A dead, dark dungeon of a year in which much was accomplished but very little was done. I read more books in this year than any other year, more than some people read in an entire lifetime and most people read in an entire decade. I won an award in the spring, for things I did the previous year. All I really remember is reading.



My class schedule was light, filled with more-or-less worthless education department courses. You barely had to attend class in order to ace them, let alone do any outside studying or reading. I remember for one of these classes the final project involved using construction paper and crayons. Here I was, supposedly an adult, in a class full of other supposed adults who were just about to become teachers, and the best test of our teaching acumen this university could come up with was a project that was within the grasp of most 2nd graders. It was disgusting. I had no choice but to supplement my education with outside reading. Otherwise I would be just as stupid as my peers.



Truth be told, there was little else we could do aside from read. Alex was working in the mall and spending all of her money in the mall. I had student loans and that was it. I paid all the bills and spent about 50 dollars a week on groceries and gas (my parents helped out, too). I was still under 21, though the gas station down the street would occasionally sell to me, and we didn't have any friends up here in the Cedar Valley. There were acquaintances, but no one whose company I enjoyed enough to consider speaking to them outside of school.



So I read. On Fridays we'd smoke pot and order pizza, and 1-2 nights a week I'd drink a 24 ouncer from the gas station, but that was it. Soberest time since I was 15 or so. Kelsy and Nate and them were planning on moving up for school the next year, and so they stopped up to visit a couple of times. These were huge events, for me and Alex, since we were so starved to see people. Once they brought Jay and Michelle and we all drank heavily, all day, and then went to Olive Garden and there was paper in my soup. It's still one of my favorite days, even though I can't remember most of it.



When people came up, I would still take time to read. It didn't seem rude at the time. After all, I wasn't spending what I then considered a full shift of reading. It was only 2-3 hours a day. That was nothing. When the summer came and I visited my parents for a week or so, I remember feeling horrible because I was only reading 40-50 pages a day.



We had a scare near the end of the semester. I had to leave the house to go take a final exam, but 10 minutes before I had to go I noticed that Benny, my beloved cat, was missing. When I say beloved, I mean beloved. A man goes crazy lying in a bed reading 6-8 hours a day. It was my fault, too. I had brought up a laundry basket and left the door open for a long time and I didn't think to check once I came in. I ran through the apartment screaming for him. The front doors were open. I ran all around the building, yelling his name. I was crying. But I had to leave. I absolutely had to leave. The final I had to take was for a Thursday night class—it was literally the last scheduled final in the entire university. There was no way I could make it up.



So I left. Alex said she'd keep looking. The whole ride to school, I kept thinking about what I was going to have to do. Stay up all night, probably. 5% chance, max, that we'd find him. Call the humane society as soon as we got back. Roam the fields around the complex, calling for him. Then posters, offer a reward. Then nothing, probably. Some redneck would find him, or some fucking sociopathic teenage fuckwad boy, or some fucking Mexican would use him as bait in a dog fight. Hopefully he'd get hit by a car. Hopefully before some worthless person could get a hold of him he would die a decent death.



I got to campus right as Alex was calling my cell phone. She'd found him. He was curled up on our floor, behind the big heavy door right in front of stairs. When she carried him in, he was shivering. Not because he was cold but because he was so scared. There was no composure for me to lose, but if I had any (in general or in this particular moment), I would have lost it, sitting in the parking lot with a cell phone in my hand on a beautiful early summer evening. I went for a smoke and then, without thinking, I dropped the whole pack on the ground. It wasn't a conscious thing. I didn't say "woah I'm so happy right now I think I'll quit smoking." I just sat it down and left it. I've never taken a puff since. Also, I got a perfect score on my final exam, and according to the professor that was the first time that had ever happened.




My 21st birthday was a bit of a wash. Zach and Alex were still under 21 (as were nearly all the rest of my friends), and so they smoked pot before going out. We went to Doughy Joey's and then the bowling alley. It was fun, but I didn't even black out.



I started reviewing good beer about a month after that. In the 4.5 years since I have written reviews for over 1000 beers. I saw my uncle Tom in Madison, where I went to my first brewpub. We all went to see the Cubs beat the Brewers in Milwaukee, which was my first game since 2000. The Cubs traded for Nomar and then fucked everything up. Dusty Baker was, and still is, a monster.



I began to drink more regularly, though not so regularly as to disturb my reading. I didn't skip any pages. I didn't skim. When I started a book, I finished it. Summer ended. In the fall we went to our first Oktoberfest, and it was a blast. That—that was a blackout drunk. I sang with the old people in the barn. On the way home I demanded we stop a few times, so I could continue drinking. I fell asleep on the bed but woke up on the couch. It was wonderful.



The election was horrible. I had caucused and drove old people to the polls on election day. Two dumb old bitches, from two parts of town, at two separate times of day, both told me that they were voting for George Bush because they were hoping the apocalypse would come within their lifetimes and they figured he was the candidate best suited for making that happen. This is when my manipulative disenchantment with democracy began, and so far it's been working out really well for me. It was clear that Kerry had lost around midnight. By that time I had already polished off 10 High Lifes and switched to Gin. A whole bottle. Zach Parsons started an online discussion that prevented me from doing something rash. Instead we blasted our comfort music, the same albums we listened to in high school, Ok Computer, Dark Side, that kind of stuff. Smoked pot. Stayed up until 4 and blew off school the next day. I heard that Kelsy spit on all the Bush-stickered cars she came across the next morning. I took a different tack, which I don't wish to comment on here.



I gained a lot of weight this year, especially after I stopped smoking. I hadn't been going to the gym regularly since school began, and when I cook for myself I tend to use a lot of oil and butter and cheese. It was the last Christmas in our old house on McKinley. Zach and Andrew came up for New Years.