Movies at the drive-in!

I went to the Keno here in Kenosha tonight to see a couple of movies with my parents. It was a fully day; I worked 'till 6, biked home, and spent just enough time there to get stuff together before packing folks and things into my car. We stopped at Walgreens to pick up some snacks, then drove off to the Keno, whose box office opens at 7:00.

Truth be told, I was primarily there to take photographs, as rumor has it that this is the Keno's last year. This is sad, but not surprising given the bind so many small theatres are in that can't make the switch to digital. Anyway, I had a great time, got a bunch of photos of the drive-in, and even a couple of my thanks to my mother. I'll post more when I can.

I feel like I ought to make a perfunctory attempt at movie reviews, but I'm really not the right person. My neurological facial recognition deficit often makes it difficult for me to follow movies. Perhaps partly because of that, movies aren't really my thing and I rarely go out to see them. (This is ironic, considering that movie palaces are some of my favorite buildings and I think the cultural context of movie exhibition is fascinating.) The first movie was 2 Guns, which was an action movie with a couple of male leads who did a lot of shooting and driving cars around very fast. It was ok. The second movie was The Wolverine, which had one male lead who did no shooting, but a lot of slicing people up and driving cars around very fast, but with fewer crashes. Ok, were those reviews adequate?

I enjoyed the second more, just because I like the comic book character. I also was pleased that I could catch and understand the occasional snatch of Japanese, like "No eigo" or "Gaijin da". It made me miss attending lessons in Japanese though. I ate a cheeseburger purchased from the refreshment stand at intermission, and also photographed the inside. The burger was best described as adequate, but somehow that made it the perfect food for the venue.

Prior to the first movie, my mother walked around with me as I wandered the site composing photographs. At one point, as I was trying to line up some shots that showed the neat way the lines of now-empty speaker poles curved around the grounds, she said that my grandfather would probably have really liked watching me work. That made me happy; I think that's true, and it's a nice thought. At one point, I saw some people playing dominoes on a card table behind the tailgate of their van; I chatted with the briefly about the theatre and asked if I could photograph them. My mother commented again on how comfortable I am being social with strangers these days, and jokingly asked what drugs I was taking. This made me smile as well; I'm pretty well settled into my new ways of social interaction these days, but sometimes I'm reminded of how far I've come.

I just took a quick shower and am going to get to bed very shortly. I'm going to sleep in a little later and take my car to school, but I'm still only going to get 7 hours or so of sleep. Soon I really need to start planning and packing for my trip, and reading some papers by the professor I have a meeting with next Tuesday.


At the Keno - Pic-a-day 6 August 2013

Copyright my mother 2013

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I was working on cleaning up, catching up on my budget, reading papers, and thinking about what to bring to Canada when my dad asked about getting the old Schwinn cruiser in the basement set up for him. He's been doing much more exercise as part of cardio rehab, and he thought it would be nice to be able to do some riding. Maybe even with me. I've been planning on checking it out and seeing what it needs to be ridable since he brought up the idea a month or two ago but hadn't quite gotten around to it. I decided I ought to look it over before leaving for Canada, so I brought it out and learned it needed an inner tube. I suggested that he pick up a couple at some point so I could install them once I got back.

I thought about it more and went back downstairs to see if he wanted to go out and get them tonight. Yeah, I've got other stuff to do, but when I thought more about how neat it would be to help my dad have another option for exercise and at the same time enable him to potentially go out and do something with me that I love doing (bicyling), I realized that other stuff could wait.

So we went out and got tubes and I just took a bicycle ride with my dad for the first time in, he estimates, 20 years or more. It was so awesome!

I wish I'd thought to have him take a picture of us!

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As well as going for short but wonderful bike rides with family members (one of them at least), I'm working on money matters tonight. I already regaled you with the story of the summer financial aid misunderstanding. To add to that, I tried to make a late class registration change and learned that I'm locked out until I pay the outstanding tuition. How aggravating.

So I caught up on my bank account, and thought about how much financial aid to accept. I think I could squeak by on just grants this semester, but it would be tough and I'd be stressing about finances more than I usually am. So I decided to once again accept the subsidized loans as well. I got my monthly letter today from the bank that holds my student loan from when I was getting my IT certifications in Michigan. It's nice to see that number slowly shrinking over the years. And just as neat is seeing the capital-to-interest ratio swing every so slowly in my favor. When I was gainfully employed, I was paying extra to push it faster, and I'm finally down to about $3700 on a 5.25% loan. I've cut the outstanding balance by half I think. Though I still have most of three years left to pay on it, it's nice to be making progress.

That said, the amount I owe for my current undergraduate experience keeps going further up. It should be close to $15000 after this semester. Still, interest rates on these subsidized loans have remained at 3.4% since I started school, which is pretty good. Hopefully I can manage that even if I don't manage to get into grad school.

As I was working on my numbers, my brother, the recent law school graduate, came in. I told him what I was working on and we talked a bit about financial aid. He now owes, he told me, approximately two-hundred thousand dollars. That's $200,000. The interest would be about $1.50 a minute. That does make me feel a bit better. As for him, he's planning on working in the public sector, which will provide for loan forgiveness. I think it's so cool that he wants to be a public defender.

Anyway, now that I know how much money I have in my account, I can write my college a check for most of $900 tomorrow to make sure that's taken care of before I leave with Danae.

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In other news, I cleaned over 2000 messages out of my Gmail inbox. When I'm stressy, it's relaxing to do something that exerts control over some aspect of my life, even if it's something small like that. Yay!