Thanksgiving '09, a story. (A bit late)

Thanksgiving 2009, a story.

That's my Gramma Julie, mother to my father, and known crazy lady. Back in the middle of November, at a ham and turkey raffle, she asked what I was doing for Thanksgiving, laying down the hint that she had absolutely nothing to do, should I care to invite her to wherever I was going. I told her that I'd probably do the same thing I'd done the last two years: drive around town with Dad for twenty minutes while he claims he knows the Chinese buffet was open, and then end up going to Perkins, because it's the only place that's open.

She replied with, "Oh, well, Jo Ellen and I usually do something, but I don't know if we're going to this year."

I smiled, freshened her beer, and went about selling raffle tickets at fifty cents a pop.

Fast forward a few days, I'm ringing the bell for the Salvation army with my aunt Jo Ellen, and we're talking about the upcoming holiday. She's not planning on doing anything either, not even going out with her mother. She was going to go to the auction, eat turkey there, then come home and rest.

Idea!

"We should have a Thanksgiving dinner, because Lord knows I'm sick of Perkins' shitty turkey substitute," I told her.

She thought, "Joe and them used to come over for dinner, but it got to be too many of them for my little house. We could do it, if we kept it small."

I listed off the people in out family that didn't have a Thanksgiving to go to, which amounted to a total of six people, including us. And thus, it was born, Thanksgiving in Eldred, PA. Invitees were called or texted at lunch that day, and by the time we rang the bell again, two days later, we were ready to assign food dishes for people.

Thanksgiving day, Mickey and I picked up Grandma around three thirty, and made the trek over to Eldred. We thought we'd be late, because instead of making the pie and the mashed potatoes the night before, we woke up at noon Thursday and made them (we also did the laundry and cleaned the car). But, luckily, we made it there just in time, four on the dot, and before my Dad and Sally, which meant we weren't really late.

Since aunt Ellen hadn't cooked a turkey in decades, the Turkey was nearly overdone by the time we all got there, so instead of having munchies and sitting around until five, which was the original plan, we set out to setting the table, carving the turkey, reheating the side dishes people brought, and talking to my cousin Kim, who called so she could talk to most the family in one go.

After dinner, and desert, we retired to living room, while Sally cleaned (because that's what she does). Aunt Ellen, Dad, Gramma Julie, and I played Wii bowling, while Mickey watched. It was a close game, except for my father, who was a few strikes behind.

Dad came in last place, which we all kind of figured, and Gramma Julie, Aunt Ellen, and I were all only a pin away from each other. Aunt Ellen placed in third, and guess what.

My 89 year old crazy Grandmother beat me in Wii bowling.

But only by 1 point.

Michelle is awesome.

So, as you may have noticed, I have absolutely nothing to blog about. That and multiple computer/internet issues have left this space sparse, outdated, and half-forgotten. But, because I wanted to update this blog, I asked my faithful Twitter followers what I should blog about. At the time of this post, I got one response. It was from @rotheroni, someone who I've known over the internet since way back in my high school days, when Neopets were all the rage.

She told me to blog about how awesome she was, "because it's true."

Michelle is awesome for several reasons. I'm going to randomly, and probably not in order, list a few that I remember from the many years I've known her.

When livejournal was the hip, cool thing (back when you had to have a code to open one) she routinely made me a new layout just about every time I was sick of my current one.

When she got her first website she hosted mine for free. She also designed and coded my first layout. After that I attempted to do it myself, but almost always screwed something up, which she almost always would fix for me. She also helped with my brother's fan club web page.

Michelle and I also traded Christmas cards every year, a past time that has sadly gone out the window because I'm horrible at sending things in the mail. (I still have a Mother's Day card to send to my mom from 2008.) When I moved by myself for the very first time she sent me a blanket and some ducky things for my bathroom. Those few ducky things (I know one was a soap holder, but I can't remember what else started with her) have now evolved into the "Rubber Ducky Invasion" that is now my bathroom. I tried to complete the set that she started, until Wal-Mart discontinued it.

I remember I sent her a package/letter/card/something one time and I couldn't remember her last name so I just wrote "Michelle Bin Laden" on the package.

I also remember one time, while I was living with my Gramma, that I left the web cam on while I went to rehearsal/work/a party and asked her to watch the house for me. She did. She also claimed that my Gramma, whom she dubbed "Agnus," was hot. She demanded that I start calling her Papa. I did. It started to became difficult to explain that she wasn't really an elder man when I said something about "my papa," but I still did.

We did kind of lose touch for a little bit. Sometime after I "met" her for the first time (during which we went to see Hairspray). But, thanks to twitter, I'm still kind of updated on the awesomeness that is Michelle.

By the way, if you happened to click on the link to the archived version of Michelle's website, the last few sentences of the last post on the page are about me. It's one huge reason why I think that Michelle is so freaking awesome:

Jessica is, honestly, my best friend. She’s always there to make me laugh. She’s very silly, but I like her like that. I’m glad that we met.

So, I'm going to finally pay her back by telling the world wide web what I think of her:

Michelle is, honestly, one of the coolest people I know. She's been there for me whenever I needed her and I can always be myself when I'm talking to her. I'm so glad that I've (hopefully) had the chance to influence the tiniest part of her life, because she has influenced mine in more ways that she or I probably know.

Michelle is awesome.

Making friends isn't so hard.

Recently, I went on a "last chance" trip to Niagara Falls, Canada with my brother and a few friends. We quickly ran low on money, but high on open bottles of alcohol. Since we were under the assumption (most likely correctly) that we couldn't take open bottles over the border, we needed a quick way to drink large amounts of alcohol.

We knew there was no way that we could drink all that wine, whiskey, and vodka by ourselves, so my brother and I decided to call a few friends over and make a party out of it.

First, at my brother's suggestion, I phoned room 110 to come down the hall for "wine, whiskey, and vodka drinks." They said they couldn't come down, even though they'd love to, but they're "going out."

So, my brother called room 124, our neighbors. No answer, sadly. Then I made the suggestion to call our upstairs neighbors, room 223, and see if they wanted to come down.

"Hi! Room 223?" My brother began, "This is 123. We were wondering if you'd like to join us for a few drinks. We have wine, whiskey, and vodka for screwdrivers." He paused for a few moments while the other line responded. "We're just four friends up here for vacation and we'd like to make new friends." Pause again, "Yeah, okay."

I had the video camera on him at this point. He turned to the camera to explain, "So, he sounds kind of interested, but he has to confer with his girlfriend. We may or may not being having guests over." He turned back to the phone, "Good. Wonderful! We'll see you then." A big grin on his face, he spoke to the camera again, "He said, and I quote, 'Despite my girlfriend's hesitations, we're just going to finish dinner and then we'll be down in about ten minutes.' Score!"

Twenty minutes later, we thought they had skipped out on coming to visit us. My brother and I ended up leaving the room with four glasses of wine and the video camera (no one else wanted to come with us). Out in the hallway we ran into a family who got the floors mixed up after leaving the pool area. As we were waiting for the elevator and chatting with the family about trying to make friends, a man and a woman walked through the hall, coming from the stairwell, "One Two Three?"

I turned, as did my brother, "Yes."

"We're two two three!"

About two and a half hours and two or three mad libs later, Ellie and Damien, from room 223, joyfully left our hotel room to get some sleep before the wedding they had to go to the next afternoon. They were full of booze, as were we, and they had a story to tell at the wedding the next day. And probably one to tell at home, in the Bronx, too.

See? Making friends isn't that hard, you just have to be willing to put yourself out there enough to face rejection. Try it next time you're stuck at the hotel on a rainy night. Who knows? You might just meet your own version of Ellie and Damien!

Stalking a stalker.

While I was waiting for the plumber to arrive early Wednesday morning, I decided it was time I put some actual work into the look of my blog.  Because I'm very lazy, I was looking for an old layout I used for my brother's old fan club, TOSJFC, where I could use the code and just replace the picture.  Looking through old files and emails led me to a very amusing picture and a very sad feeling.

The amusing picture:

The sad feeling:

I used to love rushing home from school to turn on 1490 WESB just to listen to my brother.  It was cool to have someone I know on the radio, especially AM's most popular area DJ.  My brother used the name Stalker Jay during his time at WESB.  He was only there for just over a year, nearly three years ago, and was fired for some reason that I never bothered to ask about.  

I have a sneaking feeling that the radio station was Jay's favorite job.  Not just because he had his very own fan club, but because it let him do something he is very good at, entertaining people.  The radio station let him entertain the masses, while still sitting around doing just about nothing.  It was enough of a real job to be proud of it, but there was enough messing around to make it a fun thing that you got paid to do.

It's not like Jay did nothing but slack off.  He had a fan club to please, for crying out loud!  While he was there he made Employee of the Month twice and even scored himself a ticket to go see OAR with his little sister. 

 (That was the first concert I ever went to, and I'm so glad it was them with my brother.  The St. Bonaventure gym wasn't very crowded, but the band was awesome.  This was OAR before "Shattered", back in the days of "Hey Girl" and "Crazy Game of Poker".  Jay was so excite about getting the free ticket that I remember he squeed like a little girl.)

I wish I could find the audio samples I recorded off the radio way back when.  They hold such awesome memories that no one really cares about, except my brother and me.  The one I really want to find is titled "prom problems."  Apparently, some girl (Sarah?) danced with her grandma's cousin's husband's cousin's grandson (Ryan?) and wanted to know if it was incest.  Stalker Jay broke it down and let her know that it was okay if they kissed, because there was marriage in there somewhere and we were from such a small town that accidental incest was bound to happen sometime.  (Okay, maybe I added the accidental incest bit, but I'm sure he was thinking it.)

Then there's the time we made him try Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.. Or the time he took an on air poll to see if we could guess if he was wearing boxers or briefs (I guessed pink thong).. There was also the radio promo of our grandmother babbling on Jay's voicemail.. And we can't forget the Stalker Jay photoshop contest!

Every once in awhile, TOSJFC comes up in our conversation.  We chat about how much fun he had, how idiotic his listeners were, and the one guy who still yells "STALKER JAY!! I LOVE YOU!!" every time he walks in a bar, even though he's been off the air for three years now.

(Sorry, the TOSJFC site has gone to the wayside, so all the links are archive.com versions.)

(Double sorry for the post length, I didn't realise that it'd be this long when I started writing.  But once I got digging for old Stalker Jay stuff, I couldn't stop.  I even began to clean out my closet looking for the old audio files.  I know they're around here somewhere.)