The End Of An Era

It took about three hours that Saturday afternoon for Kelsey and me to take down all the items from the wall and reminisce. Two long years stood at our feet in three Hammermill Paper boxes. We found a place on Evansdale with my friend who I have known since I was in diapers (Bryan "Butturs"). After seeing what we created in our house, Butturs and his roommate Dan attempted to copy our unique style of scrapbooking; however, they never filled up the wall the same way we did. Each piece has a story just like each photo in an album. It just happens to be that our "album" isn't pressed under plastic sheets with stickers and colored paper with patterned edges.

Kelsey and I will never forget the two years we lived together in that house on Falling Run. The era has ended at the "Fun House" as it was termed early in its tenure, but a new one emerged and was just as random as playing Deal or No Deal. I end with just one more random item in the form of a question...


Butturs, Marie, Kelsey

Where I Come From

Some people wonder how Kelsey and I can live with this "junk" on our wall. Most of the items on our wall show the stupidity of our world - mostly Wheeling, our home town. Wheeling isn't a big metropolitan city like NYC or the happening-place-to-be like Miami. But it sure has a lot of representation on our wall, including a magazine dedicated to the city. Our first thoughts were, "Really? What is there to display in a magazine?"

One of our most recent additions to the wall happened over the four-week Winter Break of 2007. Wheeling has been growing little by little economically. With the new mall-type shopping at The Highlands and the plans to build an amusement park behind it, Wheeling is rising from the slums we grew up in. So it's no surprise to us to be gone a few months and a new business pops up. A Tim Horton's replaced an abandoned building when Raxx went out of business six years ago. It's located across a thriving Sheetz gasoline and food station. Kelsey tried the new coffee/pastry cafe to rank the coffee to those bean-brewing giants of Starbucks, Seattle Joes, and Gloria Jeans.

The experience was horrible, the coffee didn't come in any variety that our culture is used to with places like Starbucks, and the soup wasn't prepared ahead of time. Kelsey took some reading materials to try to pass the time before her sandwich was done. She couldn't believe that she had stumbled across extraordinary pieces to add to our collection. Fliers, normal advertising fliers for trips and mini vacations our region has to offer. One pamphlet she was reading talked about trips to a brown bag tour through Wooster, Ohio. Kelsey and I couldn't resist the thought of taking a trip just to get the can of soup, and not just any soup, Campbell's Soup. What a prize! We signed up that day.

The Wheeling Register, the only paper in the city, is chuck full of interesting stories and characters. Kelsey's mother frequently sends us the most interesting ones to inform us of what's going on at home as well as add to our wall. Mostly the articles are police reports and bad happens we would find some humor in. Now, don't get me wrong, Wheeling isn't a bad place to live or raise children, but no town or city is crime-free. Just fence in your inflatables during the holiday season. Usually we would read the article a few times pointing out the stupidity in the criminals, mostly when they would deny the crime.

Our favorite one is "Hugh Huffer." He is the first article Kelsey's mother sent us and immediately we had to put him and his ridiculous face on our wall. But it didn't stop there. After we told "Birds" (Kelsey's Mom's nickname), she continued to send us stories from the crime section and most of the time, the arrested individual went to high school or even graduated with us. Some of their crimes are so profoundly disturbing it makes Charles Manson look like a saint.



The Most Unlikely Superhero
Our House
My Birthday

Back To Written On The Wall
The End Of An Era

My Birthday

Kelsey and I came to a napkin halfway up the wall. It was from my 22nd birthday.

---
It was Friday, I just got off work early to celebrate. My boss knew what was good for him. I met Kelsey at the house, and we did our getting-ready ritual which included blasted teenie bop songs and rap while we scurried between our bedrooms and the bathroom showering, fixing our hair, and pre-gaming for the night of outrageous fun.

We headed out around 6:00 to get dinner at one of our favorite places downtown - The Brew Pub. With the new pedestrian overpass at Oglebay complete, we decided to walk to the restaurant, get some exercise to not feel so guilty about the unhealthy choices we would be making later that night. Kelsey hasn't been downtown for classes since sophomore year. It was a treat for her to see what the talk about the new renovations was all about. We decided to cross and take the PRT to Walnut (yeah, forget that not feeling guilty part, we were wearing uncomfortable shoes and the almost half mile we walked just about killed our feet).

We get off at the Walnut PRT which is literally up the street from the Pub. After we walked down the steps to the station, I heard something peculiar for a Friday night on High Street, drums. At first I thought maybe it was WVU's drumline, but after reaching the corner of High and Walnut, we noticed it was University High School's homecoming parade. Gosh, it really put Kelsey and I in our place; our last high school anything was four years ago. Man how the time flies.

Finally off to get our grub on. The Brew Pub - That's where the conversations are priceless and lines are so memorable, it's as if it was the newest, hottest movie in theaters that everyone who is anyone has seen multiple times. Kelsey and started noting the occurrences thus far on what supplies we could get our hands on - a napkin. We saw people we haven't seen in years, mostly from high school. I had spotted the Oscar Mayer Wiener mobile crossing over the Westover bridge, but we couldn't get our cameras out and ready fast enough to snap a picture of the huge hotdog car.

After having dinner and a few beers, we called our posse of party-goers and gave each of them the game plan for the night. We were going to Bent Willey's. It had the drink specials we were looking for; it was a nice night to sit outside and just talk, shoot the breeze, jabber, laugh; and the music is worth the money to get in (a rap/hip-hop room and an 80s room). On our way to the bar, Kelsey and I saw the Oscar Mayer Wiener mobile. We ask someone to take a picture of us with it, because how often do you see such a marvel?

We finally make it to the bar where endless laughs are heard, drinks are bought, pictures are taken, and memories are made. The night progresses and we're all getting hungry, so around 1:30 a.m. we all head out to the Mountainlair for the Midnight Breakfast at Up All-Night known to every student as "Drunk Breakfast." Now it's not a requirement to be drunk to enter, in fact many times Kelsey and I are just up that late and don't feel like cooking, so we go there for the awesome hashbrowns and other breakfast foods.

We shoved food into our starving bodies and headed home to pass out. The next day, Kelsey and I reviewed all the pictures we had, laughed, and placed the napkin in its proper place on the wall.


The Most Unlikely Superhero
Our House
Where I Come From

Back To Written On The Wall
The End Of An Era

Our House

So I've lived at the same residence for two years. It's a three bedroom, one bathroom, two level house. Washer and dryer are just right outside my bedroom door and besides our wall the most random features of our house include the basement where we have to enter from the outside, a missing bridge, and an attic with junk from previous tenants.

Before we took down the wall, I took pictures of our accomplishment. We had made it a goal to make it up to the top of the stairs before we moved out. Kelsey is tall, but at some point she wasn't able to reach any higher on the wall, so we progressed along the wall. We also have a "Window Sill of Randomness" for items that cannot be pinned to the wall.



The Most Unlikely Superhero
My Birthday
Where I Come From

Back To Written On The Wall
The End Of An Era

The Most Unlikely Superhero

Kelsey and I started our Saturday with a trip to the new behind-the-glass burrito making restaurant in Morgantown. Qdoba had all the rave from everyone we talked to and Kelsey loved a good hand-made burrito just like any other hungover college student looking for something to settle the war in his stomach that he helped proclaim the night before.

We walked up to the counter, looked intensively at the menu. They had chips and queso, but then again what Mexican restaurant wouldn't? We had to split an order of those and rate them among the competitors (Cheddar's, The Boston Beanery, and Applebee's). The food was so cheap since the place had just opened up not more than a month ago. They wanted business, and they knew how to get it. So Kelsey and I ordered two burritos (chicken and beef), a quesadilla, and a drink each! Plus we had the chips and queso to share. We obviously were not ordering on-the-go. So once we got our order, we found a booth by the windows on the side of the restaurant. The tables were shiny, cold and huge. We had just barely enough room to lay our feast out.

As we began to sink our teeth into the quesadillas, Kelsey stopped me. She caught something out of the corner of her eye. It wasn't a napkin. It wasn't trash. It wasn't someone walking past our window. It was... BURRITO MAN!

He was fantastic! It was something you'd only see on Who's Line Is It Anyway? as Ryan Stiles attempted to mess with Colin Mochrie in the game called "Superheros." There he was... skinny arms, smile, and feet. It was quite clear that someone resting in this booth before us wanted to add a little kick to the flier. It made our lunch that day, and also started our Wall of Randomness for our house.

Our House
My Birthday
Where I Come From

Back To Written On The Wall
The End Of An Era

Written On The Wall

People love memories. It's how we cherish them that makes us unique from everyone else. Some people keep photo albums, some people make scrapbooks. For me and Kelsey, my best friend and roommate, we keep our memories on a wall. Not like pictures, but items we find in our travels and outings together.
---
This all started sophomore year of college. Kelsey lived one floor above me in the same big "33" room in Summit. She came across a particularly unusual paper sign and decided to take it and pinned it to her wall next to her huge vanity mirror. Thus began the Wall of Randomness. Everywhere we went from there on out, we looked for something to capture the excitement or adventure for the day in more than just a Kodak moment. Sometimes the items found us. Her wall grew and the time came to pack up the memories into a shoebox and find a new place to live for the next two years.

Kelsey and I moved into a house with a third person in May of 2006. I was enrolled in summer classes and Kelsey was working a pharmacy internship/rotation for the school in our home town of Wheeling, West Virginia. She came to visit me the last weekend of May for a local band's last concert ever. The minute she arrived, we discussed the continuation of the old tradition. Luckily, that night, it was a good one to remember. This started our Wall of Randomness which shoots up the staircase to the second floor and just to the point of the huge Mario Lemieux poster next to the bathroom door.
--
It's now May of 2008. Kelsey and I are ready to pack up and move again. This time we have two whole years worth of memories to take off and shove into boxes. We spent $40 in thumb tacks (push pins as one of my former roommates always called them) and strained ourselves physically and sometimes legally to obtain some of the items on our wall.

We're drinking our Bud Lights, listening to the AOL Holiday Party Mix (it's so bad, it's good), We were being rowdy and sad at the same time. We started tearing down the items which started the wall...


The Most Unlikely Superhero
Our House
My Birthday
Where I Come From

Morgan's Town

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first free write

People love memories. It's how we cherish them that makes us unique from everyone else. Some people keep photo albums, some people make scrapbooks. For me and Kelsey, my best friend and roommate, we keep our memories on a wall. Not like pictures, but items we find in our travels and outings together.
---
This all started sophomore year of college. Kelsey lived one floor above me in the same big "33" room in Summit. She came across a particularly unusual paper sign and decided to take it and pinned it to her wall next to her huge vanity mirror. Thus began the Wall of Randomness. Everywhere we went from there on out, we looked for something to capture the excitement or adventure for the day in more than just a Kodak moment. Sometimes the items found us. Her wall grew and the time came to pack up the memories into a shoebox and find a new place to live for the next two years.

Kelsey and I moved into a house with a third person in May of 2006. I was enrolled in summer classes and Kelsey was working a pharmacy internship/rotation for the school in our home town of Wheeling, West Virginia. She came to visit me the last weekend of May for a local band's last concert ever. The minute she arrived, we discussed the continuation of the old tradition. Luckily, that night, it was a good one to remember. This started our Wall of Randomness which shoots up the staircase to the second floor and just to the point of the huge Mario Lemiux poster next to the bathroom door.
--
It's now May of 2008. Kelsey and I are ready to pack up and move again. This time we have two whole years worth of memories to take off and shove into boxes. We spent $40 in thumb tacks (push pins as one of my former roommates always called them) and strained ourselves physically and sometimes legally to obtain some of the items on our wall.

We're drinking our Bud Lights, listening to the AOL Holiday Party Mix (it's so bad, it's good), We were being rowdy and sad at the same time. We started tearing down the items which started the wall...

The Most Unlikely Superhero