i'm so sad. ............................................................................................................................

i'm going to miss the sixth annual edition of BADCALFF, or Brent and Dales Cheap-Ass Labor day Film Festival. you may dismiss it as too lowbrow for a film festival, but it's a lot of fun. the gist of it is this: after a pot luck barbeque at Dale's house, everyone heads over to the local dollar theater where, other than a scheduled dinner break, you basically watch 5 or 6 movies all in a row, moving from screen to screen. this is easily accomplished because Dale has called the theater weeks in advance, gotten the movie schedule, and planned out the entire day's itinerary. you just buy all the movie tickets when you arrive and you're set for the day. some are the movies you saw earlier in the year but want to see again, some are movies you missed in the first-run theaters, and the rest are the movies you either kinda wanted to see but refused to pay good money for or were too embarressed to admit to wanting to see them.

i've only been able to go to one festival, but it was enough to make me sad that i'm unable to go this year. maybe next year?

it was one of the best beach days this past saturday. hot sun, cool breeze, warm water; what could be better? after i'd had enough, i went cell phone shopping with my cousin "yuko." we checked out the various providers and pondered which cell phones we liked. in case you're curious, we determined the deal at t-mobile was superior to those at cingular or verizon. (i forbid shopping at sprint.) the Motorola V330 we chose takes pictures and video and has blue-tooth capabilities, although none of that really was the draw. It simply wasn't big and ugly like most everything else we saw. i was shocked at the crappy phone selection; i thought technology and design was supposed to get better, not worse. (brent, i saw the phone you got. very nice! not as small as i thought though. it must be all those features.)

yesterday was good church. Our pastor was back from his 5-week vacation. i WANT one of those!

i'm going to argentina. (have i blogged this already?) i officially registered and gave my deposit for the trip this past sunday at church, so i should be in rosario the last few days in march 2006. now i need some language lessons. dumb american educational system: how could they let me get through 19 years of school without learning any spanish?

my church is organizing a big crusade, so there will be a whole lot of us going over. and since they keep the choir under lock and key, i probably won't even notice that i can't communicate with anyone. But this missions trip includes the young adult choir too (i'm in the adult choir, sometimes called the old people's choir!), so that should make it a little more interesting. it's always good to meet more people, and they're more my age group.

but that's a long ways off. for now, i'm just hoping for beach weather this weekend.

the theme this past week has been "do overs." for example, at work we've been dealing with folks who like to change their minds, which means we're always redoing the drawings. (and yes, they've already started construction.) Now i'm redoing them again, sometimes going back to how they were originally. so much pointless time-wasting is involved with "do overs." (redundant, i know)

Example two is the weather problem at my apartment. you see, it's been raining poo. the toilet on the floor above ours was backing up yesterday, spilling sewage into our bathroom. after scrubbing down the walls, fixtures, and floor with bleach, we experienced yet another poo storm. so now i'll have to re-disinfect. what a nightmare. (see ryan's blog for the start of a catchy song related to this incident: feed me architecture)

but not all repeats are terrible. this saturday i went to the beach again. i could live there.

is a scone not just a failed attempt at a muffin?

As I write, It's 6pm and 93 degrees. We should just shut the city down and head to the beaches. It's really not worth it. Last night was perfect bike-riding weather, so I pedalled over the Williamsburg Bridge (which is just a giant hill!), across manhattan to the West side, and down to the World Trade Center. I went back basically the same way. I never know exactly where i'm going on my bike; I just know the direction i want to go and head that way as much as possible depending on traffic openings and where the streets go. it always seems to work out and i get where i'm try to go. but right now i'd like to just stay inside where it's a/c'ed.

Like Jerry Seinfeld's TV character, I am a big fan of cereal. I have a bowl and half or so for breakfast every day. The actual kind of cereal changes every year or so, but the morning routine stays the same: milk and cereal.

Now that i'm going to the gym and at least pretending to work out i 've been thinking about what else can change in my daily routines that would be healthier or cheaper or whatever. Thinking about my cereal diet, i realized that i consume a lot of dairy. (Plus i'm a big fan of cheese, being from Wisconsin and all.) So i decided to try soy milk to see if 1. i could bear the taste, and 2. if switching helped my weight at all.

This morning was the test. Would it be too unlike milk and too gross to eat? well, the taste was fine. it's different than milk, but reasonable. But by the time i finished my bowl of cereal, my throat was pretty swollen and it was difficult to swollow. Also, my palms were really itchy for the next hour or two, and i was producing all kinds of mucus and coughing it up. Sooooo, it doesn't look like i'll be having the rest of that soy milk i bought. and it seems i have some sort of soy allergy.

I love mondays.