Brad's Cactus Shack

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Monday, 5-26-2003: Me and Emily left fairly early – around 10am. Drove all day. Emily was really good on the trip. She was bored but she didn’t complain too much. We stopped at a lot of rest stops and gas stations so she could get out of the car. She went to sleep around 10pm and we finally got home right at 2am. She woke up for a little while to play with the kittens and then went back to sleep.

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Sunday, 5-25-2003: I was the first to wake up. Checked on hotels and donuts. Me and Mr. Spessa went to a downtown donut shop to buy donuts for all the kids. Our first trip was to some underground waterfall thing which wasn’t TOO interesting. Then we went to see Mount Rushmore and spent quite a bit of time there. The security guys were actually carrying machine guns with them because of some heightened terrrorist alert which I didn’t manage to get a picture of. Security was tighter than any airport I’ve ever been to. We went to Flinstone town for awhile and to an underground cavern. I think that was it for the day. We went back to the hotel, let the kids swim for awhile and then all went to bed.

In the first picture below, you see me doing something shady by the Bedrock Telephone building. The second picture is a paper that Spessa noticed in our hotel’s elevator which had quite a few spelling & other mistakes in it. So she took it to her room, graded it, placed it back in the elevator and took a picture of it. I thought a C+ was a little harsh but who am I to argue? You can click on that one for a full sized view.

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Saturday, 5-24-2003: Got up around 8am and started driving again. Emily didn’t even want to shower or have breakfast anywhere so we ate cookies in the car for breakfast as we drove. Drove all day with very few stops and Emily was surprisingly good for the drive. We stopped at a gas station and redid our window signs to say MADE YOU LOOK and a few other slogans on the sides. We arrived in Rapid City, South Dakota around 4pm or so. Got on a pay phone to call the Spessas, then met them at their hotel.

We went to Target to pick up swimming gear for their kids. Then to some underground waterfall in a cave. We tried to go to some caverns but they were all closed. Came back to the hotel and let the kids swim for a few hours, then went to eat at a restaurant across the street. Came back and all went to sleep eventually. The kids had their own room and we had ours down the hall from them.

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Friday, 5-23-2003: Worked a little and packed bags for vacation to South Dakota. Me and Emily are driving out there to hang out with Spessa & Company for the weekend. We left around 5:15pm or so which is a sucky time to take off driving for the day. After we got out of St. Louis we stopped by a McDonalds for Emily to play and have some supper. We used window paint to write I LIKE CAKE on the back car window and other various things on all the other windows which caused everyone to stare at us as they drove past. Emily found this hysterical. We had people pointing, laughing, making faces at us, etc. It made the drive very enjoyable. I was hoping to drive until 3 or 4 in the morning but I only made it until 1am. I stopped at a Super 8 in Nebraska and we slept until 8am.

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Sunday, 5-18-2003: My brother and me went to see The Matrix 2 at Eastgate. Earlier that night I’d been on a conf and I mentioned to Murd0c that I was going and that he should try to have me paged at the theater. So me and my brother are watching the movie and maybe 45 minutes into the movie, during the stupid Oracle scene, the movie stops and the lights come up. An employee in the back yells to the crowd, “Is there a Brad Carter here? Brad Carter, you have a phone call!” She does that for awhile and I convince my brother to keep quiet and I try to explain my friends to him. They turn the movie back on and we snicker for the next 10 minutes. Then the theater’s number starts calling my cell phone over and over. I later found out that Matt from down the street was in the movie so he went out and told them he knew me and he knew my phone number. It turned out that Murd0c, Phusion and a few others impersonated the IL state police and told them my mom had been in a major accident. The theater stopped both showings of the Matrix and paged me like that. I’m sure that pissed off a lot of movie patrons since that was opening weekend. For me, it made a horribly boring movie very memorable.

Thursday, 5-15-2003: Next door to me I rent out an apartment and my friend RijilV stays there. Tomorrow he’s moving out. And I’m thinking that I probably don’t want to ever rent that place out again. Maybe the rooms, but not the whole apartment. So I decide that I’ll chop a big hole in the wall so that I can walk over to RijilV’s place and say hi. There’s this built-in bookshelf in the wall which was originally (according to the blueprints of my house) a door to the other side of the house. So I decided to remove the bookshelf and turn it into a door again. Or just an opening. Or whatever. Anyway, so I do. And I attempt to scare RijilV who’s sitting at his computer. That doesn’t work too good but at least I got a few pictures out of it. You can click on each picture for a larger view and roll your mouse over the picture for a description.

Friday, 5-9-2003: Is0tek came over around 5:00 or so to hang out and spend the night. Mainly we just messed with Taco Bell and I’m not able to go into too much detail about that on a public page. But it was fun. Went to eat with him and Rob at the Granite City Waffle House.

Wednesday, 5-7-2003: Bought a new car! A 2000 Ford Focus. I’ve been car shopping for a new car for over a year now, being torn between either buying a new piece of shit or a fairly new car that doesn’t break down all the time. I finally decided on something newish. Amy came over for lunch. She brought me Taco Bell and helped me clean out my old car. Anyway, my car looks a little like this: