Summer with the kids
Sunday, June 19th, 2005: Made it to the plane on time. Had a layover in Phoenix for a couple hours. Got home in the evening. I need groceries. Here’s some pictures from the trip – we turned some cute yapping dogs at an airport gift shop into killer dogs by sticking other animals into their mouths. The rest are just random hotel and airport pictures. Payton chopped off our heads in the picture of me and Emily.
Payton’s best quote during the flight: MAYDAY! MAYDAY! WE’RE GOING DOWN! I told him to shut up before the air marshals tackled us.
Monday, June 20th, 2005: Saw Sharkboy & Lavagirl with the kids tonight. And wow, it really sucks! I normally like kids movies and I loved the Spy Kids (same director/writer) trilogy. But this was just horrible. I didn’t even like it a little. What a stupid movie. Plus I can’t view 3-D images because of my screwed up eyesight so I didn’t even get to enjoy that part of it. The popcorn sure was good, though! Had some Sonic shakes afterwards, watched a little Eerie, Indiana and went to bed.
Tuesday, June 21st, 2005: Worked, went to city hall to get inspection stuff for the new renter, played videogames with the kids, went to my parents for a few hours. Came home and watched some Eerie, Indiana. They’re both really loving that show.
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2005: Saw Herbie at the theater. It was good, in a cheesy Disney family comedy sort of way. Especially compared to Sharkboy and Lavagirl.
Thursday, June 24th, 2005: My bike has been stolen! Somebody has taken it off the deck at some point this week. It’s not a big loss, really. I bought it at Wal-Mart about 5 years ago for under $100 and I’ve been thinking about replacing it soon. It just sucks that it happened. In my 8 years of living here, I think this is the first thing that’s been stolen from my property. I never lock anything up. I’ll have to drive around the roads behind my house tomorrow and see if it was dumped in the woods – the bike’s front wheel was a little messed up and they wouldn’t have gotten very far trying to ride it away. I went out to repair it this evening when I noticed it missing. Anyway, grrr! That’s my half hearted attempt to be pissed off about it.
Today the kids and I had lunch at Subway, then walked to the bank and post office in the mid-90’s heat. Late this evening we drove to downtown St. Louis to pick up El Jefe at the train station. And he didn’t show up! His train arrived but he wasn’t on it. I officially don’t like El Jefe now. You suck, El Jefe. I don’t know why he wasn’t there but I guess it was too much effort to call and let me know that he wasn’t going to show up. I haven’t felt this stood up since the murd0c airport incident. Me and the kids arrived back home from St. Louis around midnight, feeling crushed and defeated.
Friday, June 25th, 2005: Today around 9am El Jefe called from the Greyhound station and I went to pick him up. I guess his train was delayed by 4 or 5 hours yesterday so he missed his connecting train. Apok0lyps was supposed to contact me to let me know not to show up last night, but he didn’t. I really like hating Apok instead of El Jefe. El Jefe answered a ringing pay phone at the Greyhound station as I arrived and it was someone thinking they had a doctor’s office, calling to confirm an appointment. He was nice enough to move their appointment up a few days ahead of schedule. When we get together, weird phone stuff just happens. We don’t even have to try anymore.
This afternoon I took the kids to the pool. Stayed until closing time and went home. Across the street from the pool is my favorite old 7-Eleven building which I snapped a picture of here.
Monday, June 27th, 2005: Worked most of the day. Took the kids (plus Casey) to Wendy’s for lunch. Didn’t really do much over the weekend. I remember spending a couple hours in a McDonald’s at some point, reading my book – the Steve Jobs biography. We were going to go swimming but decided against it since rain was in the forecast. We visited my ex-babysitter, Shirley, on Saturday. She always calls me to take her to Wal-Mart. This time she wasn’t feeling up to going out but wanted me to go there and pick up a paper shredder for her. So that was my weekend – picking up paper shredders for old people and hanging out at McDonald’s.
Oh yeah, I bumped into an old friend yesterday who I hadn’t seen since about 1991. I have old “friends” from my teen years approach me every once in awhile and I rarely remember them or even care to. But this one was nice – we caught up with each other for the minute walk to our cars. Her name was Staci and I used to work with her at Eastgate. My parents, for whatever reason, decided to name their new puppy after her back in 1990. I refrained from blurting out that the dog she was named after died recently.
Wednesday, June 29th, 2005: Hung out at the swiming pool until closing time. Casey came with us. I remembered to bring a book this time, but I spent all but my last hour in the water. Some guy at the pool asks me, “Hey, are you Brad Carter?” I cautiously agreed that I was Brad. He claims he went to high school with me, but his name didn’t sound at all familiar to me. He named off all these people I used to know. Apparently we never said a word to each other but he knew who I was. He said, in quite an apologetic fashion, that it took him about 32 years to realize he didn’t need to be an asshole to everyone. So maybe he used to beat the shit out of me and I’ve just repressed the memories! It was an odd encounter, though. I guess just odd because I couldn’t place his name at all. Even though I suck at remembering faces, I can recognize most names from my past.
Yesterday, or maybe it was the day before that, I cleaned the hell out of my kitchen. And I promised Jammie that I would create a journal entry that made my cleaning adventure sound like the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. But I’m sorry, Jammie, it’s just not in me. I made a couple of half-hearted attempts in this paragraph, but I just can’t do it. It’s a nice change, though. In the past year I’ve pretty much abandoned most of my house. The kitchen was covered in dust, grime, cobwebs, etc. I had the kids’ rooms completely closed off and the air ducts sealed up. The entire house, while not exactly messy, has just been collecting dust for a year. Except for my room, which I rarely left. When I’d step out of my room in the winter, I’d be greeted with 50 degree drafts. Anyway, the kitchen is all sparkly now. And the rest of the house is slowly getting there again.
Thursday, June 30th, 2005: I mowed the lawn today and it’s a THURSDAY! Isn’t that nuts?? Who mows their lawn on a THURSDAY?? I’ve been consistantly mowing my lawn only on Saturdays and Sundays for 8 years now. And I didn’t even have a valid reason for doing it. I just did it, completely out of the blue! Sometimes I think I’m just insane! It was overdue for a mowing but I could have just waited a couple of days and done it on Saturday like a normal person, but not this crazy man. I got out of the mower and spent a complete hour doing the entire lawn. I haven’t felt this crazy since I mowed the lawn on a Monday back in 1998. My neighbors probably all think I’ve lost my mind.
Friday, July 1st, 2005: Went nowhere today. Well, except to Little Caesars for some pizza. And a walk around the block with Payton. And I won’t get into the insanity of weed wacking my sidewalks on a Friday. Yesterday I registered brad-carter.com and that’s where my homepage is now located, in case you haven’t noticed. I’m so annoyed by that hyphen! Damn you, Brad Carter from St. Louis.
Saturday, July 2nd, 2005: Have a birthday party today for one of Emily’s friends. Went to Target to buy a present, then across the river to buy some fireworks. Went to the party around 5pm and stayed until about 8pm. Lit off a few small fireworks when we got home – just snakes and smoke bombs.
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| Fireworks! | Back of my house – I should probably chop these down but they look so cool | Emily playing touch football | Emily comes in 2nd in a 3-legged race |
Sunday, July 3rd, 2005: Watched the fireworks at the Alton bridge from the police station. After that we went home and shot off a bunch of our own. I didn’t get any pictures so to compensate, here is a picture of me eating some Gerber baby food:
Payton was giving me all kinds of shit about this. A TV commercial came on for Gerber life insurance (I think it was Gerber anyway) and he’s like, “Everyone who eats baby food, watch this commercial!” and turned his head away. “Oh, looks like you eat baby food, dad!” Then at the end it said you could get $50,000 in coverage and he tells me, “Hey, you could get all that money…since you eat baby food!”
Tuesday, June 14th, 2005: I was driving around today, saw this sign in East Alton and took a picture of it. Strikes me as kind of funny, a proof reading business who apparently hired Jed Clampett to design their sign. I posted the picture on 
Later that evening… Okay, so I went to it. About a month ago, this guy orders some Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy buttons from me on Ebay. They were basic HHGTTG book/movie-related buttons. Along with his payment for the buttons, he sent me a flyer for a “Galactic Picnic” along with a full page hand written letter telling me about himself, the picnic and other random things. I’m surprised to see that this Galactic Picnic is located in Carbondale, Illinois which is just a couple hours south of me. Just to be a hoopy frood, I whipped up a design for the Carbondale picnic (pictured to the left), pressed about 20 buttons and included those with his order, free of charge. I also gave him an extra 20 or so HHGTTG buttons that he ordered. I figured it was for a nice, nonprofit cause so why not.
Every time a random person would walk by, he would invite them to our picnic but nobody accepted the offer while I was there. He had several backpacks full of books and papers with him and he would occasionally dig through one of them to show me things. I noticed that most of his printouts were done on a dot matrix printer. He showed me a Douglas Adams eulogy and I started reading it. Then he grabbed it from me before I got very far and said he’d read it for me. So he gets up and puts on a BATHROBE, stands in front of me and reads the entire thing with all kinds of enthusiasm and hand gestures and stuff.
