Tag Archives: Iron Horse

Same Date, Ten Different Years

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I have said before that if my apartment ever got caught on fire the one thing I would go back in for would be my journals. Since the seventh grade I have kept a daily journal and since that time there is not one day of my life not documented. Thousands of pages and about 12 different journal books chronicle the better half of my life.

A few days ago I started thinking about ideas for blog posts and the concept of sharing a brief summary for a specific date of my life over a five year span popped into my head. I decided to run with it. I designated tonight as the evening that I wanted to write this post and a couple hours ago while I was researching through my journals I realized I have more here in my possession than I thought (I have several in storage at my parents’ house). In fact, I had double the amount of years available to me. So instead of five quick recounts of the various June 26th’s experienced by Brent Reser, you will get ten even quicker recounts of the various June 26th’s experienced by Brent Reser.

I probably should have waited a week or two to put this concept into action because the last weekend in June is Hoopfest weekend, something that I always participate in. If I could contain my excitement for this blog post a little longer I would have waited, but I couldn’t, so please don’t get too bored with the continuous Hoopfest mentions you will see throughout the years. Now if you will, please come on this journey with me as we go from a young teenager Brent at 17 years old in 2004 to the mid-twenties adult Brent in this present year of 2013.

 

I treasure my journals more than anything.

I treasure my journals more than anything.

 

Saturday, June 26, 2004:

I was participating in the Washington State Football team camp in Pullman, Washington, during my senior year at Mead High School. I got up at 7 a.m. and got a bagel for breakfast and then got ready for the last day of football camp. For the final day, all teams played mini games against the other schools present. Because we had performed well the previous days, we played against the other dominant teams. We tied against a team made up of solely all-stars (athletes who were invited by WSU to the camp) and lost on the very last play to a team called Liberty. After camp awards we had a BBQ right outside the field house and then we took the bus back to Spokane. We got back to the school and I took my teammate and friend Erik Lowe back to his place and then I went home and slept.

Sunday, June 26, 2005:

It was the Sunday of Hoopfest and my team had made it to Sunday. I was on a team with my friends Corey Langill, Cole Steinbach, and Cody Lorenzen. Corey picked all of us up and we went downtown for our 8 a.m. elimination game. We played against one of the most bush league teams you will ever encounter and ended up losing in overtime in a defensive (foul fest) match, 12-10. After getting eliminated the four of us watched as a team that only had two players defeat a team that was at full strength. After that great athletic achievement I went home and made it in time for 11 a.m. mass at St. Thomas More. Our pastor at the time, Abbot Adrian Parcher, was saying his last mass at our parish. Later in the day I went to Lilac Lanes with Corey and Jordan Brink.

Monday, June 26, 2006:

I got up at 9 a.m. and went to Gold’s Gym where I got my arms workout in. A couple hours later my brother and I went to Taco John’s for lunch because I had a couple gift certificates there. Glen and I then came back home and played a couple games of “Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball” on Nintendo 64. Glen then got suited up in his real baseball uniform and I went and watched as his team (Mead) played Newport in summer ball. I left a little bit before the game was over and went to Northwood Middle School where I would always run during the summer. After my run I came home, showered, and then I went over to Michael Hoover’s house where I played in a $10 Texas Hold ‘em tournament with Hoov, Zach Nichols, Cody, Mike DeLaMatter, and others. In my entry I wrote that I got “sucked out” so obviously the outcome didn’t go too well for me.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

I got up at 6:55 a.m. and Cody and I went to the lobby of our hotel where we ate breakfast. We were in the Portland, Oregon, area doing road construction work for Cody’s dad’s company, Blackline. We picked up the equipment we needed in the Woodland area and then drove to Hillsboro where we worked the whole day grinding paint off the roads. It was such a hot day that we had more trouble than usual with the debris that we grinded up sticking to our shoes. For lunch we ate at an incredible little place called Aloha Teriyaki. We stayed at a hotel that night in Hillsboro called The Dunes and ate at an Italian restaurant called Amelia’s where I had spaghetti and meat balls. Cody and I then went back to the hotel and watched the Mariners-Red Sox game.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

I woke up at 8 a.m. and went to Gold’s Gym where I did squats and auxiliary lifts. I then went to downtown Spokane where I donated plasma at one of the dirtiest, sketchy centers you will ever come across. On this day it was a complete zoo as the ATM machine broke down and people were going nuts. I checked in, got processed, and by the time I donated the ATM machine was working and I had $40 in my pocket!! From there I picked up my gear for my inaugural year as a court monitor for Hoopfest. I then came home and watched as Derrick Rose was selected as the #1 pick in the 2008 NBA Draft. I then did my running at Northwood and came home where I did another money-making scheme I utilized that summer…working as an answer guide for the online service ChaCha.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Living fulltime in Missoula, Montana, I woke up at 6:45 a.m. and made it to work at Grizzly Athletics where I was working in an interim position. I left the office at 3:30 p.m., put some gas in my car, and headed off to Spokane for Hoopfest weekend to court monitor for the second straight year. I made it to my parents’ house and we went out to dinner at a fabulous Chinese restaurant called the Cathay Inn. I feasted on almond chicken, fried rice, chow mein, prawns, and chicken noodle soup. We then came home and sat out on the front deck and watched as a neighbor dog named Skittles continually barked at our cat, Nabisco. Shortly thereafter, my cousin Kelly and her three daughters (Taylor, Emily, and Katie) arrived at the house as they would be taking part in the Hoopfest festivities the next day as well.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

I woke up a little before 6 a.m. and my dad, Glen, my cousin Cole, and I all went downtown for the first day of Hoopfest. I was assigned a “50 and under”, 6-3 to 6-4 bracket. I monitored 20 games that day with majority of all the action going very smoothly. The day started out overcast and windy but by the afternoon it was sunny and warm. When the action on my court ended for the day after the 20th game, I still did not have enough basketball in my system so I watched a random game on another court that was still being contested. We then came back to my parents’ house and we had a big backyard BBQ of hamburgers and hot dogs. I then promptly passed out from pure exhaustion.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Wouldn’t you know it that I would be at Hoopfest again!? I woke up at 5:40 a.m., had a chocolate muffin for breakfast, and then went downtown for the Sunday of Hoopfest. As it was the second day of competition, the games got pretty competitive. The previous day I met a new friend, Carissa, who was assigned to my court to monitor as well. On this day it was her birthday and we had a fun time celebrating it with the players in our bracket. A team called Four Locos came out of the loser’s bracket to defeat a team called the MFI All-Stars to take the championship on our Hot 96.9 court. After all the action I came back to my parents’ house and blogged and ate nachos that my dad made. I then went to the Elk in Browne’s Addition where I met Carissa and her friend to further celebrate her birthday.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

I got up at 6:45 a.m. and went to work at Grizzly Athletics. It was a Tuesday so I did a lot of the beginning of the week type things such as updating website features, drafting a web report, turning in travel reports for our mascots, etc. I went to the rec at noon and did arms and ran a mile. I came back to the office and ate my peanut butter sandwich for lunch, attended a meeting at the I.T. Center on campus, and worked until 5 p.m. I then went home, wrote a blog post, and then went to the Tamarack where I met my buddy Eric Fulton so we could do some stuff to my blog. It turned out that we could not access internet at the Tamarack so we moved to the Iron Horse where we ate dinner and created the current version of my blog. We got my site hosted by WordPress and I finally purchased my domain name, www.brentreser.com . Thanks so much to Mr. Fulton.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Finally we are to the present! Throughout the past 10 years of this date, I got up the earliest today. I got out of bed at 5 a.m., got ready, did my morning routine and made it to work by 7 a.m. I took care of some things I needed to take care of and had a productive morning. At noon I went to the rec center and did the exact same workout that I did a year ago…and then came back to the office and had the exact same lunch I had a year ago as well. The afternoon went great and I came straight home after work, cleaned up my apartment, and read Entertainment Weekly. I started this blog post about 90 minutes ago and am almost done. Once I publish this I am going to jump in the shower and wait for Paige to come over so we can hang out and drink a beer.

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Ten years of my life…wow! Depressing thing is that I didn’t do anything spectacular or noteworthy throughout any of those days. The uplifting news is that I have a memory of each of them and I had fun during them all too. I plan to do this again down the road, probably on a date where I had much more diverse activities going on over the ten years. But like June 26, please don’t expect anything spectacular or noteworthy. Don’t Blink.

Five Days of Life

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I have enjoyed the last five days hanging out with my friends. While working out today, I reflected on the past several days and realized that I could kind of pull a certain story from each night that kind of defined that particular evening. Let me warn you now, there is nothing too overly exciting…well maybe one of the stories…but I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. Basically, I have just lived my life recently and am deciding to write about it for tonight’s post. Hope you don’t get too bored!

Wednesday, June 13: Trivia Victory

This past Wednesday, a group of us went to the Broadway (Restaurant/bar in Missoula) for all you can eat wings and trivia. For only $9, you can gobble up as many wings as your stomach can handle while also playing in a pretty fun trivia game. While getting basket after basket of wings, we managed to hang tight in trivia. We managed to stay in the upper tier of the standings for most of the game. However, when the final round came along, it looked as if we would not leap frog into first place. Because of this, we all paid our tabs. The last round, the “music round”, came and went. We hung around just to see where we ended up.  Well, wouldn’t you know it? We actually did know our music pretty well and once the results flashed on the bar televisions, there was our team name, #Winning, sitting all alone in the number one spot. We had just won a $50 bar tab and none of us had a tab open. We remedied that situation and asked our server to bring us out $50 worth of Fireball shots. The Broadway staff was more than happy to help us consume the plethora of shots.

Our team, #Winning, won trivia.
Thursday, June 14: Making Friends at Downtown Tonight

During Thursdays during the summer, Caras Park in Missoula holds “Downtown Tonight,” a great community event that features food, beer, and live music. The food choice is always amazing and when the weather is decent, the fun to be had is pretty remarkable. This past Thursday, my friend Chris, my co-worker/friend Jimmy, and myself invaded Caras Park. While chowing down on gumbo and distributing business cards for Jimmy’s new BBQ restaurant, we also met a couple different groups of really cool people. First off, we met two girls working a booth ran by a very successful real estate agent here in town who we all know from work. As successful people usually do, they hire intelligent and motivated people who will in turn be successful in the long run. This was definitely the case with the two girls that Diane (real estate agent) had working her booth. Just a little ways from the real estate table, there was a wood oven pizza stand ran by three girls around the age of twenty-three. One of the girls happened to actually start the business. This girl hired two of her friends to help her run the business (it is called Ciao Bella Wood Fired Pizza…check it out next time) and the rest is history, they completely sold out of pizza on Thursday night.

So we got to know both groups of these girls pretty well. Once Downtown Tonight ended and everything was packed up, it just so happened that Chris, Jimmy, and myself found ourselves sitting on a patio deck of a popular restaurant with both groups of girls, Diane, and the dad of the girl who runs the pizza business. Don’t think I said this above, but all the girls were beautiful. We had a great time visiting and getting to know each other. Anytime you can enjoy an evening where you network with similarly minded young professionals who also happen to be very attractive you know that you did not have a bad night.
Diane with her two workers.
Friday, June 15: Sucker Punched

On Friday night, Chris, Dan, and I were at the Iron Horse (yet another established restaurant in Missoula). The Iron Horse has two levels, connected by a staircase. The staff closed down the upper half of the restaurant that the three of us happened to be in. As we made our way down the stairs, there was a big commotion just a few feet away from the bottom of the steps. A troubled and very intoxicated guy in probably his late forties was giving the Iron Horse staff problems as they were trying to get him to leave the place. Not wanting to get mixed in with the unfortunate scene, we veered to the left to completely avoid the confrontation. Well, that night my red and white striped Where’s Waldo shirt must have attracted just a little too much attention because as I walked by looking straight ahead away from the scene, I was the recipient of a sucker punch to my jaw.

The moment the blow connected with my face, no fewer than four Iron Horse staff members mobbed the dude, carried him out with his legs kicking, and threw him into the parking lot. The whole place watched the scene as the 86’d individual tried to get up, only to fall backwards. His friend who was beyond fed up with his actions took the guy’s shoe and started beating him with it. The place erupted in laughter. The Iron Horse staff was very professional and sympathetic to me about the whole situation. They said they had never seen an unprovoked attack like that before. I told them not to worry, they took care of the problem immediately. After all, it was really no big deal at all…the guy couldn’t throw a decent hard punch if his life depended on it.
Moments after getting sucker punched Jessie pointed out the point of contact.
Saturday, June 16: A Great Meal on the House

Friday night, Dan and I played in the Bingo game at the Lucky Strike. Dan happened to win one of the rounds and in addition to some cash he also got a coupon good for two free dinners in the bowling alley’s connected restaurant. We decided to cash in the coupon on Saturday night. The card was good for two dinners, two drinks, and two desserts. We sat down in the empty restaurant with a killer air conditioning system and just enjoyed a free meal. Our entrees came with either soup or salad and I chose the former which was meatball soup! I had never tried such a thing before but it was delicious. Next, our dinners came. I got steak and mashed potatoes while Dan got the steak and shrimp combo. Even though we probably could have passed, we couldn’t refuse the free dessert. I got a giant brownie topped with ice cream and whipped cream while Dan got caramel cheesecake. We enjoyed every bite of our food along with every drink of our bottomless Coca-Colas. Getting a hearty, good tasting free meal every once in a while is not so bad.

Dan digs into his dinner at Lucky Strike.
Sunday, June 17: Seeing an Old Friend

On Sunday late afternoon I got to see an old friend who I had not seen in person since the Miranda Lambert concert way back in October. A lot had changed since that last encounter and unfortunately it was not for the better. Ellie lost her dad in January, an experience that I can’t even begin to comprehend. She came up with her mom from Kalispell for a day of shopping. When they finished hitting the Missoula shopping spots, they invited me out to one of my favorite restaurants in Missoula, Johnny Carino’s. We visited and caught up and had a really nice time. After I ate every bite of my five meat Tuscan pasta, I got to taste some of what Dan ate last night as the three of us split a piece of cheesecake. I was honored that I got to spend some time with Ellie and her mom on what had to have been a very tough Father’s Day for both of them.

Ellie and I at Carino’s earlier today.
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I look forward to what this next week has to hold. Hopefully I will continue to have good times with my friends, meet more new people, and not get punched in the face. We shall see. Don’t Blink.