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

we have nothing to lose

recent blips from a recent convo + other thoughts...(a rant of sorts)

im tired of squeaking by and selling my weekend for $150. my heart isnt throbbing knowing that i provide better coffee and quality food/beer.

people always say that if its too good to be true, it probably is. i intend to prove this wrong, or go broke trying. but i've been broke so long i wouldn't even know when i arrived at this proverbial "state of poverty".

we have nothing to lose

i'll drop everything to commit. 4 months of labor. 8 months of freedom. why not.
imagine what a 6 pack of high life would taste like after a week like that. i can't! well then, lets find out.

in the words of king Salomon, all is vanity, but it sure would be nice to pay off a lil debt, buy my sibs some nice gear and then buy myself a one way tix to patagonia.

it can happen. idealistic thoughts no longer dwell in idealism when they become concrete. when they become a reality.

dont write it off. dont write me off.

a recap

and thus ends a week filled with:

-47 hours of work between 3 jobs
-working at a cabin in the mountains and watching my boss kill half a 12 pack of MGD as we drove home while his wife, mother-in-law, and 7 week baby rode peacefully in the backseat
-helping my boss kill the other half
-biking to work at 6:45am in sub 30 degree temperatures
-pitchers and peanuts and the world series
-TGR movie (somewhat disappointing) and the surprise of seeing my high school buddy's 2 minute clip in the movie alongside sage, seth morrison and others
-then running into said buddy along with 5 other high school kids i haven't seen for 5 years and haven't missed and suffering through awkward small talk
-creating a theory at the coffee shop that height has a direct correlation on age and blood relatives
-collecting dunnies with my boss...don't hate until you know
http://www.kidrobot.com/products2.cfm?ID=6891&cfid=9846573&cftoken=50819879&nav_chooser=
-eating venison every third meal
-donating a beer to a 30 year old dude having marriage problems that is sleeping on our couch...holy awkward turtle

drinking alone

a recent conversation i had after finishing a shift at shadow's keep (and after finishing a knob creek on the rocks):

barkeep: how was it?
me: delicious
barkeep: whats next?
me: no idea, pondering that as we speak
barkeep: how bout a carbomb? (good bartender i might add)
me: ha! i was actually just thinking the same thing
barkeep: well why not
me: well i've never done one alone, i feel i'm not quite ready to do carbombs alone in public drinking houses
co-worker: i do them all the time! no shame in it!
pause
pause
me: well buddy, heres to ya (as we share a car bomb)

how precious

the last best place

outside of working 2 and possibly 3 jobs, riding my bike absurd distances just to save $2 in gas and frequenting the local library and gears shops, I've been volunteering.

the PEAS farm is a community farm located a half mile from my house on the rattlesnake creek and supported almost entirely by volunteer help. four hours of work will earn you ten pounds of food which make a lot of sense economically for me (as my time is valued by nobody but me). i've helped harvest winter squash, pumpkins, tomatoes and peppers. my buddy rick is the caretaker at the farm and lives just past 400 pounds of drying onions on the second floor of the farmhouse. im envious and secretly planning to buy property in MT and begin a small subsistence farming operation with a friend while working part time to make ends meet.

ten spoon vineyard grows, harvest, mashes and bottles their own organic grapes and produces 4-6 varieties of wine per year. the vineyard is a mile or so up rattlesnake drive from my house. i spent a few days last week harvesting two different varieties of grapes with other missoulians in temperatures of 32-40 degree F. we also received snow flurries. only in MT can you harvest grapes while getting snowed on. i love it. we received an amazing meal each day consisting of a combination of stew, cornbread, chili, lasagna, salad, orzo, a Big Sky Brewery Keg and 10-15 bottles of wine. the vineyard owner gave me a bottle of their Range Rider Red for volunteering multiple days and offered to hire me during bottling next month.

missoula like most towns has its far share of jamokes but i've also met a handful of rad/absurd people including wisconsin joe who would polish of almost an entire bottle of vineyard wine during our lunches, a 23 year old trail crew worker/student who lives up the rattlesnake while keeping bees and brewing mead, hippy james who brewed fresh ginger tea for my fellow grape pickers and kept trying to sneak more and more rum into the tea, and lindsey from maine who has worked/guided a large portion of the AT.

as i told jcd the other day, i think MT may be just the place for me.