Picture Memories - Edward 7 Cans

April 25th 2009 was a Saturday. It was 1084 days ago. And it was 8 days before I graduated college.

The only log of my existence that day is this picture:

The picture shows Mark, Myself, and Craig standing on the front porch of my college house preparing to play a game of Edward 7 Cans. Which is much like Edward 40 Hands for those who are too lazy to go to Campus Corner and buy actual 40's. It's genesis can be traced here.

The best I can tell from this picture, we were probably sitting around the house watching day 1 of the 2009 NFL draft. Thus I am wearing my Lions jersey. The Lions picked a southerner named Matthew Stafford with the first overall pick.

There are really only two known strategies to Edward 7 Cans. Both are on display in this picture. Craig has chosen the "line" strategy whereby he aligns all 7 cans in a row along both forearms. This strategy is nice because you can drink down the line, and avoid spilling beer all over your face, which is a problem with Mark and My strategy which is known as the "cluster". The nice thing about the cluster is that your arms don't get as cold, but you have a tendancy to spill beer from previously drunk cans all over your face.

I have no clue whose idea is was to play E7C or what happened after that game but I definitely think I enjoyed myself. The previous post showed Mark and I drinking at the beginning of our college careers, this one shows us still drinking at the end of our college careers. We clearly matured in 4 years and evolved to physically attaching booze to ourselves for optimal drinking results.

Picture Memories - Dorm Drinking

A little over 2 years ago I wrote a blog post about how I was going to start posting pictures from college and telling stories about them. My intent was to take my favorite pictures and write a little something on my memories of the event and what the meant to me. But, after the initial post I never bothered to write another one. Well here's to round two.

That picture is me and my best friend Mark drinking in the dorms freshmen year. The picture is us on a tiny futon in Natalie and Rachel's dorm room freshmen year. If I had to guess it is from second semester. I still have the shirt I'm wearing, but have no idea about that jacket. From the looks of it, we are about to drink some vodka shots and chase with Dole Fruit Punch. Knowing those two it is probably Burnetts vodka, and this could be the night that Natalie tricked me into taking a Midol.

It's a great picture because it doesn't preface a specific story, but rather it is a reminder of life in the dorms. Sitting around and drinking with new friends. It's amazing how long ago it feels, but how much optimism there is in the picture. It's like a sense of knowing that we had a great base of friends going into the next four years.

Six years later everyone in the room that night has moved out of the state. Next weekend I'll be attending Mark's bachelor party and hopefully the same shit-eating grin will show up on both of our faces like it has so many times in the past. Here's one to the memories.

The Futon

Futons are a lot like fruitcakes. You are never the first person to own it and you're never the last. At least that's what I learned about fruitcakes from sitcoms. Moving into college freshmen year, my sister told me I could take the futon they had at their house. She had gotten the futon by finding it on the street and taking it back to her house. No one knows the history before then.

After getting a new pad for it, we moved it into our freshmen year dorm room. My roommate very quickly decided that he would rather sleep on it then in his bed. Every weekend he and his smokin' hot roommate would sleep on the futon and his buddy from north campus would sleep on his bed. For some reason everyone called his friend "Boner". I enjoyed that.

The futon and the two unofficial roommates

We were on the last floor to get block furniture, so every room on our hall had futons. Sometimes while I was skipping my 1pm Chem 130 lecture, I would go futon hopping on the hall just chilling with whomever was around.

Later that year, I found myself in an opportunity to have local Ann Arbor band Tally Hall film a video on my Futon. That made my futon an internet sensation. I wouldn't even become an internet sensation for another 11 months. I've embedded the video for you're enjoyment.


That summer I moved the futon into my sophomore year house. I spent the next year sleeping on the futon. It was some of the worse sleep that I ever got. But that year the futon got some great stories attached to it.

My room sophomore year. Total college.

I have no idea who these girls are sitting on my futon. It was sometime sophomore year. Can anyone can tell me why these two girls are on my futon? I'm bamboozled.

Same story goes for these girls. Man, college all seems like a blur.

Probably my favorite futon picture. That was sometime after a football game. Perhaps the one where Fritz broke into his own house in a stupor.

Eventually the futon made it's way back home to my house for some repairs. Its legacy continued as it graced my little sisters dorm room. It still exists and continues its glory in her off campus house. Lots of hours, hundreds of friends and a few other things went down on that futon. It was a big part of my first two years of college.

Picture Memories - Orientation

I'm going to start putting up some pictures that I have from college and maybe snippets or stories of their relevance over the best 4 years of my life.

To start:
Orientation

This is one of the few Pictures I have from orientation. It is my Friend Paul with the very fist girl we met in our Post-High School lives. It always amazed me about how the people you meet at orientation you will actually know throughout college. Like Marky Marky. He was the second dude we met at orientation and since the first one was also named Mark, he became Marky Mark. We would always tell each other about Marky Mark sighting for the next four years until one time at a party we walked in and Evan said "Hey Marky Mark is here!" and he came up to us and said verbatim "Don't call me that".

The story of my orientation took me to a party at the Box house which 2 years later I would move into. The pistons had just won game 3 of the NBA finals and I did my first straight pull of vodka. I also blacked out and dropped trou in the middle of the party. Eventually I ended up in this position.

I had to be driven back to my sisters house, which was only 6 houses up the block. I was woken up at 7:30 lying on a tile bathroom floor and covered in my own vomit. I didn't even have time to go back to East Quad because my enrollment appointment was at 8AM on North Campus. I showed up smelling of alcohol and covered in puke, the advisor took one look at me and sighed.

On the way home from orientation, I knew that I was going to have a hell of a next 4 years.