Sunday, July 31st, 2005: Finished my book and then took the kids swimming all day. Stayed until 7pm. Payton is suddenly really brave in the water. He’s under the water all the time (with and without goggles), keeps jumping in from the side, constantly wants me to take him into the deepest water and let him go and he took at least 20 rides down the waterslide today. A month ago he was afraid of doing any of that - he would freak out if anyone touched him in the water and he refused to try the waterslide. So I guess the swimming lessons paid off, even if he can’t actually swim yet. Maybe next year. To the left is a picture of him being brave.

Oh yeah, I brought my PHP Bible book with me but didn’t get much reading done. Emily saw it sitting upsidedown on our chair and says, “PHP? Does that stand for Phone Losers of Philidelphia?” I don’t know where she came up with Phone Losers of anything. I never tell her about any of that stuff and she’s never been on the website as far as I know. Maybe Colleen talks about PLA a lot.

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Payton and his cake	Payton opening more presents while Emily assembles his Lego car	Robotic Monkey

(whiney voice) “Moooom, I don’t want any new shoes!”
“Your need some new shoes, the ones you have look horrible.”
“But I don’t LIKE any of the shoes here!”
“You need new shoes and we’re buying new shoes today.”

They argued back and forth like this pretty much the entire minute that I was in the shoe isle. But here’s sad part - the son was my age. He looked like a completely normal guy and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t retarded. But he was arguing with his mom about shoes like he was a bratty 5-year-old. Only with a lot more cursing. I shoulda snapped a picture of them.

Later we went to Burger King for lunch. I was hanging around the counter for a few minutes, waiting for somebody to take my order. I decided to show off for Emily and reinact a scene from Family Guy. I grabbed the microphone at the register and said, “Hey, is this thing on? TESTICLES!” Only I didn’t actually push the button on the mic. Emily smiled and said, “Dad, I think she’s ready to take your order now.” I looked over and the cashier is staring at me from the other register. Luckily she seemed somewhat amused by it and didn’t treat me like a bratty 5-year-old for playing with the mic.

After Burger King we went to Target, home for awhile and then to swimming lessons. This evening I taught Emily how to skateboard! She bought a skateboard at Wal-Mart today and this evening she decided to go out and try it out. She came back in 3 minutes later saying she couldn’t stay up on it. So we went out for maybe 30 minutes and I taught her how to stand and ran next to her on it and caught her a few times. A very nice father-daughter moment. Tomorrow we work on turning and I’m gonna loosen her wheels a little. She ended up staying out until 10pm, skatboarding with neighbor kids and then my neighbor Bethany took her to McDonald’s for a Sundae.

Tonight me and the kids watched adult swim and got to see the actual episode of Peter from Family Guy yelling into a fast food mic. I guess it was a new episode and they were just playing the commercial for it all week. It was so nostalgic, seeing Peter reinact my Burger King thing.

So my week hasn’t been too exciting. I’ve worked, played, ate, etc. A couple days ago I got up at 7am to go help my brother drywall, then me and the kids went swimming for the day. I spent 4 straight hours in the water, got burned a little. Started the new Harry Potter book that day which so far isn’t too bad. Hrmmm, what else…Jammie and I hijacked murd0c’s journal yesterday which is rather amusing.

This evening we went to Shirley’s house - she was my babysitter until I was about 13 but I still manage to visit her a few times a year. Hung out at her house for about an hour, then went to Wal-Mart and home. Emily rules - the lady in front of us had about 20 items in the express lane so Emily loudly counted each item as it was scanned. They looked back at her a few times.

Yesterday Tami came and picked up her kids around noon. Then we went to Target for groceries and to buy another birthday present for yet another birthday party. The kids went to this one by themselves and I stayed home. After the birthday party, Beth took my kids and hers to her parents for swimming all day. They didn’t get home until around 8pm. I spent most of the day staring at my laptop screen, working on website stuff. I completed my very first PHP-enabled page!

For the past year I’ve been wanting to insert PHP code into certain parts of phonelosers.org. Every time I’ve tried, I’ve failed. I chalked it up to me being stupid. But then I registered brad-carter.com and had it hosted through Go Daddy and every PHP thing I’ve done on there has worked flawlessly. So it’s the phonelosers.org host that sucks, not me! Which is nice to know. What really sucks is that I don’t understand exactly WHY most code doesn’t work on phonelosers.org. If I knew that, maybe there’d be a way I could work around it. I’d have so much cool stuff on phonelosers.org by now if things would just work right. I really want to create user accounts, themes, shoutbox, instant messaging and integrate the comments system into it all. But nothing seems to work.

I explained the problem to him, assured him that it wasn’t on my end since the neighbor’s internet was out too. He asked me to try a website. I did and it just happened to be working at that time. I should have lied because he then became skeptical of me. He wanted me to go through all the standard troubleshooting routines with him - unplug the modem, disconnect the router, reboot my computer a hundred times, etc. In the end, he refuses to send anyone out. My new theory is that the outage is being caused by the heat since it’s only down in the daytime but works perfectly at night. It’s been in the upper 90’s all week. Currently it’s 68 degrees out (10:00am) and the internet is working. The high today is 80 degrees so we’ll see if the internet holds up. Maybe I can just aim my garden hose at the cable stuff on the telephone pole to cool it down whenever it stops working.

Yesterday I started clearing out my basement. I gave away probably 20 old computers to a neighbor, 10 monitors, a bunch of ISA/PCI cards (apparently they read my ramblings - hi Beth & Ryan!). I gave away an old kitchen sink/counter to another neighbor and I’ve stacked a bunch of ceramic tiles on the porch to list on Freecycle, which I’ll probably do today. I’m probably going to visit NYC next month so my goal is to completely empty out the basement (aside from my office) before I go. Today I have a bonfire planned to get rid of the piles of scrapwood. It’ll be a nice night for it since it’s cooled down so much outside.

We also had swimming lessons yesterday. Payton is getting pretty good with everything. He used to cry when they’d make him jump in the water and eventually the lifeguard would just push him in. Now he just jumps in on his own immediately. It seems like he actually likes it, although he tells me he just does it so they’ll leave him alone about it.

Payton	Emily

I came home and started working. 30 minutes later I hear water running so I go outside to see all the kids soaked with the hose. So I get out their slip-n-slide and they play on that for the next hour. After the kids were inside and dried off, we went grocery shopping at Shop N Save. For the evening, we planned a campfire in the back yard so I could burn up a bunch of the scrapwood in the basement. When we got home I started lugging it all outside. Mac and Beau came over to ask what I was doing and they decided to help me. Within an hour, we had the basement completely emptied of scrapwood. And that was a lot of wood.

We also carried an old bench outside to be burned too. Once we got a small pile started burning, everyone showed up. It amounted to about 3 adults and 10 kids, roasting marshmellows, hotdogs and smores. It was fun but didn’t last too long. Me and Beau were the last ones left so I got bored and put out the fire with the hose and we went inside. I still have a huge pile to burn which maybe I’ll get done this weekend. Or maybe I’ll just put all the wood on Freecycle and somebody can come and take it from me. I just need it to be gone.

Here’s the pile of wood created by me, Mac and Beau	Emily’s guest list - she was trying to figure out how many chairs we needed	The burning bench - aka the camp fire.

A couple days ago, Jammie was talking to Baconstrips on the PLA Voice Bridge and he tried to get Jammie to send him a free PLA t-shirt. Me, being the incredibly nice guy that I am, decided to go ahead and send him a free one. But I didn’t want to blow $10.00 on Baconstrips so I compromised by busting out my Sharpies and making him a customized PLA Harley shirt. I spent about 20 - 30 minutes on it which is more time than I spend on real PLA customers! Here are the pictures of it…

Back of shirt - I didn’t have the patience to write out the original shirt text so I shortened it with a little personalization.	Front of shirt - incidentally, the APC shirt at RBCP’s Closet is no longer available.

That’s in reference to me and Jammie hanging out with her ex-boyfriend in St. Louis. Is hanging out with an ex really that strange? I’ve stayed friends with many of my exes. I still talk to ex-girlfriends from high school online regularly. (Exes from 15 years ago!) Other exes of mine are married and our kids are good friends together. And most of my long-term girlfriends inevitably end up meeting a few of my exes. My ex-wife used to go to yoga with an ex-girlfriend of mine. In fact, I used to hang out with my ex-wife’s ex-boyfriend from high school. Maybe I am really strange. Or maybe it’s really normal.

Today me and the kids went to Subway for lunch, had swimming lessons and had another campfire & marshmellow roast. Still haven’t made much of a dent in the big pile of wood. But the kids across the street are using it to build a skateboard ramp in the middle of the street.

Built the kids stilts today out of coffee cans and wire.	Emily trying out the ramp	Campfire

Jammie convinced me to try out Craigslist.com to sell my furniture. So I set up an account, put up a few classifieds and I’ve already gotten reponses for things. I showed Emily the ads and told her that over the next month, our furniture was likely to start disappearing. She said, “Well at least you’re not doing like mom and telling me that you’re just trying to make more room in the house.” Apparently Emily is still a little bitter over her mom tricking her with the move last year. Anyway, yeah, Craigslist rules. Much better than just giving things away on Freecycle. Thanks, Jammie!

Payton and a snake, getting ready to attack him from behind	Payton walking across a pit of water
I painted on Emily a flower, sunshine and a butterfly. Phear my artistic skills.	And for Payton, a snake.

This was my first trip to Raging Rivers, even though it’s been a mere 30 minutes from me for most of my life. It was a great place, albeit hella expensive. Was $50 for all 3 of us to get in, $5.00 to park in their parking lot, $25 for nachos, hot dogs, chicken strips and drinks, $3.00 for a locker. So in the end, it was 3 or 4 times more expensive than going to the local pool. But we had a great time. None of us had ever been in a wave pool before, which turns the entire swimming pool into a giant mosh pit. Then there was the “Swirlpool” which shot you into a giant funnel, spun you around and dropped you into a pool of water. I was somewhat terrified on my first trip through it but after the first time, Emily and I took another 4 or 5 trips down it.

Their waterslides sucked. They were longer than Wood Rivers but much much slower. We saw the kids’ swimming teacher from the Y who said hi to them. She was a lifeguard there. We also saw my old friend Sheila, who I enjoyed being rude to, and her kids. Hrmmmm, guess that was our day. We stayed until they closed, then drove to McDonald’s/Taco Bell for supper. Here’s some pictures.

This is a shot of most of the park. That’s the Mississippi River in the background.	This is the kid section. I couldn’t get Payton to stop for a picture, but he’s seen underneath the structure, in the middle	Payton and me

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Saturday, July 9th, 2005: Yesterday my parents took the kids camping for the weekend. Today, Jammie is visiting for a few days. I picked her up around noonish and asked her to be my girlfriend and she graciously accepted. I dunno if it’ll work out, though. I bet she ends up dumping me before the weekend is over. So an hour later we met her ex-boyfriend Thomas at the St. Louis Arch and hung out with him for about 4 hours. How’s that for a first date? We bought some tickets to visit the top of the Arch but had to wait for a couple of hours before it went up so we headed to The Landing for food.

We were going to eat at The Spaghetti Factory but they had a 45 minute wait to be seated so we settle on The Train Wreck across the street. After lunch we walked back to the Arch and visited the top. Several minutes after getting to the top, we got bored and went back down. I seem to visit the Arch about once per year since out of town friends seem to visit me a lot. Jammie said it best - once you get up there and look out the windows, you quickly see that there’s not really much to see in St. Louis. Anyway, we wandered around the museum for about an hour after that, said goodbye to Thomas and went home. Hung around the house the rest of the evening and watched The Butterfly Effect since Jammie had never seen it.

Jammie and Thomas in front of the Arch	Me and Jammie in front of the Arch
Me and Thomas in the little pod elevator thing that takes us to the top	Thomas, Me and Jammie in the top of the Arch

OMG CRAZY BREAD!	Me and Jammie on top of some big thing in West Alton, MO.	OMG SHAKES!

Feeling defeated with the letterbox thing, we decided to visit a Geocache. But I didn’t have the computer with me so we were lazy and visited a Geocache that I’d already found a year ago. Except that we were defeated yet again since that particular Geocache had been removed. Got to spend some nice time in the woods, though. While in the woods, Emily called me to let me know that they would be home soon and I could come and pick them up. So we went to my parents house and hung out there for 20 - 30 minutes. Then left with the kids.

My ratty old shoe next to Robert Wadlow’s fancy bronze shoe.	In place of the cache was a rock with writing on it - “Cache Temp. Archived”

We were going to take them to the City Museum but luckily Jammie suggested calling to make sure they were open. I thought the City Museum would be open until midnight. But it actually closed at 5pm (and it was already 4pm) so we scratched that idea and went to Dave & Buster’s (a huge arcade) instead. We spent maybe 3 or 4 hours at the arcade, playing video games and winning tickets. Emily won a ton of them by herself and me and Jammie gave all our tickets to Payton. Then as they were picking out ticket prizes, Payton buys Jammie a plush Tootsie Roll thing, costing him 200 tickets, in appreciation for her giving him her tickets. Jammie had tried to win a similar Tootsie Roll thing out of a crane machine and failed so I guess Payton was just trying to make her feel better about that. What a nice kid!

Payton playing a boxing game.	Emily and Payton with all their tickets.	Payton presenting Jammie with a Tootsie Roll

We went home and all watched some Eerie, Indiana on DVD. Back in ‘97, I got into this old show (made in 1991) called Eerie, Indiana. It only lasted one season but it was a great show. A month or 2 ago, I ended up buying the season on DVD. I watched every single episode by myself. Then when the kids came for the summer, I watched every single episode again with the kids. They loved it - we ended up watching a bunch of the episodes more than once and they watched a few of them again on their own. Jammie wanted to see it just to see what I was raving about the previous month. So we all sat down and ended up watching 3 different episodes, each picked by the kids. They tried for a 4th but by that point I was pretty tired and kind of sick of watching Eerie.

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Wednesday, July 6th, 2005: Went swimming at the Roxana pool today instead of Wood River. I’ve never been there before. They have the dumbest rules. You can’t have toy balls in the pool. So, no playing catch. I asked the lifeguard why and she said someone might get hurt with them. Can’t argue with that. Then awhile later, she told Payton he couldn’t wear his goggles. Because someone might kick him in the face and they would break his nose. That’s what the lifeguard told me. Anyway, we stayed there all afternoon and had a good time, despite the weird rules. Payton started swimming lessons this week. He’s afraid to learn and afraid of the deep end. But he did okay. I even got him to put his head underwater a bunch at Roxana with no goggles on.

Tonight me, the kids and Casey went to Burger King. Payton had a dream last night that the Fantastic 4 toys were at Burger King now - that was the first thing he told me when he woke up. So we went to Burger King only to find crappy old Star Wars toys.

Payton’s quote of the day: “Daddy, why does she think that shit is bananas??” - while listening to that Gwen Stefani song on the drive home from BK.

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Monday, July 4th, 2005: My parents rule. They are screwing with their neighbors out of boredom. My dad happened to have a pink flamingo, for whatever reason. So around midnight one night, he has my brother walk across the street and stick it in some old lady’s yard. This old lady has a very strict personal schedule each day so they knew that she would walk outside to get her paper at exactly 7:10 in the morning. So they were at the window, waiting for her to notice it. She sees the flamingo, stares at it for awhile, walks a circle around it, looks really confused and goes back inside. Shortly after that, probably after conversing with her husband on the matter, she went back outside and pulled the flamingo out of the ground and put it in their shed in the drive way.

The next night, around midnight, by brother sneaks over and takes the flamingo out of their shed. He puts it in a different spot in their yard. The process repeats with her staring, looking confused and walking circles. This time she doesn’t throw it in the shed. She pulls it out of the ground and puts it in another spot in her yard. The next night, my brother lays some pink plastic easter eggs under the flamingo, giving the impression that it’s laid some eggs. The old lady hasn’t done anything about the eggs yet and they’re still there. If you look closely in the picture, you can see them. Their next plan, my dad tells me, is to buy some baby plastic flamingos and put them under the big flamingo to make it appear that the eggs have hatched. I asked when he was going to tell these old people that he was responsible and he said never. That rules. I had to scold them for not videotaping her confusion, though. I snapped the picture myself as I was leaving.

Anyway, we did the rest of the fireworks from my house tonight. A neighbor lady brought over a ton her own and shared with us, which was really cool. Managed not to blow up any people or set any roofs on fire.

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