Hows my little memorial weekend traditionalist?

In May of the year 2000 I began what became an annual pilgrimage to the cabin of my good friend Justin. Last year was our not so grand finale of this annual tradition. This weekend I spent quite a bit of time reflecting on my annual tradition and this being the first year I didn't make the trip I thought it was worth sharing some good memories of our shenanigans and adventures.

In the interest of time, rather than telling a long disjointed story I'll list out some of the highlights of what went down on these weekends.

Easy Cheese - The first year we went grocery shopping and I insisted on getting like 4 cans of the stuff. I may have finished one, the others greeted me more than one year after.

Cookies.

My mexican "poncho" the guy who sold it to me called it a pullover though. Ponchos don't have sleeves. This was a staple piece of my weekend wardrobe, I usually slept in it.

Putting in the dock - We only did it one time and it was freezing.

Losing the prop on the blue boat without beaching it, still an unsolved mystery.

Launching fireworks, lots and lots and lots...and lots of fireworks.

Going to movies on rainy days.

Bowling at night.

I got a boaters permit to drive the Jet ski solo, I rode the jet ski for hours. Bouncing spinning, tipping, and falling off were some of my favorite things to do, as I got older I realized I really like driving around looking at houses too.

Taking the new Jet Boat out one morning and running it out of gas. We got towed back in.

Taking a Jet Ski out and flipping it and it didn't restart, this was a different year but I think the same guy towed us back.

Tubing, waterskiing, learning to wakeboard, and cruising in the pontoon listening to the best rock and roll the early 2000's gave us.

The Kite tube.

Smoking my first (of many) cigars on the dock. I didn't know cigars could impair someone's ability to walk before that one.

The real naked centaur.

Some other naked things. Mostly involving running and swimming.

The Kite Tube.

Mountain Dew (before it became MTN Dew), Lots and lots of it.

Board games, like Talisman and Settlers of Cataan. Risk was also played over the course of a day often, I did not partake in Risk usually.

Puzzles.

Throwing farts.

Setting up the water trampoline was always one of our jobs. An air blower and a giant inflated tube was hours of fun for a bunch of 15-18 year olds.

The blob. We had more fun with it on land launching people off than we ever did on water (too slippery).

Lots of really really good food. Justin's Dad is a wiz on the grill and we had some fantastic meals like Brats, Houston Burgers, Lobster (or was it crab legs?), Salmon, Prime Rib, Steaks, and yummy egg bakes.

Geocaching

In my time the Houstons had (not all at once) 3 power boats, 1 pontoon, and 4-ish Jet skis.

Eventually we all turned 21 and alcohol consumption became a part of our weekend. There was a beer pong tournament for a few years.

Haircuts.

Football tossing and yard games.

Night cruises on the pontoon.

Bar Hopping, Justin always liked this bar called the Top Spot.

Long conversations about anything under the sun, the foundation of our fantastic friendships.

Summer Shandy in a can!

Lots of stories, catching up, joking, drinking, smoking, and laughing around a campfire.

Last year I even found some morel mushrooms and fried them up.

Relaxing, and getting some sun.

I think I will forever associate Our Lady Peace and Oasis with riding shotgun in the Lexus with the windows down to the cabin.


I went up there with a group of guys who I still call my closest friends for fourteen years. We didn't always have the full crew and new people rotated in and out but it was always a good time. Unfortunately all good things must eventually come to an end. Last year most of us had either moved all over the country, or recently married to begin or continue new traditions. Every year memorial weekend was a source of bickering between Laura and I because it's the first Long weekend of the summer and she never shared it with me. After beginning college and then moving to Illinois I found spending memorial weekend with my best friends more and more valuable, I loved catching up with everyone along with running around naked, shooting fireworks, and getting drunk around a campfire (sometimes all in the same night). Life has a way of changing, our final few memorial weekends were remarkably different than our first few, not only in our activities and lack of nudity, but also our conversations changed too. We went from talking about school, sports, girls we liked, girls we needed to break up with, what college we were going to, and stories from the year at school, to more adult things like, current events, who was buying what house/car, where people were moving to, what their new job was like, and what their goals were. Of course like old friends do, we would still trade stories and memories from the old days.

With a heavy heart I'm sad to be moving on from this annual tradition, but like someone once said, when you shut one door a new one will open. I have a new baby girl, and I'm excited to start shaping her memories of memorial weekend traditions. This year we didn't start anything noteworthy but next year will be a new and exciting time as she'll be up and moving.

So, Cathy and Lanning Houston, thank you. Without you guys providing a wonderful place to make memories and supplying hungry guys with endless amounts of food, fireworks, mechanic shop bills, and gasoline we all wouldn't have made the lasting memories we have. You may never read this but I'm forever grateful.

And to my friends, Justin, Jon, Andrew, Brian, Henry, Matt, Ben, Tom, and Alex, thanks for the memories.

This is probably one of the sappiest blog posts I've made yet but like I keep telling myself, I write this blog as a diary of sorts, everyone else who enjoys it is a bonus. Today I realized that for nearly half my life on the same weekend every year I went to the same place and had a great time, this is worth marking in my online diary.

Hows my little governor?

It's not often one gets to meet the governor of their state. In my case I handed him my wine glass and said he needed it for the picture. He drank from it, stole it, and walked away. I eventually got it back from his assistant? sans wine. That was my whole interaction with governor Bruce Rauner. The man with a million robo callers, whom I didn't vote for strictly based on the how harassing the frequency of the calls were. But anyway, I was in springfield pouring some samples of wine on the Governor's Mansion lawns, to spread word that Illinois wine is good, when my photo op happened. Not much to say about the event except that I realized how strange the world of politics really is when looking form the outside in.

From Left: My district representative Chad Hays, Some Lady, The Gov, Me.

Hows my little Facebook quitter?

Recently I’ve been having this rather large and incredibly corny debate in my head and with other people regarding the world’s largest social advertising network. It all boils down to me realizing tired of facebook and I think I should leave it once and for all. Most of you might remember I’ve done this twice now. I’m probably turning into the boy who cried wolf, but that was then, before facebook had over a billion users, before businesses were pretty much required to have a page, before ads, before those stupid one dollar gifts, before farmville, hell it was before newsfeed was added. That was back when the facebook was solely about connecting you with people.

But now that I’ve connected with everyone I’ve begun unconnecting with them too. I think I left college with three to five hundred “friends”, many of whom I simply attended high school with or met in college classes, I didn’t even have an interest in their ongoing lives. It took a few years but I finally paired my friend list down to around 150. Which to me sounds like a lot of people but some of those friends have over A THOUSAND (facebook) FRIENDS! Which is totally cool, but how can you be interested in that many people’s lives? Maybe you can. Anyway. The reason I’ve stayed with it since moving to Illinois is that it was a great way to keep in touch with the people I like without actually keeping in touch with them. This is just the way life is now, so I won’t bitch about that too.

So here is where my disdain for facebook starts. I’m a guy who just wants to use it to know what my friends are up to. Lately thats been what they’re drinking, where they are, who they married, and what kid just fell out of a vagina. Which is awesome, that’s why I’m connected. But there is also a vast scourge of regurgitated unoriginal content having little to do with anybody’s lives (I’m looking at you ecards). I’ve become a professional at hiding game notifications and requests. I’ve even unliked businesses and other pages because if I want to find more info I’ll just check their page at a relevant time, or I’ll sign up for their e-mail newsletter. 

On top of all of this I have another major issue. Most of what I consider to be my real life closest friends on facebook, the people who I’d like to know what’s going in in their lives, no longer participate aside from the occasional ‘like’ because they are friends with too many people to share their ideas and thoughts. Professional lives have crossed into their personal life, and pictures and opinions are now too dicey to share socially. Facebook made these cool friend lists to prevent such happenings but they are apparently underutilized.

Lastly I hate that newsfeed sorting constantly reverts back to top rather than new. For some reason this isn't a permeant setting and it drives me up the wall. To me, the top post sorting doesn't make sense. Plus I hate when people I don't know bring old posts back from their order by liking or commenting on it days, weeks, or even years later.

I’ve taken great pains to make my facebook time shorter and simpler so I don’t waste so much time on it. I’ve been largely successful but even with all of my efforts of friend lists, unliking and unfriending I’m not getting the same easy straightforward experience I once enjoyed with this social network. 

Which is a roundabout way of saying, maybe I should quit facebook once and for all, I don’t like it anymore. If you’ve read my rant this far you’re probably thinking this blog post has been a lot of whining about one of the most lame and insignificant parts of someone’s life.

Which brings up another point, facebook is no longer insignificant. There are over a billion users. Hell, people in some parts of the world consider facebook the internet. Some businesses opt just for a free facebook page rather than a webpage. Bands announce tours, share links to early releases. Stores announce sales with offer codes available only to people on their page. Authors announce book tours and release dates, newscasts air comments and posts. Not to mention all of the pages just for pushing news, teaching, and entertaining. So leaving facebook can disconnect a person from some of their favorite things in the world, having a tool that makes it so easy to consume this information is rather useful, some might even say necessary. 

So in our digital age can someone feasibly quit?

Of course! But at the same time you have this tool to remain connected to the world. A tool that is relatively easy to use, so quitting just makes life a little more challenging for you. But only a little. So right now i’m not sure if I’m going to totally nuke my account by changing my password to something I’ll never remember and log off for good, or if I’m just going to go inactive to pop on occasionally to check out something I need to know of. What I can say for sure is facebook as a platform isn’t about connecting people any more, its about connecting money to facebook through people and I’m not enjoying myself anymore. 

Also I’m quite certain 95% of my readers of this blog follow the link through facebook so I do have that going against me if I quit. The irony of automatically sharing my quitting facebook blog post to facebook is one I enjoy.

EDIT: I wrote most of this over two weeks ago. Since then I’ve taken all my shortcuts from my phone and computers away so I'm not unconsciously checking. I can honestly say, I haven’t missed it. The only time I needed it was for work, I can just make a work account and nuke my personal one. I’m done folks. Done for good.

After having a conversation with someone else who very recently quit I realized I’m engaging in an uphill battle towards simplicity and straightforward updates which isn't the facebook platform any more. 

I guess you can find me on instagram but honestly most of you have my email address and phone number, I’ll still be around.