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Geez, what a day…worked for an hour or so in the morning. Then drove to Portland to meet D for lunch, a 70 minute drive of listening to Podcasts. It ended up being a lunch with a total of 7 people there at some fancy restaurant. After that D and I walked to Powell’s Books for awhile, back to his room, to some office building where he left his backpack, to another dinner at an even fancier restaurant and finally to see the movie World’s Fastest Indian. Before I knew it, it was 10:00pm so I headed back home. It’s 11:45 now and I’m ready for bed. Had fun seeing D, though.

Last night I spent over an hour on myspace.com, putting in random names of family members, old friends, old classmates, people from my old church, random people from school, etc, and finding nobody. But then, near the end, I did find Eric. I wrote him an email and I just now noticed that he responded…

Hi Eric. I’ve just spent the past hour of my life inputting just about every name that I’ve ever known from my past into Myspace, just to search for people out of boredom. Not one single member of my extensive family has a Myspace. None of my good friends from high school do either. Nobody from my old church comes up. Apparently not even my old enemies use Myspace. Finally I decided to try your name and there you were. You were approximately ..103 on my list of names to try out.

Brad Carter

His reply:

Subject: Holy Crap?!

Eric

So that’s sorta interesting for me. I’d completely forgotten about the things he mentioned but remember them vividly now. I’ll have to swap some more stories with him. And I have plenty more.

Here are the first three items from the Police Blotter in the local paper…

TRAPPED IN DUMBWAITER: A 30-year-old man climbed into a dumbwaiter early Sunday morning at the Sweet Home Elks Lodge and became trapped between floors, according to the Linn County Sheriff’s dispatch log. Sweet Fire and Ambulance was called but the man was able to climb out and free himself.

NO HOSTAGE SITUATION: A mail carrier in the 2600 block of Burkhart Street SE found a note in a mail box on Friday that read “Postman. Help. I am being held at this address,” and the note was signed, according to Albany police. On Friday, the mail carrier found a similar note saying the woman was locked in the house. Police determinded that the woman and man who live there suffer from dementia. The woman later was taken to Samaritan Albany General Hospital after threatening to kill people.

TOUCHY SITUATION: A man told the Linn County Sheriff’s Office he checked on a car parked next to his trailer in the 2600 block of Old Holley Road about 10:30am Saturday. Inside, he reported seeing a naked man who was passed out with his genitals tied to the steering wheel. The caller woke the man up, and he drove away.

Get me out of here.

Oh, and watch this immediately.

Today I stopped by Salvation Army to look at furniture. The sticker on a cabinet with broken hinges reads, “Hengeses need replaced.” HENGESES??? I could accept HENGES as a misspelling, but geez. HENGESES.

Next stop was 7-Eleven for lunch. Total cost $1.58. Out of $5.00? And here’s three pennies. Then I get that blank look that I seem to get every single time I add a few pennies or nickels after they’ve already entered the amount into the register. And this lady is like FIFTY. At 50 years old, you should know how to do grade school level math. I mean, the total on the register shows that she should give me back $3.42. So just add 3 cents to that, right? Even without it written right there in front of you on the resgister screen, that’s not a hard thing to figure out in your head.

Isn’t it annoying how I always use LJ to pick on everyone else’s faults? As if I don’t have a million of them.

Camera phone pictures dump:

An hour ago…

Wendys Lady: Here you go sir. *hands me a bag and my drink* I know you said it was for here but I hit the wrong button on the register.
Me: Oh.
Wendys Lady: I have a tendency to do that. I’m sorry.
Me: Oh. Well uh… Could I still have a tray?
Wendys Lady: *thinks about it* Okay! Here you go. I’m sorry about that mixup.
Me: It’s okay. Thanks!

Let’s see…Saturday we were lazy. Slept until after noon, bummed around the house all day, cleaned Jammie’s room, watched House and House II and we declared it no pants day.

Sunday…we were going to go pantsless on the 6 train to be part of some wacky flash mob, but it was too cold for that so we watched Creepshow instead. It’s a good thing, too, since a few people were charged with disorderly conduct for the no-pants thing. Would have been hilarious to get Jammie arrested, though.

After Creepshow, went to a psychic fair. When we got there, we discovered it wasn’t so much a fair, but a very small room to the side of a coffee shop with a few tables. The people hawking their goods at the tables outnumbered the amount of customers there. As we approached each table to look at the merchandise, the new-age hippy-looking 40-something behind the table eyed us like a vulture, pleading with their eyes for us to by something. You could see the disappointment on their faces when we walked away empty handed. This one girl had stacks of her unframed “art” for sale – water color and crayon hippie designs on posterboard. It reminded me the shit kids drew in middle school. She only wanted $40 for each of them. We quickly passed by the 3 psychic reading tables – they wanted $30.00 per reading. Considering the number of $5.00 psychics we see every other block in the city, fuck that.

Walked around for awhile, went to The Container Store, Barnes & Noble and a few street vendors. Then we went for some pizza and to an improv show at the 78th Street Theater Lab. It was a small show – the audience was only double the size of the cast. Pretty slow-paced but occasional bits of hilarity. They asked for the names of fictional movies and Jammie yelled out “Phone Losers of America” and they did a movie review on it – turned out to be a club of serial killers called the Phone Losers of America who murdered people over the phone by making them swallow their cell phones. Or something like that. I recorded the whole act with my cell phone but the quality is too horrible to put up.

Yesterday, I wandered Manhattan for an hour or so before picking up Jammie from work. Then we (Jammie, Rob, Mara and me) went to see Billy Joel in concert at Madison Square Garden! The show was incredible, probably one of the best concerts I’ve been to this century. Oh wait, it’s the only. I don’t think I’ve been to a real concert since Aerosmith in 1999. But yeah, it was great. I thought I was a hard-core Billy Joel fan, but I ended up recognizing only maybe 60% of what he played. And then I only knew the lyrics to about half of those.

Last night we went bar hopping. The first was a place called Montien. I got to meet a guy who I was in some kind of massive IRC war 10 years ago that I barely remember. We patched things up by drinking a few shots together and I gave him a PLA button as a peace offering. I guess us PLA types harassed his channel, called #stuy95. Apparently this is chronicled in some old PLA issues.

Next was Coyote Ugly. That’s a blur. It was too crowded but didn’t last very long. Then some other bar for the rest of the night until about 1am. All night people seemed to know me from Jammie’s journal, which was weird for me. At the last bar, a girl greeted me by saying, “You’re the one who gave me Corey Feldman’s cell phone number!” Met lots of people whose names I’ve heard referenced often over the past 7 months. Got home at 2:30am.

This morning I walked around about 8 blocks, looking for the post office. Finally found it. That sure was exciting. Tonight we’re watching some 80’s Eddie Murphy standup thing with Rob and Mara. Guess I’m going to try and finish up my stuff here earlyish and go to the city to wander around for a few hours. Still need to find some kind of souvineer thing for Payton. We found Emily a kickass charm bracelet the other night at a giftshop.

Later that day…

I went to Manhattan and had lunch with Jammie at the Trailer Park Cafe, which murd0c recommended the last time I was in town. I had sloppy joes and tater tots. Took Jammie back to work, then went for long walks. Visited the World Trade Center site. Then walked to Battery Park, hoping to find something for Payton with the vendors. Failed to find anything worth getting. Then decided to walk back to Times Square instead of taking the Subway, with just 90 minutes to get there. I didn’t make it. A little over an hour later, I was only halfway there so I found a Subway and got to Jammie’s work just in time.

We walked to a bar where her employees were all gathered. Stayed for about 30 minutes, then left. Got a Subway home and then napped for an hour. Rob showed up, then we went to Duane Reade to pick up Mara from the Subway. Got junk food, then went home to watch Eddie Murphy’s Delirius. Which was probably one of the best standup shows I’ve ever watched. Somehow I never managed to see it until now. Actually, I’ve never seen anything Eddie Murphy has done from the 80’s, aside from his SNL stuff which I have on VHS.

After that we all drove back into Manhattan (minus Rob) to see Underworld with Anontio, Sergei and some girl whose name I forget. Made it to the theater just as it was starting – to find out that it was sold out. Everything was sold out, in fact. Who’d have thought that the movie theater in Times Square would be sold out on a Friday night?? So instead, we all went to Antonio’s apartment and ended up watching Team America. Left his apartment at 3:30am, got home around 4:30, crashed immediately.

Last night I was wandering around Woodside for about an hour, killing time while waiting for Jammie’s train to arrive. Around 8pm, I sit down on a bench in front of Duane Reade and notice a man eyeing me. A minute later he walks over and says hello. I reply, “hi.” He asks how I’m doing and I say something like, “Oh, just fine” in a dismissing tone. Apparently I have a very good dismissing tone because he walks away without asking me for money.

But then he wanders back a minute later and asks if I can spare a dollar. I tell him no and he jokes around with something like, “What happened to the days when they asked you for a quarter? Now it’s always a dollar! Ha ha.” He apologizes for asking, we bid each other farewell and he leaves again. What’s strange about this guy is that he’s clean cut, dressed nice, speaks well and clearly isn’t used to asking strangers for money.

Here’s the bizarre part…he comes back again and apologizes, once again, for asking me for money. Then he tells me, “We’re out here looking for someone” as he walks off, and in a reassuring tone he tells me that I’m not the one “they” are looking for. A few seconds later he’s disappeared around the corner, behind Duane Reade and out of sight. Cop? Crazy man? Homo? All of the above? You be the judge…

Tonight we’re going to see Avenue Q. Last night we watched the American Idol premiere, which is only the 3rd time I’ve ever watched it in the 4 years that it’s been on. I’m having a great time here so far. Over the weekend we visited some motion picture historical place which was lots of fun. I rewired Jammie’s TV and installed shelves in the kitchen. And next week we might see Billy Joel. Here’s a few pictures…

	Jammie being a weather girl on a chromakey screen
	This is some weird strobe light animation thing. It ruled.
	After installing shelves, I OMG HAX some washers on the table.

I got to experience my very first New York tragedy today! It was so great! A big fuel tanker tipped over on the BQE, eexploded 8,000 gallons of fuel and an overpass collapsed on top of it! All right here in Woodside, near Jammie’s house. They even closed down the #7 train, which the the one we take to get to the city. We heard lots of fire trucks and helicopters so I looked out the window and saw 2 helicopters and thick black smoke. Jammie went out later and told me there were actually 6 helicopters so I turned on the news to find out what was happening. Exciting tragedies should happen more often! (It’s okay, somehow nobody was hurt during all this.) Here’s the news story on it all.

Just took this picture from my back door. As I’m writing this, it’s already gone away. Yesterday the newspaper said that it’s rained for 21 days straight here and that there’s still plenty more to come. It also said that this is the worst flooding and rain we’ve had since 1996. Which I happen to remember since that’s the year I moved away from this town. The weather forecast shows at least another week of rain. Luckily I’m going to NYC this weekend. It’s raining there too, but the forecast shows a couple clear days throughout the week.