Today someone from the Tampa area was calling me and I correctly assumed that it was Legend813. He was calling from a mall kiosk phone that was selling VoIP long distance service. We talked for 10 or 15 minutes. The lady there started getting annoyed and told them there was a 3 minute time limit on that phone. He kind of gave her a hard time and she said something like, “We usually have this problem with kids but not with grown men like you.” So I say, “Let me talk to that lady.”

In the most authoritative and scary voice I could muster, I gave this lady a piece of my mind. I told her I was with the district attorney and I was a VERY important man and it was not a good idea to mess with me and blah blah blah. I did a good job at rambling on about how important I was! Eventually she hung up on me.

I immediately called back and said, “Oohhh, you’ve really made me mad now, lady! Do you want some trouble there??” She hung up again. I called back again and was hung up on again. I don’t think the number was even supposed to be taking calls since it was some kind of display phone. Apparently I made her mad enough to call the mall cops on Legend813 so he had to get out of there rather quickly to avoid getting into any trouble. But not before he snapped a picture of her.

After work, went by the farm again and fed everything and took pictures. Chickens don’t appear to like having their pictures taken. It seems to freak them the hell out. I forget the puppies names except one of them is Dot. The rat’s name is Noskes. I forget the cat’s name but it doesn’t seem to care. And as you can see in the last picture, I made peace with Sasha, the dog that was ready to kill me when I arrived yesterday. And no, Amy, there were no eggs to be found in the chicken house.

Earlier today this old couple that live across the street from me called me from their cell phone. They told me they were at some cafe in Edwardsville and in the parking lot was a truck that had a sign on the side of it that read www.bradcarter.com. Better yet, the license plate included the name ALEX on it, which is my middle name. I say, “I know that guy, he has my domain!” For years, I’ve waited and hoped that the guy with bradcarter.com would let his domain name go because I want it for my homepage. I don’t think it’ll ever happen. While on the phone, I checked the contact info on the domain and it looks like Brad Carter lives in Mt. Zion, Illinois which is sort of closeby. My neighbor said this Brad Carter was sitting in the cafe typing on his laptop and he was going to go talk to him. I told my neighbor to tell Brad I want my domain! I still haven’t heard how that conversation went. Maybe my neighbor roughed Brad up and got the domain name for me.

Amy: what are you doing today
Brad: just got back from doin’ my chores
Brad: at the farm
Amy: ahhh the chickens
Brad: yep
Amy: did they have eggs
Brad: not that i noticed
Brad: i just fed them and got outta there
Amy: you should check tomorrow
Amy: you can make eggs for breakfast
Brad: eww
Amy: you dont like eggs?
Brad: not from chickens!
Brad: i only like the ones from the grocery stores
Amy: lol your tarded

I have spent much of my weekend getting my office computer back in working order. I lost no data in the crash, but it sure was a pain to get it moving again. The restore CD that came with the computer refused to work properly. It pretended to, but 45 minutes later it still didn’t work. I tried several hard drives. Finally I resorted to my pirated copy of Windows XP. Which means no service pack 2 updates. Goddammit. The good thing is that I now have approximately 450 gigs of storage on my computer between the 4 hard drives. It’ll be a little while before I run out of space again.

So my quest to save Calimar from marriage was a complete failure but I still managed to have a really great time this weekend. I present to everyone…

I’m referring to it as a con because it seemed like a mini-hacker con to me. I met people there that I usually only interact with online. I met, for the 2nd time in my life, Jammie who founded the #rock channel a decade ago. I met a guy I didn’t know but who said to me, “Yeah, you used to prank call my dad all the time and you would really piss him off!” Not to mention that there were PLA Bells on the wedding cake and cactus confetti spread all around them. Cal’s wife arranged that herself so she can’t be that bad of a person! I didn’t take many pictures myself so I’m planning on stealing Jammie and Laura’s pictures as soon as they’re all up online. For now, though, here are a few of my pictures. More will be added soon…

I had 2 pictures of the PLA bells on the cake but one of them got corrupted in the transfer from my SD card and it happened to be the better picture. Dammit. Hopefully Jammie took one too so I can put it up. The picture of Calimar singing with one of the groomsmen – they’re doing karaoke of the song Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. In girl voices. I regret not bringing my video camera for that. On Sunday I drove a friend several hundred miles home to help him avoid airfare. So I thought the Limo thing on my back window was fitting.

The weekend was great fun. I ate at restaurants all weekend and I never seemed to be able to pay the tab because someone always beat me to it. Damn you nice people! I finally managed to pick up the tab on our piddley breakfast Sunday morning before we left. On Friday night we all met at a bar called Chances and stayed there until about 2am. I ended up sleeping on the floor in D’s hotel room. I’d slept on Cal’s couch the night before and it was comfortable and everything but he had these animals in his kitchen (sugar gliders, I think they’re called) and they made horribly annoying noises all night and kept me up. I don’t think I slept for more than an hour at a time. The hotel floor was much quieter.

On Saturday morning we got up and did some running around town with Cal, going to a few stores and gathering random things that were needed for the wedding. Ate breakfast with a bunch of people at some mexican place. The wedding ended up lasting maybe 30 or 40 minutes. I ended up being one of the ushers in the wedding which was fine with me since it required minimal responsibility. At some point, Cal’s fiance, Anita, decided that I would be the one to walk her down the isle and give her away. I text messaged this information to my friend Amy on Friday evening and she replied, “That will be an easy way to keep Cal from getting hitched. Just before you walk her down the isle, chloroform her and lock her in the closet. That way Cal will just think she is another runaway bride like that one chick on TV.” I thought that was a hilarious idea so I passed my cell phone around the table for everyone to read the text message. I’m thinking that perhaps this is the reason it was decided that I wouldn’t give Anita away. She probably wasn’t sure if I was joking or not.

After the wedding was the reception and then me and a few others went to Corpus Christi to see Revenge of the Sith. I’m not really a big Star Wars fan but it was still a good movie. After the movie we hung out in a place called Habeeb’s Corner and ate pizza for awhile. Then me, D, Laura and Jammie went in search of a beach to run around on. We made a quick pitstop at a stripclub along the way that was actually just a double-wide trailer with a sign on top reading ADULT CABARET. We stayed there for less than 3 minutes and then continued to Rockport in search of the beach.

You’d think for a town which is practically an island, we could find a beach. But it was dark and all we could find were fishing piers. None of us were FROM Rockport and I’d sure never bothered looking for a beach there before. We actually stopped at a Circle K and asked the clerk where the beach was. Eventually we found a suitable beach. Laura and Jammie, who are from DC and NYC, really wanted to see a Texas beach. And they got to see it, overgrown with moss, roaches, fishheads and a terrible smell. We eventually found a much cleaner section of beach and Laura convinced me to run around in the ocean with her. In my clothes.

That night ended around 2am or so. The next morning after our breakfast and goodbyes, I gave D a ride to his house, a few hundred miles away and then I made it to Muskogee, Oklahoma and crashed in a Super 8 for the night. I was really hoping to make it to Missouri before stopping, but I was tired. I got home on Monday around 5:30pm. I’d hung around Muskogee all morning, working from my cell phone, which is why it took me so long to make it back to Alton.

Set my alarm for 6:00am but ended up waking up at 5:30am instead. But that was good, it got me on the road quicker. Today I’m driving to Texas to witness my friend Cal getting hitched. My plan is to ruin/stop the wedding in some sort of spectacular fashion. He just doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into! Any sabotage plans anyone would care to email me are welcome. I might just kidnap him for a couple of days until this whole wedding thing blows over.

On the way down my front-right tire blew out just before I reached Lebanon, Missouri. It didn’t just slowly go flat like they usually do, it just suddenly went kablewie! Luckily I didn’t spin out of control and flip my car a few dozen times. That would have been cool, though, especially if it happened in slow motion like in the movies. When I pulled over and looked at it, it was smoking. I got my spare tire on in a record 15 minutes. I used my phonebook CD-ROMs to locate a crappy little discount tire store 10 miles up the road. Then my GPS to get me there. I ended up getting 2 brand new tires for a total of $85.00. Last year when a tire blew out on my way to Montana, I spent over $100 for just 1 tire. But I didn’t have GPS then, to guide me to a crappy little discount tire place. GPS officially rules now.

As the old man at the tire shop was trying to run my debit card, he cursed at the machine a few times and then told me he’d be right back. I watched him walk across the parking lot to the telephone pole, open a box on the pole and start fiddling with the wires inside. A minute later he came back, tried it again and it worked. He really should consider calling the phone company…

In the end, my blown tire cost me just an hour of lost driving. I got into Oklahoma City at 4:30 and visited a friend for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow I’ll finish my drive. And this weekend, I will attempt to save Cal from the evil clutches of marriage.