So what did I do?

Didn't I mention something about things happening this past weekend?

So lets see; first, I didn't float the Madison River. I think I had mentioned that Steph's friend Linzy was in town. She had come out to Bozeman last summer as well, but before Steph and I started dating. While here a big group went floating and she really enjoyed it. So when she came this year she was really looking forward to floating again. Unfortunately, it did not happen.

The only nice day of the weekend was going to be Saturday, and it wasn't guaranteed to be beautiful, the weather has been all over the place lately. We had decided the night before that we were going to leave for the river between noon and 1pm "no matter what". Well, that didn't last. We had friends coming into town but we didn't know what time they were going to arrive. Another friend who had talked to them said that they were interested in going and if we could wait a little that would be great. Fine, we'll wait. We rationalized that the water would be a little warmer if we waited a little longer.

We finally got a call from our friends and they said that they were at the bike shop building the bike they had come into town for. This was about 1:30pm and I was assured that it would be only about 30 minutes until they were done. Fine, 2pm would work--we'd be out there pretty late, but it wouldn't be too bad. So we all sat around and watched the Olympics while waiting for the call. We lost a little track of the time and by about 3:30 we were all pretty unhappy. We decided to go over to the Bozeman Beach which is just a little pond so people could swim a little bit. As we left we contacted our friends to let them know that floating was no longer in the works, it was 4pm and we probably wouldn't have gotten in the water until 5:30 or so, we would have been freezing by the end of our float.

So we all met over at the beach and the ladies went for a swim and the two guys just chilled out and drank some "cheerleader beer". Another friend had somehow got his hands on 4 cases of Bacardi Silver Limon so he wanted people to drink as much of it as possible. We struggled through those while the ladies swam in the rain. It was cold and windy and sometimes rainy--I was thinking that it probably would have been a pretty miserable float. Oh well.

After that we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant and then headed over to my current roommate's soon-to-be new place for a party/bonfire. They were having a going away/welcome to the place party. So we went out, had a beer or two out of the keg and waited for the bonfire to start. For most of the time while it was light out I played with the pack of dogs that was there. I think there were about 10 dogs at this party, and most of them were Blue Heelers. I don't know if I've ever met one of these dogs before but they are high strung and can be nasty. They would all gang up on the other, non-blue dogs at the party. A buddy had to take his dog, a big Chesapeake Retriever, home before we even got there because all of the other dogs were trying to take a piece out of him.

They were fun to throw sticks for though. Imagine a pack of yipping dingos, jumping and barking all around you, waiting for a big stick to be launched. When I threw it they would all take off at once and either pick up the stick or try to get it from the dog that had actually picked it up.

The bonfire ended up being quite a disappointment. It was hardly bigger than a normal campfire and my group of friends was the only one sitting around it for the most part. Steph was the only one who actually put more wood on the fire! They had tons and tons of wood to use, but no one wanted to use it. By the time we left, most of the people the party was for had already left or were just chilling out inside. It was really weird.

So that was Saturday. On Sunday a few friends headed to The Lewis and Clark Caverns. They were exceptionally cool. It was a nearly 2 hour walking tour underground up and down stairs and through tight tunnels. Most of the time you couldn't believe that what you were looking at was real. It looked like everything was straight off of a movie set or something. The tour itself came with too much cheese. The rehearsed jokes and quips contained way too many groaners for my comfort. When we did receive actual information it was usually very interesting. It cost $10 which I was a little leary of (I had fairly recently been kind of burned for $15) but it ended up being well worth it. It's a tour I would recommend to everyone making a trip to Montana.

Later that day I decided to sit down and watch a couple of movies that Steph and Linzy had rented earlier in the week. One I had been interested to see and the other I was a little leary of. The first, which I had wanted to see was Monster starring the Oscar winning Charlize Theron. The film is certainly disturbing and Theron gives quite the performace, completely transforming into a crazed serial killer. The one thing about the film that is a little hard to swallow is how the director/writer seems to be trying to justify the killings. Many of the guys killed were scum of the earth and were guilty of punishible offences, but I didn't like how the movie was trying to make us feel sorry for the crazy, murderous lady. I wouldn't necessarily call my time watching the movie "enjoyable" but it was cool to see an actress do something completely different.

The second movie, which never really piqued my interest was Something's Gotta Give starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton. I was really pleasantly surprised by this movie. There were lots of easy laughs and pretty good dialog. It certainly wasn't perfect and lots of stuff seemed forced and unlikely, but hey, it was a romantic comedy. Jack and Diane worked really well together, in a few scenes it really didn't seem like a movie and it was like watching two real people just chatting with each other. I have to say that watching this movie was more enjoyable than the previous one, a few good laughs and a nice, tight, happy ending tying up pretty much all of the strings. Like Steph had mentioned before, I can defintely see how people like our parents would have really enjoyed the movie.

So that was the weekend.