Aaron
Known Since: 1989
Resides In: My apartment (San Diego, CA)
I'm pretty sure it was was 1989 when I first met Aaron. He was living in San Diego, and I was in Sacramento. He knew K.C., and Tim had met him once. He and I sort of met through print, since K.C. had gotten him into the amateur press publication we'd started. But we finally met in person when he came into town to visit, and Tim and I took him out on the town. Knew right away he was a player (of course, this was back before people were calling each other "player") when at the first club we were at, he walked up to the prettiest girl in the place and asked her to dance, and got her out onto the floor. This led to an ongoing joke when he later told us she was from Rocklin, and we had to explain about girls from Rocklin...
We were right about the same age, me being about a week older than him, and we were both college guys, into partying and writing and movies. Outside of keeping in touch over things in the publication, we'd see each once a year when the annual San Diego get-together started, and he'd usually end up being the host, since he lived there. I met Joel and Ben through Aaron, too, and they'd end up becoming long-time friends from then on. Aaron was going for his communications degree at the time, and was a DJ on the college radio station, and was known as "John Drake, Secret Agent". Where I was into the rock side of 80s music, Aaron was more into the pop and underground side, and I learned to appreciate a lot of that stuff through him (and we both loved Oingo Boingo, the band that has no boundaries..).
After college, Aaron decided to try living in New York for a while and moved away, while I took off for Arizona. But after a couple of years, an opportunity opened up to manage a Kinko's in Sacramento, and though I couldn't understand how someone could be from San Diego, live in New York, and CHOOSE to move to Sacramento, he did. And it wasn't too long after that my breakup happened and I ended up back in Sacramento rooming with Tim and Rich. We were finally in the same town, and Aaron became a staple at our house...even had his own corner of the living room he crashed in after nights of partying. But he was soon without a roommate, since Greg had gotten engaged, and he became the fourth Chico at La Casa. It was a grand time for us all then, just a bunch of buds, living together, throwing parties, watching basketball and football. It got even better when A.T., during a temporary breakup with his future wife, moved in with us, too. But A.T. patched things up and got engaged, and Tim and Rich too both quickly got engaged.
The age of La Casa was over, and Aaron and I, the lone bachelors, got an apartment. We had some good times, then, spending a lot of time watching movies and our TV shows, working on creative projects, and smoking way too many cigars. We had BBQs at our place, and people over for parties. But one summer at the annual San Diego gathering, I was alone in Seaport Village, killing time and waiting to head to the airport and head home, and I started wondering what it would be like to live in San Diego. Somewhere between there and home, I made the decision to move there, and I soon let Aaron know my plans. Being from there, but not having lived there in a few years, Aaron thought he might like to give home a shot again, so he said he'd go along. We flew down, spent a couple of days staying at his folks' house and apartment hunting, and soon it was a done deal. On New Year's Day, 1998, after a last night spent with Sacramento friends, we loaded up my van, his car, and our U-Haul, and took Greg along with us for the trip down to help us move in. A.T. flew down the next day and helped out for that weekend as well. So our San Diego life began.
Aaron and I share a two-bedroom apartment in La Mesa, having been roommates now for a number of years. I described our home life elsewhere on this page, but it's pretty much made up of lots of TV and movie watching, lots of basketball (love the NBA League Pass on cable! Go Kings!), lots of cigars, and lots of talking over familiar subjects (name your top five favorite Buffy episodes...best John Cusack films...how the Star Wars prequels could have been done better...if the Kings could pick up any small forward in the league, who would you want?). We can usually be found on weekends either hanging out as Russ's place or going out to movies, or one of our familiar spots around town (Ogees, Habana Club, The Blarney Stone). Aaron works both at Kinko's and does desktop and graphic design contract work. Aaron never met a beer he didn't like, and does enjoy knocking them back. He's an often uncontrollable laugher, and a very funny guy. He's a sports freak, listening to sports radio all day, following his Chargers and his Kings religiously, and going to Padres games whenever he can. He's both a talented writer and graphic designer, is very outgoing and connects with people instantly, and cares a lot about the people in his life. A great friend and great roommate, Aaron's someone you're really missing out on if you're don't call him one of your people. If you don't yet, just buy him a beer sometime and start a conversation about who should play Chris Webber in the Sacramento Kings movie. You're set.
Random Me and Aaron Memory: Us watching Babylon 5 reruns every day when I was out of work with my foot injury until I'd caught up on the series. Turns out he was right...great show.
