Why last night was amazing

When I was in nursing school, living in Lawrenceville with Kat, and accepting beer as payment for utilities, I regularly drank at the Thunderbird for many, many hours many, many nights week. We’d have “Hot Bitches Mondays” when Kat, Robin, and I would get “dressed up” and go to the bar without the boys. Looking back, that is a ridiculously inaccurate statement because our version of “dressed up” was essentially to brush our hair and wear our good jeans, but there we’d be. Crowded around a touch screen machine playing naked photo hunt. Girls, not guys, because the pattern was usually ‘boobs, vagene, hair, earring, dog’.  I loved when they would just remove that big white dog’s eye, or make his tongue really long. When you play the erotic guys, it’s usually a sweaty dude playing basketball, and that’s not really naked at all, now is it?

Sometimes, we’d vary our venue and venture to Gooskis or the Vets club, Belvediere’s or the gay/lesbian bar on Polish Hill that’ s closed now, but the night always started or ended at the Thunderbird. It was Kat’s bar, her bar family, and I felt a little guilty for assuming it could be mine as well, but Kat being who she is, I was welcomed with open arms. I was surrounded by all these off beat, funky, smart, interesting people who were as interested in getting to know me as I was to get to know them. For the first time in my life, I felt like I could just be me. I didn’t have to explain anything, I didn’t have to be a pushover and go where everyone wanted to go when they wanted to go there. I had a friend and ally in Kat because we balanced each other perfectly and we both were trying to make it through nursing school with our sanity (but not our livers) intact.

I have ridiculous memories of that time. Passing out and falling down the stairs at our Davison house and Kat making me waffles after escorting me back to bed with instructions not to get out alone. Passing out at Gooskis in that puddle of water/beer, Hobby picking Robin and me up and Robin insisting that I’d pissed myself. Robin pretending to be my girlfriend so that I was more comfortable at the lesbian bar. When Kat skipped school and made me spaghetti and garlic bread for birthday dinner, and Hobby and Robin brought over boxed wine and a princess crown.

This was when I had my very first I-no-longer-live-with-my-parents party. It was a hot ass summer Friday, Kat and I had just each spent an entire day at clinical and, after being awake and sweating since 5 am, I remember sitting on our porch, looking at the keg and wondering if it would be rude to cancel. This was the first meeting of all of our various groups of friends, and I was excited. After all, I had found all these amazing new people, and if I thought they were awesome, surely my old friends would, too? Well, no go. I was accused of being a bad hostess because I didn’t devote enough time to talking to my old friends, and this became the catalyst that led me to cut a lot of old friends out of my life. The tension that I was starting to feel when I was with them was horrible in relation to the happiness I felt when I was with my new friends, and it was an easy decision to make. It’s not hard to cut out the people that are holding you back, at a certain point, you can actually feel yourself being pulled in two directions. I didn’t have enough of me for everyone and school. I let a part go. And I never regretted it.

Last night, I went to the Thunderbird and see Shawn & Hobby preform. I remember when the hosted open mic night, every Wednesday, both working multiple jobs at that time to pay the rent while chasing their musical dreams. I remember drinking at the bar on a Saturday afternoon while Kat worked and they practiced and recorded their first album on the upstairs stage. I remember when I heard they were moving to Nashville, and that final show before they left. I remember when I realized that they were making it on their own talents, and I remember how happy I was to attend their first return show at the Thunderbird.

It is very odd to sit in a bar that you feel you were fated to walk into (the only address visible on the mural painted on the wall behind the stage is 516 – my birthday, which was always some sort of sign to me) and listen to music and songs I’d first heard 5 years ago, sung by the voices of boys who I once knew very well. Who came up to me last night with big smiles and hugs. Who promised to mail me a shirt because they didn’t have a red one in my size. Who hugged me goodbye as if they had been really glad to see me, and who put on an awesomely fatastic show.

We all once lived in this bubble that was 2005 at the Thunderbird, but now most of us have moved on. Kat, Jake, and Robin are all out in California. I bought my Shadyside condo and stopped being a Lawrenceville bar rat. Shawn and Hobby moved to Nashville and made it doing what they’d always wanted. But, in some small way, we all still have that part in us. It is the spot where we all reunite whenever any of them comes back through town. It’s the place where I met them all, the place that was home base for so long.

Last night, in some weird way, was like going home again. Only, you know, I can’t drink til 4 am anymore and was drinking Michelob Ultras instead of chugging shots of Rumplemintze and Jager bombs between the Miller Lights. And I didn’t park my car halfway on the sidewalk when I got home.

It was evident how much had changed. But it was also evident how much hadn’t. And that is why last night was amazing.

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A song that reminds you of somewhere

I’m avoiding using “Sweet Caroline” as a song that reminds me of Jack’s because nothing annoys me more than hearing “Sweet Caroline” at Jack’s. It makes me shudder to think of it.

This one was difficult, but I’m going to have to go with O.A.R. “Crazy Game of Poker” and it reminds me of Tequila Willie’s andThe Boardwalk. I KNOW, RIGHT? I know what you’re thinking… Jen, when the hell did you ever go to Tequila Willie’s? Well, I was a young girl of 23 and my best friends at the time had all just gotten their legal drinking wings and wanted to go to clubs. I hated clubs then, much like I hate them now. In order to get me to go, there were rules. I wasn’t to drive, we had to arrive really early so I could drink a shit ton of 50 cent well drinks before it got all crazy, and when I wanted to leave, we left. Everyone knew the more I drank, the less I’d want to leave, so this was never really an issue and I often got to drink for free.

Anyway, we arrived very early one weekend and I remember sitting at a table on the Boardwalk area, drinking some cheap vodka and cranberry that probably contributed to my now near-chronic heart burn, listening to a DJ play “Crazy Game of Poker”. It was the first time I had ever heard the song, the first time I’d ever hear of O.A.R. and this song sort of became my litmus test for future awesome people. Like, if you knew the song, you were automatically cool. You were even more cool if you knew the words to the song.

This rule has served me well as many of my future friends knew the song before I had ever heard of it. Leading me to believe that I know how to pick awesome friends. :)

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A song that reminds you of someone

     All of these topics are blurring into one another. There are songs that make me happy and sad and every other kind of emotion because they remind me of someone. But, I suppose I can try to narrow it down and pinpoint a song that reminds me of one specific person, and I am going to try really hard that that one specific person isn’t Owen.

     The first song that came to mind is Mexico by Cake. My nursing school roommate introduced me to many amazing things when we moved in together. Mondern day hippies. The Thunderbird Cafe (one of the most amazing bars in Pittsburgh). The joys of having friends who let me be me and not have to tiptoe around other peoople’s strong personalities. The transition of moving out of small town Liberty Boro and into the heart of the city was really the catalyst for change that I had been in search of for a lot of years. Of course, starting a new career helped, too, but even that was amazing because I lived with an amazing woman who knew first hand what a trek through hell nursing school really was. Nursing school kicked my ass, I have never worked so hard for something in my life. For someone for whom school had always come so easily, having to work and study my ass off was a bit of a shock. But I had a good friend to be my war buddy.

     We drank a lot in school. When Kat and I talk now, we don’t know how we did it. There were Saturdays when we’d start at noon and hang straight through until 3 am. And we were dirt poor.

     Anyway, back to the song. On May 5th, 2006 Kat and I spent Cinco de Mayo at the Thunderbird. If memory serves, it was a work night. Had to be because we were two of the very few people in the bar. Someone played Mexico on the juke box about a dozen times and we thought we were so clever when we sang “I don’t know much about Cinco de Mayo, I’m never sure what it’s all about!” and then downed a shot of tequila.

     Perhaps not the best memory, but its not so much the specific moment as what the entire experience of living with her meant to me. I tell her all the time that she changed my life, and she’ll never know what she means to me. She’s since became one of those people who will always be my friend. She’s moved to California and, when she visits, we only manage to last about 3 hours at the bar now instead of 13, but when I see her, it’s like she never left. We pick up right where we left off. I only have 3 other friendships like that, the kind that aren’t changed with time or distance. Kat gave me the courage to become myself, because she showed me that people will love me for it. And for that, I am enternally greatful.

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School

The thought of going back to school has been driving me insane because I love school and I really feel like I should be enrolled in some sort of post-BA program. The problem, though, is I’m now a nurse. The logical thing to do would be to go get a MSN and make a shit ton of money in the nursing field.

But I don’t want to do that.

I was considering getting a PhD in Health Care Ethics because, well, often I have had a large problem with some things that I’ve seen. But also because its healthcare related and I thought it would be a better sell to all those who I feel need to approve of my life’s decisions.

After a long talk with my mom yesterday, I have finally figured out what I think I want to do.

I am very lucky because I have a job that I love. I don’t know that I’ll want to go further in nursing because I don’t really need to. I have job security, the longer I stay at my new job, the more money I will make, and as soon as the government gives me my first time home buyer credit, I’ll be essentially debt free.

So I’m looking into a MFA program in Fiction Writing. I don’t know if I will actually follow through with it, it will depend on if I can do it one class a semester. And I realize that actually won’t finish the degree for about 4 or 5 years, but that really isn’t the point. The point is that I want to do it, and I don’t care how long it takes.

I’m excited about it. My brain needs to go back to school.

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A song that makes me sad

     This, I have a back story for, and it’s depressing, so bear with me.

     About ten years ago, I had a dream that I was getting married, and my dad was no longer alive. My brother walked me down the aisle and it was all very sad and depressing because, well, my dad is my hero and I felt like I had a horrible premonition or something.

     Nikki and I discovered Marc Broussard a few years ago, and when I got the Carencro album, I came across Gavin’s Song. I’m relatively sure this song is about him being on the road and away from his kid, but every time he gets to the part “Be good for your mama…” I tear up, it’s ridiculously moving to me in an ominous, nightmare kind of way.

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