DSU Crew Goes to Minnesota
All summer, I had hoped the DSU friends would venture up to Minnesota to visit and take in Valleyfair. It never happened. But here we were, the last full weekend the park was open to the public, and the gang decided to take the trip. Friday afternoon, Dave, Geiszler, Schuh, Drotzman, Craig, Cooney, and I piled into Dave’s parents’ van and we made the drive up to the Cities to stay with the LaPlants at the apartment I still technically am paying rent for. Friday night, we were joined by Patrick, Vincent, and Feeney and went to the bar. Saturday, the LaPlants and Cooney had to work at Valleyfair, but the rest of us took in the early Twins/White Sox game at the Dome. It started at 11am because they had to change the baseball field over to a football field for the Gophers game. Stupid Metrodome. But the game was great. Santana shut down the White Sox, striking out 13 over eight innings, and Nathan struck out the side in the ninth in a 5-0 win. But the real highlight was an eighth inning Joe Mauer foul ball that was hit to us down the third base line. It seemed to ricochet off of everyone, but it went to the end of the line to Craig and Geiszler. The replay will show you that Craig was cradling the ball, about to grab it, when Geiszler grabbed it from his arms and held the ball up. So Geiszler was the lucky recipient of the baseball. That night we went out for supper at Applebee’s and hung around the apartment. Sunday, it was time to hit up Valleyfair and use up our free passes. We were especially cheap as we parked the van in the employee parking lot and walked around to the front entrance. It was a perfect day to go to the park. It was sunny, warm, and no one was there. We just ran to the front of all the lines. The highlight of the day was our first trip on RipTide, the new ride from this year that I had already ridden on a dozen times or so. But for some reason the ride was way wilder this time. It flipped over at least two more times than normal. I had never been so disoriented in my life. My head was spinning and I had no idea what was up or down. It took a minute to get back to normal. So overall the weekend was quite the time.

Wagon Train to Embark on Three-Year World Tour
Bryan Ahrendt, Jeff Landhuis, and I grouped up for our first Systems Analysis and Design class project late Sunday night. For those of you who don’t know, the class is about the process of implementing a new computer program of some sort into a business… er something. I don’t even know, and I’ve been there for three weeks. It’s a weird class. Anyway, our first assignment was to pick a project or business of some sort, and create a feasibility report examining projected sales, profit, etc. for our new system we would be putting in place. It was almost 11pm when we met in the TC to sit down and get to work. I was staring at the homecoming artwork in the TC windows when I saw a picture of a cowboy (it’s a cowboy theme this year). I said, “Hey, how about our project is a folk trio and we account for ticket sales, costume expenditures, that kind of stuff.” Bryan and Jeff seemed skeptical at first, but soon we had agreed. We would do the folk trio project, and our trio name was Wagon Train, which for some reason was written on the windows in paint as well. After an hour, I was busy writing our paper, Bryan was crunching some numbers, and Jeff was doing some research on the folk music industry. Suddenly, we all kind of stopped what we were doing. It hit me. “Uhh, guys,” I started. “Is this project supposed to have something to do with Systems Analysis and Design?” Here we had forgotten the point of the project and were worrying about buying lassos and cowboy hats instead of building some sort of computer program. Rather than scrap our whole idea and start over, I proposed we still be Wagon Train, but we’re also building our own ticketing system and that would be the project. The project is also supposed to be over a three-year period, so we have to pretend like we’re embarking on a three-year world tour. Well, we’ll certainly have the most unique group project.

Softball Win Streak Continues
I didn’t even realize I was on the intramural softball team until about 7pm Monday evening. It was a terrible time for me to find out, too, since the much-anticipated “Arrested Development” opener was on. But I just couldn’t resist heading out to the diamond to try to defend our co-ed softball championship from the spring. Jon Waldman is the team captain, and he is a hell of a recruiter. We never have a bad player on the team—male or female. And it showed Monday, as we crushed the other team 21-9. I pitched and picked up the victory, and went 3-for-4 at the plate with 3 doubles, 3 RBI, and 3 runs scored. I probably will play again Tuesday, but after that it looks like I’ll be working during the games the rest of the week.

Top Ten List | Today’s Topic: Arrested Development Characters
In lieu of the season opener of the single greatest current TV show, here is my list of the top ten “Arrested” characters.
1. Gob (Will Arnett)
2. Lindsay (Portia DeRossi)
3. Michael (Jason Bateman)
4. George Michael (Michael Cera)
5. Tobias (David Cross)
6. Maybe (Alia Shawkat)
7. George, Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor)
8. Buster (Tony Hale)
9. Lucille (Jessica Walter)
10. Oscar (Jeffrey Tambor)

Well that is all for Monday night. By the way, an awesome show is CMT’s “Crossroads,” which combines a rock artist and country artist and they play each other songs. Last night’s episode of Bon Jovi and Sugarland was great. Speaking of Bon Jovi, their new album is out today, and when their tour hits the Cities November 11, Jason is even up for coming along (if I do indeed decide to go).