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Oct. 30th, 2005|12:36 am: Got up at 7:30 this morning, got everything left in the house packed and was on the road by 8am. Stopped at Angel Cream for donuts. Man, I’ll miss their donuts. Anybody who has not had Angel Cream donuts simply does not understand how great their donuts are. So I drove all day and it was very uneventful. Traffic was light and boring. A saw an 18-wheeler tipped over in Missouri in the middle of the road with all it’s contents spilled out of the top. I ate nonstop today - donuts, Fritos, Oreo Blizzard, Pepsi, water, Pringles. I was really tired for awhile in the afternoon so I kept eating in hopes of staying more awake. In the evening I finally stopped being tired. I got about as far as I expected - Wyoming. Right now I’m pulled into a truck stop for the night. In fact, I noticed after I pulled in here that I’m at the exact same truck stop and in the same spot as I was earlier this year. It’s 37 degrees out right now but it doesn’t really feel that cold. The low tonight is supposed to be 35 and no snow. I didn’t end up writing anything on my car window. I suck. Maybe I’ll do that in the morning. Tomorrow I expect to make it to Montana before stopping for the night. I think that’ll take me about 11 hours to get there from here. I think I’ve set a personal record for myself for the number of states I’ve visited in a single year. I’m not going to try and list them all, but I think I’ve been in 20 - 25 states this year. Maybe less, depending on which way I drove to Oregon and back earlier this year. I think also a record for the most vacations I’ve taken this year and the number of airports I’ve ended up at. Time for sleep. Oct. 30th, 2005|10:09 pm     That’s what I saw pretty much all day today. It was boring. I think I’ve made this trip by car 9 times in the past year and a half. Like, 5 times to Oregon from Illinois and 4 times to Illinois from Oregon. Or maybe it was just 7. Still a lot, though. Nothing interesting happened today. I ate lots of junk food and listened to lots of random radio stations and mp3s. Listened to lots of public radio and lots of religious shows. Those religious shows are like stand-up comedy to me. My phone stopped working halfway through Wyoming so I couldn’t talk to anyone without paying crazy roaming charges. Stopped in a hotel tonight in Montana. I’ve got lunch with a friend in Polson tomorrow, then I’m going to Idaho for a day or two, then to Oregon.
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Oct. 28th, 2005|05:36 pm: I still have a trunkfull of window paints. Any ideas on what I should write on my window for a cross-country trip? Here’s a few shots of past window paintings…   
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Oct. 28th, 2005|01:32 pm: Sitting in a waiting room right now, getting the oil changed on my car. Today Bonnie took me out to lunch at some little diner by Clifton Terrace. Bonnie was trying to talk me into renting out my empty house to Terrence & Shonna. I said I couldn’t trust them to pay the rent since they’ve been kicked out of their last 3 homes for not paying rent. She’s like, “Oh, I think they’ve learned their lesson this time!” Yeah right. They’re both 30 and Shonna has never left anyplace peacefully in her life. The amount of damage they cause to every place they live in is just insane. Yesterday my parents took my brother and I out for supper at Applebees which was nice. Then last night I went to a few bars with Tami & Bryan, then to White Castle. Came home and called Jammie at 2am, waking her up. Told Lewis & Susan at the post office my goodbyes today. Susan was all asking about Phone Losers and if I was going to forward PLA’s mail to Oregon too. She’s actually a semi-fan of the site, thanks to Amy. Looks like I’ll be leaving Illinois very early tomorrow morning. As early as I can wake up, anyway. By 7am, I hope.
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Oct. 27th, 2005|05:32 pm: This is my sad cat story of the day. I drove to my dad’s house and was hanging out and talking to him. At some point in the conversation I said, “By the way, did you notice the dead cat in front of your house?” He starts asking me to describe it and he looks out the window and sees that it’s a neighbor’s cat which belongs to a few grade school kids. I look at the clock and mention that maybe we should go get it out of the street before the kids get home and see their dead cat in the street. So I get a trash bag and an old towel, set the cat onto the bag and move it next to my parents’ garage. The cats eyes were still open and it’s body was still warm. It hadn’t been squished or anything so it wasn’t even gross. But it was kinda gross anyway since it was a dead cat. Only a minute passed before the neighbor came home with the kids all in her van. My dad went over and quietly told her the news. And that’s my good deed for the year - making sure a bunch of 2nd graders weren’t devastated at the sight of their dead cat in the middle of the road.
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Oct. 27th, 2005|12:56 pm: Went to Wendy’s for lunch today and the same guy who gave me $1.00 too much in change last week took my order. The total was $4.93 and I give him a $5 bill and say, “And here, I have 3 pennies.” and I quickly select 3 pennies from a handful of change and give it to him. He’s already put the $5.00 into the register and the digital display shows that he owes me 7 cents. He stands there with the 3 pennies in his hand, staring blankly at the register. After what must be 30 seconds, I finally tell him, “You owe me 10 cents.” and he says “Oh!” and hands me a dime. How has he kept a job there for so long? His drawer must come up short/over every day if he gets that easily confused. It reminds me of this time at McDonald’s drive-thru…I posted this on the notla.com forums on September 6th, 2001 - here’s a copy & paste of the incident: This isn’t a complaint really, just kind of a stupid incident that happened to me at the East Alton McDonald’s. I went through the drive-thru and placed my order. The total came to $7.35. When I got to the first window, a high school kid told me it’d be $7.35 and I handed him 35 cents, a twenty and 2 ones. He closed the window and started to put in in the register. Then he opens the window and says, “It’s only $7.35 - you gave me $22.35 here.” I told him I realized that and he says sarcasticly, “Well here’s $2.00 of your change!” and tries to hand me the 2 ones. I tell him I’d rather not have the ones and just to take it out of the $22.35. He looks at me for a second and shuts the window. Then he calls a friend over and I see him explaining to him how I must be retarded, holding up the money and motioning towards me. THEN he punches the $22.35 into the touch screen register and sees my change is $15.00 even. He stares at the screen for a minute, pulls out a five and ten and hands me my change without saying thank you and not looking directly at me. I don’t blame the guy really, he’s just a high school kid who’s probably never had a register job before. He could have tried not being quite so rude about it, or at least said “thank you” when he realized his mistake. But at least it gave me a laugh for the day.
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Oct. 26th, 2005|10:56 am: Irony: Moving the washing machine and dryer into storage, getting rust from the bottom of the machines all over my hands, wiping my hands on my pants and shirt, needing my pants and shirt washed, no longer having a washing machine and dryer to wash them with. Maybe that’s not irony, but I’m better than Alanis Morisette at coming up with examples. Yesterday, SBC’s automated voice recognition system said to me, “You just said ‘no’. Is this correct? Please say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ now…” I snickered as I said ‘yes’ to it, which confused it even more.
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Oct. 25th, 2005|11:02 pm: Today I borrowed Joe’s truck and moved my washer & dryer into storage. Managed to get them up the basement stairs, up into a truck, then into my storage space. By myself. Those fuckers are heavy. I can’t believe I’ve managed to fit my entire house into a 10×10 storage unit with no help from anyone, one carload at a time. All I have left to get rid of is my bed and the recliner, then pack up all my office stuff which is mostly sitting on an old dining room table that I’ll be throwing in the trash. This house is empty. Every time I open up a room and go in, I’m hit in the face with cobwebs. Spent some time at Joe & Stephanie’s and he showed me his hacked X-Box with all the games built into it. I tried doing that to my X-Box years ago and it never worked. I suck. Having all their kids running all over the place and talking to me (there was 5 of them) really made me miss my own. I can’t wait to get to Oregon. I’m pretty sure I’m leaving this weekend. I called up Emily and Payton and talked to them for over an hour and they seem pretty excited about me getting there. Payton lost teeth this week, Emily told me all about spelling tests and book reports. I can’t believe I’ve allowed myself to miss an entire year of my own kids. Fucking Colleen.
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Oct. 21st, 2005|10:50 am: I’m the middle of my 2 hour layover in North Carolina right now. I’m sitting in some airport bar called The Stock Car Cafe which appears to worship all forms of Nascar. This is my first time in this airport. I’ve visited a lot of airports for the first time this year - Salt Lake City, Kansas City, JFK, Minneapolis, Charlotte, San Francisco and soon Orlando. I guess most of my airport experiences were limited to the west and the south before. Had to get up at 5:00 this morning to make sure I got to the airport on time. Got some Angel Cream donuts to eat on the drive there. Been a pretty uneventful trip so far, just reading more Mark Twain biography. Tried to sleep for some of the flight but that didn’t work too good so I resorted to reading again. Guess I should go find my gate now… Oct. 24th, 2005|6:10pm: I’m sitting at my gate right now, waiting for them to start boarding our flight. There’s this guy a few seats away from me who’s playing all his voicemail messages on speakerphone at full volume. It’s really obnoxious. Funny thing is, he’s broadcasting the phone number and message of everyone that has called him to everyone in listening range. I can tell by the automated prompts that he uses T-Mobile. I bet I could easily SE his phone number out of the people that have called him, then SE his passcode from T-Mobile. Wonder how he would react to me playing his messages on my own speakerphone at full volume. Of course, that’s evil and I just wouldn’t do that. 6:30pm - Okay, on the plane now, waiting for takeoff. My weekend was great. Jammie and I just split ways since we leave from different terminals. Our friend yo_mama and his wife flew out too, so we all spent the weekend together. On Friday I met up with them, we checked into our hotel, ate steak, then picked up Jammie. We did the Halloween Horror Night thing on Saturday evening until 2:00am. Then Steak N Shake until 3:00am, then back to the hotel. Jammie and I got up the next morning and spent some time in the various pools and the hottub. Then checked out of the hotel, checked into a new one, ate lunch at Carabbas and went back to Universal. Yo_mama & company had to leave after just one show (Terminator 3-D) since we arrrived kind of late. Me and Jammie stayed behind and did a lot of the basic Universal-type things such as E.T, Back to the Future (I got a picture with a Doc Brown lookalike!), Men in Black, the earthquake subway ride, etc. I am now officially spoiled with the Express Pass which lets you cut in lines. We didn’t have them for Halloween Horror but we did for regular Universal. Never again will I not get them! The park closed at 7:00pm and we caught a cab back to the hotel. This morning Jammie and I decided to get some breakfast at Dennys which was 2 or 3 blocks away. Normally this wouldn’t be such a problem but there was the outskirts of Hurricane Wilma passing through town. It had been storming all night and I thought it looked better outside when we left but I was wrong. After just a few minutes our umbrellas were broken and, for the most part, useless . The wind and rain were really strong and we had to cross two busy highways. I think the entire walk/run took maybe 15 - 20 minutes and we were soaked and a little disappointed that Denny’s didn’t didn’t have electric hand dryers in their bathrooms. We dried off, had some breakfast, filled out a few postcards and then TOOK A CAB back to the hotel. A few hours later the rain and wind disappeared and the sun came out. Jammie and I took a stroll around the huge hotel property for awhile, then got a cab to the airport. And that brings you to now - I’m in a plane and nearing the Charlotte airport. I did this entire entry with my Pocket PC’s on-screen keyboard. Impressive, eh? It’s actually quite speedy with its word-completion feature. Hopefully there aren’t too many typos. One of the more bizarre things about the past 24 hours were our neighbors at the hotel. Our room had a connecting door with theirs and all they seemed to do were scream at each other and beat their kids. At one point we heard the dad (we assume) yell at a kid to stop crawling on the floor, lots of slapping, lots of crying, then the dad screaming at him to stop crying. Sheesh, poor kids. This went on all Sunday evening and today until we left. Luckily they slept at night. It must suck to be angry and screaming 24/7. It must suck even more to be their kids. You’d think people like that would eventually die of a heart attack from being so stressed out all the time. And to think, they were in a resort, likely on vacation. Wonder how pissed off and stressed out they get when they’re not on vacation. Ahhhh, landed at last. Time to upload all this dribble while i wait for my connecting flight. Here are some pictures…
Oct. 24th, 2005|09:04 pm: I think this flight attendant is either hitting on me or screwing with me. Before we departed she sat next to me and the dialogue went something like this… “I’m going to sit next to this cute guy for awhile.” Eventually she left to make flight announcements , but 30 minutes later she comes over, puts my tray down for me (seat in the middle since I have a whole row to myself), sets down a full can of Coke (as opposed to the half can we usually get), apologizes that it’s not Pepsi, and 2 bags of pretzels. It’s so nice to have a delusional flight attendent mistake me for cute and give me extra stuff. Only 30 minutes or so left until St. Louis…then a 45 minute drive home to Alton. My house will probably be freezing since it’s in the lower 40’s out and I haven’t had the furnace on since last Spring. Oct. 24th, 2005|11:30 pm: As I pulled up to the booth to leave long-term parking, I noticed the booth attendent was sleeping. I waited for a few seconds but she didn’t move. I revved the engine and she didn’t budge. She appeared to be in a pretty deep sleep, mouth hanging open and all that. It’s too bad they had the thing blocking me from leaving or I could have saved paying the parking fee. I tapped the horn a few times and she stirred. A few more taps on the horn and she finally awoke and took my money. One thing I didn’t think to do was take a picture of the sleeping parking attendent. Ah well…
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Oct. 20th, 2005|08:33 pm: Yesterday I convinced Tami to spend an entire day with me, driving to Hannibal, Missouri and visiting all of the Mark Twain landmarks. I’ve been really itching to do this for the past week since I plan to move soon and probably won’t have many other opportunities to drive up there. So I got up around 7:00 this morning, went to her house and we started driving there. The drive was just under 2 hours from her house in Jerseyville. We took various highways through Illinois all the way up since there were no convenient interstates to drive on. Crossed the bridge and we were in Hannibal! The first order of business was lunch since I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. We checked on a bunch of restaurants and settled on the Jumping Frog Cafe. Ate some sandwiches and read some brochures. A mere $8.00 each got us access to buildings all over downtown. Museums, inside Mark Twain’s house, inside Laura Hawkins house and other miscellaneous buildings that I can’t remember. We also went through a really lame (yet amusing) haunted house, we climbed 250 stairs to the lighthouse, hiked around the woods for a short time and then headed back towards downtown. Stopped at an ice cream parlor for milkshakes and to fill out a bunch of postcards. I think we stopped by a few more places after that, then headed back to the car and started driving home. In all we spent nearly 4 hours in Hannibal and got to see a lot of things. We missed the tour bus since we were so busy with everything else but I don’t really think there’s much we didn’t see. I would have liked to explore the caves and the lake a little, but there’s always next time. I also really want to see the live show, where some actor who looks like Mark Twain does some of his old routines. The weather was pretty nice for us. A little cold but no rain while we were there. As soon as we got out of town and on the road, it starts pouring. It keeps pouring for much of the trip home. We drove back home on the Missouri side of the Mississippi this time so that the drive didn’t feel like so much backtracking. Got stuck in rush hour traffic once we reached St. Louis which added an extra 30 minutes to the drive, but finally reached my house. Stopped in for a few things, then continued to Jerseyville to drop her off at home. And that’s my day. I don’t think Tami was quite as into the Mark Twain stuff as me, but she says she plans to read his books again, now that she suddenly knows so much about him. Now it’s time to pack for Orlando which begins tomorrow!
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Oct. 19th, 2005|06:35 pm:  I’m not feeling too positive about my weekend in Orlando that begins in just a couple of days. I know it’s supposed to happen way south of Orlando, I just hope they don’t go closing down theme parks for our safety. Clicking on the image above will take you to a page full of updated hurricane Wilma information.
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