Pretty Little Pieces: November 2010

You know what sucks?

When you’re in the middle of a gay romance and boy number one is all flustered by cute boy number two, and when cute boy number two breaks out in a wonderfully harmonized rendition of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream, your internet connection cuts out. Not cool Wi-fi, not cool.

So it may be blatantly obvious to some of you that I was just ripped out of one of my favorite TV series known as Glee. Those of you who didn’t know, please catch yourselves up so in the future we can avoid incidences like this. You can actually watch the latest full episodes on Hulu (best site ever!!! Will someone PLEASE start paying me for all this advertising I do???!). Anyway, in an effort to entertain myself while not so patiently waiting for my crappy internet to allow me to finish my boy choir version of Perry, I thought I’d grace my blog with my presence. Ok, so maybe I can’t grace my blog with my presence since of course I need the internet to do anything fun on this dang computer (minus spider solitaire of course) but an old fashion word document will have to do. Besides I can copy and paste later, YES!?

SOooooo the topic of this blog is not about gay romance (I know you are all secretly disappointed) but mainly about my recent move to a nice little house in Duluth, Minnesota. As many of you know, it took me quite sometime to get my life in enough order to pack up my things and move here. Which by the way, Joe and I both realized that when I say pack up my ‘things’ it really means packing up and moving mountains. Yep, mountains of clothes. And shoes. (Houston? I think I have a problem!) (FYI: My internet connection just came back on!) So moving on, Today is Tuesday, and I have officially been here for one week. Last Tuesday after a bunch of shannanagans went down involving a trailer with broken lights, Joe and I officially jumped in my families mini-van and hauled ass up north.

The ride went pretty well with very few issues. The biggest issue was having to stop every other exit to purge our nicotine fits. Along one of these smoke break exits I noticed the padding that was wedged between my chest and the wooden planks on the trailer had blown out in the 70 mph winds. Upon further inspection, I realized a large chunk of wood was missing on the back edge of my once perfectly beatific chest. Sadly with the loss of the padding and the jump of the rickety trailer my chest had been rubbing quite hard against two giant protruding bolts (did anyone else’s head just end up in a gutter?) It was a sad day for all involved.

Now that I have relived the splendid drive up here, that brings me to my arrival. Joe and I pulled up to my lovely little home on top of the infamous ‘hill’ in Duluth to find that Jake had yet to clean out the space that I was to move into. Now this would not be an issue under normal Jamie circumstances, but Joe had to be back to the cities pronto to finish up some pertinent labor at his place of employment (which in the end was all in vain). So we met up with Jake who apologized profusely and we all started bringing in some of the littler boxes that had fit in the back of the van. After we moved much of them into the inside living room it became very apparent that there was NO WAY all of my clothes were going to fit into my downgraded (From mom and Dad’s place) but also upgraded (see last blog) closet. So in an attempt to pass the time, Joe and I took off to shop for a fix while Jake finished cleaning out the room.

This is the part where I made Joe go in and out of three different stores on a mad search for the perfect external closet. I started off at Goodwill thinking that in a college town they’d probably have some really useful things. Little did I know how sadly mistaken I was. Even Jake had forewarned me of this particular goodwill stating it’s not like the goodwill’s in the cities it’s, “The Duluth Goodwill.” I wasn’t quite sure what he meant when he emphasized Duluth (maybe I could have portrayed that emphasis like, “The Duluth Goodwill.”) but once I got there I immediately understood. Pulling into the parking lot I almost hit an old man, with by the way? there is an abundance of them up here! I thought this was going to be a college town, and it is, but the current ratio between old and young is probably 1:1 and the middle aged don't exist here...

As Joe and I walked into stop number one of the afternoon I noticed the dirtiness that seemed to be all around us, and as we approached Joe proceeded to point out the improperly installed doors. They had been installed backwards and apparently no one thought it to be important enough to fix. Anyway, once Joe and I were inside I proceed to search for my new wardrobe holdy thingy and in passing made a comment to Joe about a wooden headboard. Immediately we were approached by an old man who instantly fills us in about how nice of a head board it really is. At this point, I stopped listening and started to avert my eyes while slowly moving away. He said a few more things to Joe of which I don’t recall, but to this day I’m not sure if he worked there and wanted us to buy the headboard, or if he was some dude letting us know he had already staked his claim and was marking his territory while his wife and ten kids pulled up the minivan. Who knows.

Next up on the list was Wal-mart where I actually gave up my penny pinching hopes and purchased a brand new external wardrobe thingy. However, this was still not enough. I then proceeded to drive further on down the road to check out Target’s selection as well. You can never be too sure about who carries the best thing or has the best price! By the time all of this running around was complete Joe and I got lunch and headed back to the house. From here on out was smooth sailing. So here is a picture of my pieced together room in which you can also see my wonderful new wardrobe holdy thingy. The room is a lot smaller than I had originally thought but it works nicely!

The following day was more or less organizing and moving my room around to accommodate the mountains of crap that I had brought with me.. After putting my room together like a brilliantly played game of Tetris (represent, yo!) I was ready to get out of the house and pick up some food at the grocery store (which is seriously a mile away! If I haven’t already mentioned how convenient the location of this house is, I will do so now. It’s three blocks away from a gas station and liquor store, three blocks away from my school, one mile away from a grocery store and one mile away from an erberts and gerberts, awesome, right!?) Anyway my first grocery shopping experience in Duluth was wonderful. I did an awesome job at picking only healthy foods (yes I consider Healthy Choice frozen meals healthy regardless of what chemicals may or may not be in them). But what got me real good about this shopping experience was a display that my roommate had pointed out to me at the front of the store. I snapped a picture so ya’ll can see:

Yes my friends, my local grocer cares about its clientele. They want to ensure that when you come in for your frozen meals and pop tarts that you don’t forget the essentials to the popular college game, Beer Pong. At this point in time it became obvious to me, that I had definitely moved to the right town. Don’t get me wrong, I actually don’t like beer pong all that much, but what I do like is that if I did want to play it? My grocer would be there to support this decision. Awesomeness!? yes I think so.

Speaking of beer pong makes a good segue into my next interesting night here in Duluth. So Friday had rolled around and two of my roommates informed me they were planning on having some friends over to drink later on that night. Since it is currently one ten in the morning I am going to keep this incredibly short and sum this all up in one annoying and probably confusing run on sentence. So here it goes: Alex the ex-roommate invited his friends who were crazy, the most notable was 50 year old Dave who had theories of mushrooms sucking up toxic waste, also notable was Alex’s brother Dan and his BFF red sweater boy who asked to retire with me (I secretly adored him and just two hours earlier he had had his boxers ripped off by a stripper. SERIOUSLY.) also notable was Taylor who tried to do a subtle lean in and kiss move on me but he was met with the hand of rejection, all while Alex was getting more and more intoxicated resulting in punching one of my roommates (jokingly?) in the back of the head and as if that wasn’t enough moving on to his brother’s face which bled all over the kitchen floor in which I ended up cleaning. The End.

Okay so there was a lot more involved in all of that but maybe another time and another place would be a good time to tell it, or maybe never, but definitely not now.

So the following night I went hunting with Mr. Thompson in Moose Lake. Here are the wonderful shots I got from the experience:

(Matt Showing off his 'rack')

and last but not least the pretty fire!!! oooooo....

Now Moose Lake is about a half hour drive from Duluth, and Thompson had informed me that I would be meeting him at a hunting bar about, “ten miles or so” east on 27. Silly little me believed him. So I’m about 30 miles down 27 when I start to question if I’m still going the right direction. I hadn’t seen a road sign for about 15 miles at this point. I check my phone to see if I can give him a ring and realize, “GREAT, NO flippen service!?” SO I’m out in the middle of God’s Country, not a clue as to where I am and all I can do is give a little prayer. Surprisingly, (but not really) about one mile later I see a deer swerve to miss it and end up in the parking lot of this quaint little hunting bar off hwy 65. Man, I love Minnesota. HA. I ended up spending that night in a fish house with a wonderful serenade of snores to lull me to sleep. In the morning we got up early to go sit out in the cold and wait for a damn deer. Nothing ever came, yet I heard shots all around me from the other neighbors out hunting as well. I was convinced it had something to do with me smelling like a girl. Or maybe not, but I guess I’ll never know. I finally get to the point where I just want to crawl back into my bed and sleep, so I pack up shop and head home to Duluth.

Once I arrive I load up my arms and body so I can get all my stuff inside in one trip because I’m lazy like that. I carefully make my way up to the door and into my room. I’m about to throw down all my stuff on the bed and curl up in ball when I realize something is different. Yep, I had to close my eyes just to make sure I wasn’t all messed up from the lack of sleep, but it was certain, some dude was passed out in my bed. I dropped all my stuff on the floor, stood there, and just stared. I wasn’t sure what to do at first until I got a little bit angry at this man for being in my clean, personal area. Dude, get the F out. So I whacked him on the shoulder, and said, “Dude, You’re in my FUCKING BED.” He mumbled an apology and said he was just keeping it warm for me and honestly he took entirely too long to get the hell out of my room. It’s like he thought some friendly conversation would make up for his lack sobriety and dirtiness being all over my shit. WRONG… LEAVE… NOW… Anyway, he ended up kicking it at our house until he had to go to work at 4, only after he had a few more beers to ‘cure his hangover’ which I think was still in the ‘hang’ phase because the drunkenness did not seem to be quite over yet. After he left, I cleaned and washed everything he could have possibly touched. EW, he could have had those killer bedbugs that everyone is talking about… NASTY! For the record, he was a pretty nice guy, and all of my roommates apologized for not keeping tabs on my room. A different person might still be upset about this but I’m fine with it (this time). These types of experiences are the one’s that make life interesting, if it hadn’t happened what would I have to blog about, right?!!!

Anyway, in the past week I’ve spent my day’s filling out job applications and trying to convince retail people that I really want to try my hand in their line of work (Lies, this is the last thing I really want to do). So far I’ve had two interviews one at Spirit Mountain and the other at Bath & Body Works. I accepted the position at B&B, but would prefer to work else where. Today I got a call from Spirit but unfortunately didn’t get to my phone in time and of course when I returned the call it went to voicemail. I truly hope I hear from them again!!! I can’t wait to go snowboarding on my brand new baby!!!