Category: Uncategorized

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Tuesday, 1-5-2004: Me and Tami went to Applebees for lunch. Went to Lowes and got some electrical stuff. Wired a switch in the basement workshop to turn the lights on. Also got my treadmill to the basement.

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Monday, 1-14-2005: Worked for a couple hours from the motel, then started driving again. Got home at 2pm and worked the rest of the day.

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Wednesday, 1-16-2005: Went to lunch with Tami and Applebees, then to Slackers. After work I went to her house and we saw Are We There Yet? with her kids at the theater.

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Saturday, 1-19-2005: Went to the post office, then to Rosewood Heights to take a picture of a new church. Then to Tami’s to help her put togehter an entertainment center. Stayed there all day, until about 4 or 5pm I think. She took me and her kids to lunch.

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Sunday, 1-20-2005: Woke up around 9:15. Went to McDonald’s for breakfast and then to Kristine’s. Today I’m going to help her and Greg move all their stuff from Alton to Troy. Spent all day going that. Finished loading everything up by about 3pm and drove to Troy. Then unloaded it all into their new house. Greg brought me home around 10pm. By bed time, my muscles were really aching from all the moving.

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Monday, 1-21-2005: I can barely move. Ouch.

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Tuesday, 10-12-2004: My internet has been broken all day. Went to Richards for awhile to finish up the election reports. Went to Jamestown Mall in the evening to pick up a new internet router.

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Saturday, 10-16-2004: Today I worked on getting a light wired into the guest room closet. I’m tired of using that tiny lamp in there. Later I decided to move my room back into my room since I was sick of living in the guest room. I wanted to wait until my room was finished to move in, but screw it. It’s gonna be months before I get all that done anyway. My brother came over this evening so I could help him get some files off dad’s old hard drive. Amy called me at 3:30am and woke me up. We talked until about 5:30am.

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Sunday, 10-17-2004: Spent all day working on electrical stuff in the guest room and closet. Doesn’t sound like a big project but somehow it took all day. Well, most of the day. Josh & Lori finished moving out today so I went over there and looked around the apartment. Watched Dead Like Me and it was probably the best episode of this season so far.

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Tuesday, 10-19-2004: Today I had to hang out at the apartment next door all day to wait for the cable guy and gas guy. Worked from the downstairs kitchen for a few hours before they showed up. The cable guy was here for several hours and I had to help him run the cable through the attic for Kelli’s apartment. After work me and Tami went to Edwardsville to see Team America.

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Friday, 10-22-2004: Worked until 2 or 3, then drove to Nashville for Phreaknic. Got there around 9pm and wandered around for awhile. Called Zeroknowledge and ended up hanging out with him and some other guy. We tried to find murd0c but we were told that he was passed out somewhere. We ended up taking all my ‘Milk Matters’ stickers all over the hotel – on doors, walls, elevators, tables, etc. We spent a little less than an hour sticking them everywhere and it really pissed off the Phreaknic staff. Later we did a bunch of pranking hotel guests which really pissed off the hotel staff. Amy called me around 3:30am and I was in the lobby talking to her and listening to the front desk guy and security guy talking about the pranks. At some point we met up with murd0c. I ended up sleeping in his room with about 8 other people.

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Saturday, 10-23-2004: Left the room around 8am and went to the Waffle House for breakfast. Ended up leaving the con quite early, maybe around 2 or 3pm, for reasons that I shouldn’t get into right now. Got home at 9pm.

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Tuesday, 10-26-2004: After work I went to Florissant to meet Caerie for super at Applebees. Then stopped by Gamestop and Barnes & Noble by myself. Got the DVDs Pleasantville, Phenomenon, Timeline and Fightclub and a book on bank robberies.

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Thursday, 10-28-2004: I told Casey that I would go to the East Alton holloween parade to see him marching in the band. So I filled up my mp3 player with music and walked over there. Casey’s band was the first thing out so after I waved at him, I left. I walked across East Alton, stopped at Piasa Pantry for some gum and ended up where the parade was ending. I saw Joe T. and hung out with him for the rest of the parade. He gave me a ride home and we hung out for awhile. Went to his house and he showed me all of his renovations.

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Saturday, 10-30-2004: Wasted most of my morning sitting on the laptop and converting old UPL issues into HTML. Around 2pm I went next door and scraped wallpaper off the wall for a couple of hours. Tami IMed me and asked if I wanted to go to the Alton holloween parade so I did. I parked by Fast Eddies and walked a few blocks until I found her and her kids. After the parade, we went to Golden Corral to eat.

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October 27th, 2004: My plan is to continue not updating my journal very often. I’ve been sticking to my non-online (unline? nonline?) journal for the past few months instead. I have started a photo log, though, which lets me upload photos to it directly from my camera phone. Thanks to murd0c for pointing me to textamerica.com.

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October 9th, 2004: My friend Amy documented her evening out with lots of digital pictures. I decided to outdo her by documenting my entire day with pictures. So here they are…

	Here’s me in the shower completely naked.
	After the shower, it’s time to brush my teeth, etc.
	I stop by the neighbor’s house to scare the small children.
	I drive to the post office only to find the whole street blocked off by cops.
	I go into the post office and check my mail.
	Walk around the corner to Subway for lunch.
	Turkey & cheese…
	I sit at my table, eat and photograph the lunch rush.
	A picture of myself driving.
	A lady approaches my car and asks for a donation. She’s happy to let me take her picture.
	Some CDs in my seat – ICP, Steve Miller Band, Blackeyed Peas and Dean Friedman.
	I go to Circuit City to do an hour of browsing around.
	I stop in West Alton, which is across the river from Alton, and take a picture of Alton.
	Creative grafitti.
	The smallpox memorial in West Alton.
	Here’s the first thing people see when they come off the bridge into Alton – the porn shop! Well, it will be the porn shop. It’s not open yet.
	This guy in front of Wal-Mart asks for a donation. I give him one and then tell him I need to take his picture. He isn’t happy about that but he doesn’t have a choice.
	Here’s a Wal-Mart greeter doing a shitty job.
	Me getting on Wal-Mart’s overhead paging system.

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Wednesday, 10-6-2004: Today Bonnie called me and we ended up going to the downtown Subway for lunch together. After work I wired new cable and phone jacks into the apartment next door. That took all evening. Took a trip to Lowes to get some cable & phone stuff I needed to finish it up.

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Thursday, 10-7-2004: Guy from Alton came to inspect the apartment next door today. Went to Subway for lunch, as usual. Took at walk around 7:30pm. Today I got Dead Like Me season #1 on DVD in the mail. So I started watching those this afternoon and have been watching them all evening, except for when I went on a walk. Talked to Josh & Lori today and it looks like they’ll be moving out around the middle of this month. So now I’ve got another apartment to get rented.

Sunday, 5-9-2004: Worked on putting wooden planks in my room this morning. Then went to Tricia’s parents house for lunch.

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Saturday, 5-15-2004: Me and Tricia drove to Carlinville for her cousin Natalie’s wedding. As I was sitting in the wedding, I see Emily’s old best friend Tiffany and her brother Zach standing around. I stare at them for just about the entire ceremony, wondering if that’s really them or not. We’re an hour away from Alton so it seems unlikely that I could bump into them. But later, at the wedding reception, I see them again and confirm that they’re who they are. They don’t seem to remember me very good at first. I guess it’s been a year or 2 since I’ve seen either of them. But later when I’m at the hotel swimming pool with Jordyn, Tiffany starts asking me where Emily is and other questions. So that was really cool, seeing her again. She used to practically live at our house when she lived on our street.

Monday, April 26, 2004: So last night was pretty exciting…I went to bed around 10 or 11pm at my motel. Around 2am I wake up to a car alarm going off outside. It’s the kind of car alarm that just honks the horn over and over. After about 10 honks, it stops. A few minutes later, it starts up again. I peek out the window to confirm that it’s not my own car alarm and I see that it belongs to some green SUV. It’s pretty loud and it’s probably waking up the entire motel cause I can hear people walking around upstairs. So this SUV alarm goes on and on for several minutes. I think it was about 5 minutes total. I almost thought about hitting the alarm button on my own keychain to add to the confusion but decided against that.

Then I hear random yelling outside. Apparently one guy is really pissed off about the noise and he starts beating the hell out of this SUV. I’m thinking, “Yes! Live entertainment!” and I’m trying to figure out how to open my window so I can listen to the action. Before I can get the window open, I hear guys yelling at each other, running around and I can hear punches outside my door while some lady is shreiking. (I guess cause her boyfriend/husband is getting beat up.)

I’m guessing it’s a pretty good fight because I can hear all this scuffling right outside my door but I can’t see them from my window. I don’t want to open my door since it’s right there and I still can’t get my window open to hear better. Around this time is where I start hearing gunshots. Wow, a gunfight! But then I hear a guy screaming, “ALBANY POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND!” A second later, 3 more gunshots and another, “ALBANY POLICE! GET ON THE GROUND!” This repeats about 5 times for a total of about 15 gunshots. Apparently the guy they’re yelling at actually gets away. I dig through my backpack for my police scanner only to find out that I’ve left it in the car. Damn! I finally get my window open a few inches so I can listen to things. It’s like listening to a live episode of COPS – a trailer trash-sounding woman tells the tale while a monotone cop asks really obvious, pointless questions to her.

I sit at the window for awhile and listen to her story. I can’t see either of them but I think they were a few doors away from me. I see the motel room door in front of the SUV is open which is where the pissed off guy came from, I think. The lady telling the story gives his room number and it’s pretty temping to get on my cell phone and call that room to try and arrange a drug deal or something. That would’ve added a little fun to the chaos outside. But I decide against that too. After maybe 45 minutes I get bored with the whole thing and I lay back down, leaving my window open. Then at 3pm, things get exciting again! I hear yelling by a guy again and then, “ALBANY POLICE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!” This repeats over and over for a few seconds along with, “DON’T MOVE OR I WILL HIT YOU!” I guess he means he’s going to shoot him. I hear the guy run past my window and several officers chasing after him, probably with drawn guns. This time they manage to catch him. Right now I’m still lying in bed, listening to the cops interview motel guests. It’s 3:30am and I guess it’s kind of over. This kind of thing makes staying at a crappy motel worth it. You just can’t get this kind of live entertainment at a Best Western Hotel. I can’t wait to read the newspaper’s version of this story tomorrow.

UPDATE: I got a paper and read the story. Most of what the lady told the cop was left out of the story. It turns out that the cops shot this guy with a bean bag gun, then the guy attacked the cop and ripped off his badge and THEN he actually got away from them. I don’t know exactly what a bean bag gun is but they sure don’t sound very effective. The caught the guy when he returned to the hotel about an hour later.

Thursday, April 8th, 2004: Since Sunday I’ve had this really horrible toothache. The kind that keeps you up half the night and makes you nearly OD on asprin. So I finally got my dentist appointment today and I’m expecting them to tell me I’ve got a cavity and fix it. I haven’t been to the dentist in 2 years so that would make sense. But I don’t! The dentist says that I’ve been grinding my teeth. I say no I haven’t. She says yes you have and we get into a fist fight. Anyway, she says that people grind their teeth out of stress. I guess it’s just from missing my kids so much. Or maybe from living with Cal for 8 days straight. Or not being able to find that 2nd Geocache. I dunno, I haven’t felt stressed so I guess I’ve just got mental problems.

I finally got a call from my kids again this morning. They made it to Oregon finally. Payton told me if I come out there to visit, be sure to drive through the mountains rather than going to Disneyland first because it’s a shorter drive. They told me all about Disneyland and all the rides they went on. At one point Emily said, “You know, mommy lied to us.” I asked how she lied and Emily said, “She told us that we weren’t moving, we were just going to Disneyland. But after Disneyland she told us we were moving.” I just can’t believe Colleen would go about everything like this. The thing that really sucks about all this is that I was actually a pretty good dad. I’m not the kind of dad that sits on the couch all day, watching TV and ignoring the kids. I always went out of my way to play with them, watched their TV shows with them and took them to fun places. Not because that’s what I was supposed to do but because I really enjoyed doing it. Every day after school me and Emily did her homework, every evening they got a hot meal, each night I read each of them a bedtime story. My entire life completely revolved around everything they did. And what do I get in return for all that? The courts allow their mom to take them 3,000 miles away from me. I’m totally lost without them around.

Enough of my complaining…tomorrow I’m taking a vacation to Texas to see Cal. I’m going to wait a few more weeks to go to Oregon to let the kids get settled and in school and everything. I’m also going to visit an old roommate of mine from Galveston that I haven’t seen or talked to in about 12 years now. I tracked her down and called her today which was quite a surprise for her. I’m planning to stay in Galveston for a few hours to visit her and then continue south to Cal’s house. I’ll probably leave sometime tomorrow morning. Galveston is 981 miles away which takes about 15 hours to get there.

Just a few hours after I wrote my Saturday entry, my kids called. The first thing Payton asked me was if I’d taken my games back to Blockbuster yet. He wanted to know if they were late or not. I talked to him and Emily for maybe 5 minutes. It turns out that they’re on their way to Disneyland. “Hey kids, I’m taking you away from your daddy. Let’s go see Micky Mouse!!!” I assume they spent all day Sunday at Disneyland and they’ll probably arrive in Oregon sometime tonight. Hopefully I’ll get another call.