happy birthday mom

i was staring at my gas gauge the other day realizing it holds an extremely strong correlation with the overall health of my finances. i can't remember the last time it hit a quarter tank.

i spent an entire evening shuttling around drunk new englanders while rallying my truck on slippery snowy roads at 3am, chuckling, nursing a sprained ACL (my toms have no traction) and wondering why people spend so much money at bars. (prefunk?)

i watched a roomful of jamokes dance in my basement, while throwing out a barrage of requests...and they thanked me with an extreme case of dance floor ADD as i shuffled between daft punk/jay-z/mia/lcd soundsystem/the rapture/talking heads/beastie boys...with relatively little success

i stood proud as my sister and a select group of friends and roommates led the charge, and wouldn't let the energy die no matter what. and we laughed and mocked and screamed as people creamed themselves during paper planes. watching my roommates (also brothers) grind and freak was a little disconcerting.

i saw the temperature rise to 1 degree at 2pm, the official high for the day, and burrowed down in my polar bear puffy as jo and i hauled couches, shoes, dead peace lilies and peppermint schnapps up a snowy fight of stairs as the wind chill fell to 15 below zero.

i wished my mom a happy 50th birthday as she belted out her own rendition of the "tigger" song, and wondered how it would feel to be 25 or to have children, or to have a full time job, or to have responsibility, or to have blonde hair or to attend jazzercise.

i think i may take up jazzercise

the first day of the rest of my life...right

i was in the white xmas section...jo did tights



i took it way too seriously...as you can see

montania!

finally something worth reporting

two roommates, a twin brother and i headed up into the seeley-swan wilderness with my ford ranger, an axe, 3 Milwaukee beasts, a broken hacksaw, two hatchets, beech nut chew, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, 6 scones, and the greatest of intentions. we expected to encounter western MT at its finest...and we were not disappointed.

after navigating our way though a maze of MT back roads, we arrived. a bumpy and viciously narrow road greeted my ranger and i as we entered the property of some jamoke who had given us permission to commandeer his firewood. we arrived expecting to spend countless hours chopping/sawing/hatchet-ing firewood and then loading it into my truck.

11 minutes later we finished and my truck shocks were maxed.

our next move was obvious. jeff and i went into town on a beer run and steve/elliot spent the next half an hour looking for a tree we could chop down. montanaia! upon returning with our high life we realized that all present trees were somewhat to mostly alive and our roomate/dendrologist/texan roommate would not allow us to cut anything down.

so we improvised and an obstacle course was created. 4 sticks were chosen. short sticks starts. as luck would have it...i began. i can't remember the last time i was so nervous.

round 1: chug a beer (no shotgunning allowed...much to my dismay)
round 2: ashen pit cross (any fall required a re-start on said log)

round 3: 12 foot log clean

round 4: log-carry up hill, around chosen tree, and back to start

round 5: 12 ft. tree climb
round 6: dive under log surrounded by plants thought to be poison ivy

round 7: 500 meter run (dry heaving included for all members)
round 8: dive under log surrounded by plants thought to be poison ivy
round 9: log chop



final results
steve 5:01
ethan 4:49
elliot 4:19
jeff 3:43

round 10: shot put sawed log...three throws
finals results
4th-elliot
3rd-steve
2nd-jeff
1st-ethan (i have no idea how i won this)

definitely one of the greatest days of my MT career...more pics to follow. git some.

you ever get so broke it just becomes funny?

not for your mother or your rich aunt...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GKOqdr0-e8

5 days

fri: too long ago to remember

sat: costume ulti tourny (with 4 kegs donated by Big Sky Brewery) also with a free b'fast of mimosas/bacon/sausage/pancakes fried in bacon grease (which i vomited up just before i pulled the disc to start our first game) followed by a dance party DJ'd through Pandora. holy garbage people, this is suicidal and i've seen it happen twice in the last 3 weeks

sun: road trip to neighboring podunk town outside of missoula to visit a run down/historic book store boasting 150,000+ used books. see pic.

mon: 13 hrs of work followed by a night that didnt end till 4 am

tues: 4 hrs of disc golf with a dog i've been stealing followed by a Hot'n'Ready (aka Gut Bomb) and turkish coffee. god i love turkish coffee. god i hate capital letters.

right now: new roommate. young/overly polite/new england native/beer and coffee and disc golf amateur. i wonder if he even knows that new england is not a place, but an idea...kids these days.

i almost cried...almost

tuesday morning i drug my tired and unshowered body out of bed at 6:45am...the earliest i have risen in perhaps the last few years for an activity outside of work/ultimate/skiing. i dressed in long underwear and 4 layers of pata-gucci, ready to brave the cold and hour+ long lines. i arrived at the courthouse, bleary eyed, coffee americano in hand, ready to blacken a few ovals. the most important ovals of my entire life.

and then i voted

i left the missoula county courthouse filled with a pride i have never experienced, and found myself feeling that same pride 12 hours later as i was surrounded by hundreds of other missoulians...cheering, crying, screaming, pounding pints of PBR. and before i knew it, i was choking back tears. tears that i didnt know existed but had been waiting to come out for a long time.

i never knew how good it would feel to be proud of america. but as i watched crowds in the EU going bonkers, and villages in Africa crowding around a solitary television set and cheering for our new commander in chief, i was proud. its scary it took 23+ years for this feeling to set it but i dont plan on letting it go anytime soon.

holy awkward turtle

i went out last night for halloween part 2...big mistake. after attempting to rescue the lamest dance party i've ever witnessed by DJing with YouTube (which is nearly impossible), i headed downtown with a high school friend i hadn't seen in 6 years (who is facebook stalking me) and two girls i barely knew.

we arrived at a tragically hip bar only to realize that of the 150+ packed in the bar...nobody was dressed up. given the situation, i taught the three girls awkward turtle, then set out to ease some awkwardness. i would randomly approach hipsters and compliment them on their wonderful costume, then guess who they were dressed up as ie. Kevin Bacon/Mel Gibson etc, compliment them one more time before returning to the girls and a glass of whiskey (on the rocks).

what i learned...
-there are actually people in the world that don't get excited when dancing to annie, or bizmarkie, or hot chip
-laughter is the best medicine but whiskey tastes better

i am living out of context