Subterranean By Design...
---Flat Tires and Billy Joel---
2004-02-16 - 1:21 a.m.
Ahhh, the old girl is working again. It's been some time since I've blogged, but then it's been some time since there's been something to blog about. OK. Weekend update with Toolie.
Friday was as good as a Friday can be, I suppose. I went to my classes and then hung out at the office with Christina in the afternoon. In the late afternoon I played in some poker tournaments and broke about even. That evening I went to Wells Hall and caught Matrix: Revolutions for two bucks. While a lot of people claimed that it sucked, I thought that the movie was a fitting end for the trilogy. I'll assume that most people have seen it by now (if you haven't, then skip to the next paragraph). It was cool that the biggest enemy, in the end, turned out to be Smith, and not the collective of machines. I thought it was cool that the machines and Neo had to work together to survive. Though it was kind of obscure as to how they defeated Smith, leaving it open in the end was a good idea (Lady or the Tiger resurfaces all the time). I liked the action scenes of the humans trying to fight back the machines, but it seemed silly that they even stood a chance. The sentinels didn't fight a very good battle. Perhaps they were using French military tactics.
Saturday turned out to be a crazy day. It began with a few hours of reading. I purchased "The DaVinci Code" on Thursday, and am now roughly 75% finished with it. It's a pretty good read (it received ringing endorsements from mother and Ciofani), and it's good for me, as I haven't read an entire book in quite some time. Hopefully it doesn't become another "Catch-22" for me. I read half of that book over Christmas break my junior year of college and haven't picked it up since...and I was enjoying the book! That should tell you what kind of a bookworm I am. What ever happened to that little kid with glasses that used to cruise through the "Book It" program? I guess I need free pizza as incentive to read.
MSU won their basketball game, so that was nice. The second half of my day was planned as such: Pick up stuff at Lia's apartment, go to Church, drive to Grand Blanc to see my girl on Valentine's Day. It went like this: drive halfway to Lia's apt., change my flat tire, finish driving to Lia's, call for advice, call Sears, drive to Sears on the donut, get two new tires, tweak my knee, drive home to make sure I have clean clothes (my church clothes got pretty dirty changing that tire), drive to the Blanc, pass out. I was pretty worn out at the end of the day. I blew the tire at about 75 mph and was lucky to not be near any other cars at the time. I had to change the tire in snow and mud. Luckily I had a towel in the trunk of my car that I was able to kneel on. It was the first time that I had to change a tire on the road, and I did an adequate job. I wouldn't have gotten any speed points (nobody recruited me for Daytona today), but I did solid work for my first time. Thank goodness I had the owner's manual so that I knew to tighten the bolts in a star pattern. After getting to Sears, I walked across the way to Hallmark to get Lia a card (so I was cutting it close...) and it had closed in the last ten minutes. Wheeling on my left leg, upset, I felt something tweak in my knee which only fueled my rage. So I hobbled across the parking lot to Kroger, which luckily had a greeting card section. I purchased the card and a 35 cent can of orange soda and went back to Sears to wait for the tires to be finished. Eventually I wound up at Lia's, had some dinner, exchanged gifts, and went to bed.
Sunday was a much better day. Lia and I had breakfast and then took off for Detroit to see "Movin' Out," a musical that involves all Billy Joel songs. It was quite different than the average musical. First, there was a band stationed above the stage. In the middle of the band was a grand piano where a fellow portraying Billy Joel played and sang. All of the actors below were basically ballet dancers who said hardly anything the whole time. You had to discern what was going on by the themes of the songs and the actions of the dancers. So this made it different, but somewhat odd. The dancing was spectacular, and the song selection was optimal (i.e. Piano Man was amazingly NOT in the musical). I had a great time there, as did Lia. The show was at a theater that looked pretty ghetto on the outside, but was quite nice on the inside. There are some nice places in Detroit, but the neighborhoods are terrible. That city needs a renaissance. After the show we went to Windsor for dinner at a nice Italian joint called Spago. The food and wine were choice, and it capped a wonderful Sunday afternoon. Following dinner we headed back to Flint, and then I came home.
Home brought a viewing of Rounders, which I borrowed from Rick. Oh yeah, I hung out with Rick and Sarah on Friday night after viewing Matrix. We had some food and drink at Buddy's, where I got the quesadilla (it's BIG!).
Song Currently on WinAmp: CD this time, and the song is "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship. This classic power ballad comes from the 80's and the move Mannequin. A movie about a mannequin that comes to life...sounds like they ripped that off from Today's Special of old school Nickelodeon. I love this tune.
Two Steps Forward - Two Steps Back
