Yet another Apokalipsis!

In those intervening years, I managed to start another weblog. That old one will just direct you to this one.

So please check it out!

Apokalipsis -- Everything's over!

I'm sorry, I should have posted this here sooner. I've finally started my long-promised new weblog at slowseason.blogspot.com, with a goal of posting once a day (so far, only one day has slipped from my grasp without a couple of written words), and if you have the time, I'd love for you to check it out. So please change links and bookmarks for me. I'm sorry I keep moving around so much, it's just sort of the way I live.

xoxo
Aaron

RETURN! . . . and a sort of farewell.

I'd hoped to upload some road trip pictures tonight, but find that I have left my USB cable at home in Oregon. oh well for tonight.

So Erin and I made it to California! Freezing rain on the border between Oregon and Washington cost us another day of traveling, but earned us a wonderful stay with my Uncle Mark, Aunt Holly and their kids, who welcomed us into their home, fed us (multiple times!) and let us look through old photo albums documenting their own youthful cross-country trip (they went much further than we did -- on bicycles -- but not in the winter, at least!) and my mom's probably-not-as-goofy-looking-in-1983-when-everyone-had-perms-anyway hairstyle.
We were able to spend a few days in Dallas once we finally got there, spent a wonderfully misty afternoon hiking to waterfalls and around snow piles in the Columbia River Gorge, ate my mom's banana creame pie while playing cards with my sister and her brand-new roommate who came over for dinner, and I shaved off my beard.
Then, we headed straight SOUTH, with only and overnight stop to see my relatives in Medford between us and Orange County. Uncle Gordon, Aunt Monica and their daughters were our gracious and very generous hosts, and we were also able to see my wonderful Aunt Lori. We had a great time hanging out, chatting, and watching old Peter Sellers movies. I also think I ate almost all the M&Ms they had in the house.
We were expecting a 14 hour drive the next day, but made it in twelve. Our destination: a house closer than some of the Chapman University dorms to the Chapman University campus where a few of my best friends live, and where I was happy to be staying for the spring semester. Occupants of the house (which either has or NEEDS a sweet name besides just "the house") include Alec, a CU freshman I met when he moved in last summer, my old roommate Grant, my old roommate Ed, Ed's current roommate, and my former roommate, Aaron Choate (nicknamed AC to avoid confusion), and Brett, a med student who used to play in Ed and Grant's band that I named, and now plays with them in band at church. The first people we met when we pulled into the drive way were memebers of a band I had never met before who were practicing in the garage.
They said, "are you here for the 'show'?"
I said, "no, I'm here to move in."
"Oh, hi," said the lead singer (??), "I'm Aaron."
"Hello," I said, hardly phased by this sort of thing at all any more, "My name is Aaron, and I'm here with my girlfriend Erin."
Later in the evening, me, Erin, AC and band Aaron all joined hands in a circle and chanted our name together.
Even later in the week, I found out that one of my ex-girlfriends is interested in another guy named Aaron. We are everywhere.

I'm going to be taking AC's place in the house when he leaves to study abroad in Austria in a week or something, but while he's here, me him and Ed are all sharing the room, which means I sleep on the floor. Which I don't mind.

Erin, howevere, arrived in California without a place to stay, without a job to earn rent money at, without much except what was in the trunk of her car, and me (Awwww), although she did pack an awful lot in the trunk of her car(she'll tell you differently). So the first order of business was to find her housing and employment! As it turns out, she ended up moving into the house right next door to "the house!" And then she went to Hawaii.

So I moved out here with Erin, but have been without her for a few days now. I've managed to stay out of too much trouble, although after dropping her off at the LA airport I went to go see my pal Peter at LMU and we ended up getting horribly lost coming back from a comic book store on Sunset Blvd and drove around Beverly Hills and Venice Beach for about two hours before we finally just bought a cheapo map and found our way back to his campus. I also had to buy a new engine belt and air filter for her car, which were quite worn down after 3500 miles through mostly freezing weather since we left Wisconsin, and have gone grocery shopping and sort of unpacked (although it's a bit hard in this crowded room). I helped run one of Ed's shows at the Ugly Mug (I sold tickets and took pictures), have started a couple of new screen plays, and also played a lot of Mario Kart. But most importantly, I've gotten to see and hang out with a ton of my cool friends down here. I have cool friends all over the world now, but it's been great to see everyone down here again . . . it sort of feels like home.

And since I'm back in Orange again, with no out-of-the-country quite yet on the horizon, this blog's sort of come full circle. I'm going to be starting a new, perhaps more permanent one soon, so this may be my last full post here. I'll let you all know how to find me again when I settle on a spot to be found.

xoxo

word balloons

Instead of updating tonight I came across this website which comments on the daily funny pages. When I lived at home and we had newspapers actually delievered, I read the comics every single day. I often didn't find them funny, especially as I got older, but it was sort of an obsessive thing I guess. I'm too tired to think of something actually clever to say, except that it was cool to get caught up on old strips and to be reassured that they're still not funny. The commentary on the website, however, made me crack up multiple times and I had to stiffle my laughter to not wake my sleeping roommates.
I'm back in California now, by the way. I'm living in a four bedroom house with some good friends. The housing breakdown is basically one guy to a room, except for my room, which has three of us, and I sleep on the floor.
A more proper update will be written sometime after I get up tomorrow morning.
the end.

Extreme Road Trip 2005!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I'm on the road with my lovely girlfriend Erin. We're snowbound at her aunt and uncle's giant house near Billings, Montana, enroute from Wisconsin to Oregon, where we'll visit family and friends before heading down to California for the spring. This part of the country is so cold (Erin tells me to add "beautiful," and it is) that I think I'll appreciate the warm Cali sun that much more.
We've had a good drive along the way and managed to stay unfrozen, although I did sort of get the car stuck in the snow at one point. Fortunately there was a police officer there to help us. Unfortunately he was also writing me a speeding ticket at the time.
But I wasn't driving dangerously, I swear. We were just going down a hill and I didn't realize how much speed we'd gained!
Other adventures:
*Visiting Erin's grandparents for breakfast and being greeted by fresh french toast and their dog. We ate the french toast, but we did not eat their dog. In fact, their dog wanted very badly to eat our french toast.
*Driving around Minneapolis with a car full of kids from Erin's school (North Central University) and having to convince them not to take us to Canada.
*Getting locked out of the room I was supposed to be staying in at NCU in Minneapolis when it was snowing and freezing outside and ultimately sleeping in the room of a complete stranger.
*Staying with Erin's cousins Bruce and Fernanda where we were treated to homemade dinner, then all fell asleep while watching Troy, and woke up to homemade breakfast! (Erin told all her relatives that I love french toast, so we have had it three time already since leaving her house!)
*Stopping at a tiny Mom + Pop diner in Buffalo, ND and listening to the locals invite our waitress (the only employee in the whole place) to visit a pig farm with them. And man, the sandwiches there were great!
*Making a detour through Beach, North Dakota where there was no water or sand in sight. There wasn't much in sight at all, in fact. Just a really, really fancy new visitor's center pointing us to . . . well, a quilting shop downtown, mostly.
*Stopping for pictures in the snow covered Painted Valley, where we saw real buffalo, and at times because of snow blowing all over the highway, not much else.

We are safe, we are sound, we are quite happy. Spent a good part of today cooped up indoors playing and Uno version of Rummy ("All the fun or Rummy, with the magic of Uno!" proclaimed the box"), watching Singing in the Rain and drinking Chai. Also, the cat here keeps trying to slash my foot open. But I have faith we will make it out of this alive.
...
THE EXTREME ROAD TRIP WILL CONTINUE!!!

another sort of New Year

Today is my 22nd birthday! I've felt kind of sick ever since I work up (to a phone call from the lovely Erin), and now am running a fever. A lot of plans were sort of wiped off the board since I haven't felt like eatting, or even really moving at all. So I've mostly just layed around and slept today, although I did go into Salem with my mom and sister, which was fun, and people have generally given me sympathy and let me sleep in peace, which has actually been pretty nice. My sister also made me a smoothy since the idea of eatting anything else sort of makes me want to vomit. I hope I am better by tomorrow when I hop on a plane to Wisconsin where I can hug my girlfriend again and then we can start Ultimate Road Trip 2005 to California! Wooo!
to me, it sounds like a cure for anything.
...
My mom says I shouldn't donate money to the Tsumani victims because I hardly have enough money to get by myself. So I'll have to wait until I'm working again, I suppose. But if any of you feel inclined to get me a birthday present, it sure would be great if you donated to the relief efforts instead!

so this is the new year . . .

So 2005 isn’t that different from 2004 so far, but I think we’re still in transition. These days being home usually is sort of a buffer between trips, semesters, countries, a time to reflect on where I’ve come from, where I’m going and to be reminded what it really feels like to be home. This is the first time in a while that the transition hasn’t felt rushed, and I’ve been able to settle into things a bit more, to dig into all those buried shoeboxes and rediscover my family. I had forgotten how wonderfully bizarre everyone here is! My family seems much more spontaneous and strange than most of my friends at college or in Europe, which was a bit of a revelation. Perhaps they are more comfortable with me than most people. Or maybe most people are just more boring and normal. I’ve also found collections of my parents old love letters, and it is comforting to read the private thoughts of two people my age who would go on to lead inspiring and heroic lives (at least to me), and to realize that their hopes, doubts and dreams were not that far from my own.

I spent New Years Eve with my extended family on my mom’s side for our annual family reunion, which is always around New Years, but rarely actually overlapping it. We rang in 2005 an hour early so the adults could go to bed, but thanks to many party favors and noisemakers, we rang it in in style. I proceeded to stay up many hours later than everyone else working on a very difficult 1000 piece cow puzzle, which was eventually finished with the help of many aunts and uncles sometime before January 2.
New Years Day I went hiking around Multnomah Falls with my dad and Aunt Rachel, and although we were a little damp by the end, it was a beautiful hike, with a variety of waterfalls, fresh snow on evergreens, majestic cliffs and a beautiful view of the Colombia Gorge. Oregon is perhaps the most consistently gorgeous place I’ve ever been.*

My grandma reminded me a couple of times over the weekend that she has two sets of ten grandkids -- one is grown up, and the second is rapidly growing up. I am the second eldest in that younger batch, and it was amazing to me this year how much taller and older my younger cousins looked. Back before my brother was born, my mom and aunt started loading us up in a minivan for annual summer trips around the Northwest, and tradition that continued (often with matching shirts) more or less until annually until we started going off to college. In the summer of 1992, this picture was taken on one of those trips.


Ben (11), me (9), Elizabeth (7), Jon (7), Allison (5), Meredith (2), Nathan (1)

This was the first time we were all reunited in the same place at the same time since those trips stopped, so we decided to duplicate the picture.


Ben (23), me (21), Elizabeth (19), Jon (19), Allison (18), Meredith (14), Nathan (13)

Crazy. We’ve all got longer hair, except for Jon and Ben, who could not be coaxed to take off their hats. Behind us is the still-beautiful Gorge.


*It could, also, just be a matter of perspective, as this John Muir quote points out: "All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains...so universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best."