writ. dodging classification

Yesterday i had the pleasure of seeing Batman Begins. Mr. Johnny K. and myself met up at the good ol’ treehouse in cockeysville to get some food and beer before we headed over to see the movie. John had seen the flick before, but liked it enough to agree to see it again since I had yet to see the film. Also, he was bored, I was bored, everybody else is off doing other stuff. Anyways. Beer was had, good chicken sandwiches consumed, and zing off to the movies. We did a bit of talking about biking and video games. Coincidentally we had some time before the film enough to head to dick’s sporting goods and look at some new bikes for John, since he’d been saying he definitely needs a new bike (his current one he’s had since he was about 12 i think, thats definitely reason for an upgrade).

Batman Begins, begins. It was pretty much everything and more i was hoping for the film. I really liked it. It got the batman movie franchise back into a darkly told story about a hero who really in his own right is pretty creepy and scary, and rightfully so. Batman, and Bruce Wayne needs to be portrayed in a dark and a little disturbed fashion. I mean there’s just not something right about a guy who runs around in a bat suit and fights crime. So when an actor is playing the alter-ego of that guy (i.e. Bruce Wayne) you have to get the feeling that he really isn’t quite all there himself. Christian Bale plays this role perfectly. He’s perfect for any role where you’re supposed to think he’s just not right in the head, no matter how handsome he’s made up to look.

With that said, Liam Nieson plays Raaz-Ah-Guul perfectly as well. I’ve only really known this character through the Batman: The animated Series, and the episodes with him have to be some of my favorite from the series. The story is a little different than what was written for the cartoon, which is understandable. The character himself is exactly what I was expecting, and well done.

My only commentary on the action for this movie was that I tend to dislike when action is portrayed with zoomed-in and jerky camera motions to portray more action than possibly was being shown by the actors in the film. I think its kind of cheap, and if they’d spent more time on some choreography, they wouldn’t need to resort to this sort of camera trick to give the illusion of more action going on than actually was filmed. I really only tend to notice this sort of thing when I see films in the theater though, so maybe its just disorienting to me when seen on the big screen. I’m sure if i see it again on DVD i won’t even make notice of actions scenes done this way. Even so, there were plenty of well done action scenes in the movie, that didn’t need the above mentioned film technique.

Loved the movie, i highly recommend it. The Scarecrow is a scary bastard….

Maybe.

I road up the North Central Railroad bike trail today that starts in cockeysville and goes all the way up to York PA.

I set my goal at going to the PA state line and coming back, thats 20 miles just to get to the line. I did it .. I’m pooped.

40 miles in 2h52 minutes on a gravel trail…. most of the 20 miles to the state line is slightly up hill .. which was really killing me about 5 miles from my turn around point…

So i figure it’d be a good idea to go cycling up the North Central Railroad trail that starts here in Cockeysville. Don’t worry I’m bringing a camel back, backpack of water and a water bottle. I’ll be fine ;).

I had a fun weekend of visiting my family with Laurie. We went out to dinner with my brother and sister-in-law to this Mexican restaurant that has some pretty good and very strong margaritas. Then on Sunday we were walking around Tyler Arboretum. I’m guessing one of the highlights for Laurie was finding old photo albums that have a billion pictures of me when I was a little kid, and of course embarrassing stories from my parents to go along with them ha ha.

EDIT at 3:15pm: Well when we were driving up to the trail. The temperature on a sign said 101. Who cares ! i got water. And it turns out the NCR trail is mostly shaded by trees, so it really wasn’t a bad ride at all, with the air current moving past you on the bike. It felt really nice actually.

that is all.

So today I got my car in for some warranty service at the BMW dealership. Whats cool about that is that I get a “loaner” car for the day. Yep since my service is going to take a good portion of the day, they let me take a brand new 330i for nothing, just part of the warranty service. I’m really not sure how I like it yet. I’m not sure I’d buy a 3 series, especially these 2006 ones, I’m just not as big a fan of the look, plus the insides I can see are a little not too my likely… but its OK. Hell who am I to complain. Its definitely a smooth ride.

Oh so here’s the other sorta interesting and kind of odd things about it. Below is a picture of the key for this thing:

Oh, uhm yeah that key, is just that, an electronic little key with some short range frequency in it. It doesn’t flip out to produce something more traditionally “key” looking. Its just that thing and you put it in a slot and hit a start “button” to get the car to start. Sorta funny little thing actually.

anyways that is all for today.

I’m done .. final outed today.

I cleaned my room .. rock on .. and dusted.. Holy crap.

I had to run over a belt of a tire from a truck on the Beltway today to which it ripped up the protective shields on the front underside of my car and also screwed up the bottom part of my front bumper .. Looks like I’m going to need to be calling my insurance .. dealer checked it out and made sure there wasn’t anything else that got screwed up. Thankfully it was just the shields and the cosmetic damage to the bumper .. ugh.. nothing i could do about it too .. happened right in front of me .. no time to get out of the way at highway speed.

Thats about my day. Really I’m actually in a pretty good mood.

http://iammikesdomain.com/imagery/lomo01

check it out

I’ll upload more pics later

I find myself thinking this morning about what causes people to start up conversations or talk to random people on the street, in an elevator, or sitting next to a person in traffic or at a light. I’m definately not the most outgoing person. I don’t think talking to random people is bad. I don’t know if it really gets you anything either. In the end maybe its just a mental device people use to pass time while they’re stuck in some sort of line or waiting for something. There’s a lot of these times. What spawned me thinking about these things was when I was sitting at a light this morning a guy looked over from his Audi A4, and said “hey thats a beautiful car”. Hearing him I looked back over and said, “hey thanks” with a smile, and at that point the light changed and driving commenced again. This happens from time to time, randomly at stop lights, or traffic or things like that, I’ll have people do this or if its a long light I’ve even had people get into conversations with me about the car or somethinng like that. All of it short of course. To me though I guess I just don’t understand peoples needs to do this sort of thing. I don’t mind talking to them, and hey I love my car, it is pretty nice, I’m amazed at the fact that its mine most times I come out and get in it. To me though, if I was driving another car and looked over and saw my car at a light, or say a porsche or a corvette, I don’t think i’d even think to say anything. I’d just probably look at it and think to myself “hey thats a sweet car.” (hell even with driving my car i see other sweet cars and think that) I’d figure whoever is driving it already knows that since they own it right?

Now i’m not annoyed at this happening. It just feels a little awkward sometimes. I guess cars are just one of those things.

On another note, i totally got rained on while driving to work today with the top down. The kicker is, that if i hadn’t stopped to put the top up I probably would have ended up a lot less wet than I did, since I got out of the rain about a minute after I had stopped to put the top up in the rain. Go figure… Oh well that was fun.

I find myself thinking today about the tour de france. I’ve been following it about as hard as I follow it every year. Which means when I’ve got time, i sit down and watch the end of whatever stage is on that day, and I’ve tracked and read the news logs off of the tour website for the day. Its pretty neat to read each report as they came in sequentially. It almost gives you a feel of actually watching the race, just compacted down into little reports that you can read in 15 minutes instead of watching the 4 hours of the race. Todays stage was won by a guy named Alexandre Vinokourov. He and another rider got out quite a bit in front of the peloton on todays mountain stage, and while they were pursued by about 20 some riders being led by Lance Armstrong’s Discovery team, they were not caught. Lance and the crew with him tried, to reclaim the time lost, but could only make up to being 1 minute 15 seconds behind the 2 leaders. It wasn’t quite as important for Lance to make up the whole gap today, because neither of the 2 made up much time on Lance’s overall lead with that 1min15sec time gap. The big thing for the rest of the field was the big group that came with lance’s attack. All of his rivals who wanted to stay in contention came on this attack of the 2 leaders. These including Jan Ulrich, and Ivan Basso.

But I digress… for the most part i’d say you don’t care about this.. but I like writing it none the less. The big thing I’ve been thinking about is… that i kind of want Lance to lose… sort of. I mean of the big names, Lance is the guy i want to see win. I almost really want to see some darkhorse rider no name young guy come out and challenge lance for his win. Somebody nobody thinks of. There’s a couple of people in the standings right now that have a chance to do that. Who knows though. In the end I guess i really do want to see Lance get a 7th tour win and retire like that, it just seems fitting. The guys physical fitness is amazing.

Well its 2 weeks now till I start my terminal leave. Then I’ll have about till the beginning of September where I’ll basically just be doing my own thing. I’ve been thinking about this time off today. I think I’ve got a plan for what I want to do. People keep suggesting I take some trips and such. I really don’t know what I’m up for though. I know I need a plan. I don’t want to just sit around and do nothing. On the other hand I really don’t think i need to feel obligated to be traveling, just because I have the time. I’ve done my fair share of traveling on my own, and honestly I like to share traveling with someone else. It doesn’t mean as much to me if I’m just going to go on my own. With that in mind, anyone I’d want to travel with, isn’t really going to just be off work like I am for a month and a half. So i feel like I need to do things more towards my own personal betterment. I plan to golf some. I plan to take on some projects of my own, with either computers and electronics. I feel like I’m obligated to build something. I just have that itch. I want something to show for this time off.

Also, i think my most appealing idea so far, is to take a few solo biking day trips. Something like seeing how far up the Potomac Canal Path I can get.. or ride my bike as far as I can up into Pennsylvania on the bike path near my apartment in cockeysville. Something akin to when I road my uncles bike for an almost 40 mile trek up and down the coast of southern California from Oceanside to Del Mar and back. Maybe if i can figure out how to transport it in my car, i could even drive it over to Ocean City, MD and ride up the oceanside highway.

Anyways thats what I’m thinking of this morning…