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Cashier: “Will that be all?”
Me: “This and pump #9.”
Cashier: *blank look* “You’re on pump #9?”
Me: “Yes…that white car” I point.
Cashier: *panicked look* *blank look* *panicked look again*
Me: “Did that lady before me pay for pump #9?”

Finally she runs out to the parking lot, stops the lady from leaving and brings her back in. The lady claimed she didn’t notice that she was only charged $5.00 for gas instead of $32.00 for her giant SUV thing. Since she paid with a debit card, there was no easy way to charge me for the gas and charge her for the extra $27.00 she owed. I ended up offering to put my milk back on the shelf so I’d have enough cash for everything else since her credit card machine couldn’t just charge me. All that was pretty much the highlight of my day.

Kids and I went to Jack in the Box today for lunch. As always, I’m the only one to have my very own personalized lid punchie thingie…

Looked at some thrift stores this morning. Still trying to find a dining room table but everything has sucked. Might just break down and buy one from a regular store. We’ve been eating off a U-Haul box for a month now. Scored a globe (you know, of Earth) for $5.00 and some blank journals for Emily and misc. office supply stuff for me. Looking at the globe, Emily commented that she always thought Alaska was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Had lunch at Wendy’s then picked up the kids from Colleen’s. Emily stayed at a friends house for an extra 2 hours so Payton and I went to Tilt and played some air hockey, then grocery shopping.

This evening I rigged an antenna onto our television so we can watch actual channels. I feel like I’m stealing from the cable company or something. It just doesn’t seem right to get TV channels without paying an outrageous subscription fee. My antenna consists of a few strands of copper phone wire stretched in a V shape from the TV to each top edge of the window, electrical taped to some coax. The picture is surprisingly clear and we get 8 or 9 channels. For free! The only problem with this is that I happen to hate pretty much everything on the network channels. I can’t stand daytime talk shows or the evening reality shows. But the kids got to watch a Disney movie – Snow Dogs. Then we watched Times Square for awhile.

As midnight approached, we opened the door to listen for any explosives that might be set off in the vicinity. When the fireworks started going off, they both watched from the door but eventually ended up running down the block for better views of the sky. In their pajamas.

So happy 2006. My resolutions? Bah. I never have any.

Kids and I went to see Chronic-WHAT-les of Narnia tonight. I downloaded the SNL Lazy Sunday mp3 to listen to on the way to the theater. (The kids have seen the SNL video so they got the joke.) I told them we should stop by Dari Mart to mack on some cupcakes but we ended up skipping that. Usually we stop by 7-Eleven and buy food to sneak in if I don’t feel like paying an extra $15.00 for a combo and candy. But tonight I splurged. Anyway, the movie was great.

Earlier today we went to McDonald’s for lunch. Since I’m not a big fan of McDonalds (aside from breakfast) I stopped by the Taco Bell drive-thru for tacos which I ate inside. I’m so rebellious sometimes. The kids saw somebody they knew from school there so Payton was at their table for awhile, ranting on about what he got for Christmas and other random things. At one point, his rants shifts into, “And last week my dad was on TV and we got to sit in the studio but his part on the show was really SHORT!” which is about the time I made him come back to our table. Makes me wonder how many other people he’s told about this since Thursday.

That addictive Java thing from the previous entry – I spent probably 3 hours on that on Christmas day/evening. Jammie laughed at me that night when I told her every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was multi-colored sand falling in front of my eyes. I showed it to the kids this evening and they each spent probably 90 minutes on it until we left for the movie, then another hour on it when we got home from the movies. They were each on separate laptops, showing each other tricks with it all evening.

SPEAKING OF EVENINGS! I’m reading Tom Sawyer this week. It’s a great story. I’m pretty sure I’ve read it before but very little of it seems familiar to me. Near the beginning of the book, Mark Twain makes a reference to “evening” and there’s a footnote on the bottom of the page by him, informing us that “evening” is a word that southerners use to refer to the afternoon. Or something like that. Kind of interesting to think that a word as common as that wasn’t very well-known 100 years ago. The book is so dated that it’s hard for me to tell when he’s being serious or not. Like, almost everyone in the book is incredibly superstitious and it’s funny to read about. But I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be funny or not. I’m sure it’s exaggerated at least a little but he’s either trying to make the kids way too cute (in a Family Circus kind of way) or kids were just really stupid back then. I blame lack of TV/internet.

SPEAKING OF OLD-ASS WRITINGS! Jammie got me the 1953 War of the Worlds DVD. I didn’t even know they had DVDs in 1953! (yuk yuk) But I watched it Sunday and it ruled. Oh wait, I think I mentioned all this in my last entry. Anyway, I also listened to the original Orson Welles radio play which was included on the DVD. And that was just as great as the 1953 movie and the book. So far I’ve really liked that story in every incarnation I’ve seen/heard it in. And as I listened to the radio play, I read about all the havoc that it caused when it aired which was pretty amusing. The United States got punk’ed by Orson!

Click here for the page that I read as I listened. For those that don’t know the story, it was a fake news program that caused everyone to think that New Jersey was being attacked by Martians. All kinds of mass hysteria and stuff. I remember something similar happening in the 80’s when a fake news program on TV showed an atomic bomb going off, I think in South Carolina. I half-believed it at the time. I think I still have a copy of that on VHS. Oh, I just did a Google search and found it on wikipedia! Here it is. It was called Special Bulletin and it caused a little bit of a panic too.

So yeah, it’s 1:12am and I’m going to bed.

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Dec. 25th, 2005|05:16 pm: I’ve had a boring Christmas. No kids today because they’re at their mom’s. But Emily has called me twice and messaged me once. I think this is the first time I haven’t had the kids on Christmas morning in 9 years.

I opened one present of mine today, from Jammie. A War of the World’s DVD! (The 1950’s version.) I just finished watching it and it was great. Well, it was terrible but in a lame 50’s sci-fi movie kind of way. Thanks, Jammie! My parents sent me some cash for Christmas earlier this week and I bought myself a new coat, hat and gloves.

This morning I spread lots of Christmas cheer to blogs, forums and Myspace pages across the country! And by Christmas cheer, I mean tub girl. Earlier this year, I blocked the ability to hotlink images from phonelosers.org. Instead of the images they try to hotlink, they see an image that says “Hey, quit stealing our images!” That majorly cut down on the hotlinking but there’s still a lot of it going on. So I added Tub Girl onto the top of the image. That should gross people out into taking down hotlinked images. So today I caused approximately 100 different web sites across the country to show it’s visitors Tub Girl. I am a bad man. Here are a few of my favorites:

MYSPACE: Check out who she’d like to meet!
MYSPACE: Nice background!
The people on this forum sure love Tub Girl
Xanga: Skinny girls vs. Tub girl

Dec. 12th, 2005|07:05 pm: Friday: Hung out in the Portland airport for 7 hours! Did lots of laptop-type things, had Wendy’s, browsed the stores, etc. Jammie arrived at 11pm and we went home.

Saturday: Breakfast at the little restaurant behind my house, went to a few shops in downtown. I think Saturday is when we watched 3 O’clock High on DVD. In the evening we went to a dinner theater in downtown Albany which was really fun. The place was called Flinn’s and had a buffet and bar. Both the acting and the food wasn’t great but the whole thing was really fun. The play centered around Christmas in the 19th century.

Sunday: Breakfast at The Original Breakfast. A bunch of laying around and doing nothing all day. We watched Ghostbusters 1 and 2. It was a very 80’s couple of days with our 80’s movies and the uh…Christmas in the 1880’s play. In the late evening we drove back to the airport, dropped off Jammie and then I went back home.

Nov. 30th, 2005|12:38 pm: Today I got my T-Mobile bill in the mail. And I skim over it and notice one unusual thing…it appears that I called my brother and talked to him for 48 minutes. Now, I like my brother and everything, but I can’t imagine holding a 48 minute conversation with him. What’s even weirder was that the conversation started at 12:27am. So I referred to a calendar and checked my journal to see what I was up to that night.

It’s from when I was in Orlando with the Yomamas and Jammie. Then I remember my brother calling me the next morning and telling me that my cell phone had accidentally dialed him the previous night. Which I can see happening since my “send” button is stupidly located on the outside part of the phone. The fucked up part is…my brother sat there and listened to Jammie and I for 48 minutes. And I can just imagine what we were doing after midnight on a Friday night. Geez, what a perv my brother is. I hope he enjoyed it.

Nov. 29th, 2005|12:00 pm: I checked my mailbox today to find a rain-soaked green envelope full of gifts from Spessa. Among the gifts, I got my very own T-Mobile Hotspot window decal and about a dozen Qwest temporary tattoos. The tattoos have a dog on them wearing some kind of bib that says “Spirit of Service” on it. She addressed those to the kids, but I stole one for myself and put it on my arm. I stuck the window decal on my office window. Here’s some pics…the Qwest logo is a little obscured by the camera flash glare. You know you’ve got a true friend when you’re constantly giving each other phone company memorabilia as gifts.

Nov. 19th, 2005|01:59 pm:

Why is it when you enter any laundromat in the country, you instantly feel like you’ve time traveled to the 1960’s…

I did laundry today, but not before visiting numerous garage sales. I scored a book by George Burns and a 4 foot Christmas tree for $3.25! One garage sale had a perfect dining table and chairs set for me for just $15.00 – but it was already sold. I was terrified to learn today that the JUGGALO STREET CREW does their laundry at the Elm Street Laundrymat. I don’t think it’ll be possible to feel safe at night anymore with the JSC out there. I took a few pictures of their crimes against bathroom walls…

Remember – if you wash lights with darks, then you’re not down with the clown!