Fast forward. Michigan-8pm greeted by my step mom, brother, and Dad, we quickly exited the airport. I wasn’t feeling too hot. A combination of stress from the flight and work plus low blood sugar. I was starved. We wound up at a local seafood place. I had crab legs and crab cakes. Talked with the folks about life and times in Portland while intermittently accosting my brother with mouthing his forehead. It made for good laughs.

That night, I unpacked, claimed the couch, and passed out.

In the morning, I woke up, got some coffee with dad, Priscilla, and Zack. We were in search for a rental car for myself. Apparently this year was hard for a lot of people to find rentals. Eventually the Enterprise on Woodward and 13 mile was available to give me a good car. A Lincoln Towncar to be exact. Thank goodness for my charm…and my corporate discount…the normal price was close to 125 dollars a day. The representative gave me the car for $64 a day! Quite a deal.

Later I wound up at my old friend Tommy’s dad’s place as he was cutting lengths of metal stock for the family business. It was great to get to talk to him and hear him decompress about life and love. We wound up going back to his house and playing Left 4 Dead 2 and coffee bombing at Ram’s Horn. It was like old times…minus him salting my coffee when I wasn’t looking….;) After a while we picked up his wifey and hung out a little longer before I had to go home and catch some more “Z’s”.

Christmas eve I woke up and quickly left the house. I had to get gifts. I suck at getting gifts. I hate bringing gifts on the plane…so I usually default to gift cards. Be warned. I finished up earlier than I thought I was going to so I had time to grab some lunch. I found this great little crepe place called “What Crepe?” AWESOME crepes. I had a spinach, prosciutto, and cream cheese crepe followed by a dessert of strawberry, cinnamon, and butter crepe. I creped my pants…hahahah..ha..yeah…anywho.

The night was punctuated by my annual ass-kicking. This is where my sister Sierra invites me out to pool…then stomps me while giving me some updates on how her life is playing out. It was nice to hang. We wound up back at Ram’s Horn…drinking coffee, laughing, and gorging on salt and butter. It was great. I dropped her off at her house and headed back to the loft for even more “Z’s”.

Christmas morning was kind of special to me this year. As Zack has come to be under the impression that there is, in fact, no such thing as a “Santa Claus” there is more excuse and reason for him to sleep in…which means so do I. I made it to 830. It felt a little off not having Sierra and Adam not there in the morning. Sierra eventually came by around 5pm for AMAZING sausage soup and salad. She unwrapped gifts, hung out for a bit, then left. It was good to see her. The evening wrapped up with talks with the family, watching the movie “Up”, and having some reflection time. I slept well that night.

Saturday morning I was really excited. I got to drive up to Midland, Michigan and visit my friend Kate. I am a bit socially retarded (no offense Pearl) so I didn’t give Kate quite the heads up that she needed. So when I called to tell her I was in Midland, “What? Right now?…” It was funny. I didn’t know where she lived so I was waiting to meet up with her in a parking lot on the other side of town. While she got ready I went to a dollar store that was moving and liquidating and bought her a rubber monkey. It was pretty cloudy out. When she pulled up, like magic and metaphor, the clouds broke way and the sun filled the Midland Town Center Parking lot. I gave her a big hug and we said our hellos. We drove to a coffee shop, talked life, laughed and smiled. We then went to the Midland mall and tried to find a safe quiet spot at Barnes and Noble to talk more. We wound up sitting in those crappy black massage chairs that molest you for a dollar. It must have been serendipity that I had 2 one dollar bills in my pocket. We sat, received robot molestations, and decided to grab a bite. By the time it was time for me to go back south to Royal Oak, the sun was setting. She felt it obligation to give me something for the rubber monkey…so she scoured her front seat and center console of her car. She gave me a CD with Trespassers William on it. I hadn’t heard of them before, now I play it constantly. If Mazzy Starr and Beth Gibbons did a side project, it would be Trespassers William. I highly recommend it.

I drove home, drunk on my friends hug and interaction. I decided to drive around a bit longer before winding up at my favorite Michigan establishment, Andary’s. I texted Tommy that I was there and he should come. He brought Jackie and his nephew Andrew. I haven’t seen that kid since 1999 when he was 2. Holy smokes time flies. We went back to his house and played Wii and I enjoyed the company until it was time to once again retire.

Sunday morning, I had a breakfast date with my good friend Sarah and her daughter. We caught up, smiled, talked some more and then it was time for me to head back to the house. Adam had made it in so we had a second Christmas dinner with some family friends. Artists Greg Z. and Mark Arminski made great dinner conversation. It was a beautiful night. At last minute I decided to go catch up with some old stage crew friends from high school. It was a great end to the night.

In the morning I casually prepared for the trip home. I made it to the airport around 230p to allow plenty of time in the airport security dance I figured I’d have to do. Overall the commute home went smooth. I even talked to a stranger on the plane! Social Experiment_004 complete!

It is good to be back in PDX. I need some mental digestion time though. My head is in the clouds still. You can check out the sketches I made starting here.

Have a great evening everyone.

~G

Let me recap Christmas and the day after.

As per Zack’s modus operandi, he woke me with a gentle 730a “Alriiiight!” and crinkled paper and wooshed about the living room with his new loot. I fell back asleep and dreamt of Portland city lights. I finally woke up around 1030a. I unpacked my stocking which was stuffed with candies, zombie finger puppets, gift cards, and a Tibetan prayer player (AAA batteries not included.) Dad and I drove in my rental car to the only open Starbucks nearby in Birmingham. 25 minutes later we were back with coffee in hand for the family. I slowly opened presents throughout the morning. I received some wonderful presents…2 of which I am wearing now; cozy new socks. My mom and dad had promised not to get each other gifts this year and I caught wind of this. I decided the most tactful thing to do was take the money that I was going to spend on everyone and pool it more to them. I got them both $100 gift cards. I’ve never been able to do that for them before and it made me really happy to see I could get them something that they could use. Everyone got gift cards, candy and a “Smooshed Apple” fruit jerky. It was nice.

For most of the day, we hung around the house, playing games and joking around. Sierra decided to start the excavation of her room and modified her picture wall, which is  literally a wall of photos from the last X years. It was great to see her start to take the initiative. Steph came over and modeled her impostor “Snuggy” which I am calling a “Sniggy”. It is a comforter that snaps on like a hoody and has zippers and all sorts of ancillary function. Wow. We had dinner, laughed, ate, laughed some more. Sierra retreated to her bedroom with Steph and the rest of us ate pie.

I played with my gifts and wound up passing out on the couch after watching with Sierra and Steph the last 2 episodes of The Hills…(Lesa-shut it) and the horrifically bad movie “Wanted”–too clever, too violent, too desperate to be Fight Club’s distant cousin. The last line of the movie has the main character look at the camera and ask, “What the fuck did you do today?”–too condescending.

This morning I woke at 11a to the giggling sounds of Sierra and Steph as they talked over coffee and cereal. Steph left and Sierra and I decided to go gallivant around west Royal Oak. We wound up at Michael’s and Dunam’s looking for on-sale Christmas lights and cozy shorts. One out of two isn’t so bad. The shorts fit good I am told. I also escorted Sierra to Comerica bank where she started her first checking account. I am very proud of her. Little steps make large differences.

We wound up going to Athena’s Coney Island where we gorged on junk food and chocolate milk shakes. She told me a bit about school and we laughed over fries. We then drove to Hilton Family Billiards where I was effectively stomped by Sierra as the pool shard she is at 10-7. Finally, we went to Cafe Du Marquis and had wonderful talks with regulars about Finnish Metal, Chess Metal, and Pepito the Cafe Du Marquis mascot chihuahua. I was worried about smelling bad from all of the smoke I was surrounding myself by so I thought purchasing a shirt would be a good idea. The shirt I bought from the cafe smells of 15 years of collected smoke and is most likely giving me lung cancer now as I wear it.

I dropped Sierra off at the house to meet up with her other friend Abby. I made some calls and texted some people before heading back to the east side to visit Tom, Jackie, Steve, and Sean. Tom’s grandmother died recently and he bought her house. I am really proud of him. I met Roxy the pitbull and made love to her jowls on the couch. We picked Jackie up from work and an hour later her sister.

After driving her sister home we thought it would be only apropriate to go to Ram’s Horn and buy late night coffee and sandwiches. The waitress was bored so I kept harrassing her as I normally would. When around old friends I am a little more obnoxious than around my professional colleages and wound up talking to the waitress about her sleeping problems; at which point we discovered she has a hard time staying awake. Casually, I asked her if she had ever been branded while sleeping. She never came back to check on us after that.

We went back to the house to exchange memories, smiles, laughs and the education of mild narcotics. I decided that I needed to go as I didn’t want to be out too late driving in the fog that had rolled in over the last few hours.

Fog on I-696

As I drove through the fog, I started thinking about the trip so far. The trip from Portland to here. The tension of the house as the year draws to a close, the seal problems of the house and its lack there-of. There has been a lot of social, physical, mental, and spiritual fog on this journey. I think talking has cut through a lot it. It is hard sometimes to sit as a spectator to my families trials and I am always an open ear but I wish sometimes I could give them more of myself.

Tomorrow, or should I say, later today, we are going to the DIA to see some art and enjoy our family friends Kate and Jerry Dunn. Jerrry is Sierra’s god father and one of dad’s oldest friends. I love them a lot and have always thought of them as family. I look forward to that time. I have to give up my sweet ride tomorrow as well–kind of bummed out about that. Sunday will be wrap up day as I pack my loot as well as more books to slowly move my stuff out of the basement here back to my home in Portland. Yikes.

Happy holidays everyone. Please be safe and have a wonderful and fun and love filled New Year’s celebration!
~Gabe

After Kansas City, MO we had a bit of a delayon the runway as might be expected.

Finally airborn I rested my head and waited to get into Midway. We were told not to land as the runway was overbooked with air traffic. Finally we touched down and taxied to the gate after waiting 45 minutes. The reboard went pretty quick and I moved up a few rows to expedite my offboarding in Detroit. The plan was over loaded by 600 pounds initially. After repacking and rebalancing the plane, they got it down to 100 pounds over. So in a move of despiration they kicked some poor sap off to make it work. Jokingly, the service attendant said to the guy as he left the plane, “Lose a couple pounds, would ya?!”…he was not amused. Finally after all of the commotion we taxied to the runway and had to stop to de-ice. Finally ,after two and a half hours, we took flight. The flight was an eternal 35 minutes. As we were landing we again were asked to stay in a holding pattern above Detroit as the runway needed to be inspected. At this point after being full on peanuts, coffee, and Burger King, I was irate. We touched down, taxied to the gate for 10 minutes and I was off the plane…in Detroit…finally. It was 215am. The parents hired a driver to pick me up-Mustafa. He was a tall dark east African gentleman with a hat and a beautiful accent. He escorted me to the Metrocar. On the way to the parent’s house, we spoke about all subject ranging from the auto bailout to family and social values and the differences therein between American and Sudanese culture and the benefits and drawbacks of both. On the way, mid-sentence there was a truck backing up on the highway stuck in a trough of snow. We both watched as the two kids helped thier dad push the truck out. He laughed and said, “They need meta-vitamins!…Hahahah!” then continued talking about his culture and the State Department of African Affairs.

Finally as we roamed the late streets of Royal Oak. He dropped me off in the driveway and my dad, wearing his typical biker shirt, jeans, and cheeky grin, paid Mustafa and he was on his way. We went up to the loft. As we were standing talking about Mustafa’s sense of humor, my dad noticed that the car was stuck. I dashed down with shovel in hand and we dug his car out and he was indeed on his way. 330am…19.5 hours of travel later…I fell asleep spooning the couch.

My circadian rhythm was still set to Portland time. The doorbell rang at 5am…Portland time. The water department of Royal Oak said that in 24 hours the house had racked up a $100 bill. They were concerned that a  pipe had cracked. All I could think was that it was 5am and I was only 5 hours of sleep into my slumber and this guy’s beard was piecing my sense of decency. I told him the owners of the property was asleep and we would deal with it later. He didn’t understand my dismissive nature and tried convincing me out of my comfortable heated shelter…I was not to be fooled and closed the door.

Later when people woke up I made everyone aware of the water “situation” and it was calmly put aside for a day when the water department would actually pick up thier phones. After a while, Pete and Megan came over (family friends). We laughed and talked and Starbucks was drank while groceries were unloaded from the car. I then requested to go to the Royal Rent-a-Car to pick up a Focus. The gauge cluster in that car is way over designed in my opinion. YOU HEAR ME ERNEST BREECH!? Respect!

I picked up the car and ventured around old neighborhoods, had lunch in old stomping grounds (Andary’s Grill formerly Kay’s Kitchen at 9 1/2 and Gratiot), braved Toys R Us and Barnes and Nobel, and took aim to try and find some gifts at The Road Show with little sucess. I drove back to the house.

When I got in I found Dad, Zack, and neighbor Don frantically shoveling snow away from the house. The seal had broken around the structure and water was pouring into the basement. We stopped the waterfall about an hour later and my shoulders still hurt. Afterward we cleaned up and prepared for dinner at Nippon Grill which was forementioned in a previous blog. In short great sushi. We came home and now I sit with coffee in hand and laptop in lap. Typing. I think tonight and tomorrow with be pretty low profile. I hope to wrap my gift cards I purchased and enjoy the family time.

I will more than likely update again tomorrow.

<3

~G

Hi.

How are you?

I’m good. I miss you sometimes…but not your economy.

I will be inside of you from December 23-28, 2008 to wriggle around.

Looking forward to it. I will wear protective covering.

That is all for now.

Gabeapalooza 2008 tour dates

Nov 26-30 Detroit

Dec-1-7 Xiamen Canceled (May move to January

Dec xx-xx (TBD) Detroit

Jan 2-Jan 4 Phoenix

Buy your tickets now at www.gabrielmathews.com

*service fees may apply