A friend was making fun of me last night for writing this up, saying it's important to Get Over College. I understand that as a first time read through, not knowing any of these people and probably knowing way too much about me, she could see this as some sort of attempt to gain happiness by reliving the “Glory Days”. That's not what this is about.
There are going to be some stories told and some laughs at others experienced, rest assured. If you've been driven here by someone, chances are you are eventually going to get something good about that person. The other part of this blog though, while still trying to stay light and entertaining, is to try to figure out that “What's Next” question that seems to be going through so many of my 30something friends right now, myself included.
Ask anyone who knew me way back when if, at that time, they'd see me living in a town of 4500 people raising 3 kids right now. Safe answer is no. I know who I was then and I have a generally good feeling about who I am now, but I have no clue on how I got from there to here.
I know the whole “life is a journey” thing. I get that. Maybe it's just not that important to dwell on these things and just go with the flow. My thing is that somewhere between Point A of living life all about ME to Point H of living my life entirely for my family, I lost something pretty important. I've forgotten some important step on how to keep making myself happy just for the sake of making myself happy. I am also really bad at remembering numbers and if we can find some correlation between the two I'd call that an extra bonus.
I said yesterday that I knew college was the best time of my life. That's true in the sense that I was smart enough to enjoy it, but it's not meant to come off as pessimistic on my part, suggesting there is nothing left to live for after those times were done. I've had many, many happy and great life experiences and memories since then, they just aren't really going to be the focus here.
This is all a little unfocused right now. Give me a few days of ramblings like this to sort of spew out all of the basic details and such and then we'll start to work on Focus and Theme and, perhaps if there is time, Spelling.
There were 2 main houses that were operated by our group of friends back in the day. The first was mentioned yesterday and was a 3 story home right behind The Zoo Bar in Aberdeen. We had the top floor which was a make-shift 3 bedroom with a living room, bathroom, and kitchen. The main level was mostly lived in by a complete and raving psychopath named April who still holds the honor of being the single craziest woman I've ever met and, God willing, ever will. The basement people were a rotating cast of cellar dwellers that we never paid attention to.
To get to our portion of the house you had to go through a door that took you into an entryway that had a nasty overstuffed chair and a flight of steps up to our never-locked door. The door opened into the living room which held 3 couches and a refrigerator. My room was right next to the entrance door with Wipf's room right next to mine. The bathroom was at the other end of the living room and there was a “hallway” that took you into Moose's room. You had to go through Moose's room to get to the kitchen, which partially explains the refrigerator in the living room.
The carpet was nasty, the furniture all hand-me-downs from previous tenants, and there was a cat named Victor there for a while that was left behind by a previous tenant. More on Victor later. Wipf and I had locks on our bedroom doors and kept everything that was important to us in our rooms, safe from wandering drunks and strange party-goers.
The second house was a bit of an upgrade. Moose had moved West and Wipf was busy with other aspects of life so I had to find another place to live. I got together with Stormo and Rob and we went in search of a new place to live. We found one about 2 blocks from campus that was beyond perfection for 3 single guys just finishing college. The only problem was it was a 5 bedroom at $900 a month so we had 5 hours to find 2 more room mates. That's how I met Jeff and Jennifer but neither of them lasted around very long. Like in our old house, once someone moved out we would just have another friend move in and we had a waiting list to get into that house. It was a huge 5 bedroom home with 2 sets of stairs, 2 living rooms, dining room, kitchen, an outdoor pool and indoor hot tub. It also had faulty electrical work and bats in the attic but you don't care about those tiny details when you're in your early 20s.
A lot of us lived in that house at any given time including Rob, Jeff, Jennifer, Tara, Jenn, Robert, Lorenzo, Pedro, Storm, Wipf, and Shaun. We found that by keeping a woman in the house as a room mate helped to motivate us to keep it just slightly cleaner. That was probably a future life lesson in the making.
The landlord lived in Deadwood so we never had to worry about him dropping by. His one and only rule was “No Parties” which we only really broke one New Year's Eve for Naked 2000, which is a story that will be told at some point but I will need to get some permissions on that one, I think.
So that's all boring background stuff that you needed to familiarize yourself with. I'll let that soak in and we'll move on to something a bit more entertaining later today.
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