Category: Uncategorized

Nov. 11th, 2005|12:34 pm: Emily called this morning and told me she’s going to be in the Veterans Day parade. So I drove to downtown, parked, hung out in the crowd for over an hour waiting for the parade to start. They had some cool jets fly overhead before the parade – the kind that you can’t hear until after they’re almost gone, then suddenly it’s like thunder for a few seconds. By the time the parade started, it was getting pretty damn cold out. Somehow it didn’t rain at all, though. I barely managed to notice Emily and Payton – they were on the opposite side that I was standing. Luckily I recognized Emily’s bright-green jacket and ran over to them. Ran alongside the trailer they were in for about a block, talking to them and snapping a few pictures. Here’s some pictures of grown men in skirts, then a few of the kids…

Nov. 10th, 2005|12:10 pm: Ahhhhh, the sweet smell of marijuanna wafting under the connecting door to my motel room. And it’s a non-smoking room too! I’ve had the weirdest neighbors since I’ve been here. The current couple in there fight a lot. This morning the guy was yelling a lot and slamming things around. Then he went back to bed, I think. A couple of days ago, some new people arrived very late at night and they tried their best to open the door in between our 2 rooms while I was sleeping. It woke me up slightly, then I fell back asleep and had a dream that I was drilling a long drywall screw into the doorjam to secure it from opening. (I swear, I am not making that up.) The next day, they tried opening it again during the day. Last week, the people living there had the shortest sex ever – each night it was like Peggy and Al Bundy. Uh oh, guy next door sounds pissed again – his buzz must be wearing off.

The maids have not stepped into my room once since I’ve been here. That’s mostly because of the Do Not Disturb sign I’ve kept on the door most of my stay, but I’ve taken that off for most of this week and they still haven’t come in. Yesterday the maid knocked on my door and asked if I needed anything. I said I could use some more towels and she just handed them to me at the door and asked if there would be anything else. I said the trash was getting full and she handed me 2 trash liners. Last weekend, they handed Jammie a pile of bedsheets, expecting us to make our own beds. Not that I’m complaining – it’s pretty amusing and I don’t really like having anyone in my room while I’m not around. I never make my bed anyway. Last year when I stayed here, the maid was in here every day vaccuming the floors and doing the trash and towels. The new maids are either lazy or afraid of me.

This motel is, in my opinion, the 2nd seediest motel in Albany. Only the Marco Polo motel has got it beat in terms of seediness. But this one has a trailer park on one side of it and an interstate on the other. This is the same motel that had police shooting at some guy in the parking lot when I stayed here in 2003. I’ll kind of miss it, though. Only 1 week to go until I can move into my new place…

Nov. 9th, 2005|07:13 pm: Got an apartment today! They called me and let me know that I’m approved for the duplex that Jammie & I looked at on Monday. So yay! Went and put a deposit down on it and I guess I can move in next week after they’ve finished cleaning it up. That happened quick. Kept the kids last night. Since I have no fridge or microwave or even food, we went to McDonald’s for breakfast. The cashier noticed the kids’ Chicken Little toys and said, “Oh, that’s a good movie! My husband downloaded that last night and we watched it.” Another cashier said, “Isn’t that illegal?” She replied, “No, my husband does a thing where it’s legal!” Does such a legal thing exist? That lets you download movies that have only been in the theaters for a few days? I think her husband is fooling her…

At the school office, some little girl was trying to call home to her dad. The secretary said he probably would be at work so he’s not going to answer at home. I heard the number she gave and immediately put my useless phoneloserish knowledge of area phone exchanges to good use by saying, “That’s not a home phone. It’s a T-Mobile cell.” I was right, of course.

This evening I went on a quest to find a new battery for my Pocket PC since my old one died. I drove to Salem and tried Office Max, Office Depot, Circuit City, Target, Best Buy, Staples. Somewhere else, too, but I can’t remember. In Target, I was talking to Jammie on my cell and I said, “Oh yeah, kcochran said my old Target supervisor works here now. Maybe I’ll see her.” Less than a minute later I said, “Uh…I just walked past my old supervisor. Lemme call you back.” I was surprised that after almost 10 years, she still remembered me, Colleen and Emily. I showed her updated pictures of Emily since she hadn’t seen her since she was just a few months old. Is that normal – for someone who I just worked with for only a few months once in 1996 to still remember me? I suck at remembering people. Then again, I did remember her too.

At Circuit City, I was in the PDA isle and some customer goes up to an employee and says in a big manly voice, “I need someone who knows about PDAs to show them to me.” The kid opens up the case and starts showing them off, pointing out features. He gets to the part about it having WiFi…

MAN: Wifi is outdated. I don’t want that.
KID: If you need to get on the net, though, wifi is a good way…
MAN: Wifi is outdated. It’s all about broadband now.
KID: I’m just saying, a lot of coffee shops offer the wifi now, so…
MAN: I don’t want wifi on it. That’s outdated.

It seemed to keep going on like that as I walked away. So that was my day. I never found a Pocket PC battery. Or even that many Pocket PCs. Palm seemed to be the popular PDA around here. It was the same way in Idaho, when I was looking for one there. I’d like to just buy the same model of PDA that I have, swap the new battery for my dead one and then return it. It IS still under warranty, after all. I just have my PDA’s box and stuff in storage in Illinois so I can’t return/exchange it legitimately. But nobody sells my Pocket PC in this half of the United States! I guess I just have to find a spare battery on Ebay…

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Nov. 4th, 2005|07:11 pm: Quit work around 1 or 2pm and drove to Fry’s Electronics in Wilsonville. I was hoping to get a new battery for my Pocket PC since my old one seems to have completely stopped working. But they didn’t have any. What sucks is that I just bought this Pocket PC and I could take it back to Office Depot and get the battery replaced but I packed up the box and manuals into my storage place in Illinois. So I’m kind of screwed there.

After Fry’s I drove to a hotel that Jammie reserved for us. She’s flying into Portland tonight. Dumped my stuff in the hotel room and drove to the airport. And now I’m on the Trimet towards downtown Portland for the 2600 meeting. Jammie doesn’t get here for another 3 hours so I guess I’ll get about 2 hours of 2600 in before going back to the airport.

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Nov. 4th, 2005|09:30 pm: Done with Portland 2600. It was boring. Kind of like St. Louis – a bunch of guys hunched over laptops in a coffee shop with an occasional burst of short conversation. The difference being that I don’t know anyone there so I was extra bored. I finally gave into peer pressure and busted out my laptop and caught up on the Fark news that I’ve been missing out on since I left Illnois. Now I’m back on the train to the airport. Jammie in t-minus 1 hour, 25 minutes…

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Nov. 5th, 2005|11:04 am: Left our hotel at 11am, parked the car near a Max stop and took the train to downtown Portland. Walked around the Saturday Market for awhile, looking for Jack. Asked somebody about him and she informed us that he was still in Africa. Dammit. So we walked around Saturday market, Jammie bought lots of stuff, we ate Nachos and then got on the train back to the car and drove to Albany. It’s rained pretty much all day. We had to buy new umbrellas at the market since my last umbrella has been destroyed ever since Orlando.

At 7pm we met Kcochran and Chad at Red Robin for dinner. I’ve known Kcochran online since about 1997 and this is the first time we met in person. Here’s a picture of all of us in front of the…uh…Burger of Liberty, then a picture of me and Jammie being nausiating in our matching Back to the Future t-shirts. As we entered the restaurant, some teen girl asked to see my shirt, apparently thinking it was the coolest shirt ever. She was even more impressed when Jammie showed hers off.

The other day I created some postcards on the computer from a picture me and the kids took together on Thursday. Jammie and I took them to Walgreens tonight and printed out 30 of them. I’m going to send them to everyone I know in Illinois to let them know that I made it to Oregon alive. Here’s the postcard…

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Nov. 6th, 2005|10:33 am: Jammie and I had breakfast at a really good waffle place. It was packed and we had to wait an entire 10 minutes to be seated. Went through a bunch of Oregon tourist literature, looking for something to do, but found nothing. Ended up going to the mall in search of milkshakes. I got a milkshake and Jammie got an Orange Julius. Our plan was to pick up Emily and Payton at some point during the day so they could all take me to Pizza King for my birthday. But Colleen didn’t seem to be home when we called.

After awhile of walking around the mall, I notice them walking into a store. So I run up and grab Payton from behind, pick him up and say hi. I think it took him a few seconds to realize who I was. Jammie stood there, I think horrified, thinking I was harassing random kids in the mall before she realized who they were.

So we ended up taking the kids then, and went to see Chicken Little at the movie theater. By the time we left there, we decided against Pizza King since we were all pretty full. Went back to the hotel, I got a birthday surprise of Hostess cupcakes with candles in them, then we played Legos for an hour before driving the kids back to Colleen’s.

We went for a walk around the neighborhood, then to eat at Abby’s pizza. Later in the evening, we went to see Shopgirl at the theater. I thought the 9th Street Cinema was in Albany but it ended up being in Corvallis which is 10 miles away. So we drove there quickly, hoping to not miss too much of it. We got there 30 minutes late (we were already cutting it really close when we thought the theater was in Albany) and the girl at the theater let’s us in for free since she’s already counted all her money. So that was nice! We only missed maybe 10 minutes since there were a lot of previews.

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Nov. 7th, 2005|08:14 pm: Today is my birthday. I’m officially 33 years old. Jammie and I went to breakfast at that same place this morning. I forget what it’s called. Then we had pizza for dinner at Abby’s again. I asked for “the usual” at Abby’s but I had to remind the cashier what the usual was. We spent the morning going through newspapers and looking for apartments. Then we spent the afternoon driving around and looking at apartments. I think we looked at a total of 8 of them. Jammie rules – I never would have accomplished that many on my own. And a couple of them looked very promising so I have slight hope that I’ll have an official place to live by the end of the week.

Nov. 3rd, 2005|01:02 pm: This week’s weather forecast for the greater Albany area…

Today: Rain…windy.
Tonight: Showers
Friday: Rain
Friday night: Showers likely
Saturday: Rain
Sunday: Rain likely
Monday: chance of rain
Tuesday: chance of showers
Wednesday: chance of showers

Isn’t Oregon wonderful!? The fucked up thing about rain here is that there’s never any lightning or thunder. It just rains all the time. I remember the last time I lived here, really missing the thunder and lightning. Stupid northwest. I plan to vacation often. Don’t know what me and the kids are gonna do this evening since anything outdoors isn’t too possible.

And what’s the difference between showers and rain in that forecast??? This is like that partly sunny/partly cloudy thing. I think their weather program just picks the words at random.

Oct. 28th, 2005|05:36 pm: I still have a trunk full of window paints. Any ideas on what I should write on my window for a cross-country trip? Here’s a few shots of past window paintings…

Oct. 28th, 2005|01:32 pm: Sitting in a waiting room right now, getting the oil changed on my car. Today Bonnie took me out to lunch at some little diner by Clifton Terrace. Bonnie was trying to talk me into renting out my empty house to Terrence & Shonna. I said I couldn’t trust them to pay the rent since they’ve been kicked out of their last 3 homes for not paying rent. She’s like, “Oh, I think they’ve learned their lesson this time!” Yeah right. They’re both 30 and Shonna has never left anyplace peacefully in her life. The amount of damage they cause to every place they live in is just insane.

Yesterday my parents took my brother and I out for supper at Applebees which was nice. Then last night I went to a few bars with Tami & Bryan, then to White Castle. Came home and called Jammie at 2am, waking her up.

Told Lewis & Susan at the post office my goodbyes today. Susan was all asking about Phone Losers and if I was going to forward PLA’s mail to Oregon too. She’s actually a semi-fan of the site, thanks to Amy.

Looks like I’ll be leaving Illinois very early tomorrow morning. As early as I can wake up, anyway. By 7am, I hope.

Oct. 27th, 2005|05:32 pm: This is my sad cat story of the day. I drove to my dad’s house and was hanging out and talking to him. At some point in the conversation I said, “By the way, did you notice the dead cat in front of your house?” He starts asking me to describe it and he looks out the window and sees that it’s a neighbor’s cat which belongs to a few grade school kids. I look at the clock and mention that maybe we should go get it out of the street before the kids get home and see their dead cat in the street.

So I get a trash bag and an old towel, set the cat onto the bag and move it next to my parents’ garage. The cats eyes were still open and it’s body was still warm. It hadn’t been squished or anything so it wasn’t even gross. But it was kinda gross anyway since it was a dead cat. Only a minute passed before the neighbor came home with the kids all in her van. My dad went over and quietly told her the news. And that’s my good deed for the year – making sure a bunch of 2nd graders weren’t devastated at the sight of their dead cat in the middle of the road.

Oct. 27th, 2005|12:56 pm: Went to Wendy’s for lunch today and the same guy who gave me $1.00 too much in change last week took my order. The total was $4.93 and I give him a $5 bill and say, “And here, I have 3 pennies.” and I quickly select 3 pennies from a handful of change and give it to him. He’s already put the $5.00 into the register and the digital display shows that he owes me 7 cents. He stands there with the 3 pennies in his hand, staring blankly at the register. After what must be 30 seconds, I finally tell him, “You owe me 10 cents.” and he says “Oh!” and hands me a dime. How has he kept a job there for so long? His drawer must come up short/over every day if he gets that easily confused.

It reminds me of this time at McDonald’s drive-thru…I posted this on the notla.com forums on September 6th, 2001 – here’s a copy & paste of the incident: This isn’t a complaint really, just kind of a stupid incident that happened to me at the East Alton McDonald’s. I went through the drive-thru and placed my order. The total came to $7.35. When I got to the first window, a high school kid told me it’d be $7.35 and I handed him 35 cents, a twenty and 2 ones. He closed the window and started to put in in the register.

Then he opens the window and says, “It’s only $7.35 – you gave me $22.35 here.” I told him I realized that and he says sarcasticly, “Well here’s $2.00 of your change!” and tries to hand me the 2 ones. I tell him I’d rather not have the ones and just to take it out of the $22.35. He looks at me for a second and shuts the window. Then he calls a friend over and I see him explaining to him how I must be retarded, holding up the money and motioning towards me.

THEN he punches the $22.35 into the touch screen register and sees my change is $15.00 even. He stares at the screen for a minute, pulls out a five and ten and hands me my change without saying thank you and not looking directly at me.

I don’t blame the guy really, he’s just a high school kid who’s probably never had a register job before. He could have tried not being quite so rude about it, or at least said “thank you” when he realized his mistake. But at least it gave me a laugh for the day.

Oct. 26th, 2005|10:56 am: Irony: Moving the washing machine and dryer into storage, getting rust from the bottom of the machines all over my hands, wiping my hands on my pants and shirt, needing my pants and shirt washed, no longer having a washing machine and dryer to wash them with. Maybe that’s not irony, but I’m better than Alanis Morisette at coming up with examples.

Yesterday, SBC’s automated voice recognition system said to me, “You just said ‘no’. Is this correct? Please say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ now…” I snickered as I said ‘yes’ to it, which confused it even more.