Notes from Jeff Running

Movie Reviews – Long overdue

Shrek 2

Troy
Troy is a historic epic. It has great battle scenes and plenty of attention to detail.

The Day After Tomorrow
The Day After Tomorrow is a typical summer popcorn flick. Unfortunately, it is too typical. The film is a special effects display with a fairly thin plot. I had problems immersing myself in the plot and constantly found myself thinking about trivial plot points. Even the special effect couldn’t keep me distracted. Although the film was worth seeing for the effects the lack of an interesting plot makes it impossible to watch more than once.

Walking Tall
Good action flick. Nothing special.

Blinding refrigerator

The other day I was putting a jar of blue cheese dressing back into the refrigerator when it bumped something on the ceiling. I kneeled down and discovered that for the last year only one of the two light bulbs in the fridge had been working. So with a quick turn of the bulb I doubled the lighting in the fridge. Now I’m blinded every time I open the door.

Too Many Magazines

A short while ago we exchanged some of our airline miles for magazine subscriptions. We went from receiving zero magazines a week to receiving anywhere from three to six a week. I've been spending quite a lot of time reading during the last few weeks. To add to the current volume of reading material we just started receiving Lucky and Glamour magazines courtesy of someone who forgot to provide a forwarding address to the post office. It appears that the magazines used our forwarding address information from our last apartment. Apparently all it took was the same last name to get them confused.

Oh, and about Lucky magazine. I can't believe that anyone would subscribe to it. Its motto is "The Magazine about Shopping". It's like paying to receive ads. But then again it’s not marketed to me.

Where’s George

I began entering bills May 1st 2000. If I remember right I was attempting to avoid studying for finals. As of today I have entered 107 bills worth $572 and have only received 9 hits. A hit is defined as another person find your bill and return to the site to log it's current location. I remember that when I first started entering bills I wasn’t very good about marking my bills. It’s been about two years since I last entered a bill. Hopefully I’ll do a little better this time around.

WheresGeorge.com

Almost all of the fun is derived from finding out where one of your bills has traveled to. I've had two bills that received two hits after I entered them. The first bill traveled from Minneapolis to Sauk Centre, MN to Bismarck, ND over the course of two years. The other bill traveled from Minneapolis to Duluth, MN to Sioux Falls, SD over the course of just under a year.

Friday Poker Game

Last Friday we played Texas Holdem at Mark's. i only ended up down $10. Mark didn't fair so well and Dave made out like a bandit. I didn't make it home until close to 4 in the morning. That's what happens when you follow up a game with bull riding on TV.

Hey, Matt. If you're out there let me know what you're up to. Mark and I both tried to contact you but couldn't get a hold of you. We're both guessing that you're in Iowa.

Sneezing "Bless You"

Here’s a moral question. Well sort of. Whenever anyone sneezes at work there is a quick response over the cube walls of “Bless you”. The air in our area seems to encourage sneezing. I usually sneeze two or three times a day. When the company moved half of the employees on our floor a few months ago, another employee was moved into the area that originally was located half way across the floor. Even he has started sneezing on a daily basis. Let’s just say that everyone in the area sneezes a lot.

So, now to the question.
Originally I though saying “Bless you” was odd. It dates back to a medieval practice. They believed that sneezing was your body’s way of expelling evil spirits. By blessing the person the evil spirit could not return. After I read that information I didn’t want to continue the practice and stapped saying it. Well, MB informed me that it was rude not to say it and that the practice no longer was intended to stop evil spirits and was instead a polite nicety. So now I say “Bless you”. But in a childish manner in my head I think “with sneezes”. So in a manner I've changed the polite exchange into a curse.

So the actual question is.
Have I been causing all of the sneezing in my area? Should I stop this childish act that I only started doing in college?