nothing to prove

home and the unexpected

I made it back safe and sound. It all started back on the 22nd when I had to live that day twice, travel to a different hemisphere, and participated in the Blaine High School alumni swim meet all in a day. Only to be topped the next day with second row tickets to the Timberwolves game in which Mark, Ben, Reid, and I all got drunk for. That night I also got my mom's cell phone stolen, but she needed a new one anyway. In some ways it is difficult to believe that I was home for as long as I was because of how quickly it all went by. Having said that it is hard for me to keep track of all the things I did and when they all exactly happened. Good thing I have this to keep track of the stuff I did in Japan of the last few months otherwise who knows what I would actually remember.

Most of the first week actually went by fairly slow, which was fine by me, so I spent a lot of time at home relaxing and being generally lazy. It gave me plenty of time to decorate our Christmas tree and spend an afternoon making Christmas cookies with the family. I spent Christmas Eve at my grandparents and it was great to see all my relatives again for plenty of food, presents and games. For once all of my cousins were in the same place at the same time so we had to get the grandchildren picture in, as it becomes more and more infrequent that the ten of us are all there. The next day I spent with my family as well and for once I woke up my sister instead of the other way around. Thankfully I got pretty much everything I wanted, which included plenty of warm clothes since Japan, despite being a modernized country, lacks central heating.


After picking up a few extra hours at work, which was basically so I had money to fuel my eating, drinking and spending habits over break, and then New Years had suddenly arrived. I had to work on the morning of New Years Eve but got off in time to head back, take a shower and then head to Uptown for a few afternoon cocktails. Later that evening I had a party at my parents place and had a decent showing of people there to enjoy it. It basically consisted of a bunch of good friends eating, drinking and catching up on life. Anyone noticing a re-occurring theme? The party was also amusing in the fact that there was only one couple there so when the ball dropped most of us just toasted and gave hugs all around. Clearly I wasn't wasted enough since I wasn't making out with everyone in the room and my shirt was still on but I still managed to have a great time.



The next day Jennie, Joy, Ben, Brad, Mark, and myself all got some hungover Perkins. Let me just say that I didn't know Perkins actually got busy before midnight. It was nice just to get some food in our bellies though. Later that day, I went to my grandparents for more food, drinks and games. However, I only stayed a few hours because I had a date with Matt later that night where I kept my tradition of loosing at Scrabble. Honestly, who comes back from a 50 point deficit to win? Matt does. Someday I will win that game, I just hope it is against Ben and Mark.


Then it was Ben's birthday, the big 23. Somehow it had been decided to have his party in Anoka so a few of us got together and vowed to get Ben trashed despite him having to work the next day. A football game, lei and ten shots later Ben was drunk talking in the bathroom stall to his little brother. Pretty amusing. Yes, I was the one to lei Ben. Oddly enough we ran into another Johnnie who was home from Japan. He did the JET program the previous year and was now studying Japanese near Osaka. Apparently he was at a really violent school so he had no qualms about only staying a year, I wish I had something like that to solidify my decision.


Finally I come to the fun part, Matt. I actually met Matt the Thursday before New Years at a gay bar called Boom in Northeast Minneapolis through a mutual friend. We ended up talking most of the night but never even exchanged phone numbers. I had only told him I was working New Years Eve at the Sunny Side-Up Cafe and sure enough he showed up that very morning. It was an interesting morning since a couple groups of friends also swung through that morning and got to see me trying to flirt with him, probably pretty amusing for anyone watching. Needless to say we exchanged phone numbers and emails before the morning was over and proceeded to have an amazing week together. He is an brilliant guy that I was fortunate enough to meet and spend a week with while I was home. The last night I was home he traveled to and from St. Cloud with me to see a bunch of my high school friends, drank too much and stayed up with me the rest of the night. I am going to miss him a lot.

posted by Aaron @ 5:26 AM