Friends
Friend Profile: Chris Noel
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Name: Chris Noel
Nicknames: Dexter Morgan, Chrias
Interests: Togging (photography), running, Umphree’s McGee, Social Networking
When Chris lived in the FIJI house his Junior year, my Senior year, I didn’t know much about him at all. In fact I think our first interaction was me saying, “Hey man, can I borrow your DVDs of Curb Your Enthusiasm?”. That’s about all we said to each other until this year. Roommates now, we actually have more in common than I thought, though I’m still a little cooler.
Chris studies at Caribou all the time, which happens to be one of my favorite place to go on the rare occasions that I decide to go somewhere to get work done. Though Chris has a very demanding class load, he manages to crush with the best of them.
Chris is also very into ethnic food, and has a large variety of Indian food in the house. While I’ve yet to truly dive headfirst into Indian food. Chris and I have sampled many Thai places together. Often the other roommates don’t have the money, so we go on man dates a lot. It’s not too awkward. I swear.
Chris’s biggest passion has to be photography. He has a camera that is about 14 pounds, and if I’m really strapped, that is the first thing in the house I am taking to the pawn shop. He is an avid Flickr user, and his photo gallery can be found at “http://flickr.com/photos/chris_noel” . He has gotten some notoriety in the area as he has been in contact with Juice magazine to possibly do some work for them. He has also had some photos discovered through Twitter, and is having one of his photos sold at a studio in Merle Hay Mall. Sweet Stuff.
Friend Profile: Justin Stubstad
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Name: Justin Stubstad
Nicknames: Bear, Stubby, Sacajawea
Occupation: Student for life. After getting his PharmD, Justin decided that wasn’t enough. Now he is getting his degree to practice law as well.
Interests: Baseball, the 49ers, and “wilderness type” sports. He enjoys sporadically playing sports between traumatic knee injuries.
Activities: Telling stories poorly, playing sports, knowing lots of useless facts, ruining watching movies with him by saying the lines before they are said in the movie.
My friendship with Justin really blossomed when we lived together sophomore year at Drake. It is during this time that I learned how crazy he can be, and not in a bad way. Justin can be very stubborn, more so after imbibing, and all the roommates learned this the hard way. One day Hank and I were on a marvelous Nutty-Butty Bar run, (the best Little Debbie snack), and nothing could bring us down, until we got the call that Justin punched Garrett in the face. Ending the fun factor of the day, myself, Hank and Samit took Garrett to the doctor to get stitches. This encounter ended up being a tet question on one of my Street Law tests.
Justin also has a love for golf, a pretty terrible sport to watch on TV, but not bad to play. Inexplicably however he got all of us to watch the Master’s for it’s entirety, something I never thought I would do. That year also fostered my love for Tiger Woods for PS2.
Justin also manages to wake me up at odd hours of the night, more often needing a blanket to crash on the couch. Rather than let me sleep, he has discovered the best way to wake me up is to knock incessantly until I finally open the door. Not my favorite aspect of Justin though.
Besides that, great friend that I’m happy to have.
Friend Profile: Joe Meyer
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Name: Joe Meyer
Nickname: Joe “Former Treasurer” Meyer, Joe Fro, Toodles
Occupation: Actuarial Analyst at Principal in Downtown Des Moines
Interests: Sleeping, telling me what to do, Minnesota Sports
Activities: Watching sports, playing sports, adjusting the Netflix Queue
Favorite Quote: I’ll be there in two shakes of a persian kitten’s whiskers
Favorite food: Anything that doesn’t have lettuce, onions, or any kind of sauce on it.
Joe was the first person I met my freshman year at Drake. He lived two rooms down from me and he was playing Madden 2004 in his room. I said something along the lines of “Oh I’m OK at Madden”, at which point Joe’s brain told him not to worry about this jerk’s Madden skills coming anywhere close to yours. Joe’s brain was right. Madden 2004 had this wonderful glitch where Michael Vick runs faster than anyone in the game AND doesn’t get tired. Joe’s favorite team to play as? The Atlanta Falcons. Joe could literally run laps around my team and score 99 yard rushing touchdowns every time. I’m surprised we stayed friends after that. (more…)
Friend Profile: Jay Nieves
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Name: Jay Nieves
Occupation: Getting trains on the right track. In charge of directing transport via rail. Also known as head conductor.
Interests: Crushing
Activities: Rocking at ping pong, Call of Duty, sports, and winning “best dressed” in high school
Favorite Quote: Scientific name for an animal that doesn’t run from or fight its’ enemy is lunch – Michale Friedman
I’ve known Jay since I was about in eighth grade through church group. Like all my friends, most of our hangouts consisted of usually grabbing food then heading to someone’s house to play videogames or watch TV. Jay was big into golf in high school and is still really good at it. As I rarely golf, I do have some memories of Jay hitting the ball harder than anyone I’ve ever seen, and straight too. (more…)
Friend Profile: Mike Hatfield
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Name: Mike Hatfield
Occupation: Worked his way up the corporate ladder at Universal Drilling Corporation, selling mag drills to companies that want to drill the hell out of something.
Resides: Montgomery, IL
Interests: Crushing
Activities: Playing Call of Duty, Coming up with get rich quick schemes
Favorite quote: “I’m Fabulous!” -himself
The son of a preacher man, Mike decided at a very early age that he was going to do whatever he wanted to do. This has led to some early in life thinking he’s an ass, but it’s more a matter of him knowing what he wants. Now Mike is living in Montgomery, IL with his wife Teri, the sweet girl he met in college.
Mike’s parent’s house used to be the central meeting place many times for all of us friends. So as a result, it was often Mike’s house that got messed up or destroyed because of all our antics. Bocce balls destroyed, every soda in the fridge drank, and boxes of kleenex used up because of my cat allergy. Luckily for me, cats seemed destined to always be a part of Mike’s life in one way or another.
Mike’s entrepreneurial prowess was present from an early age. In high school, he had several schemes, though not all of them were simply get rich quick schemes. Some did have a noble purpose. Two specific ones that I remember are when Mike wanted to become an Apache helicopter pilot in the Army and another time Mike was pretty sure he was going to become a buddhist. I know there were many more that I can’t remember now. I remember in college he had the idea to create a service team where people would go into your house, and categorize and value everything for insurance purposes. Actually not a terrible idea. After graduating from college, Mike coaxed Teri to come to Illinois, where they lived with Mike’s parents for a while before moving into an apartment and then a house.
Mike and I met pretty much how everyone of my best friends met, through youth group in church. I don’t remember the one moment where we became friends, but I think that is maybe pretty standard. This is going to be the first in a series of posts that gives a brief synopsis of all my friends, from my Iowa circle and my Illinois circles.