Nov. 16th, 2005|01:42 pm: Moved out of the motel today and into my new apartment. It’s nice to be away from the crazy crackhead motel neighbors of mine, but I sort of miss them in a way. As I checked out of the motel, I mentioned their zany antics to the lady at the front desk and she agreed with me that they were pretty bizzare people. She said he always looks drunk. I never did get a good look at him so for all I know, it was Larry. But I think he was way too young to be Larry. Sounds and acts exactly like him though.

Last night, the son came to the room with two friends. And the motel manager showed up immediately after they went in, knocked on their door and ordered them all to leave. He appeared to know one of the guys that came into the room with him and told the people that he didn’t want “riff raff like that” on the motel’s property. After the manager left, the couple yelled at each other for a few minutes but after that it was quiet for the rest of the night. I recorded during the manager incident but I haven’t listened to it yet to see how it came out. It wasn’t that interesting anyway.

My new apartment rocks. It’s quiet and clean. There’s a shiny green telco can right in my front yard which makes me feel right at home. I have no furniture, though. My desk is a cardboard box and I’m sitting on the floor. I stopped by Staples today to buy a desk (desk is a priority over a bed, of course) but they were out of the one I wanted. I’m supposed to check back today or tomorrow to see if they get one in. There is not one single closet here so I’m going to have to do something about that. There’s a spare room that I might just turn into a big walk-in closet for all of us.

Last night my plan was to get to bed early so I could wake up around 6am or so. Which would have gone great if it wasn’t for the neighbors. Earlier in the day yesterday, I’d opened up the cable TV jack in the wall and dug through about 7 inches of insulation to expose the back of THEIR cable TV jack. So all that was separating us was a thin piece of plastic. My plan was to set my digital recorder in the wall and get some good recordings of their fights. Jammie says I’m doing this out of boredom, but I say it’s out of fascination with these people. I think it’s amazing that they just go on and on and on with their arguing for hours at a time. So this is like a National Geographic thing for me – I’m trying to study and record them from a distance. It’s not creepy at all, I swear.

Anyway, the digital recorder didn’t pick up anything. So I went to Target and bought a PC microphone for $9.99. It’s one of the long ones, so it was able to reach all the way to the back of their plastic thing, pressed right up against it. But still, I just couldn’t hear anything. So I gave up on that, put the TV jack back together and went for a more low-tech approach – I put the microphone under the door. And it worked! The quality isn’t that great, but it works. They got home soon after I got back from Target and they ranted at each other for a full hour, which I recorded directly onto my PC. I’ll have to go through it later and pull out the good parts.

So yesterday evening, after an early dinner of Nutter Butters, I decided that I would go to bed very early. I spent the rest of the evening reading and talking to Jammie. By 9:30 or so, I was trying to sleep but the people next door were going nuts on each other. He was hitting her, she was biting him, they were both yelling a lot. If I weren’t so determined to get to sleep early, I could have had some classic stuff recorded. It just went on and on for hours. But I put an extra pillow over my head to muffle the sound and eventually went to sleep. I awoke at 5:30am and they were STILL YELLING. I’m not sure if it went on all night, but they were still pretty pissed. I finally got up for the day an hour later and they were completely silent.

This morning, my water was orange. Last night, Jammie made fun of me for a large portion of our conversation because I said, “I think there’s something wrong with the motel’s water.”

“Why?”

“Because when I turn on the faucet, there’s no water.”

I got lots of “OH, YOU THINK?” and references to Sherlock Holmes. When the water finally came back on, I told her it probably wasn’t safe to drink and I’d need to boil it or something. And she made fun of me more for that. Well, if I wasn’t so tired this morning, I would have thought to take a picture of the ORANGE WATER POURING OUT OF MY SHOWER to show her. I had the same thing in my sink. After running it for a few minutes, it finally turned clear again. Nice of the motel to warn us…

This morning I went to breakfast at the Original Breakfast restaurant. On my way out, I slammed the door as hard as possible, hoping to possibly jolt the neighbors awake. When I got back I did the same thing and I could hear the guy muttering about something. I went out for a Pepsi, slammed the door, came back inside, slammed the door, more muttering. I’m not pissed or anything, I just want them to wake up and start yelling at each other some more.

Nov. 14th, 2005|12:13 pm: I got home from Subway and the neighbors were at it – “fuckin’” was every other word. They made up, though, and now I hear laughing. A few minutes ago, she came near the door that separates our rooms, I think to pick out a shirt for him, and she says, “Honey, is flannel okay?” It’s funnier to hear it in her drunken-sounding country twangyish voice. As they left just a second ago, she was rambling about AA meetings. I peeked out my window to get a look at them and they were exactly as I pictured. Now they’re trying to start their truck. This should take awhile.

I hate how I can’t completely pull in any radio stations in this town. The few good ones I find have just enough static in them to make it unbearable to listen to. The one station that comes in really good happens to be country music. Which is the station they play at Subway. Cricket Country, it’s called. Maybe it’s time to finally activate my Sirius satellite-ready radio.

I thought I saw a black woman the other day. But as I got closer, I realized she was just Mexican. It was stupid to think that there’d be a black woman seen in this town. That just doesn’t happen. Okay, enough complaining about Albany for the day. I’ll resume tomorrow. I really do like this city, overall. I’m just nitpicking everything.

• How dare you bite me! This is him trying to get her out of bed in the morning.
  
• You’re a jerk! – You’re a bitch! In this one she insists that she’s not going and they call each other names.
  
• Goddamn crazy This is just them arguing back and forth for a bit.
  
• Try to bite me! He tells her he’s a bigger animal than she is.

There’s lots more audio than I’ve posted here. The problem is that the sound quality isn’t that great. I’m going to mess around with the sound files in Cooledit and see what I can do. And there’s sure to be lots more arguing tonight.

My next door motel neighbors get more and more bizarre every day. I wish I could hear more of the conversation. It sounds like they have a pretty exciting life. Today she was ranting about something that involved her saying “They’d have no proof! I would deny it!” every few sentences. The guy was yelling that he was ready to kill someone. I heard her complaining about being in protective custody at some point. Something about bus tickets. They’ve been there for a week now. They’ll leave to go somewhere, get in their truck and crank the starter for several minutes straight. Sometimes it will start up and they’ll rev the engine for awhile before it dies. Then they’ll go back to cranking the starter for another few minutes. It amazes me that the battery never gives out. The guy just left a few minutes ago. It took him a few minutes to get the truck going, but he finally left. When they can’t get it started they’ll come back into their room, extra pissed off for the night. Luckily they were fairly tame last night when the kids stayed over.

Yesterday morning, the guy’s cell phone kept ringing. I guess he doesn’t know how to stop it from ringing when he doesn’t want to answer it. It seems to ring fairly early each morning and it’ll ring the full 4 times before going to voice mail. Yesterday someone kept trying to call them. On the 3rd attempt the guy yelled, “FUCK you!” at his cell phone to try and stop it from ringing. It didn’t work.

Yesterday I went to the post offices (I have 2 of them I have to visit until my mail gets consolidated into just the cheap one), visited the Book Bin in downtown and bought 3 books. I got The Complete Novels of Mark Twain, volumes 1 and 2. They’re both copyrighted in the 1960′s and I think they’re fairly complete. Then I got the Encyclopedia of World History which is copyrighed in the 1940′s. I’m so overloaded on books that I need to read. I’m not even finished with the Mark Twain bio that I started over a month ago. I also went to the thrift store and looked around for awhile. I think I’ll be buying my dishes there once I get moved into my apartment. Lots of good stuff there for cheap. I went by a bike shop and I went to Wendy’s for lunch. I later found out that Colleen and the kids went through the drive-thru there while I was inside eating.

At the UPS Store, some guy in his mid-20′s stopped me and said, “You’re from Illinois??” (He noticed my license plate.) So I told him I was, what part I was from and he said he was from Effingham. The weird thing is, this guy had no teeth at all. No teeth. And he was in his 20′s. It seems like there’s a lot of this around here because he’s the 3rd young guy that I’ve seen in the past couple weeks with no teeth. At the parade, a couple of guys walked by me probably in their mid 20′s and the one that was talking was missing his 4 front teeth. Other than that he looked like a very normal person. I’m just wondering how someone loses so many teeth so early in life. My friend Shonna in Illinois lost all of hers in her late 20′s because of drugs. Meth, I think. Maybe meth is just really big around here. Or maybe I just happen to be running into the few residents with no teeth.

Around 1:30 I picked up the kids from Colleen’s. I really hoped the kids would be up for the idea of seeing Zathura at the theater. And they were. We stopped by the theater to check the times on it and we ended up getting there just as it started. The kids say it was better than Jumanji. I really liked it, but I think Jumanji was much better. Definitely not a disappointing movie, though. Went back to the motel for awhile and then went to Izzy’s for dinner. Emily picked Izzy’s and I had a little trouble finding it. It was a nice buffet restuarant, though. It’s weird taking directions for things from Emily. She told me where Burger King was this afternoon for lunch too. She knows the town better than me. I still take wrong turns and get a little lost occasionally.

Before the movie I took the kids by my new place. We walked around it and they looked in a few windows. Looks like they’re still painting it and renovating the bathroom. They seem happy enough with it. Today we went to Albertson’s for donuts. (Going out for 3 meals a day is getting expensive) Some old guy there knew Emily and gave her a hug. He claims he saw me at the parade with them which is BS since I wasn’t at the parade with them. Guess he works at the after-school thing though. Hung around the motel most of the day, played some Legos. I think I napped for a short time, read some of my book, watched Jumanji on TV. Took them back to Colleen’s at 2, after some lunch at Burger King.

It’s still rained every day and there’s plenty of more rain in the forecast. The end of this week, rain is being replaced by “areas of fog” in the forecast so maybe that’s a good thing. I wish there’d just be a few really nice days here before winter officially starts. It’s hard to enjoy exploring the town very much when it just rains all the time.

Nov. 11th, 2005|12:34 pm: Emily called this morning and told me she’s going to be in the Veterans Day parade. So I drove to downtown, parked, hung out in the crowd for over an hour waiting for the parade to start. They had some cool jets fly overhead before the parade – the kind that you can’t hear until after they’re almost gone, then suddenly it’s like thunder for a few seconds. By the time the parade started, it was getting pretty damn cold out. Somehow it didn’t rain at all, though. I barely managed to notice Emily and Payton – they were on the opposite side that I was standing. Luckily I recognized Emily’s bright-green jacket and ran over to them. Ran alongside the trailer they were in for about a block, talking to them and snapping a few pictures. Here’s some pictures of grown men in skirts, then a few of the kids…

Nov. 10th, 2005|12:10 pm: Ahhhhh, the sweet smell of marijuanna wafting under the connecting door to my motel room. And it’s a non-smoking room too! I’ve had the weirdest neighbors since I’ve been here. The current couple in there fight a lot. This morning the guy was yelling a lot and slamming things around. Then he went back to bed, I think. A couple of days ago, some new people arrived very late at night and they tried their best to open the door in between our 2 rooms while I was sleeping. It woke me up slightly, then I fell back asleep and had a dream that I was drilling a long drywall screw into the doorjam to secure it from opening. (I swear, I am not making that up.) The next day, they tried opening it again during the day. Last week, the people living there had the shortest sex ever – each night it was like Peggy and Al Bundy. Uh oh, guy next door sounds pissed again – his buzz must be wearing off.

The maids have not stepped into my room once since I’ve been here. That’s mostly because of the Do Not Disturb sign I’ve kept on the door most of my stay, but I’ve taken that off for most of this week and they still haven’t come in. Yesterday the maid knocked on my door and asked if I needed anything. I said I could use some more towels and she just handed them to me at the door and asked if there would be anything else. I said the trash was getting full and she handed me 2 trash liners. Last weekend, they handed Jammie a pile of bedsheets, expecting us to make our own beds. Not that I’m complaining – it’s pretty amusing and I don’t really like having anyone in my room while I’m not around. I never make my bed anyway. Last year when I stayed here, the maid was in here every day vaccuming the floors and doing the trash and towels. The new maids are either lazy or afraid of me.

This motel is, in my opinion, the 2nd seediest motel in Albany. Only the Marco Polo motel has got it beat in terms of seediness. But this one has a trailer park on one side of it and an interstate on the other. This is the same motel that had police shooting at some guy in the parking lot when I stayed here in 2003. I’ll kind of miss it, though. Only 1 week to go until I can move into my new place…

Nov. 9th, 2005|07:13 pm: Got an apartment today! They called me and let me know that I’m approved for the duplex that Jammie & I looked at on Monday. So yay! Went and put a deposit down on it and I guess I can move in next week after they’ve finished cleaning it up. That happened quick. Kept the kids last night. Since I have no fridge or microwave or even food, we went to McDonald’s for breakfast. The cashier noticed the kids’ Chicken Little toys and said, “Oh, that’s a good movie! My husband downloaded that last night and we watched it.” Another cashier said, “Isn’t that illegal?” She replied, “No, my husband does a thing where it’s legal!” Does such a legal thing exist? That lets you download movies that have only been in the theaters for a few days? I think her husband is fooling her…

At the school office, some little girl was trying to call home to her dad. The secretary said he probably would be at work so he’s not going to answer at home. I heard the number she gave and immediately put my useless phoneloserish knowledge of area phone exchanges to good use by saying, “That’s not a home phone. It’s a T-Mobile cell.” I was right, of course.

This evening I went on a quest to find a new battery for my Pocket PC since my old one died. I drove to Salem and tried Office Max, Office Depot, Circuit City, Target, Best Buy, Staples. Somewhere else, too, but I can’t remember. In Target, I was talking to Jammie on my cell and I said, “Oh yeah, kcochran said my old Target supervisor works here now. Maybe I’ll see her.” Less than a minute later I said, “Uh…I just walked past my old supervisor. Lemme call you back.” I was surprised that after almost 10 years, she still remembered me, Colleen and Emily. I showed her updated pictures of Emily since she hadn’t seen her since she was just a few months old. Is that normal – for someone who I just worked with for only a few months once in 1996 to still remember me? I suck at remembering people. Then again, I did remember her too.

At Circuit City, I was in the PDA isle and some customer goes up to an employee and says in a big manly voice, “I need someone who knows about PDAs to show them to me.” The kid opens up the case and starts showing them off, pointing out features. He gets to the part about it having WiFi…

MAN: Wifi is outdated. I don’t want that.
KID: If you need to get on the net, though, wifi is a good way…
MAN: Wifi is outdated. It’s all about broadband now.
KID: I’m just saying, a lot of coffee shops offer the wifi now, so…
MAN: I don’t want wifi on it. That’s outdated.

It seemed to keep going on like that as I walked away. So that was my day. I never found a Pocket PC battery. Or even that many Pocket PCs. Palm seemed to be the popular PDA around here. It was the same way in Idaho, when I was looking for one there. I’d like to just buy the same model of PDA that I have, swap the new battery for my dead one and then return it. It IS still under warranty, after all. I just have my PDA’s box and stuff in storage in Illinois so I can’t return/exchange it legitimately. But nobody sells my Pocket PC in this half of the United States! I guess I just have to find a spare battery on Ebay…

After Fry’s I drove to a hotel that Jammie reserved for us. She’s flying into Portland tonight. Dumped my stuff in the hotel room and drove to the airport. And now I’m on the Trimet towards downtown Portland for the 2600 meeting. Jammie doesn’t get here for another 3 hours so I guess I’ll get about 2 hours of 2600 in before going back to the airport.

At 7pm we met Kcochran and Chad at Red Robin for dinner. I’ve known Kcochran online since about 1997 and this is the first time we met in person. Here’s a picture of all of us in front of the…uh…Burger of Liberty, then a picture of me and Jammie being nausiating in our matching Back to the Future t-shirts. As we entered the restaurant, some teen girl asked to see my shirt, apparently thinking it was the coolest shirt ever. She was even more impressed when Jammie showed hers off.

The other day I created some postcards on the computer from a picture me and the kids took together on Thursday. Jammie and I took them to Walgreens tonight and printed out 30 of them. I’m going to send them to everyone I know in Illinois to let them know that I made it to Oregon alive. Here’s the postcard…

After awhile of walking around the mall, I notice them walking into a store. So I run up and grab Payton from behind, pick him up and say hi. I think it took him a few seconds to realize who I was. Jammie stood there, I think horrified, thinking I was harassing random kids in the mall before she realized who they were.

So we ended up taking the kids then, and went to see Chicken Little at the movie theater. By the time we left there, we decided against Pizza King since we were all pretty full. Went back to the hotel, I got a birthday surprise of Hostess cupcakes with candles in them, then we played Legos for an hour before driving the kids back to Colleen’s.

We went for a walk around the neighborhood, then to eat at Abby’s pizza. Later in the evening, we went to see Shopgirl at the theater. I thought the 9th Street Cinema was in Albany but it ended up being in Corvallis which is 10 miles away. So we drove there quickly, hoping to not miss too much of it. We got there 30 minutes late (we were already cutting it really close when we thought the theater was in Albany) and the girl at the theater let’s us in for free since she’s already counted all her money. So that was nice! We only missed maybe 10 minutes since there were a lot of previews.

Nov. 3rd, 2005|01:02 pm: This week’s weather forecast for the greater Albany area…

Today: Rain…windy.
Tonight: Showers
Friday: Rain
Friday night: Showers likely
Saturday: Rain
Sunday: Rain likely
Monday: chance of rain
Tuesday: chance of showers
Wednesday: chance of showers

Isn’t Oregon wonderful!? The fucked up thing about rain here is that there’s never any lightning or thunder. It just rains all the time. I remember the last time I lived here, really missing the thunder and lightning. Stupid northwest. I plan to vacation often. Don’t know what me and the kids are gonna do this evening since anything outdoors isn’t too possible.

And what’s the difference between showers and rain in that forecast??? This is like that partly sunny/partly cloudy thing. I think their weather program just picks the words at random.

Nov. 3rd, 2005|10:50 am: Worked all day, then picked up the kids from school. We went to my motel and hung out for a few minutes. Emily asked which room I was in when we pulled up and I told her. Then she tells me which room number I was in over Spring Break and which room I was in when I got them for Christmas. They argued where to eat for awhile and finally decided on Arby’s. I wasn’t sure where it was so we drove around town for awhile until we spotted it. Then we went by Target to see if the new Xbox 360 was out yet so we could try the demos. It wasn’t. Went to the mall for awhile and played in Radio Shack and then a video game store. Back to the motel for 30 minutes or so to watch The Simpsons and do homework. Took them to their grandma’s house at 6:30pm. Overall, it was a very successful first official day with my kids.

While I was at the mall, I spotted some Verizon cell phones and decided to go back and look at them after I dropped the kids off. I ended up getting a new cell phone with Verizon since the T-Mobile coverage in Albany is completely unbearable. Only problem is that this new phone doesn’t offer bluetooth internet to my laptop computer, even though the sales guy assured me that it would work. I could take it back, but I really need Verizon in this town. Plus Verizon works much better in Idaho. I might just keep the internet plan on my T-Mobile phone. Sucks, though, because now I can’t sell my old T-Mobile phone on Ebay.