May 2005

May 31, 2005
Tuesday:

I got up when Johanna went to work this morning and ate a leftover hamburger for breakfast. I rode the bike into town at 9 o’clock and took my USB hub back to the computer store where I had bought it. I no longer had any use for it since the apartment’s management told us yesterday that we are not allowed to have a network. I was not sure if I would even be allowed to return it, but the same cashier I bought it from was working, and he told me that there was a one week exchange policy. So, I looked around the store for a while and decided to buy a discounted wireless optical mouse and keyboard combo package. I really needed the keyboard because the space-bar on mine was crushed on the trip to Finland. To use the rest of my 39 Euro credit, I also bought a 10-pack of CDR’s. I came back home afterwards because the keyboard-mouse box was too big to fit into my backpack. There, I opened up the box and found why it had been discounted; the battery cover on the back of the keyboard was missing, and the directions and installation CD were also gone. But, none of these missing items should keep me from being able to use the stuff. After examining my new computer products, I looked at some old phone chargers that Johanna had lying around the apartment. I thought I was going to have to buy a new one for my phone because the one I have is from China and will not plug in here, but one of the old ones I looked at today was the same voltage and appears to be charging my phone just fine
I left the apartment again at about 10 o’clock. I took the trash and recyclables out the door with me and emptied them in the apartment buildings receptacles. The dumpster here is underground and I really want to see how it could possible be emptied. There are recycling containers next to it for paper, glass and metal(I think there is no ‘plastics’ bin because people get money for that at the supermarkets). I had originally been throwing all the recyclables in with the regular trash, but Johanna made me start separating them. I think everyone in this country recycles everything.
I next rode the bike downtown and went out in search for a SIM card, a glass bottle with a cork in it, AA batteries and pizza crust. I first went inside the largest mall, Stockmann, looking for the SIM card and the batteries. I went to two phone stores and found that a prepaid SIM card will cost me 3 times what a regular one does. I cannot get a regular one without a Finnish ID, so I decided to have Johanna get me one later. I also went into a bookstore at Stockmann and looked at some Finnish-English dictionaries, but didn’t buy one because the cheapest ones were 20 Euros. I wasn’t able to find any of the things I was looking for at Stockmann, so I went back out onto the streets. I man at a camera store told me I could find batteries at another nearby multi-level department store, which I went to and sucessfuly made the purchase. I next found the corked-bottle I was looking for at a second-hand store a few blocks away. I then got back onto my bike and rode back towards the apartment, stopping along the way to buy pizza crust and a large bottle of Fanta. Riding home today I was thinking that the city is not as flat as I once thought. It is not as noticeable when walking, but the city is full of long, gradual hills that make bike riding tough at times. There are a few spots downtown with quite steep hills.
So, back at the apartment I put my batteries into my wireless keyboard and mouse, but I could not get it working without the software, which was missing. I will just have to download it from the Internet. I next ate a leftover chicken leg quarter and a hot dog for lunch. The hot dog buns here are tiny, but they fit small hot dogs well. After the meal I made use of the small corked jar I had bought today. Johanna and Gretchen have a unusual interest in one another and Gretchen had given me some of her hair to give to Johanna. So, I put the hair into the jar and set it on top of the TV. After that, I spent some time working on a wedding video to give Randy and Lisa. I have almost two hours of footage spanning over 3 days.
I was still feeling kind of sick and tired today, and I took a nap for almost two hours. Johanna got home from work soon afterwards, then left again about 30 minutes later to meet her friend Mari downtown. I then finished working on the wedding video and started studying Chinese. I got a C in the class last semester because I had a hard time reading the characters, so I plan on spending some time learning to read it better this summer. It was hard for me to concentrate on anything this evening because I had a headache. There were no pain killers in the house and only pharmacies sell medicine here, and I did not know where the nearest pharmacy was.
The back wall of the apartment has a large window which stretches from end to end. I was looking out the window and procrastinating studying Chinese and I was thinking about how much more active people are in this country than the United States. In front of the window is a soccer field and some walking paths. It started raining about 6 o’clock, but the people did not disappear, they just got put on raincoats and got umbrellas, then kept exercising. One lady even had a red raincoat on her terribly overactive dog. Not only do people exercise more here, they also walk and ride their bikes when they go place to place. The apartment I live in is at the edge of town, but the sidewalks are still always crowded with bikers, rollerbladers and pedestrians, many of which have their hands or bikes full of things they have purchased. These people are not all students either, as many of them appear to be middle-aged.
I started making two small pizzas at 7 o´clock. I could find no can opener in the house to open the tomato paste and mushrooms. I eventually realized that the can opener was a small piece of flat metal with a blade on it that I have seen lying on the counter for the past few days. When I started opening the cans, I was not even sure that the thing I was using was a can opener. I mangled the first can trying to figure it out, but caught on to the concept by the second can.
I put the pizzas in the oven when Johanna got home at 7:30. She brought home a SIM card that she had purchased for me. My phone will now cost me 66 cents per months, plus 7 cents per minute for any calls I make. This system is so much better than that of the US for people who use there phones little. I will post the number in my contact info as soon as I find out what it is.
My headache got worse through the evening. Johanna called her friend Satu that lives nearby to ask for pain killers, but she also had none. I am going to stock up next time I´m at a pharmacy.

May 30, 2005
Monday:

Last night, Johanna had planned on calling in sick to work today because she did not expect to feel good, but she felt better this morning and ended up going. I slept until 10, then got up and made a sandwich for breakfast before spending a couple hours cleaning the apartment. I told Johanna that I would keep the place clean this summer since she is working full time. While I was vacuuming, I disconnected the computer’s Ethernet cable from the wall. I plugged it back in when I was done and the Internet connection would no longer work. I spent some time trying to fix it, but had no luck.
I was feeling unusually tired around 1 o’clock, so I went back to sleep for two hours. I thought I was getting Johanna’s sickness, but felt OK again when I woke up. I then made myself some instant noodles for a late lunch. I was looking out the window while I was eating and I noticed that some maintenance men across the street appeared to be cleaning moss off of the letters on the side of an apartment building. The letters spelled a name and stretched from the top to the bottom of the 4 story building. I had noticed the mossy letters when I first arrived and thought it would make a good picture. When I saw the maintenance men, I thought what a coincidence it was that they had just happened to clean when I wanted to take a picture, because the letters probably took years to get that mossy. I decided to walk outside and take a picture of them cleaning the letters, and then found that there was never even moss on them in the first place. For some reason, the letters were just wrapped tightly in green bags that looked liked moss from a distance.
Johanna got home at 5 o’clock and told me about an email she received today saying our internet service had been shut down for a week because of an ‘illegal’ connection. The apartment complex provides free high-speed service, which comes with certain rules that we did not know about. It turns out that we ‘broke the law’ by networking our computers together and sharing the Internet connection. So, we disconnected the network and Johanna is going to try to convince them to turn it back on before one-week.
I asked Johanna to go rollerblading with me as soon as she got home, but she first wanted to watch Dr. Phil present ‘America’s Worst Spouses’ from 5 till 6. We then went skating for about two hours. I am getting better at using my brakes, but I still have a way to go. We stopped at a larger supermarket for about 30 minutes and bought some food.
Back at the apartment, we made salad, potatoes and hamburgers for dinner, then drank a beer and watched TV for an hour before going to bed.

May 29, 2005
Sunday:

Johanna was feeling even more sick today and the weather was overcast at 50 degrees. We slept in till 10:30, then ate some noodles and some kind of soft bread snack for breakfast. We stayed in the apartment until 2. Johanna tried to study, but did not appear to be very successful. I read an article on CNN.com about a guy who got two years jail-time for killing a friend in a drunken driving accident. The driver was so drunk that he hit a telephone pole support wire and did not know it. His friend had been sticking his head out the window and throwing up at the time the car hit the wire. The accident decapitated the friend and the drunk driver drove on home for 15 minutes without even noticing the headless body in his passenger seat. He apparently thought his friend was just passed out and went on inside to bed when he got home. A neighbor saw the headless body in the passenger seat the next day and called police. The driver and passenger had been friends since childhood.
Johanna and I walked to the grocery store at 2 and bought some marinated chicken leg quarters for dinner. I noticed that the supermarket had several different kinds of video gambling machines in the front of the building, which were mostly in use as we were walking out of the store. It reminded me of being in Nevada. After leaving the grocery store, we went to Hesburger, which is the Finnish equivalent of Mcdonald’s. There is only one McDonald’s in town, but there are a couple dozen Hesburgers. On the walk to and from Hesburger, Johanna attempted to instruct me on the proper pronunciation of the restaurant’s name. I apparently have the ‘r’ sound all wrong, but I just can’t tell that my pronunciation sounds any different than it does when a Finnish person says it.
We ate our meal when we arrived back at the apartment. I had a burger that looked and tasted almost exactly the same as a Big Mac, soggy fries and a coke. The ketchup packets I received were free and twice as big as that of the United States, but Johanna ordered a Mayonaise packet with her fries, which was an extra 50 cents.
I went bird hunting after the meal. I have been noticing a very strange looking and sounding bird in the field by the apartment since I first arrived here. It hangs out there all day and occasionally makes a squaking sounds that almost resembles opening a door with very rusty hinges. Its appearance is just as unique. It has a red, fleshy head like a chicken and the body of duck with brown and white feathers. Today, it let me walk out into the field about 20 feet from it, but it ran away when I turned on my camera. I was able to get near it again when I turned off the camera, but it kept running away as soon as I would turn it back on. I was never able to record its distinctive sound. I tried to find out what kind of bird it was on the Internet when I came back inside. Johanna helped me and we think it is some kind of pheasant, but we’re not sure.
We spent the next couple hours using our computers, which are set up side by side at a big desk in the living room. Johanna chatted with her friends and I worked on my website and sent emails. We went back outside for a while around 5 o’clock and took the pictures I posted to the site today. There is a small hill of mostly solid rock directly behind the apartment building, which is about 20 feet tall. There are some wooded areas on the sides of it. For the pictures, I was trying to act like an animal in those wooded areas. I tried and tried to get Johanna to do the same things, but she wouldn’t even put her hands up like a squirrel.
We watched the reality show ‘Cheaters’ at 8 o’clock, where suspicious spouses have the show’s private detectives follow their other half around and record them. After a few days of gathering evidence, the host of the show plays tapes of the infidelities to the suspicious spouse. The show makes sure to play the tapes at a time when they know the other half is with their lover, then they offer the now more-then-suspicious spouse a chance to confront the other two directly after watching the tape. The first confrontation happened at the outdoor patio of a busy restaurant. The angry spouse, an otherwise peaceful looking hillbilly type, marched into the restaurant followed by a camera crew of about 20 people. He pulled his wife’s the lover from a table where they were sitting, and started wresting and slapping him. Guards with the camera crew kept the two from hurting each other too badly, but they still allowed the angry man to follow closely behind the other two as they left the restaurant and got into a van. The host tried to interview them as they tried to make their escape. The second case was a black woman who was being cheated on. The confrontation here happened in her own home, when her husband thought she would be at work. The wife quietly opened the front door and let the huge camera crew in the door. The cheaters were making out on the couch and the husband appeared to be laughing at first, but not for long. The wife started taking his things into the back yard and burning them with charcoal lighter fluid.
Johanna and I let our chicken leg quarters cook while we watched the show, then ate afterwards. She had noodles with her meat, and I had potatoes.

May 28, 2005
Saturday:

Johanna and I got up at 10:30 today and she made egg sandwiches for breakfast. We spent some time in the morning using the Internet and just hanging out in the apartment. We had the radio on and Johanna told me that DJ was making fun of America by telling a story about an extremely fat woman who was offended when her doctors told her to go to the zoo and get her x-rays taken in a machine for large animals. She said that the radio DJ’s make ‘fat American’ jokes all the time.
We went rollerblading in the early afternoon. I was still having a lot of trouble using my brakes, and Johanna and I both fell overtop each other once when she tried to help me stop. We rode all the way to City Market, which took us about 30 minutes. There, we bought some taco material for dinner. Johanna translated a sign for me in the paper towel isle, which said that the selection of paper products was limited due to the paperworkers strike.
Back at home, Johanna was feeling sick from a cold she had, so she took a nap. During that time, I spent some time editing the video I posted today. We made our tacos for dinner at 8 o’clock, then just watched ‘The Patriot’ on TV and drank a couple beers. We had planned on going to a nearby pub after dinner, but Johanna was still feeling sick.

May 27, 2005
Friday:

I got up again at 7:30 when Johanna went to work. I ate some instant noodles for breakfast, then spent a while using the Internet before getting on Johanna’s bike and riding downtown. I first went to a supermarket and bought some things for dinner and razors, soap, toothpaste and shampoo. I then went to the computer store that I had been in yesterday. I asked the cashier for directions to a store he had told me about yesterday where I could buy a power adapter for American plugs. He wrote the location of the place on my map and told me how to get there. I bought a USB hub from him before leaving. A USB hub allows me to connect my computer to Johanna’s so I can share her Internet connection.
I next went out in search of the power adapter. The location was only a couple blocks away in the very center of the city, but I at first had trouble finding it. I went into another computer store there and requested the adapter I needed. They also did not have it, but they did direct me to the place I had been looking for, which was very near. So, I walked down the street and found the place on the second floor of a small mall, called Forum. It was a large store that took up most of the second floor, and it sold mostly just hardware, tools and electronics. I thought that they would for sure have what I was looking for, but they did not. I asked an employee for help finding the adapter and he said, “You won’t find that in all of Finland”, I told him that I had already bought one yesterday and he looked surprised. He then told me to go to another store across the street called Stockman.
I found the multi-level Stockman inside of an even larger mall. It was like a Famous Bar that sells groceries out of the basement. I walked through every level of Stockman and through the mall, but found no power adapter, so I left to continue my search other places.
I next walked through a large outdoor market that was mostly selling fruits, vegetables, plants and flowers, then went back to Forum. There, I looked again for the adapter and asked a different employee for help. The employee looked in the phone book and told me another place I could go nearby. I at first decided to just buy a pair of pliers so I could “adapt” the adapter I bought yesterday to fit my camcorder charger. My plan was to buy a European plug for my computer, then use the adapter it was plugged in with on the camcorder. As I was getting ready to check out with the new computer plug and pliers, I decided to put them down and first go check out the other place that the other employee had just told me about.
I at first had some trouble finding it and accidentally went into a pharmacy, where an employee directed me in the right direction. I also hit a guy while riding the bike. He appeared to be of high school age, and he was with a friend. They walked out between two parked buses, where no cross walk was located. They came out so fast that I only had time to swerve. One guy got out of the way, but my handlebars hit the other one in the chest very hard. I stopped immediately afterwards and apologized. The guy didn’t really say anything, but he did look scared. He didn’t appear to be hurt at all, though, so I rode on in search of the place I was looking for. I eventually found it next to a Salvation Army store. It was not a normal business, and appeared to be set up for mainly commercial customers because it had no storefront. I wasn’t even sure if it was really a store at first. I walked up to an employee I saw in a small shed and asked him if it was a store. He said yes, so I told him what I needed and he took me up a flight of stairs to a small office with a few vacuum cleaners and electrical supplies behind the counter. There was also a huge brown dog behind the counter that was standing with his front legs on the counter and holding a basketball-size tennis ball in his mouth. The men played with dog while they discussed whether or not they had the power adapter I needed. They then told me they also did not have it, but they directed me to another place and wrote a small map.
I found the next place just a couple minutes away. It was set up like a regular business, but nobody was there. I walked in and walked around for a couple minutes, but could only hear voices in the back. I eventually said ‘hello’ into the back of the store and a man came out that spoke not-quite-fluent English. He also turned me town, and started telling me about other places I could go. I told me I had been everywhere and then left and decided to go back to my other plan; ‘adapting’ the adapter I bought yesterday. So, I went back to Forum and bought the pliers and European computer plug that I had set aside.
Back at home, I ‘adapted’ the adapter using a kitchen knife that I heated on the stove. The problem with the adapter was that it had a long neck that would not allow me to plug in my bulky camcorder adapter, so I used the hot knife to melt-cut the neck off. It worked. I next set my sights on getting the computers connected together with the USB hub I bought. This turned out to be a disaster at first, because it messed up Johanna’s Internet connection, but after an hour I realized I had made an obvious mistake, then both computers worked fine.
I made myself some more instant noodles for lunch, then decided to go to sleep for a few minutes before I was supposed to leave and meet Johanna downtown at 4:30. I heard an insanely loud jet noise as I was laying in bed. I got up and looked out the window to see two fighter jets flying not much higher than roof level. They went directly over the apartment at a very high speed.
I fell asleep around 3, and Johanna came home at 3:45. She had left work early. We took a 30-minute walk to downtown at 5 o’clock because I needed to buy jeans and she wanted a pair of shoes. We walked through many of the downtown businesses that I had been to earlier in the day. I ended up buying more expensive pair than I wanted to, and she found a pair of shoes in a smaller store. We then decided to take the bus back to her apartment, which cost 2 Euros per person. After getting of the bus, we walked to a small supermarket and bought a 12 pack of beer. At the store, I noticed that a magazine rack had both ‘My Little Pony’ magazines and porn magazines which showed waist-up nudity on the front cover.
On the walk from the store to the apartment, we saw a 10-year-old looking kid smoking a cigarette. I thought it would have been funny to turn on the camera and go ask him for a smoke, but I didn’t do it.
For dinner, Johanna and I made a pasta dish using some things I bought yesterday and egg sandwiches using what I had bought today. After the meal, we spent the rest of the evening drinking a couple of our beers and watching “The Bachelor”, Conan O’Brien and some finish shows.

May 26, 2005
Thursday:

I got up at 7 this morning when Johanna got up for work. I made us sandwiches for breakfast using a very coarsely ground kind of rye bread, ham, cheese, cucumbers and a butter-like spread. I don’t normally make sandwiches like that, but it was what Johanna requested.
I spent a couple hours using Johanna’s computer after she went to work, then started unpacking my things. I found that the case of my computer had been crushed bad enough that it did not sit flat don the floor anymore. I was worried that the circuit boards could have been cracked, but found that it did work when I hooked it up later.
I left the apartment at 10:30 and rode Johanna’s bike to the office of her apartment complex. She had called the office earlier in the day and arranged for me to go there and pick up a key to the apartment. I found the office using a map that she had ripped out of the phone book and written on.
I next rode into to a street Johanna and I had walked on last night, where she had told me a good place to get a haircut was. There, I first went into a computer store on an unsuccessful search for an power plug adapter, then took 240 Euros from an ATM machine before going into the barber shop. I had to wait about 10 minutes, then a lady cut my hair. She spent longer than usual cutting, and I liked it when she was done.
I next went out in search for a store where I could buy the power adapter, which I needed to be able to plug in the things I had brought with me. I eventually ran into a store that was almost as large as a Super-Walmart, called City Market. As I was walking inside I noticed a recycling system on the wall that takes recyclables using ATM-looking machines. Each machine accepts a different kind of can or bottle, and each can or bottle is put one at a time into a hole in the machine. After you feed in your recyclables, it prints out a receipt, which you take to a cashier for cash. I later asked Johanna how the store keeps people from putting the wrong things into the machines and ripping them off, but she just laughed and said that nobody would ever go to the trouble.
So, once inside the store, I first went to the electronics department and an employee directed me to a power adapter that he claimed would work for me. Next I bought some things Johanna needed for her apartment and some food for dinner tonight. Shopping was rather hard because very little in the store was printed in English. At the checkout, I realized that there was no bagger and no bags. I put all the stuff back into my cart after paying for it and tried to figure out a way to get it home. I then noticed that other customers were getting bags on request. A separated liquor store was in the same building, and I went inside and bought a bottle of wine. I requested two extra bags with my purchase. They man was surprised when I spoke English because I had been letting him talk to me in Finnish during the checkout. I had not told him I didn’t understand before that because there was not reason to. He had said ‘Moi’(hello) in the beginning and I had responded. He then went on to tell me my total and the amount of my change in Finnish, but the information was also on the register display. After getting my change, I then pointed at my cart of unbagged groceries and said, “Could I like have a couple bags?”. He gave me a puzzled look for a second, then handed over the bags. All the cashiers I went to today spoke to me in Finnish after I said ‘Moi’, and I think some of them might have been trying to make small talk instead of just telling me my total because they gave me a funny grin as I handed over my money.
Getting home from the store was a bit of a challenge, as the bags were hard to carry on Johanna’s older-style bike. I later realized that I had forgotten about the empty backpack on my back. The ride home was about 20 minutes and I tried to do it without using the map. I eventually found the bus station, then remembered how Johanna and I had gotten home from there last night.
Back at the apartment I made noodles and a sandwich for lunch, and I drank some apple juice from a bottle that I had bought at the store today. The bottle fizzed when I opened it, and I found that it was carbonated. I am thinking that it will turn into normal apple juice if I just leave the lid off the bottle long enough. After eating, I then finished unpacking my things and I set up my computer. I used a monitor that Johanna had brought her a few weeks ago from her parent’s home. The power adapter that I bought today did not work very well. It fit American plugs, but not ones with a ground prong, like that on a computer. So, I just used the pointed end of a knife to scratch a hole for the ground prong into the adapter. It was a tight fit, but it worked. Also, the employee that helped me at the store told me that the adapter would allow me to plug in Asian appliance, but he lied. I needed that adapter to plug in my phone, which came from China. I brought the phone here because Europe uses the same kind of phones as Asia does. The personal information is stored on a small chip called a SIM card. So, if you get a new phone then you just take your SIM card out of the old phone and put it into the new one. If you move to a new place and want a local number, then you just put a new SIM card into your phone. I had tried to buy a SIM card today on my way home from the store, but was told that I could only get a prepaid card without a Finnish ID. So, I will either have Johanna get one for me or I will get a prepaid. (The owner of the phone store I went to did not speak English, and he is the first person I have met here who does not.)
I took a 30 minute nap before Johanna got home at 5. We then went rollerblading for an hour. I wore all my pads, but Johanna wore none of hers. I can still not use my brakes properly, but my balance is getting better and I have not fallen yet. On the way back home, we stopped to watch two guys about to fight in front of a bar. After a couple tense minutes, they ended up walking back into the bar with their arms around each other’s backs.
Back at the apartment, Johanna and I realized that we had no corkscrew to open the bottle of wine that I had bought today. So, I got on Johanna’s bike and went to a nearby supermarket. The store was near the bar where the guys had been about to fight earlier. They were now sitting outside just talking like old friends.
I bought the corkscrew and took it home to open the wine. I then started cooking the food I had bought today, which included a huge portion of salmon($3 per lb!) and a baked potato. I had also bought some pasta, but we decided that it would be too much food. The salmon turned out perfect.
We watched the news in Finnish after dinner. Johanna translated a few things for me. People in the country are worried that a paperworkers strike could run the nation out of toilet paper. Some people have been stocking up on it. Johanna told me that paperworkers have already formed a powerful union that gets them almost as much as doctors make here, but they now want even more.

May 25, 2005
Wednesday:

We landed in Amsterdam at just after 6 AM. I had planned on staying in the airport during my six-hour layover, but Alex(see yesterday) had told me that it was only a 15 minute train ride into downtown, so that is where I went. Going through customs was amazingly simple. There was only one official working and there was no line. The man barely looked at my passport before stamping it, then I was in the country. The train station was connected to the airport and I bought a ticket for $6.50(Euros) using my Visa debit card. As soon as I got into the city, I was impressed by the buildings, which were almost all old and unlike any others that I had seen before. There were barely any cars or people on the streets when I first arrived, but thousands of bikes began appearing around 8 o’clock, along with a lot a lot of public transportation and a few cars. The traffic system was very confusing for a foreigner. Trains, buses, cars and bikes move in a maze of curved streets, and it is hard to tell what is a street and what is a sidewalk. Soon after I got off the train, I met a guy named Terry from Australia, who had also just arrived in town. He had recently finished a military tour of duty which involved Iraq and the Bali bombings. He was planning on spending the next few months working in England because Australian citizens are allowed to work there for a certain amount of time. I walked around with Terry for about 30 minutes as he looked for a hostel to stay in. I then went off on my own to look for a place to use a bathroom. All the businesses were closed and the bathrooms at the train station required a 50 cent payment to get in. I did not yet have any cash, so I went out in search of an ATM. I ran into Terry two more times as I was looking, and we started walking together again the second time. I then soon found an ATM and took out $100(all $ amounts will be in Euros while I am gone, and one dollar is worth about 1.25 Euros). As Terry and I were walking, we ran into a guy named Ryan from Arizona. Ryan was on a European bike tour by himself. He had been an exchange student in Europe last semester and was spending the rest of his time here on this bike tour, camping along the way. Our group had now grown to three, as Ryan decided to walk along with us. After going with Terry to check into his hostel and use the bathroom there, we sat in a coffee shop for a while. Like most of the coffee shops in Amsterdam, this one sold marijuana and mushrooms. A joint was $2.50 and a gram was $10. The joints were mixed with tobacco. The mushrooms were about $18 per gram. By about 9:30, I was getting paranoid that I would miss my flight if I did not head back to the airport. Terry and Ryan left the coffee shop at the same time I did and we walked through the red light district. There was only one girl in the windows at that time of the morning, and she was not very impressive. I did not take a picture because Ryan and Terry told me that the girls get very mad and will come outside and try to break the camera.
I was back on the train by 10 o’clock. I had to go through both security and customs at the airport, but was never searched or asked any question other than “Where are you going?”. I was at my gate before 11 and my flight did not leave until 12:35. I spent some of the time reading a book that Ryan had given me in Amsterdam. It was written by Michael Moore and called ‘Downsize This’. I only read about 20 pages of it before I felt too tired to read anymore. In one part, Moore sends unusual checks to presidential candidates. For example, he send a $100 check to Bob Dole that has the name ‘Satan Worshippers for Dole’ on the check. Dole didn’t cash the check, but several other candidates did cash similar checks. Just before my flight left, I sat at a nearby Heineken bar and had a beer and a cigarette. Smoking was only allowed at bars and restaurants, but the bar I was at was right in the middle of the hallway, so smoke was going all over the place.
I was the next to last person to board my flight because the plane was not seated by section and I was too tired to stand in a big line. Once in the plane, I sat next to a girl named Taru from Finland. She was in her first year of college and was returning from a 3 week trip to a remote Nepal village, where her older sister had married a local man. Her pictures and stories from the trip were quite amazing. There were not even roads leading to the village she went to, and the Hindu wedding ceremony spanned several hours over two days.
The plane landed in Helsinki about 4:30 and Taru and I collected our luggage together, then she helped me find out which bus to take to the city of Turku. It just-so-happened that the bus she needed to get on was leaving from the same bus stop at just about the same time, so she sat with me and pointed out my bus to me when it came. She told me that she would be visiting friends in Helsinki and we exchanged email addresses and agreed to hang out when she comes into town or if I go into her town, which is nearby.
The bus ride to Turku took about two hours. I slept most of the time and had to switch buses one time. On the second bus is when I paid for the trip. A girl walked up the isle with a machine collecting money. I had seen a Visa symbol on the side of other busses, so I tried to use my card, but the girl told me that this bus did not take visa, so I paid $43 cash. I spilled all my American change as I was opening my wallet, and an older woman sitting behind me had picked it all up by the time I was done paying the girl. The older woman handed it to me as soon as I was finished paying.
I really liked the looks of the city of Turku as the bus drove through it. There are about 100,000 people and the land is mostly flat with some small rocky hills. It is early springtime now. Everything is very green with lots of people riding bikes and walking. The middle of the city has a huge old church on a hill. I got off the bus expected to try and find a way to call Johanna, but she surprised me and was there waiting. She had known what bus I would most likely get on and had ridden her bike to come meet me. We took a cab back to her house because my suitcase was too large to take on the 30 minute walk. She lives in a complex of 3 story student apartments just a few minutes walk from the university. She realized she had lost her keys when we got to the door of her building. She had to call a manager to come open the door for her, but realized the keys were in her back pocket just before the man arrived. She decided not to tell him that she had the key because she could keep the new key he gave her and give it to me. He charged a mandatory $15 for the service and we have to wait until tomorrow to get the key.
Johanna’s apartment is a bit larger than some of the other student apartments here, with a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and living room all separated into different rooms. After I took a shower, we decided to walk back to the bus station so she could pick up her bike. I put my rollerblades into my backpack and rode them back as Johanna rode her bike. I had not ridden skates in years and Johanna told me that I looked like a newborn horse as I refamiliarized myself with them. I did better on the skates after a few minutes, but had a real problem using my brakes, as I always have since I first skated when I was younger.
Johanna and I arrived home after 10 o’clock, and it was still light out until about 10:30. Later in the summer it will be a bit light all night long.

May 24, 2005
Tuesday:

I got up at 7 this morning and gathered all my luggage together. I checked the weather in Finland before leaving and found that the week was forecast to be in the upper 50s and lower 60s with a chance for showers every day. The nights were in the 30s and 40s.
Mike took me to the airport at 7:30 and I checked in for my connecting flight to Detroit, which was at 9:45. At the security checkpoint, was a tub full of abandoned lighters because they are no longer allowed on planes. However, I went into the smoking lounge and noticed that some travelers were lighting their cigarettes with lighters that they must have smuggled. They should be prosecuted as terrorists and sent to Cuba. The only purchase I made at the airport was a small hot chocolate from Starbucks.
My flight to Detroit(in a DC-10) was about half empty and there was nobody else in my row of 6 seats. The flight lasted about an hour and a half, and the temperature on the ground was about 20 degrees colder than that of St. Louis. The terminal I exited into at the Detroit airport was one of the nicest I have seen. It featured a large animated choreographed fountain and a shiny red elevated indoor train that took passengers between terminals. The bathrooms even had automatic soap dispensers. I bought a pen at the airport and the cashier could not get my debit card to scan, so she wrapped it tightly in a plastic bag and tried scanning it that way, which didn’t work either, whatever it was supposed to do. At the gate my flight was supposed to leave, a homeland security official was harassing all the foreigners that were leaving the country. Each of them was required to go to an ATM-looking machine and receive a card that had some kind of a barcode on it. The machines were a couple hundred yards from the gate I was at, and the official made each person that did not haved the card carry all their luggage back across the terminal and get the card. Almost none of the foreigners had known to get the card, and their reaction to the news was always despair. They did not get mad, probably because they knew they had no choice, but they did look sad at the prospect of the long walk back through the crowded terminal. One girl was a particularly sad case. She was a small thing in her early 20’s who was carrying a duffel bag over her shoulders that appeared to weigh as much as she did from the way she was walking with it. When she got the news that she had to walk back, she just stood and stared at the end of the terminal for several seconds, and she looked like she had tears in her eyes. She then spent several minutes trying to figure out how to use one of the machines that dispenses luggage carts for $3. I felt bad for not offering to help her carry the bag after she left. I thought that an American offering to help would have kind of made up for the trouble that the government was giving her. The most demeaning part of this procedure may not have been having to walk across the terminal a second time, but what happened when the foreigners returned with their hard-earned barcode cards. The Homeland Security official used a machine to scan the cards, then had the travelers put their finger into the machine, which took fingerprints. The fingerprint-taker was not working well, so the official asked the people to rub their fingers behind their ears so they would be oily. If the behind-the-ear method did not work, then he would ask them to rub the finger other places, like a forehead or the back of a neck. It was truly a weird sight to see. I wish I could have understood the conversations the foreigners were having with each other after completing the process, as they all looked shocked.
The flight leaving Detroit left at 4:10. I was in an Air Bus 330, which has two isles down the middle of the plane, but is smaller than a 747. I sat next to a guy named Alex, whom I ended up talking to for hours during the 8-hour flight. He was a US citizen who had come to the US from the Ukraine 15 years ago. He was traveling to visit his wife, who was exhibiting art at an exhibition somewhere in Europe. He told me that he owned a clinic which tried to save the limbs of ailing diabetics. When Alex and I were not talking, I was either sleeping or watching movies. The plane had a video-on-demand system and I watched the movies “White Noise” and “Hotel Rwanda”. The video system also provided the usual real-time links to the planes navigation system. As I watched the information I was thinking that it is probably very disturbing for some people when they see that they are traveling at 700 MPH, the outside air temperate is -83 and the wind speed is 103MPH. It did not bother me at all and I slept for about two hours between 3 o’clock and 5. The nighttime only lasted less than 3 hours because the plane was traveling forward through 7 time zones.

May 23, 2005
Monday:

I got up at 7 o’clock this morning so I could wake up Rodger, who had to drive home an hour-and-a-half and be at work by 10. We called a cab to take us back to his truck, which was still parked at Carboz from last night. After picking up the truck, we then went back to my house so Rodger could pick up the cufflinks to his tux, which he had forgotten. Next, we drove to Randy’s house and give him our tuxs so he could return them. Randy told me that he and Lisa really enjoyed my wedding gift of weird Chinese foods.
On the drive back, Rodger and I stopped at a McDonald’s drive-thru and I bought us breakfast. We both got steak sandwiches. Back at my house, Rodger collected his things and then left at 8:30. I spent the next hour getting my things ready to be taken out of the house. A water department employee came to the house and shut off the water as I was in the middle of brushing my teeth. I was glad that I had not tried to take a shower. Clara came with the Suburban at 9:30 and helped me load everything into it.
We then went back to Murphysboro and I unloaded everything. I was able to fit all of my things into my extremely crowded storage area, except for two bikes, which I stored elsewhere. As I was organizing the storage area, I took a couple dozen of my video tapes out of a huge plastic container that is full of them. I wanted to store some of them in a separate location in case the building the container is in ever catches fire or anything, so I put the ones I took out into a spot in the house.
After all my stuff was put away, I spent a couple hours using the computer and making final preparations to the things that were coming with me to Finland tomorrow. Clara gave me a couple things to give Johanna and her family as gifts. My dad was supposed to come home from work early so I could see him before I left, but things didn’t work out. Randy and Lisa came to pick me up around 3 o’clock, and my dad had still not arrived home.
Randy and Lisa were coming to St. Louis today because their honeymoon flight leaves the airport tomorrow morning also. We stopped once along way to get gas, and again to get food from White Castle. At the restaurant, we ordered 10 hambugers and 10 cheeseburgers. I ate 6 cheeseburgers(they are very small). I bought the food for us as a favor for the free ride. We wanted to stop and take a tour of the Anheiser-Bush bottling plant on our way through St. Louis, but could at first not find the place, then when I called for directions, I found that the last tour of the day had already taken place. So, we then went on to Mike and Carolyn’s apartment, which is were I was staying for the night. Randy and Lisa came in for a few minutes so Mike and Carolyn could give them directions to the airport.
I spent the first part of the evening setting up Mike’s computer for him and getting his DSL Internet access working. I was able to get it working on the first try, but then it quit working after a few minutes and it took me about an hour to realize one of the phone filters I had installed was bad. Once online, I found an email from Orbitz.com that was requesting feedback about a hotel I stayed at in Malaysia in March. Since I was never in Malaysia in March, the email made me worry that my account with Orbitz had been used fraudulently. I could not find any charges made to my account, so I called Orbitz. After waiting on hold for about 20 minutes, I was told that the email was probably just sent out in error and that no charges would be applied to my account.
Mike had dinner ready at 8:30. He made grilled chicken breasts, semi-creamed corn, scalloped potatoes and salad. After the meal, he and I went to a nearby Schnuck’s store so he could buy some things he needed.
Back at the house, I spent a while eating ice cream and watching part of a movie about Franklin Roosevelt with Mike and Carolyn before going to sleep.

May 22, 2005
Sunday:

Randy woke everyone up at 8 o’clock this morning. We had planned on going to the wedding site and setting it up as soon as we got up, but the other family members that were supposed to meet us there were running late, so Rodger, Randy, Nicholas, Chuck and I spent 30 minutes playing the Star Wars game while we waited on the other to get ready. I played the game for the first time and I beat Nicholas twice. Nicholas is only ten years old, but I didn’t mind beating him at all. Playing was good fun because Randy has his Playstation hooked up to a big-screen TV with a very good surround sound system.
We got to the wedding site sometime after 9 o’clock. I rode with Rodger and we pulled the trailer that had the 4-wheeler and wagon on it. Once we were there, Rodger and I unloaded the 4-wheeler and wagon from the trailer, then drove it down to the spot where the wedding was to be held. We were using the 4-wheeler because it was an easy way to get all the things from the parking lot to the wedding site, which was a few-minutes walk. So, this morning we first hooked up a sound system using a stereo Rodger had brought and the generator that Randy bought yesterday. We put the generator back into the woods about 100 feet from the stage and then ran an extension cord. We had the generator hidden behind a tree, and we put a box over-top of it to muffle its engine noise. The extension cord was bright orange, so I covered it up with leaves.
The other family members soon started arriving with all the decorations. Rodger and I made another trip with the 4-wheeler to carry flowers down. We then spent some time helping get everything placed into just the right positions. After we were done, we put the new ‘System of a Down’ CD into the sound system and played it full blast. It was really funny to have the loud hard rock playing in such a serene forest. While it played, Randy, Rodger, Chuck and I had a mosh session on the stage. The other family members got a good laugh out of it and recorded it.
For lunch, Randy, Rodger, Chuck, Nicholas and I all piled into Randy’s truck and went to Super Buffet(Chinese). After we paid, I said good-bye in Chinese to the cashier, and she understood. I wanted to say more, but I didn’t know what to talk about since my vocabulary is so limited. After lunch, we went to Wal-Mart because everyone except me needed black socks to wear with their tuxs. I did buy a tape for my camera, and Rodger also bought window markers so we could write on Randy’s truck. Rodger wanted to get Randy back because Randy had written all over his truck during his wedding last year(I had helped). Rodger and I were tying to keep our plans a secret from Randy, but Nicholas ‘spilled the beans’ while we were checking out.
Back at Randy’s house, we all spent an hour taking showers and getting dressed for the wedding, which was scheduled to start at 3 o’clock. We arrived at the site at 2:30, and guests started showing up shortly afterwards. Rodger and I attacked Randy’s truck with the markers as soon as he walked away from it, writing things like “sex wagon” and “don’t come knockin”. Most of the guests did not get there until exactly 3, and several even came late. Because of all the late arrivers, the ceremony did not start until 3:30. I talked to Randy and the preacher while we waited, and I jokingly offered the preacher a shot from a flask I had in my tux pocket. I had Cindy(Schnuck’s) be my camerawoman while I was in the wedding. I walked down the isle with Randy’s sister, Julie. The isle there is downhill and very narrow, which makes it difficult for two people to walk side-by-side. Julie’s very young daughter, Anastasia, was a flower girl in the wedding. Anastasia could not handle the pressures of her job and clung tightly to her mother as we walked down the isle. So, two people was hard, but 3 was impossible. Julie had to walk slightly behind me and Anastasia had to walk behind her. Despite a late start and some uncooperative kids, the wedding turned out great. Randy and Lisa both cried, as did several family members.
After the wedding, Rodger and I took everything apart and used the 4-wheeler to take it all back to the parking lot. We felt really funny riding a 4-wheeler while we were wearing tuxs. Some family members also helped carry and transport some things.
I then rode back to Randy’s house with Rodger and the 4-wheeler. As we pulled out of the parking lot, Lisa stood up through the sunroof and everyone honked at her.
After Rodger and I dropped off the trailer, we went to the reception, which was at Carboz(night club). I had earlier thought that Carboz was a weird place to have a reception, but it turned out very nice. There was a staff of about 10 catering to us. Beer was free and other drinks were $3. Dinner was served about an hour after we arrived. All of the food was delicious, especially the beef steaks. An ice sculpture was on the table with the food. Rodger and the bridesmaid, Sabrina, had to make speeches after the meal. The DJ brought two microphones to them that did not work, so they had to talk loudly. After the speeches, Rodger gave cigars to about 15 of the guys at the reception and we all went to smoke them at the bar, which was the designated smoking area. After that, I spent some time with the people on the dance floor. During the slow songs, I danced with Michele(Schnuck’s), Lisa’s mom, and the girlfriend of Donnie(Schnuck’s). Michele’s 3 year old daughter wanted to dance with me during the song ‘Sexual Healing’, which got a laugh out of several people. She also wanted to dance with me during a lot of other songs, and the way she wanted to dance was by having me hold her hands and spin her in circles. I did that for one whole song and could barely stand up afterwards. Randys brother told me some interesting things while I was talking to him at the bar. He told me that many cars have had black boxes for the past 5 years. These black boxes work kind of like the ones in airplanes. They record information about a vehicle at the time of a crash, including speed, braking info, etc. They also record some information for the past several months the car was driven, such as seat belt information. So, Randys brother works for a company that retrieves information from these black boxes. Insurance companies are thier main customers. Wierd.
The party wound down around 11 o’clock. At that time, the remaining guests all went into the bar and had a couple last drinks, then said goodbye. Rodger and I then called a cab back to my house. Our driver was a big guy named Tim, and he let us stop at a liquor store for no extra charge. Back at my house, I realized that I had left my key in Rodger’s truck. So, I stacked some bricks under the kitchen window, then opened it and had Rodger help push me through. I ripped a button off my tux in the process. Once inside the house, Rodger and I both drank just part of one beer before we realized we were too tired to go on. Rodger inflated an air mattress and slept on the living room floor. There was almost nothing in the house because Mike and Carolyn had already taken all their things away. Luckily, they had left my bed.

May 21, 2005
Saturday:

I got up at 10 this morning. Mike and Carolyn were gone then, but came home for a few minutes around 11 before leaving again to go see the new Star Wars. They said good-bye to me because I will probably not see them again before they leave for St. Louis tomorrow. I was supposed to ride to St. Louis with them, but I had previously thought they were leaving on Monday. Since they are leaving tomorrow, I can not go with them because I will be in Randy and Lisa’s wedding them. Luckily, Randy and Lisa offered me a ride to the airport on Tuesday morning because their honeymoon flight is leaving at the same time mine is.
I made myself two sandwiches for lunch at noon. I wanted to eat more of the leftover BBQ from the graduation party, but to my horror, the big bag of BBQ was missing from the fridge. So, I made a ham sandwich and a roast beef sandwich. The ham was fine, but I got an unpleasant surprise when I bit into the roast beef. It had smelled fine, but there was surely something wrong with the taste. It must have been in the early stages of decomposition. It was gross.
After lunch, I packaged Randy and Lisa’s wedding gift. I didn’t really have any money to buy them anything because I had already spent a lot of money on a Tux, but I did give them some interesting gifts; smoked salmon, pickled chicken claws, smoked minnows and two fabric name badges that say “Randy”. The food all was bought in China and is vacuum packed. I found the two name badges in the meat department at Schnuck’s, which had fallen off the Randy’s coats at work. All Schnuck’s meat department employees get white coats with their names printed on them. So, I took one of the name badges and put an “’S” at the end, making it say “Randy’s”. I was thinking that Randy and Lisa could put the badges on matching hats or something. Randy will wear “Randy”, and Lisa will wear “Randy’s”.
Wrapping the gifts was kind of hard because I did not have the right stuff. For the box, I took apart an old yard sale sign because I noticed that the sign was made with a flattened Postal Service box. For wrapping, I used some thin, green, tissue like paper that I found in a old grocery store bag. I used duck tape to attach the green paper to the box. As bad as this sounds, I made the gift look acceptable. I even found some red ribbon of Carolyn’s and tied it around the box. But, I did not clearly label that the present was from me. I folded over a small piece of paper and wrote the “to” and “from” stuff inside of it. I then taped the paper shut so nobody could lift it and look.
Nic and Sara came over at 1 to pay Mike and Carolyn for some things that they wanted to buy from them. I took the money from them, then they stated and talked for about 20 minutes. At 2:30, two black guys that live nearby came over to buy a large computer desk that was sitting in the front yard. Mike and Carolyn had put the desk there when they left with a sign saying “$15”. I was surprised when I answered the door because one of the guys had a hat on that said “FBI” and an earpiece in his hear. But, if he was actually FBI, he didn’t want anything but the desk. He asked me if I would take $10, and I said yes because Mike and Carolyn had told me to take as little as $5 for it.
Rodger had planned on picking me up at home on his way to Randy’s house today because I had told them I would stay there tonight and help them get ready for the wedding. He was supposed to arrive around 3, but had truck problems and did not arrive till 5. Yesterday he had been driving Julie’s(his wife) very nice car, but today he was driving his truck, which is a 1983? Chevy pickup truck. He was driving the truck because he had sold Julie’s car this morning. The truck is very loud and gets under 10 miles per gallon. Rodger told me that it only gets 5 miles per gallon when he is towing something, and that it only has a ten gallon tank, which means that he sometimes has to fill the tank multiple times in the same day. On the way to Randy’s house, we stopped at a tobacco shop to buy cigars and a liquor store to buy some beer.
We did not end up having to do much work at Randy’s house tonight, other than moving a few things into his truck and putting a wagon and 4-wheeler on a trailer and connecting it to Rodgers truck. Also at Randy’s house tonight, was Lisa’s son, Chuck, Nicholas, and Randy’s old roomate, Steve, and Steve’s wife. Lisa was gone for the night so Randy would not see her before the wedding.
So, we spent most of the night just having fun. For dinner, Rodger and I cooked rib-eyes and potatoes for everyone. We spent the rest of our time either sitting around outside and talking, playing pool and playing a new Star Wars game for Playstation. Everyone started watching a movie at 11 o’clock and I went to a couch in the basement and fell asleep.

May 20, 2005
Friday:

I got up at 9 this morning and finished packing everything up in my room that I will not be taking to Finland with me. Mike slept all morning because he stayed at Buckley’s until 5 AM this morning. I made myself sandwiches for lunch from the leftover graduation party BBQ.
Rodger and Randy came over at 12:30 to pick me up for Randy and Lisa’s wedding rehearsal. The rehearsal did not actually start until 5, so we spent the afternoon doing some things at Randy and Lisa’s house. We first tested a generator Randy had just bought, which will power the sound system for the wedding. We spent the rest of the afternoon just hanging out with all the other people that were arriving. About 15 people eventually came.
The preacher, Steven, showed up around 5 o’clock, then all of the wedding party rehearsed the wedding in the front yard. After that, everyone went to the location that the wedding is being held, which is the Touch of Nature. I rode there with Rodger, and we were the first of the wedding party to get there. The preacher was already there, so we talked to him for a few minutes before the others arrived.
We then all walked down to an open-air chapel by a lake. The chapel consisted of a stage and benches built onto a hillside facing the lake. I practiced walking down the isle with Randy’s and Lisa’s sisters. I talked to the preacher a few more minutes before he left. Randy had earlier told him I like to travel, so we talked about different places that we had both been.
I then rode back to Randy and Lisa’s house with Rodger and helped him get the grill going. We used the grill to cook rib-eye steaks for everyone. Dinner was ready around 8 o’clock, and also consisted of corn, baked potatoes and mashed potatoes.
Rodger gave me a ride home on his way back home at 8:45. He had to leave early because he needed to be at work in Centralia at 5 AM. We both smoked a cigar on the way home.
Mike and Carolyn arrived home shortly after I did and continued getting ready for their move. I unpacked my computer speakers and hooked them up again so they could have some music. I helped them by climbing onto the roof to disconnect the satellite cables, then had trouble getting off the roof. I had used the bed of Mike’s truck to climb onto the roof, but could not use it to get back off, so I just had to jump. Just as I got off the roof, a woman in a car stopped and asked me how to get to a nearby aerobics studio. She told me that she was frantic because she was supposed to pick up a little girl there and could not find the place. I tried to give her directions, but she did not seem to understand, so I got on my bike and told her to follow me. Just a few seconds after I got on the bike, I hit a big hole in the yard and flipped over the handlebars. The lady in the car saw what happened and then acted even more frantic. But, I landed in the grass and was fine except for getting some mud on me.
I went over to Buckley and Jen’s house at 11 and stayed for an hour. Jen’s brother was also there, and so were their two lesbian friends.

May 19, 2005
Thursday:

Bruce and I were awakened in our tent by rain at 6AM. There were just a few drops falling, but we knew that bad weather was in the forecast and wanted to get our stuff put away as soon as possible. We had planned on cooking breakfast before leaving, but with the rain, we were packed up and on the road by 6:30. We stopped at a Mcdonalds in Marion for breakfast, then Bruce dropped me off at home.
Mike and his dad were already at the house and working by the time I arrived at 7:30. They were putting all of Mike and Carolyn’s things onto a flatbed trailer and into the back of their pickup trucks. I had expected Mike and I to do that at 11 in the morning, which is what time I had expected to get home. But, Mike’s dad wanted to start earlier than that, so they had planned on just loading the things themselves and leaving for St. Louis before I ever arrived home. So, if I had stayed camping, then I would have gotten out of moving today. As it was, I ended up helping them load up the things and then leaving for St. Louis with them around 10. Mike and I had the trailer attached to his truck.
We had to stop before we ever got out of Carbondale because the ropes we had tied a tarp down with were coming loose. The tarp was on top of the flatbed trailer because of the before-mentioned severe weather in the forecast. Mike’s dad tightened the ropes and then wrapped duck tape around the entire flatbed trailer, which took about a whole role. We looked like the Beverly Hillbillies probably, but we didn’t have any more problems with the tarp. The only other stop we made was for gas because Mike’s truck was dealing with the weight of the trailer by using a lot of it. I slept for most of the last half of the trip.
When we arrived at Mike’s apartment complex, he had to stop at the office, sign a lease and pick up the key. Mike’s dad called his stepson whom lived nearby, Matt, to come help us put the things into the apartment. Carolyn also took a two-hour lunch so she could meet us at the apartment and help.
All of the things were in the apartment within an hour. The hardest thing to move was the couch, which would not even fit into the same sliding-glass door that we brought all of the other things in through. After getting all the things unloaded, Mike and Carolyn took everyone out to lunch at a nearby restaurant. I cannot remember the name, but it was very near the Schnuck’s corporate office that Carolyn works at. On the way there, she told Mike and I about a Schnuck’s employee that was killed at one of the stores today when a semi delivery truck backed over her at the receiving dock.
We all sat at a round table for lunch and everyone in the building was watching a Cardinals game. I ordered a cheeseburger and fries. We went back to the apartment after the meal and locked up the BBQ grill before leaving for home. Mikes dad again followed Mike and I along the way. I again slept about half the way. We finally saw the bad weather as we were nearing Murphysboro. We had to stop there so Mike could drop off the trailer at his grandparent’s home. At just the time we arrived at their house, extremely heavy rain started falling. The rain was mixed with small hail and some heavy wind. Mike and his dad were completely soaked by the time they got the trailer disconnected. I did not get out of the truck because there was very little that I could have done to help.
Back at home, I fell asleep from 5:30 till 7:30. I rode my bike to Buckley and Jen’s house at 9, where Mike had already gone to. There, Jen cooked us all dinner. Her brother was also there, but he left as dinner was getting ready and did not eat. After the meal, we all watched a comedy called ‘Team America’. I makes fun of the United States’ war on terrorism, and all the actors are puppets. It is made by the same guys who make South Park. Parts of the movie were very funny, but the music was the best part. I came home at 11, then spent an hour using my computer and getting things in my room ready for the move.

May 18, 2005
Wednesday:

Bruce and I got up sometime around 8 this morning. He tried to make coffee on the campstove, but the coffee filters kept breaking, so we quickly drove into the nearby town of Goreville and bought some coffee and ice at a gas station there. We then went back to our campsite and cooked sausage and scrambled eggs for breakfast.
Bruce cooked the food, so I cleaned up most of the dishes after the meal. I noticed several abandoned logs at a campsite near the water outlet, which Bruce and I spent a few minutes carrying back to our site. There had been enough wood at the other site to last for the rest of our stay. We started our fire around noon and had hot dogs and roast beef sandwiches for lunch. Gretchen met us at 1 o’clock and I made her lunch. She stayed and talked with Bruce and I until she had to leave at 3 to go tutor a kid. A man and woman came to the site to collect money just before she was leaving. The woman told us we were supposed to pay at an office. I told her about the raccoons getting on the table and letting me film them last night, and she just said, “Don’t feed the coons”.
Next, Bruce and I took a hike for an hour on a nearby trail. The first half-mile of the trail was quite a steep downhill. We sat on some boulders by a stream for a while, then walked back up the steep hill, which I thought was going to kill Bruce.
Back at our campsite, we cooked potatoes and rib-eye steaks for dinner. After the meal, we then spent the rest of the night just camping again. Bruce went to sleep before 10 o’clock. I stayed up again to see what the raccoons would do. They attempted to get our trash that was hanging in a tree, so I later took it to bed with me.

May 17, 2005
Tuesday:

I spent some of the day getting ready for my camping trip tonight, and spent the rest of the time helping Mike pack and talking to Johanna online. Mike and I packed almost everything in the kitchen. I boxed most of the breakable items using newspapers.
Clara came over at 5 to bring me 3 campstoves. She brought 3 because she was not sure which of the 3 worked. I tested them after she left and found one that burned right. Bruce got to the house a little after five and we headed out on our two-day camping trip at Ferne Clyffe State Park. We stopped at WalMart on the way out of town and bought food and a lantern. We tried to use the self checkout to pay for our items, and I strongly recommend not ever doing so, as the machine messed up multiple times. We also made a stop at SI liquor to buy beer and ice.
We arrived to our campsite about an hour before dark. It was a walk-in spot that was completely surrounded by forest except for the path leading to it. You could not see any other campsites from the spot, but most of the others were not being used anyway. During the first hour, Bruce set up the tent while I hunted for firewood. There was very little wood on the ground, so I had to push down dead trees, some of which were about 20 feet tall.
After getting our campsite ready and our fire burning, we ate hot dogs for dinner. We spent the rest of the evening camping, which means that we talked, put logs on the fire and drank our beer. Two raccoons began harassing us around 10 o’clock. We had heard them watching us from the woods since the sun went down, and they got more and more brave as the night went on. I was able to film them very up close. Bruce went to sleep an hour before me, and the raccoons were even more brave when the campsite became quieter. As I quietly sat at the picnic table, the animals actually got on top of it and smelled my camera as I filmed. The video of that will be on here within a couple weeks.

May 16, 2005
Monday:

I got up at 11 this morning and Mike and I went to breakfast at Denny’s with Tera. Mike and I picked up a few things outside from the party before leaving the house, and the birds had already started the cleanup process for us. They were working on eating cake and chips that were left on the picnic table outside.
We spent about an hour eating at Denny’s with Tera, then came back home and spent the next hour finishing cleaning up from the party. Before we had left, I had thrown a bunch of the leftover chips at Mike, and by the time we returned, the birds had eaten every trace of those chips which had landed on the ground. So, just in case anyone ever wandered, birds love sour-cream-and-onion flavor. Mike later sprayed me with a hose to get even for the chips.
After finishing the cleaning, Mike and I played badminton for a few minutes. I borrowed Mike’s truck around 2 o’clock so I could drive to campus and pick up my bike, which was locked to a bike rack on campus. I stopped at Jen’s house on the way there because I needed to talk to Steph. Noboday was home, so I left a note, then went to Schnuck’s so I could get some money from an ATM.
Back at home, I worked on preparing yesterday’s party pictures for the Internet. I then slept from 4 o’clock till 5. Mike and I then went to Jen’s house so I could pick something up from her. After that, we came back home and met John at the house. John hooked up the BBQ trailer to his truck and took it back to the business that owns it. Mike and I had planned on playing racquetball this afternoon, but decided not too because we also planned on going to Josh and Courtney’s house to play poker at 7, and playing racquetball would have made us late. We ate some leftover BBQ and beans for dinner, then went to play poker. Nikki was there with Josh and Courtney when we arrived, but she did not play and only stayed for less than an hour. Mike and I played with them for about two hours and I lost $2. Mike won about $2. I wore my traditional Chinese shirt to their house because they had asked people to come dressed as movie characters. I just told them I was Bruce Lee. They had both put a bit more time into their costumes. Courtney was dressed as a woman from “Dark City”, and Josh was some character that resembled a gangster, but I don’t remember who exactly he was suppose to be. Another guy came after Mike and I arrived that was dressed like the main character from ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’. This guy had the costume perfect and even looked like the guy. He also had the voice down perfect.
Josh and Courtney were giving out prizes for having specific hands during the poker games. They are moving to Memphis in 2 days and were trying to get rid of some things that they did not want to take with them. I won a book of short stories for having 2 queens, 2 VHS movies for having a full house, and a role playing computer game for having 4 of a kind.
Mike and I came home at 11 and played Nintendo, which was still set up on the kitchen table from the party last night. I later checked my final grades online and found that I passed Chinese with a C, which I am very happy about. I also got a B in accounting and an A in the computer class. The other class grades were not posted yet.

May 15, 2005
Sunday:

I got up this morning at nine and mowed the yard. Mike and John and had been working on the BBQ since 6 o’clock in the morning. I spent a few minutes filming the BBQ process before I mowed and after I mowed, then I went back inside and talked to Johanna online.
I tried to sleep from 11 till 12:30, but never actually went to sleep because a lot of activity was developing in the house during that time. Although I never really went to sleep, laying down for an hour and a half was still great.
I was surprised to see Sean K. at the house when I got up from my nap. Last week, I had made a bet with Ryan that Sean would not show up to the party. I was still glad to see Sean even though it meant that I lost money, because I had not seen him for about 2 years.
Around 2 o’clock, I went with Mike to buy a keg at ABC liquor. After getting back to the house, I ate some BBQ wings and pork chops, which tasted like some of the best I have ever had. Jared came over at 3 o’clock and only stayed for an hour because he had to drive back home 7 hours to go to work in the morning. Ryan and I played washers against Mindy and Carolyn and lost 3 games in a row.
Massives amounts of Mike’s family started arriving at 5. For about 2 hours after that, it appeared that 80 percent of the party guests were over 80 years old. I thought this was a great time to get out the cameras and take some pictures and video. At some points during this time, there were about 50 people here, and the combination of the young and old was a good thing to record.
I wish I could list all the people that came and went throughout the evening, but that would be a massive task, so I will just try and post the video in a couple weeks. But, most of the older people left before dark, and most of the younger people left just after dark. The people I knew who came from out of town were Ryan, Mindy, Sean K., Tera, Tavis and Katie.
Most of the people were gone by midnight, but there was a small group of us that stayed up until after 3 AM, which included Ryan, Mindy, Jen, Steph, Tera, Melissa Ethridge(T’s friend), Mike and Cole C. It got quite cold later in the night, so we all sat around a fire. We played the electronic scategories game and Ryan converter a noisemaking device into a beer bong. The noisemaking device was a 3-foot long tube than made a creepy humming noise when it was spun in a circle. Ryan was trying to make everyone do bongs and he even put champagne in it a couple times. I agreed to do just one bong, but some people did several.

May 14, 2005
Saturday:

I got up at nine o’clock and talked to Johanna online for an hour. I spent the rest of the morning writing(journal) and doing laundry. At 12:30, my dad, Clara and Charlie(Clara’s son) came to pick me up for Amanda’s graduation, which was held at the arena.
I took my camera and filmed during the ceremony. Afterwards, we took some pictures outside of the building and also inside by the stage. Next, we went to the reception in the engineering building, where cookies, fruit and punch were being served.
I was dropped back off at my house around 3 o’clock, and then I slept until 5:45. When I woke up, Mike and Carolyn were getting ready for their graduation ceremony, which was at 7. I did not go there with them because I was planning on going to my sisters graduation party at 6.
My dad had earlier said that he would pick me up for the party, but he never showed up. I started packing things in my room at 7 and continued doing that until 8:30. At that time, I began to worry that something was wrong because nobody had called me to arrange any change of plans. Mike and Carolyn got home at 9, and Carolyn let me borrow her car so I could drive to Amanda’s house. There, I found that the party was ending and that my dad had just forgotten he was suppose to pick me up. I stayed for about an hour, then came back home.
Tavis and John were at the house when I arrived. John was helping Mike and Carolyn prepare the meat for tomorrow’s BBQ, and Tavis was back for a visit from Cincinnati. My brother and Carrie came to pick me up at 11. We then went to a party on Old Route 13, stopping at Westroad Liquors on the way.
I had a great time at the party tonight, mostly just talking to my brother, Carrie and their friend, Cole. The hosts of the party had a keg that was pressurized with a tank, so no pumping was required. We had brought our beer to the party, but were told that beer was free and that we should take our beer back to the car. We spent the rest of the evening either talking at the house or in an area nearby where a bonfire was. Towards the end of the evening, we went inside and ate BBQ that was in the house. It appeared that lots of food had been cooked earlier in the evening. It was cold by the time we got to it, but was still very good.
My brother, Carrie and I left the party at 3, then they dropped me off back at my house.

May 13, 2005
Friday:

Today was long and fun. The first couple hours were not included in the fun, though, because I got up at six and studied for my final exam in Management Information Systems, which was at 8. The exam questions reminded me that it is the worst class I have ever taken at SIU. It was 80 questions of useless and soon-to-be-outdated computer terminology. The teacher never made any effort during the semester to do anything except teach exactly along with the book. I just think he was really lazy because he was never available during his office hours and he never answered any emails. When reading the class syllabus, I noticed that a grade of ‘B’ or better is required in the class for student that plan on going into the next level Management class. I was really surprised when I read that, because passing or not passing this class does not seem to prove or show any skills or accomplishments.
I stole a bike after class. I have written before about the abandoned bike I have had my eye on during the semester. So, I took a pair of pliers to class with me today, then went to get the bike after class. There were employees mowing around the bike when I first got to it, so I decided to wait a few minutes, and I went into the Faner building to try and find my Chinese teacher so I could get my exam grade. The Chinese teacher was not in his office yet, so I went back to the bike and found that the mowers had left. I first took the tire of my bike, then took the tire off the other bike. The other bike was only locked by the tire, so I was able to remove it from the bike rack after removing the tire. I then put my tire on the other bike, locked my old bike up to the bike rack and rode home. I found that the stolen bike needs a little bit of a tune-up, but it is in better shape than my old one.
Ryan and Mike were at the house when I arrived home. I had not expected to see Ryan until tomorrow, when he, Mike and I were suppose to take his guns out to my home in Murphysboro and shoot. But, we ended up doing that today. We first needed to buy ammo, so we went to a pawn shop in Carbondale that sells it. We arrived at 9:40 and the shop did not open till 10, so we went into Hobby Lobby to kill some time, which is right across the street from the pawn shop. As we walked around the store, we talked about how certain pieces of the artwork on display would be very fun to shoot at.
We went back to the pawn shop at 10 and bought a $60 box of ammo, which we split the cost of 3 ways. We then went to Schnucks, where I used my Link card to buy a watermelon, 4 grapefruits, 1 cantelope and 14 cans of soda. We then went through the Burger King drive through and got some lunch before we proceeded to Murphysboro.
There, we drove out to a spot in the back of the property where we have been shooting for years. At the spot are two old junk cars and several pieces of old machinery. We began our shooting by killing all the produce and soda. We had 3 guns to do this with; a shotgun Mike owns and a 50 caliper Desert Eagle handgun and SKS that Ryan owns. Ryan’s handgun is worth about $1300 and it is the biggest handgun I have ever seen. The SKS is a rifle that shoots the same kind of ammo as an AK-47 does. The fruit and soda did not stand up well to any of the guns, but the Desert Eagle did the most damage. I set my camcorder up on a tripod and had it zoomed in the food as it exploded. I had to clean the camera lens a couple times because fruit juice got all over the lens.
Shooting five televisions turned out to be just as much fun as the fruit. Ryan had brought two old TV’s with him, and I had been saving the other 3. We lined them up on top of one of the old cars and opened fire. Using the SKS on the TV’s was very fun because it is semiautomatic and holds about 30 rounds. So, the bullets come out as fast as the trigger can be pulled, which just cuts TV’s apart.
We were all wearing glasses while we shot because pieces of glass and metal will occasionally come back and hit us. I got hit with a piece of metal in the hand that made me bleed. I also burned myself on the SKS, which gets extremely hot after it has shot a few rounds. Also, I am glad that Ryan works at a gun range and practices good gun safety rules, or he could have shot me today. It happened when I was adjusting the camera by the TV’s and he was loading the SKS behind me. The gun fired unexpectedly when he cocked it, but he had luckily been aiming the gun in a direction a few feet away from me. I was pushing some buttons on the camera when I heard the shot and felt the concussion in the air. I was at first shocked that someone would shoot that close to me, then I turned around and saw the surprised look on Ryan’s face. He told me that he had never seen a gun malfunction like that. Mike was standing right next to him and had also seen the random firing of the gun. It was really ironic that this happened, because I had jokingly told Ryan he could shoot me several times earlier in the day.
The gun would not work any more after shooting at me, so we had to take it up to the house and work on it with tools. Ryan discovered that the firing pin in the gun had somehow become bent and was jammed in the forward position, which caused the gun to fire when it was cocked. Ryan was able to straighten the firing pin using a vice and a wood file. While Ryan worked on the gun, Mike and I went to my storage area and got some things we needed for the Sunday party and moving. We then continued shooting until about 2 o’clock. We ran out of time to finish our huge box of SKS ammo that we had paid $60 for.
Ryan dropped Mike and I off at home after leaving Murphysboro. UPS delivered my rollerblades shortly afterwards. I was happy to find that they fit perfectly. Mike cousin, Chris, came by for a few minutes and I talked to him while Mike was busy doing other things. I then walked over to Buckley’s house and hung out with him and Jen until we left at 4 o’clock to go to a Green Day concert. Carolyn had planned this trip a long time ago as a Valentines Day present for Mike. Also going today, was Tim, Nikki and a friend of Tim’s that manages a local winery. Jeff was suppose to go, but called in sick earlier.
Mike and I rode with Jen and Buckley in Jen’s car. We stopped along to way to buy some beer and eat at Mcdonalds in Nashville, IL. After leaving Mcdonalds, Mike and Buckley put the beer into their soda cups and drank it along the way. I had not thought to bring a soda cup, so I just had to be careful drinking mine. Jen was driving and didn’t drink anything.
We got to St. Louis just after 6 o’clock. I paid the $10 parking fee since Jen and Buckley had paid for gas. The concert was held at the Saavis Center(hockey stadium). We waited at the front entrance for Carolyn to meet us there. Then we went in and found our seats.
During the concert, some of us got up on a couple different occasions to buy drinks and take smoke breaks in a stadium bar that was near our seats. The bar is the only smoking area in the stadium. Beers cost $10 each, which is a new record for me to pay.
I expected to see a lot of people my age at the concert because Green Day has been popular since I was in High School, but there were almost all younger people there. There were probably about 10,000 screaming high school students in the stadium, all of whom had their cellphones out filming and taking pictures the whole time. It is weird that cameras are still not allowed into concerts because almost every phone has a camera now. Some of the phones only take low quality pictures and video, but more and more of them are now multi-megapixel, so it is just the same as having a regular camera or camcorder.
During the slow songs, thousands of people turned on their cell phone lights and waved them in the air just as they would lighters.
The concert ended with confetti guns at about 11 o’clock, then I rode home with Buckley and Jen. Jen had trouble finding the interstate and it took us about 30 minutes to get out of St. Louis. Our only stop along the way was a gas station, where Buckley and Jen bought some food. During the whole ride home, Buckley and I exchanged stories of when we worked together at Mcdonalds in 1995. He remembers details of events and the sequence of them, which I could not even come close to doing. I am glad I keep a journal now.

May 12, 2005
Thursday:

I got up at 9 o’clock this morning and talked to Johanna online from 10-11. I began studying for my Chinese test after that. I took a break for lunch at noon, then continued studying until the exam began at 3. As expected, I did not do too well on the grammar section of the test. I probably passed, but I am really not sure. The teacher was voluntarily helping students during the test. It was the female assistant from Taiwan that gave the test, and she would walk around and tell students when they were doing things wrong. On three different occasions, she looked over my shoulder at the test and said, “wrong”. I would then change the answers and she would come back and either say nothing or say “wrong” again. Unfortunately, the test was too big for her to help everyone with every question, but she at least helped me get several more points than I would have otherwise.
The test ended at 5 and I then met Mike at the rec center. There, we played three games of racquetball. I almost shut him out. I won the first game by eight, then won the second in overtime. I was one point from winning the third game, but he was able to come back and win.
He had ridden his bike to the rec center also, so we rode home together after our games. We were exhausted by the time we got home. The games had already made us tired and the bike ride even exhausted us more because it was a bit hot and humid today. After resting for a bit, Mike, Damien and I went to Schnucks and Westroad Liquors. At Schnuck’s, Damien and I sat in the air-conditioned truck while Mike bought some things for dinner. At Westroads, we got a bottle of Carribean spiced rum.
We then came home and started making dinner. I cut up some cheese and cleaned out the fridge while Mike did the rest of the cooking. I had to clean out the fridge because we needed to make room to let our 50 pounds of pork butts thaw out, which had been in the freezer earlier. All the meat is now thawing for the party on Sunday.
After the meal, we watched a couple episodes of South Park. I had not seen one of episodes before, in which the citizens of the town debate changing the city flag, which depicts a group of white stick figures hanging a black one. Tara called me during the second episode and I talked to her for about an hour. It was a coincidence that she called, because we have not talked for several months and I had just sent her an email a few hours before she called, which she did not yet know about.
After the phone call, I then spent some time studying for my final final exam, which is in Management Information Systems tomorrow at 8 AM.

May 11, 2005
Wednesday:

I got up at 9 this morning and called the university doctors office. The sinus cold I had last week has not yet completely went away, and the last two days it has been getting worse again. I have had a constant sinus headache the past few days and it was so bad last night that I could not sleep well. On the phone today, I was given an appointment for 2:30.
I talked to Johanna online for a while after talking to the doctor, then had a piece of cake for breakfast. I studied for my macroeconomics test from 11-12:30, then fell asleep for a few minutes. Johanna called me again at 1. I was asleep when she called and I knocked over my lamp and burnt out the bulb as I was getting out of bed to answer her call. Then, instead of putting on my headphone to talk to her, I put on my sunglasses. It was one of the best cases of getting-out-of-bed-confusion I have ever had.
I rode my bike to the doctor’s office at 2. I was hoping I could be seen early if I arrived early, because I had my macroeconomics exam at 3. The doctor saw me about 2:30, then I had to go across the street and pick up a prescription of antibiotics and Sudafed.
I then went to take my macroeconomics test in the Faner building. The test went smoothly and I probably did very well. On the way home, I stopped at Old Town Liquor and got a 12 pack of Keystone light for Mike and I to share tonight. I also stopped at Yesteryear Tobacconist and picked up some cigarette papers.
Mike got home from his 3 days in St. Louis about 30 minutes after I arrived home. We went to Schnuck’s at 7 to pick up some boxes that I was having them save for Mike to move with. We then came home and cooked potatoes, sirloin steak and corn for dinner.

May 10, 2005
Tuesday:

This was the first day I have lived in this house that I have not left the property at least once during the day. I was home all day and only went outside to eat lunch and dinner at the picnic table. The temperature was over 80, and it is suppose to be almost 90 for the next two days.
I got up and 9 and talked to Johanna online. I made her a short video to rub in our weather to her(it is still only about 50 degrees during the day there). I then talked to her again around noon and she watched the video. After that, I warmed up some leftover broccoli and ham casserole for lunch. I slept from 2 till three, then got up and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening studying for my Chinese exam, which is on Thursday. I spent hours creating a single paragraph, which tells of my experience in Chinese class this past semester. I did this because the exam review guide says that it must be done on the test using at least 10 different grammar concepts that we have learned during the semester. My paragraph reads something like, “I didn’t understand everything in Chinese class this semester. Studying was both fun and difficult. Class in America was much harder than China. Class in China was too easy and too short. I now understand more and more Chinese. I can both read a bit of Chinese and speak a bit, but still not enough. I have already studied for one year, and I have 2 more years remaining.” ……It took me 4 hours to figure out how to write that in Chinese, but only 30 seconds in English. I have a long way to go.
I took a dinner break around 6 and ate two leftover drumsticks and some potato salad. I watched a reality show about bounty hunters for a few minutes after the meal. The show features a family of bounty hunters who regularly harass the people that they arrest. The wife of the main bounty hunter got in a screaming match with the girlfriend of a person they arrested. It appears that people get really mad when bounty hunters come after them, and the hunters on the show seem to love that.
I got an email tonight from a Chinese language exchange website that I sent a message to earlier today. It claims that in exchange for teaching an English class in China by webcam and microphone, that I would get free Chinese lessons in the same manner. I think I must try it out as soon as I get settled in for the summer in Finland.

May 9, 2005
Monday:

I went to campus today at 9 o’clock to meet with someone, then came back home. I stopped at Burger King on the return trip and got a breakfast meal, which I ate in the store.
I talked to Johanna online from 10 till about 10:30. Mike left in the late morning to go to St. Louis for 3 days because he has a job interview there today and Wednesday. I planned on studying all afternoon for my accounting final exam, which was at 8 PM., but didn’t do quite that much studying. I fell asleep from 11 till noon, then actually studied from about 1 till 6. I took a break at 4 for lunch. It was extremely difficult for me to concentrate on the boring material, and it didn’t help that I had a sinus headache all day. But, I wasn’t under that much pressure, considering I just needed just a 20% on the test to get a C in the class.
I spent the last hour before the test just watching TV, then rode my bike back to campus. I think I did better on the test than expected, but probably no better than a B. I finished about 9:30, then went to Wise Guys and bought a slice of pizza for $2. The cashier, who was from Palestine, talked to me for a couple minutes after I ordered, then the next customer that came in was a guy I went to high school with. I think his name is Mike Green, but I am not sure. During our junior year, I collected money one day from my biology class to get him to eat a giant beetle than was glued to a display on the wall. At the beginning of the class period, he had told me he would eat the bug for a certain amount of money, which I can no longer remember. I took up a collection before the class started, and it was enough for him to eat the beetle. So, as soon as the bell rang at the end of the class, he pulled the old and dried-up beetle off the wall as he walked out of the room. He was the first to leave and everyone followed behind him. He stuck the bug in his mouth and started chewing as soon as he was in the hallway. It was so big that it filled his entire mouth, and he turned around and opened his mouth as he chewed so everyone could see. He then stopped at a water fountain and washed the bug down. The last time I saw this guy was when I was in jail in 1997. As a guard was leading me through the jail hallways, I saw him in a cellblock as I passed by the window. He smiled and waved at me, and I did the same.
I took the slice of pizza I ordered from Wise Guys and ate it on the sidewalk in front of the Hangar. I then went into the Hangar and met Nic and Sara. They had invited me there for Nic’s birthday. Nic had decided that he wanted to do 21 shots tonight, but he only made it till 10. I followed him around with me camera while he got drunk because he had earlier asked me to do so. Sara kept a list of each shot he drank and made him sign the list for each shot. His signature gradually deteriorated. He ended up throwing up outside the bar about midnight, and at his request, I got it all on tape.

May 8, 2005
Sunday:

Ryan came into my room just after I went to sleep last night to ask me to borrow my camera. It was about 2 A.M. when this happened, and some very interesting footage was recorded. I looked at the tape after I got home from work today, and I don’t think I will be able to put in onto my website, at least not in a place where innocent people will stumble upon it.
I went to work at 7 this morning and left early at 1. I worked with Clayton and he made me a bet regarding whether or not we had some supplies on-hand that I could not find. He bet me that I would have to get in one of the nasty bone-barrels (waste meat containers) if he could find the supplies. He was going to get in the barrel if he did not find it, but he did find it. I was supposed to go into the barrel at 13:00 hours, but at that time, he told me I didn’t have to do it.
Just before I was leaving work, I saw Kevin and Stephanie Kelly(sp) shopping with their family in the store. I was friends with Stephanie when I was 17 and Kevin was my roommate when I was 19. They now are married and have 2 kids. I had not seen them in about 3 years and it was strange to see them with their kids, whom I had never seen before and were older looking than I would have expected. I used to work with Stephanie at Mcdonalds and I followed her around like a puppy for about 2 years. It was pathetic but she was always a good friend.
So, at 1 o’clock I left work for the last time until September! I came home and fell asleep from 2 till 4:30. Mike and I cooked hamburgers and fries for dinner at 6. After the meal, I watched a show on TV about Siberian tigers that stalk certain individuals. A story was told about a man that stole some meat from a tiger in the woods of Siberia and was then harassed for 3 days and eventually killed by the animal.
Later in the evening I got online and ordered rollerblades and protective pads for myself. I got everything for $92 because the rollerblades were on clearance and I did not have to pay any shipping. I have never used pads when rollerblading before, but I plan on doing a lot of riding this summer, so I thought it would be a good idea. Johanna does a lot of riding and we plan on going out almost every night on the trails in her town, which she said are very well maintained.

May 7, 2005
Saturday:

I had to work at 6 this morning, after just about 4 hours of sleep. I worked with Matt, Mark and the new guys early in the day, then Clayton and Todd came in later. I spent all of the day just stocking and cutting for the fresh meat cases. I got a Whopper meal from Burger King for my break. Nathan Childers was working as the cashier there. He used to go to my high school and was always constantly getting in fights. I had not seen him in years and it appears that he is still having a rough life, just because he seemed very disheveled today.
I slept from 3 till 5:30 this afternoon, then got up and helped Mike get ready for the poker party we had tonight. We first bought a few things for dinner and the party, then came home and got the house ready. We set up a poker table outside and put a speaker out there so we could listen to music. I took Mike’s truck back to Schnucks at 8 o’clock because we had forgotten to get the cardboard “boats” that we use to put nachos and cheese in on poker nights. The “boats” are the cardboard bowls that are used at Schnucks to put ground beef into. We always pick up a few of them when we are shopping for poker parties because they are perfect to put our nachos and cheese into.
John was the first person to arrive at the party, and he got there about 8. Amy and Dylan arrived soon afterward, then came Ryan, Amy and Nic. Some of Chris’s girlfriend’s friends also came for just a few minutes later in the evening. Mike grilled drumsticks and corn on the cob for dinner. After dinner, Josh T., Nikki, Chris(Mike’s cousin) and his girlfriend, Jeff and Tim arrived, and we all began playing poker. There were 10 people playing at the table, which is the most we have had so far. I played the game for about 3 hours and was close to losing all my money when I made an amazing comeback. I won only 3 hands during the entire evening. The first one happened early in the game and the last two happened very late. The first hand I won in the end was almost a straight flush, and the second one was 3 kings. I won almost $10 on the three kings hand.

May 6, 2005
Friday:

I got up at 7:30 this morning and studied again for my oral Chinese test. I then went to campus at 10 and took the test in the teacher’s office. I was the first person to take the test today and it only took about 10 minutes. I went into the teacher’s office and he closed the door behind us, then asked me 10 questions in Chinese. After the test was over the teacher told me that I had received 27 out of 30 possible points, which I was very happy with.
I came home after the test and grilled myself a roast beef and cheddar sandwich. I spent the entire afternoon studying for my accounting exam, which is on Monday. Mike got home from work at 6 and cooked pasta, spaghetti sauce and garlic bread for dinner. During the meal we watched the reality show, “Trauma: Life in the ER”. It showed a man who had been admitted because his hand had been run over by a train. The hand had been flattened like a pancake and it looked a lot like the spaghetti sauce I was eating. Another patient on the show was admitted because he had been beaten in a liquor store parking lot. He was a middle aged black man with a huge belly. He had to undergo immediate on-the-spot surgery because he was bleeding to death internally. The cameras showed the doctors ripping his clothes of and slicing right down the middle of his huge belly. They made a cut that was about a foot long and massive amounts of blood began pouring out of his belly because of the internal bleeding. The doctors then had to find the source of the bleeding, so one of them just stuck his whole hand and arm inside the patient and felt around. His hand was in the guy up to the elbow. As he felt around inside the guy, some of the intestines started spilling out of the belly. The most amazing part was when the patient was shown sitting up and talking and laughing the next day.
Ryan and Mindy came over after dinner. Mike and I did not even know they were in town until they called this evening. They had come because Ryan’s grandma had just died unexpectedly a few days ago. We all spent the evening sitting outside and talking and playing our electronic Scattegories game. Ryan and Mindy left around 1 AM.

May 5, 2005
Thursday:

I did not have any classes or work today, but I spent much of the day studying for the oral part of my Chinese exam, which is tomorrow at 10. I was quite sick again all day, and took a couple different kinds of sinus medication. Mike knocked on my door at 9 this morning to wake me up because he had gotten up early and cooked a big breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns, bacon and biscuits. He didn’t even have the courtesy to bring it to me in bed. I actually had to walk to the table and serve myself! After breakfast, Mike went to the last college class of his entire life. He now just has to wait a couple weeks and he will get his masters degree. He got back home sometime before noon, then I went with him to Schnucks. He needed me to go with him because he wanted to buy 6 of the pork butt roasts that are on sale. He could not buy 6 himself because there is a limit of 3 per customer. There is also an additional $10 purchase required. So, we put 6 pork butts into a cart and about $20 worth of other merchandise, then went to the check out and each paid for 3 of the pork butts and $10 worth of the other stuff.
After getting home from the store, I then began studying Chinese. I stopped for an hour in the mid-afternoon and took a nap, then got up and continued till about 7. The oral part of the test consists of the teacher asking me ten different questions and then listening to the pronunciation and grammar of my responses. I was given a review sheet that lists all the questions, but preparing for the test was still no easy task.
At 7 o’clock I made myself a sandwich for a snack, then went to Buckley’s house. Mike had already went there at 6. Jen got home at 8 and BBQ’ed a big dinner for everyone. Two her friends came over soon after she arrived home, and another person, Debbie, came over at 10:30. Debbie has worked with Buckley and Jen for a long time and has been at their house before when I was there, but I hadn’t seen her about a year.
Mike left to go home at 11 and I left about an hour later.

May 4, 2005
Wednesday:

My throat illness turned into a sinus illness overnight, which kept me up for a couple hours in the middle of the night. I eventually took two Tylenol PM and went back to sleep.
The weather today was much warmer than the past week or so, and it was sunny also. I went to accounting class at 9. The teacher was so sick that she could barely speak. She let us out early and I went to the student center cafeteria for breakfast. I ordered a full plate with scrambled eggs, biscuits, gravy, hash browns and sausage.
Next, I went to Chinese class. After class I asked if I could take my oral exam with the group of students that is doing so on Friday, instead of the Thursday group that I signed up for. The Chinese teacher was also sick.
I went to Macroeconomics class at 11 o’clock, and the teacher let the assistant teach the class for the day. The assistant is from China and she gave a presentation about how the Chinese and American economies affect each other. She was not a very interesting lecturer and it was very hard to pay attention to her. The guy that sat next to me made comments to me about her during most of the lecture. At the end of the class, the real teacher gave us back our tests from last week. I got an A.
I went to my computer class 30 minutes early and spent some time studying for a quiz we had today. The teacher sang in class again and made lots of weird jokes. One of the jokes was about a Microsoft Access term called a “one-to-many relationship”. He asked the class what the term meant, then after a student had answered, he said, “or it could be a Mormon”.
When I arrived at home, Mike was just finishing up a phone interview with Regions Bank. He left after the interview, then my dad left a message a few minutes afterwards for him. During my birthday dinner, my dad had told Mike that he would put him in contact with an old college friend of his that is now a Bank Of America president. In the message today, he told Mike that he had contacted his friend and she had requested that Mike call her as soon as possible.
I tried to call Mike at work, but some stupid secretary said that he didn’t work there anymore. So, I rode my bike the 3 blocks to the bank Mike works at so I could deliver the message to him. I asked an employee to please ask Mike to come the front of the store. The employee left for a moment, then came back and said that Mr. Eaton with be with me in a moment. Mike came to the front a few minutes later and I gave him the message. Today was his last day working at the bank because his internship ended. He came home from work shortly after I got home, then called bank president. Her secretary told him that she would call back shortly, but she never did, so he called again at 4:30. He was then told that the president had gone home for the day, but had instructed someone else to contact Mike about the job. The person did call a few minutes later and said that an interview would be scheduled sometime tomorrow.
I spent a couple hours in the afternoon talking to Johanna online. She does not have to work tomorrow, so she stayed up later than usual talking to me. After our conversation I went outside and spent the last few minutes of daylight studying Chinese in a chair on the lawn. Mike got home from a fishing trip with his dad just before dark, then we had a homemade pot pie for dinner that had been in the freezer. While it was cooking we watched a TV show about woman who meet prison inmates by mail and marry the men while they are still in jail. The TV show gave the addresses of some websites that people use to meet prison inmates, and I got on the Internet and checked them out. Inmates are not allowed to use the Internet, but they post classified ads by sending pictures and profiles through the regular mail to the people who run these websites. I decided that I would write a female inmate in California named Angela. Her profile says that she is an open mined exotic dancer that would like to have pen pals.

May 3, 2005
Tuesday:

I had a Chinese test at 10 this morning. I don’t think I did as well as my last one, but I probably passed.
For lunch at home I ate a leftover t-bone steak and a few pieces of leftover shrimp. I talked to Johanna online for an hour from 12:30 till 1:30, then went to sleep for two hours. I was still feeling kind of sick today and it made me tired yet again. I hope the tiredness goes away soon because final exams are coming up.
In the evening, I drank some rum and Pepsi with Mike, thinking that would kill the cold viruses? We went to New Kahala(Chinese) and picked up food to go for dinner. The cashier was wearing a shirt with a radio-active symbol that said, “Superior Firepower = Peace”. I told him I liked the shirt and he seemed very pleased. I was wondering if the Chinese owners made him wear the shirt.
Jeff came over to the house around 9 and stayed till 10. Neither Mike nor I had seen him in several weeks. He said he had dropped most of his classes and planned on taking a couple semesters off school.

May 2, 2005
Monday:

I had planned on going to school this morning, but decided not to when my alarm went off. I was still feeling sick and I did not have anything important to do in class. I slept in till 11, then got up and made myself a sandwich for lunch. I talked to Johanna online for an hour at noon, then went back to sleep. I ended up sleeping until I had to get up and go to work at 5. I had leftovers from my birthday dinner before I left the house. The food did not seem to have much flavor the night I ordered it, but it was great today. I must not have had much taste on my birthday because of the illness.
My shift at Schnuck’s was very busy and I did not even take my break. I had to clean the cutting room at the end of the shift, and it appeared that noone had made much of an effort to clean up after themselves all day. Paul worked with me until 9, then I finished cleaning just in time to go home at 10.
As I was riding home, I saw Mike in his truck returning videos across the street from Schnuck’s. I put my bike in the back and rode with him and Damien as they went to get gas. I got a bottle of apple juice and a giant Butterfinger at the gas station and it was a bad combination. My stomach felt bad for the rest of the night.
I went to sleep at 11 and took two Tylenol PM so my cold wouldn’t keep me awake.

May 1, 2005
Sunday:

I still felt sick all day today and I had to work from 7 till 3. Kevin wrote Mark up today because he did a bad job at cleaning up the meat department last night. Mark, Kevin and Clayton argued with each other about it much of the day. I also made Clayton mad by telling him I have a Link card. He told me that people who cannot take care of themselves should die. I responded that it was his job to take care of me(pay taxes for my link card). I really enjoy arguing with Clayton, although our arguments rarely have any seriousness to them.
During my lunch break, I gave Tom the statue of Mao Zedong that I had bought in Shanghai. I had been wanting to give it to him since he read my journal during my entire China trip.
I fell asleep soon after getting home from work, and slept two hours until 6 o’clock. I woke up to Mike and Carolyn cooking dinner. They had gotten me a porterhouse for a day-after-birthday dinner. We also had shrimp on skewers, salad and mashed potatoes. Carolyn left for St. Louis shortly after the meal. She will not be home for two weeks because next weekend is Mothers Day and she wants to be with her mom.
Mike went to rent movies at 8 o’clock and we watched “Meet the Fockers”. I thought it was just as funny as the first one. Damien passed gas throughout the movie.