HeyThereHawsey's Xanga

Friday, April 18, 2008

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:54:59 GMT

EAAARRRRTHHHHHHHQUAAAAKKKEEEEEEE!!!!!!

We had an earthquake registering as a 5.4 on the Richter scale here in the Wabash Valley this morning, followed by several aftershocks. My first reaction when woken up by one of the aftershocks (not the earthquake itself, because I didn't even wake up for that) wasn't to find a doorway to stand in or anything. No, instead, it was to ask my roommate, Tim, if I had rocked his world. Something's wrong with me.

In other news, Tim and I have both rediscovered our favorite non-vice vices. He's 'Quilling like there's no tomorrow, and I'm definitely back on the Afrin. Woo.

Wally Gordon and the rest of New Orleans

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:05:25 GMT

I got back in to Terre Haute from my Spring Break at about 6:30 this morning. I had three options as to what I was going to do over SB08: (1) fly down to Waco to find a place to live once I start my job, (2) go to Daytona, FL with five of the guys in my chapter and drink beer on the beach for a week, or (3) go on a trip organized though the Vineyard church with 16 of my Fraternity brothers to New Orleans, LA and help rebuild houses for a week. I called the HR lady at work with whom I do most of my talking about work.

Me: Hey Crystal, I was wondering when you wanted me to go down to Texas to find an apartment. I have spring break coming up, but I have an opportunity to go down to New Orleans with some of my Fraternity brothers to help build houses.
Crystal: Oh, well just god bless your heart! We'll fly you down some other time--you go do good work and you can deal with this stuff some other time. We definitely made a good choice in hiring you.
Me: Oh...awesome. Done deal.

The drive down was pretty uneventful. I learned that one of the new freshmen is the spaciest kid on the face of the planet. The number of times that we had to yell "GET IN THE FUCKING CAR! LET'S GO!" at this kid was obscene. Every time we stopped somewhere, we got held up by this kid. We told a lot of dirty jokes, etc--the standard roadtrip fare. Ended up getting in just after 10:30 central time. We stayed at a campsite set up by the Vineyard church in Kenner, LA (a suburb of New Orleans). Pretty standard stuff for camping--cots, sleeping bags, 30 dudes in a gigantic tent.

I found out Monday morning that I'd be working on framing a house for a man named Wally Gordon who is without a doubt the coolest crazy old Cajun guy I've ever met. His house wasn't very flooded by Katrina and the floods that came after Katrina. According to him, he had a gigantic Chestnut tree in his back yard which was torn from its roots by Katrina and smashed into the side of his house. His house was flooded a few weeks later by Rita, and virtually everything he owned was ruined after that. His entire home had to be demolished, which he was surprisingly happy about. He'd been wanting to redesign/rebuild his house for years. He's putting an elevator into his house, and when we asked him why, he said that though when most people look into what their life will be like in their 60s and 70s, they think that the might be in a wheelchair. He, however, knows he'll he in a wheelchair and is planning accordingly. Along with the elevator, he's also making all his doorways 4' wide so that he can fit said wheelchair through them easily.

Wally's best friend, Phil, lives next door to him. I noticed after day 2 that they both wore belts that said "Bandidos" on them, t-shirts that said the same with pictures of motor cycles on them, and that they both owned motorcycles. I asked Wally at lunch on Wednesday if he was in a motorcycle gang. His response: "No! I am not in a motorcycle gang. I am in a motorcycle club. It just so happens that some of our members have gone to jail for murder and drug dealing, which makes the police want to qualify us as a gang. I don't do any of that, I've never done any of that and I never will do any of that. The Bandidos ride together and party together. Beyond that, I don't care how anyone lives their life and I won't tell 'em how to either."

On Thursday, a guy I was working with named Mitchell and I were cutting out some of the rafters so that we could put in the chimney stack. We'd been up on the roof cutting away for awhile when I had to go down to the second floor to remove some of the fire-walling that was in the way of where the stack was going to go. Not twenty seconds after I had started, I hear "WHOA WHOA WHOA!" which to me means stop. Turns out that meant "Get the hell out of the way," because when I stopped, I got hit in the head with a hammer that Mitchell had accidentally dropped. It was only from about 7 feet up, so it could have been worse, but it still hurt like hell. I held on to a wall for a few seconds, and then decided to get back to work. Unfortunately, in my wooziness I wasn't watching where I was stepping and brought my foot down right onto a nail. It didn't penetrate too deeply, and I didn't hit a tendon or a vein or anything, but still. Ouch. It was at that point that Wally told me that I should go relax in his FEMA trailer, kick my feet up, drink a coke and watch some TV. It was at this point, sitting on his couch in his trailer, that I looked down and saw a hookah that smelled like double apple (my favorite flavor) and next to it, a big stack of Playboys. Wally Gordon is an American hero.

Monday and Wednesday night we went down to Bourbon Street. The first bar we went to was the Bourbon Cowboy, which had two things of note: (1) the beer was 3/$5.50, which is obscene given how expensive everything else on Bourbon Street is, and (2) they had a mechanical bull for drunk girls to ride. I've already been scolded by Kristen for objectifying women, but I mean, what am I supposed to do, not look? Yeah right. The number of bars that had downright amazing blues bands or rock bands playing was simply ridiculous. We went to a bar that was called, believe it or not, The Blues Bar. The band there was awesome enough for Cleve to want to buy their CD which we found out two days later was the biggest piece of shit ever made. It was entirely elevator music made on a synthesizer...gross. The only other bar that was special was the Old Absinthe House. It was the second time I'd done absinthe (for which a round of 5 costs $75, as Whit found out). I slammed mine down as soon as I got it...turns out no one else did. Whatever.

Tuesday we went to Tulane University. The first stop we made was at the Pike house there. We knocked on the door, did the whole introduction shtick hoping to get a tour of their house and maybe a few beers. Instead, we got this really shifty-eyed look from the guy who answered the door and were told "Yeah...we're doing uh...stuff with our pledges right now. You need to come back later." Hazing--awesome. We came back later and only the pledges were there, and they looked haggard as hell. We just opted to not come back. Way to go, Eta chapter. The nice thing about their house, though, was that it is right across the street from the best bar at Tulane, The Boot, where they had $1 beers and $0.50 well drinks. I took full advantage of this. Thursday we went to see the New Orleans Zephyrs, a AAA affiliate of the Mets, play the Nashville Sounds. It was pretty cool. I'm amazed we didn't get kicked out--we just heckled the center fielders and the guys in the bullpen the whole time.

Friday we went to the sweetest bar I've ever been to, The Boot. They had 48 beers on tap, and another 80 in bottles. The place was completely packed the whole night, and we met some Pikes from LSU who bought us all shots of whiskey after we told him what we were doing in New Orleans. Sweeeeet.

One of Cleve's cousins, Greg, is a dentist in New Orleans. Cleve had intended to just go see his family by himself, but after being told what we were doing down in NOLA, he demanded that all 17 of us come to his (gorgeous) house for dinner. He boiled somewhere in the range of 150-175 lbs of crawfish with corn, sausage and potatoes for us and it was, by far, the most delicious meal I had the entire week. Speaking of food, the one thing that really bothers me about the food in NOLA is the Po'-Boy sandwich. It's just a regular old sandwich except it's on french bread, and everyone down there flips their shit about it down there like it's the greatest sandwich ever made. I had one--it's not.

What really gets me about NOLA is how awesome and kind everyone is there. I didn't meet a single person who had a bad attitude about what had happened to them, even though they had every right to be furious at everyone and everything. One guy said "Yeah, after the flood I only had two feet of water--in my attic!" and then laughed his ass off about it. There's no way I'd have that good of a sense of humor about something like that. It's really an awesome place--I kind of want to end up there some day.

We also stopped in Memphis on the way back, which was an excellent choice. The guy whose van we took down there, Whit, is from Chapel Hill, NC and he refused the UNC/Kansas game. We got there right as Memphis won their game, and it was one gigantic party. Buddy, Whit and I got drunk enough so that the freshmen would have to drive the rest of the way, too. Awesome. We got back at about 6:30 this morning, and I didn't get out of bed until 5pm.

There are a ton of other stories about this trip. Just ask some time.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:07:26 GMT

Ah, L'Amour
A Bitter Film by Don Hertzfeldt

Monday, February 25, 2008

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:59:47 GMT

Guess who passed all his classes depsite not having any business doing so!? This guy did. Granted, I did the worst I've ever done in school, but I'm just happy to pass. I took 20 hours, and did maybe 12 hours worth of work--I really had no business passing at all.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter D, which stands for Diploma.

Monday, February 04, 2008

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:16:03 GMT

Update: The concert was absolutely worth skipping the Super Bowl. I got my face rocked clean off. However, I did Tivo the Super Bowl, so I'm looking forward to seeing Tom Brady's tears. Go Giants.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:16:32 GMT

It's official: I'm a moron. I bought concert tickets for a show that's at the exact same time as the Super Bowl. FUCK. I mean, it makes sense given who's playing. Bayside and Straylight Run are way too emo to care when the Super Bowl is being played, or even know that it's being played at all. Damnit damnit damnit damnit.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:02:32 GMT

Hangover, you are my bitch lover. My tolerance is way down thanks to this working out bullshit.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:24:28 GMT

I still get chills every time I see this.

It's been eleven years since this, and I can still recite their entire starting line-up by heart. Those were the days.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:24:57 GMT

Notes from break thus far:

Kowski stayed here Saturday night. He, Cameron, Erin and I went to Broadripple and drank. It was good.

Kowski's wonderful girlfriend, Jen, came here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Christmas Eve was spent here, and the next morning we went to Tell City, IN to visit mom's family. We stopped at the Caesar's Casino in Louisville/New Albany on our way down--I won $60 playing two video poker games at the same time. Jen got to experience the entire Roland clan, from Grandpa Roland to my cousin Jake, and what we do at Christmas: get shitfaced.The tequila made its way out around 2pm, and was gone shortly thereafter.

I love my family. When we had the gift-opening in Tell City on Tuesday, the biggest gift I got was a twelver of beer. They know me well, even if it was Corona. As an added bonus, my parents have actually been behaving as though they like each other, which is something I haven't seen....ever? I'll go with ever.

My cousin Jake told me while we were down there that he wants to go to Rose. I had to sit him down and inform him that, although I love Rose, if he wants to party as much as or more than he already does, Purdue will provide an adequate education with approximately 9000 times the women, drinking and parties. I think he took my advice.

There's a new gym in town that I conned into giving me a free trial for the duration of break. Hell yes. I haven't gone as much as I should, but going at all while still eating reasonably healthily is better than nothing at all. Speaking of working out, I ran a mile today. Granted, it was at a molasses-slow 10:23, but damnit, I ran a mile. I haven't done that since HS.

The phrase "reasonably healthily" reminded me of this:

All the officer patients in the ward were forced to censor letters written by all the enlisted-men patients, who were kept in residence in wards of their own. It was a monotonous job, and Yossarian was disappointed to learn that the lives of enlisted men were only slightly more interesting that the lives of officers. After the first day he had no curiosity at all. To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day, and out of every letter that passed through his hands went every adverb and every adjective. The next day he made war on articles. He reached a much higher plane of creativity the following day when he blacked out everything in the letters but a, an and the. That erected more dynamic intralinear tensions, he felt, and in just about every case left a message far more universal. Soon he was proscribing parts of salutation and signatures and leaving the text untouched. One time he blacked out all but the salutation “Dear Mary” from a letter, and at the bottom he wrote, “I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappmann, Chaplain, U.S. Army.” A.T. Tappmann was the group chaplain’s name. -Catch 22

I don't know why.

Covele came over last night, and it was nice to see him. We drank beer, watched football, and then watched Kill Bill Vol 1. I love that movie--they showed it, censored obviously, on Spike a few weeks ago, and it broke my heart. If you can't see it with all its gore, then why watch it at all?

I've been getting texts, IMs, and even a phone call from Boston. This is a good thing.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 13:14:49 GMT

Why, Topanga? WHY?!