Month: December 2010

Posted on

A quarter century and counting

Today was Jeremy Gustafson’s 25th birthday party. Two days ago, I also thought that today was supposed to bring freezing rain and seriously hazardous road conditions. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal, although there wouldn’t be as many guests at the party, but that doesn’t account for the last few years when his birthday has brought heavy snow, ice and pretty much everything but frozen gerbils falling from the sky. If that rain had come down tonight, we might have started wondering if God didn’t want Jeremy to celebrate his birthday anymore. Or maybe our eating at IHOP was enough of a punishment, I’m not sure.

There were also a few quotes worth sharing (there were a lot, really, but only a few that make sense without worrying about context):

“I stay out of trailer parks. That’s Cracker City.”
“It’s funny how talking about sterility can kill a conversation.”
“To pronounce the name ‘Marissa’, just pretend you’re a Chinese person saying ‘Melissa’.” (I’m probably going to Hell for that one, but it sounded really funny when I said it.)

Posted on

Wiiiiiiiii!!!

Yep, to celebrate the season of lavish consumerism, I went out to Best Buy with my mom today and we bought a Nintendo Wii. Some of you might think it’s to create an excuse for playing video games for hours on end. You’re probably right. But it’s also to create a means to exercise at least a tiny bit instead of just watching TV or staring at the computer all evening.

So tonight, I opened the box, spent about an hour fiddling with all the pieces and cords, got it hooked up to the TV in the family room, spent another hour playing Wii Sports and broke a sweat from exercising for the first time in… it’s been a while. I know, I know, that’s pretty pathetic, but I’m aiming to play soccer again sometime in January. Then I’ll be lucky if I can run around on the field for five minutes before collapsing and dying from an inability to channel blood through my body with an atrophied heart.

Incidentally, did you know that the Wii is officially endorsed by the American Heart Association? I’m not kidding; it says so right on the box.

Now poor Facebook and Twitter will probably start to feel neglected because I’ve got another toy to play with in my spare time, but they’ll have to suck it up. Besides, it’s not like we had that close of a relationship. Especially not during the season of lavish consumerism. After all, they’re free.

Posted on

Keep driving waaaaay past “Go”

I’m on the verge of registering at Augsburg here in MN to earn an MBA degree, but I just ran into some bad news. They held an informational session at a building in Bloomington a while back, which was essentially an off-campus location for the entire program. That was probably six months ago. It must have been at least that long ago because when I started filling out the application form today, “Bloomington” wasn’t on the “Which campus do you want to attend?” list.

Apparently, there wasn’t enough demand for taking classes at that location, so they’re not enrolling any new students there. Bloomington is less than 15 minutes away. Augsburg’s main campus is in Minneapolis, which is half an hour with no traffic. And it’s near downtown Minneapolis, so there’s always traffic. So now I have just over a week before the registration deadline to decide… everything.

I mean, sure, some people drive that far every day to their jobs, but they’re earning thousands of dollars by doing it, not paying that much for school. How much do I want the degree, how much do I need the degree… but on the bright side, I just started filling out all the forms, so by making this discovery now, I haven’t paid the fifty bucks or so that it’ll cost for the registration fee and all my transcripts. The glass may not be half full, but there’s at least a little sip of water at the bottom. Cheers!

Posted on

Mind Over Matt, post-production party

I’m not sure if that’s the proper title for tonight’s party, but I thought the alliteration sounded cool, so I ran with it. Anyway, it’s now two weeks since we wrapped, so most of us got together to watch ourselves on DVD. (Unfortunately, two people couldn’t make it because they’ve got “higher priorities” like “family”… lame excuses, if you ask me.)

We met up at someone’s apartment in Minneapolis, ate, drank, played games and watched the first Sunday’s performance from start to finish. Minus the breaks between scenes and the intermissions, of course. No one needed 15 minutes to grab food or use the bathroom. Well, sorta didn’t need it for the bathroom—it was out of commission for a while when the toilet got plugged up and there was no plunger in the apartment. Incidentally, if you ever need to borrow a plunger from a neighbor, don’t be surprised if they tell you you don’t need to bring it back.

Turns out that the performance went really well, everyone nailed their lines and they looked good doing it. Okay, I think we looked good doing it. It was a shame that we didn’t have a bigger audience that afternoon, but as the director pointed out when giving her introductory speech, people had to do a lot of shoveling before coming to the show.

The only regret I have about the party? Sure, there’s the sad “I don’t know if or when I’ll see any of these people again with whom I’ve had so much fun” stuff, but during the course of the play, Matt mentions having Cheetos and Sprite in his kitchen. Tonight? No Cheetos or Sprite. I felt so dirty…

So that’s it. We’re wrapped, no more stories about the future of the play. There are a handful of stories I’ve yet to tell due to a lack of blog entries for the last three or four months, but I’ve got until the last day of the year to write stuff—I should be able to fill in one or two blanks during that time. Whether I’ll be able to fill the void that came about due to the lack of Cheetos and Sprite tonight… maybe it’s not that bad and I just need to straighten out my priorities. Maybe all I need to do is spend some time with my “family.”

Posted on

“I can’t believe that actually happened.”

A friend of mine, Jason Schumacher, made a movie called “The Telephone Game” that played in a film festival this weekend. The premise of the movie isn’t that awe-inspiring—a bad play from auditions to performance that goes horribly awry in a multitude of ways—but how it was created was pretty impressive: there was no script, just three pages of notes. Aside from a song and a few lines of dialogue, almost all of it was improvised.

Because this was a film festival, there were ballots at the door of the auditorium so people could grab one and vote for “Best Movie”, “Best Cinematography”, etc. Sure, it might have been the only movie I saw, but I was so impressed with The Telephone Game that it got my vote in every category. Including “Best Documentary.”

Posted on

Who doesn’t like icy intersections?

We got about 6″ of snow yesterday, which isn’t a big deal for Minnesota. Assuming that it’s not the first snow of the year, of course. I don’t know how the mind-wipe occurs, but it happens every year when even one inch of white stuff falls from from the sky (and I’m not talking coke that someone flushed down an airplane’s toilet to avoid getting busted by the cops). People forget how to drive in snowy weather and the late news reports 300 spin-outs and an eight-hour drive to make a 10-mile trip home from work.

But that’s here and now. My mom told me horror stories about when she lived in Pennsylvania for a while about 40 years ago, so I’m hoping people have outgrown the practice. (They probably haven’t, but hope springs eternal.) If there was ever any snow on the ground back then, a lot of people had no idea how to handle it. 300 spin-outs at the end of the day would be a happy surprise. What scared her the most, though, was when they were driving on city streets.

If you’ve done a good job teaching your kids to drive in snow, they’ll know to accelerate slowly until the car starts moving. Some of Mom’s friends back there used a different method: gun it until the tires melt the snow, hit the pavement and move you forward. It’s an interesting technique that might work once or twice, but there’s one teensy-weensy problem. Melted snow refreezes. That might not mean much once you’re gone, but I imagine the drivers behind you who can’t stop on the ice, slide through the red light and then into another car sure appreciate it.

So that’s my advice for the day. Take it easy, drive slow and don’t gun it to try to move faster. Even if you need to flush some coke down a toilet to avoid getting busted by the cops.