(upstate new york is wonderful)

it should be said that i haven't had more than 5 hours of sleep in each of the last five nights. since monday morning i've driven roughly 18 hours and 1000 miles.

it should be said that since i left for new york i've spent 28 hours in the car with my youngest sister, half of that spent in a caravan with my other sister and her boyfriend communicating trivia back and forth via walkie talkie. on the way home we had to leave on different days, and make note: road trips are better with walkie talkies and trivia.

name the five countries with names ending in the letter "L".

it should be said that our chosen route to new york and back included 5 states, which created 5 opportunities for my sister to get excited about the "Welcome to _________" signs. this excitement puzzles me.

it should be said that i have roughly 25 cousins on my mother's side, and 10 on my father's, assuming my quick math prior to coffee is correct. that doesn't include offspring of those cousins, and it doesn't include aunts or uncles...all of whom were on at the lake. somehow almost everyone got fed.

it should be said that we've expanded our reach in the adirondack mountains to include 9 cottages. we've had two weddings up there already, and i don't think they'll be the last.

it should be said that my week in the mountains with such a huge, diverse group of incredible people is probably the most significant consistent experience in my year every year. it is in every way the foundation of my definition of family and its importance, and piercingly intrusive to my regular perception of every day life in that it makes that daily routine seem like something i'm doing outside of the really important stuff.

our mountain rendezvous, with its hectic(ish) fun-filled schedule and nosey questioning and constant chatter and constant boozing and late nights and early mornings and shoddy living quarters and lack of privacy and its trips to the local karaoke joint...well...to be frank it's always fucking wonderful.

(vacation versus rest)

the first thing i told myself this morning as i uploaded some pictures and thought about the last ten days was that summarizing a trip into the mountains cut off from consistent and real communication with the outside world isn't something you can do in one blog post.

this is vacation season and i'm sure all over the blogosphere people will be recounting how great it was to get away from life for a bit, so i throw my two cents in with confidence that others will do it better than i will.

upstate new york is gorgeous.

it's remote.

t-mobile's never heard of it, and even when you're on the internet up there you're on the internet between a few hours at a beach on a resevoir and a bar-b-que dinner with family and friends and very quickly twitter and brightkite and facebook seem like they're in chinese.

the outside world moves a lot faster when you're not a part of it.

i'd like to say i'm refreshed and rested, but in some ways i'm just not.

i need a vacation from my vacation...something i'll probably touch on more later.

for now though, it's nice to be back in the big city. back with the streets full at 10pm on a monday night, coffee shops open at 6am, and beautiful girls walking around in the streets. back to the july 4th buzzed social circles and the baseball and pride-laden memories i missed out on. back to the blogosphere.

so...did you miss me?

(the trip to new york)

as you can see below, we left at 4:32am last friday morning, set to drive to upstate new york.

we were two minutes late.

then the sun came up and it was in my face for the next 6 hours, a few of which my sister and dog slept, a few of which they didn't.

after hundreds of miles and a sick dog episode and numerous highway rest stops, i could finally hold my camera up to the window and snap in every direction and see wilderness and nature.

and weird locals.

i arrived late friday, and on saturday as my cousin was married in this little mountain town and a little mountain church, i was greeted with this smiling face.

nora is my cousin's daughter...the oldest in the next generation.

the wedding was amazing and fun and a great start to the week up here.

up to this point that's about as clean as i've been.

such is camp.

(lake luzerne)

in ten days i'll be headed across the country into the adirondak mountains for about nine days of rest and relaxation. for what's probably approaching a hundred years, my extended family has gathered in upstate new york at a little hide-a-way lake community called lake luzerne, where we have gradually expanded from one main cottage.

my mom and her five siblings spent their summers in this rickety old red cabin about a hundred yards off the lake's edge, sailing dingy sailboats, taking swimming lessons, and challenging one another at badmitton. they grew up in queens, new york, so the respite from their city life caused a serious affection for luzerne, and brought each of them back year after year as they had children and moved away from new york city.

my family, living in the midwest, was always the furthest from the lake, and every year we'd make the 1000 mile drive up there to see my thirty cousins and spend a week running around barefoot, chomping on candy, and yelling at one another underneath a canopy of hundred foot tall pine trees.

thunderstorms were terrifying. beach days were fantastic.

every year we had a badmitton tournament. every year we'd all complain about being bored. we'd ask when we'd get a tv up there so we could watch beverly hills 90210.

...

now we're all adults, and some of us have children. some of us own our own places, and all of us are immeasurably grateful for the relationships we have throughout our family...i could tell you the happenings of every one of my thirty-odd cousins and i love them all dearly. some of them are married and i know all of their spouses and significant others.

for a group from all over the world to descend on a small little town to annually reunite with family these days is a rarity.

i really do feel so lucky.

this year will be branner's and shiloh's (my sister's new pup) first year up at the lake, during which i'll be teaching them how to swim and not run away. this year, brady may join us for his first year up there too.

i. can. not. wait.

(tattoo)

it was cool in the bay area that night, but not nearly as cold as my recent trip back to chicago for christmas. the trip when brady had showed me the tattoo he'd went ahead and procured along with an attitude as to whether or not i was serious when i committed to getting one with him.

that attitude being that i was a lost cause. brady can be pretty impatient sometimes.

hence his solo trip to the chair.

back in the bay, i was long past my decision phase...which had admittedly taken a very long time. inspired by brady's tat i'd been doodling in econ class and during the downtime i had between weights and soccer practice, honing in on an image that i knew i could live with for the rest of my life.

something i was going to see every time i took my shirt off. something i'd be explaining to people for years to come.

i had it. and i needed a needle.

deuce and i rode up route 280 along the coast to san francisco, a city where tattoo artists are not only readily available, but chocked with talent. it was dusk, and i wasn't sure how i'd pick a place to have it done, so deuce patiently hung around with me as we walked up and down columbus, nervously indecisive.

how do i pick a place, i thought. it's gotta be perfect. this is forever. like a bride and her wedding dress, i was determined to find the perfect place.

after a few window shopping-ish walkthroughs, an artist in one shop came up to me and asked me what i was looking for. i showed her my drawings, and i explained to her their significance. she told me she loved what i'd done, and asked if she could prep a sample for me. i asked her how long she'd been drawing, and she told me she'd given janis joplin a tattoo.

it was a small, quiet shop with only one other patron, getting her entire back done in three or four sittings, this being her second.

i felt comfortable, and the drawing this woman brought back to me was just what i was looking for. with a lighteness in my gut like the first time you ride a rollercoaster, i paid her to ink my chest.

i've always been a bit of a contradiction...a mix of subversiveness and mainstream...hopefully not quite what i look like.

what i am, without any shred of doubt, is a happy product of my family. extremely fortunate to have been born to the parents who raised me the way they did, into the enormous and close family we have all over the world.

my tattoo would reflect my wonderful family.

i've treasured it ever since.

it's a half sun kind of thing with the four flames discreetly shaped as the first initials of each one of my immediate family members. the sun, being half-shaped, is in the shape of a stemless "D", thus surrounding me with family.

i know that when i have my own family (i.e. wife and kids), i'll get a matching tattoo on my back over my left shoulder blade, directly behind the tat i already have. they will draw a line through my heart.

(your dark mountain)

life had begun to feel like a vicious joke.

i'd been in california for over a year, crisp to the wonders of temperate mini-climates, tanned legs, and things i'd only read about back home now within biking distance...things like the ocean.

the wal-mart just off campus stuck out like a sore thumb, tucked in between the authenticity and organic-ness and fresh sushi there were signs that people actually live in califorina all the time.

that excitement fell through the rusted well grates along the side of campus drive on its way from my dorm to yours, apparently, and never negotiated the long slow curve i'd spend the next few years running every afternoon while i should have been in spanish class.

the same road i'd get myself arrested on for driving under the influence at 10am on a sunday morning.

no, you were in your dorm, behind closed doors, suffering.

whatever universal forces brought us from a childhood spent two miles apart, in the same classrooms and on the same soccer teams and pictured together every week in the local newspapers, to an island of beauty, intelligence, and opportunity two thousand miles away, had somehow morphed into forces that delicately drove us in different directions. we were magnets with the same charge.

and you didn't know it, but i was watching closely.

i was watching from a distance and i was looking in through the eyes of your girlfriend back home and the updates from your dormmates and through conversations with our head coach during road trips you stayed home from.

i was intently and desperately imagining your emotional strife and i was cowardly doing that from behind the scenes. i was afraid.

but you see, at the time i could understand.

you've always been like a brother to me, and for all our apparent similarities we've always been acutely aware of our differences. for every comparison those journalists made to our talents and success, we were one another's foil, our grandeur exposed in one another's weaknesses.

i could understand how hard it was to be away from her. i could understand the mountain such an intelligent person would have to climb to defeat the depression wreaking havoc on his heart and thoughts.

i could understand that i was the last person you could look to for help. that i was the inappropriate joke in your dark comedy, dressed in your clothes but smiling like an idiot. i saw the clouds in your eyes, and i quietly respected the distance that i knew you hated but couldn't traverse.

i promised her i'd take care of you. and i promised everyone i'd take care of you, because you had to be okay for me to be okay, as selfish as that sounds to me now.

the reflection in my mirror was dying and i would be there when that reflection looked back at me, gave me the slightest sign i was needed on the inside of an inescapable nightmare.

you were running through the night so fast that none of us could catch you.

...

i rode along campus drive faster than i ever would again that night, as if there was a speed that might take us all the way back to the beginning. i left my bike on the ground and i glistened with a nervous sweat as i trotted through the hospital looking for you.

i walked around that white curtain and i saw you before you saw me. you were wearing dark washed jeans, a blue collared sweater, and nine months of exhausted anguish.

we saw one another and you immediately knew i knew everything.

i saw that realization wash over you and i saw you accept that you weren't alone.

and we sobbed.
and we sobbed.
and we sobbed.

for you.

and at the universe.

it's gonna be okay, i sputtered.

and we got about climbing that mountain.

(graduation)

this weekend my youngest sister graduated from college, and i drove down to st. louis and back with my middle sister to attend the ceremonies.

stacey is the youngest memeber of our generation on my mother's side, which includes some 20 odd cousins, most of whom have managed to turn themselves into doctors and lawyers.

the majority of them live on the east coast, and as such a simple family meeting would suffice to up and decide to turn ourselves into a very powerful east coast irish mafia organization.

that aside, stacey brought up the rear with a stellar university career highlighted by her Magna Cum Laude honors* and degree in International Business and Accounting**.

she's moving to japan to teach english in two months, which made her one of the few graduating seniors in her class that had an answer to the most-asked question on grad weekend; "what are your plans for the future?"

st. louis is a quaint midwest city full of terrible drivers.

it doesn't help that the city doesn't paint half of its major roads, and it also doesn't help that the people in st. louis are predominantly from missouri.

the actual graduation ceremony, of course, was soul-crushingly boring.

the fact that our nation's nexus of higher level thinking celebrates its participant's success by standing around in robes puking cliches about the future is ironic and depressing.

can society's intellectual elite not think up a better way to honor graduates?

how did the keynote speaker to stacey's business school graduation end her speech, you might ask?

"be all you can be."

i mean.

really?

an old army slogan is all you could muster up?

after that two-hour fiasco, the weekend was a whole bunch of great weather, food, and alcohol.

how was everyone else's weekend?




*my other sis was Summa Cum Laude, and at the ceremony i leaned across her and told my parents, "well...there's Summa, there's Magna, and then there's me."

**at which point i realized i'm the only sibling in our family with a Bachelor of Arts degree...both my sisters have Bachelor of Science degrees...the evidence of my lack of comparative intelligence is piling up.

(mother's day)

mother's day yesterday was another trip out to the suburbs with the pup in tow, followed by a lot of red wine and broken waterford crystal.

the red wine was for me, the waterford crystal saucer a present to my mother many years back. the curiousity about everything in my parents' house was branner's, and as he squirreled around a particularly wobbly table with said crystal and a frighteningly ancient china lamp on it i was able to jump across the room and catch the lamp as it bucked its perch.

the crystal hit the floor and shattered.

happy mother's day, love branner.

it was no big deal, and the day at mom's house with my sister and her dog was extremely relaxing once i decided that branner would in all likelihood not kill himself on my parent's first floor.

previously described damage aside, the afternoon passed without major consequence.

every few hours my sis, her boyfriend, and i took our dogs out back and let them sprint in huge circles around the luscious green early springtime yard, branner following in tow as shiloh bounded back and forth, easily faster and more agile than his younger cousin. branner took to head-on collisions to express his excitement, and more than once both dogs bounced off of one another onto their backs like furry trainwrecks.

as a gift to my wonderful mother i offered to set us up with a cooking class downtown sometime this summer. the two of us love to cook, and she's been so worried as of late about packing our house into boxes and the space she'll be giving up by moving into the city that i couldn't bring myself to give her more stuff.

she loved the idea, and were anyone to have a great recommendation for us i'd be much obliged.

we sat around the dinner table long after the food was gone discussing politics and theater. and family.

our family dinner and post-dinner discussions are among the most poignant fixtures in my life.

as such, i lost track of time and arrived back in the city as midnight approached and carrying an unconcious puppy.

how was your mother's day?

(home for me)

last weekend or maybe the weekend before (you try keeping track of my life, because i can't) i got up at the crack of dawn and packed up a nippy golden puppy and his treats, blanket, and food for the day. we drove out to the far west suburbs to where my parents still live in the house i grew up in.

the house i interviewed last thanksgiving.

it was a truly gorgeous day, that saturday, and i'd promised to help my mother clean up their yard in preparation for the upcoming thunderbolt of change facing our family in the eventual listing of said home and property on the For Sale section of the ubiquitous Multiple Listing Service.

as my father's company nears its headquarters relocation to the far north suburbs, and spring makes its (INCREDIBLY SLOW) appearance, the day on which a stranger from afar will have the option to call my home their home fast approaches.

as such my mother is predictably stressed, and the idea of her crawling around our front lawn turning over mulch and pulling away weeds was just to unbearable to even contemplate...plus i've realized the perfect remedy for stress is cleaning up puppy urine and i also know one puppy who's favorite thing to do is urinate.

perfect. match. as they say.

a long time it's been since i was doing chores that i myself hadn't assigned to me. initially it was disconcerting...i thought i was done with that kind of thing when i moved to the city and stopped living off of my father. i enjoyed being able to help, surely, but when the first rake snapped in half under a heavy load of mulch i began longing for the urban jungle and its...lack of nature.

branner, on the other hand, was happier than a pig in shit.
sort of.
once he'd accustomed himself to the idea that the big yellow house and friendly older woman showing him gobs of attention didn't mean he was in danger, he warmed up to the idea of spending the day outside and watching me sweat.

since "warmed up to the idea" means "desperately wanted to BE the mulch i was attending to," i had my mother take him on a number of long walks. every one of which he was repeatedly relieved to find out didn't mean he'd never see me again.

it was nice, being home, with nice weather, some physical labor, and some suburban solitude.

it was comforting to see our rickety house in such pristine condition, with new hardwood floors and paint and carpet and doors. to open up the stainless steel refrigerator where the clammy white one used to be.

to hear my mom whisper "i love it" whenever she went near an appliance.

and at the same time, it's unsettling, being back there. the ocean of memories i have in that place seem to be slowly dusted off the furniture, and the whole place starts to look like a snapshot of my past that someone took an airbrush to, cleaning up all the grimy or unbecoming nicks and scratches.

our front door had a crack in it for something like ten years. icicles used to form discreetly along that crack line during winter and i used to center my sight line on the sunlight creeping through it as i sprinted down the hallway to make a 180 degree pivot to charge up the stairs. you can imagine how many times.

the crack is gone now, in its place a beautiful new oak front door.

in many ways, the changes and eventual surrender of this place verify the long road i've taken since i ran around the bubble of my old neighborhood without many cares to speak of. the immeasurable journey my sisters have made since they were the little people i remember holed up in their respective childhood bedrooms. i am not as sentimentally inclined as my mother, and i look forward to the steps she and my father will take in their new journey as cosmopolitan empty nesters.

but i'll always be my mother's child, and as such i'll always have a fondness for this acre of land in rural illinois, where i became a good and smart person, a good soccer player, and i threw some damn near amazing parties. it will always be a place i'll go to reunite with people i've loved and cared for.

it will always be home for me.

(eyeing the dance floor)

this weekend my youngest sister and her friends had their mothers descend on their college campus for an appreciation weekend of sorts.

cute, right?

a bunch of moms and daughters doing whatever it is a group of moms and daughters do.

which i'm sure involved lots of chatting and even more wine.

well after midnight i started receiving text messages from my sister, with updates on the evening's events, all in reference to our mother and her dance moves.

this morning, i found this picture of my mother on one of the girl's facebook pages:

that's my mom eyeing the dancefloor.

the next pic was mom on the dance floor, which i think i'll just leave where it's at.

i also like this picture because how badass does mommy look in her slick leather jacket?

(sibling chat)

N: have you talked to our little sister today?

me: left a birthday message, wrote about her on my blog, facebook, etc...so NO.

N: yeah, me neither. But the mice that I engineered (that I've been trying to get to breed for 8+ months now) decided on today for a birthday!

me: no way!! on our sister's birthday!
me: "the mice that i engineered" is what normal people say all the time
me: stacey shares a bday with your engineered mice...it's so fitting!
me: did you name one after her?

N: yeah. ha, I know.
N: well, genetically engineered. but they've just been duds for almost a year, as my thesis waited on them, and as I went ahead with trying to produce new mice -- and then out of nowhere (well, not NOwhere, I've tried lots of black magic) one gives birth and the other is pregnant!

me: wow! you must have played the right love songs in the lab.

N: Right now there's five pups (which is a small litter actually) but they all get to be named "Stacey" until I can tell them apart.
N: They're like the size of your pinky fingernail right now.

me: FIVE STACEY'S!

N: hahaha.

me: wow. do you have a camera? cuz i really want to see a pic.
me: btw, can you imagine five stacey's? you'd never get a word in.

N: I know! They'd all be like, "whatev!"

me: hahahaha!
me: like, "i luuuuuuuuv college!"

N: I tried to get her to stop saying that last time we hung out. She's stuck on it. "Whatev!"

me: i know. she's adorable though. also, have you ever noticed how photogenic she is? our sister, not the mice.

N: um. yes.
N: it's crazy!

me: i was looking through her photos and can't believe it...even hammered, she owns the camera.

N: I know, she's insane in pictures

me: um...no one IN OUR ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY is REMOTELY photogenic.

N: hahahaha
N: Totally!

me: mom and the milkman, apparently.
me: so the mice thing is good for the thesis, yes?

N: it's so good. it's like really REALLY necessary...
N: or Plan B starts looking The Plan...which always sucks.

me: right. well that's great, congratulations.

N: thanks. Maybe it was the Barry White I played. Otherwise, I didn't do much but wait.

me: sounds just like our sister's conception.
me: ew.
me: just threw up a little.

(comments and whisky)

one of the cool things about having a blog is hearing from people that they enjoy what you write.

it's a challenge, sometimes, to write, and it's even tougher to try to find the truth or core of your experiences and then pair up the words that might demonstrate that truth to someone who wasn't there.

but to me, that's the challenge of communication in general, and writing like this is an exercise in overcoming those difficulties. it's gratifying to do that successfully, and while i certainly know i don't always succeed at composing a compelling retelling of my thoughts or my life, i'm encouraged to know that every once in a while i do.

so when i'm out in the offline world, where i spend time with some of you, and you mention something i've written and you refer to it with any sort of respect or even familiarity, it truly warms my heart.

you see, i don't always know who's reading, and i don't expect anyone to read regularly, because while this blog is a part of my life, it needn't be a part of yours for us to be close and relate. i rarely mention my own blog as it is, and i should think that's way my friends would like it.

no one needs a repetitive self-promoter, right?

but for those of you who are reading, i just want to say thanks, because it's an honor to have your eyes.

today after a wonderful play at the steppenwolf theater, my sister mentioned my blog and a comment she'd left here last month, attached to the post i wrote about her christmas gift. she asked if i'd seen it, and because i hadn't, in the past, received notifications when a comment is left here (i've now changed that, of course), i hadn't see it, and i wasn't aware of how the whisky glasses i'd ordered for her from scotland were performing.

this was her comment:

It was like tasting scotch for the first time, indescribable. I finally found the cherries, vanillas, and maples, the peatiness, woodiness, and pines I had only fleetingly scented before. They came through finally as solid features, pillars of sensation. Each scotch tells a story and now I am able to listen directly. I immediately purchased three of my old favorites and found to my dismay that I absolutely hate one of them. But my all time favorite, the Lagavoulin 16 exalted and was exalted. I cannot thank you enough.
Nancy | 01.04.08 - 3:46 pm | #


i was happy to learn she reads the blog. 'happy' isn't the right word...'honored' really is. people throw that word around sometimes, but i do mean it. it impacts me when people i respect and love take the time to read my (mostly bone-headed) take on things.

and i was simultaneously pleased that she was so happy with the glasses.

yay for successful gift giving!

so, in short (or in a long-winded round-about post), my dear readers: thanks.

all of you.

just thanks.

today is my littlest sister's birthday.

she's on the left in that second picture.

i just spent twenty minutes looking through her facebook photos, tracing her last year in college back to pictures that were taken on her 21st birthday twelve months ago.

i realized she's probably a little jilted by the fact that she's turning 22.

she's at that age during which she's not quite sure what it'll mean to be an adult, and although she's more ready for it than i ever was, she's in a dear, intimate relationship with her life as a college student and future adult.

what's always impressed me about her is how aware she's become of who she can be right now, the kind of life she's able to take part in.

oh, and the fact that she's the only photogenic person in our entire(ly huge) extended family. oh, and she can literally talk to anyone.

my little sister is a senior down at st. louis university, where she's fallen in with the sweetest, most genuine group of young women that i think exists in college right at this moment. her clan is the reflection of a girl who seemed only to need a bit of space from the parental pressure and sheltered environment of a cookie-cutter hometown in order to blossom into this inspiring, shiny version of what once was.

each one of them walks around with this glow of intention and purpose, fully owning their insecurities and fully aware of their fortunate place in the time line of life.

what will i do when i graduate?
i certainly don't know...but i sure would like to make an impact.

we can all look at our newest young adults and jest at their naivety.

but we all know we stood in that sand.

and when you look closely, like i look at my young little kin and her friends...well, the truth is you find the hope we all have for our own futures. you find your own motivations and desires to really be who we're meant to be.

ten years ago i'd have said my kid sis was a non-issue.
i thought i won fights even if i didn't.
i had high school things to worry about...she was a grade school afterthought.
when we teamed up on our middle sibling, great. most of the time i was a self-involved twit.

today i look at this wonderful young women like i'm watching the play-by-play on the birth of a snowflake.
there's just one version.
it's a one time thing, baby, and if you blink you might miss something.

you don't know many people their whole life. you don't remember the day everyone came home from the hospital cherry red and screaming bloody murder. for me, that list is two people long, and because she's the last to show up, she's the one i remember pretty damn well.

and now she's making the world vibrate.

she's traveling the world like no one i've ever know.
she's circled the world in a boat!

she's knee deep in experiences that everyone i know talked about experiencing.
she's smiling and befriending you and your parents and your friends without introduction or hesitation.

she's placing her mark on the room.

and on the world.

and the love i feel for you, my dear little sister, literally brings a tear to my eye.

happy birthday, baby sis.

i recently had an 'i really miss chalise' moment, so i thought i'd write about her because we all know it'll make it seem like she's around...stave off the void i'm feeling in daily life with her gone.

or at least that's what i'll just go ahead and tell myself, mkay?

i mentioned that chalise was really my first true love. we'd been childhood friends for years when we fell into a more serious relationship sometime around our sophomore year in high school.

it all basically started in between our last class each day at school, and our respective start times for practice; mine - soccer, hers - cheerleading and gymnastics. we got into the habit of heading off the school's campus for an hour or two during those times to hang out...i think we'd watch a movie, go to applebees (we were suckers for their potato skins which i still don't understand), or whatever else.

somewhere along those lines we decided it'd be fun to go dancing at this under-age dance club in a town nearby to ours, and the second we hit the dance floor our relationship changed. we were those teenagers bumping and grinding one another while making out; i'm sure the staff was really impressed with our level of maturity.

but it broke the ice, and we ended up together for quite a while. we plowed through intimate barriers together and were as in love as kids can be during a pretty formative time for both of us.

of course at the time we thought we'd last forever...at that age nothing ain't worth doing unless it's forever, right?

in reality, of course, we'd go through the normal relationship ups and downs for the next few years. at times we were just friends with benefits. at times we were just friends. i remember our first breakup in a local ice cream parlor; she was wearing overalls and we both cried. i remember surviving that breakup and knowing i'd know her for the rest of my life.

for five years, we saw each other sparingly.

we visited one another twice in college, once on each campus, and although i know i wondered where our lines would be during those visits, and during our brief holiday visits home, they remained platonic.

our lives at school engaged us...we were each merely visitors in the new lives we'd both created for ourselves. we were molding a real friendship that'd been born of a first love.

so we reunited in our home towns years later...two aimless young adventurers, eager to claim the cities music scenes, beautiful people, and killer food. we were inseparable almost immediately...it almost seemed too easy sometimes.

i'm not sure how many people have a deeply important friendship like the one chalise and i found ourselves in. i don't mean that as a comment on anyone's relationships, but for the two of us, i don't think we'd have ourselves if we didn't have one another.

because i think with the love, experience, pain, and intimacies of our past, we're left with a trust and companionship that's hard to maintain between a man and a woman.

we find ourselves in love with our connection.

we thrive on one another and the different set of tools we each bring to life.

she's insanely active, social, artistic, and optimistic. she's exotically gorgeous, which we use to our advantage.

i'm grounded, intellectual, well-informed, and inexplicably insightful...she thinks i have an old soul. i'm a guy that likes to over-analyze relationships.**

we both love strangers. we're both very spontaneous.

she's gone for two months, living in the caribbean, and we're about a month in. when i broached the subject of my last relationship, susie from everyonelovesabostongirl*, asked how chalise felt about my dating her best friend from college.

i thought that was a pretty good question, because even kate was a bit sensitive to it at first.

and i think it goes without saying that chalise was probably happier about it all than the two of us! i mean...chalise had her two best friends basically living with her for a while, and loved the idea of the two of us ending up together.

i know she adored the way kate and i treated one another.

and we loved having her in common.

and i think somehow all those ties will end up preserving a relationship between all of us in the end. kate and i will always have chalise, and chalise will always have both of us.

but the one thing i'm absolutely sure of?

i will know and love chalise for every minute of my remaining life.







*who, ironically, is in chicago this evening.

**i'm like a straight gay boyfriend.

the warm weather through last night gave me a chance to run outside for the first time in a long while.

unfortunately, it also tricked me into racing a thunderstorm...a race that i lost by a long shot on monday night.

after the trip to wisconsin, and the trip to new york a day later, i was feeling like i'd put on about 15 pounds in a matter of two weeks. that's probably a lowball guess too, if you consider the thanksgiving to christmas stretch and the nightly after-work holiday drinks and all the rest.

i always seem to combat the holidays pretty well...working out consistently through the madness, and coming out the other end a bit tired, but altogether having held off the sedentary party-life that makes 'getting back into shape' so hard for everyone.

this year, though...the late stage trips out of town really threw me a curve ball.

i'd planned on running in wisconsin.*

almost two feet of snow prevented that pipe dream.

i brought my running shoes to new york.

ha!

run in new york city?

more like run around the city and boroughs for four days on five or six hours of sleep, eating and drinking at every turn!

so it's nice to be home, with some control over my schedule, and to boot; some warm weather.

you can imagine how determined i was to run on monday, as the lightening flickered in the early evening sky, just daring me to get a few miles from home.

which i did.

and at which point the skies opened up like a rain forest and everyone in the city crawling home in rush hour traffic looked out to see the crazy guy flying down damen avenue in torrential downpour, pondering his concern for his own safety.

but you know what?

it was totally worth it.




*it looks like our video of the screaming kid in wisconsin was posted up onto collegehumor! the video's here.

okay, so the delay last night was annoying, as any stint in an airport new york tends be, but it lasted about an hour and i slept most of that hour.

waiting for my luggage was actually the worst long moment of my trip home...took an hour in and of itself, and that was just long enough for me to start doubting myself and thinking i'd missed my bag or they'd lost it which more than once caused the words "okay now i'm pissed off" to scroll by on my screensaver.


but i'm home.

new york was extremely tiring, but it was also everything seeing my family always is...my cousins and their parents are the funniest, craziest, most random people i know, and the group is so homey and so familiar and such a rewarding place for me to be.

even if i did end up with a pretty un-exciting grab bag gift despite my advantageous draw number. next year candles and picture frames are banned.

i've got so many stories and observations to share with you dear readers after the last month of shotgun parties, trips, people, and the rest that i'm going to have to babystep through it all. i hope you'll be patient with me.

i also have an interview for ya'll that i know will be interesting if the interviewee will let me interview her and publish it here...lex, if you're reading, say hello to the crowd. crowd, all together now..."LET D INTERVIEW YOU, LEX!".

2:28 minutes?

really, michael vick?

so here i sit, in rural new jersey at my aunt's house for our morning-after holiday breakfast, and i just on my laptop to check my flight to find the FAA site claiming there are 2 hour 28 minute average delays on flights to chicago.

what is going on out there, chicagoans?!

my uncle bob cooks eggs for our entire extended family and we are all recovering from the holiday party last night, but this news of major delays is really bumming me out despite the great food.

delicious eggs.

and a wide array of other foods, treats, drinks, and leftover