Year: 2007

After a lunch at Wendy’s, I ran across the street to see if there was anything good at Goodwill. First I found a 5 1/4″ diskette case with a giant Apple logo on it. I really wanted it, just for the logo. But I resisted since I have no use for a disk holder. I tried to peel the sticker off, but there’s no way it would come off and stay in good shape. I just now checked Ebay and there are lots of Apple Computer stickers on there.

A shelf full of Nokia cellular phones! All $3.99 each and one even had a charger for it. This Goodwill always has a large collection of cell phones but this is the first time I’ve seen almost all the same model of Nokia.

An outhouse! With a door that appeared to open. So I opened it…

To reveal a guy sitting inside.

My holiday Monday has been somewhat productive. I worked all day. This evening I painted on my clock (don’t ask), bought an electronic baby toy from Goodwill to hook into my home alarm system (don’t ask), upgraded the HDD on the kids’ computer to 220 gigs (from 20 gigs) plus fixed a few misc. things wrong it like the PCI cards slipping out of their slots, and watched Little Nicky (I love that movie). Goodwill had giant packs of balloons for a buck each so I picked up about 10 of those for our next UFO scare attempt. Oh yeah, I don’t think I wrote about that last one yet.

I don’t know what the hell I did yesterday. I think I was just home all day, catching up on email and other internet-type things. Oh yeah, I did laundry. Someone left a U.S. News magazine from 1993 at the laundry mat and I got to read all about president Clinton’s universal health care plan. I hope his plan works! Saturday the kids and I went on a hike at Avery Park in Corvallis.

On Friday evening we went to the Arts & Air Festival at the Albany fairgrounds. Some hot air balloons were supposed to lift off after dark but they canceled that because it was too windy. Can’t say any of us were too disappointed though. On Saturday we went to the State Fair in Salem. We spent 5 or 6 hours there playing games, going on rides and seeing animals.

Payton tried to refuse to go on any scary rides, which included pretty much all of them. I told him he didn’t have a choice and we went on the Sea Dragon. After a few screams of terror on it, he decided that he loved it and wanted to go on it again. So we did before we left. Same thing with the ferris wheel, he was completely against that at first. So he conquered two unreasonable fears yesterday. Here’s a video of our 2nd ride.

Not much else going on here. I’m just organizing my office today. It’s been trashed along with the rest of the house for the past couple months.

For a lot of this year I’ve had trouble deciding if I should move or not. My primary reason for wanting to move is the thefts. Two bikes, a smashed car window, and my car stereo missing since I’ve lived here. That’s a lot of thefts for just under 2 years. This is a nice neighborhood and I love this apartment. It’s perfect, it has central air, and it’s really cheap. I like pretty much everything about it. The neighborhood is nice and quiet. The neighbors across the street are old and nice and bring me stuff. Warren and the others next door are insane, but they’re not bad neighbors. They’re not loud and I don’t really have any problems with them. This is assuming that Warren isn’t responsible for my thefts, of course.

Warren used to have a lot of people coming and going at all hours. He’s clearly a drug user. His father and sister (who both live over there) seem okay though. All kinds of his friends used to park next to my car and I bet one of them looked in and saw my car stereo, so they smashed my window one night. I’m sure I wrote about all this back when it happened. Warren is definitely a suspect in the thefts. But who knows, maybe it’s just completely random.

The thing that bugs me about the most recent bike theft is that I had the gate padlocked and the bike locked to the bike rack. They cut the padlock and the bike lock. Someone is walking around the neighborhood with bolt cutters. Or it could just be the people that Warren had visiting for the week prior to that. Them and their vans disappeared after that happened. That’s a pretty bold move, chopping locks off of things. How long before they decide to break into my house?

If I move, I’ll definitely pay more rent. This place is really cheap and is technically 3 bedrooms. Everything else I find that will work is $600 – $900. So at the very least, I’d pay an extra $100/month to move. But probably more than that. My reasoning for staying is this – I could instead blow an extra $100/month on beefing up security around here.

I have a pretty good alarm system that I installed, I think last year. It will call my cell phone if the alarm is tripped. It’s only hooked to the back door, but I could put it on the front too if I wanted to. Its wireless sensors are crappy, so I have to use the wired sensors. But it works perfectly with the wired sensors. I also put motion sensor security lights outside. I upgraded them last week since the old cheap ones weren’t being very reliable. I also installed a plug inside on the opposite side of the security lights that only turns on when motion is detected and the lights turn on. I bought a toddler toy from Goodwill the other day that I’m going to plug into it. So whenever the lights are tripped, I’m going to be asked questions about the alphabet for about 60 seconds before it turns itself off. I really love this part of my home security. It’s so weird and ghetto. I bet nobody else in the world has something like this.

Yesterday at Home Depot I picked up a security camera that I’m going to aim into the patio area. Eventually I’d like to get another one and aim it at the car. Today I checked online and found some kick ass security camera software for $29.00. It emails and/or text messages you pictures when it senses motion. Plus you can log in and check it remotely. I’m really gonna love that. I also bought a hotel-like door lock for the back door and window security bolts for all the windows in the house.

I know it seems like I’m being way too paranoid about breakins. But this all seems way cheaper than moving. And it makes me feel a lot better about leaving the house, considering that last theft. Plus it’s fun to do all this. I’m gonna get the camera mounted maybe tomorrow. I’m going to stick it out for a while longer here and see how it works out. Maybe I’ll put a decoy bike out there once I get the camera up, just to see if someone takes it. I don’t even know where else in Albany to move. What if I move to another area and things are even worse?

Oh, another thing about Warren. The past two weeks they’ve stopped locking their gates when they used to keep it locked 24/7. And they’ve got 3 or 4 bikes back there, none of them locked up. Why don’t these bike thieves ever go over there? They did used to have things stolen – people were actually going over the fence to steal things from them. But Warren told me that it was someone he knew stealing from him and he put an end to it. Which is another reason to think that Warren or his friends are responsible for all this.

Saw Superbad on Friday and loved it. Went with Angela, her daugher, and her daughter’s boyfriend. Saturday I worked a lot during the day. Didn’t do much in the evening either, but went on a walk to Taco Bell for supper after dark. On the way back noticed a spotlight in the sky, so I followed it and ended up in downtown Albany. There was live music by an okay band. Apparently there was some kind of fair thing going on all weekend that I didn’t know about.

Picked up some things at Home Depot and spent Sunday installing them. A shelf on top of the shower, a new door latch for the back door and some window security locks. Fifty feet of cat5 cable, stapled along a wall, puts wired internet in the dining room now for the kids’ computers. I had some old USB wireless thing in there before and it was annoying. Oh, and bought a giant closet for Payton’s room which took almost two hours to put together. I love putting furniture together.

Drove to Salem to visit Home Depot and Target. What should have been 20 minutes there ended up being 90 minutes because of a major traffic jam. And then at the end of it, there was no payoff! No car wreck, no semi with vegetables spilled all over the highway, no collapsed bridge, NOTHING. It was such a letdown for that long of a wait. It didn’t seem like 90 minutes to me since I was listening to the Mysterious Universe podcast. Thank God I had my Ipod with me.

Today I worked all day. Emily stayed home, chatting on the internet and playing games all day. This evening I got all my tax stuff together for an appointment tomorrow. Now I’m chatting with Spessa. And writing an entry. Then I’ll click Publish and probably go to bed.

Spessa & family left this afternoon. I don’t think I can possibly express what an insanely good time we’ve had this past week. I can’t even remember what I’ve written about in here so far. But yesterday was a TON of UFO insanity which I’ll be sure to post pictures of eventually. The sky was lit up with multiple colors flying all over the place. It was nuts. Drank too much champagne last night, then prank called hotels until 2am. Walked to downtown and the park with all the kids during the day. They were having some kind of giant basketball tournament which covered several downtown blocks. Had snowcones there, lunch at the hospital.

We drove to Salem yesterday to return some stuff at Lowes. I bought some new security lights there since the motion sensor on my old ones aren’t very reliable. Mr. Spessa spent about 15 minutes riding a handicap cart all over the parking lot and we put PLA stickers all over it. Installed the security lights when we got home – this time I rigged it so that when the lights turn on outside, it also activates a plug inside the house. I can plug anything I want into it, such as a radio or just something to beep and alert me that someone is out there. Oh yeah, my bike was stolen again last week. They actually cut the lock this time!

This evening I’ve been cleaning up the house. Every time I walk through the house I’m exclaiming things like “Goddamn!” and “Holy fucking shit!” My house is so trashed. More trashed than I’ve ever seen it. Garbage is piled into several boxes and bags in the kitchen and on the patio. Stuff is just everywhere. Dishes are everywhere. My office and room are a wreck and so are the kids’ rooms. Balloons, legos, DVDs, papers, sheesh. I did laundry this evening, so at least that’s done. Did some dishes but there are still a lot to do. I’m not saying the Spessas are messy, but having an extra half-dozen people in the house, coupled with me ignoring a lot of housework in favor of just hanging out with them all, sure took its toll on this place.

I skipped Defcon in Vegas this weekend, only to drive to Reno tomorrow. Should be about a 10 hour drive, I think. I wrote in my LJ on Friday that I was packing for Nevada, just to see if it would cause any confusion as to whether or not I was going to Defcon. Murd0c called me on Saturday to let me know that it worked, listing a few people that had been asking him where I was. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to see MARK TWAIN STUFF in Reno. I’m not sure what else is there.

Back in 1992, a friend introduced me to The Jerky Boys. About a year later, The Jerky Boys released their first album. Then they released a bunch of other albums that I don’t care too much for. And the head Jerky Boy does the voice of Mort Goldman on Family Guy. The Jerky Boys were on MTV, had a movie made based around their calls, a video of pranks, a book, and probably a lot of other junk I don’t know about. Their first album was an inspiration to prank callers everywhere, myself included. So I feel sort of cool that the official Jerky Boys Myspace requested me as a friend on my Myspace. Not the PLA Myspace, but mine. So sure, it’s all to promote himself and his new album. But still kind of cool.