Geocaching, Laptop mount, Jersey Girl

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Friday, April 16th, 2004: Worked until 11am, then went to the dentist. After that me and Tricia went to Red Lobster for lunch with her mom. After lunch, me and Tricia printed out a few geocaches and went hunting. Our first attempt was at the Elijah P. Lovejoy monument. We searched for about 30 minutes and found nothing. A couple of guys were at the cemetary mowing the lawns and we think it may have been hidden behind where all their lawn equipment was sitting so we’ll have to go back to that one some other day. Then we went to Commons Park and wandered around a forrest looking for another one, which we found hidden under some logs. A few hours later we went to a theater in Saint Louis to watch Jersey Girl. And since the air conditioning broke down at the theater, they gave us free tickets for another show as we left! Too bad that can’t happen went I end up seeing crappy movies. Here’s a few pictures – one of my new laptop mount and one of Tricia signing the Commons Park cache logbook:

laptop mounttricia signing a geocache logbook

Babysitting, Laptop mount, Geocaching

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Saturday, April 10th, 2004: Watched Kristine’s kids for a few hours this morning. I’ve pretty much abandoned the downstairs of my house since my kids have left so it’s gotten pretty messy down there. I hardly ever leave my room anymore. So I got up about 6:30am and started cleaning the house. Cat hair is everyplace. I really need to get rid of my cats. I’ll have to talk to my kids about getting rid of them this summer because I think the cats are really bored without the kids around. Last night I rented Matrix 3 so I watched that today and man, was it stupid. I didn’t think it’d be possible for it to suck more than Matrix 2 but it sure did. I sat through over 2 hours of utter crap for maybe a total of 2 minutes of good stuff. And by good, I mean it didn’t suck nearly as much as the rest of the movie. What a disappointment. I’m glad I didn’t waste my time seeing it in the theater this time.

Today I’m building a laptop mount for my car. Yesterday I bought the plans for a mount on Ebay for $2.00 which I realize is kind of stupid because how hard can it really be. But the plans helped me pick out the parts from the hardware store rather than just guessing what I would need so it was worth it. I got the whole thing done except for drilling the holes in my floor to mount it. I was going to do that but it started raining out so I decided to wait until tomorrow. Emily called me today and I ended up talking to her for about 40 minutes. I got to talk to Payton for about 5 minutes but he ended up giving the phone back to Emily since she kept telling him what to say to me.

Went to visit my brother and we ended up doing some Geocaching. We printed out 5 searches and managed to go on 3 of them. We found all 3 stashes. One was at the Piasa Bird caves where me and Tricia tried the other day. It was a little easier to find in the daylight even though it was raining. We drove up to the security booth again just to see if the cop would do anything. He came out to our car and we said we just made a wrong turn. Turns out that it’s the city’s water supply. We found another cache at the Alton Federal Prison Memorial and then one on a bike trail in Wood River. Here’s a couple pictures:

my brother signing a geocache log at the Alton Federal Prison memorialcontents of the piasa bird geocache

After this we went to Slackers to look at PS2 games, Applebees to eat and then Saint Claire Square to look at more PS2 games.

Grinding my teeth

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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.

My first Geocache

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Wednesday, April 7th, 2004: Found my first Geocache today! Me and Tricia went out to find it and it was a very easy one. It was at the House for Miss Lucy, something I’d read a lot about in my Alton history books but never actually visited. It wasn’t a very interesting find, just a small film container with a paper full of signatures inside it. We signed it and put it back. We wanted to do some more searches but I’d only printed out the Lucy cache so we went to Hayner library and printed out a few more.

Our next stop was to the Piasa Bird caves. The GPS took us around the side of the cave in the car. We were surprised to see concrete barricades staggering the road that I had to zigzag around. When I got to where the GPS stopped, I noticed a security guard booth and a policeman (a policeman, not a security guard) walked out of it and stood there looking at us. Tricia says to him, “We were, uh, just turning around.” and I leave. I have no idea what’s over there that would require that kind of security. We went back to the Piasa Bird and looked around for awhile. The cache was supposed to be under some rocks. We kind of wonder if the whole thing was a scam just to get people to drive up to a high security place and be harassed by the police.

After a quick stop at Taco Bell, we went to our last search on Smallpox Island, right across the bridge from Alton. By this time it was completely dark outside so it’s a good thing we brought my Mag Lite. This one was interesting because you had to go to some coordinates, read the smallpox memorial to get clues to NEW coordinates. Then you went to those and counted the number of stairs to the top. After that it was kind of a letdown. I’m supposed to email the number of steps to this guy and I’m not sure what I’ll get in return for that. Probably nothing. But we had a lot of fun doing all this. There seems to be a lot of caches in the Alton area so I’m going to print them all out and do a lot more this weekend.

2004 Trip to Texas

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Friday, March 26th, 2004: Woke up around 6:30am and couldn’t fall back asleep. So I went ahead and loaded up my car and took off. I somehow managed to get slightly lost as I passed through Saint Louis. Then there was a thunderstorm that pretty much stopped all the traffic on the interstate. But I finally got out of Saint Louis at 10am. I drove all day without stopping except for gas. I brought my laptop full of mp3s to play as I drove, so the driving part went by really fast. I got into Galveston at about 1:00am. I immediately went for a long walk on the beach, then came back to my car at 2am and went to sleep in the front seat.

Back in 1991, the cops wouldn’t allow people to park their car on Seawall Blvd. (right on the beach) and sleep all night. But when I got there, I noticed RV’s parking all along the beach and setting up for the night. I saw a couple in a Bronco putting sleeping bags in the back to sleep for the night. So I didn’t get bothered by the cops which was nice.

Saturday, March 27th, 2004: The sun shining into my car woke me up at 6am. I actually slept pretty good. Had some breakfast at the Waffle House, then spent my morning driving around the island and being impressed with how much things have changed in the past decade. Hung out in the lobby of the Holiday Inn for about an hour, writing emails. Then I drove around and found someone’s wireless connection so that I could hijack their signal and send the email. (This is the first time I’ve ever done that so I’m impressed with myself.) I tried calling my old friend in Galveston but she wasn’t home so I left and headed for Cal’s house. 5 hours later, I showed up at his door. We ended up going to a bar, playing lots of Foosball and getting home at about 1:30am.

my laptop in my car, playing mp3swater splashing at mecell phones blow up gas stations

Pictured above: 1- My laptop, playing mp3s while I drive. 2 – While walking on the beach, I took a few pictures as the water splashed up on me. 3- A sign pictured above a gas pump, warning customers not to use their cell phones while pumping gas. Because, you know, the radio waves from a cell phone will surely make a gas pump explode. Everyone knows this. I was daring and used my cellphone camera to take that picture. It came out pretty blurry, probably because of all the gas vapors interfering with the singal.

Sunday, March 28th, 2004: Drove to Houston with Cal so he could meet some girl. Before we went, though, we stopped by a computer store and I bought a GPS for my laptop. I never realized how cool they were and it made the drive kind of fun, watching a little green dot make it’s way across Texas on my computer screen. I would have saved myself a lot of pointless driving in St. Louis the other day when I got lost if I’d had the GPS. I’m never taking another trip without this thing.

So we met this girl and Cal told me to get lost. So I drove his car to Galveston, which is about an hour away. I figure I can give my friend in Galveston a call and maybe end up having dinner with her. It’s all working out, right? Nope. As soon as my car crossed the bridge onto the island, Cal calls me and says to come and pick him up immediately. So I did. To make things worse, as I was leaving the island, my cell phone rang and it was my friend. Thanks, Cal.

Friday, April 2nd, 2004: This morning me and Cal went to some wildlife reserve thing. The coolest thing we ended up seeing was a 15 foot crocodile. Cal threw rocks at it but no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn’t swim over and eat us. I ended up leaving today at about 3:30pm. I drove up to San Antonio and attended the 2600 meeting for a few hours. Then got back on the road and made it almost to Dallas before stopping in a rest stop for the night.

I neglected my journal pretty much all week while I was in Corpus. Our week consisted of going out to eat a lot, going to bars, clubs, foosball tournaments and driving around a lot. We ended up driving by my old place in Corpus Christi (that I lived at in 1995) so we got out and filmed my house for awhile until a resident came out and asked us what the hell we were doing. We told him we were looking for Brad Carter but the guy there didn’t seem to know him. Here are a few random pictures from the week:

a pay phone with a very convenient TNI box next to itkicking Al's ass at some bar gameMe pretending I'm oldschool by getting a high score on Galaga.Cal kicking my ass at pool.

Saturday, April 3rd, 2004: Woke up today at 6:30am in the rest stop. I think I woulda slept a little later but the passing traffic kept waking me up. Ate a bunch of Nutter Butters for breakfast and drove all morning. I’m in aTaco Bell just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas right now, writing this on my laptop and getting lots of heavy stares from the other patrons & staff. Apparently they don’t have laptops in Arkansas. I’m hoping to make it into Illinois by 6pm. It’s noon right now…

Mommy Lies

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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.

Disneyland

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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.

Kids – March 2004

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Friday, 3-12-2004: Emily wanted to go to a movie party at the Rec Center so I picked up the kids a little early to take her. But when we got there she decided she wanted to go to the park instead so we played there for about 30 minutes instead.

Saturday, 3-13-2004: Bonnie brought Brianna and Christian over at noon to spend the day and night. Had a lot of fun with them all day, just hanging around the house and watching TV and stuff. I did a little more work upstairs on the walls throughout the day. I set up the computer upstairs and the laptop downstairs so that Emily and Brianna could chat with each other on them. I also set up the webcams but for some reason only the laptop cam would work. The ended up being a pretty big hit – they spent hours chatting with each other. My mom called and complained that she hadn’t seen the kids in awhile. I told her she should come over and she surprised me by saying she would. Her and my dad showed up and stayed for about 15 – 20 minutes. They probably would have stayed longer but the kids were too occupied with their friends to pay much attention to them.

Sunday, 3-14-2004: Emily and Brianna chatted on the computers again all morning. I ended up going out to get donuts for them all when I woke up. Bonnie came and picked them up around noon. Colleen came and picked up Emily and Payton at 2:30pm.

My random playlist

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Wednesday, March 10th, 2004: I’ve decided to steal RTF’s idea who stole the idea from Murd0c – load my entire mp3 collection into a single playlist, then list the first 10 songs that play, no matter how embarassing they are. My mp3 directory and all it’s folders makes up 7.52 gigs of my hard drive. There’s an 80’s music directory that takes up 1.54 gigs of this space, a 90’s music directory claiming 613 megs, a 2000’s directory using 1.99 gigs and a classical music directory of 323 megs. The 90’s directory is small because I have quite a few full 90’s albums that are kept in separate directories. There are also small directories for Humor, Comedy Skits, Movie/TV Logos, Instrumentals, TV Show Themes, Sound FX and Phone Calls. Anyway, here’s my list. I decided to do 15 instead of 10:

  • 1. Eminem & Snoop Dog – Unreleased Freestyle – I probably have a gig of Eminem stuff in my 1990’s directory. I even got the underground shit he did with Skam!
  • 2. Weird Al Yankovic – Stop Draggin’ My Car Around – Same with Weird Al, I’ve got everything of his.
  • 3. Information Society – Cruel Loving – I hate these guys. I really need to delete this one.
  • 4. Good Charolette – Walk By – I downloaded a bunch of Good Charolette after their hit last year. I need to delete most of it.
  • 5. Rent Soundtrack – La Vie Boheme B – I downloaded everything from the Rent soundtrack to familiarize myself with the music before I went to see the show.

  • 6. 2gether – Visualize – Yeah, this one is a little embarassing. 2gether was a great show though, it’s too bad it’s not on anymore.
  • 7. Steve Miller Band – Jet Airliner
  • 8. The Jerky Boys – Insulator Job
  • 9. Brownsville Station – Martian Boogie – A very unfunny skit from one of my Dr. Demento albums. For some reason his fan base seemed to think that raising the pitch on your voice to make yourself sound like a chipmunk was clever comedy.

  • 10. Insane Clown Posse – Ugh, I forgot to type the name of the song. It was something from the Amazing Jekel Brothers CD. And it sucked.
  • 11. No Doubt – Just A Girl
  • 12. Hewy Lewis & The News – The Heart of Rock N Roll
  • 13. Petra – Rose Colored Stained Glass Windows – I’ve always loved Petra’s 80’s music, despite the christian lyrics.
  • 14. Jon Bon Jovi – Miracle
  • 15. The Beatles – There Are Places I Remember
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