Saturday, July 9th, 2005: Yesterday my parents took the kids camping for the weekend. Today, Jammie is visiting for a few days. I picked her up around noonish and asked her to be my girlfriend and she graciously accepted. I dunno if it’ll work out, though. I bet she ends up dumping me before the weekend is over. So an hour later we met her ex-boyfriend Thomas at the St. Louis Arch and hung out with him for about 4 hours. How’s that for a first date? We bought some tickets to visit the top of the Arch but had to wait for a couple of hours before it went up so we headed to The Landing for food.
We were going to eat at The Spaghetti Factory but they had a 45 minute wait to be seated so we settle on The Train Wreck across the street. After lunch we walked back to the Arch and visited the top. Several minutes after getting to the top, we got bored and went back down. I seem to visit the Arch about once per year since out of town friends seem to visit me a lot. Jammie said it best – once you get up there and look out the windows, you quickly see that there’s not really much to see in St. Louis. Anyway, we wandered around the museum for about an hour after that, said goodbye to Thomas and went home. Hung around the house the rest of the evening and watched The Butterfly Effect since Jammie had never seen it.
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| Jammie and Thomas in front of the Arch |
Me and Jammie in front of the Arch |
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| Me and Thomas in the little pod elevator thing that takes us to the top |
Thomas, Me and Jammie in the top of the Arch |
Sunday, July 10th, 2005: Woke up, had some waffles and went on a tour of Alton. We visited Alton mob memorials, scary crypts, fenced-off caves, the Piasa Bird, the smallpox memorial, a dumb redneck in a truck, Little Caesar’s for crazy bread and shoplifting and then home to watch The War of the Roses. I don’t even remember how we decided that we were going to watch that movie. I think it was Jammie’s idea. We made this list of things to do this weekend and somehow that movie ended up on the list along with The Butterfly Effect. Not that I’m complaining. I just can’t remember how that happened. We also went on a nice long walk through the neighborhood today and had a late supper at Steak N Shake.
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| OMG CRAZY BREAD! |
Me and Jammie on top of some big thing in West Alton, MO. |
OMG SHAKES! |
Monday, July 11th, 2005: We started off our day with some breakfast/lunch at Denny’s. While waiting for our food to arrive, we harassed
RTF with a phone call and some text messages. After Denny’s we went to Walgreens and then walked across the street to the post office. Ended up visiting the Robert Wadlow statue and memorial and searching for a
hidden Letterbox which was supposed to be hidden in a tree. I’d read about it last year but never bothered looking for it. Later that night we discovered that it was actually buried in the dirt inside a tree. I didn’t expect that since burying things in the dirt is usually against Geocaching rules.
Feeling defeated with the letterbox thing, we decided to visit a Geocache. But I didn’t have the computer with me so we were lazy and visited a Geocache that I’d already found a year ago. Except that we were defeated yet again since that particular Geocache had been removed. Got to spend some nice time in the woods, though. While in the woods, Emily called me to let me know that they would be home soon and I could come and pick them up. So we went to my parents house and hung out there for 20 – 30 minutes. Then left with the kids.
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| My ratty old shoe next to Robert Wadlow’s fancy bronze shoe. |
In place of the cache was a rock with writing on it – “Cache Temp. Archived” |
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We were going to take them to the City Museum but luckily Jammie suggested calling to make sure they were open. I thought the City Museum would be open until midnight. But it actually closed at 5pm (and it was already 4pm) so we scratched that idea and went to Dave & Buster’s (a huge arcade) instead. We spent maybe 3 or 4 hours at the arcade, playing video games and winning tickets. Emily won a ton of them by herself and me and Jammie gave all our tickets to Payton. Then as they were picking out ticket prizes, Payton buys Jammie a plush Tootsie Roll thing, costing him 200 tickets, in appreciation for her giving him her tickets. Jammie had tried to win a similar Tootsie Roll thing out of a crane machine and failed so I guess Payton was just trying to make her feel better about that. What a nice kid!
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| Payton playing a boxing game. |
Emily and Payton with all their tickets. |
Payton presenting Jammie with a Tootsie Roll |
We went home and all watched some Eerie, Indiana on DVD. Back in ’97, I got into this old show (made in 1991) called Eerie, Indiana. It only lasted one season but it was a great show. A month or 2 ago, I ended up buying the season on DVD. I watched every single episode by myself. Then when the kids came for the summer, I watched every single episode again with the kids. They loved it – we ended up watching a bunch of the episodes more than once and they watched a few of them again on their own. Jammie wanted to see it just to see what I was raving about the previous month. So we all sat down and ended up watching 3 different episodes, each picked by the kids. They tried for a 4th but by that point I was pretty tired and kind of sick of watching Eerie.
Tuesday, July 12th, 2005: Worked a little in the morning then went to Angel Cream for donuts. Jammie went back to NYC today. My brother came over and hung out with the kids for a few hours while I took her to the airport. As we were saying our goodbyes, she dumped me. Guess it was just never meant to be! It was a nice 3.5 day relationship, though. The best way to sum it up is that it was a steady stream of fun all weekend. Like, nothing but highlights. There were no dull moments. That’s the best I can come up with since I suck at being articulate. Thanks for the weekend, Jammie, it’s something I’m unlikely to forget over the next few decades.
Sunday, July 31st, 2005: Finished my book and then took the kids swimming all day. Stayed until 7pm. Payton is suddenly really brave in the water. He’s under the water all the time (with and without goggles), keeps jumping in from the side, constantly wants me to take him into the deepest water and let him go and he took at least 20 rides down the waterslide today. A month ago he was afraid of doing any of that – he would freak out if anyone touched him in the water and he refused to try the waterslide. So I guess the swimming lessons paid off, even if he can’t actually swim yet. Maybe next year. To the left is a picture of him being brave.
Tuesday, June 14th, 2005: I was driving around today, saw this sign in East Alton and took a picture of it. Strikes me as kind of funny, a proof reading business who apparently hired Jed Clampett to design their sign. I posted the picture on 
Later that evening… Okay, so I went to it. About a month ago, this guy orders some Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy buttons from me on Ebay. They were basic HHGTTG book/movie-related buttons. Along with his payment for the buttons, he sent me a flyer for a “Galactic Picnic” along with a full page hand written letter telling me about himself, the picnic and other random things. I’m surprised to see that this Galactic Picnic is located in Carbondale, Illinois which is just a couple hours south of me. Just to be a hoopy frood, I whipped up a design for the Carbondale picnic (pictured to the left), pressed about 20 buttons and included those with his order, free of charge. I also gave him an extra 20 or so HHGTTG buttons that he ordered. I figured it was for a nice, nonprofit cause so why not.
Every time a random person would walk by, he would invite them to our picnic but nobody accepted the offer while I was there. He had several backpacks full of books and papers with him and he would occasionally dig through one of them to show me things. I noticed that most of his printouts were done on a dot matrix printer. He showed me a Douglas Adams eulogy and I started reading it. Then he grabbed it from me before I got very far and said he’d read it for me. So he gets up and puts on a BATHROBE, stands in front of me and reads the entire thing with all kinds of enthusiasm and hand gestures and stuff.
