Category: Uncategorized

By the end of December I will live in a new place! I’ve been looking at apartments all year and I really started looking hard this week. It looked like I was going to move into the New Heritage apartments in mid-January. But yesterday I paid rent and I asked if they had any 3 bedroom places available. She showed me one that looked really great. I went home and looked in up on Google maps (aerial view) and it looked awesome from the sky. I called up and made an appointment to see it.

Today I met Dale there and he showed it to me. He seemed really intent on “selling” it to me, pointing out every good feature he could come up with. He didn’t have to, though, because the place was really great. It has a completely modern kitchen, giant living room, giant bedrooms, a walk-in closet for me, 1.5 baths, a back patio, a garage, and washer and dryer hookups. I haven’t had a garage since Ohio in 1997! And it sure would be nice to do laundry at home again. I’m really excited about the whole thing. It’s on a dead-end street too. I can finally get a new car stereo without worrying about Warren’s friends busting out my car window. And I can buy a bike again!

I badmouthed the hell out of Warren to Dale. Dale was surprised that he was even living there since he wasn’t supposed to be. I told him about my car being broken into, my two bikes, the locks being cut with bolt cutters, and the attempted break-in to my back door. Dale says he’s going to kick them all out. Which he’s been saying since my very first day there so I don’t believe him. But it’s nice to know that he’s hating those people. I just hope Warren doesn’t figure out that I said anything before I move out.

I immediately drove to the rental office, filled out the paperwork and put down a deposit. They have to clean the carpets and then it’s mine. I put in my 30 days notice for this place so I guess I’ll have a few weeks to get everything cleaned up around here. I started moving everything out of Emily’s room tonight and I’m getting the screw holes all patched up in there. I’m going to try and do a lot of work on everything this weekend. Her rooms is almost completely emptied already. Guess I’ll start on Payton’s next. I need to find someone to help me move all the heavy furniture. Craigslist?

After a lunch at Wendy’s, I ran across the street to see if there was anything good at Goodwill. First I found a 5 1/4″ diskette case with a giant Apple logo on it. I really wanted it, just for the logo. But I resisted since I have no use for a disk holder. I tried to peel the sticker off, but there’s no way it would come off and stay in good shape. I just now checked Ebay and there are lots of Apple Computer stickers on there.

A shelf full of Nokia cellular phones! All $3.99 each and one even had a charger for it. This Goodwill always has a large collection of cell phones but this is the first time I’ve seen almost all the same model of Nokia.

An outhouse! With a door that appeared to open. So I opened it…

To reveal a guy sitting inside.

My holiday Monday has been somewhat productive. I worked all day. This evening I painted on my clock (don’t ask), bought an electronic baby toy from Goodwill to hook into my home alarm system (don’t ask), upgraded the HDD on the kids’ computer to 220 gigs (from 20 gigs) plus fixed a few misc. things wrong it like the PCI cards slipping out of their slots, and watched Little Nicky (I love that movie). Goodwill had giant packs of balloons for a buck each so I picked up about 10 of those for our next UFO scare attempt. Oh yeah, I don’t think I wrote about that last one yet.

I don’t know what the hell I did yesterday. I think I was just home all day, catching up on email and other internet-type things. Oh yeah, I did laundry. Someone left a U.S. News magazine from 1993 at the laundry mat and I got to read all about president Clinton’s universal health care plan. I hope his plan works! Saturday the kids and I went on a hike at Avery Park in Corvallis.

On Friday evening we went to the Arts & Air Festival at the Albany fairgrounds. Some hot air balloons were supposed to lift off after dark but they canceled that because it was too windy. Can’t say any of us were too disappointed though. On Saturday we went to the State Fair in Salem. We spent 5 or 6 hours there playing games, going on rides and seeing animals.

Payton tried to refuse to go on any scary rides, which included pretty much all of them. I told him he didn’t have a choice and we went on the Sea Dragon. After a few screams of terror on it, he decided that he loved it and wanted to go on it again. So we did before we left. Same thing with the ferris wheel, he was completely against that at first. So he conquered two unreasonable fears yesterday. Here’s a video of our 2nd ride.

Not much else going on here. I’m just organizing my office today. It’s been trashed along with the rest of the house for the past couple months.

For a lot of this year I’ve had trouble deciding if I should move or not. My primary reason for wanting to move is the thefts. Two bikes, a smashed car window, and my car stereo missing since I’ve lived here. That’s a lot of thefts for just under 2 years. This is a nice neighborhood and I love this apartment. It’s perfect, it has central air, and it’s really cheap. I like pretty much everything about it. The neighborhood is nice and quiet. The neighbors across the street are old and nice and bring me stuff. Warren and the others next door are insane, but they’re not bad neighbors. They’re not loud and I don’t really have any problems with them. This is assuming that Warren isn’t responsible for my thefts, of course.

Warren used to have a lot of people coming and going at all hours. He’s clearly a drug user. His father and sister (who both live over there) seem okay though. All kinds of his friends used to park next to my car and I bet one of them looked in and saw my car stereo, so they smashed my window one night. I’m sure I wrote about all this back when it happened. Warren is definitely a suspect in the thefts. But who knows, maybe it’s just completely random.

The thing that bugs me about the most recent bike theft is that I had the gate padlocked and the bike locked to the bike rack. They cut the padlock and the bike lock. Someone is walking around the neighborhood with bolt cutters. Or it could just be the people that Warren had visiting for the week prior to that. Them and their vans disappeared after that happened. That’s a pretty bold move, chopping locks off of things. How long before they decide to break into my house?

If I move, I’ll definitely pay more rent. This place is really cheap and is technically 3 bedrooms. Everything else I find that will work is $600 – $900. So at the very least, I’d pay an extra $100/month to move. But probably more than that. My reasoning for staying is this – I could instead blow an extra $100/month on beefing up security around here.

I have a pretty good alarm system that I installed, I think last year. It will call my cell phone if the alarm is tripped. It’s only hooked to the back door, but I could put it on the front too if I wanted to. Its wireless sensors are crappy, so I have to use the wired sensors. But it works perfectly with the wired sensors. I also put motion sensor security lights outside. I upgraded them last week since the old cheap ones weren’t being very reliable. I also installed a plug inside on the opposite side of the security lights that only turns on when motion is detected and the lights turn on. I bought a toddler toy from Goodwill the other day that I’m going to plug into it. So whenever the lights are tripped, I’m going to be asked questions about the alphabet for about 60 seconds before it turns itself off. I really love this part of my home security. It’s so weird and ghetto. I bet nobody else in the world has something like this.

Yesterday at Home Depot I picked up a security camera that I’m going to aim into the patio area. Eventually I’d like to get another one and aim it at the car. Today I checked online and found some kick ass security camera software for $29.00. It emails and/or text messages you pictures when it senses motion. Plus you can log in and check it remotely. I’m really gonna love that. I also bought a hotel-like door lock for the back door and window security bolts for all the windows in the house.

I know it seems like I’m being way too paranoid about breakins. But this all seems way cheaper than moving. And it makes me feel a lot better about leaving the house, considering that last theft. Plus it’s fun to do all this. I’m gonna get the camera mounted maybe tomorrow. I’m going to stick it out for a while longer here and see how it works out. Maybe I’ll put a decoy bike out there once I get the camera up, just to see if someone takes it. I don’t even know where else in Albany to move. What if I move to another area and things are even worse?

Oh, another thing about Warren. The past two weeks they’ve stopped locking their gates when they used to keep it locked 24/7. And they’ve got 3 or 4 bikes back there, none of them locked up. Why don’t these bike thieves ever go over there? They did used to have things stolen – people were actually going over the fence to steal things from them. But Warren told me that it was someone he knew stealing from him and he put an end to it. Which is another reason to think that Warren or his friends are responsible for all this.

Saw Superbad on Friday and loved it. Went with Angela, her daugher, and her daughter’s boyfriend. Saturday I worked a lot during the day. Didn’t do much in the evening either, but went on a walk to Taco Bell for supper after dark. On the way back noticed a spotlight in the sky, so I followed it and ended up in downtown Albany. There was live music by an okay band. Apparently there was some kind of fair thing going on all weekend that I didn’t know about.

Picked up some things at Home Depot and spent Sunday installing them. A shelf on top of the shower, a new door latch for the back door and some window security locks. Fifty feet of cat5 cable, stapled along a wall, puts wired internet in the dining room now for the kids’ computers. I had some old USB wireless thing in there before and it was annoying. Oh, and bought a giant closet for Payton’s room which took almost two hours to put together. I love putting furniture together.

Drove to Salem to visit Home Depot and Target. What should have been 20 minutes there ended up being 90 minutes because of a major traffic jam. And then at the end of it, there was no payoff! No car wreck, no semi with vegetables spilled all over the highway, no collapsed bridge, NOTHING. It was such a letdown for that long of a wait. It didn’t seem like 90 minutes to me since I was listening to the Mysterious Universe podcast. Thank God I had my Ipod with me.

Today I worked all day. Emily stayed home, chatting on the internet and playing games all day. This evening I got all my tax stuff together for an appointment tomorrow. Now I’m chatting with Spessa. And writing an entry. Then I’ll click Publish and probably go to bed.

Spessa & family left this afternoon. I don’t think I can possibly express what an insanely good time we’ve had this past week. I can’t even remember what I’ve written about in here so far. But yesterday was a TON of UFO insanity which I’ll be sure to post pictures of eventually. The sky was lit up with multiple colors flying all over the place. It was nuts. Drank too much champagne last night, then prank called hotels until 2am. Walked to downtown and the park with all the kids during the day. They were having some kind of giant basketball tournament which covered several downtown blocks. Had snowcones there, lunch at the hospital.

We drove to Salem yesterday to return some stuff at Lowes. I bought some new security lights there since the motion sensor on my old ones aren’t very reliable. Mr. Spessa spent about 15 minutes riding a handicap cart all over the parking lot and we put PLA stickers all over it. Installed the security lights when we got home – this time I rigged it so that when the lights turn on outside, it also activates a plug inside the house. I can plug anything I want into it, such as a radio or just something to beep and alert me that someone is out there. Oh yeah, my bike was stolen again last week. They actually cut the lock this time!

This evening I’ve been cleaning up the house. Every time I walk through the house I’m exclaiming things like “Goddamn!” and “Holy fucking shit!” My house is so trashed. More trashed than I’ve ever seen it. Garbage is piled into several boxes and bags in the kitchen and on the patio. Stuff is just everywhere. Dishes are everywhere. My office and room are a wreck and so are the kids’ rooms. Balloons, legos, DVDs, papers, sheesh. I did laundry this evening, so at least that’s done. Did some dishes but there are still a lot to do. I’m not saying the Spessas are messy, but having an extra half-dozen people in the house, coupled with me ignoring a lot of housework in favor of just hanging out with them all, sure took its toll on this place.

I skipped Defcon in Vegas this weekend, only to drive to Reno tomorrow. Should be about a 10 hour drive, I think. I wrote in my LJ on Friday that I was packing for Nevada, just to see if it would cause any confusion as to whether or not I was going to Defcon. Murd0c called me on Saturday to let me know that it worked, listing a few people that had been asking him where I was. If I’m lucky, I’ll get to see MARK TWAIN STUFF in Reno. I’m not sure what else is there.

Back in 1992, a friend introduced me to The Jerky Boys. About a year later, The Jerky Boys released their first album. Then they released a bunch of other albums that I don’t care too much for. And the head Jerky Boy does the voice of Mort Goldman on Family Guy. The Jerky Boys were on MTV, had a movie made based around their calls, a video of pranks, a book, and probably a lot of other junk I don’t know about. Their first album was an inspiration to prank callers everywhere, myself included. So I feel sort of cool that the official Jerky Boys Myspace requested me as a friend on my Myspace. Not the PLA Myspace, but mine. So sure, it’s all to promote himself and his new album. But still kind of cool.

My friend Angela and I went to the Stand By Me Celebration in Brownsville, Oregon today. It was about a 30 minute drive from Albany. In the mid 80’s, the movie Stand By Me was filmed in Brownsville. I have no idea why since all of Stephen King’s stories usually take place in Maine. But it was. I’m not a huge fan of the movie and I don’t think I’ve ever read the Stephen King story that it was based off of. I saw the movie once or twice in the 80’s and that was it. But it seemed like it might be fun, so we went.

Brownsville was a nice little town. I think we enjoyed visiting all the shops and museums there more than the actual Stand By Me stuff. The town was packed with people and there was Stand By Me stuff everywhere. Everywhere you looked they were selling Stand By Me memorabilia. There was even Stand By Me water.

We wandered around for a few hours, reading all the things about the movie. Brownsville is really small and I’m sure that movie is the biggest thing that will ever happen there. It seems like even when they’re not having a Stand By Me festival, there’s a lot of Stand By Me stuff everywhere. It was fun to learn about the movie, even if neither of us could remember a whole lot about it. We had lunch inside a bar and grill that was in the movie. There were old cars all over the streets and 50’s music blaring. A few of the cars were the ones used in the movie.

At some point, I got the idea of telling people that we’d seen River Phoenix there, who was one of the 4 stars of the movie. He died in 1993. Then the plan evolved into me wearing a CAST badge and claiming to anyone that asked that I was River Phoenix. So we started looking around for paper to make a fake cast badge. There were other cast members at the event and quite a few that had badges that said EXTRA on them. In the pie eating scene, they used people from the town to be extras. We purchased a Brownsville, Oregon button that would hold my badge on and found some paper that I could draw a badge on. Then Angela suggested that I just go ask for a real badge.

The badges were in clear plastic and looked pretty nice and there was a booth for cast members and extras to get them for free. I could easily claim I was an extra and they wouldn’t know. I chickened out at first, but then went back and asked for a CAST badge. I was going to tell the old man there that I was River Phoenix if he asked, just to see what he’d say. And if he noticed that I wasn’t, I planned to tell him that I was an extra in the pie eating contest. If you’ve never seen the pie eating contest scene, you really should watch it:

Oddly enough, though, the old man didn’t ask who I was in the movie. He just believed that I was a cast member. He was friendly and chatty enough, but he didn’t ask me. I wasn’t expecting an actual Cast badge. This ruled! I said thank you, put it on and quickly walked away.

We didn’t stay for much longer after I received my badge, but I did manage to have a little fun with it. While inside an antique shop, the elderly lady working there noticed my Cast badge and asked who I was. I told her I was River Phoenix, one of the four boys in the movie. Her face lit up and she says, “Ohhh!” She actually seemed a little star struck. We said a few words to each other and I shook her hand, then we left. It’s hilarious to think that she might tell everyone that River Phoenix was in her shop. And that if she finds out that he’s dead, she might think I was a ghost or something.

We were on our way back to the car after that, but stopped to get sno cones. A group of teenage girls were working at the sno cone stand and the one making my sno cone asked who I was. I told her River Phoenix. She pauses, smiles, and says that I’m her hero! I’m being looked at by all these girls and one of them tells an older lady in the back that River Phoenix is buying a sno cone from them. I think I heard one of them mention that he was dead. I knew that my ruse was up then, so I blurt out something along the lines of, “JUST KIDDING!”

They all had a good laugh about it though. I told them that I was actually just an extra in the crowd and I don’t know why they gave me a Cast badge. The girl giving me my sno cone made a big deal about it, saying she wasn’t going to let me buy anything from her. Then she told me that she’d spit in my sno cone and a few other random things. All just kidding around, of course. Geez, I hope she was. I tipped a dollar and we left. Being a star for 20 minutes was fun. It’s probably good that we left before I ended up getting punched in the face.

Reading all the Stand By Me stuff on their website earlier this morning made me decide to download the movie and watch it, since I hadn’t seen it in 20 years. So we got back home and watched it. If we’d stayed there any longer, we could have watched it outdoors AND we could have watched them have a real pie eating contest. But that would mean hanging around there for another 5 or 6 hours, which was just a bit too much Brownsville, Oregon than I wanted.

It was cool to see the movie after visiting all the sites. We recognized every other thing in the movie. We didn’t realize that the interior of the bar was in the movie, so we were able to see about where we our table was. Actually I think the movie camera was in our table’s spot. The bar looked exactly the same in the movie as it did today. More or less. And we recognized cars and other parts of town. It was cool. I have a new appreciation for that movie. But I doubt I’ll ever watch it again.

Click here to view the pictures from today. They’re not the greatest pictures ever, but the Brownsville museum had the coolest collection of old lineman’s tools I’ve ever seen and I got a lot of pictures of those. Plus my cool CAST badge is in there.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention – it was a little creepy how nice everyone in the town was. I mean, it’s nice that people are friendly. I’m just not used to it. Like we’re walking down the sidewalk and some guy with a couple of kids says, “Hi! Welcome to Brownsville!” And a few other people in museums have random conversations with us. I’m just way too anti-social for that kind of interaction. I just checked the population of Brownsville and it looks like it’s under 2,000. So they probably notice who all the out of towners are. For such a tiny population, though, they sure have a nice downtown area.

Woke up around 8am today at the hotel. Walked across the street for breakfast at McDonalds and then called a cab to take us to the train station. Rode the train bus back to Albany and I’ve done pretty much nothing but listen to podcasts and unpack all day. Speaking of podcasts, Nate and Di are back! They did a short show and it was great. I’m really happy that they’re going to start doing shows again. Listened to more than 4 hours of the Mediocre Show and then an episode of Twisted Pickle. I didn’t listen to any podcasts while I was away so I’m really behind on them all.

Also picked up the mail and stopped by the store for bread and milk. The plants are all alive. I thought 3 weeks without water would kill them, but they look fine aside from a little brown on them. My deadbolt was unlatched and my alarm was turned off. I was thinking the landlord may have stopped by, but the gate was padlocked so they couldn’t have come in the back door. Maybe I just forgot to lock the deadbolt. I can’t explain the alarm, though. There’s no way I forgot to set the alarm. Maybe my shitty Radio Shack alarm system just turns itself off after a few weeks. I really need to spend some money on a real alarm system. Maybe the power went out and reset it. But it’s got a battery backup. Argh, I dunno.

Reorganized office stuff to accommodate some new stuff I brought back with me. Had to adjust shelves to make things fit. I can’t wait for my boxes to arrive in the mail, since I mailed all kinds of good stuff back to myself. My factory car stereo is one thing that’s on its way that’ll be nice to have back. Plus a lot of the kids’ toys that probably cost more to mail than they’re actually worth.

I need to buy a cheap cassette deck. I brought back all these cassette tapes that I want to transfer to mp3 and throw away.