Really Nice Stalkers

Thank you all for your kind words regarding my acceptance to grad school at TX Wesleyan. I have a lot of work yet to do, but this is an important step, of course.

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The Zavalas had their baby! Elias Roel was born May 6. Wanna see the pictures? http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bolander2/album?.dir=/69d0&.src=ph&.tok=phcoV_CB.CByw2nv

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I met Roel while attending UT, and I'd developed a bad attitude towards the students in general. I guess the time I spent hanging out with frat boys didn't help.

The guys mostly struck me as stoners, party-boys, trust-fund babies and annoyingly liberal attention-seekers.

And I'm a fairly liberal guy myself.

Suddenly in class one day this guy was sitting next to me, saying, "Hey, don't we have another class together?" Man, it was Roel, and I really had no idea whether I'd seen him before.

But he's a friendly, chatty guy, and I couldn't sustain my bad attitude where he was concerned. He just wouldn't stop being nice to me! I don't have friends so much as really nice stalkers.

So we became friends, me with my snobby attitude towards the other students, and Roel, from Crystal City, who admitted he'd never seen so many white people before coming to UT.

After we graduated he met a girl. Do I need to go on?

They got married a few years later. I spoke at their wedding, which I'm quite proud of. Driving to the wedding through the rain as I wound my way through an old Austin neighborhood, the cab of the truck was suddenly filled with the overwhelming scent of roses. I still have no idea why.

Roel and Marie live in San Antonio now, but we stay in touch. He gave up on his broadcasting degree long ago, instead getting certified as a physical therapist.

(It's taken me MUCH longer to give up on broadcasting; maybe I should have followed his lead years ago)

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Roel was the last guy I ever drank with. Salud.

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I do believe that Danny Henley and I play phone tag more than anyone else on the planet. It's amazing how often we call each other yet how rarely we actually get to talk.

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I'm still stunned at the catch Kevin Mench made today in the 5-0 victory over the Twins. It preserved Kenny Rogers' scoreless streak (at 30 innings now). Not for an instant did it look like that ball would end up in his glove. I'm watching ESPN closely for a recap, because I want to have a good look at that.

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I'm about 90 percent done replacing the faucet in the back bathroom. Thing is, in this 45-year-old house, the plumbing is a little different. It uses sizes that aren't the same as industry standard these days, so any time I need to connect stuff (faucet to water supply in this case) I have to deal with mismatched parts. Ugh.

Faucet looks nice there though. It'll be nicer if I can ever coerce it to actually provide water.

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Had the headache again today. 800 mgs of ibuprofen with 400 mgs of Tylenol did the trick.

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I didn't go to Austin to attend school. I went to be a slacker. I had no direction, and Austin is a great place for the directionless. If you have any friends, you can get free beer any night of the week.

I ran with this guy named Kevin for a while. Nice enough guy, but mainly we were party boys together. We worked in the record store together, and at night we'd party with his friends. Every night somebody was having a party or some excuse to drink a lot of beer.

We ended up at frat houses sometimes. I remember one night... can't recall which frat it was. I think it was called IMA BI GUY.

Okay, just kidding. That joke always cracks me up.

But this little frat rat decided I was worth talking to for some reason. From our post near the keg we watched this pretty Asian girl stumble around. She was drunker than hell and could barely stand.

Frat Rat leaned over to me. "See that girl right there? Any guy in the room could have her tonight, easy. Any guy could take her upstairs. And you know, she'd probably wake up tomorrow claiming rape, making a big fuss..."

It was... disgusting. I was drunk, and I suppose that's the closest thing I have to an excuse for not voicing my displeasure.

The guy later asked me if I'd consider pledging to his frat. No one had any idea that I was NOT in school. And I told him SURE! I'd have told him I was Cinderella if I knew it'd keep the beer coming.

And the beer kept coming.

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Whit McClendon told me that one of his students, a young girl, has apparently been given the idea lately that martial arts are for boys.

I'd say the existence of guys like Frat Rat makes an excellent argument to the contrary.

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I eventually had to distance myself from Kevin. It's happened a few times in my life, always with guys who partied too much, guys who were too self-destructive for me, even when I was partying myself. He managed to stay drunk so much that he flunked out of school.

The last time I heard from him, Kelli and I had just moved into an apartment together. I'd been dodging him, not returning his phone calls. He left a message on the machine, sort of halfheartedly inviting me to a party. He knew it'd never happen, and midway through the message he stopped and said, "Ah f*ck it" and hung up. So long Kevin.

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S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT!