Pictures Worth a Thousand Tears

Last night we were honored with the presence of some of my old friends who I don't get to see very often.  Prior to my life with Gllen, my friends Christen and Andy and I had a weekly dinner club... where every Tuesday night, Andy would cook for us, and we'd sit around laughing and eating the whole night.  We had a good run at this dinner club, but as usual, life takes its twists and turns and we couldn't expect it to last forever... Andy became a father, Christen moved out of state, and I started dating a Gllen.

I pretty much lucked out - I found my own live-in-chef who makes me delicious meals, makes me laugh and in general keeps my spirits up.  Everyone should get to have Dinner Club forever. So, I was really excited to see my old gang, and introduce Gllen to the people who I spent a few formative years in my twenties with.  They have good stories to tell.

Gllen is a good listener - he doesn't usually interrupt a story.  So he absorbed a LOT of chatter about the good old days.  At one point he told the group, "It was really interesting to hear that story unfold. Pretty much all I heard was, 'That was the WORST night of my life.... did you WRITE that poem?' and whatever happened, it sounds amazing."  I really enjoy seeing life through the Gllen Lens sometimes.

The highlight of the evening was when we gathered back at our house for some late-night drinks and decided to play a board game... Gllen's new favorite game... Telestrations.  It's basically like pictionary combined with a game of telephone. Anyway, this game, without fail, makes Gllen laugh so hard that he CRIES. I think we all did.  But Gllen's laughter is so genuine, so joyful, that you can't help laughing when he does.  He was sitting next to Amanda, one of our guests, and drawing and cracking up so hard at his own art that he would get Amanda giggling, which in turn makes me laugh and it was went around in circles from there.

My favorite Gllen drawing from the night was his rendering of the word "cuddle".  I present it to you here... the more I look at it, the more I am amazed. I've blacked out the word so you can play along and make your own guess... to reveal the answer, simply highlight the blacked out text.

And for fun, here's one more... the secret phrase is "water off a duck's back".

Lemonade 4 Sale

Our friends Mike and Brent have a birthday today, and each year they treat us with a little shindig in their honor. It usually involves beer and meat and bean-bag toss. It's happening on Saturday - and I'm excited that it is happening right across the street from me at Mike and Kate's house.

Since Gllen hasn't been drinking this year, there's very little to lure him over there besides the promise of a meat morsel. Let me remind you that he hates socializing, so I'm sure there's already bets out there as to how many MINUTES he will actually spend at the party before retreating back into his office.

Yesterday, I was giving him a hard time about this. His response was, "Maybe I'll put up a lemonade stand out in our front yard."

I gave him the WTF look. "What does that have to do with the party?"

He quickly replied, "If people want to to talk to me, they will have to buy lemonade."

That's his solution to socializing.

I told him he would have to be outside in the sun and it would be hot.

He decided that he wasn't going to try to socialize this year.

The Shirt Says it All

Today, Gllen and I were talking about a party I am going to where there are a lot of Apple users. Gllen jokingly said he would come to the party and wear a shirt that says "Windows is better than Mac"

"Okay!" I said eagerly. I think he was taken aback by my easy agreement, so he revised, "I'll wear a shirt that says, 'Janelle is my girlfiend. Macs Suck.'"

I smiled at him. "Sure!" When he raised his brows at me and laughed, I added, "That will certainly strike up some conversations. People will want to talk to you. I enjoy seeing you converse with others."

He made some wierd noises and revised again. "Janelle is my girlfriend. Macs Suck. I won't talk to you."

With a smirk on my face, I told him, "You know, that shirt would come in handy in pretty much any social situation you are in." Really. It sums him up, and reflects about as much as he would contribute to a conversation verbally anyway...

He IS the White Elephant

Gllen was able to go to one of my holiday gatherings this year because it occurred early. With my Mom's side of the family, our holiday celebration has come to include lots of cocktails, appetizers and the dice game.

In preparation for the party, we stole the Ricketts' Buffalo Chicken dip recipe. Gllen tried to convince me that we needed to make a practice version of it. I denied him. Even without a dress rehearsal, the dip came out delicious. We both ate our fair share and there were no leftovers when we left.

So, other than eating a good portion of dip and drinking about 9 beers, Gllen was pretty quiet. Until the dice game. That's when things got rowdy.

After the first round, Gllen had acquired a good amount of gifts - one being a DIY coloring kit for a velvet poster. He actually seemed excited about it. So, now it was time to steal gifts. With so many treasures to pick from, Gllen turned to me and said, "I know exactly what I'm going for first." I glanced around the room. Could it be the slotted spoon? The carton of Whoppers? The spiral notebook?

When he rolled his first set of doubles, he shouted out, "Sauerkraut!" Yes. Someone had thrown in a can of sauerkraut as a joke, and Gllen had been vying for it from the moment he laid eyes on it. I laughed with the rest of my family. It wasn't until he rolled doubles again and shouted "BEETS!" that I almost died.

I announced the room, "We just broke up. Seriously. It's over." Gllen leapt up and claimed his prize, unconcerned about the status of our relationship. My cousin looked relieved that he had taken it. But now Gllen had, in his opinion, the best gifts there.

No one tried to steal them back from him.

Do You Believe in Magic?

I was bamboozled into going to a Magic Tournament (as Gllen reads this over my shoulder, he's already correcting me, saying "It's called a Magic Draft").

Gllen had advertised to me that Shane was having an Octoberfest keg at his house and tons of people were going, including extended friends and family from out of town. I expected to see lots of beer. I expected to find Gllen drunk. I suspected that I'd be the designated driver. I was not prepared for the Magic Tournament.

I arrived, fashionably late, cute as hell in a dress and heels from a previous party. As I pulled up in front of the house, I could see Kay peeking anxiously out the front door window. Perhaps she was worried that the police were going to arrive any second to shut down the monster kegger that had overtaken her home - at least, this is what I assumed she was feeling. You can imagine my surprise when I flourished through the door to find a quiet and somewhat reserved scene. A few people were playing Rock Band in the upstairs living room. A few people were mingling in the kitchen, watching Shane prepping food. Gllen was seated in the kitchen with Adam, hunched over a deck of Magic cards.

Oh, great, I thought to myself, he's going to be doing this all night. Little did I know. As I wandered towards the back porch, I noticed several tables, and more decks of Magic cards, and more hunched over fellows, muttering things like, "I cast my wolf of the dark banshee slayer..."

I flagged down Justen as he walked by, inquiring, "What is going on here?" He greeted me with an enthusiastic "Jazelle!" and happily explained that they were in the last legs of a Magic Tournament. He then gestured towards a gigantic white board where there was a complicated grid with player pairings. After detailed explanation of the rankings and who played what, he exclaimed, "Gllen is in the semi-finals!" Then he flitted away on a cloud of happiness.

Okay, I thought to myself, this doesn't seem to be the run-of-the-mill Magic game. Usually, a deck or two of Magic cards are brought out at random parties and I'll lose track of Gllen for most of the night while I socialize with those who aren't playing. In this case, EVERYONE was playing. I stared at the white board and did some mental math. So, it seemed that at least 10 rounds had already been played. In my rudimentary calculations, I figured maybe I'd be able to spend time with Gllen in a couple of hours, assuming he kept winning.

Some of the tournament losers had gone home to lick their wounds, others were immersed in the xbox. I didn't dare sit down next to Gllen, lest my presence be considered a bad luck charm. (Besides, I don't know anything about Magic, so its pretty boring for me to sit around and watch.) You may wonder why I decided to wait for Gllen. It was because in the two minutes I did talk to him, he hinted at the possibility of sleeping in his van - he had even come prepared with a blanket and pillow, safely stowed away in the back seat. Selfishly, there was no way I was going to allow that - I would end up worrying about him all night and never be able to sleep myself. Thankfully, Jesse arrived with his baby boy and I found the diversion I was looking for.

So the next hour or so, I was in the baby-haze. Either holding the baby, talking about babies, or staring longingly at the baby. But through this haze, I heard tiny snippets of what was going on around me:

"Gllen beat Adam!"

"The finals are going to be Gllen and Ryan!"

"Gllen won the first game in the finals!"

"If Gllen wins this game, he will be the Magic Champion!"

"Gllen won the tournament!"

Gllen won the final game and was crowned The Magic Champion. After 15+ games and 12 competitors, he earned his crown.

He eventually found me to tell me so. And then he told me again. And again. And it didn't stop for the rest of the night. As we were getting ready to leave, he said "The Magic Champion says 'drive me home'!" and then on the way home, he asked, "Did I tell you I won the tournament? I am the Magic Champion." Then we got home and he started making more demands like, "The Magic Champion says 'Open the door'." and "The Magic Champion wants McDonalds.", I didn't roll my eyes once, I swear.

This continued for at least a week. And even now, I still hear a thing or two about how I am dating the Magic Champion, aren't I so lucky?

A Reaction

Today, I'm going to spend time with my family. Gllen has other plans.

He walked by me on his way to his office, holding a tower of beer cans, stockpiling for a long poker session. He paused to ask me, "What time are you leaving?"

I responded, "My dad is picking me up any minute now."

He stared at me for a moment and then looked down at the beer. He looked back at me. "Is he coming up?"

I waited a full twenty seconds before answering. "No."

He looked relieved and continued to his office. I called out after him, "Would you have put the beer away and starting to knit if he was?"

"No," he hollered back at me, "I'd get some more beer."

The Truth Will Out

So, last weekend, after Gllen and I got home from a romantic date at Namaste Cafe, (Gllen loved all the food we had there and wants to go back) we ran into our downstairs neighbors, Anna and Kyle. They were sitting on their porch having a glass of wine, and I sort of invited Gllen and myself to join them. Gllen reluctantly agreed to socialize, but I know he had a nice time when all was said and done. The highlight of the evening was when, after a few drinks emboldened me, I revealed a secret that Gllen and I had been keeping from them for over a year...

Gllen had a hard time adjusting to living in the apartment at first, because he would constantly forget to take his keys with him when he left the house. I suppose at Dupont, he never left and if he did, someone was always home. So, several times he came home to a locked door and a girlfriend sound asleep - and of course his phone would be dead or not with him, so he would have no way to get inside. He learned to get my attention by throwing snowballs at the bedroom window. The first time he did this I was terrified and didn't realize that the sound of the snowballs was NOT coming from inside the house and NOT being made by a serial killer... Gllen tries to brush this off as romantic (me saving him from a cold night, etc.)

As I relate this to the neighbors, they give each other a questioning glance. I tell them that the last time he forgot his keys it was springtime, and there was no snow on the ground, so Gllen started throwing rocks and sticks at my window. Begrudgingly I got out of bed and let him in. This was nothing new by this time. Now, I wasn't even really think about it when a few days later the neighbors told me they were going to have our landlord install some security lights on the side of the house, because there had been a prowler in the yard over the weekend. I think my reaction was "Wow, that's scary!" It wasn't until two days later that I had the eureka moment and realized that, most likely, the prowler the were referring to was Gllen!

Immediately I went to Gllen and told him that we should tell the neighbors about his midnight tryst with the sticks and windows. He was mortified and begged me not to say anything to them as too much time had passed. I didn't quite agree with him, but I promised him I wouldn't bring it up out of the blue, but if the subject ever came up, I might casually mention that Gllen had been outside throwing sticks.

At this point in my telling of the story, the neighbors are saying things like "Oh my god!" and "What a relief!" Apparently, the experience with the prowler has given Anna nightmares ever since. She's constantly paranoid about it and the whole thing has become very well known in her circle of friends. She was so relieved to hear that it was only Gllen that she admitted she might actually start sleeping better.

At this point, I beg her to tell the story from her perspective, which makes me laugh now every time I think of it.

She had been lying in bed, not quite asleep when she saw a man walk by her window. When she started hearing noises (sticks and rocks) she looked out the window again she saw the man looking through the window at her. Terrified, she tried to quietly wake up her boyfriend, Kyle, to alert him to the prowler's presence. Being startled into wakefulness, he shouts. Anna sees the prowler take off running. They call the police. Within ten minutes, the police have arrived and are shining spot-lights into the yard and patrolling the block for suspicious people. The police never did find anyone...

1st Guest Blogger: Mike Ricketts

I'm pleased to introduce my very first guest blogger, Mike Ricketts. Mike is one of the few people that can hold an online conversation with Gllen for more than three lines. Even I have a hard time with that. Mike has an interesting perspective on who/what Gllen is, especially since he is one of the only people that has befriended Gllen outside of his childhood circle of friends. Quite an accomplishment. A lot of it is due to their unique communication style... And without further ado, I give you Mike Rickett's Living with Gllen guest blog:

The Noise

For as long as I have known Gllen, our methods of communication have been constantly evolving. The first time I met Gllen was St. Patrick’s Day 2001. He came from Wausau to a party in Minneapolis and said maybe four things. Our communication at this point relied on brief awkward stares. The case was the same when I visited Wausau that summer and was a guest at Gllen’s house for part of an evening. I observed aloud, “Gllen, there is not one thing on any wall in your house except for that tiny picture of Eminem over there in the back room.” He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. Later I noticed a pile of about 200 Mountain Dew cans in the kitchen sink and asked him if he liked Mountain Dew at all. He gave a sheepish grin and nodded very slowly. Even though he said less to me during this visit, he communicated more.

Later, Gllen moved to the Twin Cities and our communication blossomed into daily conversation, both in person and over instant messenger. For a brief while I lived with Gllen and that stretch represented the climax of our verbal interaction. Still, even amidst that flourish of banter, if you were to do a word count on one of our conversations in the garage, Mike would be responsible for over 2,000 words and Gllen would have about 23.

A few months after I moved out, Gllen got a phone. This was the first phone I’d ever known Gllen to have. It was a remarkable thing to be able to call Gllen, however we all soon realized that the phone would remain shut off 99% of the time. To this day, I think I have received less than 10 calls from Gllen. In rare cases I am out with someone who receives a call from Gllen, their reaction is ALWAYS, “What the fuck!? Gllen is calling me?” In recent years he has been more active in making and receiving calls, and text messages, however it doesn’t matter anymore because we have honed the most reliable and dynamic method of communication mankind will ever need: The Noise.

It started out as a sarcastic jeer of dismissal, a condescending reflex.

“Gllen, do you have any mustard?”
“Pssssht.”

“Mike, where is the DVD player remote?”
“Chaaa.”

“Gllen, did you have a jack that last hand?”
“Pffffft.”

This went on for many months. The Noise began to evolve, taking on new organic directions on a daily basis. The challenge became to create sounds that were as ridiculous as they were dismissive and unhelpful. Our instant message dialogues often involved no actual words, but I like to think something still got done.

“Mike, what time is grilling?”
“Ptshhhaka.”

“Gllen, can I get a ride?”
“Bzzzztrikaa.”

“Mike, did you win last night?”
“SssssssffffffppppTK.”

Presently, we’ve reached the asymptote line of absurdity. We’ve been traversing it for over a year or so now. Basically any time Gllen or I see each other, we emit The Noise. How do I describe The Noise in plain text? This is such a tall order. Hopefully Janelle can coerce Gllen into letting her record a good sample to embed here, but I’d say The Noise is like a bus with 50 ducks on it crashing headlong into a tanker full of alphabets.

It also possible to make The Noise quietly—just imagine the bus and tanker are peanut-sized.

The Noise is always in full force during poker nights. As more and more alcohol becomes involved, The Noise presses and mutates the boundaries of its relevance (please see figure 1). It gets laughs from some people, but it should be noted that Janelle absolutely hates The Noise. She hates on it real bad. On the surface, she harbors ill will toward me for being a co-conspirator on behalf of The Noise, but deep down I think Janelle knows that it is not my fault, and that it is here to stay regardless of what any of us do about it. Like the Seinfeld episode where he mocks his date’s growling stomach with a fun and jovial voice. Janelle can hate on The Noise, but that will only make it stronger, exactly like the evil goo that blankets New York in Ghostbusters 2.

Figure 1

Today, it remains my most effective channel of communication with Gllen—a product of years of linguistic evoIution.

I really am sorry, Janelle, but this is bigger than all of us.

---

Janelle's Response

I have real compassion for Mike's getting to know you story. I met Gllen at least 30 times, and had several stilted conversations with him, before he even noticed me. I met Gllen 6 years ago. If you ask Gllen, we met 3 years ago. He just isn't one to who worries about social pleasantries.

Now, about that Noise. I really do hate it. It is the most annoying thing to hear come out of anyone's mouth. It could never be done in a cute way. And despite what Mike says, it is not here to stay as far as I am concerned. When Gllen and I are alone together, he does NOT make The Noise. Partly because of the Angry-Girlfriend-Death-Glare I give him when he makes it, partly because he refrains from upsetting me, but also another reason... Its not fun for him. He likes making The Noise and having someone react to it. Sort of like a call and response kind of thing. I don't respond. So, Mike, if you wonder why I'm giving you the evil eye and radiating ill-will, it is because I'm pissed that you are encouraging him.

Relieved

So, I've been invited to a little soiree this weekend, and knowing that I would be imbibing, I wanted to cajole Gllen into giving me and my friends a ride out there. So, I started out by saying "I need a favor..." Gllen gives me an apprehensive look. "There's this party on Saturday night, and it's kind of a dance, and they have alcohol there, and there's other fun stuff." Gllen starts to look uncomfortable and avoids my eyes, and I realize it sounds like I am inviting him to go the dance. I quickly finish my proposal, "And I was wondering if you could give Becky, Yanaba and I a ride?"

"Oh." He says, "You want a ride?"

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble."

He leans back, obviously relaxing after those few tense moments. "I think that can be arranged. I'm just glad I don't have to go."

I pat his head and reply, "Of course not. I know it's not your cup of tea. It involves dressing up, dancing and socializing... all things that you hate."

He takes a breath of relief, smiles, nods and says "Yeah."