Birthday Bashing

Well it has been quite some time since I have posted last and for good reason. Birthdays seem to bring the fun out in some people, I just so happen to be one of those people. I enjoy my friend’s birthdays more than I enjoy my own. I find great pleasure in doing things for others, like volunteering literally hundreds of hours to community service growing up and while in college for the football team. Birthdays, however, are a different form of voluntary community service. When one of my friend’s birthdays rolls around I live by the motto “go big or go home.” I was able to once again live this motto a few weeks ago for a dear friend’s birthday.

Thursday Night:

In Laramie, Wyoming, most students consider Thursday to be a part of the weekend. Now, normally I work at one of the bars on Thursday nights, but given the holiday (my friend’s birthday) I had the night off. I have also recently discovered that Pinnacle Whipped Cream Vodka and root beer makes perhaps the most potent yet delicious drink ever, tasting exactly like a root beer float (kids, do not try this at home). Knowing how deadly just a few of these drinks may be, three friends and I only had a few, partly thanks to a friend I like to call Bully (you know who you are) who kicked over the bottle and lost a quarter of it into the carpet. After watching a little NBA postseason basketball and arguing about how worthless hermit crabs are as pets, we collectively decide to venture out on our pub crawl around Laramie. Although Thursday was quite an interesting night in itself, Friday and the birthday celebration is when things really took a turn for the weird.

Friday Night:

What started as another typical night quickly exploded into one of those nights that I will never forget. Birthday Boy, two other friends, and I followed protocol and began pregaming at Birthday Boy’s house. As a side note, for special occasions, such as this, I like to do something special for the birthday person called the tower of power. The tower of power is a t-shirt that has a checklist of tasks written onto the front of it (usually 12 to 15 tasks), usually starting with a shot count that is equal to the persons age (i.e. 21^st birthday means 21 shots). These tasks are all considerably risky to complete and can only be crossed off the list once completed and someone from the birthday party witnesses it. The tower of power has a way of making the person wearing the shirt forget the night and make the night memorable for all of those who are not wearing it. I began this ritual for my roommates 21^st and it has been amazing every time since its creation.

After a while of drinking and listening to Birthday Boy complain about having to wear the tower of power shirt, that I so generously created for him, we decide to begin the usual bar rounds. At the first bar we start with a round of shots followed by a few more and before long Birthday Boy is more than comfortable in his new shirt and, in fact, is beginning to take pride in it, showing people everything that he has in store for the night. Low and behold there is one brave individual that wishes to be a part of this memorable evening and drops his pants in the middle of the bar to let Birthday Boy sign his buttocks and cross his first task off the list, and it is official, the night has begun.

We continue to stagger from bar to bar and make a mockery of this night with birthday shenanigans, not asking but yelling at anyone and everyone to help us complete this laundry list of tasks written on this now alcohol stained t-shirt. Surprisingly Birthday Boy is doing quite well with the list. Motorboat a bartender, gone, make money working the pole, did it, give a stranger a lap dance, easy, he even managed to cross off the body shot off of a dude (the most entertaining thing I have ever witnessed at the bar in years). However, despite all of the begging and pleading of over half a dozen times, one of the few that Birthday Boy was unable to accomplish (have yet to be seen done), rock-paper-scissor a police officer.

Despite not completing the entire list of twelve tasks I woke up very proud of Birthday Boy for he had set a new tower of power record which was crossing off 8 tasks, which is almost double the number of those who have tried in the past. And because of this I cannot wait for the next birthday so we can once again attempt to set records.

Observe and Report

When you work at a bar, much like I do, you get to see some pretty entertaining and interesting things. People are very intriguing as is, but when you add alcohol, music, and in some instances other substances into the mix people become far more entertaining. I work at two of the more popular bars in Laramie, the Buckhorn and the 2^nd Street Cowboy Bar and Dancehall. Despite how small Laramie may be these two venues attract a far different crowd from one another. For those of you not familiar with either of these places the Cowboy is, go figure, a cowboy bar with a country atmosphere and live music. The Buckhorn on the other hand is more of a hip hop atmosphere with an upstairs that houses what is called the Parlor and offers Laramie a sort of dance club.

Since I have started working at the bar I have picked up a new hobby, people watching. People watching may sound a little weird but it is actually quite fun and you learn a lot about human interaction. People watching is simply just inconspicuously observing people from afar. As a communications major I enjoy studying people and how they act and interact with one another, so that may explain why I enjoy this unusual activity so much. In a sense it is a form of real life reality television for me and I get paid to watch it, which is a nice bonus.

As a bouncer I have to be assertive to the world around me and can not help but watch and laugh at times. You never know what you are going to see when on the job, especially since alcohol tends to make people a little unpredictable. Some nights the bars are really quiet and there is no drama or problems just crowds of people having fun, dancing, sharing stories, and laughing. However, some nights are the polar opposite, and this when people watching is at its prime, think Jersey Shore minus the tans and the steroid use. Even in little old Laramie we manage to attract drama, and a lot of it, welcome to college! Fighting is not something that is tolerated at the bars but it is always fun when it occurs. The back stories that the individuals have to tell about the occurrences are what make them the best too…you can imagine how ridiculous they get. Even after a long night at the bar I can always look back at the quality people watching achieved throughout the evening and realize that it was a good night and I am walking away with some good stories. Blog you later

Same Shizzit, Different Day

One thing that you get used to growing up in Wyoming is waking up to a world that rarely changes and it is as much of a good thing as it is a bad. Being enrolled in college doesn’t help this fact either. I wake up knowing that I am going to see the same people, the same scenery, go to the same classes, even the same weather (which in Laramie is generally cold and windy). There are very few things that change day in and day out. I still have the same sarcastic yet entertaining roommates that are unique in their own way. The only things that seem to change in my daily routines are the comments that those sarcastic roommates have to make, the lecture topics in class, the assignments I receive at my internship, and whether it is going to rain or snow that day.

We all, in some way or another, have a daily routine that rarely changes. It is just human nature to form routines and structure out our daily lives. We may not realize it, but it does exist and it is so monotonous. Being involved in sports my whole life having a routine was something that had consumed my life. Having to go to lifting, then rehab for injuries, class, lunch, more class, film, practice, rehab, dinner, study tables, and finally sleep. This is the very routine that I lived six days a week for three straight years playing college ball. Now, even without collegiate sports in my life, I have managed to form new routines that have helped the days fly by. Today is one of those days where I had an epiphany about this fact of life. I realized that my days seem so boring and literally fly by because there is nothing that changes throughout the day.

I am very fond of change and enjoy changing my daily routines, but have been so caught up in life at the moment to make any changes. I still find myself waking up, making breakfast, going to class, going to my internship, then going to another job, and then going home to watch a movie and do homework before I randomly pass out at some point. Up to this point I have been content with this monotonous routine. However, due to this lack of change in my life I have made it a personal goal of mine to make at least one change in this routine every day. Read a book, go see a different friend every day, go for a run, etc. And I challenge everyone who reads this to do the same, change your norm and break free from your routine to do something new and unusual. Blog you later

My First Blog....But Not My Last

"Don't let making a living get in the way of making a life." ~Andrew Hammond

It is interesting enough growing up in a state that a disturbing amount of individuals in the country do not even know the whereabouts of, Wyoming, but it is even more interesting coming from a town within that state that people who even live in Wyoming do not know where it is or that it even exists. This is an accurate way of describing my hometown, a place unknown to many that live in a place unknown. Greybull, Wyoming is a peaceful little tight-knit community where everyone literally knows everyone, and is set at the base of the Big Horn Mountains in north central Wyoming. A town that sits in the bottom of a hole that is small enough that if you blink, you just might miss it. Growing up we would have to drive an hour (54 miles) to go to the nearest movie theater or Wal-Mart and drive over two hours (125 miles) to shop at the nearest mall. Being from a small town is a luxury that a lot of people in this world will never get the chance to experience, and for that I am very grateful.

Although I come from an awfully sheltered and shut off community that is worth a blog in itself, that is not why I am sitting here today writing this. I am not here to offer up words of wisdom but instead to share my journal entries about someone that comes from such a place as Greybull, Wyoming, and has escaped the black hole to live the kind of life that not many “small town boys” get to.

So, a brief introduction to all who stumble upon my post, my name is Garrett and I am currently a student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. Probably another place that many people do not recognize nor care to, but for a person like me Laramie is a big town (roughly 27,000 including students). I am a former football player majoring in Communications with a minor in Marketing Communications and am approaching graduation in May without a clue of what I am going to do next. On top of being a full-time student I also work three jobs and still find plenty of time to enjoy the shenanigans that college has to offer. I have already managed to experience a lot of life’s curveballs in my 23 short years of being alive, and am sure to encounter many more, both good and bad, in the years that I have ahead of me. That being said let’s get this blog rolling and hopefully my senioritis does not affect my blogging as much as it does my school work. Blog you later