Author: rbcp

The flight was okay. Our 2nd flight was delayed by an hour, which isn’t too bad of a thing. My brother & his girlfriend picked us up. Before I left, I listed a few things from storage on Craigslist and some lady came by today to pick up my old washer & dryer. And our old Christmas tree. Went shopping with mom, dad took me to storage. Later I drove to St. Louis to drop off a FedEx envelope and then went back to storage to organize a few things. Stayed there probably two hours, going through boxes, labeling them, and taking pictures for Craigslist.

My mom showed me an old jacket of mine this evening. Said she was going through a closet the other day and found it. I recognized it as the jacket that I wore in Jr. High. The thing was, the jacket had a speaker sewn into the back of it. Like, facing towards whoever would be behind me. And there were wires running through it, into a hole in the pocket.

In the pocket was a small jumble of wires, connected to a battery, a push button, and a piezo buzzer. This was all sewn into the pocket area. There was also a spare battery in the pocket. Pushing the button made the piezo buzzer work (yes, after 20 years it still buzzed). I’m not sure what the speaker was for but it was wired to a 1/8″ jack and wasn’t a part of the rest of it. As far as I can tell, anyway. I have no idea what any of it was for. I think I remember sewing the speaker into the jacket but I don’t remember what it’s purpose was. Here’s some pics…

A month ago, I happened across Sylvia’s Myspace. Sylvia is the girl who I looted a 7-Eleven with in 1993. We went our separate ways later that year and haven’t talked since then, except the occasional prank calls Zak and I would make to her in the mid 90’s. So I sent her a message. It went like this:

Wow, Sylvia on Myspace! It’s good to see you. Looks like you’re doing great. I wonder if you hate me. Or even remember me. If you don’t wanna write back, I understand and I won’t bug you anymore. But…hi! :)

Brad

The next day, I receive a reply from her. Here it is:

hi ok there is no way i can ever forget you as much as i wish i could i can’t cause you was a big part of my life for some time do i hate you no i don’t cause that would take up too much of my time and energy do i wish you would forget me yes i am married to a wonderful man with kids he knows nothing of you or what my life was like back then i’m not trying to be rude or mean i’ve made peace with my life and would like to keep it that way and yes after many years of therapy i can say that i am at peace with everything that went on in my younger days i’ve grew up and changed i’m a respected person in my comunity now i wish you no ill harm or want anything bad for you i hope you have a happy and fullfilling life and i hope that you find some meaningfull and lasting joy i also do not hold you responsible for anything that may of happened in our past i have let go of my grudges and as far as bugging me i can’t say that you did it was just a big shock to hear from you after all these years so ok now i wrote you back and i hope you understand i had to get that out and off my chest

Is she saying she went through therapy because of me? Her giant paragraph is kind of hard to understand. How is it that somebody who spends all their free time reading books can be a complete failure at grammar, spelling, punctuation, and even paragraphs? Colleen’s the same way, reads nonstop but fucks up constantly with simple writing. I can understand someone writing like that if they never read. But I’m talking about complete bookworms! I’m not trying to put her down, just seems strange to me.

I wrote her back one more time…

Hi again. I’m guessing you’d prefer not to keep in touch then. That’s cool with me. I was just searching for random old friends on Myspace last night and happened across your profile. I wasn’t trying to upset you, I just enjoy catching up with people from my past. I’m happy to hear everything is going well for you! If you ever change your mind and want to do some catching up, I’ll be here.

Brad

I think it’s crazy that she’s married to a guy and has kids, but hasn’t told him about her past. You’d think that robbing a 7-Eleven, spending a couple weeks in jail, and then spending a couple years on probation for it would be worth mentioning to someone you’re in a relationship with. Me and her were together for an entire year, and we traveled the country together! The reason she even lives in the state that she lives in now is because I helped her find her birth mother and brother. They even met me! Did she tell them to keep quiet about me?

Every girlfriend I’ve had has known about all my previous long-term relationships. And they’ve known about the 7-Eleven incident. You can’t just leave out a giant chunk of your life like that. Especially if it’s interesting! We hitchhiked, flew on stolen credit cards, spent months in a college dorm, explored Hollywood together, had jobs together, spent time in the back of police cars together!

Back in 1995, it’d been at least a year since I’d spoken with Sylvia. Out of nowhere, she calls and leaves a message on the PLA voicemail number in Texas. But she doesn’t say she’s Sylvia. Instead she claims she’s the cousin of some kids we used to take care of in Highland, Illinois. She tells me that a couple of them were in a horrible car accident and that they were in the hospital and burned really bad. Her voice was unmistakable.

The next day I called around to a few hospitals to see if it was true. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t. I’d been pranked. I could only assume that she was retaliating because Zak and I had been harassing her friend Chris Tomkinson for the past year and a half. So I tracked her down quite easily. Me and Zak harassed her until she eventually changed her number and/or moved. A month later I tracked her down again and the process repeated several times over the next year. By 1996 we quit and I never heard from her again, until last month. It’s not like it was unprovoked harassment, though!

Jammie says I should clue her husband in on Sylvia’s past. And as hilarious of a thought that is, I’m not going to do it. I wonder what else Sylvia’s husband doesn’t know about. I wonder if he even knows that she had a couple kids when she was 14 that she gave up for adoption. That’d be nuts not to tell your husband that. I bet she hasn’t. I should track down the kids and set up a reunion on Maury!

An email from someone named Alex Cervantes…

I want to record my girlfriends cell phone conversations. She uses direct connect (walkie talkie) 95% of the time. Can you help, or point me in the right direction?

A reply from me…

You need to buy her flowers instead. (I’m serious)

Brad

I get these a lot. And if you look at the page on recording phone calls, you’ll see probably 100 comments on there from people wanting to tap their spouse’s phone or their kid’s phone. It’s funny to read through.

I got up at 5:15 this morning. On a Saturday. Why? To participate in a Phone Mob. I never sleep well when I know I have to get up that early and last night was no exception. I was up a lot. I wouldn’t say I slept more than 2 hours at a time, probably less. I think I had dreams that I was sleeping bad too, which made it worse. And I had a dream that I got up for the stupid Mob and nobody showed up but me. That was right before I actually woke up.

The mob was fun. I sat at the computer for 4 hours for it and there were at least 10 people in the chat room the entire time. We all got through to a radio station dozens of times over that 4 hours and they sure weren’t happy about it. Regular listener response could have been better, but it was still good stuff. Thanks for organizing that, NWBell!

I really wanted to bike to Corvallis today but it kept raining. So I drove there instead, spent a few hours checking out downtown Corvallis. Stopped in a bar for lunch. Bought a book on sign language at The Book Bin. It’s for the kids, not me. They know a little sign language, now they’ll know more. The few businesses in Corvallis that I remember from 1996 don’t seem to be around anymore. For some reason, in 1996, I used to spend a lot of time in downtown Corvallis with Emily when she was just a couple months old. I can’t remember why. But I know the cafe we used to frequent isn’t there anymore.

I attempted to nap at some point today but that didn’t happen. I kept flipping between Idle Hands and Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion which kept me awake. Stupid cable. Played some video games, messed around on the internet. I’m boring. I have an equally fun-filled day planned tomorrow. Well, actually, I probably won’t leave the house tomorrow. So it’ll be even more sarcastically fun-filled than today was.

Last night, around 11pm, my phone beeps. It was a text message from a local number that I didn’t recognize. It said:

Sex is like eating at kfc once your done nibbling on breast and thighs you always have a nice greasy box to put your bone in! Later Tater

I look at the number with Fone Finder and see that it’s a Verizon cell from Lebanon, Oregon. A wrong number, obviously. So I reply back:

OMG, that’s the best analogy EVAR!

They replied with:

Ya u like that prity impresive aint it.

And I replied with this:

I was hoping for a WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU??? or something, but no luck with that. I never got another text message from them again.

Yesterday at Goodwill I picked up one of those old 80’s power switch box thingies for $6.00. They’re the kind that people used to have sitting under their monitors to switch various computer components on and off. Back in the days when you didn’t have to “power down” your computer – you just switched it off while all your stuff was still on the screen. Here’s where I put it:

I had to take the thing apart to drill holes in the top so I could mount it to the bottom of the desk. And while it was apart I scrubbed the 20 years of dust off of it. I bought a few extension cords too and I’m plugging in everything that runs on an AC/DC transformer. That way I can switch off those energy-sucking adapters instead of leaving them running 24/7.

I’m not sure if it’ll make much noticeable difference in my power bill or not. My electric bill usually only runs $30 or so. So it might. Probably take me a few years to make back the $6.00 I spent on this power swich box. But at the very least, it’ll sure make my room a lot less brighter at night. Damn LEDs…

Before I moved to Oregon, I had this crazy plan to put some kind of centralized DC power supply in my house and then run 12 volt hookups to every room. THEN I was going to start ripping the transformers out of all my household appliances and convert them to 12 volt power. Too bad I never got around to that before I moved.