I have not had as much time as I used to in the last several months to get out there and see all the movies that I might’ve wanted to see.

Next Sunday (March 5) is the Academy Awards show, and in the last five years or so, I’ve always at least taken in the 5 flicks up for best picture, so that when the winner is announced, I can have a qualified opinion about why the people who do the voting are fucking idiots.

This year will be no exception, although I am in the position of needing this “cram” weekend to do it all.

Last night, Jen and I went to the budget theatre in Oak Creek to catch The New World, which is up for best cinematography. I really enjoyed Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, so I banked on this one being equally moving from a visual standpoint. I thought it was, for the most part.

Today I have three flicks on the agenda: Brokeback Mountain at noon, Good Night, and Good Luck around 3, and Munich later in the evening. That will leave me with only one left to go in the Best Pic category…

Right now Jen is breathing down my neck to help her with some housework, though, so that’s all I have to say about that. If you’re in Milwaukee and want to join up for any of the day’s movies, give me a call.

Reviews/reactions to come…

Had a really weird sequence of dream images last night, check this out:

I went to see ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ and I was really surprised that most of the movie was actually about how the Harlem Globetrotters built Stonehenge. The forbidden love shared between two cowboys was just a throw-in in the last ten minutes…

Later at home, I was slicing square carrots in my bedroom, when all of a sudden I got a message from Tom Carr that the Emperor was demanding I make contact with him. I took a knee on the platform, and was about to ask, ‘What is thy bidding, my master?’ when a giant holographic image of Brett Favre sitting on a tractor appeared before me, and I decided that calling Brett ‘my master’ would sound really strange.

Any thoughts?

There are certain unwritten rules that I follow when using a public restroom, and I’d like to share them with you for debate/information…

1. Avoid eye contact with any person whose fly is open
2. Do not initiate conversation with anyone engaged in any act of human waste removal (although I may respond to someone who addresses me while I am urinating, provided that eye contact is avoided)
3. Whenever possible, maintain a 1-urinal “buffer zone” between fellow restroom occupants
4. Always use soap
5. Maintain a distance of at least 4 inches from the urinal, but do not exceed 8 inches
6. Do not, under any circumstances, engage in conversation with someone who is occupying a stall, or engage in conversation while occupying a stall

I would thank you to observe these rules any time we are in a public restroom together…

1. If the Packers hire Wade Phillips to be the next head coach, I will weep.

2. I’ve been sick for about two weeks now; I should probably make time to go to the doctor.

3. Sometimes I wonder if everyone at work everywhere is a little afraid that they might be screwing something up every day.

4. Process, process, process, read news, web search, process, process, process, read, process, read, search, process, process…

5. This weather is insane: freezing-ass December, and now it’s like it’s March.

6. I did not watch a single college bowl game for the first time in years, and apparently missed some good ones.

7. Really wanted to post pictures last night, really pissed that I forgot USB wasn’t working on my laptop.

8. I don’t want to have to get a new laptop.

It was about 9:30 pm yesterday when I found out that the ‘season premiere’ of Scrubs was on that night. Twice, apparently. Err, it was two episodes.

Now– I will whole-heartedly defend the New Order in network television scheduling. People don’t watch re-runs because there’s plenty more to see all over the dial, and you end up with these unconventional schedules whereby the network can essentially put on twice as many shows, each of them for half a ‘season,’ more or less.

That’s all well and good and makes sense if you would just publicize when you’re going to re-arrange things. Or, for chrissakes, give people a week after the holiday season to settle in and wait for the all the football to end. Did YOU know that Scrubs was going to be on again last night? Now I have to try to get it by some other means.

Anyway, outside of that, you can expect to see some photos from the New Year gala in their very own gallery later today (possibly in the evening).

Also, please send thoughts and prayers in the direction of Michelle’s family, as some of its members have been less than healthy of late…

This from the we-can-all-be-geeks file.

I had the chance to read some old blogs the other day, catch my memory up on what has happened in my life (and that reallly made me realize that this blogging thing is at least as much for me as it is for you– there were times that I read somethng and said to myself, ‘oh, I forgot all about that,’) and it struck me that the Last Ride of Willy the Festiva never made its way into cyberspace.

There was a bit in the blog a while back (roughly a year ago) about how I got an estimate done and the car was definitely totaled, but then it sat in Dave Schrubbe’s parking lot for another 5, 6 months or something like that.

When I finally took the old boy over to the Ford dealership where Bart Starr would later pick him up, Dave was nice enough to ride with me and take a couple pictures.

He also took a video (about 5 MB).

Look for the photo (very similar to the shot that Grandma Markowski took on the first day I had the car) in the Public Gallery…

Off to complete my party preparation; looking forward to seeing you soon!

It was a nice Christmas weekend — how was yours?

Friday night (the 23rd), Wordy and Michelle & I went to the Bucks game. It was nice to see them get a win. It was also a helluva lot warmer than it had been the week before, when we had to walk a lot farther for a much less positive outcome…

I did a very little bit of last-minute shopping the morning of the 24th, and then made my way over to Jen & Joe’s house for Markowski/Mundschau family tidings. Michelle joined us there for dinner, gifts, etc.

On the 25th, the Bocks got together at the Behling house in South Milwaukee. Among other things, I got to talk to Uncle Bob about his “pest control system,” Uncle Mark about the tail end of the deer hunt, and my cousins Aaron and Matt about school and computers and some other stuff. Dan was feeling pretty crappy due to a dental problem, and that was too bad, but other than that, I think everyone was doing OK.

It was really nice to see everybody and have some laughs. I realized in the course of talking with my cousin Adam that all of us kids are awfully close to being totally grown up; in catching up with family that you don’t get to see or maybe just don’t have a chance to chat with in the daily comings and goings of your life, I thought to myself, “this was a pretty good year.”

Barring any significant tragedy in the next 4 days, 2005 was, for me, a year of generally good news and positive developments. Allow me to cite the significant milestones, in a quasi-sequential order:
– I went 6-0-1 in my wrestling debut on Jan 1 05.
– I was able to go on yet another exciting spring break trip, this time to Boston, MA in March
– Jen and Joe got married in April, amidst much fanfare, libations, and good times
– I met Michelle at that wedding, we started dating in May, and things continue to go just splendidly as of today
– I wrote a novella and earned A’s in both my spring 2005 classes
– I sold Grandma & Grandpa’s LeSabre?, but somehow still managed to “get around” over the summer, thanks in part to Christy’s wheels (June)
– For whatever reason, I didn’t worry about money over the summer
– On August 19, I was hired on as a full-time academic staff member at the Financial Aid office
– I was chosen to be the fiction editor of this year’s Wisconsin Review here at UWO (September)
– On October 2, it was official: the Milwaukee Brewers did NOT have another losing season
– Two of my best friends announced that they’d be getting married in ’06: R Chris Lorch, and Joseph P Knitt
– It was a safe and successful deer hunt (November)
– Despite a grueling work and class schedule, I was able to secure A’s in both my classes again, for the third straight semester
– The aforementioned enjoyable holiday season

In summing up, I guess it’s really no secret that meeting Michelle and getting a real, full-time job were my top two this year, followed closely by the recent realization that all I have left to do is write a thesis and I’ll have a Master’s degree. For such a long time, you (or in this case, I) flounder around and wonder when the hell things are going to start coming together, and for me, it seems 2005 has been the beginning of something.

And sure, in spite of all these good things, there were some unsavory goings on this year, too:
– One of the best friends I had growing up, Ben Wartgow, died in March after an extended fight with cancer
– Joe Knitt’s mom, Terry, had her own cancer scare
– A couple of my friends split with their long-time significant others, and that is certainly never easy
– I had, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most stressful fall on record, what with the pressures of a new job and the volume of work in two English classes—there were times that I was plagued with nightmares about irrevocably screwing up one, the other, or both

Despite these things, I’m still chalking this up as a “very good year.” I look back and there is an extent to which I feel bad for the self that lived through 2002, 2003, as well as some less-than-stellar days late in college, round one. I suppose it actually is important to maintain the ol’ positive outlook and continue to plod on through. Things could get better, or things could worse, but if you’ve got the essentials covered, and you’ve got people who care about you, you’re not doing that bad.

Here’s wishing you all the best as we look forward to 2006. My hope for you is that the coming year will feel as good as this one did to me…

The unthinkable has happened: