6 month synopsis.

*(i was filling out a survey on myspace. please don't quit reading this forever just because i actually opened a post that way. wow. this must be getting worse with time. anyway, i was filling out a survey on myspace and it asked me what had changed in 2008. i am now going to march through quick memories from the months as to not forget.)

01.08.

new's years at gabe's own personal oasis. backing eugene the jeep into the ditch and leaving it there for three days, spending the time with riley and aric. forming lung cancer with john, dustin, and kyler. quitting lung cancer. getting car out of ditch. heading back to mason city. seeing hannah for the last time until later noted. moving back to pella. my short stint in pietenpol with kyler and the gang. interviewing, convincing, and moving into cmcc house. starting and quitting the ray. hanging out with nicole for the last time as actual, no feelings friends. drifting apart from hannah. into to broadway class. no money for books, too slow applying for loans. they never arrived until...

02.08

loans came in. bought most of my books. not all of them. start asking questions about hannah and finding terrible answers. quit talking with her completely and then try a bunch of things out. really not a good time. lauren, kelsey, elizabeth, maybe others. spent the rest of the loan money on living expenses and the vito endeavor. wore a red and gray scrilla everyday. requit smoking. got bad sinus cold from sudden moisture. started missing classes. moved off campus into the white house with john and fatty. candle nights with no furniture, lots of incense, and no furniture. the eventual gaining of furniture to the house. taking pride in keeping it clean. taking pride in being on our own. house show at gabe's for new look lung cancer. bottle of captain ripping through the back pocket of my pants. rachel getting locked out. getting really sick of central campus food. starting to drift from the entire college scence with more and more nights at the white house.

03.08

good visits from anton start on a weekly basis, and things with vito getting good. got to know bobby from cec, and realized how crazy life can be, and how things can control you. had a very drunk women i have never met claim to be a fortune teller of sorts in my living room at noon on a saturday. spending time with alec. lots of conversations with ricky, plans with ricky, execution with ricky. meeting kileen and sharing a bed the first night we knew each other, sleeping head to foot. started to get nervous about missing classes. sought help in eric jones. decided to withdraw from introduction to broadway and composition. started going back to logic, enviro. history and politics, and u.s. in world affairs. hopelessly lost in logic. dropping logic, and being bummed because i don't have an excuse to see ky or lizzie three days a week anymore. holding hands with nicole under a blanket out of nowhere. rethinking that whole thing. jumping. falling. landing back on campus in the cmcc house. the first day the temperature hit fifty hols, claire, john, alex, mark, fatty, vito and i went out to our overlook at the lake near cordova and had a bbq. hols climbed a tree, and we all tried to see how far we could throw our last snowballs of the year. fatty starts talking about moving. hanging out with nicole, sort of. talking about all of that. watching movies and listening to konstantine. spring break spent on couch back at white house with nothing going on campus. hanging out with hols before school, alex during school, and fifteen other people nightly after school. watching the wizard of oz with melissa. hanging out with her mom having heart to hearts with her mom while she was working. fell in love with her family. kind of just let it go when things got more distant with john and fatty. picked nicole because she was friends with my friends and more open to the things that i'm used to doing. i didn't want to break melissa's heart. i was too scared of that. she was way too good for me, and i knew it. i just could have been better, but was too afraid to try. let things progress with nicole.

04.08

started fighting with nicole for the vast majority of everyday. during the first one had a mental breakdown the likes of which i haven't seen since i couldn't get caroline off my mind. where caroline would have bailed and said i was acting weird (leaving ms. vanderwell to pick up the pieces everytime), nicole stayed and literally held, me. my head was collapsed on her shoulder and she soothed me. she made it all okay. it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done to me. it changed my outlook, and i think also made me want to have more lows so she could pick me up. maybe not. maybe the thousands fights after that weren't picked so we could make up. i have a feeling a lot of them were. she stole my heart that night. i didn't even know i still had it laying around somewhere. rumors started flying back and forth through all thirty people that were at the white house everyday. fatty was jealous, but telling me it was fine. john certainly didn't seem happy about either. everyone else was starting to get sick of hearing about it. infighting started. trained at super eight during the day. weird afternoon after that. hung out with ricky more and more to keep my mind off the way everything else was falling apart. getting an a on a fifteen page paper in u.s. and world affairs. still not afloat. not owning all the books starting to kill me. in an attempt to stay more connected with campus, i started hanging with more of the theta's than just ricky. eventually met clare, kelsey, laura, and dave. throwing up all over dave's kitchen on the 2oth. playing games with everyone mentioned with dave plus ricky and rachel weezy. living at the house with vito, and john. fatty moves out and eventually into joey's place. nicole starts hanging there. i keep to the white house. division in friends is getting stranger. working nights at the super eight starts to get old fast, even with late night visits from john, maxxwell, vito and a host of others. start working at george's again. have a lot of fun with the familiarity and the sense of belonging. making good money between the two jobs, especially with pleanty of income coming from everywhere. prom with a thousand people passing through our house before. then just gill, utah, vito and i sticking around. gill runs to des moines. comes back, and then the night begins. split up with gill and roll with utah and vito. teach utah life lessons like pumping gas and tell him pleanty of advice. get to shera's. play actual ping pong and drink imported beers with ship and dillon fontana. have a good talk with nicole who looked like belle from beauty in the beast in her prom dress. it was the first time in life a girl i was involved with actually walked into a room and took my breath away. fights with nicole still getting worse. everybody starting to get way sick of it. fatty's mom moves back to pella, and pitches plan to fatty and i about him moving to arkansas. i tell her that i will help him see that is a good option. meet ben and start spending odd weekend nights going to parties with him and bringing him with me. watching him get arrested at gill's house and seeing how much trust you have to actually have in people. out smarting a cop. early spring walks in normanland with john and claire, quickly change into adventures with john, claire, and hols. couldn't be happier about it. got to know holsy better than ever, and realized how much he means to me. saw in him how to be a listener, a doer, and most of all a good friend. started to really look at myself. luke, and maxxwell join john, vito, and i to form five. jonny b. shows back up in town with his girlfriend brooklyn, and they start basically living at our house as well. lots of days spent bowling and rolling with jonny, fatty, alex, vito and mark.

05.08

i realize there is no chance for me to finish my classes, but go to all of them anyway, knowing i am going to fail, but getting ready to take finals. dodging eric because i don't want to let him down and tell him that there is no way i can get through all the make-up work for the pathetic two classes that were still on my schedule. managed to get past it and start thinking about post central plans. tulip time with caroline, caroline, jenny, and john. the split in the major friend group was completely visable for the first time. walking by nicole with caroline, and trying to play it like i knew i shouldn't be doing it. the back room of the basement with caroline, caroline, and jenny and then walking to westmarket, finding a wolf shirt, and enlightening mrs. visser on the finer points of my life. parade on the porch with crazy bobby and drunk jane. then, the work weekend from hell. two-thirty to ten-thirty at george's washing dishes. brought me back to being fifteen and was a lot of fun. never got behind all night. felt great about how the other guys realized how much better we all were at our jobs without ever trying a few years ago. bonded with guys in the back, making cigarette breaks a lot more enjoyable at work for the rest of my stay in pella. then i worked the over night from eleven to seven at the super eight. i missed a party at our house and worried about nicole until she showed up and sat on the roll away ben in the back with me, our feet up against the wall. i cried, and she cried. we decided to try and make things work. she left and i hadn't say all i had to say. spent the night writing her a letter and then gave it to her the next day. it was an honest letter, but not the right words put together. the next morning i went to bed as luke was getting up for work. slept until ten. nicole came and woke me up in my bed before she had maching band. maddie was there. they started to talk, and then nicole left for the parade. maddie and i went up to spy on luke's beard-net, and then ended up meeting up with some of her friends from des moines. we also ran into mitch and kayla, along with the lewis parents. then i ran off to work at george's, where i waited tables until close to midnight, but was proud to point out my "girlfriend" to my co-workers as the band passed by in the last parade of the weekend. the older waitresses were impressed, and the mexican's just made a hissing sound through their teeth. this was a little joke that had started with elizabeth and then got funnier when every night i wouldn't work i would come in with a different girl during the summer after my senior year of highschool. finished work and hung out with nicole, she helped me pack up my the last of my things at cmcc house, and then overslept her curfew when we both fell asleep from exhaustion. eventually she woke up and i frantically drove her home. passed by the white house and thought it looked pretty quiet, so i found my way to the basement for some therapy with vito and mark. awoke the next morning in a daze and made it to george's fifteen minutes later than planned on at ten fifteen. worked with gia, bella, taylor, and tanna and had a blast talking about how much i liked nicole. they would immediatly talk to her about it. not what she needed to hear with everyone sick of hearing about people talking about it. i biked home from george's at two headed straight back into the basement with a whole host of people. was not ready for work by four o' clock, but made it on time anyway and in the same clothes from that morning. worked with caroline for one of the first time's since she started working at george's again. i flirted with her, but i think she was just acting normal back. at the time it seemed like more. she was dating peter. got through work at george's by eleven. ran home for an hour and then went off to work at the super eight until seven the next morning. would have gone to bed then, but my mom was visting and i hadn't seen her since easter. i walked up to the windmill cafe and ate with alison, tyler schipper and her. it was nice to see her, but bad to know that she would be getting my grades soon. the rest of the study day i spent with ricky. he was getting ready to head back to texas, and i was really dreading it. he had been my partner in crime(s), a trusted confidant, and a somewhat of a mentor. we cruised all the roads we always took: the loop down elevator and back past hol's cabin, t-14 north to wyatt's, and every other one we could think of. we got no studying done, and eventually four o'clock came around and i went to work. worked with caroline again and thought that something was there again and we made plans to hang out, albeit with her boyfriend. i left george's and walked home, in a hurry to get to the hotel. fit nicole in somehow between changing clothes and getting ready for work. we kind of fought. we were kind of okay. by that point, every six words turned out to be the distance between war and peace, and thousands of them were being spoken about us by everyone we knew everyday. no one wanted to hear it at all. i ended up going to the super eight again and then writing nicole yet another letter. that one was less genuine, more just because i have a tendency to do things like a broken record: repetative until all sense of originality and artistry are lost. i made it through the night barely, waking up at one point to find the keyboard outlined on my reflection when i went to the bathroom, the result of heavy eyes from the eighty plus hours i had worked in the past four days. i got off work and received a phone from a very angry mother of a son who i had met in the street a few weeks before. she seemed adiment of meeting ricky and i, and we were not very obliged. i ran around campus looking for ricky, going from each of his known girlfriends doors to the next and eventually found him. i knocked at the door, and it sounded like he struggled for awhile to put clothes on. then he emerged in only his boxers. i would have found it funny had there not been a very angry woman threatening to send me to jail on the phone. we made a plan and put the wheels in motion as i ran home changed, called anton, claire, and hols, and then managed to make it to my environmental history and politics final half an hour after i started. it seemed fitting seeing as i had rarely shown my face except for the last month and a half, and mr. james zaffiro did not seem to mind at all. i took it to the best of my ability, and more than likely failed it, i have never in fact checked the score, but someday i may. maybe i will just leave it a mystery. i finished up my finals that afternoon collapsed on the front porch of the white house. which at this point, with school officially out for the year, was now my only definative home. during tulip time fatty had in fact moved to arkansas, i was working too much to really notice or say goodbye, knowing he would be back. fatty being gone took some of the stress off nicole and i, and things looked somewhat brighter. everything was looking brighter: i had the weight of school off my shoulders (only a burden in mental strain, not actual time constraints), the summer was setting in, i had nothing to look forward to except for hanging out and then working my two jobs i had previously been balancing with school. jonny b. and brooklyn moved out of the house rather aprubtly as luke and maxx started to feel more at home. i have no idea to this day where they went for the next few weeks after that. john, anton, kyler, and i started jamming everyday, and the result was the original tony rocky horror. partytime also started up, and pella was well on its way to being versed in circle pits and house shows. everyone moved back: riley, wyatt, satch, and even ashley for a brief stint before heading off to iowa city for the rest of the summer. a tour was planned with partytime and colonizer. i was given an offer to go along with party time. i accepted. everything in my life started to be geared towards making it to tour, as things started to fall apart around the house. our hot water was shut off perminantly, and the dishes in the sink began to attract insects from the unscreened windows. the kitchen became a place to avoid, and the rest of the house just started to become a disaster. it was starting to look like a two bedroom house shouldn't house a minimum of five people on any given day. with satch and company back, john started to hang out with them nightly. i started to work out a routine of getting off work around ten, hanging or fighting with nicole until around eleven thirty (when she had to be home), and then heading over to suzannes. we passed our stories around and ended up in far off places. i quit working at super eight so i could go to suzanne's one night. those nights were golden. i would leave and bike home in the wee hours of the morning, only to find vito and utah sitting in the basement waiting for my to arrive. i would go to bed around seven, wake up around noon, and then get back at the day. may faded in to june in an indescript way.

o6.08

wyatt and i started catch up and spend most everyday together. the eve of his twentieth birthday we sat in the loft of his barn and talked about the things in life that were looming until five in the morning. we started talking about how terrible an age twenty is, and how it was the first birthday he wasn't looking forward to getting older. as the smoke lifted through the dust in the highest rafters, the sun started to come up and i headed home. it reminded me that no matter what different paths people go down, if you are cut from the same cloth you will always find common bonds. we spoke like we did when we were fifteen, a million miles a minute and in big hurried voices; trying to show both how far we had come, and how we were smart enough to go so much further. i met brett the first day he moved into my house. he was a certified alcoholic, great guy, and genuine tough guy from detroit who was doing vocals for sender receiver. a couple days later we left on the partytime/colonizer tour. i rode with colonizer because maxx and luke kicked me out of their van before we had even left town. we ate at grocery stores and sweated on sidewalks, and in our van we listened to ska the entire way. i have never gotten into ska, and it was not a fun time for me. in witchita i met raphael and shared good conversation and some pbr's until the sun came up. in lincoln we went to the ghost house, and i thought i fell in love for about twelve minutes. that was when i knew things were never going to get better with nicole. they were dead officially in my mind on that day. we arrived back in pella on a sunday i believe, and things at the white house had changed. due to an incident while we were gone on tour, no one was feeling welcome there any longer, and it suited us fine. luke, maxx, and brett moved out. they would go on to open the wolfhanger, named for the magnet of a wolf howling at the moon that had swiped from the side of my jeep. when they moved out, john started to be a ghost around the house. only ever really there to change clothes at first, and then to make sure we hadn't totally lost his deposit. we painted the walls a deep blue color and tried to decorate. out attempts at style muffed by our careless attention to detail. john and i then ventured to iowa city with wyatt and satch. wyatt and i met up with mason and relived our highschool glory days until somewhere around midnight i received a phone call. the party of the evening in pella had been somehow moved to john and i's house, which we were now only sharing with vito. this at first had upset me. then the news was reported that vito had been severely intoxicated and driven my car. not only had he driven my jeep, but he had managed to crash it. not only had he crashed it, he had crashed it into the side of our house. i was ferious, and fought with anyone there who would get on the phone. this made the split complete. for the rest of my time in pella, things inside of the original group of friends (alex, fatty, anton, john, ship, matt, jon, vito, etc., ect., ect.) would never be the same. i left nicole and vito both in tears with the things i said over the phone. eventually, it was all smoothed over, vito paid and put in personal man hours to fix the body damage to the jeep, and all was forgiven. i was still working at george's, and with caroline, and i had never really thought about not having a crush on her since i had met her. i started to push for more hanging out, and there were parties at richards, basement parties, and even the occasional afternoons watching the o.c. from my air mattress (maxx had taken my bed when he moved out, along with many of my other possessions). these were friendly gestures to me, and eventually i started to realize that relationship was dead as well, a casualty of my childhood. i was still making trips back and forth to des moines and started to talk to taylor again. i made a circut of stopping in norwalk to vist the pharo and alec, sliding northwest to spend some time with taylor in windsor heights, and then cutting back through the city and down 1-63 to pella. on one fateful day i was running low on both cash and fuel and managed to run out of gas near the west des moines public library. taylor came and visited me, and her dad eyed my like i was some sort of underground druglord waiting to prey upon his daughter in the library parking lot. mark eventually showed up and gave me a ride back to pella, abondoning the car where it had died in a parking space near the back of the library. once back in pella, things progressed as usual through the next couple days (omitting the fact that i no longer had a vehicle) and then several opportunites arrived to get the jeep back. eventually, while deep in a nap, vito and i got the van keys from ross and we drove to west demoines to get my vehicle. we dropped by to see alec, and then dropped in at taylor. before taylor's though we went to retrive the jeep. it was now sitting on a flat tire, but we tipped the gas can in and decided to drive up to the kum and go a few blocks away. the jeep never made it. two blocks in we were shooting sparks and turning heads, so we banked it into a wall greens parking lot and abandoned it once again. we then drove through the winding streets of windsor heights to taylor's house. she was having a girls night of sorts and we were momentarily the life of the party. she seemed cute agian all of a sudden, and even though things with nicole hadn't been audibly closed forever, it was looking like they were heading that way. before the night got too intense, vito drove us back to pella. on the way i was careful to avoid to devil in the trash dump and to make friends with the man in the moon. the rest of the night was filled with rare moments shared with vito, gill, and then eventually only myself. i started to contemplate my direction in life around four in the morning and for the first time i took moving back to mason city as a serious option. by the next week it would become a reality. after a several days of recovery, and a trip to iowa city with caroline, jenny, and john, i realized i was growing a tail. at first it seemed as though there was a marble underneath my skin at the very bottom of my spine. in time (about three days), this ballooned to be roughly the size of a hacky sack. i was rendered immombile, and finally had to do the one thing i had been dreading: call home for help. in a matter of days my problems were fixed in a way. a new car was put on the jeep, and my mom drove down and brought me to the hospital. i had a polynoidal cyst that would require surgery, and i headed to mason city to get that completed. following a couple days of rest and relaxation i went back down i-35, picked up taylor and went to pella. i was freshly bandaged and getting ready for our lease to expire in a couple of days time. taylor sat with me, talked with me, and cared for me while i was recovering. then, i decided to move back to mason city. in an instant. it was not long or drawn out. it had crossed my mind on occasion, but had always been rapidly dismissed. i had utah boy back my truck into the front yard and loaded it to the gills from the porch. i haphazardly tied things down and then took off for the what i have often referred to as my lonely northern outpost. the day was june 30.