Hey... you broke my Benjamin!
This past Wednesday was "Ash Wednesday." For all you non-Catholics, Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of a period of time called "Lent." Lent signifies the 40 days and 40 nights that Satan tempted Jesus in the desert by walking next to him saying, "I've got water... don't you want some water? Mmm... water is so good. All you need to do is join me and I'll give you some water. Join me, son, and together we can rule the universe." Maybe someone else said that last bit. Now-a-days, Lent signifies a period of time when millions of Catholics give up chocolate in an attempt to prove something to themselves. Something like "it's possible for me to not eat chocolate for 40 days!" This year, I'm doing something different. I'm not giving anything up. I'm going to try, instead, to go to the gym everyday. Additionally, instead of not eating meat Wednesday (Ash Wednesday is a day of fast and abstinence from meat)... I fasted from sunrise to sunset. It was interesting... and not as hard as you'd think. What made it difficult, though was the fact that I went to bed last night hungry... so I woke up and was already hungry. None-the-less, I was able to do the "fasting" thing pretty easily. I'm thinking of trying to do it every other Friday (instead of the no-meat thing). I mean, I think the origin of not eating meat on Fridays was actually to make sure the fish was sold in the local markets before the markets were closed for the weekend. *huge sigh* This is my 'largest' departure from Catholisism yet. But if someone doesn't take a serious look at why "we" do what we do... I'll keep drifting further and further into the nothingness that is... well... everyone else, I guess.

Wednesday, I did what everyone who's facing 40 days without... well, nothing... I went to Best Buy to spend money! I got a REALLY late birthday card from my aunt and uncle, and I was looking to spend the sweet, free, birthday money. I decided to finally buy myself Napoleon Dynamite... as I saw it once and figured it was a movie I'd like to see a few more million times. And I also had Breaking Benjamin's album "We Are Not Alone." I wanted to buy it because, when I was playing this game... I created a ring entrance that was pretty sweet. I fell in love with this song... and it has an ironically named title, if you're following at home. My ring entrance was SWEET... it opened with two lines of fire moving up the ramp to the entrance... and then my character came in, stood still, and sparks came up and hit him from both sides as he bowed his head. It was AWESOME. And the song went so sweet with the entrance... it was awesome. If only the game itself was as much fun as creating that introduction. But, alas, it was not.
So I had $30 worth of fun in my hands (gross!!!!) and I was just looking around when I spotted Eddie Izzard's Glorious, Definite Article, and Unrepeatable all on DVD. I've got Glorious' VHS tape... but the other two I don't have but on CD (thanks Bohne). And I knew, when I saw them, that I was going to buy them. It was just like that... So $30 that I DID have turned into a billion dollars that I don't. That's America, I guess.

Hey, everyone! Congratulations are in order. For the past... like two months, Senior Airman Kenneth John Huhtala has been attending ALS, which is an Airman Leadership... um... School? Anyway, he's been taking these classes so that he can sew on his Staff Sergeant stripes... and Thursday he finished ALS! That means that the only step left for him is to actually get the "go ahead" to sew on his stripes (I hope I'm using the correct terminology and not just sounding like a douche). And then he'll FINALLY be a Staff Sergeant. So I can call him Serge and the slew of nicknames I came up with back when I decided that I wanted him to be a Sergeant. Anyway, Congratulations Ken!

Thursday night I had my Conservatory class. One of the funniest things that happened was the Gellman asked Thomas (a hilarious guy from Canada) to explore and heighten his feelings of anger in one scene. So he, Thomas, spent 60 seconds simply exploring and heightening... and it was very funny! The rest of class was normal and nothing to write home (or here) about.

Late Thursday night (read: very early Friday morning), I finally finished KOTOR II. I told Ken that I like the story in the first one better... but the gameplay to KOTOR II is better. I mean that I'm much more likely to repeat my 80 (EIGHTY!!!) hours to beat the second game than the 60-some (SIXTY... SOME) hours I spent on the first one. What's another solid day of doing nothing but playing that game between friends? (huh?) Besides, in the first one, my character was weak... even at the end. I was too worried that he was going to get totally killed by Malak (which he was repeatedly)... and in the second one my guy was easily and expertly hacking through rooms full of Sith at the end. I was like "Oh! I'm so awesome!" in pretty much every room. To me, that's fun. Anyway... now that I'm finally done with that game, I feel like I have more free time (isn't that weird?)... so I'm interested to see what I do with it. Ken mentioned possibly coming to Chicago for a few days... and it'll take me weeks to effectively clean my apartment (I'm not really kidding), so I've got that to look forward to. And Ken keeps talking about challenging me to a game of Madden 2005... so I might practice up to make sure I slaughter him. Heehee... I mean, to make sure it's as humiliating an experience as possible. Right.