Big Day

I got two big pieces of news before 9:00 a.m. today. One of them was good, but complicated, and the other was not so good. I'm not totally awake until about 11:00 each day, so dealing with these items first thing in the morning was not exactly easy.

The first piece of news came shortly before I left for work. If I have time (and I usually do), I get online each morning and read the news from the Dayton Daily News and the Toledo Blade. On the DDN website, I read that tickets for the upcoming Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith would be going on sale later in the day. This was the good but complicated news. It was good, because I'm really looking forward to the film and I wanted to make sure I get tickets for the midnight showing on opening day. It was complicated, though, because I had to go to work and I didn't know for sure if I'd have an opportunity to get tickets during the day, and also because I've seen the first showing of the previous two Star Wars films with my cousin Mike and wanted to do so again, but he lives in Dayton and we hadn't had a chance to work out plans for opening night.

I was still trying to figure all of this out when it came time for me to leave for work. While I was on my way there, I heard on the radio that BGSU basketball players Austin Montgomery and Scott Vandermeer are leaving the program. Montgomery, a little-used guard, came as little surprise, but Vandermeer, our starting center last season, came out of the blue and will be a big loss. He looked like a player who was poised to dominate the MAC in coming seasons, and he'll be hard to replace. Coach Dakich also announced the signings of a couple of additional players to try and take the places of these guys, but it's still tough to see them go, particularly given how many players have left the program in recent seasons. I'm still planning to write a "state of the program" essay on Falcon hoops sometime in the near future, but I think I'm going to hold off a while longer so another potential story surrounding the team has a chance to resolve itself.

Once I got to work, I spent a good portion of the morning trying to figure out exactly what I could do about the Star Wars ticket situation. A solution of sorts presented itself later in the morning, when an announcement over the company public address system informed everyone that the IT department needed everyone to close down the company database for a few minutes while they enacted some changes. I was working with the database at the time, and shutting it down left me with a few moments in which I had nothing else to do. That being the case, I hopped online and logged onto movietickets.com, where I went ahead and purchased four tickets to the midnight showing on opening night. I went out on a limb to do so, not knowing for sure if Mike and his girlfriend Lisa will be able to make the trip to Toledo for the movie, but I'm hoping for the best. I decided to risk it because I definitely wanted to get tickets before they sold out. I've seen the early showings for each of the other two prequels, and I definitely didn't want this last one to be an exception.

I'm so incredibly stoked for this movie. The trailers look incredible, and I can't wait to see how the story works out for Anakin Skywalker to complete his transformation into Darth Vader. It's hard to believe that it's coming to an end already. It doesn't seem very long ago at all that The Phantom Menace came into theaters, especially given how long we waited for that movie to be made. Now we're down to just a little over a month until the last one comes out. While I'm definitely excited, it's also a little bit sad to know that this will probably be the last Star Wars film. I just hope that the story continues to grow through other media. I've heard rumors of a possible television series in the future, which I find intriguing. Whatever form it takes, I'm just really interested to see where the Star Wars universe goes from here.