Jenna, Manney, and the newly-repatriated Graham are up this weekend, so Brainerd is exciting again. Not that we do anything exciting, mind, it's just nice to get out of the house and do something different.

Maybe I should follow Dylan's drunken advice and hang out more with Manney's girlfriend Amelia, if only for the sake of all the movies I'm not seeing.

On Saturday I saw Graham again, finally. It was anticlimactic, really, considering the time that's passed. We all met up at Amelia's and drank a few beers (I'm the only one who didn't opt for Leinee's Honey Weiss) and tried to learn a German game only to give up early so we could play Illuminati.

Good old Illuminati. I'm starting to think that Manney is right, that Illuminati really is only fun when you play it with Graham. I've never played without him (excepting one game of the bastardized CCG version of Illuminati) but I can see how, without Graham, the game would lose much of its drama.

Manney, sowing distrust as usual, had the Bavarian Illuminati, a group that tries to amass a large amount of power. Graham, waxing histrionic as usual, controlled the Gnomes of Zurich, a money-focused group. Jenna, before she got bored with the game and stormed off (also as usual) controlled the UFOs and got to keep her (poorly) chosen goal super-secret. I got stuck with The Church of the Subgenius, which has the lame goal of getting one less group than the number required for anyone to win the game.

It was still a lot of fun, and Manney and Graham's never-ending arguments kept everyone entertained and distracted so that I could steal money from the bank and Graham. I love a game where the rulebook encourages you to cheat.

I only mention the game because I won. I've never won before when I wasn't the most sober person in the room. And I suppose that's still the case. Still, good for me.

Everyone is the same. I'm sure there are some subtle changes that I'm not noticing, but even Graham seems unaffected by six months of study abroad. As for me, I think I'm having one of my biweekly existential crises, but I doubt it's affecting my behavior.

Tonight was even more low-key than last night, a feat considering that all we did Saturday was drink, play a nerdy card game, and begrudgingly go to Perkins.

The same group, sans Amelia, had dinner at Graham's with his mom. There was lasagna, salad, and the usual Lampa drama. Graham says more to his mom in one sitting than I say to my entire family over the course of a week.

After we'd all tried Jenna's homemade dessert (mashed-up berries over Angelfood cake) and everyone had doubted my tale of St. Paul's oft-stolen yellow bikes, we retrieved Amelia and ended up seeing Anchorman with the free passes Graham's mom had procured.

It wasn't as funny as I'd hoped, either because the preview has almost all the best parts or because the last half of the movie was stretched SNL-thin. But it was worth seeing for free, and Will Ferrell is still wonderful.

Jenna refused to see it again, a decision I respect, and sat through Collateral in the meantime. I'm told it's awful.

We had to wait for her, because of course Tom Cruise doesn't do short movies anymore. Watching Graham rock some pinball in the lobby, it felt like the night was already winding down.

Jenna came, we cruised around some empty North Brainerd streets for a bit, and soon enough the night was officially over.

I wish I had pictures of some of this stuff, but I haven't had the sense to get the photos from Graham. That excuse is all you get for now.