I just got a phone call from a local number. It went a little like this…
ME: Hello?
HER: Hey!
ME: Hey, what’s up!?
HER: Oh. I must have misdialed.
ME: No you didn’t. It’s me!
HER: Well I was trying to get ahold of my husband and you’re not him.
ME: No, it’s me, honey! When are you gonna be home and cook my supper?
HER: Yeah right.
ME: Hurry up. You need to put out ASAP.
HER: *click*
Payton woke me up at 6:50AM today. Dammit. Why? “Dad, can I play San Andreas?” OF COURSE YOU CAN, LEAVE ME ALONE UNTIL AT LEAST 8:00! I made that very clear tonight at bedtime. I’ve been tired all day, even though I fell asleep at one point this morning and had a nap. Today was no school. Payton played PS2 for 3 or so hours straight while Emily slept all morning. Ran some errands, visited the post office, paid the rent, went to the park, had a picnic, played frisbee, went to volleyball practice, Target for groceries…and that’s it.
Not much happening with life lately. That’s why I don’t update the journal too often anymore. The biggest news is that the nearly 6 months of nonstop rain has finally stopped. It’s been really nice out for the past week and there hasn’t been any rain. Today was in the mid 70’s.
In PLA news: I’ve been working on a new podcast project for the past week or so and I should have a new PLA Radio out maybe this week or next. I’ve also done quite a bit of work on the site lately – mostly on the forums.
Somehow I mentioned to Payton the other day, just in passing, something about the Terminator. He seemed interested so I told him all about the storyline of the Terminator movies, how the T-1000 was liquid metal and the time traveling and all that. So finally I just end up downloading it and we all sit down and watch it. I don’t think I’ve seen the kids enjoy a non-kid movie like that in quite some time now. He talked about it a lot today. Once I get my DVDs out of storage, I’ll have to show them the cool deleted scenes. It’s always nice when they’re so into something that I’ve always enjoyed myself.
I just called the utilities in Illinois to get by month-by-month totals for 2005 taxes. My electric bill was insane last year. $382 in July?? $358 in September??
Electric:
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Jan – $275.22
Feb – $236.58
Mar – $177.09
Apr – $297.86
May – $200.61
Jun – $296.66
Jul – $382.84
Aug – $213.71
Sep – $358.06
Oct – $83.18
Nov – $163.58
Dec – $115.56
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TOTAL $2800.95
Illinois Water:
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Jan – $22.46
Feb – $25.10
Mar – $19.82
Apr – $17.18
May – $19.82
Jun – $17.18
Jul – $22.46
Aug – $22.46
Sep – $19.82
Oct – $19.82
Nov – $14.54
Dec – $14.54
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TOTAL $235.20
I’m suddenly so grateful that I’ve moved into this nice little apartment where my electric bill is averaging $50 per month and my water is paid by the rental company. My electric will go up a little in the summer here because of central air. But there’s no way it’ll end up at the levels I was at before. Guess it pays to not heat and cool 3 levels of house. (The basement wasn’t by choice, the air ducts just leaked all over the place down there.)
Had some time to kill in Portland today so I decided to take a stroll through my old hood. I pulled into the 7-Eleven I used to work at and I arrived just as the Indian clerk ran up to the door and kicked a black girl in the ass as she walked out the door, while ranting something unintelligible to her. She laughed it off and kept walking. He stormed back to the counter to continue helping the line of customers, cursing the girl the whole time. Quite amusing. And man, that neighborhood has gone to shit.
Go listen to this podcast: Delta Park Project. Forward to 17 minutes and 15 seconds and you’ll hear me sing a sensitive and touching ode to my late dog Popper.
That’s the same podcast I first heard Re Your Brain on.
Picked up the kids from school, hung around the house for awhile, then rode bikes to the park. I’ve been trying to teach Payton to ride a bike for the past few weeks and he’s getting better. Today he had his first crash, right into a wall. It’s my fault. No crying or anything, though, he just got up and walked the rest of the way to the park. Stayed there for over an hour. Emily and I rode around the block a few times while Payton played with friends. Every time we leave the park, this cat a few blocks away greets us and we pet it for 5 or 10 minutes. It’s Payton’s favorite part about leaving. Today it was there again, as always.
Tonight we did homework, watched Sliders and ate macaroni. The kids are both addicted to the old TV show Sliders these past few weeks. I think I mentioned that in a previous journal entry. All they want to do is watch it. I downloaded all 5 seasons recently so I have them all. They’ll sit and watch 3 or 4 45 minute episodes in a row if I let them. Payton tells me about Sliders dreams he’s had at night and I’ve noticed him naming his lego men after Sliders characters when playing. They’ve been jumping all over the place, watching all the episodes from the different seasons. They’ve probably watched at least 2 full seasons by this point, but completely at random.
Not a whole lot else going on with my life lately. I bought a bike at Target last week but haven’t ridden much by myself yet. Emily and I went around the block a lot over the weekend, though. Been filling up my free time working on podcasts, listening to podcasts and working on the new forums and getting the web site back in full operation since the move to a new server. The new server rules. Everything works, my email forwards properly now, all the PHP works, it’s fast, I have normal access logs again. I wish I’d done this years ago.
I’m really addicted to the podcasting thing still. I’m really enjoying making my shows and listening to others. I can’t believe I’ve already put out 6 episodes in just 2 months with very little effort. Well, okay, 5. You can’t really count the email episode. I’m also spending lots of time finding new podcasts to listen to. I’m completely losing touch with music because of them. Jammie asked if I’d heard the new Eminem song the other day and I had no idea what she was talking about. I need to download that album.
Speaking of podcasts and music…everyone must listen to Re Your Brains RIGHT NOW. I’ve let several people hear this today and everyone loves it. Especially Payton. I’ve probably played it 20 times today. Jonathan Coulton’s website has lots of music on it, but that one’s definitely my favorite.
I haven’t done a dump of my camera phone lately. So here it is…
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| Me trying to appear even more nerdier than usual in my thrift store shirt a few weeks ago. | I was trying to find an address awhile back and found this pond where you could feed fish. |
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| When my ignition stopped working last month, I left my car in McDonald’s parking lot over night. When I came back the next morning, this was on my window. | While waiting for the locksmith to arrive, I wrote this on the bottom of it, planning to stick it on their delivery door. But since the manager actually came out and talked to me a short while later, I didn’t. |
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| Drug the kids to the laundrymat with me last week, but since they had tables there we turned it into a pizza party. | Snapped this picture earlier today, attempting to give Jammie a little encouragement for her speech in class. |
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| Payton rock climbing at the park today. | Emily riding my new bike at the park today. |
Richard Smith died last night. That sucks. He used to be my dad’s best friend but they had some ridiculous falling out years ago. But me and him stayed friends, sorta. I’ve known him all my life. When I was a teen, he’s the guy I’d call to come and pick me up when I had car trouble. And he always answered all my computer questions and gave me tons of free pirated software. I remember him coming by and picking me up once at 2 in the morning with my parents not knowing. In the late 90’s I started seeing a lot of him again and we worked on computer stuff together. He got me some job with Ray Grimley which I never got paid for because Richard ran off to Ohio for some contract job. That’s the last I saw of him. He’d been back in the Alton area for a few years but I’d never seen him. He had a stroke a few weeks ago, then they found that he had lung cancer in both lungs. He was a heavy smoker. Even though I haven’t seen him in 6 years and I probably never would have seen him again, I’ll miss him. He was 58.
I run a few Yahoo Groups and one of them is this Prank Calls group. The other day an email comes through it with the subject line of “Profit Opportunity!” and the email contains lots of graphics and links about all the money you can make with PayPal. Occasionally spam slips through. So I log into the group, delete the email and ban the person responsible. Then today I get this email:
From: Ronnie Vinston rcaprix@yahoo.com
Subject: membership
To: prank_calls-owner@yahoogroups.com
I am having trouble logging in to your group. Was I removed from this group because of the email I sent to all the members. It was only an email that I recieved from someone else about an opportunity to make money through paypal. I thought it would be a good idea to share this with other people. I really wanted to join this group because I like listening to prank calls, not to sell items to members. I hope you would reconsider. Thank you.
I’m not going to bother replying. I just think it’s kinda funny. Usually it’s not members who spam their own groups – it’s people who sign up with intentions of spamming groups until they are kicked off.
I’ve been a real podcast whore since about January. It’s pretty much all I listen to lately. I barely even listen to music anymore, although I’m sure all this is just a phase. Here’s a few links to podcasts that I’ve been on or pissed off or whatever…
RBPC Show Episode #9 There’s a whole story behind this one which was lost when the RBPC Show forums crashed last month. And I sure don’t feel like going into it right now. But it has to do with their forum members accusing me of cheating on my Podcastalley votes. If you fast forward to 4 minutes and 25 seconds, you’ll hear them spend a minute talking about what a cheater I am.
RBPC Show Episode #10 Fast forward to 4 minutes and you’ll hear an angry voicemail message from me. I don’t do angry too good, though. I think Pez thanks me on the end of this one too. Click here for more RBPC Show episodes.
Lazy Radio Episode 2.11 About seven minutes and 40 seconds into this show, Melissa & John play Relay Operators in Love on their show and talk about how immature and mean relay pranking is. Here is more Lazy Radio for you.
BellCore Radio Episode #21 P(?)NYB(?)Y strains to convince listeners that PLA Radio isn’t that bad. Listen to more BellCore Radio. If there’s an RSS feed for this show, I sure can’t find it. P(?)NYB(?)Y, make a feed!
PLA Radio Goddammit, if you’re reading this journal you better be listening to PLA Radio or YOU’RE NOT MY FRIEND.
I made macaroni tonight and left them boiling on the stove for nearly 15 MINUTES. Spessa will never know.