[ news @ sg ]
currents
archives
features
versions
contributors
about [news@sg]
|
|
Wednesday, January 1, 2003
|
The Happenings
Best Scenes Ever
Perhaps one of the best things about Christmas is TNT's twenty-four hours of
"A Christmas Story". Every two hours, and at the right minute, you can tune
in and see your favorite scenes over and over again! My first of two favorite
occur at about ten minutes in, where the kid says "I can't put my arms down"
and then a minute later, falls down in the walk to schoolm continually
screaming "I can't get up!" And then, at about seventeen minutes in, watch
the action unfold as we observe the breach in ettiquette by skipping straight
to the "triple dog dare". It's crazy stuff!
Good Morning To You
No longer existing is that desire to wake up as early as possible, say, five
in the morning, to open up the presents. In fact, this year was very, I guess,
casual. My Mom was in the Philippines for the two weeks previous, and was due
to arrive sometime in the afternoon. We didn't have the full fledged living
room Christmas tree this year, although the small mini-tree was set up in the
basement. My Mom's presents were prepared before she left, and were residing
underneath the bamboo shoot-tree-thing that lives in the living room. The
remainder of the presents, wrapped by the house gift wrap department (otherwise
known as my sister), were there. For the most part, this morning ritual where
the immediate family exchanges presents is a fun time where we pretty much
already know what we're giving and getting (mostly due to the siblings' gift
conference held a week prior, where we decided this stuff). I got a great
new tie and some film, and my "big" gift was a DVD player, or rather, a printed
description of a DVD player, with an explanation that the actual device was
waiting for me in Urbana. It's always a nice, little, family time. And it
started around 9:30am - just after my brother finished shoveling the recently
added snow off the driveway.
The Holiday
It was a low key Wednesday, as most of the day was spent at my cousins' place
in Bloomingdale. It was my dad's side of the family, and, all together, there
are twelve first cousins (well, eleven and me). It's one of those rare times
where we were all in the same place at the same time - especially since four
of them are now in college. Everyone's just a bit older, now. I remember
some of my cousins running around my house at five years old, and now they're
in high school... anyways. There wasn't too much in the way of activity.
Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened, well, at least in my opinion,
was the delay in gift distribution. As far as the normal order of things goes,
lunch is had, and, after a short break, gifts are distributed by one or two
people simultaneously from the massive piles of boxes and cards underneath
the tree (and flowing outward, like a massive 20 foot tree skirt of boxes).
Previously, an adult presided over the distribution process, until recently,
a few of the older cousins (I'm the oldest) would coordinate matters. This
year, my sister Cheryl and cousin Justine took control of distribution, but
were held up when one of the aunts said we needed to sing some Christmas
songs first. We all looked around, knowing we had never sung before
distribution before, and just gave back blank looks indicating "what are you
talking about?" After ten minutes of this random blah, the presiding
grandmother ordered the distribution to begin, and my sister and cousin
immediately proceeded, leaving no time for an appeal by the aunt. Other than
that, it was just a normal day, I guess.
The Days After
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday brought a virtual repeat experience of the days
prior to Christmas. The family alternated between going out to shop and going
out to eat. There was a fine dinner at Bennigans on Thursday, and Saturday we
relived the weekly eating breakfast at IHOP thing, where, I think, for the
first time in a long time, we had all five people present. Now, perhaps the
most interesting, and maybe shocking, or wacky thing that was bought in that
time was a DVD/random media type/CDG player. I can imagine yourself asking
what such a device would be for... well, CDG is pretty much the stuff that
Kareoke machines and setups use. Oh no. Admittedly, I do enjoy singing along
to the radio, but I don't think I'm willing to subject myself to that as of
yet. I tried to get my Dad to buy the August 2002 pop-hits disc, but he
declined. I'm having a hard time picturing him singing Nelly's "Hot in Herre".
The Room Setup
I returned to Urbana Saturday evening, where, upon my return, I made my way
to Best Buy to make my first DVD purchases. I returned to campus, picked up
my new DVD player from my sibling's apartment, and set it up in my room, just
above the TiVo. Oh, what a nice little entertainment room I have.
Ordinary (Sun) Day
Just a day, just an ordinary day, and I woke up with one real task in mind:
make my way to my siblings' landlord's office to drop off their rent check.
Seeing as how I was out and about, I went to the women's basketball game
versus Auburn. A two dollar general admission ticket gets you a seat anywhere
in B-section! Awesome! Afterwards, it was a bunch of chilling in front of
the football action on TV while running the Brian "end of week" audit.
Make It So
Hey, I'm in town. So, I made something happen. Zach, Megan, and I met up
to indulge in some half price starters before six. And, of course, trivia
fun was had as well. Following, we spent Monday evening at Assembly Hall as
the men's basketball team defeated Coppin State of Baltimore fame. It was
quite the nice, not expensive evening!
Perhaps Most Painful
I'm not sure why I was compelled to do this when I did, but late Monday night
I decided to do a true, extensive, exhaustive audit of account four of the
Bank of Brian - an audit of the lock box. While it may seem all simple -
counting up pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, you've got to throw in the
fact that special coins like old school pennies, 1976 quarters, Susan B.
Anthony and Pocahontas (I mean, Sohcahtoa [geometry!], I mean, those golden)
dollars, rolls of coins, and each state quarter is treated differently! In
a normal audit, I assume that most of those are correct (like the number of
each state quarter). In this instance, everything was counted, coins were
rolled, it was crazy! It lasted over three hours! However, now I can rest
assured that everything is all right in the world with respect to my coin
counts.
Touch-Ups
Someone had to work on New Year's Eve to give out those University paychecks.
So, I volunteered to do it. And, as such, I took the time to catch up with
all the random Brian busy-work that I didn't get around to in my limited time
online when at home. That evening, I took the train back to Chicago, then
walked over to another station, where I took another train to near my house,
where I was picked up and taken home to ring in 2003 with the family (actually,
this is the first time I was with the family for the New Year since 1998-1999)!
Actually Watched a Movie
"My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (2002): It's a holly, jolly Christmas, and the
best thing to do to close the night is to watch a wedding? I'll agree, it
was a good movie, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In some ways, it kinda
mirrors many culture's trend to clump. Hey, it's one reason why some people
related to me receive no information about the list unless there's a one, and
in those cases, some received the information delayed by months! This is
one film I say you should see, but it isn't the kind of thing you could watch
night after night after night. Well, not right now. For me. Anyways...
"Say It Ain't So" (2001): Yes, yet another vaguely romantic film - what's
my problem? I've already seen this, but, it was either this or Hook Friday
night, and my sister hadn't seen it, and it finished just in time for me to
catch the end of Hook (which I haven't seen in quite some time) and examine
the credits to see if Krannert was mensioned (didn't notice anything). If
anything, I suppose that this tells me that life and love can be crazy, and
that there's hope in the future if you aren't genetically linked.
"Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986): Put this in your memory - my first
ever DVD is that of one of my favoritist movies of all time. Back in the day,
and by, the day, I mean high schoolish, I always thought I could be Ferris
Bueller. Not that I would skip high school class or anything, but, yeah. He
seemed to have a piece of everything, and knew exactly what he could (and
rarely couldn't) get or do. And I felt that way, too. So, I'm not sure how
true that is of me - I'm sure that's best left for those who have experienced
me historically to discuss, but I always delight in seeing this movie and
thinking about the good times, when there wasn't much more to worry about than
personal scheduling and finanaces. Oh, wait.
"Can't Hardly Wait" (1998): So, I needed something to run in the
background while I did the rare, extensive audit of the Bank of Brian. My
second DVD, and also a delight to watch, well, for me at least, this shows
that, no, really, there is hope. I mean, Preston had an almost four year
delay between the initial Pop Tart incident to a first kiss. How's that for
hanging in there? Since I'm pretty sure most people have seen this by now,
the final scene still makes my heart flutter, if but for one second. And, no,
not the spaceship scene... the one just before it. With all those people
sitting around waiting. Yeah, you know, the one with the caption "hours later,
he finally left".
"the list"
one at four (no activity)
mdate Scheduling
next week
The majority of next week will be up in the Chicago area, so, if you're
willing and able, make yourself a schedule reservation to hang out with
me for perhaps one of the largest windows of time I'll actually be around
there.
Here's how it looks as of print-time:
- Wednesday, January 1, 2003: Happy New Year!
- Saturday, January 4: Breakfast with family
- Sunday, January 5: Church (morning)
- Monday, January 6: Amtrak back to Urbana (night)
- Tuesday Night Dinner and Trivia at Buffalo Wild Wings
Work is indicated with a star...
The most recent weekly schedule updated can be found
here.
after that
It's hard to believe that in a matter of days, I will be somehow involved with
my ninth Illinois High School Theatre Festival, affectionately known as
"theatrefest". If you're going to be around, come by and volunteer and/or
hang out!
BC Financial Press
Sunday, December 22, 2002 - Saturday, December 28, 2002
Brian General Indicator: +123.04
+--------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Category Summary |
+--------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Symbol Change notes | Symbol Change notes | Symbol Change notes |
| ====== ========= ===== | ====== ========= ===== | ====== ========= ===== |
| A FDRV 20.55- | J STDP .00- | Q CTBN 1.00- |
| B FDGR .00- | K IVST .00- | R RNDM .00- |
| C CLTH .00- | L COMM 18.50- | S INCM 504.34+ |
| D TRNS 6.20+ | M SPLY .00- | T DDCT 31.40- |
| E LDGN 385.00- | N UTLT 27.94- | U EVNT .10- |
| F ACTV .00- | O EDUC .00- | V GRUP .00- |
| G ACTR .00- | P GRAT .00- | W LNFD .00- |
| H STKP 96.99+ | | |
+--------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Transfer Summary |
+--------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
| Symbol Change notes | Symbol Change notes | Symbol Change notes |
| ====== ========= ===== | ====== ========= ===== | ====== ========= ===== |
| X XSHR 70.00+ | Y XOVR 77.58+ | Z XTFR .00- |
+--------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+
|
|
![[pretty picture, eh?]](http://news.sweetgoodness.org/img/content.jpg)
![[brian web banner]](http://news.sweetgoodness.org/img/briansg.jpg)