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benjanke


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8/30/04, 9:20 p.m.: "The person who really understands me, is my most feared enemy."
Last Friday I got "adventurous" and went down to the Stone Arch Cinema, which is about four blocks from my place, and watched "Hero." I have to say that in spite of having already seen it three times on DVD, I had not been this pumped to see a movie in a long long time. And it was certainly worth the wait. Although the translation had been altered slightly from the import version, I didn't feel it took away from the movie in more than a couple places, and even helped clear up some sections. As I had hoped, seeing the incredibly beautiful cinematography and color of this movie on the big screen was unbelievably more spectacular than on the DVD. And as an unexpected bonus, the sound and music seemed to come through more in the screen version, and really made it a more emotional experience, in spite of the fact that I knew everything that was going to happen. This is easily my favorite movie of the year so far; I can't wait until it hits the dollar theater here in Minneapolis so I don't have to shell out another 8 bucks for it =| So so so so awesome.
8/23/04, 11:30 p.m.: Blarg.
Although I have not really been in Minneapolis that many days yet, everything had been going pretty well thus far -- until today, that is. When I went for a run this morning I noticed that my bike (yes, the beloved red Fuji I had gotten for free from Dr. Buck) was not in the bike cage. I hoped for some reason that it had been confiscated by management, but this was not the case. In spite of having it locked to a rack that sits inside a locked bike cage, the bike still got stolen somehow. The cage itself consists of a six-foot-high chain-link fence with barbed wire all along the top (except for the door to the cage). Only residents of the apartment who request a key are supposed to have access. This means that either it was an "inside job" and I have a thief as a neighbor, or some hoodlum(s) climbed over the top of the door of the bike pen and stole my bike (which was far from the nicest bike in there). The landlady informed me that a few months ago they caught four 10-year-old boys in one of the pens with a pair of boltcutters trying to steal bikes--in the middle of the day, no less. I'm guessing that these same intelligent delinquents probably took my bike. I will be maintaining vigilance over the bike rack at the school across the street in hopes that my beloved road bike turns up there and I can steal it back. Until then, I have been greatly inconvenienced by this incident, as it was my main form of transportation to work and campus. The further irony of the situation was that for the first few days I had been storing the bike in my apartment, as I did not have a key to the pen yet. When I got the key I made the mistake of assuming that there would be no threat to the bike's safety behind a barbed-wire fence =|

Furthermore, this injustice has slightly soured my impression of this huge city that I am trying so hard to get comfortable living in ...
8/22/04, 7:25 p.m.: Fish Fish
This weekend was the annual fishing trip to my grandparents' place on Clitherall Lake. This year attendance was a bit down, as only Brent and Jafar were able to accompany me. This still worked out okay, since the boat makes it tough for more than three people to fish out of anyway. In spite of some crazy weather (gale-force winds and record low temperatures), the fishing was actually pretty darn good.

For those who really care, the crappies were biting really well, and we managed to catch more than enough for dinner on the last night. Jafar hooked a decent smallmouth on a surface lure (yet again), Brent caught two of the biggest bass I've ever seen come out of that lake, and I brought in two good-sized pike on my magic lure.

The big story of the trip, however, was the boat lift disaster. It was super windy on the first day, and in spite of this we still took the boat out. By the time we came back, the boat lift and canopy and been blown clear up out of the water and over the dock, coming to rest on the other side with the canopy (luckily) under water. Without the weight of the boat on the lift it was evidently not heavy enough to stay grounded. To make things worse, that night we had record low temperatures and woke up to an unpleasantly cold morning. In spite of this we waded out with my grandpa and helped get the lift back into place. It was too heavy to move by ourselves, so my grandpa came up with the ingenious solution of inflating an inner tube under it to help us get it out of the sand. Not a good way to start the day; can't say I've been that cold in a long time.
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