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According to blogger, the last time I updated this page was Feb. 16, 2004. The good news is, that’s less than a year. The bad news is, 10 months is not exactly the update schedule I had in mind. To be perfectly honest, I’m just not the kind of person that feels the need to tell the world what he’s thinking everyday. Oh sure, I enjoy writing this stuff, but the problem is really time, or more accurately the fact that this really isn’t a priority. At the end of most nights, all I want to do is fall into bed, and get to sleep as fast as possible.

Earlier this year I had pretty much given up on the blog. It was interesting, I enjoyed knowing that a few people read it, but I just wasn’t motivated enough to write something each night. Well, tonight is one of those nights where something just has to be posted, and then the link has to be put in my away message.

It all started when Jeremy asked me after dinner, “Hey Mike, wanna go see Ocean’s 12 with Gary and I tonight?” Since it’s Friday night, and I definitely wasn’t going to do homework, I decided that we’d check it out and then go. The major concern was the fact that none of us has a car on campus. So we did a little checking, figured out the bus route, called the theater to make sure there were still tickets, and decided we’d catch the 11:10 show.

Just before we were planning on heading out, I did a little more checking on the bus route. This turned out to be a good thing, because while the route that we had planned on taking stopped where we wanted to go, it doesn’t stop anywhere on Central Campus. A little more checking turned up the right bus route; it also turned up the bus schedule. The bus schedule that said that the AATA doesn’t run busses after 11:30. The bus schedule that told us that once we got to the theater, we wouldn’t have a ride back.

In retrospect, I should have seen this coming much, much sooner. The city can’t afford to run busses all night, when people are sleeping. What I really should have seen coming was Jeremy’s solution to the problem: “Why don’t we just walk back?”

Those of you that know Jeremy won’t be surprised. He’s a runner, in fact he hasn’t missed a day running in over 1000 days. He and Gary ran the Chicago marathon this year, finishing in about 3:30, which was what they expected. He’s a little off the wall too, and just crazy enough to get a guy like me to live a little. (See the below pictures for more. Yes, he is playing frisbee, outdoors, in the snow, with no shirt on…)

From here I’ll give you the abbreviated timeline:

9:30pm – Leave the dorm, walk over to the Union, where the bus stops
9:35pm – Check the schedule again, hang out in the Union for 20m while we wait for the bus
9:53pm – Get on the bus, ride it all around it’s crazy twisted route
10:25pm – Get to the theater, realize in outrage that there’s no student discount, and that they are far more expensive than the most expensive theater back home
11:10pm – Movie starts

Great movie, highly recommended. Though I must say, seeing Matt Damon in the role of the bumbling, eager to please apprentice was painful after seeing him as the elite killing machine in the Bourne movies.

1:15am – Movie ends. We realize just how far we have to walk, and how chilly it is outside

And we start walking. And walk. And walk. It’s snowing, chilly, windy, and there are parts of the walk where the sidewalk just disappears.

Finally, at 3:05am, we get back to the dorm, pretty cold and tired, but happy. It was a lot of fun, and I definitely don’t regret it.

Official distance walked (mapquest rules) = 5.25mi
Temperature = 30* F
Total time for one movie = 5:35

I’m beat.