March 2005

March 31, 2005
Thursday:

I stayed at home in Murphysboro last night and my dad brought me back to Carbondale on his way to work this morning. Clara made us both sandwiches for the ride, which had eggs, bologna and mayonnaise in them. We also had orange juice in coffee mugs.
I got home about 7:30. I got ready to start studying for my 10 o’clock Chinese test, but realized that there was no way I could cover a weeks worth of materials in two hours. I did not go to class at all while Johanna was here, so I am way behind. Instead of taking the test and failing it, I took a nap until 10:30.
I talked to Johanna from about 11:30 to 12:30. It was the first time we have spoken since she returned home. She told me that she had taken a temporary job with Nokia, which is a Finnish Company. For lunch, I made myself a sandwich out of the leftover pork steaks from last night. Carolyn had already cut them up into little pieces and put them into a sandwich bag. I also had a Cajun turkey sandwich.
Carolyn was off work today, and her and Mike went to lunch at Booby’s during his lunch break. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing accounting homework. I don’t usually do the homework because it is barely worth any credit and it takes a lot of time, but I did it today because I have missed so much class lately. It took me 3 hours.
At 4:30, Carolyn and I went to Papa John’s to pick up 5 large pizza’s, then went to Schnuck’s and bought vanilla ice cream, a red velvet cake and a giant chocolate chip cookie. Carolyn did not think the huge cookie had enough icing on it, so she had Lisa(bakery worker) write “just needed more icing” across it in blue icing.
We then took all the pizza’s and food to Mike’s grandparents house, which is just a couple blocks from Schnuck’s. There, we met Mike, his grandpa, his dad, brother, Amy, Dylan and two other relatives that I had met on the last 4th of July. We were able to eat 4 of the five pizza’s and most of the deserts, except for the ice cream, which nobody touched. After the meal, we sat around for an hour and talked and watched Dylan do silly things. Mike’s Grandma came just as everyone was leaving.
Mike, Carolyn and I came home at 7, and I rode with Mike. I then used the Internet for a while before starting more homework. Mike and Carolyn watched the movie “Ladder 49”, which I really wanted to see. I resisted the urge to watch it, but I later got distracted from homework by an email I received. You can see it by clicking the link above.

March 30, 2005
Wednesday:

I rode my bike to accounting class at 9 o’clock, and the temperature was already above 60 degrees. I then went to Chinese class for the first time in 4 days. I have a lot of catching up to do for the test tomorrow. I got my test back in Macroeconomics class, and I got an A. I skipped my last two classes of the day because I wanted to get Clara’s car ready to get back to her.
During my bike ride home, my chain got caught in the gears and it was very difficult for me to free it. My hands were black and greasy by the time I got it loose. Back at the house, I made myself a sandwich for lunch and also ate some pasta salad I found in the fridge. Johanna had mentioned to me yesterday that people in Finland eat cold sandwiches with butter, so I tried making mine with butter today and it was pretty good. I had a Coke to drink with the food, and I noticed something weird about it. Yesterday I had a two-liter bottle of Coke in my car and it was flat when I came home. The bottle had been open less than 24 hours, and was sealed tightly during the whole ride home. Last night, I had opened another smaller bottle and only drank half of it. I had left the other half out unsealed all night long, but it was still fizzy today! How can it be that a sealed bottle lost it’s fizz overnight, but not the sealed bottle? Could an 8-hour car ride make it loose fizz? How?
After eating I got online and noticed that my checking account had been overdrawn by $16, and a $30 overdraft charge had been applied to my account, which meant that I had a negative $46 balance. I had transferred $300 from savings to checking on the 28th using the Internet, but it appeared that the online transaction had not actually taken place, so I called the bank to complain. I have always had problems with the website, so I was not happy to see that it had now cost me the $30 fee. I also read in the paper last week that hackers had broken into the bank’s website last weekend and stole thousands of users personal information. So, I made the phone call, and after waiting on hold for about 10 minutes, a lady named Tammy answered and I told her my problem. She put me on hold for almost another 30 minutes, then another lady answered who had no idea that I had already talked to someone. This second lady was able to help me quickly, though. She said that the website had been changed since the hacking, and that all pending transfers on the old system did not take place. So, she removed the overdraft charge from my account and told me to go online again and make the transfer again. I did so and the new system seems to be much better, with the transfer even happening in real-time.
At 1:30 I started getting Clara’s car ready to give back to her. When she had given it to me two weeks ago, I told her I would clean it and get the oil changed before returning it. So, I drove it to Valvoline first to get the oil changed. But, the price there for a basic oil change was $27 and I though I could get it done cheaper somewhere else. So, I drove to Wal-Mart and found that the price was only $19.
They told me I would have to wait 30 minutes for the job to get done, so I walked around the store during that time. On my walk, I picked up a can of shaving cream for 88 cents, a tube of toothpaste for $2.98, and a package of rocket balloons for 88 cents. I needed the shaving cream because I left mine at a hotel in Georgia last week. I was just out of toothpaste, and the rocket balloons were to torment Damien. There are several of them in the package and each of them is suppose to be 3 feet long. They are inflated by blowing into a tube that comes with the package. After they are full of air, they are suppose to make a screeching sound and fly around. Damien will want to destroy them. I also noticed a strange display of gas cans while I was walking around the store. The plastic cans were stacked about 6 feet high in the middle of an isle near the automotive department. Above the display, one of the cans was suspended at a tilted angle from the ceiling, and was constantly pouring a gas colored liquid into a pan sitting on top of the display. A pump in the pan kept the “gas” constantly flowing. When I saw this display I wondered if anyone else would think it was weird also. If the display scared me, could I sue WalMart?
I went back to the auto-shop area of Wal-Mart after waiting 30 minutes, but the car had not even been brought into the shop yet. I walked around for a few more minutes, then went back to the waiting area of the auto-shop and read a newspaper until the car was ready. After paying for the oil change and the rest of the merchandise, I was told that I could pick up my keys outside from the mechanics. The mechanics keep a desk outside where they take the orders from the customers. I walked up to the desk and nobody was there, but a tray full of keys was sitting on the desk. Each set of keys had a piece of paper attached to it saying exactly what kind of car it was for. I rummaged through the keys and found the ones labeled “Dodge Intrepid”, but I would have really rather taken some of the other cars. I could have taken any one of them and nobody would have noticed for at least a couple minutes. I probably could have sued WalMart if I took someone else’s car and wrecked it. It would have been their fault, right?
After getting the car back, I filled up the gas tank at WalMart’s gas station. WalMart is taking over the country. I then went to a car wash and vacuumed out the car. Next, I went home and started washing it. Mike was there when I arrived, and he showed where all the car-washing supplies were. He then took Damien to the vet and I washed every part of the car. It looks beautiful now.
Mike got home at 4:30, and we went to play racquetball at 5. Our first game lasted 30 minutes, which is very long and exhausting. He eventually won in the end, and he also won the second game, but only because I didn’t get enough sleep last night.
Back at the house, Carolyn came home from work at 6:30, and the three of us got dinner ready. I just got some corn ready to boil, Mike grilled pork steaks and Carolyn fried zucchini. After the meal, I got out the rocket balloons that I had earlier bought at WalMart, and as expected, they drove Damien crazy. After we released the first one, he then got excited even as we were in the process of blowing the others up. He would jump about 4 feet high into the air and try to snag them from our hands as we inflated them. He was able to pop each one just a couple seconds after it was released. While we were playing with the dog, Mike talked about the vet visit today. He said that the vet had moved into a new building since the last time Damien was there, but Damien still knew he was at the vet and would not get out of the truck. He is usually overexcited to get out of vehicles. Either he can read the word “veterinarian” on the sign, or he knows the smell of the vet’s office. I think he can read. After Mike told the story about the vet visit, Carolyn told a story about her ex-boyfriend, who is a hog farmer. She said that his mother would go to the vet when he was sick and describe his symptoms, saying that one of the hogs was having them. She would then bring the prescribed medicine back to her son.
A strong line of storms moved just south of the city as we were outside terrorizing the dog. Mike, Carolyn and I all stood outside for a while and watched the lightshow. Damien ran inside to hide at the first sound of thunder.
Just before 9 o’clock, I got in the car and drove it to Murphysboro so I could give it back to Clara. I stayed there the rest of the night so my dad could drop me off at home on his way to work in the morning. I spent the rest of the evening watching TV and talking to my dad and Clara, then went to sleep about 11.

March 29, 2005
Tuesday:

Johanna and I did not check out of our room until the 12 o’clock check out time. We sat in our Jacuzzi during the last hour. I opened the curtains as we were packing, and the cleaning ladies walked by and started looking in the windows. They waved, smiled and gave a thumbs up when they saw me, but did not quit looking in the room for a while longer. When I handed in my key at the front desk, they made me pay 50 cents for the call I had made for the pizza delivery last night.
Next, we went to a spaghetti restaurant near the hotel. The interior of this restaurant was decorated in a very creepy way, and reminded me of the cryptkeepers lair on Tales from the Crypt. All of the decorations were antiques, and they included at least a dozen life-sized dolls, a real train caboose, a stuffed deer dressed in a Christmas sweater that was sitting in a sleigh, a carousel horse and a 2 foot tall rat dressed in a chef’s uniform. Very weird but the food was good. If you are interested, it is just up the road and around a corner from our hotel, which was at the address:
1920 E. Higgins Rd.
Elk Grove Village, IL 60007
If you go, tell me what you think.
After leaving the restaurant, we went to O’hare Airport. We got there about 3 hours before Johanna’s flight left, so we sat outside and enjoyed the 70 degree day for a few minutes before entering the terminal. Inside, I waited for her to check in, then waited with her in the security line, which had hundreds of people in it. The line eventually moved along to a point that I could not pass through without a ticket, so Johanna and I then said goodbye. I will see her again in Helsinki on May 26th.
On my drive out of Chicago, I decided to take a different route home so I could stop in Pekin, Illinois, and see my grandma, whom I have not seen in a long time. I stopped for gas before leaving Chicago, and paid $2.50 a gallon, which is about 50 cents more than Southern Illinois prices. I also went into another gas station to look for a map because I was not sure of the best way to get to my grandma’s house. As I was leaving the gas station parking lot, a man walked up behind my car giving me a very bad look. His car had been parked next to mine and he went up to it and closely examined the door, then looked back up at me and gave me more bad looks. I guess he thought I had hit his car with my door, but I didn’t.
The traffic through the southwestern suburbs of Chicago was terrible, even though it was a couple hours before rush hour. I arrived in my grandma’s city about 3 hours after leaving Chicago. She wasn’t home. I was sure she would be home because she almost always is. I left a note on her door, then continued on my way home, stopping at Burger King and getting 2 cheeseburgers and a soda before leaving town.
The drive home was mostly uneventful, but I did see a couple weird things. A guy was climbing old abandoned electrical poles along the railroad tracks and removing the glass insulators. I wonder what he will do with them. Also, when I was entering one small town, I noticed that a road sign was posted that said, “No soliciting”. The sign was attached to the same post that the town’s name and population was on. It must be a town law.
My only other stops were in Nashville. I first stopped at a Mcdonalds there to buy a Chocolate shake and use the bathroom. When I asked for the shake, the manager said, “No ice cream”, and walked away. I then went through a Hardees drive through and had a completely opposite experience. A young guy named Tyler waited on me, and he gave great service. He first offered me a new and better kind of shake for the same price, which I agreed to try. At the drive-thru window I noticed that this kind of shake was much harder to make than a regular one. He carefully added many different ingredients, then spent a couple minutes mixing it up just perfectly. He could have very easily given me the easier to make regular kind. He was also extremely polite when he took my money. The shake was the best I have ever had.
I arrived home at 10 o’clock. Mike was home at that time, but Carolyn was at work until 11. Johanna and I had only drank a small amount from our bottle of Jack Daniels last night, and I had brought the rest home with me, so I made Mike and I each a glass.
When Carolyn came home from work she told me that Randy had put his two-week notice in at work. I used my computer til about 1 o’clock, then went to bed.

March 28. 2005
Monday:

I went to accounting class at nine this morning, then spent my one hour break studying for my make-up macroeconomics test that was to take place at 1 o’clock. I went to macroeconomics class from 11-12, then spent the next hour before the test eating lunch at Mcdonalds and using the computers in the Faner computer lab.
At 1 o’clock I went to my macroeconomics teachers office and he took me to another room and handed me the test. Two other students were also in the room taking the test. Halfway through it, the guy sitting next to me made a frightened noise. I looked over and saw that a small wiener dog had rubbed his leg under the table. A wiener dog is one of the last things a person would expect to see on the 4th floor of the Faner building. I had seen the dog there once before, and it appears to belong to a secretary that works in the macroeconomics office.
I turned my test in before 2 o’clock, and I think I did well on it. I then rode my bike home and Johanna and I packed the car so I could take her back to Chicago to get on her plane home tomorrow. We left Carbondale at about 3 o’clock, stopping at Walmart on the way out of town so she could buy some gifts for her sister and a couple friends. We also got gas in Carbondale before getting on the Interstate. Our only other stop before Chicago was at a Taco Bell in Salem, Illinois. There, we each ordered 2 giant burritos for 99 cents a piece. We ate them in the parking lot while sitting in the car because the weather was so nice. The burritos were very sloppy to eat, and Johanna got bean drippings all over her shirt. She had to change it in the bathroom before we left.
We got to Chicago just before 9 o’clock, then spent about 30 minutes trying to find our hotel, which was near O’hare Airport. I had to stop a couple times and ask for directions at gas stations.
After checking in at the Day’s Inn, we went to a liquor store before going into our room. We bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Coke. Our room was a Jacuzzi suite, which I had booked online last night. We had paid Orbitz.com $100 for the room, but the receipt the hotel clerk gave me listed the price as $79. From now on, I will call the hotel to check the price before booking online.
After getting our bags into the room, we called a pizza restaurant and had pizza delivered. It took the pizza almost an hour to get there. Johanna filled up the Jacuzzi while we were waiting for it. She put so much soap in that suds were piled a couple feet high by the time the tub was full.

March 27, 2005
Sunday (In St. Louis):

Johanna I left our hotel room at the 11 o’clock check out time this morning, then went to the room Jared and Jeff were in because they were planning on riding home with us. Mike and his brother had also stayed in the room, but they had already left early in the morning to go to a car show with Carolyn, Amy and Dylan, who had all stayed with Carolyn’s family last night.
So, Johanna, Jared, Jeff and I began our drive home just after checking out at 11. We did not see Josh and Courtney as we were leaving the hotel, but their truck was still parked in the same spot this morning.
We only stopped one time on the way home, which was at a Steak N’ Shake in Belleville. Our waitress was wearing big purple bunny ears on her head. We had attempted to stop at a Taco Bell before going to Steak N’ Shake, but it did not open until noon because of the Easter holiday. For some unknown reason, Johanna has been wanting to try Taco for the last several days, and we have attempted it twice, but it was closed both times. I told her I would take her there for lunch tomorrow. I hope she isn’t expecting too much.
We finished the drive home after our meal. Jared and Jeff slept most of the way back. We arrived home around 1 o’clock. Jared and Jeff’s vehicles were parked at the house, and they drove home as soon as we arrived. I then spent a while using Mike and Carolyn’s computer as Johanna used mine. The two of us took a nap at 3 o’clock, and did not get up for two more hours.
Jen called us at that time to say that a dinner her and Buckley had previously invited us over for would be ready at 7 o’clock. Johanna and I arrived there at 6, and Mike and Carolyn came an hour later. Jen cooked chicken breasts, cheeseburgers, baked potatoes and macaroni and cheese. Mike and Carolyn brought over salad.
During and after the meal, we watched the movie “Stevie”, which is a documentary that was shot in Southern Illinois. The filmmaker follows the family of a boy named Stevie, whom he had been a Big Brother(a social program) for when attending Southern Illinois University. Stevie had been abused as a child and was just as problemed as an adult as he had been as a child. At the end of the movie, he received a 10-year sentence for sexually abusing a related 8-year old girl I would recommend the movie to anyone who has lived in this area for a long time.
The movie ended at 10, then Johanna, Mike, Carolyn and I all came home. I then spent another hour using my computer before going to bed. One thing I did was book a hotel for Johanna and I in Chicago tomorrow night. We are staying in the city because her flight leaves at noon the next morning.

March 26, 2005
Saturday:

Johanna and I got up at 10 this morning and made sandwiches and Ramen noodles for breakfast. We spent the next couple hours just hanging out around the house; doing laundry, checking email, etc. Mike came home from work at noon, then he and I went to the Rec center to play racquetball. We dropped off Johanna at the mall on the way there.
I beat Mike in two out of 3 games today. We both had big comebacks. After the games, we picked up Johanna at the mall, then went to Wal-Mart because Mike wanted to buy an Easter present for Carolyn. I dropped him off at the door as Johanna and I got gas at Wal-Mart’s gas station. As I was waiting to in line to pay, the man in front of me bought $200 worth of cigarettes. I felt like suggesting to him that he should go to Kentucky next time, but I figured that he already knew about that.
Back at the house, we all started getting ready for a trip to St. Louis that we had been planning on for several weeks. I wore my suit from Thailand out for the evening. Carolyn got off work at 4 and other people also started arriving then. Nikki and Tim cancelled today, but John, Amy, Dylan, Jared, Jeff, Courtney and Josh all showed up.
At 5, we left in 3 different vehicles. I drove one of them, and Johanna, Jared and Jeff rode with me. Courtney and Josh drove themselves, and everyone else was in John and Amy’s vehicle. The other two vehicles had to stop along the way to pick up some things, but they still both managed to beat us to the hotel in St. Louis. I still don’t know how that happened, because I never saw them pass me, but it must have happened when we were stopped to buy beer at a gas station in Nashville.
They met us at the front door when I pulled up to the hotel and told me where to park. The lobby of the hotel was very nice, with big chandeliers and beautiful surfaces everywhere. When my group and I arrived in the lobby, everyone else was there waiting. They told us that there were already feeling very “redneck” in the nice hotel because they were all dressed very causually, but that they really felt redneck when Jared came around the corner with a big box of Bud Light in his hand.
Our rooms were just as nice as the lobby. Johanna and I had our own room, Josh and Courtney had their own, and the rest shared another room, which actually had it’s own living room area. After putting our things into the rooms, we all walked to T.G.I. Friday’s. The only jacket I had on was my suit jacket, and the air was very cold. For our meal, Johanna and I ordered a bottle of wine to drink and both ate a chicken and pasta dish. After pouring the first glasses of our wine, I tipped over the bottle as I was putting the cork back in. Wine went all over the table and onto my suit trousers and jacket. I heard Mike say, “What was that, Cashmere?” I was the only person at our table that actually got any of the wine on their clothes, and it did not even show up on my suit. I am glad I did not buy a light colored suit. Even though it didn’t show, I still put a little soda water on the spots which were hit.
We did not get very good service during the meal, because everyone in the restaurant was watching the Illinois game, including all the employees. The game was very good, though. Illinois won in overtime after a good shot by the other team was not counted because it was made a few milliseconds after the buzzer.
After the meal, Carolyn, Amy and Dylan went off on their own to do other things. The rest of us all walked to a train station near the Landing, then took a train across the river to the Casino Queen. Jeff could not get in the casino because he had an expired driver’s license. Johanna and I were given white wrist bands because the employees who checked our ID’s though we looked younger than 18. They told us it was just regular procedure to do that because other security personnel might think we snuck on the boat, and the white band was proof we had been through security.
Once we were in the casino, Johanna and I sat at some slot machines first. I put a few dollars into a $1 machine, then a few more into a 5 cent machine. After that, we found the rest of our group on an upstairs level. Mike and Jared were playing video poker, and Jared was up by $90. John was playing roulette, and I decided to join him for a couple rounds. I put $10 on red, which gave me roughly a 50 percent chance of doubling my money and a 50 percent chance of loosing all of it. Luck was with me on the first round, but I decided to leave my winnings on red again and go for another round, which turned out to be a bad idea. If I had won the second round, the $10 I started with would have turned into $40, but as it turned out, I just lost my original $10.
We left the casino just before midnight. The train back to St. Louis quit running at that time, and we barely missed it. We were heading up to the platform as the last one of the evening passed by, so we all took a van taxi, which was very crowded. Johanna had to sit on my lap. We had the taxi take us back to the landing, then went into a bar there for about an hour. A band there was playing classic rock and the bar was mostly empty. We all sat in a corner that had couches and chairs around a coffee table.
We then walked back to the hotel and hung out in the living room of the biggest room. The beer Jared had earlier brought with us was warm, but we drank it anyway. We brought a couple buckets of ice into the room and Mike put the beer into the buckets so forcefully that ice flew everywhere. Some of us also smoked in the room, which was non-smoking. After one warm beer, I was tired enough that I decided to go to bed.

March 25, 2005
Friday:

We left our hotel at 10 this morning, then went out to search the area for something to eat. We first attempted to eat at Taco Bell, but it was closed. We then went to Pizza Hut and KFC, but they were also both closed. We finally found an Arby’s that was open. As we were eating, Johanna told me that she will never have fast food again in order to make up for eating so much on this trip. I told her that we should start taking a cooler when we travel so we can make sandwiches. She liked the idea.
We spent the next 3 hours traveling home, and did not stop once until we got back into Carbondale. Before going to the house, we went to the university so Johanna could get information about possibly attending school here in the fall. We were first told to go to the admissions office, then told to go to the international admissions office, which was across campus. At the international admissions office we were sent upstairs to speak with a lady, who told us we needed to go back to the first building we came from and go to the graduate student admissions office. Finally, a lady there was able to tell Johanna about the graduate admissions process and give her some papers about it.
Carolyn was home cleaning the house when we arrived. She had been cleaning all afternoon, and had even moved 3 seventy-pound bags of sand that were by the back door. Johanna and I first rearranged my room. The inflatable mattress Clayton let us borrow had not been working because it was deflating overnight, so we folded it up and put my twin bed back together.
After that, Johanna spent some time chatting with her friend Mari online. After chatting, she helped my write journal entries from our trip. She typed as I dictated what to say. Mike came home from work at 5, then he and I went to Schnucks to buy steaks for dinner. Carolyn had just gotten to work, and she said, “I have been cleaning all day, then I go to work and you guys have steaks!”. The steaks cost $26 and I paid for them with a LINK card, which must look really bad.
After leaving Schnuck’s, Mike and I went to Westroad liquor and bought a 12 pack of Keystone Light for us and a bottle of wine for Johanna. Back at home, the meal turned out great. We also had mashed potatoes and a salad.
Johanna and I went to rent a movie at Family Video after the meal, but we returned home empty-handed because we could not find what we wanted, which was a Playboy TV reality show that we had seen the last time we were in the store.
We spent the rest of the evening watching some TV and using the computers. We had some cookies and cream ice cream for desert. Johanna went to bed at 10, and I stayed up for a couple more hours. I talked to Lee on the phone from 11 to 12.

March 24, 2005
Thursday(In Augusta)

Checkout time at our hotel was at 11, but we got up late and did not leave until a bit afterwards. The front desk called us to say we were late, but they could not charge extra because we paid with cash.
I took Johanna to an American breakfast at the Waffle House today. We both ordered a meal that was so big neither of us could completely finish it. It was toast, eggs, grits, bacon and a waffle. Johanna told me that our waitress was “interesting”, and that she would like to hear her story. The waitress was a short and stocky middle aged woman who had a obnoxiously loud and raspy voice, which she used often.
After the meal, we went to the gas station next to the Waffle House to get gas for the car and cheese puffs for Johanna. There, she taught me how to say “oh no” and “cheese puffs” in Finnish, which is “voi ei” and “juustonaksu”, respectively. “Oh no” is pronounced “voy A”, and” cheese puffs” is pronounced “you-sta-knock-sue”.
We had planned on leaving town after getting the gas, but the weather was so perfect that we decided to consider staying another day and driving on to the ocean, which was another couple hours away. As we were leaving the gas station parking lot, we asked a Coke delivery man where the library was, then went to find it. It was in one of the big southern-style mansions in a residential area of the town that we had been through last night. I used the Internet there to send an email to my Macroeconomics professor and to check the prices of hotels in Charleston, South Carolina. I sent the email to my professor because I had a test in his class tomorrow. In the message, I requested to take his test on Monday on the grounds that I had come to Atlanta to check out a company I wished to work for, and had been in a minor accident on the Interstate. I thought that sounded better than, “I was in Georgia with my girlfriend and the weather was too nice to come back to Carbondale and take your test”.
But, after sending the message, I discovered that the hotel prices in Charleston were not all that great. So, we decided it would be best to go ahead and drive home. On the way out of town we twice stopped shortly. The first time was to take pictures in front of a giant church, and the second was so I could buy a pair of sunglasses to replace the ones I had, of which both lenses had fallen out.
Johanna was hand-feeding me “juustonaksu”(cheese puffs) as we were passing through Atlanta, and I accidentally got on the wrong Interstate for almost an hour. I was suppose to take I-75, but got on I-85, which was going in the wrong direction. I stopped at a gas station to look at an atlas as soon as I realized the mistake, and what I found was not good. The two interstates were over 50 miles apart, and I could not easily go back the way I came because an accident had halted all traffic in that direction. I decided that the best thing to do was to take a secondary road that connected the two Interstates, but his turned out to be the wrong idea. The secondary road traveled through many suburbs of Atlanta and traffic moved at a crawl much of the time.
Two hours after we had begun our journey on the secondary road, we had still only made it about halfway to the other interstate. We went through a McDonald’s drive-thru for dinner just before dark. Johanna set her box of Chicken Mcnuggets on the console and they flew all over the car when we left the parking lot.
Near the Mcdonald’s, was another Interstate that went back into downtown Atlanta. I decided taking that Interstate would be much quicker than continuing on the secondary road, and it was. We arrived back in Atlanta within 30 minutes, then got on the correct Interstate. The mistake had cost us most of a tank of gas.
After a couple hours of Interstate driving, I felt that I could barely keep my eyes open, so we took a nap at a rest area near the Georgia border for one hour. After a couple more hours of driving, I felt like I could again not keep my eyes open. The time was then about midnight, so I decided to just get us a hotel for the night that I had seen advertised for $22. The area was south of Nashville. We first went into a Wal-Mart so we could both use an ATM machine, then went to the $22 hotel, which was right across the street.
The man working at the hotel was very weird. He was a large, red-haired and impatient acting man with an evil stare. The room cost a bit more than $22, and he told me the $22 room was for one person only. I asked him for matches after I paid, and he rudely said, “No, I thought you wanted non-smoking”, and gave me his evil stare. I didn’t say anything, but stared back for a couple seconds before walking out. I then went to the gas station across the street and bought a lighter as the man watched. When we got to our room, I went outside to smoke a cigarette, and the man was still looking out the window at me. I made sure to set the car alarm and lock the deadbolt when I went back into the room.
Before going to bed, Johanna spent some time watching the goofiest TV preacher I have ever seen. Most of use in this country have seen goofy TV preachers for our whole lives, but I guess Johanna hasn’t because she spent about 30 minutes laughing hysterically as she watched the show. She was laughing so hard that it eventually became funny to me also.

March 23, 2005
Wednesday:

Johanna and I woke up at our hotel in Atlanta this morning. I thought I had lost my wallet but I ended up finding it between the seats of the car. We then drove downtown, parked the car and ate breakfast at Subway. We spent the next four hours walking all over the downtown area. After first going through the underground mall, appropriately named “Underground”, we aimlessly wondered the streets and enjoyed the warm, sunny day.
While sitting by some fountains, a homeless man sat down beside us and started lapping water out of the fountain like a dog. He then asked Johanna if he could have a soda she was holding, but she just ignored him. Her inattention did not seem to bother the man, as he remained seated next to us and periodically asked Johanna again for her drink. He finally walked away after about 10 minutes and said something to us under his breath as he left.
We went back to the car at 4 o’clock and paid $10 for the parking, then headed towards Augusta. On the way out of town, we stopped at a KFC for dinner. The drive to Augusta was over 100 more miles. We arrived just after dark, then called my friend Billy, whom we had come to visit. Billy had moved from Carbondale to Augusta while I was studying in China.
On the phone, Billy game me directions to his place, then Johanna and I spent about an hour trying to find it. After finding it, we did not go directly there, but bought drinks and found a nearby hotel first. At the liquor store, thousands of pictures of customers lined the ceiling and every wall. We asked the cashier if we could get our picture up and he took one of us, saying it would be up in about a week. I bought Redbull, Cranberry juice and Vodka for Johanna and I, and bought 100-proof Southern Comfort for Billy.
After leaving the liquor store, we got a $29 room at a Knights Inn next door. We called a cab after checking in, and it came about 20 minutes later. Billy was at the door of his building waiting for us. He lives in an assisted-living home because he is paralyzed from an accident he had a few years ago. We hung out in his room most of the evening, and went outside a couple times to smoke. Two friends of his who live in the building also hung out with us. One of them was a man who was older than us. He was an ex-painter who had been injured in a fall and had since taken up painting canvasses instead of buildings. The other person was a black man that was closer to our age. He had a device in his throat from a tracheotomy, which let air out when he spoke. We all had a very good time together, and it was very good to see Billy again.
Johanna and I were going to call a cab at 2, but an employee offered us a ride back to our hotel.

March 22, 2005
Tuesday: (Johanna wrote this as I dictated. She will make someone a very nice secretary)

I got up at 8 and studied for my Chinese exam. It was cold and rainy outside. So I drove the car to school. The rain had made every one else want to drive as well, so there were no parking spots available and I had to park in a 15-minute spot. After the test, I went to the Faner building to find my macroeconomics teacher, because I needed to get an exam study guide from him.
I then went back to the car and was glad to see that I did not have a ticket. When I got home, Johanna and I got ready to leave for our trip south. We left at 1 o’clock and stopped to get gas in Carbondale. We then realized that we had forgotten to bring any music, so we went back home. Mike was there for lunch when we arrived. Johanna picked out the CD’s as Mike and I played with Damien outside.
We left home the second time at 2. We stopped for lunch in Paducah at Pizza Hut. As we were paying the waitress said, “you guys aren’t from around here, are you?”, because I did not know that the soda dispenser was available for customers to use.
Later in the afternoon, I was getting very tired, so we pulled over at the Tennessee welcome center and both fell asleep in the car for an hour. For dinner, we ate at a Wendy’s, and it was Johanna’s first visit to that restaurant. She thought it was repulsive.
The rain had stopped during most of our trip, but it started again as we drove into Georgia. The fog was very thick in the mountains. At midnight we stopped at a Day’s Inn south of Atlanta. I asked the cashier the price and he told me $59. I was walking out of the hotel to check prices elsewhere when the cashier stopped me and said in broken English, “ I give you 10% discount”. So this was where we spent the night.

March 21, 2005
Monday:

Spring break is now over and school started again today. I only went to my accounting class at nine o’clock, which I rode my bike to. We got our tests back today and I got a 59%, which was even below the class average of 64%. I had written, “This is a terrible test”, in small print on the bottom corner of one page. The teacher had circled my writing in red ink and responded, “We went over everything on this test in class. See me if you are having problems”.
I got back home at 10, then made Johanna and I sandwiches and Ramen noodles for lunch. Randy came over while we were eating and stayed for about 30 minutes. Johanna and I were suppose to go to his house this week so she could shoot his AK-47, but it looks like his schedule is not going to work out with ours.
Johanna and I went to Schnuck’s at noon so we could get an air mattress from Clayton. He was supposed to bring it into work with him yesterday, but he had forgotten, but he didn’t forget today. After picking up the mattress, we went to a thrift store because Johanna has been asking to go to one the last couple days. We went to Goodwill and spent just a few minutes looking at clothes, then went back home. There, we took my twin mattress and bedsprings we were using off the floor, and replaced them with Clayton’s mattress, which is 1000 times more comfortable. I had been waking up all night before, but now everything will be OK.
Next, we got back in the car and headed to my home in Murphysboro. In the trunk, I carried the computer desk I had bought for $7 last week at Schnucks, so I could put it into my storage area. At the house, I was surprised to find that my dad had the day off work. He had 3 men over who were drywalling the new living room addition and putting a new sink into the bathroom. It was weird to see all those people working in the house because my dad usually does almost everything himself.
Johanna and I spent the first couple hours there riding the 3-wheeler around. We went all over the property and spent a while sitting in the fields and by Little Lake. We found a mutilated and rotting deer carcass lying on the shore with its head underwater. It was truly disgusting and we took several pictures of it.
Before putting the 3-wheeler away, I tried to teach Johanna how to drive it, but she was not very comfortable. We went inside after I put it away, then tried to call Chris(brother). I had not talked to him since I returned from China, so I did not even know his phone number. My dad called him for me, but only got a busy signal. So, Johanna and I drove to his house and found him there. It was the first time I had seen him in almost 10 months because he was living in Florida last summer and did not return home until after I left for China. Johanna and I spent about an hour talking to him and John Fischer, who is his roommate.
We then went back to my dad’s place because we were suppose to meet Amanda(sister) there at that time. She was there when we arrived, and the three of us spent an hour looking through old photo albums that Johanna had requested to see. On the back of one of the pictures, Amanda discovered she had barely legibly written the word “Cats” and her name when she was about 6 years old. Clara came home after we were finished with the pictures, and Johanna gave her two gifts she had brought for her, which were a candle and chocolates.
At 6:30, my dad, Amanda, Johanna and I went to 17th Street Bar and Grill for dinner. We drove in separate cars because I needed to go home afterwards and study for a Chinese test I have tomorrow. Clara did not meet us there until later because she had a church meeting to go to. She is the church treasurer, and was trying to secure a large loan to finance work being done on the church building.
As I walked into the restaurant, I saw Erin eating at a table with her roommate. I used to work with Erin at Schnuck’s, and had not seen her in over a year. I talked to her for just a minute, then sat down and ordered a Rueben sandwich with fries and potato salad. Clara got to the restaurant after the rest of us had just finished, and I gave her half of my sandwich that I did not want.
Johanna and I returned home after the meal. Mike was there when I arrived, but Carolyn was working until 11. I spent the first 30 minutes I was home studying as planned, but then fell asleep with Johanna for about an hour. I then got back up and studied and used my computer for the rest of the evening.

March 20, 2005
Sunday:

I had to work at 6 o’clock this morning. There was quite a bit of frost on the car windows and I had to scrape them with my driver’s license because I could not find an ice scraper in the car. We were very busy at work today because the meat department had to be set up for the Easter Week ad, which meant that a couple hundred hams needed to be weighed and priced. I worked with Kevin and Matt in the morning, and later with Fred and Clayton.
I almost ran into Carolyn on the way home from work. She was pulling up to the stop sign at Carico Street as I turned the corner too sharply. Johanna and Mike were home when I arrived. Mike was watching the Saluki vs Oklahoma State game and Johanna was locked away in my room.
At 2.30 Johanna, Damien and I drove to Giant City Park, taking a detour along the way so I could show her a rich neighborhood on Boskeydell Road. There, we walked along the main trail and spent about 30 minutes laying on some moss while I let Damien run free. I actually fell asleep for a short time. When we got up, small pieces of moss were semi-permanently stuck all over the back of Johanna’s finely knit sweater, and I told her it looked very suspicious.
We left the park and drove home at 5. I then made a cranberry and vodka for Mike, Johanna and I. Carolyn came home early from work because she was sick. Mike barbequed boneless chicken thighs for dinner, and also cooked scalloped potatoes and baked beans. After the meal, Carolyn left for a Schnuck’s job interview in St. Louis. She will spend the night at home, then have the interview in the morning.
Johanna and I did the dishes together, then rested for a while. At 8:30, we went to Schnucks and bought cookies and cream ice cream and cranberry juice. We also went to Family Video to rent a movie, but I decided not to rent one because they wanted to make me pay $5 of my $75 in several-year-old late fees.
We returned home after leaving the video store, then watched a Jeff Foxworthy roast on Comedy Central with Mike. Johanna and I each had a bowl of cookies and cream, then Mike made a cranberry and vodka drink for all three of us.

March 19, 2005
Saturday:

Johanna sat up very quickly in the middle of the night, looked at me and spoke in Finnish. Later in the day, she remembered doing it, but had no idea what she had said.
I had to work at 8 o’clock this morning. I worked with Clayton and Kevin in the morning, and later with Paul, Todd and Fred. People all over the store asked me about Johanna all day. One question everybody wanted to know was what she thought about the United States, and I told them it was dirtier than she expected and the people are excessively friendly, which is what she told me yesterday.
During the first part of the workday, I filled up the full service chicken case, then spent the rest of the day putting out the lunchmeat that had come in on the truck. As I was working with the lunchmeat, a very, very, very old lady with a cane came up to me and asked where the 3lb package of RB Rice Sausage was. I told her that we no longer sold that kind of sausage and she cried. Her face resembled a bulldog, and she could have possibly been one hundred years old. As tears ran down her face she asked me, “Y-y-you mean I have to go all the way to Chicago to get it”. The tears may have been some kind of medical condition and not from emotion, but she did appear to be actually crying. I went to Burger King on my lunch break and ordered 2 cheeseburgers and a five piece chicken tender. Luckily I ate my food in the store because I discovered that my 5 piece chicken tender only had four pieces in it. A high school diploma is not required to work at Burger King. I showed my box of chicken to the cashier and she laughed hysterically, then the manager gave me two chicken tenders to make up for the one missing one.
I got off work at 4 o’clock and went home. Mike and Carolyn had already left by the time I arrived, and they are spending the night with family and going to a wedding in Flora tonight. Johanna told me that Carolyn and her had gone shopping at the mall today, and they had been talking about me. I am curious about what they said because Johanna laughed a lot when she told me they had talked about me. She did admit that they had talked about my dressing style being poor.
After taking Damien outside for a few minutes, we got in the car and took a trailer park tour. Johanna has told me before that people do not live in trailers in Finland, and that she thinks it is very weird. I took her to three trailer parks on Route 51 and Pleasant Hill Rd. She said they were depressing, but the trailers were bigger than she expected.
After the trailer park tour, we went to SI Liquor and bought some vodka and cranberry juice. After that, we went to Sonic and got a brown bag special, with is two meals for $7.99. Our waitress came to the car wearing roller-skates, which really surprised Johanna.
We then took our food home and ate it as we watched the South Park movie. After eating, I used my computer as Johanna finished the movie. After the movie, Johanna wanted to watch another one, so we watched Orange County together. We each drank 3 cranberry and vodkas during the two movies.

March 18, 2005
Friday:

Johanna and I got up at 9 this morning. The weather was nice outside, and Carolyn and Mike were at work all day. Carolyn asked us to take the dog on a walk before she left, and Mike called from work and asked the same thing, so we did. Before leaving, I made us sandwiches for lunch.
We took the dog on a car ride to Campus Lake, then spent about an hour and a half walking there. We sat at a picnic table for a while, and watched Damien being harassed by two ducks. They would come close enough to the shore to make him jump in the water, then they would quickly swim away. They did this three or four times. One of the times he jumped in the water, he landed on the end of a branch, which caused the other end to come out of the water and poke him. He though the branch had attacked him, so he violently ripped it to pieces. Later on the walk, Damien and I walked out onto a large tree that had fallen out into the water. Damien was overexcited about the journey across the tree, and he fell off and hung himself by his lease. I freed the leash and let him swim back to shore.
After the walk, the three of us went back home, then Johanna and I took a bike ride to Schnucks. She wanted to see where I worked, and I wanted to buy some sandwich materials. So, we walked around the store and I introduced her to people as I shopped. Back in the meat department, Fred had a radio out so everyone passing could listen to the Saluki game. The team was playing St. Mary’s, and they ended up winning by several points.
Back at home, I used my computer while Johanna took a nap. Clara called me at 5 and invited Johanna and I out to dinner at 6:30. We left the house early at 5:30 so I could drive around and show Johanna the area. I asked her if there was anywhere in particular she would like to go, and she said, “WalMart”. She had heard about WalMart for a long time but had never been to one, so that is where we went. It felt strange to take someone on a tourist trip to WalMart, but we walked around the store and I pointed out all the different things and services you could buy. She said no department stores in Finland were that big, especially not in towns the size of Carbondale.
At 6:30 we met my dad and Clara at El Bajio’s. My dad spoke to all the employees in Spanish while we were in the restaurant. Johanna and I ordered the special, called the burrito mojodo, which my dad said translated to “water burrito”. Despite the bad name, the water burrito turned out to be great. We all left the restaurant at 8, and Johanna and I agreed to go out to the house in Murphysboro later in the week.
We then spent the next hour at the mall. Johanna wanted to help me pick out jeans because she thinks all of mine are terrible. She thinks I don’t know how to dress properly. The only jeans at the mall that she thought were descent cost $60, and I told her I wouldn’t pay that much. She told me it was normal to pay up to $100, and I laughed and told her that was crazy. She responded by sarcastically telling me to just go buy some used jeans.
We left the mall empty handed as it was closing, then went back home. I bought a 12 pack of Keystone Light on the way home, then drank one with Mike. After that, Mike, Carolyn, Johanna and I all watched fear factor together. In one stunt, everyone on the show had to use their feet to smash earthworms into a grape press. The worm juice ran into a cup, and each contestant had to drink the juice when the cup was full.

March 17, 2005
Thursday:

Johanna and I got up at 9 today, then got ready to leave Ryan’s apartment. As we were saying goodbye to him, he told us how to get to a nearby mall that he said was the second biggest in the country.
The weather outside was terrible. There was about an inch of snow on the ground that had fallen overnight, and it was still coming down. The temperature was a bit above the freezing point, so the roads were at least clear. Johanna and I went to the big mall for lunch. We both had a Philly steak and cheese sandwich with fries from one of the many restaurants that were in the center section of the mall. After the meal, I tried to use the pay phones to call Ericka and cancel a dinner that she had offered Johanna and I tonight. Johanna was still tired from her trip and did not feel like going. Making the phone call was no simple task. I first had to call information to get the phone number, but the dial tone would go away before I could get $1 worth of change into the phone. After I got the number, then none of the phones would let me make the call using change. I tried to buy a calling card at a vending machine next to the phones, but it was broken. I finally bought a calling card at a store in the mall and was then successful at making the call.
We walked through the mall for a while before leaving. It did not appear to be as large as Ryan had described it, but maybe we did not see all of it. It did have a store that was displaying the weirdest turtle I have ever seen. The skin of the turtle looked like moss and neck and head were long and flat. The mouth appeared to have a wide smile. It was truly a strange creature.
After leaving the mall, we drove to the south side of Chicago and parked the car at a train station. We then walked to a laundromat to get quarters to feed the parking meter before getting on a train to downtown. The snow had stopped by the time we arrived, but the wind was still blowing and the air was still cold. We walked several blocks to the new Millenium Park, which was said to have cost almost $500 million. Seeing the park, I could not imagine why it should cost so much. It was nice, but didn’t seem to be worth all that money. The main thing I wanted to see there was the giant reflective jelly-bean-looking thing, called the Cloud Gate, but it was covered by a tent because it was being worked on. There was one very interesting display at the park, and that was a pair of 50-foot tall glass-brick towers that had moving images on the facing sides of them. They were both showing a persons face when we viewed them, and the expression on the face slowly moved and the eyes occasionally blinked. It was very unique.
After leaving the park, we then walked about 30 minutes to Shedd Aquarium, but it was was closing early at 4:30 and the admission price was $23. We decided not to pay the money since we would only have about an hour inside. We were resting on a bench in the lobby when I noticed that nobody was checking tickets at the gate, so we just walked on in. We then looked at fish for about 30 minutes. Johanna told me that her favorite one was a small, dark colored, funny looking, oval shaped and excited one. I had to admit that it was my favorite as well.
On the way back to the train station, we stopped at a coffee shop and ordered hot chocolate, which we drank while sitting inside. About 10 minutes into the train ride, the conductor came by to check our tickets. We did not have tickets because we had planned on buying them from the conductor, which is what we had done on our way into the city. It turns out that tickets have to be bought in advance at the downtown station, so we had to pay a $4 service charge. The other bad news the conductor gave us was that we were on the wrong train. We had parked the car at 111th street, but the closest this train stopped to that was 103rd street, so that is where we got off. The area did not look terribly bad, but there did not appear to be any cabs around. We walked to a gas station a couple blocks away and asked to use a phone book so I could get the number for a cab company. But, there were at least one-hundred cab companies listed and I did not know which ones serviced the area we were in. Luckily a friendly man saved our day. He was helping us determine which companies were in the area when he decided to just give us a ride. I would have normally been uncomfortable taking a free ride from someone in Chicago when I was with a girl, but this man seemed safe because he was with his family.
He took us right to our car and I offered him $5 for the service, which he happily accepted. The rest of the night went very smoothly, except for the fact that I was very tired. I would have had to stop for the night if I was by myself, but I was easily able to stay awake by talking to Johanna. We only stopped once to get gas and food. We went through a Dairy Queen drive-through around Effingham and ate the food while sitting in the car in the parking lot. A big truck drove by while we were sitting there, and Johanna started laughing when she saw it. She often laughs hysterically and I sometimes do not realize what she is laughing at until I ask her. In this case, she was laughing because the truck had excessive lighting. It was one of those trucks that has dozens of yellow lights all over the edges of it. She explained that she was laughing because the quantity of lights was extremely excessive. She then continued laughing so hard that I couldn’t help but laughing myself. I will probably laugh again next time I see a truck like that.
We finally arrived home to Carbondale at midnight. Carolyn was still awake when we got there. We spent just a couple minutes talking to her, then went to bed.

March 16, 2005
Wednesday:

I got up at 10 today, which was just 4 hours after I had gone to sleep. I quickly gathered my things and got ready to leave because I had to be at the airport to pick up Johanna at noon. Jennifer got up just as I was getting ready to walk out the door, and she told me the best way to get to the airport.
The drive was suppose to take about 45 minutes, but it took me quite a bit longer because I needed to stop for gas and I had a hard time finding a gas station. I pulled off at a freeway exit expecting to find a gas station right away, but ended up spending almost 45 minutes by the time I found one and found my way back to the freeway.
I arrived at the airport just before noon. Johanna’s plane was arriving from Stockholm, and it was expected to land at 12:20. It actually landed a few minutes before that, but it took her about 30 minutes to get through customs. While I waited on her, I spent the time talking to a guy named Bob, who was waiting on a friend of his to return from India. Bob was a very interesting guy to talk to. He later told me he had a PHD in Civil Engineering, but he did not seem to fit that profile at all. I though he reminded me of an alien, then he made a comment about aliens, so I think he was one.
Johanna emerged from secure area of the airport just before one o’clock. It was the first time we had seen each other since leaving Hong Kong on Christmas evening, so it was a good reunion. She told me that her first impression of America was bad because the customs agent she dealt with was mean. He had asked her why she was coming to the US, and she told him that it was to visit a friend. He then asked for my address, but she didn’t know it, so he asked for my phone number. She told him that I did not have a cell phone and that she did not know the regular phone number. He then asked her what she would do if I was not there, and she told him that she trusted me. He ended the conversation by telling her that he could deny her entry into the US for not knowing my address. Whatever.
Johanna and I then left the airport and went out looking for Ryan, Mindy and Garret’s apartment, which is where we planned on staying for the night. I know Ryan from Murphysboro, and Mindy is his wife. Garret is their five year old son. We found the house within an hour, but Ryan was not expecting us until 5, so we spent the afternoon exploring the area. We first looked for lunch, and that proved to be very difficult. We stopped at the most nasty grocery store I have ever seen. Everything was dirty and unorganized, and the few pieces of produce available were rotting. Many of the shelves in the store empty, so maybe it was about to close. Nothing in the store looked edible, so we went to a chicken restaurant down the street, which wasn’t much better, so we went on in search of something else. We never found anything that looked better, but we did find a Mexican restaurant in a very run down mall. The restaurant was kind of dirty, but very authentic. Mexican music was playing and we were the only non-Mexicans there. Some of the food was being prepared in large trash cans.
After the meal, we went to a beach on Lake Michigan. The temperature was only about 40 degrees and the wind was blowing, so we were not very comfortable. We took a couple pictures and shot some video for a few minutes, then went back to the car. We then put the seats back and lay there for an hour because we were both exhausted. We headed back to Ryan’s apartment at 5.
After introducing everyone to Johanna, Ryan and I went to a military supermarket. Ryan is in the Navy, and there is a large base in the town he lives in. The military supermarket does not charge any tax, but only people with Military ID can shop there. They are allowed to bring guests, but I still had to show an ID at the door.
We bought two bags of shrimp for dinner, and a snack that Mindy had requested. We got her a can of creamed corn as a joke, but also got her something that she would like. Back at the house, I helped Ryan prepare the food. Johanna spent quite a bit of time playing video games with Garret downstairs. I joined them for a couple games, and I beat Garret in a game of Mario Cart. He was mad that I had won, so he turned off the game just before I could hit the finish line.
The dinner turned out great. In a large pot, we mixed potatoes, sausage, Cajun seasoning and the shrimp we had bought earlier. After the meal, Ryan got out his 50 caliper handgun and a rifle. We had Johanna pose with the guns as we took pictures. Ryan and I also took some pictures of each other posing with the guns.
Johanna was very tired from her extremely long day, so she went to bed downstairs at 11 o’clock. I stayed up with Ryan and Mindy until almost 3 o’clock. We played Quarters first, then played with the fish, which are two very large and aggressive Oscars. I videotaped these fish jumping out of the tank at food Ryan held several inches above the water. We spent the last hour of the evening playing video games. We first played a racing game, then a battle game. During the first few rounds of the battle game, Mindy was slaughtering Ryan and I with all kinds of heavy artillery.

March 15, 2005
Tuesday:

I got up at 10 this morning and started getting ready for my trip to Chicago. I talked to Johanna on the phone for a while. It was late at night at Finland, and she had just a few hours before she had to leave her apartment and catch her plane to Chicago. She is going to be very tired when she gets here, because her 10-hour flight leaves at 9 A.M. and gets to Chicago at noon. So, she will have already been awake for a whole day when her plane lands in the middle of the day.
Mike came home for lunch and a neighbor girl came over to talk to us while we were outside with Damien. She told us that she had seen a man walking around looking in the windows of houses. She said she walked into her kitchen and saw the man looking in the window at her. She then saw him cross the street and look in our window. I had earlier heard Damien barking while I was in the shower, which is exactly what he does when someone passes close by the window.
Carolyn came home as I was finishing packing, and she packed me a snack box for the road. She also helped me take apart my twin-sized bed. We layed the bedsprings and mattress side-by-side on the floor, then put bedding on top of them in order to make a makeshift larger bed for when Johanna gets here.
I left for Chicago just after 2 o’clock. I think Damien knew I was leaving because he tried to get into the car and then made a very sad face as I left. Before leaving Carbondale, I stopped at an ATM machine and gas station. At the gas station I made sure the car was ready for the trip and called home to leave my dad and Clara a message that I was leaving town with their car.
The drive went very smoothly and I just pulled over once to use the bathroom at gas station in the northern part of the state somewhere. I was planning on staying with Ericka and Jennifer tonight, so I first tried to find her house when I entered the city. She had given me directions, but I could not find the street she lived on. I asked a cashier and some customers about the street at an Osco drug store. I then found it with just a little bit of searching.
Jennifer answered the door, and she had a book in her hands called “What to expect when you are Expecting”. I didn’t even know she was pregnant. The first hour I was there we all watched American Idol, and Jennifer’s boyfriend came over shortly after I did. Ericka and I then ordered a pizza for dinner, which was very good.
Sometime around 8 o’clock, Ericka and I left in her car to go out for the evening. We first went to a nearby house that some of her friends lived in, stopping along the way to buy two forty ounces of King Cobra. There were several musicians living in the house we went to, and they all played in the basement as all of their friends hung out and talked upstairs.
After 45 minutes at the house, everybody there went to a nearby Irish bar called Keegans. We stayed at the bar until about 1 o’clock. I briefly left once with Ericka so she could run home and get something. The bar was completely packed later in the evening, which was surprising for a Tuesday. Ericka told me that the reason for this was that the same band plays every Tuesday, and they are very popular with the local people.
The most entertaining thing that happened at the bar was when an old man said some creepy things to Ericka. She teaches piano lessons to kids, and the old man was one of her students fathers. He kept telling her to teach his daughter how to play a song he called “I’m a dirty Daddy”, or something like that. The man then kept saying this over and over….”I’m a dirty Daddy, I’m a dirty Daddy……”
After we left the bar, we returned to the same house we had been to earlier in the evening. Ericka, I and another guy went downstairs to use the musical equipment there. At first I was just leaning on the dryer and watching, and the guy said to me, “What do you play, the washer”, and I replied, “No, this is a dryer”. I laughed hard for almost a minute, and so did the guy. I eventually ended up doing some humming and chanting into a microphone while Ericka played the keyboard and the guy played the guitar.
After the music session ended, we spent a little more time talking with others upstairs. We did not get home till 5 o’clock, then stayed up talking til almost 6.

March 14, 2005
Monday:

I slept on Rufus and Jennifer’s couch last night, and woke up when she brought their kids in about 9 o’clock. She then took me back home on the way to take the kids to school.
As I was walking in my house, I noticed a note on the front door from Carolyn, saying that she had lost her keys and to call her at work. I called her and told her that I would leave my key in the piece of deer vertebra that Randy and I found in the woods yesterday, which I moved from the picnic table to a box behind the house today. The vertibra is only one of about 15 large bones I brought back. Now, it looks funny to see a box full of bones behind the house.
As I was using my computer, I noticed that two nickels were still sitting on my bed, which is where I had placed them when I left last night. I picked up the nickels and saw that one of them had a buffalo on the back of it. The date was worn off, but buffalo nickels were made from 1913 to 1938, according to some info I found on the net. Some of them are worth thousands of dollars, but mine is in too bad of shape to be worth anything.
In the afternoon, I talked to Johanna for an hour, then slept for about two hours. Mike got home from work after 3, and my dad unexpectedly stopped by at 3:30 so he could give me Clara’s Intrepid, which I will be borrowing for two weeks while Johanna is in town. I rode with my dad to Pickneyville, where he picked up a car that he was having worked on.
I then drove the Intrepid home and went into work at 6. I stopped at Burger King’s drive-thru on the way and ate two Whoppers for dinner. I worked with Randy tonight, and we had to pull the entire frozen case and clean it. After we had removed all the products, I layed inside the case and said “buy me” as a couple customers walked by. At the end of my shift I was organizing the small case where we keep frozen bags of chicken, when I noticed that a small metal computer desk for sale on top the case was marked down from $49 to $7. I bought the desk as I left the store, and put it into the trunk of the Intrepid.
Back at home, I called Ericka to confirm that I will be at her house in Chicago tomorrow night at 7. I will stay with her overnight, then pick up Johanna at O’hare on Wednesday morning. After talking to Ericka, I called Lee and talked with him for about an hour. It was the first time we had talked since I arrived back home from China.
I went to sleep around 1.

March 13, 2005
Sunday:

I slept better last night than I can remember. I never usually have a problem sleeping, but last night was perfect, as I don’t remember waking up at all. It seemed like the night was over as soon as I closed my eyes. This was probably the result of being awake yesterday for almost 20 hours.
I was still tired all day at work today. I worked with Clayton and Kevin in the morning, and later with Mark and Randy. Randy brought me in a CD with pictures of us shooting guns last winter, pictures of us on the scavenger hunt yesterday and 2 short videos of Mark telling stories.
On my break, I ordered a 6-piece chicken thigh deal from the deli. They were out of thighs, so they gave me other parts, some of which were bigger than thighs. There was so much chicken that I could not finish the last piece.
I rode my bike home at 2:30. Mike and Carolyn were there when I arrived. They went to the rec center after 4, and I spent some time searching and booking hotel rooms online. The rooms are for our planned trip to St. Louis on the 26th.
Rufus and Jennifer came over at 5, then we went to the Teletrack(offtrack horse betting). Jennifer just dropped Rufus and I off there for a couple hours. Rufus and I drank 50 cent Keystone drafts and bet $2 at a time on several horse races. Rufus won $3 on the first race, then our horses kept coming in second the next several times.
Jennifer picked us back up at 9, then the three of us went to their place, where I stayed the night. Rufus and I burned some old furniture in the backyard.

March 12, 2005
Saturday:

I worked from 6 till 2 today. The only unique thing that happened was that I found a 2 inch nail inside of a pork butt. The pork butt was sealed inside of vacuum packing, so the nail had come from the packing plant. I have seen a lot of strange things in meat before, like cancer and tumors filled with green slimy puss, but I have never found anything inedible(yes, tumors are edible, actually very tasty, and good for you).
Randy met me at the store when I got off, then we went on an adventure. We first stopped at my house so I could pick up my camera. Mike was home, but he could not go on the adventure with us because he was cooking baby back ribs for a dinner he was planning with his brother and Amy tonight.
The adventure Randy and I went on is part of a worldwide web-based GPS scavenger hunt that I have mentioned here before, called geocaching.com. Today we searched for a container that was hidden at Little Grassy Lake, which is about 20 minutes from my house.
The container was only accessible by bicycle or foot. We were able to drive the truck within a mile of it. We turned off the highway onto a gravel road, then the gravel turned into a narrow dirt road that is in very bad shape. A regular car would not be able to go down this road, but we were in Randy’s four-wheel drive truck.
When the road ended, we walked for about a mile down a bike trail. A few years ago, Randy and I had ridden this trail a couple times. As we walked along the trail, Randy held his GPS unit in his hand and watched our coordinates. He had preprogrammed the location of the hidden container into the GPS, so the device told us exactly what direction to go and how far away we were from it.
As we neared the lake, we saw some people out enjoying the 65-degree sunny day. There were people in boats, on horses and on bikes. There is a land bridge that goes across the lake, and we saw all of the people in that area. We talked to two men on with horses as we passed by.
We eventually found the container at the far end of the land bridge. The GPS indicated that was the location, but we at first had trouble finding it because the machine is only accurate to 10 feet. After about five minutes of searching the area, Randy spotted a Tupperware container with a blue lid that was hidden underneath a pile of brush. Inside the container was a log book, a children’s learning tape and three paperback books. We signed the log book and took a book titled “Contemplation and Happiness”. Randy left a small handheld game inside the container, then we returned it to the location we had found it.
As we walked back across the land bridge, the two guys with the horses asked us for a cigarette and talked to us for a few minutes. One of them said, “So, you guys for horses or against them?”. I thought the question sounded funny.
Randy and I got back to the truck around 4, then decided to go hide our own container and list it on the Geochaching website. On our way down the dirt road we stopped at an abandoned campsite. It looked like the people had just left the site in the middle of a camping trip a long time ago. There were disintegrating pots, pans, spices and all kinds of other camping supplies scattered everywhere. A tent was lying in shreds.
Back in Carbondale, we stopped at Arnold’s Market to buy a Tupperware container, but none were for sale there. So, we stopped by Lisa’s mom’s place, which was very nearby. She was home and she gave us a perfectly sized container.
We decided to place our container in an area on public land that Gretchen and I discovered several years ago. The entrance to this area is in a rural area at the end of a dead-end road. Randy and I parked the truck at the end of the road and prepared our container. For our log book, I used a small notepad that my dad had brought back for me from Mexico. We then put in some small toys that Randy had in the car and a turtle shell that I had found earlier at Cedar Lake
As we walked in the woods towards the place I planned to put the container, we stopped in an area where an old house used to be. There, we found a pile of bones from what used to be a deer. I put some of the bones in our container, and put some more of them in my backpack. I am especially proud of a larger vertebra piece I found. We then followed a stream for about 15 minutes until we found the spot I was looking for. It is a rocky area with a small waterfall that empties into a deep pool. Surrounding it are rocks that overhang by about 10 feet. This is a really great area, and I have never seen another person there. We searched around for the perfect spot to hide our container, then walked back to the truck as it was getting dark outside.
Back at my house, Randy came inside for a few minutes. John, Amy and Dylan were there eating the baby back rib meal that Mike had prepared. I made myself a plate, but Randy did not want any. After the meal Dylan opened Amy’s cell phone and pretended to talk on it. Later he got a clean diaper and baby wipes and laid in the middle of the living room floor with his legs in the air, saying “poopy”.
John, Dylan and Amy left at 8:30, then Mike and I took Carolyn’s bike to the gas station so we could air up the tires. We also picked up my bike at Schnuck’s. At 9:45, the three of us then rode our bikes to Gatsby’s for Jared’s going away party. I will see Jared again before he leaves to take a job in Madison, Wisconsin, but the party was held tonight because not everyone will get to see him. At Gatsby’s we played pool and talked for about 2 hours. There, was Jeff, Nici, Matt, Brandy and Holly(Jared’s girlfriend).
Everyone left the bar around 11:30, and planned on moving the party to the Cellar. I decided to ride my bike home because I would have to get up early and go to work. As I was passing down Pecan St., I saw that Leslie and Nick were outside having a bonfire. I was happy to see them outside, because I had not seen either of them in over a year. Also there was Kramer and Lucas. I sat outside and talked to Leslie for about 15 minutes and drank a glass of wine she gave me, then went home to go to bed.

March 11, 2005
Friday:

My Accounting and Macroeconomics classes were cancelled today. I did not go to Chinese class because I had to be back at school at 2 for a test in World Economic systems class. I did not want to spend the three-hour break on campus or come home and have to ride my bike back to school.
I spent the morning using the Internet and periodically going over my test notes. Carolyn went to work at 11, then I was home alone. For lunch I had a ham sandwich with Colby cheese and lettuce, an orange and potato chips.
I went to school to take my test at 1:45. The campus was almost completely deserted. Hundred of students would normally be walking around on a weekday afternoon, but today there were hardly any today.
My test was fairly easy, but I don’t think the class is really benefiting my in any way. I came home after the test and talked to Johanna for two hours. She came home today from a three day visit with her parents. It is only 5 days till she arrives in the US.
Mike came home from work at 6, and Carolyn at 7:30, then the three of us met Jared at Mugsy’s for dinner. The dining area had a live piano player. Jared decided not to eat, but Mike and I ordered all you can eat blue gill, and Carolyn had prime rib. The fish Mike and I received was not blue gill, and Carolyn hated her prime rib. I didn’t think the fish was bad, though, whatever it was.
Jared left after the meal, and Mike, Carolyn and I played 3 holes of golf at the Golden Tee arcade machine. We then went home for a few minutes, before leaving again to see Fred’s band play at Big Boy’s Qu’in.
I saw quite a few people I knew at the bar, including Joe, Jake, Jen, Erin and Jeff. The bartender kept an extra dollar when I ordered a beer, then he threw the same beer away later before I had finished drinking it. I told him what he had done and he came back a minute later with a new beer. I figure that he paid me back the extra dollar he had taken from me since the beer he had thrown away was almost empty.
I brought my camera to the bar so I could record the band, but I realized that I only had 3 minutes of tape when I turned on my camera. After I used it all up, I played a few minutes of pool on a team with Joe, then Mike, Carolyn and I left.

March 10, 2005
Thursday:

I accidentally got up an hour early for school today. After I was completely ready to go, I realized that Chinese class did not start until 10 o’clock, and it was only 8:45 at the time. I spent the extra hour eating some cinnamon toast and using my computer.
The wind was blowing hard enough to know over trash cans during my ride to school, and it was blowing directly against me. It seems that the wind is always blowing against me when I am on my bike. I often feel like it changes directions during the day, and blows against me both when I am going to school and going home.
After Chinese class I met Jackie, my Chinese language partner, for the first time. We met in front of the student center bookstore and then got lunch. We spent a little over an hour talking. Jackie seems like a very nice and friendly girl. She has already graduated from a university in Taiwan, and just came here to go to school for one year. She is older than me, but she looks the same age or younger. She did not tell me her exact age. She told me several times that her English was bad, but I understood almost everything she said. I said a few things to her in Chinese and she understood, which is a good sign. We left the student center a little after noon. I gave her my phone number and told her to call me if her and her friends would like to hang out with Johanna, my friends and I next week.
I then went to the fifth floor of the library and spent 30 minutes using the Internet. This floor of the building was mostly empty except for about 10 people using computers in the center area. After using the computer, I fell asleep in at a large row of tables in an isolated corner. The upper floors of the library are my favorite spots on campus because I love these big open empty areas. They are perfect for both sleeping or studying. I don’t do much sleeping there anymore because I don’t have any long breaks during my day. But, being in the area again today made me want to sleep just for old-times sake.
(note: in past years there have been guys who hide on these isolated floors of the library and masturbate as they spy on girls. Here are a couple articles about in from the Daily Egyptian- #1 - - #2 -
The area I slept at is surrounded by dozens of file cabinets that are filled with tens of thousands of rolls of microfilm. After I had been asleep about 30 minutes, a black girl came into my area and started a long search for microfilm. The first time I saw her, she was several file cabinets away from me, so I went back to sleep. She then kept getting closer and closer, which eventually made me decide to start studying. She then left just a couple seconds afterwards.
Nobody else came into the area for the next 2 hours, then another black girl sat down in the middle of the long row of tables I was at. I was sitting at the end of the row closest to the corner of the building, which was about 3 meters away from the black girl. Two black guys sat down at the opposite end of the table a couple minutes later. The girl left after about 30 mintues, but the 2 guys stayed there until I left at 5:15.
I used a computer on the floor again before I left, and I noticed that the people using the other computers were all aisan and black. I don’t know if I am allowed to be on the fifth floor of the library. I even thought that what appeared to be a Mexican had given me a bad look earlier.
My accounting test was in the Lawson building, and it did not go well. I was expecting to do very well on it, but I may not have even passed. I even forgot to complete the last page of the test before I turned it in. I hate accounting so much. It should not be this hard, but it is hard to do something that is so unpleasant for me. I think I will pass the class in the end, but I would drop the business part of my major if I did not. Chinese is the important part to me, but the business part would make getting a job easier.
Cell phones kept going off during the test, and the teacher took them away each time. She had three of them on her desk by the end of class, but she didn’t bother to turn any of them off, and they all rang at least once more over the next hour. After the 4th or 5th time, chuckles could be heard all over the large crowded room each time another phone rang.
It was dark and a bit wet out as I rode away from school. The rain was not constant, but would come for a couple seconds at a time. I did not go home because I had plans to eat at Buckley and Jen’s house. Two girls that they worked with also at the house when I arrived, and these girls had a miniature Chihuahua with them. For dinner, was beef kabobs, chicken kabobs, macaroni and cheese and small potatoes covered with cheese.
After the meal, the girls all went in to the bedroom to hang out, and later sat in Jen’s car. Mike, Buckley and I watched part of Jerry Springer Uncensored, then played San Andreas on his Playstation. Buckley showed us how to shoot down police helicopters with a rocket launcher. Mike and came home about 10:30.
I spent a while using my computer before going to bed after midnight.

March 9, 2005
Wednesday:

I went to Accounting class at 9 this morning and we continued reviewing for our test tomorrow. The teacher was three minutes late for class today. She would not let a student hand in his homework on Monday when he was 3 minutes late. I wanted to bring up the subject as the teacher was taking off her coat and getting ready for class, but I didn’t because she gives partial credit on the test’s word problems at her own discretion.
As we were reviewing for the test, one student that is always haggling the teacher asked if a certain thing was going to be on the test. The teacher gave an evasive answer, and the student responded, “Maybe I stuttered, but I asked if that was going to be on the test”. I thought the comment was funny, but based on other things I have heard this student say, I think he has just as bad of an attitude as the teacher does. Sometimes I even think that he and the teacher might have some sexual tension between them, because they often argue, then end the arguments by lustfully staring at each other for a second or two.
My Chinese teacher(the female one) thinks I am stupid. Today she split us up iton groups of two and told us to create a dialog about checking out books at a library. We were given about 5 minutes to write the dialog, then each group read theirs to the class. My partner was a Japanese guy who sometimes wears pink. I had no idea how to write the dialog, so my partner wrote my part down for me, but when it came time for us to read our part, I could not remember how to say any of the Chinese characters that he had written down for me. So, he read the whole thing himself and the teacher just gave me a quizzical look.
In Macroeconomics class, we learned that most of the money in the world does not even exist because banks loan out more than they actually take in. I guess I always knew this was the case, but I never realized what a huge amount it adds up to. The system sound so fragile, but I guess it must not be that bad if it has worked for so many centuries.
I had McDonald’s for lunch at noon, then went to my next class, which meets in a computer lab of the business building. There, we had a very easy test. I had spent about 30 minutes studying for the test last night, and I then reviewed the material again just before the test. Even though the test was easy, it bothered me because I thought the subject matter was pointless. It covered Microsoft Excel, and I just don’t think a test over software should ever be written because a Microsoft Excel expert could fail the test, and a person who knew nothing about Microsoft Excel could get 100% on the test just because they read the test review sheet. The test mostly covered terms, and terms are not really important for most software users.
My last class of the day was History and Philosophy of World Economic Systems. As I was waiting for class to start, I asked another student when our test was. He told me, “today”, then a couple minutes later told me, “Sorry, it is actually tomorrow”. I am very lucky because I only go to this class one out of three days a week, and I thought the test was after spring break. I know this is mostly my fault for not going to class, but this is the only class I have had in a long time that has no information on the Internet. The teacher does not even know how to use the overhead projector properly. He just needs an assistant to put some basic information on the Internet. So, I luckily just happened to show up at the test review today, and the test will be on Friday.
After this class, I then went home and took Damien outside to play ball. I had left some clothes in the dryer last night, and I was suprised to see them perfectly sorted and folded on my bed, even the socks. Carolyn had done it before she went to work. Mike was asleep when I arrived, then got up just a little later and asked if I would like to play racquetball at 4. I accepted his challenge. I won the first game by several points, he won the second one in overtime, and he then won the third by several points. As I was swinging at a ball during one of the games, I accidentally hit Mike’s hand very hard with the corner of my racquet. I later hit his other hand and my racquet also flew out of my hand twice, flying across the court and almost hitting him both times. I told him that I felt like Tonya Harding.
We went to Schnuck’s afterward because we needed to buy some things for our cordon blue(sp) dinner. We planned on quickly buying our items and leaving, but ended up spending forty-five minutes in the store. We spent a few minutes talking to Carolyn in the meat department, but spent most of the time waiting on Mike’s allergy medicine at the pharmacy. There was a long line there, and all customers who had called their prescriptions in first had to be waited on first. Mike had not called his in, so we had to wait for about 10 people to get theirs. The only person working in the pharmacy was Mike, the manager. I talked to him as he was getting Mike’s prescription ready, and he told me that he was working with a multi-level marketing company that sells air purifiers.
As Mike and I were walking out of the store, we saw Jen, who was checking out with some sour cream and ground turkey. As I was talking to her, Mike realized that he had received the wrong prescription, so he went back to get it fixed.
Back at the house, Mike prepared the meal, and we ate when Carolyn got home from work at 8. After the meal, we watched the movie “Ray”, which is about Ray Charles. The movie was two and a half hours long. The movie was very good, but I would not recommend watching the optional extended version, because the regular version was almost too long. During the movie, Mike had ice on the hand that I had earlier injured in racquetball, which had been swelling up since the afternoon.
I was going to study accounting after the movie, but it did not get over till 11 o’clock, so I went to bed soon afterwards.

Where is March 8th?

3/7/2005
Monday:

I keep my bike in the utility room, and I realized that I had left my key in the house after I had locked the door that leads into the utility room. I decided to just not lock the other door that connects the utility room to the outside. I did this because I would only be gone for less than three hours, and I could easily pick open the lock of the interior door. I was running short on time, or I would have gone ahead and gotten the door open before I left.
I went to both of my classes today, and spent the one-hour break between them using the library computers. In Accounting class, we reviewed for a test on Thursday. In Macroeconomics, I learned that I have a test on the Friday after spring break, which is bad because I wanted to be out of town on that day with Johanna.
The weather during my ride to school was cloudy and very mild, but the ride home was cool and rainy. The door to the utility room was locked when I arrived because Mike had come home for lunch and noticed it open. So, I had to break in through a window which I had accidentally left open the last time I had to break in a couple weeks ago. And, don’t anybody get any ideas about robbing me, because the window is now locked.
Once I was in the house, I realized that I had the key with me the entire time, I then ate a roast beef sandwich, part of a leftover pork steak and some grapes for lunch. I talked to Johanna from 12:30 to 1:30, then fell asleep for about 30 minutes. After that, I started studying Chinese and Accounting.
Carolyn was in St. Louis taking a tour of the Schnuck’s kitchen today, so she could decide if she wanted to take the job that was offered to her there. When Mike came home from work, he told me that she had called him and said that the job was not what she expected. He said that she would have to work in a cooler all day, work on Saturdays and work some evenings til 8 o’clock. He also said that it was one hour away from the city.
I headed to work at 5:30, stopping at Burger King for dinner. When I arrived at Schnuck’s, I was glad to find that I did not have to clean the fresh meat case, as I usually have to every Monday night. I worked with Randy til 8, then cleaned the cutting room and went home at 11. I spent the next couple hours finishing Chinese homework and using the Internet.

3/6/2005
Sunday:

I arrived at work at 7 o’clock this morning. Jeremy(customer service manager) stopped me as I was walking in the door to tell me that Clayton(assistant meat manager) had called in sick. I was surprised because Clayton will usually work even if he is extremely sick. So, I worked by myself until Randy came in at 9. Mark then came in at 10, and Matt at 12. It was not a good day for Clayton to call in because there was so much to do. I have not had such a busy day at work for at least a couple years. Sunday’s are normaly a bit busy because our store ad changes, but today was even worse for many reasons. First of all, I found that half of the equipment would not work. Both of our wrapping machines were messed up, and both of our ham slicers were also broken. One of our wrapping machines is a small manual one, and the other is a huge $50,000 automatic one. Sometimes I love the big machine, but usually I hate it. On a good day, it will wrap a package and label it perfectly, but on a very bad day it will chew up and mangle everything. The machine is hooked to a company-wide computer network, which allows the corporate office to instantly update any price changes. For many years, I have thought that this extremely complicated machine is self-aware, and it reinforced those beliefs today. It would not wrap packages correctly unless I watched it. It has a clear top that allows the user to look inside when there are problems. It always wrapped perfectly when I was looking in the top, but as soon as I would look away it would start to spit out half-wrapped packages again.
The other reasons that today was bad were that the key to the meat department desk was missing, we had to send an order and make every kind of sausage. I did the order, and I should have ordered more hog heads to get even with Clayton, but I didn’t because he would not be the only one that would have to deal with them. The problem with the key to the meat department desk being gone is that the coupons are stored there. The coupons are put on any package of meat that is going out of date that day. We finally found the key at noon.
I got off work at 3, and we mostly had everything under control by that time. Before going home, I walked over to Great Clips to see if anyone was waiting to get a haircut. The waiting area was empty and the hairdressers were sitting around doing nothing, so I decided it was a good time to get a haircut. I could barely stay awake as my hair was cut. I was so tired that I didn’t notice that not nearly enough was cut off.
When I got home, I talked to Johanna for about 30 minutes, then went outside with Damien. It was almost 65 degrees and sunny today; the best day of the year so far. Johanna had told me it was warm today in Finland also. I was surprised when she told me that meant it was just 30 degrees. Doesn’t sound very warm to me.
Mike and Carolyn got home from somewhere at 5:00, then left at 5:30 to go have dinner at Applebee’s with Mark(Schnuck’s). Mark had previously given Carloyn and gift certificate for dinner there, so she decided to invite him along. I was invited too, but I decided not to go. I fell asleep while they were gone, and woke up when they got home an hour later. I then studied accounting in my room for an hour. While I studied, Mike was trying to resolve an issue he had with a member of a class project group. This member sent his part of the paper to Mike tonight, and it is due tomorrow. The problem was that the group member had plagiarized his entire section of the paper. The group had been referring to one of Carolyn’s old papers, because she had taken the same class before, but this group member copied her paper almost line for line. Mike called his other group members and they decided to meet at the library at 8:30 tonight to fix the paper. They decided that they would kick out the other group member if he did not show up.
At 9 o’clock I cooked myself two chicken breasts for dinner and watched TV while I ate them. Mike got home as I was eating, and he started fixing the messed up part of his group members project. He said that the group member had actually showed up for the meeting tonight, and had apologized with the excuse that he had procrastinated. Each group member then agreed to help him with part of his section.
After my meal, I went back to studying, and I took several breaks to use the Internet. I got an email from a Taiwanese girl named Jamie. Last week I signed up in Chinese class to get a “language partner”, and Jamie is the result of that. In her email, she said that her English is not very good and that she would like to go out drinking. I thought that was funny because I never see any students from Taiwan out at bars. In my reply to her message, I asked her if she would first like to meet for lunch this week, and she quickly sent me a response saying Friday would be good.
I also applied for an International Drivers License while I was online, because Johanna and I plan on renting a car and driving around northern Finland during the summer. I then went to bed at about 11:30

March 5, 2005
Saturday:

I worked from 6-2 today. It was just Kevin and I working until 10, and then Carolyn came in at 10. It was too busy for just three people working, and it was hard to get everything done because customers began shopping early.
I was going to get a haircut after work, but there were a lot of people in the waiting area, so I rode on to my planned lunch at Jen’s house. She and her friends had mentioned it last night, and she had called me twice at work today about it. The first call was to see if I was interested, and the second was to see if pizza was OK and to request that I bring a bottle of Coke and Dr. Pepper. Her house is only a couple blocks from Schnuck’s. Only her and Amy were there when I arrived, but Steph and Elliot arrived while we were eating. We watched a bootlegged movie with Will Smith while we ate. I had eaten too much on my break at work, and the pizza(Paglia’s) was more saucy than I like, so I only ate one and a half pieces, and two pieces of garlic bread.
I came home at 3, and Mike and Damien were asleep. I thought it was a good idea, so I went to sleep for two hours. Mike left at sometime to go to the Rec, and Damien then came and crawled in bed with me. I woke up as he was trying to burrow under my neck. He is a weird dog.
I got up at 5, and Mike got back home shortly after that. I then spent about 20 minutes making 15 cigarettes with my cigarette machine because we were planning on having a poker party here tonight. I did not plan on smoking 15 cigarettes in one night, but Mike and I share, and people are always curious to try the homemade kind. While I made the cigarettes, Mike hooked up the computer to the stereo, so everyone can listen to the music on his computer tonight.
Carolyn got home from work at 6, and then her, Mike and I had a pork steak and scallop potato dinner. After that, I cleaned up the kitchen, then Mike and I went to ABC liquor, where we bought a fifth of Jack Black and a 30 pack of Keystone Light.
Mike’s brother was the first to arrive, and he came around 8. Tim came next, then Josh and Niki came over between 9 and 10. Whenever we play at this house, we use a poker table-cover that Carolyn made for Mike a couple years ago. It is a board that sits on the table, which has green felt and printing on one side of it(like a casino table). Poker nights are the only times that people are allowed to smoke in the house, and everyone took advantage of that freedom often, which resulted in a very smoky house.
I played until 1 o’clock, and I actually won several hands for a change. I began with $5 worth of chips, and I ended up with twice that much. I would have liked to have played more, but I knew that getting up at 6:30 for work would not be easy.

March 4, 2005
9:34 pm
Friday:

I had a lot of odd dreams last night. The first one involved traveling through time and seeing all kinds of futuristic looking technology. The dream started out normal. I remember being in a normal-looking elevator, but when the door opened, there was just a bright white light with the MSN messenger logo floating in it. I quickly closed the elevator door when I saw this strange occurrence, but the next floor took me one day ahead in time. I got out of the elevator and got into a taxi. Attached to the back seat, were several tubes of bright florescent colored liquids in them. Each one of the tubes had a button on them, and the buttons were labeled with the words “tomorrow”, “yesterday” and times. Pushing a button would cause the cab to travel to the time listed on the button.
In another dream, my family had kidnapped the BTK serial killer suspect, Dennis Rader. We captured him because we suspected him of killing someone we knew in a drunken driving accident several years ago. We wanted to hold him so we could get DNA from him and prove to the police that he was involved in the accident. My job was to analyze DNA on a bolt from the accident vehicle and compare it to his. It was also my job to make sure he did not escape, and to give him food and water. We put his feet in shackles and chained him to a tractor. He asked me for cigarettes when I brought food to him. That is all of the dream that I remember.
I got up at 8:30 and went to Accounting class. A student came in two minutes late and the teacher would not let him turn in his homework. But, the teacher has been that late on more than one occasion. I wish the student would have mentioned that.
In Chinese class, we started chapter 13, which is called “Going to the Library”. After that, I went to Macroeconomics class, which has actually been slightly interesting lately. We have been discussing relationships between savings, interest rates and government expenditures. I have always wondered why the government changes interest rates to control other aspects of the economy, and now I at least have an idea why they do it.
I did not get hit by a car on my ride home from school today, and the weather was great. It was at least 60 degrees and sunny. For lunch, I had a roast beef sandwich, sour-cream-and-onion chips, grapes and an orange. I then took Damien outside to play ball. After about ten minutes of playing, he got hot and quit. He does not get to play for long durations during the wintertime, so he is out of shape.
Carolyn came home at 1. She had been at the mall getting her hair done, and it cost $110. I watched her making lunch for herself in the kitchen, and it made me hungry again, so I ate a second lunch. She went to work at 2, and I worked on Macroeconomics and Accounting homework. A question for Macroeconomics read, “What if you lived in a temperate climate and rose pedals were used for money?”.
I talked to Johanna from about 3:45 to 4:45. She will be in the United States in just 12 days. Mike got home from work just before 5. We cooked hamburgers, chicken breasts and French fries for dinner. After the meal, we went to a nighttime golf driving range, but it was closed, so we came back home.
At 9 I rode my bike to Jen’s house. Her friends Amy and Beth were in town. I had met Amy last summer when Jen and I were living together. We all had a very good time tonight. The house was full by the end of the night, with almost 20 people. They included all the regulars, plus just a couple that I did not know. They all were planning on going out to a bar later, but I left just after 11 because of work at 6A.M.

3/3/2005 9:43 pm
Thursday:

I got up at 8:30 today and studied a bit more for my Chinese test. Carolyn was getting ready for a job interview at Regions bank at the same time I was getting ready for school. I took the Chinese test at 10, and I think it was a success.
I got hit by a car on my bike ride home. The car was stopped at stop sign and the driver did not see me ride into the crosswalk. The car was small, so it pushed the tires out from under the bike, which caused me to fall onto the hood of the car. I put my hands out and caught myself on the cars hood just as it stopped. A nice-looking girl was driving, and she rolled down the window to frantically apologize. I should have faked being unconscious so she would have performed CPR.
Back at home, I heated up some of last night’s left-over pizza for lunch. I then took Damien and his ball outside for a few minutes before talking to Johanna for an hour. After our conversation, I fell asleep for about 30 minutes.
I had planned on spending the whole afternoon doing homework, because I want to get far ahead before Johanna arrives on the 16th, but I ended up hardly spending any time on homework. I finally got started on some Macroeconomics at 3, and then Randy came over at 3:30. He came to pick up a CD I made for him, which contained an audio file format converter program that I downloaded for him, and a video I had made. He told me about a website called www.geocaching.com, which lists GPS coordinates of containers that people have hidden all over the planet. A zip code can be typed into the main page of this website, then a list of containers hidden in your area will appear. Each person who finds a container can leave things inside it and/or take things from it. Some of the harder to find containers are suppose to have hundreds of dollars in them.
Randy told me that he and Lisa(fiancée) had recently found several containers in this area. They used a GPS device that he owns to find them. One was hidden in bushes in the town square of Marion, one was on the rafters of a park pavilion and the other was in a cave behind a waterfall. From the containers, they took a uniform patch from a soldier that had been in Iraq, and $2. They also left objects. Randy and I are now planning on hiding some containers of our own.
Mike got home just before Randy left to go to work. Mike and I then went to play racquetball at 5. I won the first game today, but I got beat in the other two. I lost only because my foot hurt. After the games, we went to Schnuck’s to do a lot of shopping. Today was a one-day sale, so we stocked up on many of the items that were part of the sale. Carolyn was working, and she told us that she had just received a call from a man that she did an internship for at the Schnuck’s corporate office. This man offered her a job in St. Louis as the assistant manager of the large kitchen that makes many of the products that Schnuck’s sells in it 100+ stores. She will go there on Monday and decide if she wants to take the job or not.
Mike and I spent $165 on groceries, and it was enough to fill the whole bed of his truck. I used the $90 that I had on my Link card, and Mike paid for the rest. The house was filled with the smell of sauerkraut when we arrived home. Mike had put it in the crock-pot with sausage before we left, and the smell had spread through the whole house while we were gone. We ate it when Carolyn got home from work at 8. We also had sliced potatoes and creamed corn.
I spent a couple hours on homework after the meal. I finished a Microsoft Excel project in which I had to create an expense account for 20 fictitious employees. For the employee names, I used the FBI’s most wanted terrorists list. Their expenses included things such as “Recruiting” and “Islamic Services”. All the employee ID#’s included the numbers 911.
I quit studying around 11, and was then to sleep by 12.

March 2, 2005
8:55 pm
Wednesday:

I actually answered a question the teacher asked me in Chinese class today. My answer wasn’t completely right, but it was at least mostly right. But, I was also asked three more questions that I could not even attempt to answer.
The weather in the afternoon today was a lot better than yesterday. It was still not warm, but it was mild and mostly sunny. I had lunch at the student center cafeteria, where I ate a pasta plate, garlic bread and chicken sandwich. My last two classes of the day were as terrible as always. I could barely stay awake in my computer class, and I must have fallen asleep about 20 times during my last class. I was not even tired before or after these last two classes. It is like some kind of boredom hypnosis.
Carolyn was just getting ready for work when I returned home. I first took Damien outside with his tennis ball. I threw it into the bushes so rabbits would run out, and they did, but he would not even chase them because he was too worried about finding his ball. If there are no distractions, he will put on quite a rabbit chasing show, and has even caught babies before. Mike and Carolyn told me that he caught a baby rabbit one time when there was a party at his brother’s house. He came into the back yard with the baby rabbit alive in his mouth. He chewed on it like a toy, and it screamed with each chomp. Carolyn said some of the people at the party were devastated, while others enjoyed the show. Carolyn still sounds extremely embarrassed about the incident.
I talked to Johanna from 3:30 to 5. She had sent me an email earlier today saying that I said too much about her in my journal yesterday. When we first met in Macau, she even disliked it if I would mention anything about her, but she is getting more used to it now. Maybe I will be able to keep pushing the limits of what I can say about her online, and in a couple years will be able to say things like, “Johanna was sick and peed the bed last night”.
Mike got off work a little bit late tonight. We had a racquetball reservation at 5 o’clock, but he had called earlier and left a message for me to move it up to 7. When he got home, he decided that we should play tomorrow because he had too much to do tonight. He then left again around 6. I think he is just scared that he will lose, and that he went out just to make himself look busy.
I then spent the next couple hours studying for my Chinese test tomorrow. Mike came back home after 7, and we cooked a frozen pizza and a box of hot wings. After the meal, I continued studying until about 10. I then ate some ice cream and watched the news before going to bed at 10:30.

3/1/2005
Tuesday:

The month of March started very cold this year. There was a bit of snow on the ground this morning and the wind made it feel terrible outside. Luckily, Mike was going to work at the same time I was going to school, so he gave me a ride. My 8 o’clock class got out an hour early, as usual, and I ate breakfast at McDonalds. I then spent the rest of the hour in the Faner computer lab.
Something terrible happened in Chinese class today; the teacher asked me a question. He had stopped asking me questions a couple weeks ago because I could never answer them, but I volunteered an answer at the beginning of class today, which is why I think he asked me a question later in the hour. I was once again unable to answer the question.
I came home after Chinese class. I first took Damien outside to play. A gust of wind caught his tennis ball when I threw it, and sent it into the path of an oncoming truck. Luckily, Damien temporarily lost track of the ball and did not follow it. The truck almost hit the ball.
Mike came home for lunch, then left again. Carolyn did not arrive home from work until after 4, so I had the house to myself most of the day. I talked to Johanna online for over an hour. She did not want to end the conversation, but I needed to do other things. She refused to say good-bye, so I decided to begin cutting her off a little at a time. I started by first turning off my webcam, and I planned to turn off the audio next. I thought that she then eventually would get bored with only text chatting. But, I didn’t get past turning off the webcam, though. She knew what I was doing as soon as it quit transmitting, and then said goodbye.
At 6, I took a break from studying Chinese to go to the China Buffet restaurant with Mike and Carolyn. Mike and I used chopsticks on our second plate. We returned home after the meal, and I then continued studying Chinese, and also made the video that is linked above.
It is truly insane how much time I spend studying Chinese considering how little I actually accomplish. I spent at least two hours with it today, and only managed to complete a very small portion of the homework that is due tomorrow. This homework is never graded, but I would understand more of the lecture if I could get it done, and would then maybe do better on tests.
I put away my homework and turned off my computer at 11. I then watched the movie “Without a Paddle” before going to bed, which Mike and Carolyn had rented and watched last night.