Season 8 Goals And Dreams Blog 26: Friends Of Noah

 Friends Of Noah

One day in 2018, a year before I met him, Noah was getting off the bus after work. As he walked to his apartment building, he heard someone walking up behind him. It was a man who just happened to live in the same building, and he introduced himself as Owen Blake. I have met Owen Blake a handful of times, but I didn’t know until this last summer that this meeting marked Noah‘s first adult friendship. 

From there, Noah’s friend group expanded. As I said, I met him in 2019. In 2021, Noah started hearing about another blind athlete, who we will call Emilia. Emilia and Noah heard about each other’s fame in their respective sport, but each believed that the other did not know who they were. It was not until 2023 that they officially became friends. Over the last year, Noah has also become friends with three other women, Luna, Leah, and Leah's sister Nora.

Noah’s 33rd birthday was on Wednesday, October 1st, 2025. On Saturday, October 4th, at around 4:30, Paige and I drove to a music store, got Noah guitar strings and picks, went back to the apartment to finish getting ready, and then at 6:15 we left to pick up pizza at Adriatico’s on campus. Then we drove to Luna's house. Owen Blake, Leah and Nora, and obviously Luna, were already celebrating with Noah when we arrived at 7:00, but Emilia and her fiancé, Jake, were driving from Pittsburgh. 

We spent the first hour eating pizza and getting to know each other. The theme of the party (admittedly more for everyone else as opposed to Noah) was Spider-Man. Luna had gotten a ton of Spider-Man stickers, got a Spider-Man cookie cake, and even had made the invitation Spider-Man themed. That theme is very relevant, but we’ll get back to that in a second. 

When Emilia and Jake finally arrived, we all began to talk about how Noah met everybody. After this, Luna informed us, “So before you all got here, Noah sucked some helium and sang a song.”

I replied, half jokingly, “You let him do that before we got here?”

This led to us all taking turns, breathing in helium from balloons. It was something that none of us had done since we were little kids, mostly because it is actually really bad for you if you do it too much, but there were a couple of funny moments. Noah’s was one of the funniest, but it's really hard to describe because, generally speaking, he's just a funny person so pitching his voice up just makes him almost unbearably funny. My voice is already high, so it was really funny when I took my turn because my voice was almost too high-pitched for any of us to hear. But the best had to be Owen Blake's.

As I'm sure you've noticed, I have only referred to Owen Blake by his full name. While it is a pseudonym, I chose a full name because Noah only calls him by his full name, and honestly, it fits because he is a full name kind of guy. He has this very chill, suave vibe about him. As he stood up to fill up his balloon, we all waited with bated breath. He put the balloon to his lips, took a breath in, and then, almost oblivious to the tension that had built in the room, Owen Blake said, in his normal voice, “I don't think I did that right!”

After that, but before we were able to have the cake, Leah and Nora had to go home. Before they were able to say their goodbyes, Luna suggested that Noah give a speech, and I started chanting, “Speech, speech, speech,” and the others followed. I like to think that I am a pretty good public speaker, but Noah's words were so pure that I am not even going to try to quote them; it would not mean the same thing coming from me. I will, however, paraphrase them. Noah said in a way more elegant way that he is the person that he is because of us, and that he couldn't imagine his life without us.

There was a lot more personality and comedy in the way he said it that would not make sense in this installment if I tried to put it in. But in the moment as we all laughed and smiled as Noah professed his appreciation for us, I started to reflect. Other than Owen Blake, I have not met any of Noah's friends before. However, if there's one thing that Noah does chronically, it's talk about his friends. The fact that the theme of the birthday party was a Marvel character was very fitting because, based on Noah's stories, we all already knew each other, and everyone finally being together basically had the same vibe as an Avengers movie. We all got to see each other grow individually (Noah's stories), and we finally got to interact in a big crossover (the party). 

It is general human nature to judge the other people in the lives of the people you love. It doesn't matter how good of people they actually are, you are going to make harsh judgments because they are close to someone you care about, especially at first.  I think that it is a testament to how great a person Noah is that there wasn't a single second where I doubted any of his friends.

Have A Greattastic Day and Be Safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 8 Goals And Dreams Blog 25: Fever Dream

 Fever Dream

On Friday, September 19, 2025, after I got groceries on my way home from work, I pulled up to the apartment building, put my hazards on, got out of my car, and ran up to the door. There is this brick that people use to prop the door open when they are moving in. I propped it open and began running the groceries up to our apartment, where Paige was waiting to help put them away. On one of my trips, a neighbor’s dog by the name of Waffles ran into my building, and the owner and I spent 5 minutes chasing him.

That night, Box Seats was supposed to play a show with two other bands. However, both bands dropped out at the last minute, so it was now just Box Seats playing. My parents were out of town, and I hadn’t told Luke that we were coming. As we walked to the car, I told Paige, “So, Luke texted me when I was at Kroger: If you come to the show tonight, I will give you a tambourine and let you come on stage.” We laughed at what was clearly a joke.

We parked at Luke and Josh’s house, the 245, and walked the rest of the way to the venue. When we walked in, the only people there were Luke, Josh, their band mates, Freddy and Max, Freddy’s longtime girlfriend, Kelly, Luke’s college roommate, Malcolm, his current roommate, and two girls who I have seen at a few other Box Seats shows. When I saw Luke, I sarcastically said, “This might be the biggest show you’ve ever played!”

“Well, don’t be mean about it,” he quipped as the girls laughed, and I felt a little guilty.

5 minutes later, at 7:55, about four more people and Ryan entered the venue, and the band got on stage. We all stood in what would have been the front row at a normal show, except Paige stood a little further behind to get some videos. I stood right next to Kelly.

About 10 minutes into the show, after they finished playing a song, Malcolm lifted up a piece of paper. It read: LET ME PLAY! Luke read it and brought him on stage. Once Luke had introduced Malcolm to the crowd, they played a song that they have not released on Spotify yet. When the song ended, and Malcolm got off the stage, I laughed and thought, That’s gonna be the best thing that happens tonight. Boy, was I wrong.

Now, in Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the main character's older brother is in a punk rock band called Loaded Diaper, and Luke was a huge fan of that series, even writing (and publishing in a limited capacity) a parody book based on it in middle school. The first song that Box Seats wrote is called Almost There, so when Luke called Ryan onto the stage and said, “This is the first song we ever wrote,” I assumed it was going to be Almost There. Instead, it was a rock ballad, in which Luke just aggressively sang the words “Loaded Diaper” for like 30 seconds. After they finished, Ryan got off the stage, and they actually played Almost There. After that, I rallied the crowd and asked for an encore, during which Freddy left his guitar and started playing on Max’s- while Max was still playing. I leaned over to Kelly and said, “This is a fricking fever dream.”

Since Luke also plays with Cousin Simple, he and Ryan play together all the time. But after the show, we went back to the 245, and I ended up falling asleep. Because the only time Ryan has played with Box Seats was a song that Luke totally wrote as a joke, before Box Seats even had their name, on top of me chasing a dog through my apartment building, and the bands general manic-ness, if I didn’t have pictures of the show, I think I actually would have believed what I said to Kelly about it being a fever dream. Sometimes we feel like if something is small, it's not as awesome as it would be if it were bigger. But as I think Box Seats proved, something doesn’t have to be big to be…Greattastic 

Be Safe everybody,  

J. Mitchie Ulibarri