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 / fiancĂ© / 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.

Thursday, October 03, 2002

Taking Some Time Off

Ahh, today is basically Friday for me. We have a short college break and we get Friday and Monday off this weekend. I’m looking forward to having that little bit of time off to kind of space out and not worry about my homework. Surprisingly enough I’ve got most of the weekend planned out already, though.

Tonight, when I get back home, Anne is going to take me out to dinner, hopefully at Fiesta Mexicana if it is still open. If not, it will probably be to Applebee’s because everyone from Rochester always goes to Applebee’s or Perkins and no where else. I’ve never understood it—I just go along with the flow. Maybe if Fiesta is closed I can convince her to go to Victoria’s (my favorite restaurant in Roch).

Friday I am basically taking the entire day off and doing nothing. Randy will be at ISU still, Ryan will be at school, and my parents will both be at work so I plan on vegging out in front of the tv and watching some movies I’ve been longing to watch (maybe The Green Mile and The Thin Red Line or Kung Pow and Jackie Brown). I might go to Hayfield’s homecoming game on Friday too if I feel so inclined, but I think I’d feel a little weird going back. I was at Lourde’s homecoming last weekend and that was fine, pretty much because I didn’t know many people whereas at Hayfield’s game I’d probably see a lot of people I really never planned on seeing anymore. Well, we’ll see.

Saturday I had planned to go to the SJU game at Gustavus with Anne, but she had a baby shower come up and decided that would be more fun than going to the Johnnie game (must be a girl thing). Oh well. Jeff was thinking of coming down to visit and going to the game with me so we’ll have to see if that pans out or not. If it doesn’t work out then I’ll probably spend most of Saturday hanging out with the family and catching up with friends from home. Maybe if it’s nice I’ll have a bon fire at my place, just for old times sake.

Sunday, I’ll go back to church to see everyone and definitely say hi to my pastor, who I miss. After that, Anne planned on coming down to my place to visit. Let’s hope those plans don’t change, but if they do I always have our new dog to play with. That’s right, my mommy just got our family a two year old Chow. I’m anxious to see it and play with it. I love animals and any time we get a new one I’m a happy camper, except for Gizmo. I still love the dog, but he’s SO stupid, and it also doesn’t help that he was just randomly given to us by one of our relatives when we didn’t want a new pet at that time. Hopefully, the new doggie will put Gizmo in his place.

Monday my break will come to an end and I will make the long trip back to school. Let’s hope it takes a long time to get to Monday because I’m in no hurry to come back to the massive amount of homework I will obviously have after not doing anything for a weekend. I figure it’ll be good to not worry about anything at all for a few days and then worry hard core about the stuff when I get back. We’ll see how well that works out for me when next week rolls around.

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I’ll let you all know how it went when I get back. Later.

Wednesday, October 02, 2002

Hmm... French? Yep.

Let me start off today by saying that the French are weird. No, wait, that’s not what I wanted to say, what I meant to say is that the French are like theatre majors on crack and living in an insane asylum. Where does this definition of the French come from? Brotherhood of the Wolf. Karl, Jeff, Ryan, Jared, and I watched this movie late last night because we had been waiting for a long time to see it. Karl and I saw the previews about a year ago and were looking forward to seeing it in the theaters but it never came to either Rochester of St. Cloud so we never got the chance to see it. Yesterday it came out on dvd so I picked it up in the late afternoon and Karl decided we must watch it that night. So we did.

Let’s just start by saying that this movie is not what I expected. Most of the movie I was confused—this could stem from the fact that we didn’t start it until after midnight and I was kind of sleepy, but it also comes from the mish-mash of genres this film is. Read any review of the film and it will talk about how just about everything is tossed into this movie and I have to agree. There’s a wanky political struggle, most of the movie is a flashback, you have some bad-ass werewolf/wolverine concoction killing people, there is a love plot involving the main character and a princess, witchcraft brings people back from the dead, Jesus imagery abounds, there are some Matrix-esque action sequences, and it is all supposedly based loosely around a pseudo-real French folk tale. The combination of this movie being so weird and me being as tired as I was made for a somewhat surreal experience and I will definitely have to rewatch this movie to get another taste of it to see if I can’t decipher some of it a little better.

Yesterday was also a beautifully gorgeous day out—not your average cold fall day. I really wish that Mother Nature would make up here mind as to what season it really is right now, but then again I also have to realize that I am living in Minnesota. I tried to enjoy the nice weather as much as I could. I went for a 4 mile run and as I did I got to see many of the trees changing colors. The season of God’s beauty is upon us. Every year I look forward to this season just for the sheer beauty of nature and the kaleidoscope of colors you can see walking or running through the woods. I also took a little walk down to the lake at the early evening of yesterday just to look out over the lake and reflect. I think one of the signs of actually growing up is when you actually start to reminisce about days of your past. I had recently been talking with a few of my friends about our childhood and how we all missed it so much. It really made me quite sad talking about the past and remembering how much I loved my childhood. As I looked across the lake I wondered to myself what I would be thinking in 10 years about what I am doing now. Will I look back fondly upon these years as I do my childhood, or will I still long for my childhood as much as I do now? I guess I’ll see when that time comes. For now, I’m just going to enjoy the world around me and try to be that little kid again.