub for a dance and free food (I also went since everyone left our place). I’m not much of a pub type person so I was there only for a little bit and then Nicole came and rescued me. I felt so old there but I didn’t want to just leave by myself and hang out by my lonesome back home so luckily she came to find Amanda and found me in the process.

We were back at our place as the night was winding down and my apartment-mates had returned and some of the people from across the hall were hanging out at our place. We were all just chilling, eating some cake, when a wonderful cake fight suddenly broke out. I don’t really remember how it started, but I’m pretty sure Nicole started it……or maybe me, like I said I don’t really remember. After we had made a thorough mess, Jared, making an astute observation for being very drunk, pointed out that we made it the entire night without a mess being made of the cakes by all the drunk people and then the two sober people of the night show up and make one. Oh well. It was fun, however, to watch Jared with the vacuum cleaning up some of the mess. Well, I’m almost off work so I’ll be done for now. More to come later.

Friday, November 22, 2002

Un-Thanksgiving

Well, I got that astronomy test back that I was awaiting……I think I could have waited longer. I managed to somehow come out with a “BC” on it, which isn’t great, but again is slightly higher than the class average. With this test I’m getting about a “B” overall in that class, which isn’t too bad considering I usually go to only one out of every two classes and don’t do any homework for the class, mainly because it is busy-work and a waste of my time. I read the book (because I don’t learn anything in class because all we do is tool around the entire time on nonsensical nonsense) and get just as much from that as from anything else in this class. I’m not too worried about my grade as I am just going to take it pass/fail so all I have to do is get a “C” or better and then I receive a pass, which doesn’t affect my GPA but gives me credit for the class.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving here at SJU for most of the students. Since we aren’t here over break, SJU celebrates thanksgiving dinner the Thursday before it is actually thanksgiving. It’s always a nice community feeling to be able to go to the nice, formal dinner they have……except for when your group gets turned away. I had a group I wanted to take to dinner yesterday and they had to be signed up before-hand in order to go. This was no big deal as that’s the way it always was so I went to sign up our group on Wednesday. As I asked to have our group signed up, they told me that all members of my group needed to be present there. Why? “Because you just need to have them here.” I repeat, why? “That’s just the way it has to be done.” How stupid is that? I couldn’t just call everyone and make them come there because some of them were at work and some were at home off-campus and I wouldn’t want them to drive all the way in. It was so completely asinine and even if all the members of my group were free, it just seems so stupid to have to have them all come in order for me to sign up a group. So instead Chen and I cooked a meal at our apartment for our group.

Thanksgiving dinner at our place wasn’t quite the traditional type of dinner you’d have. There was no turkey, no mashed potatoes, no cranberries, and none of the traditional fixings. Instead, we cooked beef chow mein, shrimp stir-fry, rice, and veggies and broke out a bottle of Merlot. It was a decidedly asian style thanksgiving dinner (which is more than fine with me as I love asian food). Lorri, Kate, and Megan came over to share dinner with Chen and I and Lorri even brought dessert in a home-made cake. I can say I honestly enjoyed this dinner at our place much more than some stupid formalized dinner at the reef. It just felt so much more homely to make the food ourselves and have it at our place. There were supposed to be two other people over for dinner, but they couldn’t make it, unfortunately. Now I only wonder how my family’s actual thanksgiving dinner will compare to this one, because I’ll probably be doing the cooking for that one as well. I’ll let you know when the time comes!

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Rogue Squad, The Ongoing Story

Finally, a game without controversy. The Rogue Squad played last night and for once one of our games didn’t end with questions in everyone’s mind as to if we should have, could have, or would have won. Nope, last night we just plain old lost! This brings our record to a whopping 0-5, keeping us at the absolute bottom of the pack. I thought the game was going to be a horrible blow-out considering we were down 9-1 at half time, but we actually outscored them 8-3 in the second half to only lose by a score of 12-9. That second half of frisbee was the best our team has ever played so it was fun to be there for that. We have one game left in the regular season on Thursday, I believe. I wonder if we’ll go a solid 0-6 on the season? We can only wait and see.

Onto another sport—volleyball. My volleyball team has started playoffs on both our Sunday and Tuesday leagues. Even though we’ve advanced to one game away from the championship on Sunday night, we were eliminated yesterday from the Tuesday night playoffs, unfortunately, but that’s not the only thing we lost. We lost one of our all-star girls, Kate, to a badly sprained ankle. She went up for a spike and came down on one of the guys on the other team’s foot. He had came under the net with his feet and when Kate came down from her spike she turned it pretty bad on his foot. It wasn’t pretty looking and it swelled up extremely fast. Thank goodness nothing was broken or torn. After she went down we really didn’t have the motivation to play with her out and couldn’t pull off the third game.

Another random transition……to the Leonid meteor shower. I don’t know if any of you caught the show, but it was pretty good. This year’s shower was not quite as good as last year’s, however, as the moon was out this year whereas it was not out last year. It was still beautiful and enjoyable. Nikki came and woke Karl and I up at 4:00 am to go out and watch it with her and her roommate. The thing I didn’t anticipate was the strong wind and biting cold. It had been a nice day all that day, but since we’d gone to bed the temperature had dropped significantly and the wind picked up so much that it was so cold laying out on the ground. Because of this, we only stayed to watch the shower for about 45 minutes. I truly enjoyed the time that I had out there to watch it, though, as it was a very beautiful shower. I should get extra credit in my astronomy class for going out to watch it.

Speaking of classes, I am pretty sure that I’ve just gotten the lowest grade on an exam that I have ever gotten in my three and a half years of college. I received back the test I took in computational theory yesterday and found the grade marked on the back “75”, which is a solid C. I was not happy as I think I could have done better. The questions on the test were not quite the type that I had expected, but I should have been prepared for all options. I felt a little better knowing that the class average was a 71……but only a little bit better. I really don’t know why I didn’t do better. I understand the concepts that we go over, I constantly ask questions, and I make stupid, smart-ass remarks about what we’re going over (which obviously shows I get it, if I can formulate jocular statements about what we’re doing J ). For some reason, though, I just screwed up this test, and by doing so I brought my class grade down to an 86, a B. Grrr……and then today I also get my Astronomy test back since he didn’t have them corrected for Monday. That should be fun as well…or not. At least that class I can take pass/fail, mainly because it sucks and I don’t enjoy going to it at all because all we do is go over crap.

Monday, November 18, 2002

Who's Number One?

Yippee!!! The Vikings beat Green Bay!!! I get extremely worked up for only three games during the football season—the Super Bowl and both of the Vikings/Packers games, so obviously this game meant a good deal to me. Mostly it is important just for bragging rights against all of the lame-o Packer fans here on campus. It’s so fun pointing out how the #1 team in the NFL fell to one of the crappiest. Hehehehe, ok I’m done with that.

Ok, so after the Vikes won, I didn’t think the day could get any better, but oh how it did. Volleyball playoffs started last night and our team came in ranked 9th out of 22. Not bad, but I think we should have been ranked higher. We started off by playing the 12th place team…they didn’t show up so we won by forfeit. Checking the bracket, it looked like we were going to play the #1 seed next, and that #1 seed belonged to my good pal, Jeff, and his team. This would be quite the match-up.

Jeff was pretty confident that his team would win and I also thought that it would be a good game. It didn’t turn out that way, however, as we dominated the first two games for the win, 15-2 and 15-6! Our team played so well together. We were firing on all cylinders—no missed serves (well, a couple), good blocking, precise hits, and lots of good teacupping action. For those of you who don’t play volleyball, when the other team is hitting against you, you have one or two people go up for the block and then you have two or three people form in close around the blocker to pick up tip shots and deflections. We’ve had a hard time doing that all year and so many teams took us apart with good tipping, but we’ve managed to finally get a good teacup going.

Our team was so stoked to win, and to win so well last night and I was so glad to see us all do so well. Hopefully we can continue our good play of late and possibly pull off a championship run. If we win our next game, we move on to the championship game because we have a one round bye since we knocked off the #1 seed. I’m guessing if we make it to the championship it will be a rematch against Dirkis’ team. They are a fine volleyball team, and they are one of the few teams to beat us. Last time we played them we lost in the third game 17-15 so we know it’ll be close if it ends up us playing each other.

Oh, I get my astronomy test back today. That should be fun. I’m pretty sure it destroyed me. I’ll find out soon. Let’s hope for the best.

Saturday, November 16, 2002

Well, We Couldn't Do It

0-4……that should say enough. Yes, the Rogue Squad lost their fourth straight making us the only winless team. Was this game marred by controversy just as the last three were? Yes, yes it was. I am starting to think that our team must have some horribly negative karma or something because it is as if nothing swings our way. Here’s how this one went.

The game was tied 9-9 and the time ran out. As you know from the last thought, the rules say we should play to 3 above the tied score and win by two. Both captains agreed to that, and the other team scored the final point so it was 10-9. We were prepared to play more, but a tennis team made up of elderly men claimed it was their time to use the Palestra, which it wasn’t because we had it until 9:30 pm and it was only 9:10 pm. The treated us horribly and one man, the head of their league, even went and stood on the field while we were playing our game and wouldn’t get off of it so we had to play around him. Because of the horrible attitude of the tennis players we were unable to finish our game and we had to end it with the other team winning. We have expressed our great annoyance, disappointment, and anger to the intramural and sporting office once again and I hope that they will show us the respect we deserve.

Well, we can’t do anything about it now so let’s move on to a lighter note. Yesterday Karl and I went to see the new Steven Seagal and Ja Rule action flick, “Half Past Dead”. If you’ve seen the previews for it, I’m sure most people have thought it looks absolutely horrible. We also thought it would be extremely bad, but we wanted to see it anyways because we like bad movies for some odd reason. We went in thinking it would just be unbelievably bad, but it turned out that the movie was only sort of bad. It was actually watchable……if you could manage to turn your brain off for an hour and a half.

Now for an update on the search for Josh. I got this in my email yesterday and it explains somewhat what has been going on.
1. THE INVESTIGATION
What has been done so far:
A ground search covering 20 square miles has been completed by law enforcement, fire departments, military personnel, volunteers and mounted patrol. Helicopters covered the same area and extended their search out further. All buildings on the St. John’s campus have been searched, to include roof tops and tunnels (some, 3 and 4 times). Most buildings in the 20 square mile search area have been checked. At the beginning of the search, all vehicles on campus at that time were checked. Bloodhounds and Search/Rescue dogs were used. Divers have searched and dragged Stumpf lake. All major media had been contacted and the missing person information has been broadcasted. Flyers have been posted in the area. A broadcast message was sent statewide via the Crime Alert Network. Tri-County Crime Stoppers has posted the information with a reward. Stearns County Detectives have been conducting interviews and following up on leads. FBI agents have also been involved in the case. Today, Stearns County Sheriff's Department sent Search/Rescue Dogs and divers back into the Stumpf Lake/stone bridge area. We have not been able to find Joshua so far.

Future Plans:
Detectives will continue to follow up on leads. The search will continue by law enforcement personnel only. When and if additional help is needed, the St. John’s community will be contacted for help (volunteers). We ask that anyone that may have saw a suspicious vehicle or person on campus Saturday night, or saw Joshua walking home after midnight, contact either St. John’s Life Safety Services at #2144 or the Stearns County Sheriff’s Department at 251-4240. We would like to thank all of the volunteers that assisted in the search and the individuals that have provided support over the past few days.

2. SUNDAY MASS
Beginning this Sunday, and continuing each Sunday until Joshua Guimond is located, a petition will be included in the Prayers of the Faithful during Mass in the Abbey Church. Community members of all faith traditions are encouraged to pray, meditate, and/or contemplate regularly to hasten Josh's safe return and for family and friends to persevere during this difficult time.

3. BEING SAFE
I would like to re-post a brief section of yesterday's update as a reminder to community members to re-commit to mindful living:
Students, as always, should do those things that are important to be safe: don't do anything that would compromise your abilities or judgment, don't travel alone, call ahead to friends who are expecting you and call friends and family to confirm safe arrival. Pay attention and report unusual behaviors or suspicious people.
It is essential that we care for others during this time and take good care of ourselves, too. Ask friends and family how they're doing. Utilize the counseling resources available.

4. ONGOING SUPPORT OF THE GUIMOND/CHENEY FAMILY
The family has set up a "Find Josh" fund at a bank in Maple Lake. As we receive details about how to send financial support, that information will be distributed via email and on the website: http://www.csbsju.edu/news/crisis/findjosh_guimond.htm.
In addition, the Jacob Wetterling Foundation in St. Joseph has graciously produced color flyers with Josh's picture on them that are available for distribution. Anyone who wants to distribute flyers can pick them up at the foundation office, which is at 33 West Minnesota Street in St. Joseph.

I wish each of you a restful weekend, and my hope is to share good news soon. These updates will be periodic rather than daily as new information comes to light.

Thursday, November 14, 2002

We Need to Win

I wonder if the fourth time is a charm? The third sure didn’t seem to be. Yeah, that’s right, the Rogue Squad has another frisbee game tonight. We are playing another team that is 0-3 and is, in my opinion, very beatable. I really hope we pull this one off because if we don’t that is really going to look bad for us being the only winless team and our egos will sure be hurt (some members on our team have quite big ones that could get bruised). I’ll let you know tomorrow how it turns out for us.

Today was kind of a crappy day for me. I had an astronomy test this morning and I don’t think I did very well on it. I don’t understand why our professor asks such asinine and pointless questions on the test. Instead of testing us on applying concepts that we learned, he would rather quiz us on stupid crap that is either irreverent, outdated, outmoded, or just inapplicable to anything outside of the select astronomy circle. I don’t care so much since I’m going to take the class pass/fail, which means I only have to get a “C” or better to come out with a pass which should be no problem. I just don’t want to trouble myself learning a bunch of crap that doesn’t interest me and doesn’t apply to anything else I will be doing in my life.

Today also was not too great because most of the day my throat has been raw and sore. I don’t think I’m sick or anything, I just think that it’s gotten raw from yelling at my intramural games and running in really dry air. I took yesterday off from running but I’m going to put in some more miles tonight after our frisbee game. Maybe more running on a track with really dry air will solve my problem……or maybe not, but I feel extra lazy and fat if I don’t run or exercise during the day sometime.

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Bad Luck Charm

Wow, the Rogue Squad loses its third game in a row. How could this happen? The first two games were questionable because of bungling of the rules. They couldn’t screw up three consecutive games for the Rogue Squad, could they? Hehehe, oh how I was so wrong. This game was another one lost because of screwed up time keeping. So here’s the set up: first of all, the time keeper for the game is a dude on the opposing team. That’s fine since we didn’t really care, although we should have. Now we’re playing the game and it is a running clock game. Towards the end of the game when it is tied, a person on their team needed to tie his shoe so we waited around for about a minute for him to tie it up. For a situation such as this, he should have taken an equipment time-out. Whatever, we didn’t push it.

Now the game is tied at 9-9 and there is less than a minute left. First, a rules clarification for anyone that doesn’t know Ultimate Frisbee rules. If in a running clock game the time expires while a game is in a tie, then the game should be played, untimed, until another team wins by two with a hard cap at 3 points above the current score. The time did run out while we were playing so we technically should have played to see who wins by 2 with a hard cap at 12. We didn’t do this, however, and 10 seconds after time expired they scored. They called this the winning score and walked off the field to shake hands. Bull-crap. They wasted over a minute on equipment and then scored 10 seconds after time expired. We should have played one more point to try and tie the game up if they would have kept time correctly.

Everyone gives our team crap for being the “dick” team of the league, but we have never contested any of the blatant rule violations that have caused our losing, we have the most non-frisbee players. One of the big gripes from many of the other teams was that we had the most frisbee players, but how it is so completely opposite of what they claim. We always have the cards stacked against us, yet we still go out and play our game without fighting the other teams. Maybe we should start and actually live up to the reputation our team has garnered. I don’t know.

Now on a completely different note, the situation of Josh missing still hasn’t been resolved. I received this in my email today and it should help explain a lot of what’s going on for those not in the know:
I am writing to provide an update to the CSB/SJU community about the ongoing efforts to locate SJU student Joshua Guimond. First, let me thank you for your continued prayers and especially those of you who have been assisting in the search. Today, over 200 volunteers (including 100 Minnesota National Guard troops) physically searched over 20 square miles of land, even more by helicopter, including the water and waterways on and around our campus and I-94.

Regrettably, we have yet to find any information about Josh's whereabouts or circumstances of his disappearance. As we move forward, there will be patrols strategically searching the area. The Stearns County Sheriff's Department will continue to coordinate the investigation, including identification of people who may have seen Josh before and after Saturday evening. At this point, no additional volunteers will be required unless and until specific information leads to that need-in which case we will alert you via email.

As you reflect on these events, if you should happen to remember seeing or hearing anything that seems unusual to you in light of Josh's disappearance, please contact Life Safety Services at #2144. As we seek to understand what occurred and to bring Josh back to SJU and his family, please continue to pray and to take care of yourselves. There is a forum being planned to update community members and to allow a place for prayer and discussion. Information about the forum and any additional announcements will be distributed via email.
Thank you,
Jason Laker
Dean of Campus Life
Saint John's University
I really don’t know what to think about the whole situation. The even weirder thing is the other 3 kids who have gone missing. One from Bemidji, one from Minneapolis, and one from Eau Claire, I believe. They all are from the ages of like 20-24 and were drinking before disappearing. I find it a little bit sketchy that it is all happening at the same time. Are they related? I don’t think I am qualified to even give an answer. All I know is that four kids are missing and one of them is from SJU. I just hope it all gets resolved soon. I’m getting a little weirded out by having helicopters flying overhead and having search teams scouring our woods. It makes it hard to completely focus on the work at hand, and that especially sucks since I had a big computational theory test today and I have an astronomy test tomorrow. Let’s hope they go well. Anyhow, time to study.

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

Find Josh

I’m writing today’s thought as most of the population of the campus and the local police force scour the woods surrounding the campus of SJU. Police cars are all over, news teams are reporting, helicopters are flying over head, people are wandering the woods, and groups of 4-wheelers are checking out the trails in the woods. Why? It seems that a SJU junior went missing Saturday night. He was reported missing Sunday evening and a large, organized search is now underway to find Josh, the missing student. This is an interesting and scary event in this area for many reasons.

As most Minnesotans know, about a decade (or more, I’m not sure) ago Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped right here in St. Joseph. There were many accusations thrown around back then and some of them are starting to resurface now. There is a difference with this disappearance, however, in that Josh simply didn’t come home after Saturday night. He was last seen leaving a party from Metten Court on the lower campus of SJU. His whereabouts from there are unknown and the circumstances that came to lead to his missing are also unknown. They have divers in the lake that is next to Metten Court to see if he possibly fell into the lake and drown. It’s so weird seeing all of the police all over our campus. It makes it seem like we’re in some type of murder mystery movie or something.

I first heard about this Sunday night via an email that the entire campus received and by this Monday morning our campus was covered with missing posters and student lead searches were going on before the law actually came to get involved. Many people are even not going to classes in order to help find him. It’s still weird hearing helicopters fly by every now and then.

There have also been rumors surfacing about the monastery also, but I think most of these are very unfounded and are only being brought up because of the rash of abuse cases reported in the Catholic Church over the last six months or so and the putting on probation of 14 monks. I think any monk would have quite a hard time sequestering someone and kidnapping and/or killing someone here on campus without someone in the order knowing or without being very suspicious.

I was talking about the whole situation with Hank yesterday and he thought it would be interesting if it turned out that Josh just picked up and left to visit a friend on a whim or something like that. I don’t really know why he was reported missing so soon because if my roommate didn’t come home from a party one night, then I would be reporting missing person alerts pretty often. I don’t know all the details of the situation, however, so I shouldn’t really be making any judgments. Let’s just hope that he’s found soon and that this is all cleared up. The last thing I really want right now is a controversial situation like this to be propagated here on our campus.

Sunday, November 10, 2002

Sevendust

Tonight was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in a while, but it also made me realize so many things about the people in our society. Let me explain for you. Last night, Jeff, Jared, Berg, and I went to see Cinder, Closure, 30 Seconds to Mars, and Sevendust at the Del Win here in St. Joe. When me and Jeff got there, there must have already been about 300-400 people in line to get in. Thankfully, Jared and Berg had gotten there much earlier so we moseyed on up into the front of the line with them. We got in and made our way right up to almost the front for the first band.

Starting the night off was Closure, a new emo rock band. This is their first tour ever and I think they sounded very good. Pretty standard emo rock fare, but I like that. They said they’d have a disc coming out next year sometime through Interscope records and I’ll be looking forward to it. With the was that radio rock has taken off in the last year or two I could see these guys making it pretty big on the radio, but we’ll have to see come next year.

The second band on the bill was Cinder. These guys had a pretty good nu-metal sound, but their stage presence was so annoying. The bassist had a tremendously annoying head twitch that made me wish his head would snap off every time he twitched his head. The vocalist walked around like he was God’s gift to rock music, flaunting his crotch to the crowd and gyrating it at every opportunity. He was really annoying. I didn’t mind the guitarist mainly because he just stood there and played and looked like he was having a good time.

The next band up was 30 Seconds to Mars, a band I was heavily looking forward to seeing. I knew that all of the girls at the show were there for no other reason than to see Jared Leto, but that was fine because there weren’t too many of them trying to get up in front like at most concerts where band members are teeny-bopper icons. The first half of their set they played almost in the dark, which was cool for all of a minute and then it was just annoying. The second half they played in the light and tried to really get the crowd into it (and they did for the most part), but I thought their sound was very weak live. I absolutely love their cd, and it is one of my top 5 discs of the year, but their live sound was definitely lacking. I still enjoyed watching them, and it was cool that Jared came up and sang right in front of me in the crowd. All the girls were trying to touch him, but I was just enjoying the fact that he was inches from me.

After 30 Seconds to Mars finished we were treated to over an hour of downtime, for reasons unknown to the crowd, until about five minutes before Sevendust came on. A roadie came out to tell us that the show would go on but there was a slight delay because of a death in the family of one of the band members. This was quite a shock to me and I kind of actually didn’t want the band to come out because death is something very hard to deal with. They did come out, however, a short time later. They broke into “Black” but Lajon was definitely not into it and he was not even singing all of the verses. You could also see the tears on his face. The band paused after “Black” and Lajon told the crowd that his younger brother was killed earlier that night. He was physically straining to hold back his emotions and I felt so bad for him. He went on to say that his father told him on the phone to do the show anyways, even though he didn’t want to, because of his brother’s passing.

The rest of their set consisted of many of their less heavy songs with a few heavy ones thrown in, but lacking their heaviness mainly because you could feel the pain Lajon was in. Many times during the show he broke down appealing to the crowd, telling them that he felt lost and didn’t know how to feel. Anyone who claims that heavy metal music contains no emotion only needed to see this show and to see the tears on Lajon’s face, and the tears of many of the crowd members (myself included). They put on very heartfelt renditions of “Angel’s Son” and “Xmas Day”. Lajon could not even bear to sing most of “Xmas Day” except for the portion of the chorus where he sang “You mean everything…” As the tears streamed down his face and he sang from the deepest part of his heart, expressing so much loss, I couldn’t help but be moved, myself, to tears.

This was by far the most emotional concert that I have ever been to and I can only wish Lajon God’s graces in this time of loss and remember this concert and what it meant to him to be able to sing. “Music heals” I heard someone in the crowd say and I know that this is true. Music has always helped me heal and I know that no matter what type of music someone listens to, we all share a common bond in the mutual appreciation for the universal language of music.

Thursday, November 07, 2002

Finally Back

Sorry all for the time that my site has been down. If you’ve tried to get to it over the past couple days you will have been greeted by the wonderful 404 error. I should have put up a note a couple of days ago telling you all that it would be down. The reason for it is that the company that hosts my site decided they wanted to move all of their servers to Texas for some reason or another and while the servers were in transit my website was obviously inaccessible. Thank goodness it is back up as fast as it was, though. I didn’t know how long it would take them to transport all the servers and reset everything up at their new location. If it’s any consolation, I really haven’t had too much to write about the last couple of days anyways. In case you are still mad for some reason, I have added a new section to this page, that being the Poetry/Lyric of the Moment Section. I'll post lyrics and poems that have some special meaning for me or that I have a great appreciation for. I hope all of you will enjoy this new addition. You can find it right below the Random Thought here.

Our intramural frisbee league has started and we’ve played two games already, both filled with controversy. Our first game was against the team we dislike the most, mainly because their players have a problem with our style of game, which happens to be having fun and screwing around with the other teams (and some of our guys like to push the limits of the rules a little too). We lost it quite controversially in that the rules for how a game should end were not clearly defined so we had conflicting arguments as to how the game should be resolved. By one set of rules, which I believe we should have followed because it was the logical way of doing it, would have left our game end in a tie. The other team, on the other hand, didn’t like that option and decided to be dicks about it and come up with their own way of settling the game. We would have to have a winner and we would play to a set number of points that they decided. We lost in the end because of this. A tie was stolen from under the noses of the Rogue Squad. We were not happy.

Tonight was our other game. This game we lost because of mismanaged scheduling by the IM office. Our games are to be 40 minutes long and ours tonight was only 28 minutes long. That is a whole 12 minutes short. As the game ended, we lost by 2 (or 3, I’m not sure how it ended because our team was mostly concerned with getting more time and not on our play, unfortunately). 12 minutes is a lot of time to score many more points so we were quite pissed that we were shafted time. Many members of our team has some quite colorful remarks for the people who were taking over the courts at 9:30 (and I might add that they made us leave at 9:15 so they could set up even though they didn’t have any time signed up until 9:30). So the Rogue Squad was screwed out of another possible win. We might have won both of these games under different circumstances, but we might have also lost. I’m just saying that our team was not given a fair chance to compete, which sucks.

Our team has had a hard time winning these games and pulling ahead mainly because we have not come together as a team. All of our members are playing as individuals looking for the big play or when they get burned or broken they are looking for the person on the team they can blame. I really don’t like it, but I’m pretty much accepting that this is the way the team will be this season, which is too bad because I thought we would be more of a group of comrades instead of the conglomeration of individuals that we are at the moment. We still have time to pull it together and gel into a cohesive team, but I really don’t see it happening. Our team has too much ego for its own good. We’ll just have to see if, in the end, our extreme ego can overcome the team play of the other teams. I think it’s possible, but I think it will be hard for us to do. We’ll see.

On a completely unrelated note, I have recently come upon four bands that I absolutely love. Two of them I purchased on a whim because they were on Tooth and Nail records, which is a label who releases many albums by bands that I enjoy, and the other two I picked up because I had listened to a song or two by them on samplers. The two T&N bands that I enjoy are Sal Paradise and Driver Eight. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure both of these bands have broken up, but it doesn’t change the fact that these are two of the most pure emo bands I have listened to in a long time. Both bands impressed me most by their lyrical content and honesty. Both sound somewhat similar to a slightly heavier and slower version of Jimmy Eat World. The other two bands I found are Places to Park and Stutterfly. Places to Park are a pretty basic punk band on the outside but they have some emo moments and, for some reason, their cd is just really catchy. Stutterfly remind me a lot of a harder version of Finch. They contain a lot of punk sound with very melodic vocals punctuated by some very heavy screamed out emotive sections. If you enjoy Finch and would like to see what a heavier version of them might sound like then check out Stutterfly. It’s not very often that I find this many bands that impress me in such a short period of time……actually, it’s not very often that I find a band that really impresses me period. Anyhow, that’s all I got for you.

Sunday, November 03, 2002

Halloween, Tommies, and DDR

Wow, it’s been a fun and busy last few days. Halloween was so much fun. The pictures from Halloween night are up here. Ryan and I dressed up as women, and some pretty darn good looking ones too, I might add. Leslie did our make-up for us while Anne did Ryan’s hair and after about a half hour of their magical work Ryan and Rick were turned into Rachel and Regina. While we were all dressed up we went around trick or treating in Anne & Leslie’s building eating most of the candy as we got it (my stomach wasn’t the happiest with me later that night, but the candy was good at the time). We also went and visited a lot of other people we knew around campus and most of them were quite shocked when they saw us, but I can’t really blame them. It was so weird because I’d be walking around thinking I look like I usually do until I would see myself in a mirror and then all of the sudden it was like, “AHH, I do look funny”.

After trick or treating Ryan headed back home because he was pretty tired and I headed to the ballroom dance club’s little Halloween gathering. It was so much fun even though I had a hard time trying to dance in my girl shoes. I think a lot of the girls were slightly distressed by dancing with another pseudo-girl for the night. I think the highlight of the night at ballroom dance, as least in comedic terms, was when Van Roy had everyone clear out to watch him do some moves, but as he was showing off his moves, he came over, grabbed me, and proceeded to swing with me for the crowd. I stumbled everywhere because I had such a hard time with the shoes I was wearing. One of the guys got it on video so I’m going to see if I can get it in digital form and post it for everyone to see.

After ballroom I headed back home and just visited some people I knew around SJU because they wanted to see me dressed up. It was quite the fun and crazy night. The only bad part was that I couldn’t get the freakin’ make-up off of my face for the life of me. I was convinced after a good 15 minutes of scrubbing that the only way I was going to get it off was to submerge my face in turpentine, but luckily I thought better of it and just kept scrubbing.

Friday night we had a bunch of people over for some DDR action, just like every other Friday it seems. I love it because I usually don’t ever have to leave my place to go see people because someone usually ends up here. I’m pretty sure that the DDR pads are the best investment Karl has made for this apartment.

Saturday was the Johnnie-Tommie game. For those not in the know, SJU has a huge rivalry with St. Thomas, which has lasted for about 100+ years. Everyone always shows up for this game from both schools, and sometimes the crowd is equal to, or bigger than our homecoming crowd. The stadium was absolutely packed and, of course, the Johnnies won 48-28. After the game Karl, myself, and Ryan just chilled at our place. Ryan then left and it was just me and Karl hanging out by ourselves doing nothing for the longest time. We thought that we might end up just spending the night by ourselves since everyone was out at parties. Just when we thought it was going to be a boring, people-less night, people just started streaming in. Why? Because of the DDR pads! We had people over until about 3:30 hanging out, playing cards, and doing the DDR thing. It was so much fun! I love having people over at our place and getting to know some of the new people that come over. Anyhow, it’s been a busy and fun filled last few days. I’m hoping all of you out there had just as fun of a time for Halloween!

Thursday, October 31, 2002

Dating According to Network Television

Happy Halloween everyone! Today is the day we all get to get dressed up like scary monsters or the opposite sex (which sometimes is a scary monster) and go around acting stupid and getting candy for it. From the previous sentence you should easily be able to see why I love this holiday. I, and a few other friends, are dressing up as women and trick or treating around St. Ben’s later today. I plan on having many pictures to post in the next couple of days for you all to see. I’m sure you’re looking forward to them already!

Now I know I should be writing about jack-o-lanterns and goblins today, but something I watched on tv last night distressed me a little more and I need to talk about it to anyone who might read this. Besides, you’ll get all kinds of Halloween stories within the next few days. Anyhow, so I was sitting down last night with Amanda and Burns watching some television before I was going to go to Magis (a college, student-based worship service). What was on the television? A show called “The Bachelor”. Another reality show (which I loathe), but it was also a pseudo-dating show which I might like. I decided to give it a shot. After the hour of the show was over, I left the room more angry and frustrated with a tv show then ever before. Why? Was the show just terrible? No. Was the show boring? No. Was there too big of a cliff-hanger that I didn’t want to wait a week to have resolved? No. Then why did I hate it? Because of the way it turned dating, and the now shady morals of dating, into a game show, or shopping simulator as I saw it.

The show is set up so that one man gets to eventually choose one girl out of 25 who he wants to date (and will probably marry, as this show spans months as opposed to normal dating shows). By the episode I watched, he had it narrowed down to four girls, and he had been “dating” these girls for almost six weeks now. That’s a long time to date someone. I figure if you date anyone over a month or a couple of weeks it means that there is some definite potential in your relationship—if not, you would have drifted or broken apart much quicker.

Now what really gets me is that he is basically dating these four women at the same time. If some guy was to do this in everyday life, all four women would be so pissed! The whole point of a relationship is for it to be exclusive. This show makes it look like it is completely ok to date four different people and then narrow it down to the three you like best, the two, then the one you like the best of all and that will be your girlfriend / fiancé / whatever. I don’t understand why these women would go along with this, I sure wouldn’t. If three other guys were dating the same girl I was, I would drop her fast as possible. In fact, I would think that most people expect the person they are dating to be true to them—no kissing other people, no random making out, none of that stuff—but in this show it is completely fine, and even advocated because it shows how much he cares for each of them.

Another thing that this television program shows us is that for many, money means more than love. The reason these girls and guy are doing this show is because there is a big prize attached to being the last girl with the guy (I don’t recall what it is, but Amanda told me there was something attached). These girls didn’t come on the show to find true love, they came to win money by pretending to love some guy. It distresses me so much that most of society puts money above love. I’ll admit I felt that way at one time, when I first came into college. I went into computer science and studied hard and worked my butt off because I wanted to make lots and lots of money. As time progressed, however, my priorities changed and right now people, relationships, and love mean so much more to mean than any amount of money. How can something so wonderful and intangible but put below material crap? Maybe I’m missing something here, but I really don’t think so.

I say strongly that love is not a game show, its not about shopping around, it’s not about getting money—it’s about finding that one person (not narrowing down a list), being true to them (not having them be one of many partners), and giving them your whole heart (not 1/4th of it). This show sickened me and I can’t imagine why people would want to watch this show, much less experience it. Whatever, I’m done.

Monday, October 28, 2002

Jackass!

Three words: Jackass: The Movie. This is a movie in the least sense of the term, but I would easily pay another $7.00 to see it again. Not so much a movie as a really long episode of the now canceled tv show, we have here the funniest 82 minutes I can remember in recent memory. Friday night Jeff, Ryan, Burns, Christin, and I all attended the opening showing of Jackass in Rochester. Ryan and I had been waiting in anticipation for this movie for a very long time. While watching the movie the only thing I repeatedly said to myself was “oh my freaking goodness, they cannot be doing this!” The sheer insanity of most of the things they did is what made most of the movie funny. Just to know that they all had the balls (or lack of brains) to do most of what they did not only impressed me but made me laugh my ass off. Anyone looking to see a bunch of stupid guys doing stupid things for an hour and a half should see this movie as soon as possible. ‘Nuff said on that topic.

The rest of the weekend was spent back at home. Saturday I went shopping with my mom after taking some family pictures for our family’s Christmas cards. Some of the pictures are up here if you want to see them. Oh yeah, and you can also see some pictures of tangoing from Thursday here. The main reason I had to go shopping Saturday was to help Ryan find some new jeans for winter and to get some cdr’s so I could show my mom how to make cds. After we had gotten all the stuff we needed at the mall and Shopko we quit jetted over to Hy-Vee to get some groceries quick. While we were there we ran into my grandma, who happened to be celebrating her 70th birthday that day. The groceries we were picking up at Hy-Vee were her cake and decorations so we had to run a stealth mission so she didn’t see us walking out with her cake. Luckily for us, the mission was a success. The rest of Saturday night I spent at home eating pizza with the family, watching parts of Panic Room (I’d already seen it—good film, but not one of Fincher’s best), and hanging out with Sheryl. She probably thought I was boring as ever since I was just content to sit around the house the entire night and do nothing. She got me up to date on all of the Hayfield gossip and I got her up to date on all of the SJU gossip. It was a really fun night and I was glad to see her again since I don’t get to see her very often.

Sunday I got up, packed my stuff up, put it in my car, and then got ready for church. It’s always nice coming back and going to my church because it is one of those small country churches where everyone knows everyone (which is sometimes good and sometimes bad—depending upon the people). It’s also nice to see my pastor since I don’t get many chances to talk to him anymore. It was the celebration of the Reformation and I enjoyed the sermon, hymns, and readings that went with it. Smaller known religious celebrations, such as Reformation, I always enjoy. After church I talked with my dad for a while before he had to head back out into the field for harvest, and then I headed out to get back up here to SJU. When I got back I headed over the CSB to work out and play my volleyball game. We won our volleyball game in two sets, 15-1 and 15-2. It wasn’t much of a game, actually. We basically just practiced things we wouldn’t do in a normal, competitive game.

Friday, October 25, 2002

A Rose by Any Other Name

So what have I been doing lately? Learning to tango, of course. Yep, that’s right, I learned how to tango last night at the ballroom dance club. Karl, Jen, and I all went……oh wait, Karl decided not to so it was just me and Jen. When we got there, there were only two other people there and it did end up being a pretty small crowd, but that didn’t stop us from tango-ing it up on the floor. Nicole and Leslie were also there so I was lucky enough to be a very wanted dance partner by all three of the girls (well, Nicole had Van Roy to dance with most of the time too). The tango was a little different than I actually imagined it would be. It is a very stoic and crisp dance as it is made up of quick, short moves accentuated by small deviations to the normal routine. We also learned some of the dirty dancing style stuff like dips and the whole leg massaging thing. You could really turn this into a very sensual dance if you wanted to, and I’m sure many people do.

Besides learning how to dance, I haven’t really done anything too out of the ordinary. I’ve had a philosophy dialogue on arrogance I’ve been writing, which I finished up last night, and I’ve been reading Kripke’s Naming and Necessity & Plato’s Phaedo. Besides that I’ve just been trying to exercise more and read some Edgar Allan Poe in my spare time. Speaking of exercise, I hadn’t maxed out benching for a while so I thought I would yesterday just to see where I was at in comparison to the last time I did. I managed to put up 215 but couldn’t quite muster 220. This is actually amazing to me as I couldn’t even bench 190 at the beginning of the summer and I didn’t do that much chest lifting over the summer. It is now my goal to hit 230 by Christmas time. Hopefully, since it is colder outside now and I should have more time on my hands I will be able to do that. Ask me on Christmas if I can do it and I’ll tell you.

Here’s another completely random thought. So we’ve been discussion Plato’s theory of learning is recollection and his argument for it in my ancient philosophy class. The topic of reincarnation came up and according to a section of the dialogue, Socrates states that the non-philosopher, who attaches their soul to this world, can be reincarnated as an animal or a plant that would resemble the type of person they were. For example, a very social person may come back as a wolf or a hard-working person could come back as a mule. The same analogies were made for plants. I was thinking about this last night for no real reason and I tried to put people into what type of plant they would be.

For me, this is how it would run down, in general. A very boring person would come back as nothing more than grass as grass is quite boring. Someone who likes to hide their true selves could be seen as a carrot or onion. Someone who was obsessed with looking good would probably come back as a big, gaudy flower of some type. A very wise person I would think of as a tall oak tree. A very productive worker would come back as a corn plant or apple tree. A somewhat annoying person that you can get along with for small amounts of time would be a dandelion. A mean person would be a thistle and a truly evil person would be a briar patch. I could keep going on and on (as I did last night), but I think I’ll save you from my monotony.

One plant did come to mind that was a type of an enigma in my mind. Where would you place a rose? What type of person is a rose? A beautiful person because a rose is so pretty? An evil person because of the pricking thorns? Would they want to cause pain or pleasure? Would one merely be the side-effect of the other? I stared at the rose I kept on my computer and wondered. I came to the conclusion that if I could be any plant, I would want to be the rose. Why? Trust me, it’s not because I’m beautiful or because I like to cause pain, but it is for other reasons. A rose seems like the perfect balance in our world—it has the ying and the yang, if you will. Life can’t be all bad and it can’t be all good. It can’t be all exciting and it can’t be all boring. Notice how roses are used for so many occasions—anniversaries, funerals, weddings, showing love, showing remorse, showing you care, etc. There will be joy in my life, but there will also be thorns that will prick me, sometimes very deeply, sometimes only for a moment, but above all of these thorns is the beautiful flower of the rose. Even as my hands may be bleeding on the stem, the sight of the flowering tip of the rose makes it worth it.

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

In a Rut

So I've been in kind of a slump lately. I've been sort of down and bored and I don't know what I should be doing all the time. I should be doing homework or something productive, but I just don't have the drive to do it. I wish I could explain to you better why I feel this way, but instead I figure you'd have more fun reading about what I'm doing instead of homework and studying.

Today I had a big Algorithms test--it was actually our midterm. This has been my most troubling class so far this year and I no doubt should have been studying for it, at the least, all last night and this morning. Well, last night didn't happen, but I did study this morning......for like 15 minutes. Last night instead of studying I played volleyball over at St. Ben's for an hour or so and then hung out visiting people that I knew that were down at the track. I so enjoy the company of people--there is nothing out there that can possibly replace the companionship of a fellow human being. After I had satisfied my thirst for human contact I migrated upstairs to the wonderfully comfortable leather couches in the HCC. I got all of my reading in The Phaedo by Plato done. Reading about the proof of, and arguments for, the immortality of the soul only raises so many questions and concerns in me. I spent just as much time pondering what was written as I did actually reading. If I could only read philosophy texts for the rest of my life, I don't think I'd really mind all of that much.

After my short time of reading and my long time of pondering, I went to see The Bourne Identity at the cheap theater in St. Cloud with Nikki. It was such a good movie! I enjoyed the plot, I was engaged by it the entire two hours, and I was never found to be uttering "like that could ever happen..." during the movie's run. When I saw the previews of this movie last year, I didn't expect it to be good, and I am glad to say that I was quite wrong. It was so much better than studying reccurence relations and max-heap sort algorithms. When I got back home I proceeded to read some more Poe and then go to bed. This morning I got up early enough to make my first class, but I decided to just not go. Instead, Nikki stopped over and we cooked a breakfast of hash-browns and hot chocolate. She had also missed her first class because her alarm was set for the wrong time. I then tried to study a little for my midterm, but I didn't get much done. After my miniscule amount of studying and eating breakfast it was time to head out and face this beast of a test head on.

I got there, sat down, got the test, and delved right in. I think I knew about 70% of what was on the test just from remembering what we'd gone over in class (I usually don't read the book......ever). The rest of the test I think I winged well enough to come out with a B or so on the test. I think I actually probably could have gotten a C, but we'll see when I get it back. Now, I got back and instead of writing my dialogue for philosophy, I am here writing this. I'll then probably head to the weight room and further delay any writing until it is absolutely necessary that I get it done. I think I need someone to remotivate me to doing my studies. Anyhow, I think I'm going to go procrastinate a little longer.

Sunday, October 20, 2002

Snow on Skin Actually IS Cold

In the last couple of days there has been a lot of cold weather and a lot of frisbee playing. You want to hear about it? No? Well, you’re going to hear about it anyhow. Thursday, we got about 3 inches of snow up here in St. Cloud. Since it had snowed our frisbee team thought it would be a good time to play some snow disc. It was a really fun time as we were sliding all over, falling down, getting wet and muddy, and just truly enjoying ourselves. We were playing for about an hour and we had turned the field into a gigantic, wet, mud-hole. It came time to play the last point so we had the idea that we should just play in only our shorts. I did not have shorts on underneath my wind-pants so I thought I’d just take my sweatshirt off and play in only my pants. I felt kind of left out since everyone else was just in their shorts so I decided to just take off the pants and just play in my boxers. So we played the final point and Wade through a long pass to me as I was running down the field. There was no way I could catch it except to dive for it, so I dove into the snowy mud, caught the disc, and slid for about a good 20 feet. I got up and I was SO COLD! We also had a bunch of people who had walked by and stopped to watch us play that started cheering and laughing. It was a riot, but I was unbelievably cold for like an hour afterwards.

Yesterday, I also had a frisbee tournament in St. Cloud to play in. There was no snow on the ground, but it was still very, very cold outside. We played against Bemidji in our first game and beat them quite thoroughly 13-1. Our next game was against the University of Minnesota B team. We beat them quite thoroughly as well 13-6. Our next game happened to also be against the University of Minnesota, their A team. We played them until the score was 9-9 and then the time cap horn rang so we had to play to only 11. Unfortunately, UofM scored the next two points to win 11-9. After that our team lost all of the momentum we had and we lost to the University of Minnesota—Duluth 13-6. We were supposed to have one more game after that against Stephen’s Point, but our team was very short on people (we only had four substitutes and two were quite hobbled and didn’t play much by the end of the day). We didn’t have any energy or drive left to play the last game, so we decided to not play. Stephen’s Point didn’t seem to mind.

During that day, I think I was the coldest I had ever been. I had a complete dri-fit spandex layer on, many more layers and I just couldn’t stay warm. Even when I was playing I had a hard time staying warm. I didn’t come out too often until the last game when I was having a hard time running because my feet were just killing me. I don’t understand why they can’t make cleats more comfortable on the feet. Because of that reason I also didn’t play today in the tournament. Well, that and because it was snowing and freezing cold this morning. I really have a hard time enjoying myself when playing disc in such cold weather. We should just have our tournaments earlier in the year so that we aren’t forced to play in such craptacular weather. Next week’s tourney in Winona can only be more frigid. It’ll be interesting to see what it is like then.

Thursday, October 17, 2002

Back at the Quest

IT SNOWED! IT SNOWED! We had our first snow today here in St. Cloud. I woke up to do some last minute studying for my astronomy test, which I seemed to not do enough of… After I had gotten up and taken a shower, I looked out the window and it was starting to flurry. Within 15 minutes, it was a nice, heavy, beautiful snow. I think we got about an inch of it on the ground. I had a hard time focusing on my test or on my other class because I was constantly drawn to the snow falling outside the windows. I always love watching it snow. I may hate the cold weather, but I love snow.

Yesterday Karl, Jeff, Brad, Aaron, and I went down to the Quest club in the cities to see Hoobastank, Blindside, and Greenwheel. I’m glad we had tickets ahead of time because there was a gigantic line outside the Quest for people who wanted to get tickets. Most of them did not get in because the show was basically sold out before they even opened the gates for people to buy tickets at the door. We just got there in time to see the concert because of a heavy traffic jam on I-94. A truck hauling sod collided with a car, utterly destroying the car and spreading sod all over both sides of the highway. We sat at a stand-still for almost a half an hour. By the time we got into the Quest, Greenwheel was just getting on the stage.

Greenwheel played for about a half an hour, and I highly enjoyed their set. Jeff, Aaron, and I pushed our way up to the front of the crowd. Most of the people in the crowd were all of the 18 and under age group. I figured out that there was probably so many there because it was the first day of MEA break. I’m not a big fan of concerts full of little kids, as attested by the behavior of them during the Greenwheel set. Every time they would start a new song all you could hear from all around you was “Greenwheel f**king rocks” or “this song is the f**king bomb” or 15 year old girls screaming. It was real annoying, as well as all of the body surfing. I don’t mind body surfing for hardcore, punk, and metal bands, but for rock bands, there is no need for it. Besides that, Greenwheel was a great band to watch. They played a great show, even though there was some initial feedback from the speakers.

After Greenwheel finished, Blindside was on deck. Before they started, I went up to the upper deck. This is one of the first times I’ve actually benefited from being over 21 (buying alcohol isn’t too big of a thrill for me, as I don’t). The upper deck is so nice. I got myself a nice spot right along the railing and waited for Blindside to come on. They came out with a bang and kicked into some of the best 45 minutes of Swedish metal I’ve ever seen. They played most of the songs off of their new disc and one old one, just for us old-school fans. I especially enjoyed their performance of “Time Will Change Your Heart”—my favorite song off of their new disc. I was thoroughly impressed by their set. I would definitely like to see them again sometime.

Finally Hoobastank came on-stage after a good long time setting up their gear. They put on a good show, but nothing too spectacular. Don’t get me wrong, I like watching them play, it is just that they were nothing too special. They played almost all of the songs off of their platinum-selling self-titled disc, one off of their EP that they were selling at Target, and two oldies from “They Sure Don’t Make Basketball Shorts Like They Used Too.”

It felt so good to be back at the Quest watching some good live music once again. I missed watching live music. No matter how many bootleg concerts I watch or listen too, it just can’t compare to actually being there in the crowd. This has also gotten me very anxious to see Sevendust in a couple weeks.

Sunday, October 13, 2002

Activities Galore

So I took that computational theory test and I felt pretty good about taking it and I thought I did very well as I left. My professor has just posted the key online and I went to look at it and maybe I didn’t do quite as well as I had hoped. I made some elementary mistakes, I noticed, and it also looked like I had a couple of concepts backwards. I’m now curious as to how I did. Looking at the key, I would guess that I came out of the test with a solid “B”. Let’s hope for no lower and hopefully a little higher.

Friday was a fun day. After classes were finished, Karl and I went into St. Cloud and saw The Transporter. I wasn’t expecting much from the movie, but it turned out to be very watchable and I liked it a lot. Let me clarify why I liked it, though. First of all, there really isn’t much of a plot, and what is there is so riddled with holes it makes you remember you shouldn’t be paying attention to it. The reason the movie was good, was that there was a whole load of actions scenes that just kicked ass! Jason Statham plays the perfect tough guy—mean demeanor, gruff looks, sleek car, calm under any circumstances, and likes to beat or blow up everything that gets in his way. For mindless action, there is no better movie than this one.

After the movie, a bunch of us went to see Attention-Starved Children at the pub. They are the campus improv group. I had tried out for it earlier this year, and I thought I would be a shoe-in for the group, but the head of the group has a horrible dislike of me, so I didn’t get in. I still like to go, just to see Karl perform (and Pat Welle, but he wasn’t in this show). The rest of the group was pretty sketchy while they were on-stage (except Staffa, he’s good as well—but besides those three, the rest of the group sucks). Jeff and I had our usual fun time of finding wacky and odd suggestions for the group to try and work with.

The rest of the night consisted of a whole bunch of people coming over to my place to play DDR, like any usual weekend night. It’s unbelievable how much those pads have gotten used. I think almost every other day we have someone come over and want to play. I’m almost getting sick of the songs on it, especially Boom Boom Dollar. I’m hoping that sometime soon, either Karl or myself with pick up the other DDR mix that’s been released here in the US.

Saturday morning, Jeff, Karl, and I had a cookout in front of our apartment before the football game. We didn’t know how many people would show up since it was only about 45 degrees out, but we ended up having a ton of people stop by and we went through 60 hamburgers and about 25 chicken breasts! It was fun having just tons of random people stop by. We then went to the game. We romped on Carleton hard-core. We had already scored 21 points in the first 3 minutes so we all knew by then that there wouldn’t be much competition as the game went on. We ended up winning 49-7. We mostly played our second and third string players for the majority of the game.

Later last night I went to see Lilo & Stitch with Ryan and Julie. It is such a cute movie. I think it might have just beaten out Aladin as my favorite Disney movie. We almost didn’t get to see the movie, however, since the projector didn’t seem to want to work. I was scared because the dude who was running the projector wrecked the movie the last two times I had tried to watch a movie in that theater. Luckily, by some miracle, the projector fixed itself after a couple of minutes.

After the movie, I went with Anne and her mom to see a stand-up comedian doing a show called The Wonder Bread Years. I absolutely loved it. He talked primarily about the things we did when we were kids. I related to about 75% of everything he was talking about. I was constantly thinking to myself “Oh, I so remember doing that” or “Yep, I can say that happened to me.” It was so funny laughing and remembering my childhood. His act made my night.

Now today, I think I’ll try and do some homework before my volleyball game tonight, but we’ll see if that actually happens or not…

Thursday, October 10, 2002

Definite Finite Acceptors

I really shouldn’t be taking the time to write this right now, but I needed a break from looking at right linear grammars, regular expressions, and closed quotient properties. I’ve been studying for a big computational theory exam that I have today at 11:20. I think I know most of what there is going to be on the test, but usually when I have this feeling it is not a good thing. I usually only feel confident going into a test if I feel sketchy about the material because then I know I am really struggling to learn it and trying hard to grasp it. When I have this feeling of knowing it all already, then only bad things can happen. I usually forget some important point that everything hinges upon and because of that everything seems simplistic. I hope that isn’t the cast today. We’ll see in a little while, now wont’ we?

After my test I have to run into St. Cloud to pick up tickets to see Sevendust, 30 Seconds to Mars, Cinder, and some other bands on Nov. 9th. Amazingly enough they are coming to play at a small ballroom here in St. Joseph for Rockin’ 101’s anniversary. Tickets will sell out so fast since Sevendust are huge and the venue can probably only hold about 750 people maximum. It’ll be so great to see them in a small, intimate setting. The last time I saw Sevendust I was in the Target Center sitting in the upper deck. They were touring with Creed and 3 Doors Down and even from where I was sitting, I could see that they just owned the show. They’re energy is amazing and I can’t wait to see them play some new songs off of Animosity. Let’s hope there’s tickets left when I get to the Electric Fetus after my test. They just went on sale this morning so I wouldn’t think they’d be sold out yet.

Yesterday was kind of a let-down of a day for the most part. My classes were boring, disc practice was pretty lame, I had to study for my exam, I had astronomy lab, and the Twins lost. I did have a fun time at our philosophy discussion group. Karl, Jeff, and I are in a group that meets every other week to discuss Kripke’s Naming and Necessity. I find the topics very interesting, but Karl and Jeff would rather be sleeping than be there—it’s quite boring to them. Anyhow, I need to get back to looking over my computational theory…

Tuesday, October 08, 2002

Back and Well Rested

It’s amazing how you can have big plans to do things for a weekend, and somehow you just end up doing none of them. I really didn’t do much of anything this last weekend. It was our long weekend break so I had Friday and Monday off, which was nice. For the most part, though, the weekend was pretty low-key.

Thursday night Anne, Pat, and myself arrived back in Rochester at about 7:30 pm. We dropped Pat off and then Anne and I headed to have dinner at Fiesta Mexicana. Turns out that they closed on Sunday, so we just got there in time (only three days before they closed). Mmmm…I love eating at Fiesta…such good food. The only thing that could have made it more tasty would to have gotten my meal paid for, but you can’t have everything ;-)

Friday, I did a lot of sitting around and doing nothing. Watched some old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation just for old times sake. I also baked some home-made chocolate cookies all the way from scratch for my family. They enjoyed them so much that they ate all of them by Sunday afternoon! I’ll just have to make them another bunch and take them home. They’d probably enjoy that. I also cooked steaks and hash browns for supper that night. If I accomplished any one thing this weekend, it would have to be that I cooked a lot for my family. I’m just going to lay this out on the table and say right now that whoever I marry is never going to have to cook because I just love to when I have the time! After supper I contemplated going back to my high school’s homecoming game, but instead I stayed home and chilled with my parents since we don’t get to see each other much with me 175 miles away most of the year.

Saturday consisted of me doing a lot more of nothing punctuated by small intervals of somethings. I had to take my little bro Ryan into Austin for him to get his hair cut. I managed to pick up some new shoes while I was waiting for him. I got a new pair of Aasics for running and a pair of shiny Nike tuned air shoes that look like they are made of chrome to use for indoor disc season when it starts (which shouldn’t be too long now, considering we live here in Minnesota). A good portion of the afternoon was spent out on the four wheeler riding through some of our fields. It had rained a good two inches the night before so the amount of mud and water standing in the fields made for some fun riding. I was black with mud from head to toe when I came in. It was such a fun time! I only wish more people appreciated the fine art of riding a small, four-wheeled vehicles through mud and water in order to cover yourself in dirt.

Sunday I went to church in the morning and then Anne came to visit in the afternoon/evening. Her first words when she got to my place: “Did you know you live in the middle of absolutely nowhere?” See, no one really ever really realizes that I do live in the ass-crack of nowhere until they actually have to come visit. I tried to convince Anne to come out and appreciate the joy of four-wheeling, but she didn’t seem to keen on the idea so we spent most of the time conversing with my parents, me showing her around our place, and cooking (well, I cooked at least). We had a feast of spaghetti, home-made sauce, and garlic bread that got a little crunchy—oops.

Monday morning I got up, cooked my family some brownies, grabbed Karl & Anne from Rochester, and headed back to SJU (and CSB for Anne). We got back and I unpacked and relaxed while watching some MST3K with Karl, The Gunslinger to be exact. Great MST3K episode, one of the better ones I’ve seen in a while. Then we also watched Death to Smoochy a little bit later because we were still bored. Now it’s back to the school grind. Fun.