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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

Yesterday I was having this really good day

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.

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

Thursday, 3-4-2004: I’ve decided to start playing the lottery. I’ve always made fun of people that play it, saying that it’s a game for people who suck at math. I’ve played it about once a month for the past 6 months and I’ve won exactly nothing. $6.00 down the drain. Up until 6 months ago, I’d never bought a lottery ticket in my life. (This doesn’t include lottery tickets that I stole while working at various convenience stores nearly a decade ago.) I think I’m going to buy 1 ticket per day, every single day for the rest of the year. There’s about 300 days left of 2004, so that’ll be $300 I’m wasting. If I don’t win at least $300 by December 31st, I’ll quit playing forever.

If I beat the odds and end up winning $100 million or something, I’ll give almost all of the money away. Nobody needs to have $100 million sitting in a bank. I think I’d spend a lot of money to help restore old, historic buildings and houses around Alton. I’d make that my full-time job, just blowing money on that. Then I could just go around knocking on doors of crappy-looking houses and offer to give them free paint jobs, landscaping, roofs, etc. I’d probably open up a place in town for kids to hang out, such as a skating rink. Alton used to have 2 of those but 1 closed down and then the other burned down. The nearest rink was about 20 miles away in Glen Carbon up until about a year ago. Lowes took care of that – they bought that skating rink and tore it down so they could build a new Lowes in Glen Carbon. So I’d put a million or so into a skating rink/arcade/cyber cafe. Maybe a movie theater too.

I think I’d also contact Weird Al Yankovic and his band and I’d offer to finance a few dozen videos for them. Because each album that Al puts out, he only can afford to make videos for the 2 best songs. So I would work with them and get them to make videos for most of the songs from all his past albums. We’d start with videos for The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota, Hardware Store, Jerry Springer, Mellow When I’m Dead. Then I’d allow Al and his band to pick some videos they want to do. We could just blow $500,000 per video. I bet that’d be enough money to do something cool with. That’d be a great way to blow money! I’d sure beat spending it all on the homeless or starving children or whales.

As far as myself goes…I’d pay off my mortgage. I definitely wouldn’t move into a mansion because I like where I live now. I’d pay off my credit cards and buy a nice van. I’d probably give certain family members a bunch of money. I’m sure I’d do crazy stuff with phonelosers.org. Like have a contest for “What can RBCP do for PLA now that he’s got $1,000,000?” I could open up a retail store that sells PLA shirts and stickers. And that’s it. It’d be a sorry looking store! I’d definitely spend all of my winnings, though. Maybe I’d set $1,000,000 aside in a savings account. But that’s it, nobody needs more money than that. Bill Gates pisses me off, hoarding that $50 billion dollars for himself instead of giving it all away for something meaningful. Like financing Weird Al videos. So anyway, everyone wish me luck on the lottery this year! I’ll be buying my first daily ticket in about an hour.