January 2006

January 31, 2006
Tuesday:

I may have had the weirdest dream of my life last night. Even weirder, I think my eyes opened a few seconds before I woke up. So, the dream was continuing after my eyes were open, or at least that’s what it felt like. The dream’s plot was so deeply disturbing, yet at the same time so thought provoking. I woke up at 3 o’clock and silently thought about it till almost 5. After the first hour awake, I knew I needed to get back to sleep, but the thinking continued and led to the realization that the dream had striking similarities to a movie I watched over two years ago, called Solaris.
If you want to know what the dream was like, then first watch the movie. After that, imagine suddenly finding yourself in an old house that you know you can’t leave, but don’t know exactly why. Only one other person is present, a strange beautiful dark-haired woman that somehow seems to be keeping you from leaving. You’re both scared of her and attracted to her at the same time. The sky outside is always dark and she tells you it’s only light one day per year here. You slowly begin to act more kindly towards her and she seems to be feeling the same way. At first it was just to gain her trust and try to get information, but seeing her become happy suddenly changes everything. You’re almost positive you’re not on Earth anymore and she’s probably not human, but things are now quickly becoming comfortable. You’ve been here for weeks, maybe months, and suddenly realize that neither you nor the woman has ever had a bite to eat or a drop to drink. You’ve never even taken a shower or cleaned the house, but everything’s somehow perfectly clean. You decide to stay……… then you wake up.
Staying awake those two hours after the dream resulted in my oversleeping for finance class. I got up just as it was starting, so decided not to go at all. I had some toast and leftover cream of mushroom soup for breakfast, then went to Chinese class at noon.
After that, it was off to work, where I stayed till 5:30, entering about 100 more books into the database, including a couple gay romance novels. Carl got himself, Kelly and I food from Wendy’s at 5 o’clock. I was going to go shopping and eat at home, but Nick and Carl wanted to play racquetball at 6 o’clock.
I left the store at 5:30, then rode my bike to the Rec Center at 6. Nic was planning on picking me up, but was running late. I met Carl at the information desk and got him a guest pass before Nic arrived.
We had court #13 reserved for 6 o’clock, but a group of 4 guys was playing on it and wouldn’t leave. They saw Nic, Carl and I standing outside the glass with racquets in our hands, and they saw me point at the clock, but they just ignored us. I gave them 5 minutes to end their game, but they didn’t, so I opened the door and they all then silently walked out with mad looks on their faces.
Before today, I think I lost every game I played against Nic and Carl, but things have changed now. I did loose the first game, but won the last two. We switched courts for the last game because reservations are only good for one hour and some other people were waiting to use our court. By the last game, Nic’s thumb was hurt and Carl was really tired. They are both serious players and sometimes throw their racquets and yell when they miss balls, making winning all the more fun.
Back at the apartment, I talked to Elisa and her boyfriend Huan for a few minutes, who were in the laundromat when I went through the office building to check my mail. Elisa was studying for tomorrow’s Chinese test, and that’s what I did after getting back to my room. A student in class today gave me blank CD’s to burn the Chinese language learning software I downloaded a few weeks ago, so I let my computer work on that while I studied. The end.

January 30, 2006
Monday:

No class today until 1 o’clock. I downloaded a program for printing business cards this morning, then used it with the thick paper I bought at Wal-Mart yesterday. I printed two versions of the card; one for professional use and one for other occasions. The difference is that the profession version has no reference to this website. I went to the library before class to cut the cards with a table-top paper cutter.
I spent a few minutes talking to my business communication teacher while we waited outside the classroom for another class to get out. He must be a lot older than he looks, because he mentioned children that were 27 and 30 years old. He lives three hours to the north, but stays at an apartment in Pinckneyville during the week, which results in his Monday mornings starting at 4AM. He seems like a great guy, but I unfortunately can’t say the same for his class. Although, I would probably bet money that nobody could make business communications interesting.
I came home for lunch, having a hot dog sandwich and cream of mushroom soup for lunch, then returned to school at 3 o’clock for marketing class. The teacher said that it’s somehow funny when a factory with thick black smoke pouring out of its stacks has the name of the company boldly displayed on the building, or better yet, on the smoke-stacks themselves. We continued to talk about these kinds of bad publicity, so I mentioned the story about Christmas decorations manufactured by Chinese political prisoners and sold in the US. (Some Chinese political prisoners are Christians who operated unauthorized churches. The churches are sometimes bulldozed after the arrests.)
Just after class, Nic took me to Murphysboro so I could get some video tapes out of storage, which I need to make a DVD for Billy’s mom. My dad and Clara were still on their way back from Florida, so the gate was locked when we arrived. I thought I could remember the combination, but couldn’t, so we just had to walk up to the house.
I had a few tapes in the house and a bunch more in a big red plastic box in my storage building, all of which we carried back to the car. Nic was wearing short sleeves even though it was about 40 degrees outside. Janie the dog hadn’t seen any humans for several days, so she was frantically carrying around her shoe hoping someone would throw it.
Nic and I were planning on playing racquetball once arriving back in Carbondale, but the Rec Center parking lot was so full that we knew the chances of finding an empty playing room were almost zero, so we decided to wait till tomorrow.
Back at home, I cooked myself a pizza, then went through all the tapes trying to find any with potential Billy footage. Out of about 100, I found 10 that were recorded in the timeframe we hung out. Some are clearly labeled with events where I know Billy was present, but others just list dates, so it will take a while to go through everything.
Preparing to make this DVD is leading to many computer upgrades that I have been meaning to make for a long time. I have installed a new version of my video editing program, and ordered a 200GB hard drive and 512MB more memory. Before now, I was unable to make a quality video longer than just a few minutes, but will soon be able to edit even a full-length movie. I bought the new hardware tonight from Ebay, using the Buy-it-Now option instead of going through the auction process. I tried to get a hard drive by auction, but was always getting outbid at the last second. I wasn’t really sure what kind of memory to buy, so I had to take the cover off the computer to look inside. There was so much dust in there that I almost started coughing.
The hard drive was about $100 and the memory was about $50, which will seem outrageously expensive when anyone reads this even two years from now.

January 29, 2006
Sunday:

(I learned this afternoon that my friend Billy Coe died on January 19th. Johanna sent a text message this afternoon asking if I had seen the posting on my message board.
Billy had been in a wheelchair since 1999 due to an accident in which he fell 100 feet from a rope swing. We met in the summer of 2003 at a party behind the hospital in Carbondale, which was the area of town where I lived at that time. After that, he and his friends, Mark, Brook, Pink and Andre came to several parties at my house there, which I shared with Mike and Jeff.
Coincidentally in 2004, I moved into an apartment just across the street from his, which was an assisted living home with a 24-hour staff. Billy had no brain injuries, but required much care because he was paralyzed from the chest down. His arms worked, but his hands did not, which severely restricted what he was capable of doing on his own.
We spent most of our time together during that spring and summer of 2004, usually hanging out with his group of friends at my apartment or his. We occupied ourselves with things like partying, surfing the Internet and playing with gas powered radio controlled cars, which was his main hobby.
Billy was soft-spoken, kind-hearted and one of the most loyal friends a person could have. He was unfortunately tortured by his confinement to the chair, which had happened in 1999, before even his 20th birthday.
I thought he was going to cry the day I moved out of that apartment to leave for my student exchange in China. He showed up at my door with a bag of gifts from K’s Merchandise, which he had spent about $50 on despite his very small monthly stipend. In the bag was a luggage rack, personal organizer and stop-light piggy bank. I wished he would go get his $50 back, but knew this was an act that made him feel better about my leaving. The stoplight sits in my apartment today and I’ll now always keep it on display.
The message from his mother contained a phone number and request to contact her, so I called tonight at 8 o’clock. We talked for an hour, about the incidents that led to Billy’s death, his past, his friends and experiences we had with him. She moved to be with him in Augusta, Georgia 7 months ago, and they had grown closer than ever during that time, working out all their many past issues together. She said that she would have never been able to contact me had she not made her peace with him during that time. I’m glad Billy had the mother he deserved.)
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My day started out very normally, eating a leftover chicken breast sandwich and a few bites of Ramen noodles. I don’t think I can eat any more Ramen for years, thanks to Johanna’s obsession with it, which led to me eating tons also.
I left the apartment at 11:30, planning on going to Wal-Mart to buy a financial calculator for finance class, then go to the library to work on a marketing assignment. But, stepping outside, I saw that an apartment picnic was going on by the courtyard. It was so nice out that I couldn’t pass up stopping for at least a few minutes. Walking up, I almost crushed a tiny little furball puppy that somehow got under my feet. I only realized it when the dog pushed on my leg, fighting from being pushed on a 4-foot ledge onto concrete. This dog was so small and furry that it really looked just like a hairy brown ball.
I sat and talked to Dawn and Artellio(sp) while having a second lunch of cheesecake, orange juice and biscuits with gravy. Dawn may be moving to Taiwan next fall to work on her master’s degree there. Artellio is an Argentinean-American that may very well be in his 70’s. He’s a very sophisticated man and seems out of place living here. He has been a professor at SIU and owned his own airplanes before, but whatever, he seems cool. Dawn seemed to think that an ex-wife took all his money, but didn’t know for sure.
She offered to give me a ride to Wal-Mart when she heard that was where I was headed, because she needed to get a few things too. She bought a dish drainer, bleach and nails, while I just got card stock(extra thick) printing paper. I didn’t buy the financial calculator I had come for because they were $30.
Back at home is when I got the news about Billy. I wasn’t sure if his other friends here had been notified, so I went out in search of them with his mother’s letter in hand. My first stop was Heartland Apartments, his last home in Carbondale. I went to the door to look up Brook’s number on the call box, but Pink just happened to by passing through the hallway and he let me in.
Everyone had already heard about Billy a few days ago. I talked with Pink for a few minutes before going up to Brook’s apartment. I had seen Pink on the street a few months ago, but hadn’t seen Brook since before I went to China. I knocked on the door and she asked who was there, then instantly recognized my voice and seemed really glad to see me. A friendly caretaker was in the apartment combing her hair. I sat at the table and talked to them for about 20 minutes, and the caretaker also seemed to know Billy.
Brook had been in a manual wheelchair the last time I saw her, because a semi-trailer ran over top of her and her automatic chair when she was out on an evening cigarette run in the late spring of 2004. The chair had somehow kept her from getting crushed, but it had been destroyed and her face had been slid across the concrete under its weight. She had been in the manual chair for months afterwards due to insurance company red-tape. That was a tough time for her because she doesn’t have enough use in her hands to turn the wheels of a manual chair.
My next stop was to visit Mark, who still lives above Mary Lou’s café. He didn’t answer the doorbell, but then I saw him walking down the sidewalk back towards home. We went into the apartment and then sat there talking for over an hour. Billy’s mother had also already called him with the news a few days ago.
Next, I headed to Morris Library to work on that marketing assignment, which was to find an article in a recent periodical dealing with geography issues in international business. The periodicals are currently all located in the basement due to the library expansion product. The library basement is like another dimension right now, as all the ceiling tiles and carpet are removed and big square holes have been knocked in some walls. Adding to the effect, almost nobody was present, except for a couple beautiful grinning blonde girls wearing tie-dyed skirts, who were lurking around in the narrow, dark isles of books. Kind of like a combination between Heaven and Hell……beautiful girls, but lots of business periodicals.
I found an article in Business Week about the growth of Wi-Fi, which can be considered a geography issue because it can allow Internet access in areas where land-based infrastructure may not be present. I copied the pages then returned home and read them.
I ate leftover chicken breast and peas after that, then wrote my summary of the article. I spent the next hour talking with Billy’s mom.

January 28, 2005 s
Saturday:

Slept in late today because I didn’t go to bed till after 4AM last night. Talked to Johanna for a little while, then had a couple hot dogs for lunch. I keep discovering more things moved around by the photographers in the apartment yesterday, including all the cables removed on my stereo. I thought they had broken it, but eventually figured out that they had just pushed a bunch of buttons that made it silent.
Went back to bed from 2 o’clock till 3, then went outside into yet another 60 degree(cloudy) day. I rode my bike to Great Clips and had a little Asian-American girl cut my hair. I told her about the episode of Fear Factor where the woman had to cut off all her hair. She replied that it wouldn’t be worth the $50,000. It is still surprising to me that regular middle class girls won’t cut all their hair off for that kind of money.
Back at the apartment, I studied Chinese and finance. For Chinese, I had to write a paragraph about my opinions on buying expensive name brand clothing. I basically said that thrift stores are more fun because you meet a lot of weird people and see a lot of strange cheap clothes.
It started raining in the late afternoon and continued all evening, with strong wind gusts. I made myself chicken breasts and peas for dinner, and ate while watching a documentary about the Russian space program. They killed a lot of cosmonauts because of unsafe practices. One ship was too full of stuff, so they lightened the load by removing the space suits, then the ship depressurized on reentry and killed all the crew. And, did you know that the Russians developed their own space shuttle fleet. The ships all have the same name, Buran, and look just like the American shuttles, leading some people to believe that the Russians stole US blueprints. Only one Buran was ever flown because they are too expensive for the cash-strapped Russian government to operate. Typing the word ‘Buran’ into Google led to the article link above, where one of the ships is up for auction; starting price $6 million. I was thinking that somebody could buy it and take tourists into space, but each US shuttle launch costs about $450 million. People are currently only paying $10-$20 million for space rides, so you would have to stuff 20-40 people into the ship just to break even.
Later in the evening, I watched parts of a Chinese movie that I downloaded a couple weeks ago. It has Chinese subtitles to go with the words, which really helps me figure some things out, but I have a long, long, long, way to go before I could ever claim to be fluent. This was probably a bad movie to learn with, as the first few minutes of it went from people dancing in a castle to giant monsters crawling out of the ground. I need something simple, like the Chinese version of ‘Forrest Gump’.
At 10 o’clock, I watched the movie ‘It Could Happen to You’(Nicolas Cage), where a cop promises to tip a waitress half his lottery winnings if he wins, because he doesn’t have any cash at the time to give her. He wins, of course.

January 27, 2006
Friday:

I studied Chinese and talked to Johanna before going to school today. I went to the Student Center before class to return the two textbooks I had purchased for $225 last week, which means the book strike can go on another semester. I already purchased a marketing book online for half price, and will buy a finance book from a student in Chinese class for $20.
In Chinese today, the assistant teacher was back for the first time this semester. Her and I were the first ones in the classroom, and we talked about our breaks. She revealed that she has an American boyfriend, which would explain her consistent weight gain over the past 6 months.
I had spent a lot of time preparing for class today because I was expecting the professor to teach. The assistant doesn’t direct many questions at individual students, so I don’t feel as pressured to prepare for her classes. Today was one of the only days ever that I would have rather seen the professor. (but the assistant is great, really)
Next, I watched a video in business communication class, in which two bad actors portrayed an employee and boss. The employee took personal phone calls during a meeting with the boss and was extremely arrogant, then became the perfect employee after loosing a client account because he didn’t take the bosses advice. Sound boring? Well, it was much more exciting than listening to the teacher.
I went to work right after class, and it was another perfect(but windy) 55 degree January afternoon at that time. I entered books into the computer database from 2 until 5:30, having to ask at least a dozen questions along the way. After 3 days, I’m getting much more proficient at this job now, and have learned how to use the number pad on the keyboard without looking at it.
On the way home, I bought toothpaste from Walgreens and dinner from Wendy’s. I wanted to eat right away because Nic, Carl and I were planning on playing racquetball at 7 o’clock, and I didn’t want to do that on a full stomach.
Back at my apartment, all my stuff was moved around! I had given Tammy permission to allow photographers inside today, and they really left a mess. All the decorations sitting in the living room were moved onto the table, all the dishes that had been drying were under the sink, the TV was pushed back in the corner, a few items I had never seen before were laying on the stools, lamps were moved from the bedroom into the kitchen, a picture of Johanna was taken off the wall, and my computer printer was moved, among other things. Oh, and even my bed was moved! These people that run the apartment complex are crazy, and this is the most extreme of many things to make me think that.
Opening my email, I found a message from Tammy(property manager) apologizing for the incident. Apparently, the East Coast owners of this building had sent the photographers, and Tammy had let them in with the understanding that they would be respectful. It’s not like Tammy to be very apologetic, so I’m sure she was telling the truth. But, if I didn’t know her, I would claim property worth at least a month’s rent had been broken.
Nic came to pick me up just before 7 o’clock, then we met Carl at the Rec Center for racquetball. Nic and I played a game first, which he won 8-15, then we all played in three 3-person games. My scores in the 3-person games were pathetic, as my best was only 7 points. Nic won once and Carl won twice.
Back at home, I kept finding more things out of place. An empty tube of toothpaste had been taken out of the trash can and reformed so it could be placed back on the sink, for a picture I guess. In the living room, all the appliances were unplugged and even the stereo speaker wires were disconnected. Fixing this was no small task, as the microwave, toaster, tv, Nintendo and VCR had all been plugged into the same place…….I was raped today.
Nic came over to pick me up again at 10 o’clock, then we went to Josh B’s 28th birthday party. It was at a house near Makanda, where either Josh or his girlfriend lived, not sure.
At the house was a guy and girl I didn’t know and Josh, Rufus and Kevin C. Two other guys came for a few minutes and left. But like I said, didn’t really know anybody except for a couple people.
There was a keg in the front yard. There were at least two little cats running around in the house. Me and Nic decided to leave after an hour because it looked like everybody was about to leave. They all got their second winds, but we still left because they probably weren’t going to last long.
Next, Nic talked me into playing poker with some people he knew. On the way there, he said, “These guys aren’t that good, just don’t bluff a lot or they’ll clear you out”, or something like that. Well, it turns out that Nic was just prepping me, as he bluffed everyone for 5 or 6 hands and made himself about 20 buck in a matter of minutes. But, he ended up getting what he deserved and loosing it all.
Maybe he wasn’t prepping me and maybe he didn’t deserve it, but I don’t feel bad about saying that because he(and his dad) beat me at racquetball tonight.
By the way, it seems like mine and my friend’s dads always want to challenge us at racquetball. Well, bring it on.
I walked home after loosing all my poker money to one of the guys at the house. I matched his bet with my whole pot and lost it all. We both had two cards and hadn’t seen any of the five that would be flipped. I had an ace and a two and lost everything.

January 26, 2006
Thursday:

Had my first quiz in finance class today. I couldn’t at first remember anything, then it all came to me after staring at the paper for a few moments. The teacher told us the answers after the quizzes were handed in. I got one answer wrong, but I’ll get most of the credit because it was because of a small math error.
Just after the quiz, I though I saw Holly(Jared’s girlfriend, or something) sitting in the front row. I went in for a closer look after the class, and sure enough, it was Holly. Walking out of the building, we talked for a couple minutes about the bachelor party and Johanna. She predicts that I am going to get married.
I didn’t eat anything during my one-hour break because my wallet was left at the apartment. After Chinese class, I was going return the two textbooks I purchased last week, but got to the bookstore and realized that I couldn’t do that without the debit card that had been used to purchase them, which was in my wallet.
At work, Carl had set aside 4 boxes of books for me to enter into the computer, which took about 4 hours. The computer automatically retrieves current prices off the Internet. Most books come up at $5 or just a bit more, but one small unassuming one was $250. I showed it to Carl and Kelly, who entered it into the system a bit differently than me and received a price of $5. Carl said that this was because of some imperfections in the system, which probably led it to believe that this book was some kind of special edition or signed copy.
The cat, Casper, sat in my lap for a while as I sat at the computer. After all the books were entered in, I was asked to remove a shelf from both the audio book racks, which is about the 4th time I’ve moved these items around. I left the bookstore at 5:30, stopping at Walgreen’s to buy some toothpaste, but realizing my wallet was at home before entering the store.
Back at the apartment, there was a note on my door from Tammy(property manager), that just read, “Garth, I need a favor. Please call me, Tammy”. Being curious, I called right away. She asked for permission to take pictures of my apartment tomorrow, which I guess will be used in some advertisements or something. She picked mine because she likes the suit of armor.
For dinner, I had leftover tuna and pasta for the third night in a row. I fell asleep from 7 till 8, then got up and studied Chinese for an hour and a half. After that, I picked up the apartment to make it picture-worthy, then cooked a frozen pizza. Tony’s brand is 99 cents everyday at Save-a-lot, and they’re great.
Josh called at 11 o’clock to invite me out to the Hanger. I initially said no, then said yes. He arranged to meet outside in ten minutes, but still wasn’t here after 20, so I went back in and called again. He then said two minutes, but still hadn’t showed up after another ten, so I decided to just call and cancel because I was getting tired.
Standing outside, I had noticed that green grass is starting to grow in front of the office building. Construction workers put grass seed on an area they disturbed a few weeks ago, which has since started growing. According to Jim Rasor(local weatherman), the past 36 days have seen above normal temperatures.
In other news, there was a bad accident on the interstate in Marion last night, which killed five people, including three little girls. Coincidentally, there were two other similar accidents within a few hours of each other in other parts of the country. All the accidents were caused by a semi-truck and killed 6 or 7 people. Things do happen in 3’s sometimes.

January 25, 2006
Wednesday:

Getting ready for school this morning, I realized a package of sliced cheese had set in my backpack overnight, which I had forgotten to place in the fridge after shopping last night. The packaging only says “refrigerate after purchase”, so that probably means it can stand some warmth. Hopefully so, because it’s going to be eaten.
I had adventure dreams all night, then my arms both suspiciously hurt this morning, especially the right one, which progressively got worse during the day. Maybe the real reason for the pain was stocking books on a high shelf yesterday, but that just didn’t seem very strenuous at the time.
Wednesday is my longest school day this semester, with 4 classes back-to-back. After Chinese, comes two hours of my most boring class, business communication. The first hour is the regular lecture, then the next hour is a lab session where we talk about different writing assignments that are due each week. The classroom is right next door to the room where the lab is held, which is identical, so I don’t know why we can’t just trade rooms with the class that comes in after us.
In marketing class, a small assignment was due that I didn’t know about, so I stayed to ask the teacher for permission to hand it in later. There were several other students speaking with him before me, and listening to the conversations dramatically changed my perception of him. He had seemed like a great guy during the class lectures, but is unnecessarily sarcastic and subtly rude when answering students individual questions. He did the same with me when I questioned his unclear answer to my question. He needed to assign me into one of four groups, A, B, C or D to do the assignment, and he first said D then mumbled a little bit and changed it to a C, I thought. I asked him again to be sure, and he said D this time, so I told him I thought he had said C last time. I guess the letter of my group didn’t really matter at all, because his sarcastic response was, “What group do you want to be in?”. I picked C.
Back at the apartment, Johanna and I chatted for about an hour. We had also talked for a few moments this morning. I hope she gets a job soon because she’s sounding really bored.
Next, I did a load of laundry and ate leftover tuna and pasta for dinner, then finished this week’s business communication assignment. All work in that class is submitted over the Internet and must be turned in before 11PM on the day it’s due.
There is a quiz in finance class tomorrow morning, but the material is too boring to study. Seriously, I just find myself staring at the paper and not thinking about anything. That happens with most subjects, but not Chinese, which is probably the main reason I have stuck with it though all its difficulties. Sure, it is sometimes hard to sit down and start studying in the first place, but then it’s no problem after that.

January 24, 2006
Tuesday:

Johanna and I talked for just a few minutes before my 9:30 finance class this morning.
I thought the teacher looked a little manly last week, but she’s actually a lot more extreme than that. She is tall with a muscular body shape, stern personality, hard face, deep voice, blue jeans pulled high with a big belt and thick Car-Hart style shirts that she tucks in. She probably has a pretty, petite, young girlfriend at home(I didn’t notice any wedding ring).
A couple obnoxious black girls have sat in the middle of the classroom last Thursday and today. The teacher speaks very fast and the girls sigh loudly every time they miss something, which happens to be very often. They will sometimes yell “Excuse Me” in a rude tone and ask her to slow down. After a particularly rude request to clarify a rather simple sentence, the teacher’s response was, “From English, that means…….”. From the looks of this teacher, she will probably get a lot more blunt with them in the future, and I’m looking forward to it. I am pretty sure that these are the same two girls that were doing the same kind of things last semester in my statistics class.
Next, I had my normal school lunch(Mcdonald’s), then studied Chinese in the computer lab for a few minutes before that class. The teacher was discussing buying clothes today, and I thought he asked me if I preferred to wear pants or skirts. For a moment, I was worried that he had been at Denny’s that one night two years ago, but luckily, it out that the real question had been whether I like it more when GIRLS wear pants or skirts.
I don’t think we’re really going to have a winter this year, as it was over 60 degrees when I went to work at 1 o’clock. There, I was supposed to start scanning book covers today, but the scanner was broken, so I had to alphabetize the psychology section while Carl tried to fix it. He never did get it working, so he instead showed me how to enter books into the store’s database, which also automatically makes them available for sale online.
I left work just after 5:30, then stopped at Save-A-Lot on the way home to buy some generic Tuna Helper for dinner, among other things. Back at the apartment, I cooked that with peas while watching the news and Fear Factor. I had heard that the stunts on the show had become more extreme this season, and that seems to be true. There were four teams competing tonight, each with one male and one female. Two teams were couples, one were siblings, and the other were just friends. All of the women had nice long hair, which was not just a coincidence. In the second stunt, everyone was asked to have their hair cut in some kind of terrible way. Even the best option available would result in only patches of short hair left remaining.
I at first thought the stunt was kind of boring, then noticed the fear and tears forming in all of the girls eyes, which was obviously the whole point of this whole stunt. The first one to sit in the barber’s chair was a tall, pretty blond with fine waist length hair that had probably taken years to grow. She started to freak out as soon as the barber turned on the shears, so he turned them back off. She then regained her composer and agreed to proceed, only to freak out again as soon as she heard the buzzing of the shears. There was no debate with this second freak-out. She just got up, told her boyfriend it wasn’t worth the chance to make $50,000 and walked out of the room. He was outraged with her, as it meant he wouldn’t be seeing any of the money either.
Now, if one of the other two girls quit, the remaining one would automatically get $25,000. The next team up was the brother and sister, from Alabama. The sister agreed to the haircut if the brother would let her keep the entire $25,000; he agreed. She then sat in the chair and cried for a few seconds before allowing the barber to give an awful ‘patch’ cut, which resulted in a look that resembled a bad case of ring-worm. She was psychotically laughing and crying at the same time towards the end of the haircut.
Next up, was the prettiest girl with the most beautiful hair of all. She was a hairdresser and her long black hair was as full and shiny as hair can be. Saying no would mean giving $25,000 to the other team, but she would still have a chance at the remaining $25,000. She initially decided to sit down in the barber chair, even though her boyfriend kindly said that he would be happy with whatever decision she made. Just before she was about to go through with it, he asked her how long it would take the hair to grow back. She said it would be 8 months before she could do anything with it, and the boyfriend asked, “So, you’ll have to wear a wig until then?”. That’s when she jumped out of the chair, saying, “I’m not wearing a wig”, and quit the stunt. I’m not sure, but I think the boyfriend didn’t really want her to do it.
The show ended with the couple from Alabama also winning the last $25,000, which was deserving since they both ended up with the ‘patch’ cut. The other contestants had been mean to them in the beginning of the show, but were now compassionate as ever.
Wew, that was a lot to say about a TV show, but I found it to be a great social experiment. Borderline evil, but successful entertainment.
I spent the next hour and a half reading about Starbucks, Nestle and some Indian water purification company for international marketing class. Did you know that Nestle has been accused of being an international baby killer? Apparently, they used to heavily market baby formula to ill-informed mothers in third world countries. The formula was advertised with slogans like, ‘The white man’s powder that will make the baby glow and grow’, which resulted in the mothers thinking that it was some kind of super food that couldn’t possibly be improperly used. In one extreme case a baby boy and girl were sharing one can of formula every two weeks, and nothing else. The girl weighed just 8 pounds at 18 months old. You would think that mothers have some basic motherly instincts, but I guess that’s not always the case. So, the result of all this is that you will see no baby formula ads in third world countries, among many other restrictions. Weird.

January 23, 2006
Monday:

Johanna and I talked online both this morning and afternoon. She said that I eat to many ‘industrial foods’ after I told her I was having a frozen beef pot pie for breakfast.
I didn’t leave the apartment until 12:30 because my classes don’t start until 1 o’clock on Mondays. I stopped at 710 Bookstore on the way there to try and sell back several old books, but they wouldn’t take a single one(they cost $300). Evil.
The business communication teacher was playing music before class again. Country last time and Jimmy Buffet today, so I’m starting to piece together a probable personality profile. We spent the class time talking about the details of APA style formatting, and it appears that this is the kind of stuff the entire class will consist of……ughhhhhh. APA stands for American Psychological Association, but the teacher kept calling it American Psychotic Association, then corrected himself each time. He tried to make it look like an accident, but it seemed intentional, which would fit perfectly into his Jimmy Buffet/country music personality profile.
Next, I spent my one-hour break in the AG building, which is where my 3 o’clock class is held. I bought some M&M’s from a vending machine, then sat in a study room on the second floor. Sitting there people watching, I was again thinking about personality profiles, this time about AG students. All the men in the room were dressed like farmers. There was one female present, who looked really good from behind, but was sporting a thick unibrow on her front side. A computer in one corner of the room is set up to show farming weather information all the time, and a sign on the bulletin board says, “No Tobacco Products(Chew) Are to be Used in This Room”. Although AG students aren’t usually pretty or refined, my experience has been that they are usually some of the more down-to-earth people on campus.
I studied Chinese for a while after people watching, then went to International Marketing class for the first time at 3:00, which is an hour and 15 minutes long. The teacher is a small 35 year-old guy who looks a lot younger. He has apparently traveled around the world quite extensively, and is full of interesting information that made the class time go by very quickly.
The class syllabus listed a prerequisite that I thought I hadn’t taken, but I went to a computer lab afterwards and found that I actually had. So, since I could stay in the class, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a book for it. I had been on textbook strike all last semester and didn’t buy a single one, but I don’t think I can get through this marketing class or my finance class without one.
At the bookstore in the student center, I found that the finance book was over $100, even though it was a soft cover. A used edition of the marketing book still cost the same amount. I thought I had been overcharged for it, so I asked a short pudgy smiling talkative manager, who happily took me back to the textbook section to check the price. I was unfortunately wrong about the price, but I’ve discovered that the employees in this store are so much better than the ones at other bookstores in town, especially the Saluki Bookstore, which kicked me out a few weeks ago for looking at one of their overpriced books and not buying it.
Despite the friendliness of the manager today, I would love to be able to return these books at full price, which has to be done before the 31st. I came home and found a copy of the management book on Half.com for, you guessed it, half the price I had paid at the bookstore today. The finance book is a new edition, so I can’t really save any money by buying online, but I think I can copy the pages I need and return it.
I ate last night’s leftovers for dinner, then studied Chinese for an hour. Nic and I went to play racquetball at 8 o’clock which was the first time we had been in weeks. Sara was also there with him. The Rec Center was incredibly packed tonight, as it usually is during the beginning of the second semester, which Mike once told me is because of New Year’s resolutions to get healthy. That may be true, because things always seem to thin out after a couple weeks, which makes sense because resolutions usually last about that long.
All the racquetball courts were full, so we had to wait a while to play. One came available just as we were about to start playing ping pong.
I beat Nic pretty good during the first two games, then he won by a few points in the last one. It really works to my advantage that he hurts himself often when we play.
He told me a hilarious story on the way home. He was at a hotel in New Orleans and went out to take his dog for a walk. The dog wouldn’t use the bathroom without being on grass, so he went down a side street into a much less-than-perfect neighborhood to find some. Then, multiple police cars came up to him with their lights on. Four large black officers told him to get out his ID and keep his hands out of his pockets. What Nic didn’t know at the time was that the cops believed he was in the neighborhood to buy drugs, as is usually the case when they spot a white tourist here. So, here’s the funny part……One of the cops asks Nic what he’s doing here, and Nic absent-mindedly replies, “Looking for some grass”. Well, it turns out that the cops notices the dog and the innocence in the statement and has a hard time keeping his tough, serious face. Great story.

1/22/2006
Sunday(Back from St. Louis):

I was the only one in the hotel room when I woke up around 10 o’clock. Mike then came in carrying two plates of food, which he had picked up for me after eating with everyone else at the free buffet downstairs.
We were all out of the room just a few minutes later, and I rode in John’s truck with the same group as yesterday. Mark hit a parked car in the parking garage on the way out, but we just left because there was no damage. A few minutes out of the city, Josh told John to be ready to pull over at any minute, which scared the people sitting near him. He turned out to be fine for the first hour, but requested a stop as we passed the McDonalds we ate lunch at yesterday. He claimed to just be going in to use the bathroom, but who knows. He made a more demanding stop request at the Veach station in Murphsyboro, but the store was closed. He walked in circles in the parking lot saying he had to crap, then reluctantly got back into the truck, scarring the rest of us even more. He asked us to stop again at Mcdonalds, and we think he successfully held it in until then, as we never smelled evidence of any leakage.
I went in the store to buy two plain cheeseburgers for myself while we waited for him, then we returned to John’s house. Jared gave me a ride back to my apartment, then Johanna and I talked for a while. It was the first time we had a voice chat since she returned home.
I took a long nap after that, not getting up until almost 5 o’clock. Much of the rest of the evening was spent updating my website, taking a break to make myself a late dinner of a chicken breast in pasta.

January 21, 2006
Saturday(to Mike’s bachelor party):

I got up at 11 o’clock this morning, and was the first person up except for John. I took a shower and used his computer while waiting for everyone else to get ready. We all had some snacks and coffee in the kitchen around noon, which is when Amy and Dylan returned home to see things like beer cans hanging from the kitchen lamp(my contribution).
Tonight’s party would be held in downtown St. Louis, so we drove there at 12:30. I rode in John’s truck with him, Josh, Tim, Jared and Matt. We stopped in Murphysboro to pick up Tim, whom was probably feeling the most miserable from last night(Buckley was a close second). Our next stop was for lunch at a McDonalds in a small town about an hour away. A $1 automated DVD rental kiosk in front of the store seemed to be getting constant business…..good invention.
At the Drury Inn downtown, only 4 of us went in to rent the room because we didn’t want them to know that everyone would be staying in the same two-room suite. A black man who appeared to be straight out of the 70’s checked us in. I asked what the hotel’s policy on tigers was, and he paused a moment before saying, “You’ll be OK……tiger”.
There was a national championship cheerleading competition downtown this weekend, and hundreds of the cheerleaders, mostly junior high age, were staying at the hotel. Many of the cars in the parking garage were full of cheerleading propaganda messages.
Next, we took our things to the room and stayed there for an hour or so. I unrolled my sleeping back in the corner of the room and actually fell asleep for a while, then we all headed to Harrah’s casino, which is a 20 minute drive out of the city. This was probably the biggest casino I had ever been in, and the design of its main lobby is made to look like a small town city street.
We had to show ID and receive cards with our names on them before entering the gambling area. We then spent a few minutes exploring all our options before Josh and I decided to use video poker machines at the bar. I put in $20 and played blackjack for about 15 minutes, sometimes being down to $7 and other times being up to $25. I eventually settled for $21.75 before quitting that machine.
Once per hour, all the tv screens above the bar raised into the ceiling and 6 barely dressed female dancers came out on stage for one song. After their first dance, Matt and I went to slot machines placed around a new white Mustang. We had our hearts set on winning it, but never spun any more than two ‘cars’ at a time. I spent about $7 trying before my gambling was finished for the day.
Everyone met back up at the stage for the girl’s next dance show, then headed back to the hotel room. There, we waited for Buckley, Matt’s friend Chuck(also from our high school) and a surprise guest to meet us. The surprise had been successfully kept from Mike for weeks, and the guest was Harris, whom we had all known from high school and had not seen for years. His girlfriend and her friend also came.
We next all walked to the landing and had dinner at a restaurant there. The tables were covered with white paper and crayons were available, so this of course resulted in dozens of offensive things being written everywhere. Most of us ordered beers before the meal, which were served in skinny mugs that were about a foot high.
We then went to a bar with dueling grand pianos, called Big Bang. The piano players were excellent musicians and great entertainers, but severe overcrowding ruined the fun. There was supposedly a one-in-one-out policy in effect at the door, but it didn’t appear that the workers were enforcing it effectively, as our group of 16 was allowed to enter after just 2 people had exited. All they seemed to care about was getting their $6 entry fee, and the bouncers were herding the lines along like we were cattle. Everyone in our group was disappointed and felt ripped off, as it was almost impossible to even order a beer and a even harder to find a place to stand where a bouncer or customer would not push us. I eventually just went to stand by the front door until the others decided to leave, which was only a couple minutes. So, don’t ever go to Big Bang if there’s a line at the door.
Our next stop was a bar called Study Hall, which I had been to a couple times in the past. There was actually room to move here, so we stayed for a couple hours. The same band played that whole time without ever even talking a break. I danced with some girls for a few minutes before sitting in the back corner with our group. Soon after arriving here, we realized that Matt and his friend Chuck had been separated from us at Big Bang. All attempts to contact them were unsuccessful.
After Study Hall, some of us took a taxi van to a strip club across the river, including Mike, John, Josh and Jared and Mark. I tried to pay the $10 entry fee with my credit card, but only cash was accepted. A young guy behind me paid my fee, even though I had never seen him before in my life. I then went to an ATM machine in the club to pay the guy back, but he just walked away and didn’t seem at all interested in getting his money back. Still, I eventually tracked him down and gave it back.
We all stayed at the club for about an hour and a half, sitting at one of four square stages most of that time. The girls would only ask people sitting at the stages for money. These girls are much more aggressive than the ones at clubs near Carbondale, as they grab the customers hands and rub them around on their bodies. Some dancers would say “MORE” if you only put a single dollar into their underwear.
After running out of dollars, I moved away from the stage so no more money would be requested of me. The chair I sat in was so comfortable that I fell asleep. I awoke to a stripper wrapping a blanket around me and lots of other customers watching. Some kind of show may have been about to happen, but I got up and sat back with our group, which had moved away from the stage.
Back at the hotel, the long-lost Matt resurfaced. He had gotten into a fight and had one of his front teeth bent backwards. Apparently, a guy grabbed his arm thinking that he was somebody else. The guy got really mad when Matt pushed his hand away, then started following and threatening him. Matt said that he tried to get the bouncers to help, but had to punch the guy when they wouldn’t help him. The guy then fell down, and Matt and Chuck left the bar. The guy’s friends then went out onto the streets to search for Matt, using their cell phone to communicate with each other. So, Matt said he got a block away before he realized that all the surrounding streets had people on them staring at him and speaking on cell phones. The guys eventually cornered Matt and Chuck, then the guy who he had hit returned the favor, resulting in the near-broken tooth.

January 20, 2006
Friday:

Another 60 degree January day, but cloudy and windy with some occasional sprinkles. I made myself 4 eggs for breakfast, then spent some time studying Chinese before going to school at 11:30. I had to buy a stamp and mail off an electric bill at the Student Center before going to class. I was hoping the assistant would be teaching Chinese class today, but it was the professor. The professor is a good teacher, but he is very in-your-face, so it’s good to get a break every once in a while.
Next, I went to my business communication class for the first time. It’s in a big room of the Lawson building, but there were only a couple dozen students present today. The teacher is a short, stocky man who was wearing a suit and playing country music through the classrooms sound system. The music was coming from an Internet radio station that he had tuned on the computer. It played for the first 15 minutes of class while he individually signed students up to an online classroom service called WebCT. So, the mood during the beginning of class was pretty casual, as the lights were turned down low, the music was playing and the teacher was not lecturing. I was hoping this relaxed attitude would mean no assignments for a long time, but we actually have something due next week that might take an hour or so to do.
I thought about getting a hair cut after class, but just went home without doing it. I ate some leftover stroganoff for lunch, then fell asleep. Tonight was the first night of Mike’s two-day bachelor party, and I was expected to be there by 7 o’clock, but nobody came to pick me up until almost 8:30. I spent the extra time doing most of the assignment from business communication class, which was an information report about a potential job that I might accept after graduation. I wrote that I would work for the Bank of America in Shanghai. I didn’t know the actual position I would potentially have and the salary, so I just used the information I knew about Mike’s job with the company in St. Louis.
Josh T. eventually came to pick me up, then we went back to his sister’s house in Murphysboro, which is where he has been living since he and Courtney broke up. There, he first asked me to photograph his cat, then he ate and played video games while we waited for Jeff to meet us. There were some old pictures of Josh in the house and he looked like more like a little girl than a little boy.
We stopped at Huck’s on the way to the party, and I saw Mary B. as I was taking some beer to the counter. We worked together for years at Schnucks, and I had not seen her since. The party tonight was held at John’s house. Everyone else was there by the time we arrived, including John, Mike, Buckley, Matt, Jared,Tim, Carolyn’s brother Mark and her soon-to-be brother in law Brett. In the kitchen, everyone was eating dips and some deer sausage dishes.
Matt, Mike and Jared had set up their musical equipment in the basement, and played old Disgracefuls songs for about 45 minutes. Josh became a guest singer for one song. Everyone played poker at the kitchen table after that. I think there were too many people for one table, as the game moved too slowly for everyone to pay attention to, especially me.

1/19/2006
Thursday:

Johanna and I spoke this morning for the first time since she left, but only chatted because I had to leave the apartment. I think she was really missing this place, especially since there was almost a 60 degree difference in temperature between here and there(-2F there in the late afternoon).
Back to school today, after missing the first two days. First was a Finance(330) class at 9:35, which happens to be my earliest class this semester. It’s in the Quigly building. Lou was standing in the hallway, and he said he’s also taking the class, so it’s our third one together. Lou takes notes and studies religiously, so he’s always a good class friend. The teacher of this class is a thin cold-looking middle-aged woman with wiry hair and glasses. I tried to take notes at the beginning, but found that she went way too fast for my brain processing speed. Spacing out for one second means that you’ve missed a couple sentences. So far seems incredibly boring, but we’ll see.
Next, I spent the first half of my one-hour break in the student center eating some McDonald’s. The double cheeseburger has disappointingly been replaced by the regular cheeseburger on the $1 menu. I tried to eat outside because the temperature was almost 60 degrees, but went back inside because the wind was too strong to read the paper, which said that a calf had been stolen off campus on Christmas Eve.
The second half of my break was spent at the Faner computer lab printing out the next few weeks of Chinese assignments. I could have done this at home, as Clara recently gave me her old printer and 4 or 5 replacement ink cartridges, but it would have taken forever to print out so much stuff.
Chinese class started at noon, and it’s just the same as it ever was. I said a few dumb things and learned a few new things before going on to the bookstore afterwards. Carl and Kelly had asked me to come in today to talk about their plans for me this semester. Carl said that I can work a regular schedule of 12 weekly hours entering books into Ebay and scanning the covers. That works for me, an extra $84 dollars per week. I’m starting that project on Tuesday.
I stopped at Save-a-Lot on the way home and witnessed the world’s worst customer. Only two checkout lanes were open, and this woman blocked one of them for the whole 15 minutes I was shopping. She had a cart full of stuff but not enough money to pay for it on her Link(public aid) card. So, she individually debated the purchase of each item while all the good customers had to wait twice as long at the other checkout lane.
In the spirit of being back in school, I fell asleep soon after returning home. And just as usual, I slept about 3 times longer than the planned 30 minutes. I spent the rest of the evening studying Chinese and getting new pictures and a video online, stopping to make beef stroganoff for dinner. After the meal, I watched a documentary about child molesters. It followed the life of a man who had been sentenced indefinitely to a mental institution. He was finally released after 8 years, but had to live in a small trailer on state property. He had a nine o’clock curfew and could have no overnight visitors, including his wife. It seems incredibly stupid to not allow the wife to stay overnight, as that could maybe keep the guy sexually satisfied enough to not be tempted by children. The man did nothing wrong after being released, but was constantly harassed by the public, the media and the authorities. Then one day, the police came to take him back to the mental institution, with their only reason being that his previous counselors had reviewed old interviews and simply changed their minds about allowing him freedom. Maybe they should just send the guy to Guantanamo Bay?

January 18, 2006
Wednesday(back from Chicago):

I got up at 8:30, then Ericka and I made a breakfast of French toast and bacon. I showed her some things on my website after the meal, then I attempted to get my revenge at table tennis. We played 4 more games and she is still undefeated.
We next decided to go rent a scary movie, but couldn’t find anything scary we wanted to see on VHS(the basement TV didn’t have a DVD player). We decided on a depressing Bill Murray movie called broken flowers, which I really liked despite the seemingly unfinished ending. The TV speaker made a buzzing sound throughout the entire movie, but I got mostly used to it by the end.
Ericka and I ate leftover Chinese food for lunch after the movie, then I headed back home at 3 o’clock. The drive was long and boring, and I could barely stay awake during the second hour. I stopped at a rest stop south of Champaign for coffee, and a brilliant sunset was taking place at that time, so I took a few pictures.
My next stop was to get gas and food just north of Mt. Vernon. I was also going to wash the car then, but didn’t have any quarters, so I washed it as I drove through Murphysboro. I arrived at the house there around 8:20. My dad was in the kitchen then and we ate some salad, ravioli and bread pudding together. Clara was feeling sick and sat down with a thermometer in her mouth.
My dad brought me back to Carbondale just after 9 o’clock. The moon at that time was about as large as I’ve ever seen it. Back in my apartment, the first thing I noticed was the empty spaces where all of Johanna’s stuff had been for the past 6 weeks.

January 17, 2006
Tuesday(Chicago):

I woke up this morning at 8:30 and there was no activity in the house except for the two dogs. I ventured into the shower, then let the dogs into the backyard because they were whinning by the door begging me to let them use the bathroom. While they were out, I used a lint roller to get all the white dog hair off of a black shirt and sweater that I had worn last night. A person who owns a black dog could buy all black clothes, and a person who owns a white one could wear all white, but Ryan and Mindy are just screwed. The white dog is crazy, so I know which one I would keep if I was them. Another option would be to dye the white dog black every week or so, but that would be alot of trouble.
Mindy was home and got up for a minute to say she was going to stay in bed because she was feeling sick. Her friend Lisa unexpectedly stopped by at 9:45, then they talked by the door till I left at 10:30. I had planned on staying until Ryan got home at 3:00 because he was going to take me out mudding in his truck, but decided to go ahead and leave because I would have to wait all day.
Outside, the sky was heavily cloudy and threatening a bit of icy weather. I drove to a nearby Arby’s and bought two 99 cent sandwiches using coupons I had brought from home. I’ve recently started saving all those fast food coupons that just used to be junk mail, because they allow me to get a decent-sized meal at almost any fast food restaurant for just $2 or $3.
After eating, I inquired about the location of the nearest library, which was just a few blocks away. While driving there, I was noticing how unkept the roads are in this area. It looks like a third world country because the asphalt is full of holes, the paint is coming off of it and weeds are growing all over the place.
I used the Internet at the library for about an hour, then called Ericka from a payphone there because I was planning on staying at her place tonight. I expected to go there in the early afternoon, but she said that she had to work until 7 o’clock.
So, I had about 8 hours to do whatever I felt like. I considered going back to Ryan’s and waiting for him to get home at 3 o’clock, but decided to head downtown and go to the Science and Industry museum, where I had heard that there was an exhibit of human body slices.
I took a scenic route there because I had so much time to kill before 7:00. Route 41 south, which runs near the Lake Michigan shore, turned out to have some very nice things to look at, including an almost rural-looking town with lots of big old houses and buildings, called Lake Forest. This highway eventually turns into an interstate, then turns into Lake Shore drive at the downtown area. Light snow was now falling and the tops of all the high buildings were in the fog.
I found the museum with little problem, then decided not to park in the designated garage because it cost $12. Spots on the street just two blocks away only cost 50 cents for two hours.
Admission to the museum is normally $17 for adults, but Mondays and Tuesdays are free through February. I believe that those days have been free for years and that they are changing the policy.
The main lobby of the museum contains a passenger locomotive and three cars attached that appear to be from the 1950’s or earlier. I was going to enter it, but tours were only being given every 20 minutes, so I thought I would try and come back later. A free ticket had to be issued before going into the main sections of the museum. I then walked aimlessly around for a while before getting a map and inquiring about the location of the human body slices. They were not a major exhibit as I had expected, but dated from the 1940’s and were located in a stairwell. So, this may not be the exhibit that I had been hearing about for the past couple months. Still, the pieces were captivating. There were a couple dozen of them, some of which were cut diagonally and some horizontally. According to the text, the body of a man and woman had been frozen, then cut into slices with a band saw for medical students to study. The horizontal slices included head, arm, leg and middle sections. The vertical slices ran from pelvis up to the top of the head, and were the most impressive.
The next interesting thing I saw may someday end up in my house. It was a Foucault Pendulum, which is bowling ball sized steel sphere hanging from a thin wire that it about 40 feet long. The man who invented this device in the 1850’s did it to prove that the earth is rotating. Each morning, the museum staff starts the ball swinging, then it continues to do so on its own for the remainder of the day. The face of a clock has been painted underneath it, and the direction of the swinging ball changes as the earth rotates throughout the day. The result is a rudimentary clock. This could be a great centerpiece in the great room of a home, or any other room with high enough ceilings.
I next decided to see a captured WWII German submarine that just went on display last June. The 250 foot long sub sank at least 7 allied ships before being hunted down by the Americans. It’s crew attempted to sink it after being captured, but the Americans went in while it was sinking and stopped the inflow of water. They took such a risk in order to capture on of the infamous enigma machines, which the Germans used to encode messages during the war. A time lapse video by the sub showed how a huge hole had been dug in front of the museum, then the sub was lowered into it and the facilities built around it.
My first attempt to enter the sub was unsuccessful because a $5 special ticket is required for entry. I paid the money and it was well worth it. The tour of the ship is supplemented with flashing lights and sound effects as the guide tells its story. A crew of 59 men inhabited the vessel for 90 days at a time, sleeping in very cramped quarters and not having any shower facility, so the smell must have been awful. Sleeping quarters were even stuffed into the torpedo rooms, and just one cook using one stove made all the meals. There were two bathrooms, but one was full of canned goods in order to ensure that there would be enough food. Hence, the phrase, ‘the can’. Why do so many phrases come from maritime events?
During the war, the captured crew of the ship was put into a labor camp where they made 50 cents per day picking cotton in Louisiana. They were given the option of US citizenship after the war, and 4 or 5 accepted. A couple of these people were present during the unveiling of this exhibit, and the guide joked that they were offered a $1 discount on their tickets.
It was 2:30 when I got out of the sub, which meant that I had to leave in order to be back to my car before the meter ran out. I then went in search of interstate 90, which my map showed should be a couple dozen blocks to the west. I passed though many southside neighborhoods along the way, also passing through the massive University of Chicago campus.
I eventually found the interstate, then exited it at 111th street, which is near where Ericka lives. I found her house to make sure I could still remember where it was, then bought a double cheeseburger and a Mcchicken from a nearby McDonalds. I asked the clerk where the nearest oil change facility was, and was directed to a Pennzoil station on 127th street. No other customers were present, and three employees were out back goofing around. They told me to pull around the back, then directed me into the building. This was a ten-minute oil change facility that has a basement instead of car-lifts. So, instead of lifting the car up, someone drains the oil by working though a hole in the floor while a person on the surface refills it. Quick, but expensive. I would have probably looked for another place if I had know it would cost $35.
But, at least customers are offered a free spray of high-powered air freshener with each oil change, because the interior still smelled of wine due to the spill in the trunk the night before last. I next went to a car wash in order to further investigate the odor. I opened up the spare tire compartment and found the smell to be very strong there, so I sprayed a bunch of the carpet cleaner I had bought at Wal-Mart the other day, which has some magical ingredient called OdorX in it. We will see.
I quickly vacuumed the car, then went to a bar right next door, where I hoped to plug in my laptop and type this as I had a beer and a smoke. One of the few customers that was present said that the place even had wireless Internet access, but my old laptop was a charity gift from Tim that can’t do stuff like that. The bartender plugged me in behind the bar, then I sat and had two beers and two smokes while I typed for an hour. I asked a man wearing a greasy sweatshirt if I could borrow his lighter, and he asked if I was even old enough to smoke. He later came and took a cigarette out of my pack, only asking for permission after he already had it in his hand.
I drove back to Ericka’s place at 5:30, stopping along the way to buy some beer at a gas station. I then tried to sleep in the car until she got home at 7:00. The plan was successful for about an hour, then the car got cold enough to wake me up. Ericka and I went inside to have a beer when she arrived, then went to pick up some Chinese food for dinner. We called Nick H. along the way to see if he would come hang out with us, but he returned the call later to say that he had to work early tomorrow.
Instead of spending the night at Ericka’s house, we stayed at her parents because she thought it would be a better place. They live in the neighborhood of Beverly, which seems to be a nice community of mostly two-story brick homes. We spent the whole evening in the basement, playing some jacks and ping pong after eating the Chinese food. One of the three cats, Cosmo, hung out with us all night. Cosmo probably weighs over 20 pounds and may be the hugest cat I have ever seen in person. Another unusual sight in the basement was a box of nearly 1000 bouncy balls. The balls were also scattered throughout all areas of the basement.
Ericka’s brother, Jeff, came downstairs and said that he had ordered all the balls just for the hell of it. He also played a couple games of ping-pong against Ericka, and I think she was undefeated all night. I asked Jeff what he had been doing lately, and he told me about a way to make money that I had never heard of. It’s called arbitrage, and is where you make equal bets on both teams in a sporting event. I think this is how it works; different gambling houses will pay out slightly different amounts to winners, so you make each bet with a separate house and always either come out equal or very slightly ahead. The amount you can gain is so small that very large bets must be made in order to make it worthwhile. I must learn more about this.

January 16, 2006
Monday(Johanna goes home):

Me and Johanna packed up our things and were on the road by 8 o’clock this morning. The car was smelling bad of wine because of the bottle breakage last night, so I stopped at Wal-Mart to buy a can of carpet cleaner with something called OdorX in it. I went into the store through the automotive section, hoping to check out there quickly and leave, but no clerk was at the automotive checkout counter then, so I had to go to the front of the store. There were also no clerks at the electronics counter, and all of the automatic checkout lanes were closed, so I had to wait in a regular line. I asked the cashier what the maximum amount of cash back with a card purchase was, and she said $100 in $20 increments. I think it’s always a good idea to carry at least that much cash when traveling very far from home, because you never know when some satellite in space can get hit with a solar storm causing only 10% of gas stations to accept credit cards(true story, I promise, 5 years ago).
Most of the spilled wine went down inside the spare tire compartment, but some soaked into the trunk carpeting, so I gave that spot several treatments of carpet cleaner before continuing on. Our next stop was at a breakfast restaurant called Hungry’s, in West Frankfurt. This place was full of what looked like locals, and we made a seating mistake by sitting next to a guy named Ralf at the bar, who was all by himself for a very good reason. Ralf was about 80 years old and had some serious brain issues. I’m sure everyone else there knew we were from out of town when they saw us sit down near him. He started talking in my direction within seconds, but I didn’t look that way immediately because his tone of voice instantly reflected severe problems. After a few sentences without attention, he started reaching in my direction, so I then felt obligated to make eye contact. That’s when he laid into his 30-minute long tirade of random life memories. He talked of incomprehensible sports details and people he had known in this small town over the past 50 years. I learned that some man who once lived a few blocks west used to beat his wife, and that all your buttons had to be straight in the military.
After several minutes of this, I asked Ralph where he was from, but he just gave a blank stare for a moment before continuing with his runaway train of thought. I asked his name a few moments later and got the same response. I let him continue a bit longer before requesting his name again, but this time, I repeated the question when he gave the blank stare, and this is when he revealed that his name was Ralph. He said the name so quickly and quietly that it was barely understandable.
He continued on after Johanna and I received our meals, surprisingly stopping his output to ask for a bit of input; where I was from. I said Murphysboro, and he said, “Oh, over that way, by (highway)15”, pointing in the correct direction. I nodded yes, but said, “By (highway) 127)”, which he didn’t appear to understand.
The old man’s situation could be seen as really sad, but I didn’t feel that way because he didn’t seem to have any clue people didn’t understand him. As we walked out of the restaurant, I thought the locals might be quietly laughing amongst themselves, saying, “They got Ralphed!”.
Johanna and I now continued on our way to Chicago, in beautiful January weather of sunny skies and almost 50 degree temperatures. This is when a thought provoking idea came to my mind, which I came to call ‘TruckTrack’. Closely following a semi-truck, I thought that it would be very convenient if I could magnetically attach the car to the back of the truck. I could then theoretically shut the car engine off and not pay any attention to the road for as long as the truck kept going. This though led to many ideas about the technical details of such a system. Trucks and cars could be equipped with ‘TruckTrack’ technology, which would include a vehicle attachment, payment, and information system. Every truck in the system would have a screen on the back of it showing its destination and when its next planned stop was. Car drivers that thought this information was favorable would slowly approach the rear of the truck at regular interstate speeds and attach themselves. A wireless data connection would pay the truck driver for the services and interface with the electrical system of the car, synchronizing the car’s brake and signal lights with that of the truck.
Johanna didn’t seem to buy the idea, but she doesn’t even drive.
Continuing down the road, we noticed the remains of dozens of very gory roadkill incidents. This was also the case as we were driving to and from the east coast last week, so I have determined that animals must be committing suicide, maybe because of an eminent apocalypse. About two hundred feet of one highway section was bloody, which led to the severed head, torso and legs of a small deer. The head came first, then two legs and the body. The other two legs were suspiciously missing…….
We made our next stop on the south side of Chicago, where we filled up the gas tank and I ate some McDonalds. We didn’t particularly need gas, and I wasn’t all that hungry, but I just wanted to stop here because it was at an oasis that had restaurants in a glass walkway overtop the highway. I ate a cheeseburger and fries there, but Johanna surprisingly wasn’t hungry.
We arrived at the airport just before two o’clock. Johanna was able to quickly check in, then we sat for 40 minutes at a table in a food court next to the security check-in point. We never really feel like we are leaving each other for a long time until it comes to that moment of waiting at the airport.
I next went out in search of Ryan and Mindy’s place, which is where I planned on spending the night. I had been there once before, but it was a bit harder to find than I expected. What should have been a 30 minute trip turned out to be almost an hour and a half because of two wrong decisions. The first error just cost about 10 minutes, but the second was more serious. I got on the wrong interstate for about four miles, and it was barely moving in the other direction. I stopped at one point to call Ryan from a pay hone, but just got his voicemail. I was waiting in the car to call him back when I found his road on an atlas in the car, which eventually led me to a familiar-looking area.
Mindy and Garret(their son) greeted me at the door. The first thing Garret said was that I had left a ‘camera thing’ in their car, which was a tri-pod from last May. Ryan and I were both surprised that he had remembered that fact.
Ryan was in the process of boiling some kind of corn, potato, shrimp, crawfish ’stew’, which is almost the same dish that Johanna and I ate when we stayed here last spring. Ryan and I left at 5 o’clock to take a quick trip to a military liquor store(Ryan’s in the Navy), which was just a 2 minute drive away. We bought a bottle of Southern Comfort 100 proof there, then Ryan let me drive the truck back, which is an old primer-colored Bronco that sits on enormous tires and gets less than 10 miles per gallon.
A bunch of guests came over shortly after we returned, who were mostly friends of Ryan’s in the Navy and their family members. The elusive Sean K was also there. Two twin pre-school age girls were running all over the place as everyone else talked. There were 11 people in all.

January 15, 2006
Sunday:

This was Johanna’s last day in town, and she was up packing her things at 8 o’clock this morning. We stayed home all day and really didn’t do to much of anything except watch TV, play Nintendo, sleep and eat.
My dad came over at 7:30 because Johanna and I needed to take possession of the car in order to go to the airport in Chicago tomorrow. We went with him to the Methodist Church in Murphysboro and waited for Clara to get out of a meeting there. He turned on the lights in the main section of the church for us, and it was cool to be there late at night when nobody else was around.
We waited for Clara in the church office for a few moments, then went to fill up the car’s gas tank when she didn’t appear at 8 o’clock. Back at the church, she had still not finished up by 8:20, so my dad took us back to the house so he could get another car and give us the Intrepid.
Johanna and I then returned to Carbondale, stopping at Westroad Liquors to buy two bottles of local wine, one for her sister and the other for her parents. We next went to eat at El Bajios, but found that it had closed at 9 o’clock, so we went to La Bambas instead. We stopped at Schnucks after the meal to buy some chocolate chip ice cream.
Back at the apartment, I opened the trunk of the car and found that one of the wine bottles had broken. It looked like the glass had been cheaply made, as the bottom of the bottle had come off in one mostly straight section.
We then went to Pick’s Liquors so she could buy a replacement bottle. The bottle cost $10, but Pick’s has a $15 minimum credit card charge, so I had to buy some beer to get the total up to that amount.
We spent the last part of our evening having a drink and eating our ice cream.

January 14, 2006
Saturday:

My dad came to pick me and Johanna up at 7:30 this morning for a planned trip through the backwoods of rural Southwestern Missouri. We stopped at the house in Murphysboro to pick up Clara, then drove on to Chester, Illinois for breakfast. There, we spent a few minutes driving around looking for any smaller restaurants, but eventually decided on the larger buffet-style Reid’s Harvest House. As could be expected, the food was decent and the place was full of dozens of very oversized people.
Before crossing into Missouri, we stopped at a statue of Popeye by the bridge and at the state prison there. My dad went into the front entrance of the prison building to see if they had any historical information. He had to be buzzed in and the guard was not particularly friendly. The guard noticed I was taking a picture outside while he was talking to my dad inside, and he told him that my camera could be taken away for taking pictures, but nobody ever said another word about it.
The rest of the drive was full of scenery including washers and dryers in yards and Confederate flags hanging in front yards. We turned around in a driveway after making a wrong turn, and saw a confederate flag with the words ‘Get er Done’ printed across it hanging on the front of the garage. We later saw another regular Confederate flag hanging on a tree limb above a highway.
We stopped in the tiny town of Ironton to see what was being sold at a local auction. The auction was being held in a crowded little run-down building behind an old abandoned hospital. We only stayed for a few moments because it appeared that only a few old guns, some Confederate money and junk were being sold. The coolest thing about this town was the abandoned hospital, which was a large three story building made out of locally mined red granite. The yard of the building was full of weeds and many of the windows in the upper floors were broken out.
Our next stop was at a junk store just down the road, where a big old man with a white beard and one open eye was working. He had many unusual stuffed animals hanging above his office, including a black Pekinese dog. A pot of food cooking on an old wood stove made the whole place smell strongly of smoked chicken. The shelves in the store were high, too close together and packed with way too much stuff. The man had just collected random objects for the past decade and piled them into heaps on these shelves. I did buy a book containing business advice, which cost $2 and was printed in 1931. It discusses how to do things such as hire farm hands, where it recommends paying them thirty dollars per week.
The main thing we wanted to see today was the damage caused by the Dec 14th breach of the Taum Sauk Reservoir dam. The reservoir sits on a mountain-top just above Johnston Shut-ins State Park, which is a camping and swimming area that is packed with hundreds tourists in the summertime. Had the reservoir broke during the tourist season, then this would have been a historical disaster, as the quickly moving water destroyed most of the park in less than 15 minutes.
Supposedly, the dam was destroyed because of remotely controlled pumps that malfunctioned and overfilled the reservoir during the early morning hours. The break happened at 5:30 AM and sent over a billion gallons of water roaring down the mountain and into the state park. The only people there at that time was the park warden and his family, who lived in a house on-site. The home was almost instantly destroyed, but they somehow managed so all survive, including the two young children. Unfortunately, the paramedics ended up badly burning one of the children by incorrectly using chemical heating pads on him to bring up his body temperature. He remained in the hospital weeks after the disaster, with serious burns over much of his body.
Extensive damage could be seen around the highway in front of the park, but that’s as close as the public was allowed to get. The water had cut a wide swath through the forest there, ripping out all the larger trees and leaving the smaller ones smashed into the ground. Mud sediment was left several feet thick in places.
Security at the park entrance was tight, and hundreds of ‘Park Closed’ sign had been put up along the border for miles. My dad tried to get us in by talking to a guard and saying that he worked for the Illinois Department of Natural Recources, but was told that not even senators were being allowed in. All this security made me joke that maybe the dam had been broken when a UFO crashed into it.
We had been told by a couple local people that we could get a decent view of the area by driving up a nearby hill and following a road there, but we don’t think we ever really found that spot. We did eventually find at least a partial view, where we could see the 900-foot long breach in the dam on a mountaintop in the distance. From that distance, it looked like a giant bite had been taken out of the top of the mountain, and that someone had built a ski slope on the side of it. What looked like a ski slope was just the area where all the trees had been ripped out and replaced with a thick layer of mud. Even though we didn’t get a good view, this was surely an unusual and interesting site to see.
We next decided to have a late lunch at a nearby BBQ restaurant. I was really surprised when my dad told the waitress and owner that he heard a UFO crash had been the cause of the dam breach. He did this without even breaking the slightest smile, and the reactions of the people were subtle but hilarious. Both of them got quiet for a moment before just saying something like, ‘hadn’t heard that one yet’. My dad did this as a social experiment to see if he can start a rumor. I told him that there might be yuppies showing up with motor homes full of satellites and antennas in a couple days.
We made only one stop on the way home, to see an abandoned cobalt factory in an almost non-existent town called Cobalt City. The sun was setting on the old building when we stopped, so I got to take a couple good pictures. I’ve recently found that I really like taking pictures of big creepy old buildings.
Johanna and I slept most of the rest of the way home, and my dad and Clara switched positions so my dad could sleep during the last half of the ride. They dropped Johanna and I off at Chris’s house because we were planning on going to a movie with him later. The house was full of people eating barbeque and watching football when we arrived. The other people there included Keri, John F., Anna, Slaw, Brian E. and Charles.
Mike S. and John R. came by a little later. I hadn’t seen most of those guys in quite a long time, especially Mike.
We left at 9:15 to go see the movie, Hostel(Q. Tarintino). John R. rode in Keri’s car with Johanna, Chris and I. We made a gas station stop along the way and I bought a couple bags of chips to sneak in the movie inside of my coat.
John F. and Brandy met us at the theatre. I was expecting the movie to be really scary, but it was mostly just really gross. Not that I’m against creative new ways to be gross, I was just expecting something else.

January 13, 2006
Friday:

I had a chicken pot pie for breakfast because there wasn’t much else to choose from. I was surprised to pass by the window and see heavy snow falling late this morning, especially after the 60 degree temperatures of yesterday. Johanna was even more surprised than me, because the weather does not change that quickly where she’s from. The heaviest snow only lasted for about an hour, and it was too warm for it to stick on any surfaces other than grass.
We rode our bikes to the Rec center around noon, then played racquetball for a couple hours. Johanna improves each time we play. We went on to Save-a-Lot at 2 o’clock. It was snowing and sleeting harder then, and we were riding against the wind, so the bike ride was extremely uncomfortable.
Back at the apartment, Johanna played Mario Brothers for a couple hours while I edited the video that I posted today. At 7 o’clock, I took a load of laundry downstairs, then started making dinner. I transferred it into a dryer before we started eating, checking my mail along the way and finding a $10 rebate check from a pack of CDR’s that I had bought from Radio Shack months ago. After eating, I went out to smoke a cigarette and collect the clothes from the dryer, accidentally dropping the cigarette in a puddle only after smoking half of it. There was more snow on the grassy surfaces and cars at this time, but no more is predicted for this area tonight.

January 12, 2006
Thursday:

I thought I would have to work today, but called the bookstore at 10 o’clock and was told that they hadn’t had time to organize any work for me because something had come up. That was actually good news because the temperature was over 60 degrees(17C) today.
I got my New Year’s Eve pictures online in the morning, then Johanna and I went out for a bike ride at noon. We first stopped at Schnucks to buy some water and snack food to take with us. This was the first time in a long time that I have been into the store during day, so there were lots of people working that I hadn’t seen in a long time.
We bought chips, bananas and Devil Squares, then rode south out of town. The weather was so nice that I planned on taking Johanna all the way to Cedar Lake, but the wind coming out of the south turned out to be too much to ride against. So, we turned around about a quarter mile outside of the city, then returned and had our picnic at Campus Lake.
I tried to feed parts of a Devil Square to some ducks, but it turns at that they won’t eat dark-colored things. It hit one with a piece and it quickly swam away quacking.
We walked around the lake after eating, stopping to climb a steep hill that I have always thought looks oddly out of place on the mostly flat campus. The hill is long and narrow and has a bench swing at the top of it, which I really wasn’t expecting to see. After sitting there for about 15 minutes, we continued our walk.
We returned home about 3 o’clock, then played Super Mario 3 until we got sick of it, which happened when neither of us could pass the ship on level 3. We then fell asleep for about two hours before having leftover chicken from last night for dinner. We watched a couple episodes of Friends after that, then watched the movie ‘Maverick’(Mel Gibson) on my computer.
I received my student load money of over $4000 today. The check was sent to Murphysboro yesterday, then Clara deposited in my bank account today. So, that means I was finally able to pay my rent today. I was supposed to be charged $6 per day in late fees, but actually didn’t have to pay any of it.

January 11, 2005
Wednesday:

A worker showed up at 9:30 this morning to install a new circuit breaker, which resulted in finally having a working water heater. Johanna went out for a walk just after 10 o’clock, and didn’t return for 3 hours. I spent that time getting new pictures online and cleaning up the apartment, which was a mess from the water heater repair.
Johanna got home after 1 o’clock, after having walked all the way to WalMart. We ate noodles, chili and sandwiches, then she chatted online while I did the some Chinese homework that I know will be due while I am missing class to take Johanna to Chicago next week.
We talked about going for a walk or playing racquetball in the late afternoon, but ended up going to sleep instead. Johanna just slept from 4 till 5 o’clock, but I didn’t get up till almost 6. We then continued our laziness by playing Mario Brothers games for a couple hours on the Super Nintendo that Buckley and Jen gave me before they moved to St. Louis. This was the first time I had ever played it, and like most old Nintendos, it took a while to figure out its troublesome personality. While we played, we cooked and ate chicken breasts, peas and noodles for dinner.

January 10, 2005
Tuesday:

Two guys came just after 9 o’clock to start replacing the water heater that broke yesterday. The new water heater is about three times bigger than the old one, which means more hot water but less closet space. Johanna and I had some bread and cereal for breakfast, then I went into work at the bookstore at 10:30. It was raining steadily during the bike ride there, so I got pretty wet, but not completely soaked.
I worked until about 3 o’clock, taking a short break to walk to Wendy’s for lunch. Nic came in around noon and we talked about maybe playing racquetball tonight. He had been in Colorado visiting his dad most of the time that Johanna and I were out east.
As usual at work, I moved books around all day. All of them were ones that I had already moved once or twice already, but that doesn’t really bother me because I get paid by the hour.
On the ride home, I stopped to take a picture of a spot where an old building had been removed last week. It was next to the railroad tracks and was once a linen cleaning business. The middle of the city is mostly open space now, as several large buildings there have been torn down over the past few months.
Back at home, the maintenance guys were still working on installing the new water heater. Johanna and I decided to ride the bus to the mall at 4:45. The buses run on a very limited schedule because the university is on Winter Break, so we had to walk to Walnut St. to catch it. Two cars honked at us as we waited. Nic was in one of them, but I’m not sure about the other. Just before the bus came, I realized I didn’t have my student ID, so I had to pay the bus fare. I haven’t ridden the bus in this town too many times, but there were more people on it today than I have ever seen, and there was only one or two sets of seats without at least one person in them.
At the mall, we first went to the movie theatre to see if there was anything playing that we wanted to see. There wasn’t, but we had both at least heard of one movie, called ‘Munich’, which is directed by Steven Spielberg and is about events that happened after Israeli Olympic athletes were taken hostage in Munich, Germany. The movie didn’t start until 5:45 and we weren’t even sure if we wanted to see it.
We next went to JC Penny so Johanna could return a too-small shirt that was a Christmas gift from Clara. She took the gift receipt to a clerk and was told it was worth $60. That just didn’t sound right for a little pink sweater, so we took the receipt to another clerk in the back of the store. This second clerk said $16.99, then we told her that the clerk in the front had said $60. She then scanned the receipt a second time and said that $60 was right after all. So, Johanna showed her the $34 price tag on the sweater, which she scanned then said that the receipt we had was not the one for the sweater, and that we could only have $11.99 for it without the correct receipt.
Johanna just decided to take this amount since she will be in the country for less than a week. She took a whole handful of sweaters into the dressing room, then finally decided on a white one after 10 minutes. Next, we went to the food court to see if anything looked good enough to eat. The whole mall was almost empty of customers, and I don’t think more than two people were eating. The cashier at a Chinese food place was desperate enough to offer us samples of chicken as we passed by. We ate three of them, then he closely watched us as we browsed by the other restaurants and walked out of the food court.
Instead of eating, we decided to each have drink at the bar of Alongi’s(Italian restaurant). The bartender made conversation with us and we told him that we had decided to go see the movie ‘Munich’ at 5:45. He said that he had heard it was really good, then another customer who had heard the conversation said that he’d already seen the movie and it was really good.
So, we went into the theatre expecting something great, and we were disappointed. It wasn’t bad, but didn’t live up to the big talk we had heard earlier. It was over two hours long and ended at 8:45, which gave us a couple minutes to go catch the last bus of the evening. Johanna wanted to walk, but I convinced her to ride because I didn’t think I had a warm enough coat.
The bus driver asked me where we were going after I had already put $2 into the fare box. I told her “Poplar and Walnut”, then she said, “Not on this bus”, because the last bus of the night does not go back to that point. She dropped us off at a spot on the SIU campus that was a ten-minute walk back to the apartment. There, I cooked us generic Tuna Helper for dinner and we watched some TV. I noticed a couple of infomercials for very unusual products tonight, one for diet coffee and the other for pet stairs. The diet coffee is coffee grounds with diet medicine in it, and the pet stairs are for small and/or overweight pets that cannot get onto beds or couches.

January 9, 2005
Monday:

Only warm water was coming out of the hot water tap last night, and it was even cooler this morning, so I went to the office and told Tammy about it. Johanna and I made instant noodles and macaroni and cheese for breakfast. I ate most of the macaroni and she had all the noodles and some of the macaroni.
Not only the was the hot water not working today, but the Internet access was also down, which was probably related to the jackhammering sounds in the building and all of the hallway lights being shut off. There always seem to be so many maintenance issues at this apartment complex. Someone even took a crowbar to the new exterior door keypad lock while we were on our vacation.
We left just after noon to go clean up the car and do some grocery shopping. The car cleaning was done at a car wash, where I washed and vacuumed the car while Johanna mostly watched. I did all this because I knew we would soon be returning the car to Clara. We did our grocery shopping at Save-a-lot. Watching Johanna look at the sweets is like watching a kid in a candy store or a crack addict running loose in a police evidence warehouse. She gets so excited because cake mixes and chocolate pudding are much cheaper here than in Finland.
We put some gas in the car on the way home, then I stayed outside and wiped out the interior of it while she put away the groceries inside and washed her coat. She once came and asked if I needed any help, but walked away when I said yes.
We went for a walk around Campus Lake at 3:30, taking the same route as the last time we took the same walk, and seeing the same toy Frankenstien head in the same place on the same sidewalk as last time. Johanna almost tripped over the head this time. She got to witness extreme squirrel behavior along the walk, as the animals were making angry noises and frantically collecting nuts. One of them got really angry when we stopped to watch it, and it just glared at us while making that noise and holding its nuts. She also got to see a male and female cardinal for the first time. I made sure to point out that the male was much more pleasant to look at.
Back at home, there was a key on the table and a note that said our hot water heater had not been fixed, but that we could take showers in an uninhabited apartment downstairs. A guy had been by earlier to try and fix it, but that was apparently unsuccessful, so it will be replaced tomorrow. So, it felt like we were staying at a hostel tonight. Johanna went to the other apartment to take her shower first, then I went right afterwards. I should have waited a while, because the hot water was almost gone. She said that a girl that works here had come in and left a shower curtain as she was finishing her shower. So, water was all over the floors when I went to take my shower. The new shower curtain was still in its packaging, so I put it up before getting in. Seeing this other apartment made me want to switch, as everything was new, topping it off with a set of shiny new black appliances.
At 6 o’clock, we took the car back to my dad and Clara in Murphysboro. The first thing I did there was look for my student loan check in the mail, but it unfortunately hadn’t arrived yet. Clara had a dinner of salmon, Cajun rice, salad and some kind of interesting chili waiting for us, which could have been sold for $100 at a nice restaurant. I gave her and my dad the bottle of wine Johanna and I had bought for them in Maryland, and we all drank more than half of it after the meal. We watched a video on my website after that; the one with the raccoons fighting and the giant rabbit in Finland.
My dad and Clara were getting ready to take us back to Carbondale when my brother and Keri showed up unexpectedly. We all sat around and watched them eat as we all talked. My brother had a rental car with him, which was provided by a company that he will be doing a 3-day interview with in Indiana starting tomorrow.
After talking to my brother and Keri for about 20 minutes, we made the trip back to Carbondale, making the decision to make a stop at PK’s along the way. Johanna has been wanting to go there because my dad and I have been talking it up for weeks. Not much was going on on a Monday night, but we did each have a beer and hang out for a few minutes. Johanna taught my dad how to say cheers in Finnish(Kippis). My dad talked to the bartender for a few minutes, who said he has worked there for 11 years.
We came back home after the beer. Getting out of the car, we were all shocked to see that an ink jet printer had leaked black ink all over the leather seats. Clara had given me the printer to take home because she recently purchased a new one, along with an 19-inch LCD screen. This ink spill was no small mess, as it appeared that the whole ink cartridge had somehow drained out. I had first noticed ink on my jeans earlier, which was unfortunate because they are almost brand new.
I took the offending printer inside, then came back out with some generic Windex, which surprisingly cleaned up the mess almost perfectly. My dad thought the seat would be ruined, but it appears that the ink dries very slowly. Back inside, I was hoping for the same recovery on my jeans, but I won’t really be able to tell until tomorrow if I was successful.

January 8, 2005
Sunday(home from New Jersey):

Johanna and I woke up in our hotel room around 9 o’clock, then I spent an hour typing on my laptop before packing up our things and beginning what would be a thirteen and a half hour day of driving back to Carbondale.
We never stopped for more than 15 minutes at a time, ate our meals in the car and the weather was partly sunny all day, so that 13.5 hours was actually very good time. We had McDonalds for lunch somewhere near the Pennsylvania/New Jersey border, then had Taco Bell for dinner somewhere in Ohio. I think we stopped 3 times for gas, which is oddly seems more expensive in Pennsylvania than it is on the east coast. The gas station at our last gas stop didn’t have a bathroom, even though it was a BP. I took a different route home, passing through Columbus and Indianapolis, and Johanna said that all the cities in this country look the same. The nicest part of our dive was the Appalachian Mountains in Central Pennsylvania, where we had to go through 3 or 4 tunnels and pay a $10 toll. Well, the $10 part wasn’t nice.
We listened to CD’s or AM radio because the FM radio in the car doesn’t usually work. An AM station out of Texas said that a man had caught a mouse in his house and thrown it into a pile of burning leaves. The mouse ran out of the pile on fire and went under the man’s house, burning it to the ground. The mouse got its revenge, just like on Tom and Jerry, I thought.
As I have mentioned before, Johanna thinks that lots of fast-food buildings look like they are from cartoons. Coming into Carbondale around 11 o’clock, she said that Steak and Shake is the best one and that she needs pictures before leaving. I never really thought about it, but yes, Steak and Shake does look like its from a cartoon.
Back at the apartment, I unpacked my stuff, then went outside to smoke a cigarette and check the mail at 11:30. The older couple that lives in the office building was outside smoking also, so I joined them for a few minutes. The man’s name is Don and the woman is Delana(sp). There are both music teachers at SIU and in their 40’s, I think, and they are surely the nicest couple that I have met in quite a while. Towards the end of our conversation, I said that I had always wondered why they choose to live here with a bunch of noisy students. I didn’t expect for them answer that it makes them feel closer to their deceased son, whom used to live here. They suddenly now seem even nicer.

January 7, 2005
Saturday(New York City):

Johanna and I got at 9 o’clock, then packed up the car and left our hotel. After a few minutes of searching, we found the park-n-ride metro station, where weekend day parking is only $2. We then went to ticket vending machines and bought 2 round trips to Penn Station in Manhattan. A train just so happened to be pulling onto the platform as we arrived, then it took about 30 minutes to get into the city.
At Penn Station, Johanna got a doughnut and hot chocolate from Dunkin Doughnuts, and I got three chicken fajitas from McDonalds, which was the only lunch food on the dollar menu.
We then went up to the street level to take our first-every look at Manhattan. Two soldiers were guarding the entrance to the train station. We walked around the block, seeing the Empire State Building, but not realizing it at that time.
Next, we went back into the train station to buy subway passes and decide what we wanted to see first. A very eager little man helped us buy tickets from a vending machine. We had some problems figuring out the machines, and he would instantly pop us anytime we looked confused. I expected him to ask us for money, but he never did.
We decided to make our first subway trip to the World Trade Center site. On the train, we realized that the next stop was Times Square, so we got off to take a quick look before continuing on. I have seen this area hundreds of times in pictures and video, but didn’t realize how extensive the surrounding buildings have been decorated with LCD screens. We took a few pictures here, then decided to come back after dark. Back at the subway station, Johanna’s passcard was making the turnstile show the error ‘no value on card’. A woman working at the information desk said that the card was expired and that Johanna must accidentally be using an old one This was impossible since we had just arrived in the city and had not purchased any other cards than these one-day passes. The woman insisted that Johanna must have another card somewhere, so we just had to pay another $7 for a new one.
Continuing on the subway towards the WTC area, the stop underneath the site is still closed, but trains now normally pass through it to the final two stops on the south side. The conductor came on the intercom as we approached the station just north of the site and said that we would not be passing through today because of construction there. A free shuttle bus was taking passengers beyond this point.
We rode that shuttle to within one block of the site, then walked up to the east side of it. A new subway station is quickly taking shape there, and a large shiny silver awning with the words ‘World Trade Center Path Station’ has already been installed. Walking up to the awning, we passed by the old church and graveyard that was so prevalent in the photographs taken just after the disaster.
Heavy steel fencing surrounds the whole site, and the east and south sides of it are set up to allow viewing of the area. Dozens of information panels have been installed along the fence on both of these sides, which describe all aspects of the disaster. Johanna saw a panel showing the buildings before they were destroyed, and said that she had no idea how huge they were. The picture showed them rising twice as high as any of the surrounding buildings, which are about 50 stories. After spending about 30 minutes reading all the panels and looking at the site, she said that it was the most incredible thing she had seen in her life. I felt the same way.
After 4 years since Sept 11, I expected to see more then just a huge hole in the ground and such a void in the middle of Manhattan. Several other buildings were destroyed in the attack, so the empty space is massive. A couple surrounding skyscrapers are still uninhabited and/or under repair, the largest of which is supposed to eventually be demolished.
Walking further west along the south side of the site, we came to a temporary enclosed walkway that has been built over the busy road that runs along the west side. That walkway runs into the World Financial Center, which consists of several buildings that were also damaged, but have since been fully repaired. The lobbies of those building were open today, but only a handful of people were milling around because it was a Saturday. The weather outside was near freezing and breezy outside, so we sat on a bench by a window in one of the lobbies for about 15 minutes before continuing. The large granite lobby was on the 3rd or 4th floor and the windows looked down into the WTC hole. Continuing into the next World Financial Center building, we came to the massive glass atrium that had been shown with every pane of glass shattered after the disaster. The room has been restored to beautiful condition and about a dozen full-sized palm trees are growing in the middle. One of the most impressive parts of the room is the huge semi-circular marble staircase that leads down from the east side.
We next walked to the front side of the building, which was along the water, and looked for the Statue of Liberty. It was clearly visible, but too far away to really see any details. We talked about maybe trying to take a ferry there later, but decided against it because we were now quickly running out of cash.
So, we headed back to the subway station, passing along the sides of the WTC site that we hadn’t yet seen. Back over by the old church, I noticed that the gates were now open and a sign said that there was a memorial inside. We walked into the old graveyard that surrounds it and saw that signs have been placed around some of the headstones, which have information and pictures about the recovery process. Inside, we learned that this church played a big part in the days and weeks after the disaster. Both religious and non-religious emergency workers came to this place to collect themselves during the 12-hour shifts that they worked in the rubble. Over 300 of the churches clergy had volunteered to help take care of these people.
It looked like the inside of the building hadn’t changed all that much since the disaster, as all the memorials that the workers built inside were still present. A couple people could even be seen sitting in the pews and crying. Hand drawn banners of support created by children hung on all the surrounding walls. The memorials contained hundreds of pictures of deceased people and patches from the uniforms of the workers who died trying to save them.
Continuing towards the subway, we passed a huge man that was walking on the sidewalk in shorts and short sleeves. Our next stop was Chinatown, and it took us a few minutes to figure out how to get there, even though it was very near. Even after spending a whole day trying to read the subway maps, we still don’t understand how the system works. Chinatown was surprisingly authentic to all the Chinese cities that I have seen. The streets are filled with vendors selling food and small merchandise, and people standing on the sidewalk will say things like ‘handbag, dvd, cheap’ as the tourists pass by. I bought a pair of leather gloves from a vendor here for $5, because mine were looking old and very shabby.
Our main reason for coming into Chinatown was to eat some good Chinese food, which we did find. The restaurant we picked had whole cooked ducks and chickens hanging by their necks in the windows, just like in China. We were seated at the rear of the building, then ordered chicken fried rice and a noodle dish. The food I ordered came before Johanna’s, just like in China, but we ended up sharing all the food, just like Chinese people do at restaurants. A very obnoxious woman sat right behind us during the whole meal, loudly speaking in her strong New York accent all the time.
We continued on into the city after getting our fortune cookies, which are not given in China, and paying for our meal. We couldn’t believe it when the annoying woman from the restaurant showed up right next to us on the subway. Our next stop was the Empire State building, which a young guy in the subway told us how to get to when we couldn’t find it on the map.
I remembered the building from earlier today as soon as we saw it, but it just didn’t look big enough. But, getting closer, we realized it was actually quite massive and thought about how people would have perceived it when it was built at the beginning of the century. The sun was now quickly going down and we were just in time to take a couple pictures while sun was still hitting the west side of the building.
We next took the subway on to Central Park, which was unfortunately mostly closed off and under construction for the winter. Paths were still open though, and we walked in for a few minutes and took a few pictures of the surrounding skyscrapers in the sunset. Central Park was just about what I expected, but I was surprised to see so much exposed rock, protruding 15 feet high in some places.
It was now almost completely dark, so we returned to see the Times Square lights again. We planned on taking the subway there, but walked because the lights could be seen in the distance down the street. We walked for about 20 minutes, stopping in a gift shop for a few minutes, but not buying anything because even a shot glass was $5.
Times Square was a hundred more times impressive at night. A wide four-story building at the north end has a facade that had been entirely covered with one huge LCD screen. Continuing on to the center of the square, it was as bright as day. Tonight was a Saturday night, so the area was packed with tens of thousands of people walking, standing around or waiting in long lines for things. A camera crew with a boom was filming something in the middle of the street.
We had been debating all day whether or not we should stay in the city another day, but finally now decided against it because we were running so low on money. So, we took the subway back to Penn Station, which was where our return train would be leaving. We were hoping not to wait a long time for a train, and we were in luck, as one was departing just 15 minutes later. The track number was not announced until 10 minutes before departure, which I think was to keep people from packing onto the platforms and being pushed onto the tracks. Sure enough, a stampede quickly developed as soon as the number was announced, and about 1000 people had to pass down a single escalator. We somehow were some of the last people to get on the train, so all the rear cars were packed full by that time. We ran 15 to 20 cars ahead and found some empty seats there, just a couple minutes before the train pulled out of the station. Ten minutes is just not enough time for 1000 people to board a train.
Back at the car, we headed out of the city, planning on driving a couple hours before getting a hotel for the night. But, the first thing we had to do was go to a gas station to get gas and look at an atlas so I would know how to get home. A man came out to pump the gas at the first station we stopped at, so I left because I thought that full-service would cost more. The same thing happened at the next station, which is when I remembered that most gas stations in New Jersey work this way. I had been in the state several years ago and learned this.
After a while of interstate driving, we pulled off at a McDonalds exit to eat dinner. Unbelievably, the McDonalds was closed, so we continued down the interstate to a Burger King because we had coupons for that restaurant. The clerk there didn’t know what to do with my 2 for $6 Whopper Value Meal coupon, so he got the manager. The manager was going to accept it, but then realized it was expired. So, we decided to continue on to a restaurant that had more cheap items on its menu, which turned out to be another McDonalds.
After a while longer of interstate driving, we decided to look for a little town where a cheap hotel could hopefully be found. We exited at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which was just next to another town called Hellertown. So, the names Bethlehem and Hellertown were on the same sign together. Bethlehem actually turned out to be no small town at all, with apparently no cheap hotels. We drove through the large university town for about 30 minutes without finding anything accept for a luxury place called Hotel Bethlehem. I stopped at a place that had the word ‘Inn’ on their sign, but it actually turned out to be a restaurant. I walked in and saw tables everywhere, then asked a woman sitting by the front counter, “Is this just a restaurant?”, And she replied, “Just a restaurant?”.
Further down the interstate, I saw a roadsign for a place called Budget Inn. We pulled off, but didn’t see the Budget Inn anywhere in sight. About 20 minutes later, we saw another sign, for a place called The Dutch Inn. This small clean building was located in some trees about a half-mile off the highway down a very narrow road. I rang a doorbell, then walked into the office, where an old friendly Indian woman came out to meet me. She said that the rate was $45, so I told her I would check at another nearby hotel first, then she quickly lowered the price to $40, so I told her we would take it. Johanna then came in and the woman gave us both a bottle of water. She seemed to speak very little English, or pretended not to, as the price of our room turned out to be $42.99 instead of $40. I didn’t argue with her because she didn’t seem to understand much.
She had said, “Nice room”, and she was telling the truth about that. The furniture was all matching hard-wood, and the bed had spiral-carved posts rising about 7 feet on all corners. Every detail of the decoration had been paid attention to, and this was a room that most people would be proud to have in their home.

January 6, 2005
Friday(Washington DC):

I woke up in the hotel at 7:30 and my socks got soaked while walking to the bathroom. The water was coming from under the bathroom door. Inside, I noticed for the first time that a garbage can was placed underneath the sink. The sink was partially on, but you couldn’t tell it because the faucet was broken and water was trickling down it instead of dripping. So, water had been flowing into the drain all night, then dripping into the garbage can, which must have filled up soon after we went to bed. It appeared that most of the water had somehow gone under the wall and onto the bedroom carpet.
I turned the sink completely off, then decided to take a shower, but found that the water had soaked into both of my backpacks, which had all my clothes in them. One of them was completely soaked from top to bottom and weighed about 20 pounds from all the water. Just the bottom layer of clothes in the other one was wet.
We were hoping to be downtown in the city by sometime rather early in the morning, but now I needed to go to a laundromat, as I didn’t even have a pair of clean dry socks or underwear.
So, I told Johanna to just stay in the room and rest while I went out in search of a laundromat. The clerk working in the hotel lobby said that I could find one two miles east on the same street as the hotel. I went that direction and the traffic going into the city was terrible. I stopped at a small gas station to get some smaller bills for the laundromat. I never did find it, but I did find myself entering an interstate tunnel that I didn’t mean to go in. The tunnel lead somewhere about a mile away, then I had to try and find the way back. By this time, it was already after 9 o’clock, so I decided to wait on the laundry because I might not be able to get it finished before the 11 o’clock check out time at our hotel.
Back at the room, I smoked a cigarette outside on the second floor walkway and was approached by a prostitute that was walking on the sidewalk. She stopped and smiled, then made hand gestures about coming up into my room. I shook my head no, several times, but she just kept on trying till I walked away.
Johanna and I checked out of the room around ten o’clock, then walked to a cafeteria-style restaurant that was just a block and a half away. I had seen the place while looking for the laundromat and thought Johanna might like something different than fast food. It was in a dirty brick building with a neon ‘cafeteria’ sign in the window that was so dirty its light was being blocked. The floors inside the building had cardboard laid across them, but things didn’t look dirty. As soon as we entered, a friendly older Asian woman behind the counter started telling us about all the food that she was serving up from different dishes behind a glass panel. Johanna and I both had chicken, string beans and macaroni and cheese. Several other customers came in as we ate, and most of them appeared to know the woman working, calling her Moma something and exchanging a lot of laughs. An Asian man, probably her husband, came to help her out when things got busy,
Next, we got on the bus to downtown. The payment system on the bus would not accept one of my dollar bills, so the driver took all three of the dollars and said he would put them in it, which I never saw happen. A couple blocks into the trip, we passed two women fighting on the sidewalk. One man was trying to hold back one of the woman and another man was trying to hold back the other woman and hold a puppy by the neckskin at the same time. Another block down the road, the driver stopped to yell at some of his friends that were standing in front of a small store. He tried to convince them to come along for the ride, but they wouldn’t. While he yelled, a woman was knocking on the bus door trying to get in, but the driver wasn’t paying attention and started to drive away before the other passengers yelled for him to stop.
At our downtown Union Station stop, we went to a ticket vending machine and bought two subway passes, then took the train to a station near the White House. There, the turnstiles would not open and let me exit when I put my ticket in. I went to the service booth and a man there asked me to hand him the ticket, but there were no slot in the glass between us to do that. He just stood there with his hand open like I was supposed to pass the ticket through the solid glass, then laughed and told me to come to the door of the room he was in. He ran my ticket through a machine, then asked me twice who else had used my ticket, like I was trying to pull over some scam or something. He then reluctantly let me pass through an emergency exit.
We now went out in search of the White House. I had spent several minutes looking at a map I had in my pocket before Johanna realized that there was a sign right next to us pointing in the direction of the White House. We followed signs to the backside of the building, but a fence there kept tourists from getting within at least 300 feet of the building. There were small gray boxes every few feet on the ground on the other side of the fence, which each had two slits in them and looked like some kind of high-tech security devices. We were able to get much closer to the front of the building, where a few dozen cameras were set up and a couple newsmen were doing reports. The streets in front of the building had been open to traffic when I was here about 10 years ago, but are now shut down to anything except official traffic and pedestrians. There were a handful of protestors along the streets, including one with a sign that said it had been a continuous 24-hour peace vigil since 1981. A female police officer was going around and checking some kind of paperwork that the protesters had.
Next, we walked on towards the Natural History Museum, stopping along the way at a building called the White House Visitors Center. I stopped here just to see if they were offering White House tours, but we didn’t go in because the security guard at the door was being weird. We first had to empty everything in our pockets, then he asked to see our belts. He looked at mine and said OK, then told Johanna to take her’s off with a weird look on his face, which is when we put all of our things back in our pockets and walked out.
We then spent about an hour at the Natural History Museum, looking at the dinosaurs, insects and rocks. The insect area had many unusual live insects, and a tarantula feeding was beginning as we walked through. The spider was brought out on a cart by an old man, old woman and younger man, all of whom were wearing white robes. The younger man did all the speaking on microphone while the older ones sat and watched. The small crowd that had gathered was told that the spider is brought out to eat once a week and had refused to eat last week. The man put the spider’s cage on the floor and dropped a small cricket into it. Johanna and I just so happened to both look away at the moment the spider lunged for its prey. The last thing we did at the museum was look at the famous hope diamond, which is supposed to be one of the largest high quality ones in the world. It is attached to a pendant necklace and sits on a rotating base inside of a large glass case.
It was now getting to be after 2 o’clock, and we planned on driving into New York tonight, so we decided it was time to get back to our car. We walked back to Union Station, stopping along the way to set the camera on a timer in front of the Capitol Building to take a picture of both of us. A group of girls asked me to take a picture of them at the same spot.
At Union Station, we went inside to look for an ATM machine and get change for the bus. The building was in beautiful condition and had three levels of stores and huge arched ceilings painted white and gold. We sat down for a while after finding an ATM machine because we were both exhausted. We then asked a few employees if there was an Internet Cafe in the area because we wanted to look at some information about New York, but were told that there were no cafes nearby.
So, Johanna bought a candy bar and got some change, then we took the bus back to our car at the hotel. We next took the car in search of a nearby laundromat that we had earlier seen from the bus, because we still needed to dry out my clothes from the flood. We didn’t find the laundromat we were looking for, but did find another bigger and better one not too far away. I used my laptop there while we waited for the washing and drying to finish. I think I was probably fulfilling stereotypes because I was the only white guy in the crowded building and was using a laptop. After the dryer was finished, Johanna got mad because I wouldn’t let her fold any more of my clothes after seeing that she badly folded a sweatshirt.
It was after dark by the time we left the city. Traffic was heavy getting to the freeway loop and was even heavier on the loop. It was much smoother after exiting onto Interstate 95 and heading towards Baltimore.
We stopped on the north side of that city to pick up dinner from a Taco Bell and fill up the gas tank, then continued on to within a few miles south of New York. There, we exited onto the Garden State Parkway and found an exit I had written down last week, which was to a park-n-ride area of the metro-rail system. The only hotel we saw here was a Hilton, so we stopped at a gas station to ask about cheaper ones.
We were told of an area where we eventually found a tiny hotel with a sign that had most of its lights out. The only entrance to it was just around a bend in the highway, so I missed it the first time and almost missed it the second time. The parking lot was very dark and I rang a doorbell on the office. A light came on, then a older foreign man came and spoke to us through a window, saying that a room cost $45 per night….perfect. He asked if I wanted to see the room first, but I said no because I figured he wouldn’t be asking that if there was really any problem with the room. While we were paying, he asked again that I look at the room before he charged the Visa card. The room wasn’t perfect, but was better than what we had last night.
Inside, we both had one of the drinks we bought last night and watched ‘The Field of Dreams’.

January 5, 2006
Thursday(to Washington DC):

Johanna and I got up at 8 o’clock this morning, then packed up our things, said goodbye to Greg and were on the road headed into Washington. We stopped twice during the 3 hour trip into the city, once to get breakfast at a Burger King and once at a state park on the west side of the Chesapeake Bay. We went to the park to take pictures of the 4-mile long bridge, but dense fog kept that from happening. The fog was moving quite quickly, so we waited on a beach for a few minutes hoping that it would clear up a little bit, but it never did.
We got to the edge of the city about 11:30, then filled up the gas tank. At the station, I asked an older black man filling up an orange appliance store truck if he knew of any cheap hotels in the area. I said I didn’t care if the hotel was dirty, then he gave me a surprised look with his very strange looking eyes and told directions to a place. I found that place, called the Downtown Hotel, just a few blocks down the road. By the looks of the building, it seemed like it would definitely be really cheap, but I went inside the tiny lobby and a middle-eastern man said that it was $60 plus taxes per night, so we went on in search of something else. We next stopped at a place called Budget Motor Inn, where another middle-eastern man said that the price was $52 plus tax. I then went to another hotel across the street, called the Presidential, where yet another middle-eastern man said that the price was $70, after I had waited in a line for 15 minutes.
So, we decided to stay at the Budget Motor Inn. While checking in, a lady in the lobby asked me to give her change. We didn’t put any of our things in the room at this time because this area of the city looked pretty rough.
We now drove towards downtown and somehow got lost for about 30 minutes. We finally arrived at about 1 o’clock, but couldn’t find any parking spaces, so we decided to go back and park at the hotel and take a train or bus back downtown. Getting back ended up taking another hour and a half because we got lost several more times. We had printed out a map before leaving Greg’s house, but it wasn’t seeming to help us much.
We finally pulled into our hotel’s parking lot just before 3 o’clock, which was already three hours after the time we had planned on starting our sightseeing. We now went into our hotel room to use the bathroom, which was the first time we had seen it. The carpet was wrinkled and everything in the bathroom was broken, but at least the bed looked clean.
We next went to the lobby and asked where to find the nearest metro station, and were told to go one block west and get on a bus that would go there. We had to wait at the bus stop for about 15 minutes, and a guy there talked to me much of the time. He talked about how some people smoke too much crack, but he would only take a few hits every once in a while. I did get a bit of useful information, as he told me about a gas station down the street that would give us change for the bus. I went there and bought a candy bar with a five dollar bill in order to get some dollar bills and quarters. Back at the bus stop, the man asked me for a dollar in exchange for the information he had given. He wanted the dollar in order to buy another Steel Reserve beer, which he was drinking in a plastic black bag.
The bus ride took longer than normal because a minor accident happened in front of us and blocked the road for about 10 minutes. The bus took us to a metro station that was right next to the US Capitol Building, so we actually didn’t need to take the train anywhere. We walked up to the capitol as the sun was getting very low in the sky, then got a few pictures of the building before it went below the horizon. We then walked down the mall, which is the area between the Capitol Building, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. This walk is at least a mile, so it was almost completely dark by the time we reached the Lincoln Memorial. Inside, we found that Lincoln was taking a shower. His statue had a square box of plastic sheeting built around it and just his head was sticking out the top.
We now walked back towards the Capitol Building, but walked through the streets this time. The areas we passed through were full of classy bars and restaurants with valet parking, which really made us wish we weren’t so poor.
Back at the Capitol Building, we spent a few minutes looking at the national Christmas tree in front of it. A sign by the tree said that it was over 90 years old, which made Johanna say that she felt like this was some kind of funeral for the tree and that its decoration was part of the ceremony.
We next went to the bus stop across the street from the one we had originally gotten off at. I thought we were supposed to get on bus 6, but after asking two drivers, found that it was actually bus 4.
We waited at the bus stop for about 20 minutes and were getting really cold. The temperature earlier in the day had been almost 60, but was now feeling very chilly because of a steady wind. The bus ride back to our hotel took almost 30 minutes, and as had been earlier today, we were almost the only white people that could be seen anywhere around this area of town.
We next got in the car and drove to a McDonalds to buy dinner at the drive thru. Before going back into our room, we walked to a liquor store next to the building. The store had windows that were too dirty to see through and the door only had a wire for a handle.
We spent the rest of the evening having a couple drinks and watching TV in our room, only going outside once to bring our bags inside.

January 4, 2006
Wednesday(in Salisbury):

I got up at 8 o’clock again this morning and used my laptop in the living room for an hour. Greg and Johanna were still sleeping at 9:30, so I decided to pick things up in the kitchen and take out the trash. While outside, I drank a cup of raspberry tea, smoked a cigarette and took a couple pictures around the apartment complex.
Greg and Johanna got up just after 10 o’clock, then she used the Internet for a while while Greg and I talked at the kitchen table. He has dozens of unusual and interesting stories that can be entertaining thought provoking for hours.
Our plan for lunch had been to drive to a nearby town and eat at a small café there, but we changed our minds and decided to eat mashed potatoes, green beans and meatloaf at the apartment when Steven came home for his lunch break at noon.
Afterwards, we got in the Intrepid and went out to spend the afternoon exploring the area. Our first stop was the large house we had seen on a flatbed truck yesterday, which I really wanted to take a picture of. I was worried that it would already be moved, but it was actually in the exact same situation it had been.
Our next top was the small town we had earlier planned on eating in, Berlin. We parked the car downtown, then browsed a couple of the businesses there. It was a good thing we had decided not to eat at the restaurant here, because it was closed for remodeling for one month. We went inside a place called the Globe Theatre, which is a two story building with a gift shop, restaurant, theatre and art gallery. Greg knew a guy working there named Justin, whom he introduced Johanna and I to. The art gallery was upstairs and featured expensive paintings that cost up to $16000. I bought a bottle of Massachusetts honey wine downstairs as a gift to give Clara for letting me borrow her car for 10 days.
We next went into another art gallery, which was also two stories and had dozens of expensive paintings and a couple $2500 carved stools. Greg said that he usually comes to this business regularly because they have poetry reading nights twice per month.
Next, we decided to go to a national park that Greg’s friend Justin had recommended to us. We stopped at a Wal-Mart on the way there so I could buy more tapes for my camcorder. At the park, only a few visitors were present, as the weather was cold and dark. We first stopped at a beach, where the sand was soft and white and the ocean was producing some powerful waves. We then drove on into the main area of the park, where the main attraction is wild ponies, that are though to exist here because of a shipwreck hundreds of years ago. Even more plentiful than ponies, are tiny dark colored deer. We saw at least two-dozen different animals as we drove down the road, most of which were oblivious to us, or curious. When I stopped to take a picture of a group of them, a few were frightened and a few began approaching me. Further down the road, a ranger’s truck was stopped and a horse had its head in the window.
We didn’t go fully through the park because we eventually came to a point where we would have to pay to go further. I stopped again on the way out to record video of two ponies. I rolled the car window down and one of them came and stuck its whole head inside the car and started licking things. Another one came to the passenger’s side and looked in at Greg and Johanna as it licked that side of the car.
Our next stop was a tourist town called Ocean City, which has 147 blocks of hotels, condominiums, restaurants and shops along the beach. We got out of the car for a few minutes at a 2-mile long boardwalk that runs along the southern end of the city.
It was about to get dark at this time, so we decided to head back into Salisbury to have a couple drinks and dinner. We first stopped at an Italian restaurant where Greg knew the owner’s son, Robert, who was bartending. After an hour here, we headed to the Green Turtle sports bar, which is where Greg’s son Matt works. Food was on sale at this time because it was happy hour, so we all ordered something. I ate a burger with ham and swiss cheese on it.
We next returned to Greg’s apartment. There, Johanna and I attempted to book hotel rooms in Washington and New York for the next 5 nights, but couldn’t find anything affordable. We then decided to check for hostels, but nothing seemed to be available tomorrow night. So, we decided to just look for a room when we drive into the city tomorrow morning. While passing through on the way here two days ago, we noticed several hotels advertising cheap rooms, so we’re hoping that some of those will be available still.
We ended the night by all watching a Jack Nickelson movie about three sisters who are able to will things to happen. They at first don’t realize they have this power, and accidentally will the perfect man into their lives, who turns out to be the devil.

January 3, 2005
Tuesday:

Johanna and I slept on Greg’s bedroom floor last night, which is actually very comfortable because there are a few layers of padding underneath us. I got up at 8 o’clock and used my laptop until Greg got up an hour later. We then sat in the living room and talked until Johanna got up another hour later.
We were all talking and doing some things on the Internet in Greg’s room, and he showed Johanna two articles he has had published in science magazines over the past few years, which are about space weather and Hurricane Camile. He actually rode out that hurricane, which devasted the Gulf Coast in the late 1960’s. Greg has a masters degree in English and has done much science writing over the years. He is currently a part time teacher at a local college and is now mostly interested in writing about more personal subjects and poetry.
Johanna and I ate some bread and toast around noon. Greg’s son Steve came home for lunch at that time. Steve just started an electronic engineering job in Salisbury and is sleeping on Greg’s couch for a few weeks. The job sounds rather interesting and includes tasks like building parts for military and commercial jets and satellites.
Just after noon, Greg drove Johanna and I to a nearby grocery store to pick up some things to eat for the next two days. After that, we went to a liquor store/gas station, where Greg pumped gas and I bought a box of Bud Light.
Greg got a call from a friend as we were taking the groceries into the house, who asked that he give him a $10 loan and a ride to the mall. Johanna and I rode along for the trip, which took us into the residential areas of the city. The guy we picked up, Johny, is a drag queen who is probably less than 30 years old. He was dressed as a man today, but has a very feminine voice. On the way to the mall, he was talking about a new Chinese dress he has and how its size will have to be altered because he has no breasts. He said “I love you” in German to Johanna and she understood it.
After dropping Johny off at the mall, we took a long route around the city to get home. We passed a full-sized southern-style 3-story home that was loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck. It was shocking to see such a large home in such a situation, and I hope it is still there tomorrow so I can go back and take a picture of it. Traveling on further, we passed by Salisbury University, which has a large nice-looking campus and several thousand students. Greg would like to get a full-time teaching job there, but said the competition is currently fierce.
Back at his apartment, Johanna spent time using the Internet and I talked to Greg as he worked on lunch and dinner. I helped peel a few potatoes. I went into the bedroom while Johanna was typing emails, and she covered the screen and pushed me out…..wonder what she was writing…..or more-so, who she was writing to……
Steve came back home from work just after 4 o’clock, then everyone had a meal together of potato salad, beans and hot dogs.
After the meal, we all sat around and talked for the next few hours. Steve showed us a radio-controlled robot he got for Christmas, which can not only pick things up, walk and do karate, but can also fart and burp. I talked to Steve quite a bit throughout the night, who seems like quite an interesting guy with very broad hobby interests, including everything from woodworking to electronics.
We all left the apartment together after 9 o’clock and went to a nearby sports-bar called Mulligan’s. Karaoke was happening there, and Johanna and Greg requested that I sing. The DJ’s were not getting many Karaoke participants when we first arrived, so my name was called just minutes after putting in a request for Elvis’s ‘Hound Dog’. One of the DJ’s shook my hand and said ‘Very good’ after I finished, but I had made random sounds in place of many of the words because I couldn’t remember how they went.
There was still hardly anybody requesting to sing after I did, so at Johanna’s request, I went back up to the DJ booth to get another song request card. The DJ handed me several more cards as I was walking away, saying something like, “Help us out, keep going”. So, I returned two of the cards, one for ‘Like a Virgin’ and the other for Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’. I was called a couple minutes later for ‘Like a Virgin’. There were about 75 people in the bar at this time and I heard hoots and hollers from them the whole time I sang. I tried to hit all the high notes even though I knew I couldn’t come close, which really seemed to get the most intense audience response. More people started coming up to sing after this, as the bar began to fill up, so my last song was not called until just before we left. I sang ‘Crazy’ just after a group of 6 to 8 black people had danced and sang some hard-core rap, so the two songs were quite a contrast.
We arrived back at Greg’s apartment sometime before 1 o’clock, then he and I ate hamburgers before everyone decided it was time to sleep.

January 2, 2006
Monday:

Today was almost completely filled with travel from Cincinnati, Ohio to Salisbury, Maryland, which is 2 hours east from Washington DC, across the Chesapeake Bay. The trip started out unpleasant due to weather conditions, and got progressively worse throughout the day.
As I requested last night, Tavis woke Johanna and I up while getting ready for work at 7:30. We there then were packed and on the road just after 8 o’clock. Drizzle was falling and the temperature was predicted to rise into the 60’s by afternoon, which meant that severe weather was in the forecast.
Our first stop was just north of Cincinnati, for gas and breakfast. After pumping the fuel, we both went inside because Johanna wanted gas station food instead of the typical fast-food American breakfast. When paying for the gas, I noticed a heated display of 2-for$3 breakfast sandwiches by the counter, which I purchased two of. Back in the car, if found that the sandwich buns were rock-hard and Johanna said that the clerk had rudely interrogated her about the payment for the gas while I was in the bathroom. Apparently, this clerk thought we took too long to pay and that we might be trying to skip out on the bill………who in their right mind buys food and uses the bathroom before paying for gas? My sandwiches had labels saying “guaranteed fresh”, but I didn’t feel like complaining about anything. I just went through a nearby McDonalds drive thru and ordered a sausage-egg Mcmuffin and a hash brown. The total was $3.09, but I absentmindedly just handed nine cents to the woman working the drive-thru window. She stared for a second, then curiously said, “Well, there’s the nine…”.
We didn’t make another stop for the next three hours, continuing northeast past Columbus, Ohio, then east towards Washington DC. The drizzle kept falling on-and-off and seemed to be intensifying, which kept the roads wet and the visibility low. I stopped and filled the gas tank again when it was only half empty because we didn’t have any maps of this area in the car and I wanted to be sure I was still headed in the right direction. I asked Johanna to pump the gas while I went inside the station and looked at an atlas. She had never pumped gas before in her life and was very reluctant to do so, so it took some coaxing and a quick lesson.
Continuing east, the drizzle turned to an almost continuous hard rain with long areas of dense fog as the Interstate wound through the higher areas of the mountains. The traffic flow sometimes abruptly slowed to as low as 40MPH, but usually moved at high speeds even in the worst of conditions. The combination of moving 70MPH in 75-foot or less of visibility required a high level of attention to the road at all times and become more and more nerve-racking as the hours ticked by.
We made our next stop at a rest area near Washington, Pennsylvania. They had free maps available there, but only of the state. I purchased a coffee-hot chocolate combination drink from a vending machine. Johanna had never seen a machine like that before, which is the kind that drops a cup behind a window, then sprays the drink into it. Back at the car, I remembered that I had wrote a couple very basic directions down last night just before I went to bed. I checked the pajamas I’d been wearing and found some words written on the back of a mattress tag, which just so happened to provide the information I was looking for at the time.
We made our next stop when the Interstate we were traveling on came to an end in a dense little town. There, we had a meal, and Johanna insisted it was at Taco Bell. Our order was mostly wrong, but we weren’t shorted on quantity. A long line of customers had developed and only one employee seemed to be waiting on them, so I just convinced Johanna to eat the food anyway.
We neared Washington over the next hour and a half, as the weather deteriorated further and the traffic intensified. The fog did actually make for a couple very scenic areas when viewed from a high elevation hanging low over little mountain towns in the valleys.
Washington ruined the day. I needed to pass through the city and find route 50 in order to get to my friend Greg’s apartment, which is where we planned on staying for the next few days. I drove on the 495 beltway, which is the freeway loop that surrounds the city. This was 5 lanes of traffic erratically moving through the thick fog and heavy rain at speeds of up to 80MPH. Even some tractor-trailer trucks were passing me, even though I was at least doing 65MPH. After 20 minutes or so of this hell, I came upon an exit for route 50. We thought all was well, but had actually exited to the highway at the west side of the freeway loop instead of the east, which meant that the road took us straight through downtown Washington and through a maze of turns and stoplights. It was now about 6 o’clock, so the traffic was light, but following route 50 turned out to be nearly impossible. I eventually found myself hopelessly lost and again came to the 495 beltway. After 20 more miles of freeway hell, we saw another exit for route 50, but didn’t take it because we incorrectly thought that we had done a complete loop around the belt and that this was the same exit we had taken earlier. After 10 more miles of hell we came to another exit for 50 and I realized that it was actually the one we had taken earlier.
I now couldn’t take another minute of hell, so I just decided to take route 50 though the city a second time and try to follow it out. So, we again passed by the Washington Monument and dozens of the huge marble and granite government buildings downtown. I wasn’t able to perfectly follow route 50 this time either, but with Johanna’s help at finding signs, was eventually able to follow it out of the city. Being lost had cost us two hours and about $10 worth of gas….wish I would have bought a $6 atlas.
Twenty miles later came Annapolis, Maryland and the 4-mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which costs $2.50 to cross. We purchased another tank of gas on the other side, then continued another 70 miles south to Salisbury, Maryland, home of Greg.
We thought our troubles had ended, but not quite. We were looking for a road called route 12/Snowhill Rd., but passed through the medium-sized town without seeing it. I tried to call Greg from a gas station on the south side of town, but got disconnected signals on both his home phone and cell. We drove on a little further, then returned to the gas station to ask for directions. Two foreign employees and a young male customer didn’t recognize the name Route 12, but did know Snowhill Rd, which was just about 3 miles away.
The trouble wasn’t over yet. We followed the signs for Snowhill road and drove on it for 20 miles without seeing much of anything except for forestland and a few houses. We eventually came to a quaint little sleepy town called Snow Hill and I realized that we had gone too far because Greg has a Salisbury address. We attempted to call him on Johanna’s cell phone, even though it would mean a big charge, but using her Finnish phone meant that we would have to remember the US country code, which we couldn’t. So, we followed Snowhill Rd back into Salisbury.
It turns out that a sign had pointed me in the wrong direction and we found Greg’s apartment complex just inside the city limits. There were at least 10 3 story-buildings in the newly built complex and it took us another 10 minutes to figure out which one he lived in.
Finally at 11 o’clock, three hours later than planned, we knocked on Greg’s door. He was home and the terrible day was fixed. I brought our things in the apartment, then the three of us sat at the table and talked for a while. Greg has two of his grown sons living with him right now, but they were both asleep. Johanna went to bed after a few minutes of talking, then Greg and I stayed up just a bit longer.

January 1, 2006
Sunday:

Johanna and I slept on Tavis and Katie’s bedroom floor last night. We got up around noon, which is when all the other guests were packing up to leave town. Tavis and Gabe went out to breakfast together around 12:30, then the rest of us went to Bob Evans about an hour later. About half of the people in our group were sick from last night, so we were not a very lively bunch. I had taken anti-hangover pills during the night, but still had a headache and felt tired. The pills might actually work, but I didn’t take one per hour, as is directed.
As soon as we arrived at Bob Evans, we realized that Jared would be returning to the apartment and wouldn’t be able to get in, so Tavis left to go open the door, then returned before our food arrived.
All the other guests, minus Jared, headed back to Carbondale as soon as we were done eating. They were already packed and ready to leave, so we all said goodbye in the Bob Evans parking lot.
Next, Tavis and Katie took Johanna and I into the city for a walk. We parked near a shopping center on the Kentucky side of the river, which is right across from all the big downtown Cincinnati, Ohio buildings. Near our parking spot was a truck-sized bell housed inside a glass building. On the other side of the shopping center was an old car bridge, called the Purple People Bridge, which has been converted for pedestrian-only use. On the other side of the bridge we walked around the downtown area and I took some pictures of Johanna and the buildings. An hour into the walk, we stopped at a small downtown store so Tavis and I could buy some water. For some reason, most of the shelves in the store were empty. Just after leaving the store, we saw a pedestrian that couldn’t walk straight for some reason. He fell down and rolled in the middle of the street, then just got up and continued stumbling along.
After an hour and a half of walking, we decided we’d had enough and crossed back over the river using a different bridge. Back at the apartment, Johanna went to sleep in the spare bedroom and I used Tavis’s computer.
In the early evening, I went to WalMart and Blockbuster Video with Tavis and Katie. Johanna stayed home to write some emails. At WalMart, we bought some material to make dinner and Tavis bought nicotine patches. He and Katie both have a New Years resolution to quit smoking. Tavis plans on using the patch and Katie has prescription medication. At the video store, we rented the movie ‘Crash’. We also wanted to buy a bottle of wine, but liquor stores here close at 6 o’clock on Sundays. Non-liquor stores are not allowed to sell anything stronger than beer.
Back at the apartment, Tavis made bean dip and Katie made some kind of chicken wrap dish that was smothered in a cream cheese sauce and baked, which was sooooo good(and I’m not just saying that because I think she will read this). We started watching the movie as we ate. It is about racial issues and should get a Most Depressing Movie of 2005 award, but is really good. It follows the lives of several strangers, all of different races. The ones that are the most racist end up inadvertantly doing great things for the people they are racist against, and the opposite thing happens with the people who think they are not racist.
p.s. Katie requests that I say she is cool and awesome. It’s true, but don’t give her a big head.