Of Miles Rausch

Winter Wonderlanden

TweetWell, it sure has been a while, hasn’t it. I won­der how many blog posts start out that way. I’m will­ing to bet it’s a very large num­ber. Like, ninety a hun­dred. What’s going on, Miles Man? Hit me with the Newsizzle.

News­bleep

With Bryce home, and my new cam­era in tow, it was time for another News­bleep. This one went on the theme of a “Pimp My Ride” show, and I tried to play up some of the cheesy motifs of such shows: the “vic­tim”, cool teenage lan­guage, using fam­ily mem­bers as col­lat­eral, mock­ing the vehi­cle in dire need of “pimp­ing”, nick­names of the crew so they seem more like a hip-hop posse than car mechan­ics, and (of course) the “reveal”.

This one was tricky. All of Holli’s stuff had to get shot on Sat­ur­day, but Tony and Tyler were going to be gone on Sat­ur­day and wouldn’t get back until Sun­day. Lind­sey didn’t want to shoot Sat­ur­day, but said “maybe” for Sun­day. Then, on Sun­day, she went fish­ing, so we had to shoot her on Mon­day (and cut a bit of her part). That and I had about two or three more char­ac­ters than the orig­i­nal script had fea­tured. But, it went well, and you can’t really tell that any­thing seems shot out of place. So far, the response has been pos­i­tive. And, so far, I’d say that it’s my favorite. But, of course, the lat­est one is always my favorite.

Also, it was nice to get videos from fam­ily and friends to put together a “Happy Hol­i­days” mon­tage at the end. I really liked that, and I think I’ll work in “Call for Videos” again. I don’t know if I’ll use Medi­afire again, however.

Visit my News­bleep 007: Christ­mas and Must-Nots set.

Merry Christ­mas

Of course, the list:

• From Holli:
  • 1/2 of the new video camera
  • love
  • box­ers
  • sweats
• From Mom and Dad:
  • 1/2 of the new video camera
  • 1/4 love
  • video cam­era case
• From Larry and Carol:
  • “The Office” t-shirt
  • 1/2 of a tripod
  • 1/2 of Apples to Apples
  • 1/2 of a Texas Road­house gift certificate
  • 1 ticket for Cen­tury Theatre
• From Bryce and Lindsey:
  • Kids in the Hall Sea­son 1
  • Kids in the Hall Sea­son 2 (still coming)
• From Adam and Cari:
  • 1/2 of Deal or No Deal
• From G’ma and G’pa
  • $$$$
• From Aunt Sue:
  • box of cereal
  • Psy­cho
• From Aunt Karin:
  • Gift cer­tifi­cate (which she unfor­tu­nately mis­placed, but I’m sure it’ll turn up)
• From Molly:
  • “I’m Prob­a­bly Lying” t-shirt
• From David:
  • Some­thing awe­some that I can’t talk about until every­one has theirs
• From Tony:
  • 2 bags of microwave popcorn
  • $10 gift card to Mr. Movies
• From Holly and Bob:
  • Some­thing, but I’m not sure what yet as they still have it
• From Santa:
  • a cal­en­dar of New York City

Christ­mas was good. It seemed a lit­tle anti-climatic see­ing as I got the video cam­era, my big gift, so early, but it was still good. And the bag is some­thing I was plan­ning on buy­ing myself, any­way. All-in-all, it was a pre­dictable Christ­mas. I think I requested or expected a higher per­cent­age of my presents this year that usual. I’m not sure I’ll be so exact­ing next year. A big “Thank You” to every­one for your gifts. I love them!

View my Christ­mas 2006 set.

Our Anniver­sary Date

Holli’s and my anniver­sary was on Decem­ber 21^st, and we had big plans, buddy, but it didn’t work out. Instead, we ended up stay­ing at my apart­ment because of the roads. We did, how­ever, have a nice present exchange and meal at Skipper’s.

Then, on the 27^th, Holli came up to Sioux Falls, and we had the date we had planned for the 21^st. We at at Johnny Carino’s. It was good. I had a hard time choos­ing my meal, and the wait­ress wasn’t great. At one point, another wait­ress came over with two plates and said, “We have the fetuc­cini alfredo.” Holli and I looked at each other. Nei­ther of us ordered that. She even­tu­ally gave the food to another table. Then, later, she came back with a to-go pack­age in her hands. “We packed up your food to go.” And I thought, “Why? Are you kick­ing us out?” We gave her blank stares, and protested that it must not be this table. As it turned out, the same table near ours must have got­ten the wrong dish, and so they got either the orig­i­nal order or the food they started eat­ing to-go, on the house. It was con­fus­ing, but the food was still good, and we ended up get­ting to-go boxes ourselves.

Then we went to Falls Park. It was beau­ti­ful and more lit up than a high school drop out. It was per­fect for roman­tic pic­ture tak­ing.

New Year’s

Whereas Christ­mas had been spent with my fam­ily in Big Stone City and Sioux Falls (with Holli able to share parts of that), New Year’s was spent with Holli’s fam­ily in Hawar­den and Coun­cil Bluffs. I was very happy to have the lat­est News­bleep up on the inter­net by the time I left for Holli’s house no Fri­day, so I had no edit­ing I had to do over the weekend.

When I got there we played poker, of which I was first out, but after that we played Gui­tar Hero. I’d never played before. Holli said it gave her headaches, so I played with Marissa. We sucked worse a NASA air­lock. Unfor­tu­nately, there are pic­tures, but we had fun destroy­ing some clas­sic gui­tar songs.

The next day we trav­elled to Coun­cil Bluffs to hand with their grandpa, Lau­ren. We went over to their uncle, Allen’s, place. He and his wife have a very nice place. Con­nie is a party designer, and she’s very good. As such, their house is very much a designer house. We watched a cou­ple foot­ball games, ate some pizza, and then headed to our hotel. There we watched a News­bleep, planned out church (for me), and went to bed.

The next day all hell broke loose. We left as early as we dared, because the weather was fast get­ting awful. The ride back was ter­ri­ble. It was white-out con­di­tions mixed with stu­pid dri­vers and ice. It was stress­ful, but Larry weath­ered the storm (pun intended) beau­ti­fully. I sat back and read (and even­tu­ally prayed a rosary for good mea­sure) and lis­tened to music while we made our way grad­u­ally home. Once back, it seemed way too late for mass in the area. My options, as I fig­ured, were to travel to Sioux Falls for a 7:00pm ser­vice, and then it would make the most sense to go back home. New Year’s would have to be spent alone in Madison.

But, before that, Holli and I went and talked to the priest in Hawar­den. I thought, at the least, maybe he could con­se­crate a eucharist for me, and I could read the read­ings or what­ever. As it turned out, they were hav­ing Mary feast day mass at 5pm, and that could count towards my Sun­day oblig­a­tion. Score!

New Year’s Eve night was spent play­ing games with Marissa’s friend, Travis, and every­one else except for Adam and Cari. It was fun, but I could have done with less Fergie.

Visit my New Year’s 2007 set.

How did you spend your holidays?