October 2005

October 31, 2005
Monday:

I decided to sleep through my first class today, giving myself the excuse that I would have more energy for my 5 o’clock statistics test. Statistics class met at the regular morning time and the teacher reviewed a couple problems for the test, which later turned out to be identical to two of the actual problems.
I talked to a girl I went to high school with as I was unlocking my bike after management class. Her first name is Jen, but I can’t remember her last. Her nickname in school was Jenbug because she drove a Volkswagon bug. She is 3 or 4 years older than me and we had some mutual friends in high school.
Buckley and Jen came over during my lunch break so Jen could use the Internet to estimate the mileage she had driven for her job last week. It only took her about 15 minutes, then they left. I talked to Johanna for 30 minutes before going back to school.
Despite sleeping through my first class today, economics class was just so boring that I kept nodding off. After class, I had two hours before the statistics test, which I spent studying in the Faner computer lab. The loud, older Chinese student from my class sat next to me there. He has the exact same major as me and I have had two classes with him, but had never talked to him before today. I introduced myself and we talked for just a couple minutes. His name is Ron, and despite his loudness, he seems like a real nice guy.
The statistics test was held in Parkinson Laboratory, which is a geology department building that is full of display cases filled with rocks and fossils. They used to have a gold nugget on display, but it has been gone for the past year. I wonder if that was for security reasons or because somebody stole it.
The test didn’t go very well because I probably missed many of the 40 multiple choice questions, which were mostly unlike anything we had done in class. I would have done better if I had bought the $140 textbook, but I am on bookstrike from now on. I really don’t know if I will buy another textbook because I have found that I can always get by without them, except for Chinese, but those are cheaper.
I went to Buckley and Jen’s house right after finishing the test at 6:15. I was supposed to go over there at 7:30, but I completely lost track of time during the test. It was raining lightly during the ride to their house, then nobody answered when I knocked on the door. That made me realize how early I was, but I didn’t feel like riding back home in the rain, so I just sat on the porch for a few minutes until I heard movement inside. Buckley had been asleep and Jen was packing in another room.
Tonight was their last night in town and they had invited me over for dinner. Jen cooked three gigantic steaks, mashed potatoes and cheesy pasta. We all ate so much that we were mostly silent for 30 minutes afterwards.
At 10 o’clock, Buckley and I loaded a bunch of stuff he was giving me into his truck. The stuff was things that they didn’t want to take along on their move to St. Louis, like food and extra luggage, pans, etc.. We brought the stuff over to my apartment building and he helped me carry it all up the stairs.

October 30, 2005
Sunday:

I got up at 10 o’clock this morning, then talked to Johanna for an hour. I then ate breakfast before beginning to study for tomorrow’s statistics test, which I predict will be rather hard. The weather was warm and sunny today, so I had all the windows open while I studied into the afternoon.
I went to work at the bookstore at 3:30. They are closed on Sundays and Mondays, but Carl had asked me to come help him move two large bookshelves from the store to the garage of his house. Kelly was also there when I arrived, and they said that Nic was supposed to come help too, but he never made it because he was on his way home from St. Louis.
The shelves we moved were about 7 feet tall and almost as wide, so getting them out into a pickup truck wasn’t so easy. They would only fit out the door on their sides. We stood both of them up back-to-back in the bed of the truck, then hooked them together with cables. I sat with them during the journey to make sure they didn’t fall over. Getting them into Carl and Kelly’s garage seemed a little easier than getting them out of the store, probably because we already had some experience. The garage is kind of like the warehouse for their store, as it is full of thousands of books, so they plan on using the shelves to try and organize the area better.
I was back home by 5 o’clock, then I made myself a pizza for dinner before returning to statistics for another 3 hours. I left the apartment again at 9:30 to go to Buckley and Jen’s Halloween party. Only 4 other guest were at the party, all people I had met before there in the past, including Debbie, Dale, Cindy and Jay. Jen had yesterday told me it was a costume party, so I came wearing my authentic Soviet military coat, but only Cindy and Jay had a costume on. They are a real-life lesbian couple and they were dressed as prom dates. Jay had on a fake beard and tuxedo, while Cindy wore a gown and a crown. Cindy is the feminine side of the relationship, so I thought it would have been funnier if they switched the costumes. They went off together to the Upside Down Club about 30 minutes after I got to the party. I then stayed for about another hour. Timmy was getting out of his car as I left the party, so I spoke with him in the yard for a couple minutes before coming home.

October 29, 2005
Saturday:

I woke up on a couch in the basement of John’s house at 9:30 this morning. Mike and I had expected to get up earlier to see his dad land in a hot air balloon, but nobody ever called us to give the landing location. We had assumed his dad or brother would have called.
We passed his brother on the road near his house, who told us that the balloon his dad was in had just landed in the middle of the highway between Murphysboro and Carbondale, which blocked the path of some cars. Today’s balloon ride had been a Father’s Day gift from Mike and his brother.
Mike and I next went to eat breakfast at the Murphysboro Hardees, where we both had a $2.22 2 bacon-egg-cheese biscuit special. We then went on to his mom’s house so he could copy more files onto his computer. His mom and Lloyd did not arrive home until after we had been inside working with the computers for 30 minutes. I tried to use a computer in the den to help Mike speed up the process, but the machine was too slow to be of much help. It took over 30 minutes to just write one disk with it. Thank goodness for multi-speed drives.
It took Mike and I about 2 hours to get all the data he needed. During that time, we listened to many random tracks from Lloyds diverse CD collection, which he uses when his band plays private shows. The high point of this two hours was when we closely listened to the words of the song “Stroke It”. I don’t even know if that’s the real name of the song, but you probably know what I’m talking about.
We talked to Mike’s mom and Lloyd for a while as we worked. Lloyd told us that he was drafted during the Vietnam War because he took a semester off school. Supposedly, if your grades were bad or you took a semester off, you were eligible for the draft. Talk about motivation; do well in school or there is a 10 percent chance you will be killed. I wonder if the average national grades were really better during that time.
We left Mike’s mom’s house at 1:30 then went to my apartment to collect a few more files. While there, Mike also showed me how to report a undelivered item on Ebay. The camera I ordered did again not arrive today(two weeks after the sale), so it is fairly safe to assume that the seller plans on ripping me off. Mike told me he learned by experience that any money in a sellers PayPal accounts can be frozen if a buyer claims a product was undelivered and the seller cannot provide a tracking number. Mike’s experience in this area came from being ripped off this way. He sold a rather expensive textbook on Ebay and shipped it off, but the buyer reported him for not delivering it. Mike assumes that the buyer saw that Mike had not paid to have the item tracked and had decided to take advantage of him. He ended up loosing the textbook and the money he paid to have it shipped. I bet he might like to see that guy get a brain tumor.
Mike and I made our next stop at Buckley and Jen’s house. Jen’s brother and sister where there too, but her sister didn’t stay that much longer. Mike also brought his computer here so he could copy even more files. I used Jen’s computer to help speed up the process.
I left the house at 4 so I could go home and do some things, including hopefully take a nap. Some girls drinking on a porch hit on me as I walked by, saying “hey”. They were cute, but I just waved, smiled and kept going because I was tired, they were probably illegal and Johanna will be here in about 4 weeks. The first reason is bad, but the second two are good. Farther along the walk, I picked up some interesting seed-pods I found under a tree. They look like pine cones and are about the same size, but have little red balls on them, which makes them look like little Christmas trees.
Back in the apartment, I typed this up and talked on the phone. Most of that phone-time was spent with Johanna, but I also had a brief conversation with Rufus and Josh Barkley, who now work together at a telemarketing business.
I went back over to Buckley and Jen’s house at 7:30 for dinner. Mike was still there and too and Jen was cooking a turkey breast, stuffing, mashed potatoes, rolls, gravy and vegetable. We all ate sooooo much, of course, then watched the Family Guy movie after that. Just as the Family Guy series is, the movie had some parts that were hilarious and others that were unrecognizable as humor. Overall, I enjoyed it.
Back at my apartment later. I set my clock back for daylight savings time, then went to work on getting my email account fixed. I downloaded about 1000 emails from the mail server to my hard drive. That was about 14 months worth of email. I save everything for some reason.
I chatted with a girl from Paducah as I worked with the computer. I have never met her before, but she sent me a message a couple nights ago and we talked for a few minutes. She is a 24-year-old WalMart cashier named Jennifer. She must have searched for people using Messenger in her area and found me that way, but I’m not sure. I have considered the fact that she is someone I know messing with me behind a fake identity, but I have almost ruled that out after chatting with her tonight. I don’t usually chat with strangers online, but this girl has been a very interesting chatter. I thought she would disappear when she found out that I was not available, but she seems to just like to talk. The Internet is a funny thing.

October 28, 2005
Friday:

I went to school ten minutes early today to so I could copy a file to floppy disk. As I have said here before, my computer-illiterate statistics teachers requires that the class’s assignments are handed in on floppy discs. This is a bad method because lots of new computers don’t even come with floppy disks anymore.
I bought a disk from a small disk-vending machine in the Faner computer lab, which accepts both change and dollar bills. Each disk costs $1 and I didn’t have any bills, so I tried to use change. Apparently, the machine only accepts quarters, but I only had 3 of them. Luckily, a girl sitting nearby made a change exchange with me.
I skipped my management class in order to go buy two Chinese books from 710(bookstore). My Chinese class just finished book 2 and started book 3 today. At 710, a girl working at the register told me that I couldn’t go past that point with my backpack. She said to leave it at the front of the store, but I didn’t want to do that because my camcorder was in it, so she agreed to put it next to her and watch it.
The books at 710 are downstairs, there they had both of the books I needed in-stock; the textbook and the workbook that accompanies it. I got the last textbook available.
I next stopped at home to eat some lunch before going back to school. During that time I watched some news coverage about the vice president’s chief of staff just being indicted by a grand jury today.
So, I went back to school for Chinese class and opened my new book for the first time, which is scary compared to the old one. The old book used mostly only English to explain new grammar concepts, but this new one describes concepts using a lot of Chinese. The thermostat in the Chinese classroom has been smashed since the beginning of the school year, which kept the AC stuck on for the past few weeks, and now is doing the same thing with the heat. It was at least 90 in there today and that is probably a conservative estimate. The windows don’t open.
I spent my one-hour break sending email and killing time in the computer lab, then went to work at the bookstore after my last class. There, I was asked to move about 50 boxes of books from the rear to the middle of the second section of the store, which is not yet open to the public. Kelly was in that area packaging Internet book orders much of the time I worked, so we talked quite a bit. The Internet sales part of their business appears to account for a majority of the time they spend working. I assume that is going to soon be a major part of my job as soon as this building expansion is over.
It only took me an hour and 15 minutes to finish moving all the boxes, then Carl said that there was nothing else to do today or tomorrow, so he wrote me out a $112.58 check for the week and asked me to work again on Sunday afternoon. It was nice to get paid, as my money supplies are always getting lower.
Back at home, I tried to fix my broken garthkiser.com email account. I had been forwarding the mail to a Hotmail account, but was recently sent a message from my hosting service saying it would work again. To keep it working, they advised removing some of the hundreds of emails I have saved on the server. So, I set up Microsoft Outlook to do that on my computer today. Then, the first thing I found was a bunch of emails that were sent over the past few weeks and never forwarded to my hotmail account. So if you sent an email that I never responded to, that is why. I will go through them over the next few days, but there is a chance that some could have been lost.
Josh T. came by to pick me up at 6:30, then we went to El Bajios to meet up with Mike, John, Tim and BJ. Me and Josh got their first, then the others arrived about 15 minutes later. Our waiter didn’t seem overly friendly during our meal, but he gave us a pitcher of beer for free, so we tipped him well. The restaurant was mostly full when we arrived, but mostly empty when we left, so I guess we ran everybody off.
Next, everybody but BJ decided to go back to John’s house for some poker. I rode with Josh and we stopped at SI liquors in Murphysboro on the way there. We saw Nathan Westf. and another guy we knew from school in the parking lot of the store. Nathan invited us to a party tomorrow night at the Murphysboro Senior Citizens Center, which he said that he and some friends had rented for the evening. I hope to be able to make it. Murphysboro is a small town; the cashier in the store asked me if I was Cappy’s brother after checking my ID.
I bought some bottles of Miller Light bottles, then Josh and I went on to John’s house. John was already there then we arrived, but Tim and Mike were a couple minutes behind. Josh was talking to Jared on the phone when we pulled into the driveway, then I think all of us spoke with him for at least a couple minutes.
The five of us then spent the next three hours or so playing many games of poker at the kitchen table. Mike was copying files the whole time from a hard drive that Tim had brought over. Mike had brought his whole computer down with him this weekend. I hoped the file-copying would distract Mike from the game, but it didn’t seem to affect his performance that much.
I ended up losing my $5 worth of chips before everyone else, then Mike gave me a two dollar chip loan, which allowed me to win back a couple bucks. By around one or two o’clock, everybody but me and Mike had either left or gone to bed. We stayed up for while longer and made a late night call to Jared, who was home on a Friday night watching movies at home. We tried to pry information out of him about any girlfriends that he may have made in Madison, but it was like trying to pull teeth. He wouldn’t really give us anything, which must mean he’s not getting anything. I just love making fun of my friends on this blog. Maybe it will have a positive effect by making them create their own blogs just to get revenge on me.

October 27, 2005
Thursday:

I got up 30 minutes early today so I could study for a Chinese test a little bit more, then went to work at 10 o’clock. I spent the next hour and 45 minutes moving books off a large bookcase, then moving the case to the other side of the room and replacing all the books. This was actually kind of difficult because the books were not just stood side-by-side in the case. They were arranged all different directions and some were set up on little stands, so I had to try and put everything back the same way. I noticed one of the books cost $125, which was a tiny old book about the 1925 tornado.
I went to school to take my Chinese test at noon, and I don’t think it went as well as the past few. There were a couple questions in the listening section that I could not understand at all. In that section, we have to listen to a tape of the teacher and his assistant speaking to each other, then answer questions about the conversation.
Next, was a stop at home for lunch. There, I first checked my mail again to see if my camera had come. I will hunt this guy down if he tries to rip me off for $167. Seriously. He lives in California, but I’ll go there again someday, and then I will make sure and look for him. I’ve been watching his Ebay activity already and I noticed he recently purchased 1000 glow sticks……suspicious……I’ll never get my camera.
I returned to work at 1:30, then worked for another 4 hours. My first job was to remove more books off of shelves. All the books have to eventually be removed from the east wall so a construction crew can remove it in a couple weeks. My next job took up most of my afternoon work time, which consisted of checking to see if a stack of about 200 novels were or were not already present elsewhere in the store. Luckily, the thousands of novels in the store are alphabetized almost perfectly, but it still took a couple hours to go through the whole stack I was given. In the end, I found about 50 of them that were not already present on the shelves.
Back at home, I started working on a statistics assignment that is due in the morning. After an hour of work, I made myself a hamburger and pasta for dinner, then went back to studying. The assignment is excessively difficult and I couldn’t even do half of it properly. A student told me yesterday that he went to the teacher for help and she tried to avoid him. His theory for this was that she didn’t know how to do the assignment herself. I wouldn’t be surprised.

October 26, 2005
Wednesday:

I got up an hour early today, at 7, so I could study for a statistics quiz before classes started. The heat was finally turned on in the Lawson building this morning, but it was way too hot. The temperature in the building on Monday had been about 50, so it probably rose about 35 degrees since then. They should be careful or thunderstorms could form in the classrooms. There was actually a kind of weather-related condition today; large paint chips were falling from the ceiling. I’m sure this had something to do with the dramatic temperature change. There probably never going to fix the heating and cooling systems till somebody gets killed by a tornado or lightning strike.
I couldn’t stay awake in statistics class, even though I slept well last night. I didn’t fully wake up till we were handed our quizzes near the end of class. I know I missed at least a couple questions on it.
Marketing class lasted about 5 minutes, then I came back home and fell asleep. I decided not to go to Chinese class because I had not done any of the homework that we would be reviewing today. So, I went back to school for my 2 o’clock economics class, stopping along the way at the apartment’s office to see if my digital camera had arrived in the mail. It still hasn’t come, and I’m starting to worry that I got ripped off by the Ebay seller.
I went to work at the bookstore after my economics class was over. My first job there was to finish boxing up all the books in the room I was clearing out yesterday. That took about an hour and I found a couple more books to take home. One is a 1972 hardcover edition of the Guinness Book, which has a picture of the partially-built World Trade Center on the front cover. The other is a teen book about the band New Kids on the Block, which I plan on giving somebody as a gag gift. Next, Carl had me move a bunch of audio books from the front of the store to the rear. Nic’s sister was in the building today and Kelley introduced me to her. She’s 17 and still in high school.
The live-in cat, Casper, kept climbing into shelves as I would take the books off them. All of the regular customers know Casper by name. He is a fat, fluffy tan cat that sheds everywhere. He’s pretty friendly, but will sometimes walk away if I pet him too much. I moved shelf labels as I was moving the books they labeled, and Casper tried to rip one of them off after I had moved it. Carl and I moved several things out of the front area of the store after I got the audio tapes moved, and Casper was always right behind us sniffing out all the newly exposed areas.
I stopped at Save-a-Lot on my bike ride home at 6 o’clock. I had never been in the store since its grand opening, so I thought I would buy just a couple things and take a look around. Things are incredibly cheap and it is very near my apartment, so I will probably start shopping there instead of Schnucks most of the time.
Back at home, I made myself French fries and a pork steak for dinner, then studied for tomorrow’s Chinese test. I took a break to watch the news, then used my computer and studied a bit more before going to sleep.

October 25, 2005
Tuesday:

I got up at 8:30 this morning and cooked biscuits and sausage for breakfast, which I used to make sandwiches. I had enough stuff to make 8 or 10 of them, so I ate two and stored the rest for leftovers.
I started my new job at the bookstore at 10 o’clock. Carl and Kelly(owners) were just getting ready to open up when I arrived. I met Kelly for the first time today. Carl first spent a couple minutes telling me how the pay system would work. I will be given $7 per hour and will get a check at the end of every week. No taxes will be taken out until I have made at least $700 for the year, which might not happen this year. Although no taxes will be deducted below $700 of earnings, he said the earnings would still be reported with the business’s taxes, so I wonder if I could get caught for not reporting that money at the end of the year. I guess I’ll ask somebody.
I worked on the same job all day today, which was boxing and removing old books from a room next to the store. They recently bought the other room and were selling used books out of it for the past couple weeks. That used book sale is over now, so they are giving all those books to the Goodwill so they can make room for remodeling. They will eventually remove the wall between the room and the store so they have more space.
I worked from 10 till 11:30 putting over 1200 books into about 25 different boxes, then putting the boxes into a van.
I left at 11:35 to go to Chinese class, then went home to eat lunch before returning to the bookstore at 1:30. I then worked at the same task until 6 o’clock. While I was gone for lunch, Carl had dropped off the books I already boxed and picked up a couple dozen more empty boxes from SI Liquors. Most of the boxes were for liquor or wine, so I had to remove the cardboard dividers in order to use them.
Over the first two hours of the afternoon, I filled all of the new boxes with about 1200 more books. Carl and I then went back to the liquor store together to pick up more boxes, which they keep stacked up at the front of the store.
After filling up all these other boxes, Carl then asked me to load them into the van and deliver them to the Goodwill, which is only a few hundred feet from the bookstore. I parked the van at the dock behind the store, then rang a doorbell there. Nobody answered, so I went inside and saw an employee that I used to work with at Schnucks, David Jackson. He took me back to the dock, then helped me move all the books into carts.
My next stop was to get more boxes from the liquor store. I took almost everything they had left this time.
There were about 5000 books in the room when I started boxing them this morning, and I had the job 90% done by 6 o’clock. I found a few interesting books that I kept, including a health textbook from 1936, relationship and sex advice books from the 60’s and some other books that I just thought were weird. I talked to Carl and Kelly quite a bit throughout the day and they seem to be good people to work for. I at first thought they were very quiet people, but they seemed to open up as the day went on.
Back at home in the evening, I checked my email before dinner. I got a message from Matt at my web-hosting service, which asked me to check and see if my videos were still not downloading completely. I expected that the problem would still be present because he has been unable to fix it for 4 months, but it appears that he finally did. I was able to successfully watch all the videos I was having problems with. I had sent Matt an email last week saying that I would have to change my hosting service if he couldn’t get the large video files to download properly. I’m glad he got it working because I think it could be a lot of work to move my website to another host.
I made myself pasta for dinner, then studied statistics for just a while before going to sleep.

October 24, 2004
Monday:

I had a doctor’s appointment at 8:15 this morning because of a pain that has been in my jaw for the past 5 weeks. It has slowly but surely been getting worse, so I had made the appointment last week. The bike ride to the campus clinic was freezing. It was probably no less than 40 degrees, but it felt worse because it was the coldest weather of the year so far. The temperature never rose above about 50 all day and I didn’t like it.
At the clinic, I was sent to an upstairs waiting room and asked to fill out a form. There was nobody else waiting and a nurse came to get me after just a couple minutes. She did all the routine tests and asked the basic questions before leaving me to wait for a doctor.
I was expecting the same weird doctor who saw me last semester, but a different man showed up. His name is Paul and he is a lot less sarcastic than the other, which I think is a good quality in a doctor(not being sarcastic, that is).
The doctor asked me if I had been hit in the face, then asked me to sit on the examination table, where I was asked to make a series of strange faces. The doctor would first make the face, then ask me to repeat it. He said it was to make sure that all the muscles on my face were working right, which I guess is because non-working face muscles can be a sign of serious problems. My face was just fine, so he looked in my throat and ears, then felt around on my face and neck. After all that, he said that he suspected one of two medical conditions, both of which he had names for but I can’t now remember. He said one of the conditions was minor and could be corrected by taking an anti-inflammatory drug for a couple weeks. He said the other condition was caused by a nerve and would be hard to treat. He appeared to think the condition was temporary and not serious, but he was very clear that I should not ignore the problem if the drug did not get rid of it.
The air conditioning was on in my two morning classes in the Lawson building, which made it so cold that some students wore hats and gloves while they had sweatshirts pulled over their noses. Terribly stupid, but it happens every year. The crazy professor taught my management class. He started by blowing a manual airhorn, then went on in his unusually comical teaching style. He stopped to take a drink from a red Crush soda on his desk at one point, then asked the class if drinking red Crush means you are gay. He claimed that someone had once asked him if he was gay because they had seen him drinking that product. This unusual comment made an Asian student next me laugh really hard, probably because he had never seen a teacher talk like that before.
I tried to watch TV at home during my lunch break, but it is still only working part-time. I did get to see some news footage of Hurricane Wilma crossing Florida, which supposedly left 6 million people without power, flooded 60 percent of Key West and destroyed sections of the Overseas Highway(US1). This hurricane struck at about the same time I arrived down there 3 years ago. Weird as it may seem, I wish it had happened then because I really wanted to see one.
I started studying Chinese about 4 o’clock this afternoon, then went shopping at Schnucks at 6. There, I not only bought food, but also talked to Todd, Wayne and Pam for a few minutes each. Pam was outside getting a cigarette out of her car, so I snuck up and yelled “Give me your keys!”, which seemed to get her pretty good.
Back at home, I ate leftover chicken rice bake for dinner, then went back to the Chinese. During that time, Nic’s dad called to say that he would like me to start working at the bookstore at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning.
I went to the Hangar with Josh T. at 11 o’clock tonight. He came to pick me up with a girl named Marina in the car. We went to the Hangar and sat at a table. Josh showed me Marina’s last name on his phone and she asked me how to spell it. She’s apparently Russian and I apparently happened to say the name right. She said she was from the Ukraine and I told her that I wanted to visit Chernobyl. She then said that she grew up in a town just 30 miles from the reactor. The accident happened when she was 2, but her family stayed for 3 more years. She said that the government told everyone that there was no danger because they had to minimize panic.
Her friend Emily came about 30 minutes after we arrived. Emily looks and seems incredibly alot like Jen’s friend Beth. At first, I just thought she looked the same, but then more and more coincidences kept occurring. I have to say that it was just a little bit weird. But, this is all not to say that the girls are weird(or they’re not), just interesting.
We all sat at the table for a while, then we moved because it was open mic night and some of the singers were butchering common songs. We all moved over to the pool table area and began playing teams against a guy that already had the table. The guy left after the second game, then we had the table to ourselves.
We all had a really good time tonight and stayed at the bar till closing time. It’s always especially fun to really enjoy yourself with new people.

October 23, 2005
Sunday:

I slept in late today because of the past two late nights, then put a new video on my website in the early afternoon and chatted with Johanna for a while. Nic and Josh also called. I planned on getting started with homework and studying that I need to do this next week, but that never happened. I fell back asleep for a while in the late afternoon, then went to do my laundry at Laundry World. The apartments laundry room is still broken, so I had to carry my laundry to the laundromat in a trash bag over my shoulder as I rode my bike in the rain.
I was going to eat the 2 for $1 hot dog special that is sold at the Laundromat, but I just wasn’t hungry enough to let the gross clerk that was working touch my food. He was a huge unfriendly-looking middle-aged guy wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt.
Back at home, I made myself a chicken bake kit for dinner and watched a TV show about a 1940 CIA psychoanalysis of Hitler as the food cooked. It was kind of stupid because they based it on the idea that Freud’s theories were facts.

October 22, 2005
Saturday:

I slept on the floor of a room in Mike’s mom’s house last night. It was comfortable thanks to Mike preparing a mattress and blankets for me. Carolyn woke me up at 9 o’clock my lifting my covers and letting Damien crawl underneath.
Mike and I left to go play racquetball before 10 o’clock, and Carolyn went off to go shopping with Amy.
Mike stopped at my apartment on the way so I could get some shorts to play in, then we met up with his brother at the Rec Center. The three of us started playing a game, then Mike and John’s dad, Bob, showed up behind the glass door of the court. He got a racquet, then played a 3-man game while I videotaped from overhead. We played a 2 on 2 three game series after that. I was on Bob’s team and we won the last two games. Everybody was exhausted after that.
Mike and I next went off to eat lunch at Taco Bell. We dined inside and I ordered a half-pound burrito from the 99-cent menu. Next was an unannounced stop at Buckley’s house, who happened to be up watching TV. We all watched a new episode of South Park together, which is a spoof on the events that took place after Hurricane Katrina hit.
Me and Mike left shortly after that, then went to John’s house in Murphysboro. I had not seen the house since it was in the early stages of construction last spring. His family is now living in it and the only remaining work is the interior. It sits on a beautiful wooded lot and is going to be a great place for them to live.
John let Mike and me take his 4-wheeler into a nearby field. I drove first while Mike videotaped, then we switched positions. The land in the field is very flat, so we could be comfortable getting the machine up to about 50mph.
Next, the three of us all took a drive out to Pine Hills together, which is a National Forest Service area that is near the Mississippi river. The drive to get there was about 20 minutes and we stopped a couple times along the way. Once there, we parked near the top of bluffs and walked along a trail to get to the edge of them. John had his dog Mia with him and Mike had Damien, whom he had picked up at his mom’s house on the way. We hiked to an area called Inspiration Point, which very well may be over 200 feet high. We took a rather dangerous side path to get all the way to the edge of the bluff. Damien actually had the guts to look over the edge of the cliff.
We could only stay there for a few minutes because Mike and John had to be at a barbeque at their dad’s house at 5. After arriving back at John’s house, Mike and Carolyn brought me back to my apartment.
There, I first checked my email and found a message from Johanna, who told me that she purchased a plane ticket to the US yesterday. She will be arriving on November 30, then will stay till at least January 16th. Her ticket is open ended, so she can stay longer if she wants. Her message also said that she briefly fainted while at a formal party last night, which is hopefully just from being tired.
I fell asleep from 6:30 to 8:30, then ate some chili as I got ready to go over to Steph’s house and meet Jen. Jen had left a message last night saying she was in town. There was a great horror when I tuned on my TV during the chili dinner. The picture had turned into just a thin white line, like my last TV. When Clara delivered the TV on Friday, I mentioned that it looked almost exactly like my old one. I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw the same problem on the new one today, especially considering that it was the first time I had ever tried to watch it. My first thought was that there was something in my apartment causing the problem, but I soon realized that was highly unlikely. My reason to first believe that was because the computer monitor in my bedroom sometimes flickers randomly, but it is probably just a coincidence. So, I hit the sides of the TV when the malfunction started, which caused it to flick back and forth between a full screen and the white line. Tilting the whole thing was successful at getting it to work right again. Could I possibly have some kind of TV haunting? If so, then maybe I should watch some paranormal reality shows where people pay to have ghosts run out of their houses.
OK, so back to going to Steph’s house to meet Jen. I arrived just after 9 o’clock, then stayed there for at least the next couple hours. Steph was watching the World Series and screaming at all the Sox’s good plays. She probably would have went into seizures if the cable had gone out. Good thing the Sox won, but at least there is a hospital across the street in case they loose the next game. Unfortunately, I think that hospital might only accept disillusioned Card’s fans.
We played asshole after the baseball game, then played Catch Phrase. I was on a team with Steph and Eliot and we dominated. Jen, Erin and Erika were on the other team and their scores were pitiful. Arron(Big) was also there, but he didn’t participate in any of the games.
We all went to the Hanger sometime around midnight. I rode my bike and had to stop at home to pick up my ID and some cash. It was raining for the rest of the evening, which felt good at first but not later. At the bar, we spent most of our time around a pool table, where Cheech was playing when we arrived. Sara(Little T(Tom Akins niece(my old Schnuck’s boss’s niece))) showed up a few minutes after the rest of us. I worked with her at Schnucks for a couple years, had talked to her by phone while I was in China and exchanged emails a few months ago, but had not seen her since before China. She goes to school in the south and just happened to be in town this weekend.
The band playing at the bar tonight was Spare Parts, which I have heard of before but never heard before. I walked up to listen to them soon after arriving and got to hear a song where the lead instrument was a trumpet. I hadn’t seen a good live trumpet player in years and it made me want to play mine again, which is sitting right behind me on the floor of my bedroom. The band had a pumpkin on stage in the words Spare Parts carved into it and lighted with a candle. Brilliant.
I spent most of my time at the bar either talking to Jen, Steph, Jake, or Sara. I went back to Stephs house after the bar closed, and Jen, Ericka, Eliot, Sara and her friend were also there. I got to the apartment first because I was on my bike, and I decided to scare everyone else as they came in. The plan almost backfired because the first person to open the outer door was Sara’s friend, whom I did not know and almost punched me in the head because he didn’t recognize me. There is a 2 foot space between the inner and outer doors, so the plan seemed perfect. I assumed Sara’s friend was actually Steph or Jen, so I leaped out like a dog and grabbed a leg as soon as the door opened. The guy I didn’t know refrained from instinctively hitting me at the last second. I then told them my plans and they kept quiet about my whereabouts till the others arrive. The plan surely worked, especially on Steph, even though she was not the person who happened to be grabbed.
We then all went inside and Erika, her friend and Sara left after about 20 minutes, then I just stayed for about 20 more before riding home in the rain.

October 21, 2005
Friday:

I went to all my morning classes today, then came home at lunch and didn’t go back for my last one. Clara came over around at mid-afternoon to give me a TV and lamp. She and my dad had purchased the TV the previous evening at an auction, which is a 27-inch that is in really good condition. It will be great to have a TV again.
I bought some stock online after Clara left. I briefly traded stocks about 5 years ago, then lost interest when I ended up losing almost all my money and was getting divorced. I had held on to the stocks ever since hoping that they would recover. The online brokerage I used changed hands several times during that period and is now owned by Bank of America. I have received monthly mailings about the stocks for the whole time I owned them. I first noticed this month that Bank of America now held my shares. Their mailing mentioned an web address where you could sign up to manage your account online, so that’s what I did. My original intention was to just sell all the stock and have a check sent to me. I had originally paid over $2000 for the shares, but there are worth less than $200 now, mainly because the CEO of one of the companies was convicted of fraud. So, I sold the shares yesterday, but today changed my mind about having the check mailed to me. Having a functioning online brokerage account with $150 dollars sitting in it suddenly seemed like an opportunity for me, especially since I have been getting poorer and poorer lately.
I used to search for my investments on investment websites, which I think is why I lost all my money because most of those websites get paid to say that certain companies are hot or not. The search method I used today was to type the letters “OTCBB” into the Yahoo news search. OTCBB is the name of an exchange that mostly contains just small companies with a lot of potential to gain or lose value. Anytime a publicly traded company is mentioned in a news article, its stock symbol is usually printed next to it. So, typing “OTCBB” into the Yahoo news search would show me what companies trading on that exchange are in the news. This method at first seems to work great, but only time will tell how great it really works. I found a company called NewMarket Technologies, which is an IT firm that is trying to align itself with the major Chinese telecommunication companies. It made a million dollars in its first year of operations, which was 2003, then 25 million in 2004, and has been profitable both years. The stock has fallen in value from 80 cents to 39 cents over the past 3 months even though there is apparently no bad news coming from the company. I can’t wait to see what happens. I have 360 shares and will post a link on my site where anyone interested can see my gains or loses.
Mike and Carolyn came over to pick me up just after 3 o’clock, then we went to his mom’s house in Murphysboro, which is where I stayed for the rest of the night. His stepdad, Lloyd, had set up the back yard for a little bonfire party. Mike made chili and there was also chips, dip, hotdogs, sausages and some other stuff. Carolyn and Lloyd roasted the hot dogs and sausages on two poles that each had wires on the end to put 5 items.
John and Amy came over just as the bonfire started, then Amy’s mother came over a little later with a guy that I am assuming is Amy’s stepdad, but I’m not sure. There was some drizzle falling from the sky in the early evening, but then it totally cleared up later. Amy’s mother and the man only stayed about an hour, then I think Mike’s mom and Lloyd went in to bed around 10. Tim J. came over shortly after that, then Carolyn went off to bed. Mike stayed up for about an hour after Tim arrived, then it was just Tim and I until about 1:30 in the morning.

October 20, 2005
Thursday:

Today was dull, both in weather and the things I did. The temperature was still warm, but the sky was dark all day. There was some rain in the morning, but just clouds the rest of the day. I slept in till 11 because I had been up till 3 last night. The only time I left the apartment the whole day was to go to Chinese class from noon till 1.
After class, I talked to Johanna and she told me that she is going to buy a plane ticket to Chicago online tomorrow. She plans on arriving during the beginning of December, then staying for at least 6 weeks. Life in my little apartment will me much more interesting then.
I fell asleep again in the late afternoon, then got up and wrote out all the new Chinese characters for this week’s chapter, which took about an hour and a half. I cooked a pork steak and green beans for dinner as I did the homework. Thunderstorms passed through the area all evening, one of which shut down the power for a few seconds.
Later, I did some more editing on the bee video that I made yesterday. I made a couple small changes to improve it because I plan on sending it to Ifilms.com. I filled out the Ifilms registration and was given paperwork to print and send in with the video. It probably won’t make it on the website because they just receive so much stuff, but I think there’s at least a chance.
I watched the movie “Freaks” at 10 o’clock, which I had copied for my dad earlier in the week. The movie was made in 1939 and is cast with real freaks. While watching it, I was thinking that certain movie morals have reversed over the years. For example, the people in “Freaks” never actually kiss in kissing scenes, and real freaks would probably not be used to make a movie like it today. In the kissing scenes, you can obviously tell that the actors and actresses just put their faces together at camera angles that make them appear to be kissing.

October 19, 2005
Wednesday:

My dad called at 7:30 this morning and then showed up a couple minutes later with 2 TV’s. I had been asking him over the past couple weeks to bring me one of the old TV’s that he has in storage. I went downstairs to meet him this morning and found him walking up with a TV in-hand. He handed off the TV to me, then went back down for a second one. He brought two in case one didn’t work.
He left just after the second hand-off, then I went into my apartment and evaluated my two new roommates. One of them was an old black-and-white without even a coaxial input, so I put my focus on the other one, which was a 19-inch Magnavox that was at least 15 years old, but looked like advanced alien technology compared to the other.
The Magnavox turned out to have a terminal illness that resulted in euthanasia. It began clicking erratically as soon as I pushed its power button. The sound was coming from deep inside of it. Despite the unusual behavior, the screen appeared to be showing some static between the clicks. I knew the other TV was probably not even cable-ready, so I decided to perform amateur surgery on the Magnavox. The bolts on the back of it were carefully removed with a rusty wrench, then it was plugged back in and listened to. I thought that maybe I could tell where the clicking sound was coming from and fix it. But, as loud as the sound was, its source was elusive. I even partially removed the circuit board and listened very closely as the sound clicked away, but could just not tell where it was coming from. The TV then made a loud electrical popping noise and I decided it was over. The machine is now at the bottom of the dumpster.
I then plugged in the black and white TV and was amazed that it even came on, especially considering that I remember using it about 20 years ago. Despite the fact that I will not be able to hook up my cable to it, I wiped it off with a wet towel and temporarily placed it on my TV stand. Throwing it away would be like euthanizing your perfectly healthy grandpa.
Marketing class was cancelled today, which I didn’t know until showing up at the door, where a sign just said “Marketing 304 cancelled”. So, the 150 students that show up for class each day all wasted an hour today. That’s almost a week of combined wasted time!
I got a newspaper and spent my hour reading it in the grass outside next to Stone Henge. What I call Stone Henge is a piece of artwork on a small hill. The stones are roughly the shape of the ones in the real Stone Henge, but they are smaller and not really spaced out into any kind of design.
One of the stones served as a wall to lean against as I read the paper. A helicopter that had been circling the city since 7:30 was still flying around, and a large forklift was carrying boulders from the library to areas next to Stone Henge. The boulders are from the small pond that is being dismantled in front of the library.
I went into statistics class 20 minutes early, which is held in a large old auditorium. The lights are usually turned on any other time I arrive early, but not today. There was nobody else in the huge room at this time, so I decided to hop up on the stage and look around in the back. A large mirror on wheels was blocking a doorway at the rear of the stage. Behind the doorway, was a staircase that led down two floors underground. The auditorium is on the ground floor, so two floors below that is quite deep. The brightness of the light decreased as I went lower down the stairs, then an even darker tunnel lead from there. I walked about 30 feet down the tunnel and around two bends before I was satisfied. It just contained steam pipes and electrical connections that most likely led into the campus-wide tunnel system. The tunnels are a very creepy place. Highly recommended.
Back up the stairs and on the stage, I played with the electrical system. A 50 year-old looking panel of switches and buttons controls all the different sets of lights above the stage. I turned red off and on, then figured out how to lower the big screen, which the teacher uses every day. Students began to come in shortly afterwards, so I then took a seat.
The teacher gave example problems today that involved beating and drowning children. She has joked around before about beating her kids, and now she’s talking about killing them. In her first example, she said that two kids were being raised; one with beatings and the other without. In the second, kids were being held underwater for 10 minutes to see if they drowned or not. Despite the weirdness, both examples were worded in ways that followed the statistical concepts we are learning right now.
My management teacher today informed the class that everyone was being given two additional points on all of our previous weekly tests, which means that I probably have an A now. The near-riot on Monday turned out to be very effective. Chinese class also brought good news; my first-ever perfect test score. Yep, I got a 100% on yesterday’s test.
I went into the Student Center after my 2 o’clock economics class ended. There, I put my dad’s Netflix movies in the mail and went the bookstore to copy the homework problems out of the statistics book that my class uses. The textbook area of the store was blocked off with cloth ribbons and had signs up that said “Textbook area Closed”. A back isle of area was unblocked, so I walked in and found my book. Several employees walked by and looked at me as I sat there copying the questions, but only one person said anything. A guy came out of an office in a rolling chair and rudely said, “Can I help you with something”. I barely looked at the guy and just quickly said, “No, just looking at something”. I felt him staring at me for a second, then he looked away. A couple seconds later, he said, “If you need that, you better buy it now because it won’t be here tomorrow”.
Next, I decided go sit by Campus Lake instead of going back into my apartment. I locked my bike up at the boat dock, then got a soda from a machine and sat at a nearby picnic table. The employees of the boat dock were playing load heavy-metal and riding their bikes around the building.
Bees began to pay too much attention to me as soon as I sat down; mainly because of my soda. They landed at the opening of the can, then dove at my face when I swatted at them. They were much more aggressive than normal yellow bees, but never tried to sting. I tried to study Chinese, but was very distracted. One of the bees even flew in my mouth and landed, which put me in a difficult position. I felt that my only option was to remain perfectly still and let the bee get bored and fly out. I could only handle a couple seconds of this, then I put my finger in my mouth and quickly scooped the bee out.
Equally as distracting, was the Frisbee golf games going on around me. This area of campus contains a 9 or 18 hole Frisbee golf course, which gets quite a lot of use during nice weather. Frisbees landed within a few feet of me on more than one occasion.
As if the bees and Frisbees were not enough of a distraction, the helicopter also came back and started making low circles over the lake. Only a bit of good studying took place this afternoon, but I shot lots of good video, mostly of the bees fighting at my table. I rode home at 5 o’clock, stopping at Old Town Liquors on the way home to buy a 12 pack of beer and pack of smokes, which I planned on taking over to Rufus’s house later.
Back in the apartment, I uploaded my bee video onto the computer and then found myself spending the next two hours with it. I just thought it would be cool to see the bees in slow motion, then the video started to take on a life of its own as I reviewed and edited it.
I cooked myself a small pizza at 7 o’clock, then Josh and Jeff came over at 8. I had planned on going over to Rufus’s tonight, but I was never able to get ahold of them. Josh, Jeff and me played Dungeons and Dragons tonight, which was my second-ever experience with the game. The first time was once about 8 years ago with Randy G and friends of his.
The process of creating a character was very slow and sometimes painful tonight, but then I had a good time once the game actually started. Josh’s enthusiasm for acting makes him a very entertaining role player. The game is not really what I expected, but I think I could continue having fun with it.

October 18, 2005
Tuesday:

I got up at 8 o’clock this morning so I could study for my Chinese test until class started at noon. During that time, I took a break to cook myself sausage and eggs for breakfast.
I usually start studying for these tests the night before because there is a lot of information to review, but I didn’t do that this time. That wasn’t a good idea because I was really rushed this morning, even with 3+ hours.
The test ended up going OK, then I returned home afterwards. The weather was again beautiful today; about 80 degrees and sunny. I unfortunately spent the rest of my day in the apartment and never went back outside to enjoy the weather. The early afternoon was spent talking to Johanna, then my dad came by at 4:00. He brought some DVD’s that he rented from Netflix, which he wanted me to copy because they were old hard-to-find movies. He stayed and talked for a few moments, then left the DVD’s and went home.
I spent the rest of the evening staring at my computer screen and studying a bit of Chinese when the computer was doing things. I sent a bunch of emails and got some more pictures online. At 10 o’clock, I started watching the movie “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” and ate leftover chicken and pasta for dinner.

October 1 7, 2005
Monday:

Australia sent sales people to SIU today. They made their pitches in two of my classes. It happened the first time at the beginning of marketing class. Before the teacher began speaking, a young Australian man with a heavy accent jumped on the stage and started yelling like the Crocodile Hunter does when he is about to catch a croc. The man was only on stage for about 45 seconds, but he probably said 300 or 400 words during that time. He then jumped off stage as quickly as he had jumped on and left a sheet for students to sign if they wanted to study in Australia for the summer.
Management class was visited by another crazy Australian; a young woman with long spiky bleached hair. She had the same wild, loud and speedy approach that the man had earlier, then left the room just as fast when she had finished. I wonder if they were really trying to imitate the Crocodile Hunter or if Australians just act that way normally.
Management class did not calm down after the Australian left. The class then started laying into the teacher about the content of our weekly tests, which does not follow the book or lectures. It started with one student, then spread throughout the huge crowded room for the next 15 minutes. The tests are made by another professor that is the boss of our teacher. One student asked where that professor was at that moment, then proposed to the class that all 150 of us go to his office right then. It didn’t happen, but I wish it had, both because the test questions are bad and because it would have been really funny to see the look on the professor’s face. Our teacher told us that the professor chooses the questions from a teacher’s manual that contains big lists of potential questions. I then made the suggestion that we should have access to those lists if the material is not going to be covered, which makes perfect sense. I used to think the old professor was funny because he has done things like have a piano player play before class, but I’m starting to just think he’s crazy.
As usual, I spent my 2-hour lunch break at home. Passing the apartments office, I noticed that somebody had ran their car over two signs in front of the building, which including a ‘No Parking’ and a ‘One Way’.
I talked to Johanna online after economics class, then went to play racquetball with Nic at 5 o’clock. He shouldn’t have tried to play today because he hurt his arm playing his step dad yesterday. We were able to play only one game, but he somehow was able to win. We also began a left-handed game, but he was unable to finish.
He dropped me off at home sometime before 7, then I ate dinner and talked to Greg on the phone for a while. Later, I talked to Ericka on the phone, so I spent a total of about 2 hours on the phone tonight.

October 16, 2005
Sunday:

The clock in our hotel room said 8:45 when I got up this morning, but I had forgotten that it was an hour fast. My dad got up even earlier and went down to eat the free continental breakfast before the rest of us. He came back saying that a man had been there without socks and shoes on and his toes looked even worse than any 90 year-old’s. My brother and me went down to eat the breakfast at 8:30, but the guy with the toes was gone by that time. There were some other rough looking people eating though.
I had a bagel and 3 glasses of apple juice, then went back to the room to get my things ready to leave. We were back on the road sometime before 10 o’clock, then I was back asleep until almost noon, which is when we stopped for lunch. Brant played a good trick on Chris just before the lunch stop. Keri had her arm on the seat behind Chris, so Brant touched the side of his face with his hand. Chris just thought it was Keri’s hand because her arm was behind him. So, Chris cuddled his face against Brant’s hand until he realized that it was bigger and different than Keri’s. Hilarious.
Clara still had more tuna and pita pockets in the cooler, so we found a picnic table behind a tourist information office in Kentucky. Brant and Keri did not want to eat the tuna, so they walked to a nearby Huddle House. Clara made tuna pita sandwiches for everyone else. My brother, dad and me ate all of them before we realized that we had left nothing for Clara. She tried to get a burger from a nearby Wendy’s, but the line there was too long.
After eating, Chris and I walked through a wooded area that was behind the picnic table, then we all got back into the truck. We stopped to get more gas before getting back on the interstate. Clara had taken over the driving at this point and she wanted to pump the gas herself. The truck runs on diesel and we filled up at a big truck stop, which is a bit of a different pumping procedure than a regular gas station. My dad had to give her some directions to get her through the process.
Back on the road, I fell back asleep for most of the rest of the trip. We arrived back in Carbondale just after 3 o’clock, then the first stop was to drop me off at my apartment.
I then spent some time writing yesterday’s journal entry, using the Internet and putting my stuff away.
I left the apartment at 6:30 to do some economics homework at the library. I checked out the textbook, then spent an hour unsuccessfully trying to figure out how to do the assignment. I ended up just doing what little I could and making up answers for the rest of it. Leaving the library, I noticed a new bike I had earlier seen lying unlocked in the grass on my way to the library was still in the same place. I stopped to take a look at it and found that the rear tire was slightly bent and would not turn. The bike appeared to be brand new and even had lights installed on it. I at first thought it had most likely been stolen, but then wondered if something else worse could have happened to the owner, so I wrote down the serial number on a police identification sticker that was on it.
I next went to Schnucks. There, I first cashed a check my dad had given me, which was from an old savings account that my mom had. My dad had split the money between my brother, sister and me. I got $56 after subtracting the money I already owed my family from this summer. I did some shopping after cashing the check, and ended up spending more money than I had planned on because some things were on sale that I wanted.
Back at home, I called the SIU police and told them about the suspicious bike I had seen. A woman answered the phone and I told her about the situation and gave her the ID number I had written down. Probably just a stolen bike, but you never know.
I next cooked a chicken breast bake kit that I had bought at Schnuck’s last Thursday. I started editing the video from the weekend as the food cooked, then continued doing that for the next couple hours afterwards.

October 15, 2005
Saturday:

I reluctantly got out of bed at 5:45 this morning. I had no choice because my family was coming to pick me up at 6:20. They arrived on time and we drove south towards Alabama as the sun rose.
I think everybody slept for much of the 5+ hour trip, except for my dad, who was driving. Our only two stops were to get gas at an unknown location and to take a bathroom break at the Alabama Welcome Station rest area, which is the one that has the full sized Apollo-style rocket standing in front of it. Clara had packed tuna and pita pockets for lunch, which Amanda made for us in the back of the truck and passed forward.
We arrived at our hotel in Athens, Alabama sometime between 11 and 12 o’clock. The hotel was a Super 8 and we had two rooms at the end of the second floor. The end of that floored smelled bad of mildew and we could hear a man in one of the rooms yelling at somebody about paddling them. Our room smelled even worse than the hallway, but it appeared to be clean. My brother and me hypothesized that the smell came from water damage due to a bad roof, but who knows.
All the women stayed in one room, which included Clara, Amanda and Keri. All the men stayed in the other, which included me, my dad, Chris and Brant. The clock in our room was an hour fast, which led us to believe that we had unknowingly passed into the Eastern Time Zone and would be late for the wedding. We called the front desk to verify the time zone, and they told us that it was in fact Eastern. But, it turns out that both the clock and the front desk were wrong. Brant used his laptop and the hotels wireless Internet access to determine that we were still in the Central zone.
So, we all changed into our dress clothes, then left the hotel just before 1 o’clock. The wedding was taking place one hour away, at a park in Tuscumbia, Alabama, which is the birthplace of Helen Keller. We got a little bit lost as we neared the park, which made my dad mad enough to run a red light, but we ended up arriving just a couple minutes after 2. The site of the wedding was at a beautiful place called Spring Park, which contained a lake with fountains, ducks and a large waterfall flowing into it. The ceremony took place near the base of the waterfall. There was not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was near 90, which made my black clothes seem very hot. My brother and I shook hands with the groom, BJ, when we arrived, and he said to me, “Oh, black”. I then remembered that it is bad luck for the bride and groom when people wear black to their wedding.
The wedding began just about 15 minutes after we arrived, and the bride(my cousin Heather) then arrived on a horse-drawn carriage. The flower girl tripped over a white carpet that had been put on the ground. This ceremony was the fastest one I have ever been to, as it was over in about 15 minutes. Afterwards, my family talked with some of the few other people that we knew. I recognized a few familiar faces, but couldn’t remember who anybody was because I’ve never had much contact with this side of the family except for my deceased grandmother and the bride and groom. The most familiar unknown face in the crowd was my aunt Diane, but that might just be because I had met her twin sister several times years ago, who was not present today.
The person we talked to the most with was Rowena Kilgoar, who is my deceased grandmother’s mother’s sister, which I guess is called a great-great-aunt. She took a picture for my family of us standing in front of the waterfall. I then rode to the reception with her, which was a couple miles away in a downtown building that appeared to have been converted from a business into a reception hall. Most of the rest of the downtown area contained empty shops. We were some of the first to arrive at the reception, so we had to wait a while before the bride and groom got there. Everyone then went into another room for the cake-cutting, which was very over-directed. A barrage of cameramen and photographers were directing every movement of the bride and groom on the orders of a woman who appeared to be a wedding planner.
Next, everyone got in line for food, which included things like cheese, crackers, vegetable, dips, chicken tenders, rolls and chips. I ate a couple big plates of food, then had cake.
The reception was very short and the people were not very active, probably partly due to the lack of alcohol being served. I never saw anyone dancing expect for during the traditional groom-bride and bride-father dances. The bride’s garter throwing involved three single men, including Brant, my brother and me. I caught it, then posed for a picture with BJ.
Next, my family went home with Rowena, who had invited us back to her house to look at genealogy information she had collected. She lives with her husband in a brick house in a very nice part of the city. There, we met him and all sat in the living room while we talked and looked at genealogy scrap books that Rowena has put together over the years. She brought out three of the books, each of which weighed about 10 pounds and appeared to have involved hundreds of hours of research. I flipped through one of them and was surprised to see that most of my mail relatives on this side of the family had fought for the Confederates during the civil war. The book contained military papers for many of these people, which contained details of their captures, injuries and deaths. One page contained an article about a woman in the family that had her 15 and 16 year-old sons hung to death from a tree in her front yard when she refused to help a group of men that were pretending to be Confederate agents. Rowena and her husband said that events like this were all-to-common there during the war. Hopefully, there’s not going to be any more wars on US soil in the near future.
After looking at the books for a while, Rowena took me to her computer so I could show her my website. She is the oldest person I have ever met that has a good knowledge of computers and the Internet. She was running a machine with high-speed access and using it to do extensive genealogy research on the Internet. She was collecting so much info that she was storing it on DVD’s. Rowena is definitely no Alabama hillbilly.
Her husband was also an interesting man. He took Clara, my brother and me on a short trip in a nearly mint-condition 1951 military jeep that he keeps in the garage. We rode for 3 or 4 blocks in the area, which attracted a lot of attention from all the people that were outside in their yards. Some of the houses were very large, and he pointed out a particularly big one that George Jones used to live in. He said that Jones had gotten a DUI while living there and had thereafter started driving to the liquor store on his riding lawn mower.
Back at the house, we checked out the back yard, which was small but nicely manicured with many flowers and plants. Keri and I tried eating a mango from a tree there. The mango was good, but the texture of the inside made it look like it was full of worms.
Next, we all went with Rowena and her husband to my aunt Diane’s house, which turned out to be an equally interesting experience. After a few minutes of driving, we entered a gated community that was on bluffs above the Tennessee River. We were excited to see that my aunt had one of the nicest lots on the property, with a backyard that was right along the bluff. The interior of the large home was as nice as the location. I later learned that Diane’s husband has been building and selling homes for years; each time moving up a notch. There were several other guests there also, all of which were out on the second floor balcony, which offers a spectacular view of the river. There was a bright orange and blue sunset over the river as we stepped outside.
We spent the next couple hours meeting the people that were there and admiring the home. I don’t want to mention the relationships of all the others that were there because I know I will just make a bunch of mistakes, so I will just say that everyone was wonderful and I hope I get to know them better in the future. They all seemed to be very happy and have something unique and exciting going on in their lives. Before leaving at 8 o’clock, I had all of us stand in the living room for a group picture.
Next, my family all got back into our truck and we drove for an hour towards our hotel. We stopped along the way so I could ask a gas station attendant where the nearest liquor store was, then we went there and purchased some wine, beer, rum and coke. The liquor laws in this county seem to resemble the strict rules that I saw in Finland this summer. It appears that only liquor stores sell liquor, and there don’t appear to even be many liquor stores. The one that we found shared a building with another one, which had already closed at 8 o’clock. We were curious about this strange arrangement and were told inside by a clerk that the adjacent store was state-owned. The clerk also told us that the few privately owned stores in the county were forced to add a hefty tax to everything they sold. This was definitely the case, as a regular-sized bottle of Captian Morgan was over $20. Chris, Amanda and me were asked to show ID before we even purchased anything. They asked Chris to step outside because he didn’t have his.
Back at the hotel, we all hung out in the men’s room and played the game Cranium as we had our drinks. Brant didn’t drink anything, and my dad, Clara and Chris only drank a small amount, but Keri and I finished off most of the bottle of Rum. Chris usually drinks more, but was slow tonight because of a bad headache. We separated into three teams to play Cranium, and I was with Brant. We turned out to be an amazing team during the first half of the game, but kind of fell apart later. Brant would yell things at me like “drunk bastard” whenever I didn’t succeed on our turns. I highly recommend that everyone play the game Cranium.
Brant and me eventually won the game after a very close ending. One of the highlights of the night was when my dad tried to act out the process of putting up a hammock, which Amanda was supposed to guess. He ran around the room like he was trying to put out a fire or something, instead of the peaceful act of putting up a hammock. Amanda at one point even guessed that he was taking a hostage.
The game ended around 12:30, then my dad and Clara decided to go to bed. The rest of us sat outside for a few more minutes as my brother, Keri and me smoked.

October 14, 2005
Friday:

I had two small tests today; one in statistics and another in management. I helped my management teacher hand out a sheet with a table on it that was needed to do the last problem on the test. There were about 150 people in the class and not enough tables to go around to everyone. The paper they were printed on was very thin, which made it very difficult to separate them. A girl gave me a bad look and sighed when I had a hard time separating hers. I wish I would have said something like “why don’t you do it then”, but it didn’t bother me enough at the time to say anything. Rude people rarely make me mad at them, but I still always later wish I had said something to make them madder.
Both of my tests seem to go OK today, but there is a possibility that I have done worse than expected on the statistics. I went home for lunch from 11:20 till noon, then returned to school. The breezeway under the education building has recently been filled with banners and fliers saying “WALK YOUR BIKES, PEOPLE ARE GETTING HIT!”. There are probably 20-30 of these messages in this small area. The fliers have been up all week and I have not seen a single person walk their bike through on any of the 15+ times I have passed through during that time. A man in a suit was monitoring the area as I rode back from lunch. I rode past him and he loudly declared, “WALK YOUR BIKE”, but I ignored him. I later wished I had advised him to get a spike-strip or something, as that is really his only hope. His cause is lost unless a cop is stationed there all day every day. You can actually get a ticket for riding through areas like that, but I have never seen a single ticket issued.
My Chinese class had to talk about a picture in our textbook today. All the pictures in the textbook are drawn childlike and the westerners have been given oversized eyes. The picture we discussed today showed a dorm, hospital, and school in a scene with mountains and a river. The river had a fish in it that was drawn so out of perspective that it was almost as big as the dorm. I tried to say, “That is a man eating fish” in Chinese, but the teacher didn’t understand.
I spent my hour break in the library. I checked out my economics book to do homework that is due on Monday, but then realized that I didn’t have the paper on which I had written down what was supposed to be done.
I came home at 3 o’clock, then talked to Johanna. Nic came by at 5 o’clock so we could play racquetball at the Rec Center. I kept beating him badly in every game and he would not give up. After 6 or 7 games, he was getting mad enough to throw his racquet around the room. The only thing that stopped him from playing on-and-on was the fact that a big group of kids had reserved the courts for a party. A woman in charge of the kids informed us of this at about 7 o’clock. As we were walking out, a boy said to me, “That’s gay, isn’t it”. The boy then stopped me again a couple minutes later to ask a question about a paintball flier that was on a bulletin board.
Nic was feeling completely defeated after so many losses, so he wanted to play some pool to get his ego back up. We went to the Student Center and played until one of us won 5 games. Nic is very lucky because I would have won if it had not been for a couple very bad mistakes I made. His first break was a time when I had just one ball on the table and he had none. I intended to just knock my ball off the rail because I didn’t have a shot. I ended up putting not only my ball in, but also the eight and cue ball. I could maybe never do that again in a million years even if I tried all day every day.
We left the Student Center at 8:30, stopping at Dairy Queen along the way so Nic could get ice cream. Back in my apartment, I started packing for the weekend and cooked myself a small pizza for dinner.
I left again at 10:30 to meet Nic and Keith at Gatsby’s. Nic had his friend Larry with him and Keith was with someone from Murphysboro that I had never met before. Larry is from Carbondale and has been going to school somewhere near St. Louis for the past couple years on tennis scholarships. I hadn’t seen him since before I left for China. Keith only hung out with the rest of us for a few minutes, then I played a few games of pools with Nic, Larry and some other friend of Nic’s until about 12:30.
The weather was still warm enough to be in short sleeves during my bike ride home. Hundreds of students were out on the streets stumbling around and enjoying the unusually warm temperatures. One of them had passed out on the sidewalk next to a parked police car and his friends were trying to get him up.

October 13, 2005
Thursday:

I studied Chinese for a couple hours before class. The hallways floors in my building were being painted when I left for class. A big black guy who paints had earlier knocked on my door to ask me to only walk on the unpainted half of the hallway.
I met Elisa’s boyfriend after class, who is also an exchange student from Spain. I saw them walking together by the library and asked if they would like to go out with me and Dawn next weekend(Dawn speaks Spanish).
At home, I talked to Johanna for a few minutes, then fell asleep for an hour, then talked to her again. I spent the next few hours studying Chinese and statistics before leaving again at 8 o’clock to do some shopping at Schnucks and deposit a check at the ATM. I forgot to remember the amount of the check before sealing it in a deposit envelope, so I had to rip it open when the machine asked for the amount.
A display case next to the ATM machine had pictures from a Schnuck’s 8th birthday party, which must have taken place this August. I began working there two weeks before the grand opening, which was in mid or late August of 1997. That means that the store has been open over 3000 days….time flies.
I did not want to buy anything perishable tonight because I will be gone all weekend to my cousin’s wedding. So, I bought some canned goods, frozen pizzas, meal kits and snacks for the trip. I also talked to Joe Young and Brent for a moment. I don’t usually see many familiar faces anymore when I shop, especially late at night.
Back at home, I cooked a chicken breast, cheese spirals and leftover corn for dinner, then went back to studying; for a quiz in statistics and management. I watched the movie ‘Adaptability’ at 11.

October 12, 2005
Wednesday:

Got up at 7:30 so I could study for my marketing test before class. The day started out as dark and dreary as the past couple, then suddenly turned perfectly clear and blue while I was in Chinese class. I had lunch at Mcdonalds because there was really nothing to eat at home. I sat at the outdoor dining area under a tree that was dropping huge buckeye seeds. There was a reason that this was the only non-shaded table available. Some of the seeds are the size of golf balls, and just as hard. They also bounce like a golf ball when they hit the cement. For some reason, I felt like collecting all of them and putting them into my McDonald’s sack. There were at least 25. I shook the tree to try to get more, but only a couple fell.
Free popcorn was being given away next to the Faner building. It must have been some kind of student organization, but they didn’t have any signs or anything. So, I ate free popcorn as I killed the rest of the time before economics class sitting in the computer lab.
My ‘gkiser’ email account has not been working for the past week. I temporarily exceeded my storage limits when I backed up my website last week, which really screwed something up. The problem still persists even though I removed the backup file days ago. The hosting service is run by a single guy, who has told me in an email that he can’t figure out what the problem is. So, today I configured the account to forward all mail to another address. I hope the guy can fix it.
I chatted with Johanna from 3:30 till 4:30. She says that her plans are to come here in the beginning of December and stay till the middle of January. She also says she has a secret that she can’t tell me, but that will eventually become obvious…….hmmmmmm.
Nic and me went to play racquetball in the early evening. We played 3 games and he won one of them because he is good at getting the ball into hard-to-hit spots. He’ll be a good competitor, especially because I think I can beat him more often that I did Mike. But, I don’t know if he will take beatings as well as Mike. There was some serious competition today and it will become more intense with every game.
We played a game of ping-pong after racquetball, then tried out the rock-climbing wall. The wall is not usually open to everyone, but there were two guys stationed there tonight that were letting anyone climb.
Nic invited me to have dinner with him and Sara as we were leaving the Rec Center. We stopped at Schnucks to buy soda and bread, then went to his house. I helped cut the bread and butter it while Nic cooked some kind of Hamburger Helper. We watched the end of the movie ‘Johnny Mnemonic(sp)’ as we ate, then sat and talked for an hour afterwards. They are planning on moving to Amsterdam after graduation. Sara was telling me about the process to take their small dog over there, which requires a ‘puppy passport’, a microchip installed in the dogs neck and dozens of tests both before it leaves and after it arrives.
I had been planning on spending most of the night studying Chinese, but didn’t actually get home till almost 11. I then just decided to go to sleep early and study in the morning.

October 11, 2005
Tuesday:

A dark and cool day with drizzle in the morning. I had a 9 o’clock interview with Nic’s dad at The Bookworm. I filled out an application, then sat and talked to him for about 15 minutes. Things went well and I expect that I will get the job. He said that it would entail shipping books that have been sold on the Internet, working the register and other random tasks.
After Chinese class, I went to the library and checked out the book for my marketing class so I could study for tomorrow’s test, which took about an hour and a half. Back at home, I watched a DVD that I had borrowed from Nic last night, called Boondock Saints. Me and him were supposed to play racquetball at 5, but he had to cancel because of other plans.
I made myself a chicken breast for dinner and spent the rest of the evening at home. Other than studying and using the Internet, I also learned how to copy DVD’s, so I made two copies of Boondock Saints.

October 10, 2005
Monday:

I found a giant piece of fungus on the ground as I was walking between classes this morning. It had already been knocked out of the ground, but was undamaged, so I wrapped it in newspaper and put it in my backpack. At home, I rinsed it off, then put it into the arms of my suit of armor. It looks like a lumpy softball. I plan on just leaving it sit until it dries out.
I fell asleep for an hour during my two-hour lunch break. Nic called me during that time to say that his parents wanted me to contact them about a job at their bookstore. I called them from the Faner computer lab when I got back to school. We set up an interview for 9 o’clock in the morning.
I came back home after economics class, then text chatted with Johanna for a while. Nic called me again around 5, then came to pick me up. We made a quick stop at his house, then went to play pool at the Student Center. I ended up almost beating him in a 9-game series. We are both really competitive and I could tell he wasn’t happy when it looked as if I would surely win. But, luckily for him, I screwed up.
Our next stop was to pick up pizza’s we had ordered from pizza hut. We then took the pizzas to Schnucks so Sara could share them with us on her break. We all sat in the break room together while we ate. Nic and me next went back to his house and played with chemicals. He had bought two balloons at the student center(for $1!), which he wanted to fill up with the gas that is emitted when metal and drain cleaner are mixed together. He had read on the Internet that the gas created is hydrogen.
So, we mixed steel wool and drain cleaner in an empty Captain Morgan bottle, then put the balloon on top of it. This reaction was not very powerful, so the balloon never really moved. We then added pieces of aluminum foil and things got a lot more interesting. The drain cleaner took about 30 seconds to dissolve the coating on the foil, then a violent reaction started taking place. The first balloon was full within seconds, then the bottle started to melt. We moved it further away from the house and I attached the second balloon, which was difficult to do without getting burned by the steam. The reaction was soon taking place to violently to be anywhere near, so I removed the balloon and we just stood back to watch as foam and steam sprayed into the air as the bottle wilted.
So, we now had two balloons that were full of what we thought was hydrogen. Nic sat a candle on his picnic table and placed one of the balloons a couple inches above it. Sure enough, whatever was inside was flammable. A small hole melted in the side of the balloon, then fire blew out the side until it was deflated. The same thing also happened with the other one.
We next made a quick stop at Wal-Mart before Nic brought me back home. Josh T. called me just a few minutes later. I thought he was calling me from his home in Memphis, but it turns out that is not actually his home anymore. Him and Courtney are now broken up and he is living with his sister in Murphysboro.
He came to Carbondale at 10:30, then we went to have a couple drinks together at the Cellar. There, we sat at the bar, ordered Red Hooks and a bowl of peanuts and talked for a couple hours. I hadn’t really sat down and had any one-on-one conversations with Josh for a long time. I had forgotten how many of the same people that we both know from going to school together in Murphysboro. It’s good to have him back.

October 9, 2005
Sunday:

I got up at 9 o’clock this morning so I could go to the free breakfast that my apartment complex has every Sunday. I had only gone to one of them before today. A music professor and his wife that live on the property always host the breakfast. The wife’s parents were also there today. It is really strange that a professor would want to live here. They are like the parents of the apartment complex, as they always wave at everyone and know a lot of people on a first name basis. The wife’s parents even brought fresh peppers from their garden to give out today.
An information systems PHD student from India introduced himself to me while I was getting my food, then we talked for the rest of the time we ate. Like other exchange students have told me recently, he said that Carbondale is too small for him. He thinks he feels that way because he is adjusting from just living in Sydney for 2 and a half years while he completed his masters. He told me that there are 5 million people in that city and that it is beautiful. It’s on my list of places to go someday.
Dawn came out to eat just a few minutes after me, then we went to WalMart together after finishing our meals. I needed to go there so I could return my digital camera and she just needed to do some general shopping. My camera just started going crazy over the past couple days, after just 4 weeks of use.
I had a very unusual WalMart experience today; friendliness. A young black woman dealt with me at the service desk. She agreed to allow me to exchange the camera even though I was 7 days over the 30-day return/exchange limit. She had a young black male employee meet me and escort the camera back to electronics. There, a middle-aged white lady was also very friendly. My camera had been discontinued, so she politely went to the back to see if they still had any. They didn’t, but she then told me that I could just exchange the camera instead of having to decide on-the-spot what other kind to exchange it for.
I then went back to the service desk and was given back $106. A young black male manager assisted the young black girl with the exchange. He asked me what was wrong with the camera, then pointed at the box and said, “Personally, I would never trust anything with those two letters on it”, meaning HP(Hewlett Packard).
I next bought some ham and a bag of frozen chicken breasts, then attempted to pay for them at an automatic checkout. Like almost every other time I have used the auto checkout, it gave me an attitude. After scanning the small package of ham, the computer asked me to enter its UPC code. So, I pulled the ham out of the bag I had placed it in so I could read the number. The computer then urgently declared, “An item has been removed from the bagging area! An item has been removed from the bagging area!”. I quickly put the ham back in the bag and tried to read the number from there. The computer then warned me again when I just slightly rotated the package so I could see the number better. After the second warning, I just moved to another computer, which was very pleasant and checked me out without a problem.
Dawn was already waiting at the car for me when I arrived. Back at home, I spent the next two hours using the Internet to find and buy a replacement digital camera. I finally brought the decision down to a Minolta or Cannon model, but ultimately decided on the Cannon because the shipping was free, compared to $18 for the Minolta. The Minolta also didn’t come with a battery, which was special and would have cost extra money. I was more than happy to order that Cannon, because it is a tiny SD200 model which I had wanted to buy in the first place when I was shopping for a camera early last month.
Buying the camera was so exhausting that I fell asleep for two hours afterwards. I then went to Laundry World at 5 o’clock because my clean sock and underwear supply was dangerously low. The apartment complex’s laundromat is still “closed until further notice”.
Laundry World has 33 dryers and about 100 washers, almost all of which were in use today. There were 20-30 people there when I arrived, then more kept coming as I waited for a washing machine to get done with my clothes. I sat at a folding table and studied Chinese as the machine did its job. I also ordered 2 hot dogs and a soda from a concession booth in the store, which only cost $1.70. At the end of the washing cycle, I opened my backpack and realized something when I saw a bottle of washing detergent there; I hadn’t added any to my clothes. So, I put in a capful, then restarted the cycle.
I started talking to a vaguely familiar-looking black man as he and I were waiting for two of the 33 dryers to become available. I remembered who he was as soon as he said that he worked for the public defenders office in Murphysboro; he had handled both mine and Ericka R’s DUI cases. We talked for the next 30 minutes as we dried and folded our clothes. During that time, I learned that he had come into existence when his mother met an American serviceman that was stationed in Bermuda. He lived in Norway and Spain while he was growing up. He’s scared of spiders and snakes and was really freaked out by the movie “Arachnophobia” . He also learned a lot about me during our conversation. I hope any future conversations we have take place outside of the Jackson County Courthouse.
Back at my apartment, I spent the rest of the evening using my computer and studying Chinese. This weeks chapter has over 60 new words to learn, which is a lot more than normal. I also talked to Keri and Tavis online for a while. I wanted to start downloading more stuff online tonight, but I think of I should take a break because the apartment’s newsletter this month mentioned that people using file-sharing programs would be kicked off the network. I did not actually read the newsletter, but Dawn told me about it last night. They say it is slowing down the network, but I don’t really see how the 4kb’s per second I have been using would really make a difference.

October 8, 2005
Saturday:

This morning, I installed my new DVD drive in my computer. I noticed the CPU fan was almost completely blocked with dust, so I took it apart and cleaned it before closing up the computer. I was really bored most of the day, but I couldn’t decide what to do. I tried to do my laundry, but the laundry room is “closed until further notice”, as it has been most of the week. The apartment’s management is terribly slow about getting things done, so I made a sign to put on the door that said, “GET IT FIXED!!”, but I never actually put it up. I might still put it up when I run out of clean socks.
There was an 8-hour party at a house behind my building. The people that lived there just finished building a huge half-pipe and must have had the grand opening today. The crowd in their backyard grew bigger and louder all day. I didn’t realize what was going on until later in the evening, or I would have gone over to videotape some wipeouts.
Keith C. came over at 8 o’clock and we went to play racquetball at the Rec Center. They have a new computer system at the door that shows the faces and full names of the last several people that have entered the building. Weird. I tried to take a picture of the computer screen, but my new camera has died after just 4 weeks. It started acting up last night, now it is dead.
I creamed Keith in our first couple games, so we quit playing for points after that. He did make some really good plays, so he will probably get better quickly if we play often. We went back to my apartment after about an hour, then invited Dawn to come over and have a drink with us. The three of us then headed to Tres after a while sitting in my apartment. There, we sat at a table and had one drink. We wanted to order nachos, but the kitchen had just closed.
Our next stop was Don Taco, where I received two very tiny tacos that did not even begin to fill me up. We came back to my apartment after that and played darts as we drank another beer. We grew tired at throwing the darts at the board and began throwing them at a plastic plate and a beer can. I actually made a hole in the plate, which was made of really hard plastic.

October 7, 2005
Friday:

My alarm went off this morning and I decided that I have been going to class too much lately, so I stayed at home and continued sleeping for two more hours. I did get up and go to school at 11 because I had a test at that time. I think it only got up to about 55 degrees today. I miss summer already.
After the short test, I went into the student center to mail off a payment to the electric company. My service is in my brother’s name because I owe like $400 from almost 10 years ago. I always thought there was a 7-year statute of limitations on old bills, but the electric company doesn’t seem to be following that rule.
So, I tried to buy a single stamp from the machines in the Student Center, but they were not in the mood to take change. I was luckily able to coax one of them into accepting a dollar bill.
After the payment was in the mail, I killed the rest of the time before Chinese class by walking through the bookstore and using a computer in the Faner lab. There is tons of worthless crap for sale at the bookstore.
My Chinese class learned a very confusing grammar form today. An example sentence of the new form led us to interpret it as, “He opens doors in his sleep”, but the real meaning was, “He sleeps with the door open”. I better refrain from using this sentence form in China or I am going to mess it up and accidentally say some really weird things to people.
I went back into the computer lab during my next 1-hour break. I received an email from a former Macau exchange student that asked for my help in filling out a survey for a school project. The sender is a French-Indian girl named Mary, and the questions asked me to define her personality and state her strengths and weaknesses. I thought it was kind of weird to say anything negative about her, then send that to her in an email, but I did it anyway. I said a lot of good things too, but described her main weakness as her desire to please both her family and self in relationship issues. She once told me that her family was going to arrange a marriage for her if she did not soon find a partner that they found suitable, which she seemed to think was a very scary thought. I can only imagine what that must be like for a person who has grown up in the western world.
I came back to my apartment as soon as my economics class ended at 3, then talked to Johanna for a few minutes. After that, I spent some time vacuuming my floors. My vacuum cleaner might spew out more dust than it sucks up, but I eventually managed to make the place look better than before.
Nic came over and picked me up at 5 o’clock. He wanted to make a mini hot air balloon out of a trash bag, candles and balsa wood. His idea was to release a few of these things at night and see if anybody reports them as UFO’s. Balsa wood is not an easy thing to come by, so we decided to try and substitute Styrofoam. We went to look for Styrofoam in Staples dumpster because I had seen a bunch of it there a few weeks ago when I was looking for packaging to mail off the keyboard I sold on Ebay. There were only a couple tiny pieces in the dumpster, so we walked inside to see if any was for sale in the packaging isle. We didn’t end up buying what we came in for, but I ended up buying a DVD-RW drive that was on sale for $49 and a package of DVD-R’s for $9. That drive will really come in handy now that I am downloading so much stuff. Anybody wanna buy any movies? Discographies? Anybody wanna sue me? Well, you won’t get much.
Back outside of Staples, Nic and me decided to take something from the dumpster after all; a cardboard box that we could cut up to make the frame for our hot air balloon. It wasn’t as light as balsa wood, but we thought it just might work. Ironically, this box that we took would have been the perfect size to fit that keyboard that I sold. You may remember from this journal how much trouble is was to get that keyboard shipped. The dumpster had only Styrofoam in it on the day I needed a box. Where was God then? Today we only needed stryrofoam, but there were only boxes. Where is God now?
We next made a stop at Walmart to buy tape and birthday candles, which we took back to Nic’s house and went to work with. We cut two one-foot by one-inch strips of cardboard out of the box and taped them together in an X-shape, then attached 6-8 birthday candles to the center of the X. Next, we opened up a garbage bag and attached the edges of it to the ends of the X. So, when we were done we had something that kind of resembled a hot air balloon without a basket. We used a hair dryer to get some hot air inside, then I lit the candles and took the contraption outside.
Nic and I turned out to be no Wright brothers, as the cardboard base was too heavy and the bag was too small. We tried again with a very small Styrofoam base that was made from a very small piece of Styrofoam that had been in the box, but that was also just a bit too heavy. Even though we were unsuccessful today, I think we have done enough research to make next time good.
We next decided to go out and light the giant firework we constructed earlier in the week out of all Nic’s leftover fireworks. We thought it could be way too big for town, so we drove it all the way out to paint-strip road, which is a little used place where highway paint-strip machines are tested. I set up my camera on a tripod, then put the big aluminum-foil-covered composite-firework(A.K.A. bomb) about 75 feet away under a big plastic box that Nic had brought with us. Nic sat in the car while I did the lighting, and I ran and hid behind the car before the thing exploded. We were hoping to blow the box to pieces, but failed at something for the second time tonight, as we just got a big multi-colored fire ball that made a lot of cool popping sounds and started a small brush fire on the side of the road. I quickly put out the fire, then we left.
We were still determined for a bang tonight, so we went back to Wal-Mart and bought steel wool, drain cleaner and a 2 liter soda bottle. We mixed the 2 ingredients in the bottle and put it in a field near Nic’s house, then sat in his yard and waited to hear our bang. The third time was not a charm, so I assume the heat from the reaction melted the bottle before it could build up enough pressure to blow.
We developed an interesting new sport while we waited in the yard; spool walking. I noticed a big wooden electrical-wire spool under the carport, so I flipped it over and started walking around on top of it as I rolled it around the yard. Nic joined in the sport too and we moved the sport onto the pavement to make things easier and more dangerous. There was enough ground clearance under the middle of the spool that one person could lay on the ground as the other rolled right over top of them.
Sarah came home from work at 9, which ended our fun because her and Nic were leaving town at that time. They dropped me off back at home, then I spent the rest of the night there. I talked to Tavis on the phone for about an hour and we decided to try and revive an old movie project that we worked on two summers ago, “Trailers of Fury”. We had spent hours upon hours that summer writing the script, deciding all our shooting locations, getting a cast of our friends together and running through the script with them. We planned on uploading the film to websites like Ifilms.com after finishing it, but we only ever finished shooting the introduction scene before I moved away to China and Tavis left for Cincinnati. So, if anybody reading this is interesting in making a real fool of themselves on the Internet and having a great time doing it, then let me know. We need several people, both guys and girls. We’ll probably never make a dime off this, but it will be nice to know that people all over the place are making fun of us.

October 6, 2005
Thursday:

I ate 4 eggs for breakfast and studied Chinese at home until my test started at noon. The test went well, then I returned home again. The temperature dropped about 30 degrees since yesterday, so riding my bike in a short sleeved shirt was not a good idea.
Next, I talked to Johanna online for an hour, then Randy came over to give me a $150 check for working this past weekend. I can really use that money. I copied him some pictures onto CD that I had recently taken at his house and of us working.
We then got in his truck and headed to his house, stopping along the way so I could get a meal from Burger King. Back at his place, I helped him install track lighting in the ceiling above his office area. He had bought the lights last week when we were buying supplies at Lowes, because they were marked down from $140 to $25. I was only working as a friend today, and not a paid employee. I have volunteered help with a couple projects around his house over the past 3 or 4 years, and I am sure that he will do the same when I have a house here someday. That could be very valuable assistance considering he actually studied construction in school.
Installing the lights only took about an hour and a half, even though the process was interrupted for a few minutes while one of Randy’s renters came by to pay. There was already a hole in the ceiling because he had accidentally drilled in the wrong place when trying to install another lamp in the room. We stuck an American flag up the hole so we could find it when we went into the attic. Getting into the attic is not an easy task, as the entrance is high above the basement staircase and requires walking out onto a ledge and setting up a ladder on it. Walking around inside the attic is no easier, as the tallest section is only about 4 feet high. The flagpole was sticking up all the way at the far end, so we slowly crawled back to it using a flashlight and headlamp to see. It then took another 15 minutes to install an electrical box and splice the wires.
Back downstairs, we successfully attached a transformer, track and lights to the ceiling. They make a small humming sound, but provide a nice color of light to the room.
We came back into Carbondale shortly after finishing the project, making a stop at Lowes so Randy could see if he could buy extra lights to put on the track. Driving into town, we passed a pickup truck that had a 200+lb pumpkin in the back of it.
Back at home, I organized some things in my apartment and decided to post some more things on Ebay, including a barcode scanner and some old textbooks. The barcode scanner was given to me by Mary B, who used to work with at Schnucks. She had found it in a grocery bag a couple years ago after returning from a WalMart shopping trip. I typed the model number into Ebay and found that it would be worth a couple hundred dollars if it had a charging base with it. Maybe I can still get something out of it. There is a sticker on the top that says “WalMart”, so I neatly colored it in with a black marker.
Jeff came by around 7:30. I showed him a few videos that I had made over the summer, then we walked up to PK’s to have a beer. We left after the first one, then bought two more at the liquor store on the walk back to my apartment. We then spent a couple more hours listening to music and downloading some video clips, one of which I think might have been trying to give me a virus.

October 5, 2005
Wednesday:

Another very warm October day. My dad came at 7:30 this morning to drop off some things to me on his way to work. He helped me carry 3 pieces of a sectional sofa up to my room, then took a banana and left. I also carried up 4 plants and a microwave by myself. One of the plants is the one that I bought when I was 8 years old. Clara has been taking care of it for the past couple years due to the fact that I have been moving around a lot. I don’t know what she has been feeding it, but it has grown exponentially since I last had possession of it.
I spent the rest of the time before my classes started getting all the new stuff put into the spots that I wanted it. The sectional sofa is big for my relatively small apartment.
Classes were very uneventful today and I couldn’t even stay awake all the time during the last 20 minutes of my last class.
I came home and made a grilled roast beef sandwich during my lunch break. I stopped at the apartment office to check my mail on the way back from my last class. I had never checked mail before and found that I needed to open a combination lock to get into my mailbox. I had never been given the combination, so I went into the office and got it from Tammy. Most of my mail belonged to the prior resident, including a Victoria’s Secret cataloug.
Back in my apartment, I helped Johanna finally get some pictures onto her website. Afterwards, she realized that I was going to create a link to her site, then suddenly felt that some of her pictures were too “controversial”, so she took those in question off. I would have displayed them on my website if I was her, but she’s always been sensitive about these issues. By sensitive, I mean weird….haha.
I fell asleep for over an hour in the late afternoon, then started studying for yet another Chinese test. Almost every week brings a new test in that class. It’s the only subject that I study almost every day. I actually barely spend any time at all on my other subjects unless a test is coming or an assignment is due. I guess it is a good thing that I am studying Chinese because I usually don’t mind studying it at all.
I made myself a huge cheeseburger and some spinach to eat at 8 o’clock, then went back to studying and using the Internet for the rest of the evening.

October 4, 2005
Tuesday:

The morning was uneventful, as I just studied Chinese in my apartment before going to Chinese class at noon. There is an exchange student from Spain in the class, and I walked with her after class ended today. Her name is Elisa, but I don’t know if that is the right way to spell it. We were just talking and walking when we realized that we were going home to the exact same place. She also lives at Saint Germain Square. I’m in the B building and she’s in the C building. Her boyfriend lives in the apartment with her, and he is also an exchange student from Spain. She said that they think this area is really boring, so I told her that I would be glad to introduce them to some people, which she seemed eager about. The first person I plan on introducing to them is Dawn, who has spent several months in Peru and speaks fluent Spanish.
Back in my apartment, I spent an hour and a half on the phone trying to explain to Johanna how to get pictures on her website. She was not able to figure it out yet, but I think she will have the pictures up by tomorrow.
Nic called while I was talking to her, and he told me that I may be able to start working at his parents bookstore. He had first mentioned the possibility to me a couple weeks ago, and he today made it seem like I have a very good chance at getting the job. I think I would really like to work in a bookstore. Jobs seem to be falling into my lap all of the sudden.
Jeff came over at 2:30. I had told him my address when I saw him at Jake’s poker game last week. I showed him my pictures and video from Gulf Port, which is where he had been living up until the Friday after the hurricane. My brother and I probably passed him on the way down. He recognized an area from my video as being right across the street from his apartment. I would have loved to have had his view on that Monday morning of the hurricane.
Jeff and me went to Burger King for dinner at 4 o’clock. We both ordered Whopper meals from the drive-through, then realized we didn’t have enough money as approached the window. We were both short about $1, but managed to find enough change in his seats to just barely have enough.
Driving to the restaurant, I mentioned to Jeff that his car is like the evil car from the movie “Carrie”. It is a 90? Chevy Lumina that he has been driving for whole time I have known him, which is guess is 3 or 4 years. Just about everything about it seems to be broken and making weird noises, but it just never seems to quit. The event that first made me think of it as Carrie was when it blew a head gasket then magically repaired itself when Jeff and me were roommates. It lived up to that reputation again by surviving Katrina with only some minor scratches from flying shingles. Don’t mess with Jeff or his car will come run you down.
So, Jeff and I came back to the apartment complex with our Whopper meals and ate them at one of the picnic tables in the yard. Some of the employees where out there barbequing at that time. Today was a perfect day as far as I’m concerned; sunny and 90(30C).
Jeff left to go to work after 5 o’clock, then I went inside and spent the next couple hours studying Chinese. I started some more bittorrent downloads while I studied. I had never tried to download music by this method before and I am now very excited at what I found available; entire discographies of almost any popular band that has ever existed. I started out by downloaded the NOFX album Franco UnAmerican, then started downloading the Pink Floyd discography, which is 1.5 gigs. It will probably take a couple days to download that much, but I really love bittorrent.
I went shopping at Schuck’s at 8 o’clock. I wish there was a cheaper store nearby, but Schnucks is where I’ll shop as long as I’m riding a bike. The girl from Mogadishu checked out my groceries. I asked her if she ever planned on going back and she said she wouldn’t unless things get more peaceful. I don’t blame her.
Clara called me at 11 o’clock to say that my dad would be bringing by some furniture in the morning. She also told me that she had just bought a new black refrigerator, even though she has never cared for black appliances……..a kitchen racist.

October 3, 2005
Monday:

My statistics teacher posted the grades from last Wednesday’s test online today(B), then talked about the test in class. The class average was failing, but she claimed to be very happy with the grades. She said that some people had done poorly on it because no points were given for problems were no work was shown. A black girl in class yelled, “What did you say?”, then proceeded with a loud confrontation. She stormed out of class when the teacher stated that the policy would not be changed.
Before statistics class had started, I talked to the student from my Chinese class that works at the Chinese restaurant that I ate at on Friday. He told me that he took an Arabic class over the summer, and that it took all summer just to learn the alphabet. Sounds like a tough language.
I spent my lunch break at home eating, talking to Johanna and sleeping for 30 minutes. I called about the school about a paid research program before I went to my afternoon class. An ad in the paper said that smokers could earn $175 for completing a 3 session survey. I completed a telephone questionaire to determine if I was eligible to participate. The person who questioned me said that my voicemail message was “really funny”. One of her questions asked my race, and I replied “regular”, which she also thought was really funny. After answering all the questions, I was transfered to another person, who just told me that I was not eligible. Probably because I don’t smoke enough.
Back at school, my economics teacher stopped class to ask a student what was wrong with his red eye. The student was obviously embarrassed at the attention, but the teacher then said, “take the straw out before you drink”, and laughed hysterically. Several teacher’s pets joined in the laughing and the student then looked mad. The rest of the class just thought the whole incident was really strange. We got our incorrectly graded tests back again today and my score was bumped up to a 95%.
Back at my apartment, I talked to Johanna again and helped her work on her website. She still doesn’t have any pictures up, but soon should. I studied Chinese from 5 till 6, then Nic came to pick me up. We first got Mcdonalds food at the student center, then went to the pool hall there. We played several games and I lost all of them, but usually not by much. He plays in a league, so I think I did just fine.
I then rode with him as he ran a couple errands. His parents are out of town and he is responsible for feeding their pets. We met Sarah(his girlfriend) at Schnucks so he could pick up a key to his parent’s business, then fed a big white dog at his parents house. Our next stop was their used bookstore, where we fed a big white cat. We then had to drop off the key at his house before heading to his friend Dustin’s house in Makanda.
Dustin’s family owns a construction business and the property is full of big bulldozers and other equipment. We went into a large shed and took turns riding a child-sized motorcycle around it. Dustin could actually pop a wheelie on the little thing. Nic almost crashed it into a wall. He next had to idea to take a bag of fireworks from his trunk and empty all the contents from the larger ones into a metal can. The three of us spent 30 minutes cutting open the paper tubes and breaking sparklers up, which left us with about a pound of gray, brown and black powder. Nic then put all the stuff into a smaller cup and put about half a role of duct tape around it. He made a braid of fuse from several long fuses out of roman candles.
The next question was what to do with the thing. Dustin said he couldn’t light it on his property because his family would be disturbed, so we decided to look for a more desolate location. Dustin and I wanted to save it till the next day because we could then put it inside an old demolition derby car on his property, but Nic was set on lighting it tonight. He drove us to a parking lot by a lake, but then we luckily realized that nobody had a lighter. He then drove to a gas station, where he filled up and bought a lighter. Back at the lake parking lot, we took a vote and Nic was overruled.
We then dropped Dustin off back at home and went to Jimmy Johns once back in Carbondale. An employee outside the restaurant was telling another employee that she had almost been fired for throwing away a ticket. Inside, a sign by the register said, “throw away a ticket, get fired”. Whatever that means, I guess she should have known better.

October 2, 2005
Sunday:

I worked for Randy again all day today. He called me at 7:30, then came over to pick me up just before 8. We first had to go to Lowe’s to pick up boards that we needed to finish making the staircase that we had started yesterday. The store was supposed to open at 8, but the doors were still locked at that time, so we just entered through a side door that employees were coming through.
We had breakfast at Mcdonalds after buying our lumber, then went to the job site. We had our staircase finished within about an hour and a half. Our next jobs were inside the house, where we had to install a light above the sink and replace a section of the bathroom floor. The section of bad floor was right around the toilet, so we first had to remove it. I then tore out the floor while Randy installed the kitchen light.
We next needed lumber to replace the missing section of floor, so we headed back to Lowe’s. There, we had a big section of plywood cut in half so we could easily fit it into the truck. The store has a big machine that the employees use to cut large pieces of wood for customers. The machine has a button to be pressed on the side of it when you need help. Randy pressed the button and a recorded female voice began repeating every 10 seconds, “special assistance needed at the board cutting area”. The voice repeated about 5 times before a young lady came to cut our board. I thanked her by saying, “we appreciate your special assistance at the board cutting area”.
We bought a few more things at Lowe’s, then went to Sonic for lunch. It took us the rest of the afternoon to replace the flooring in the bathroom, reattach the toilet and clean up the mess. The bathroom on the bottom floor of the house also got messy because a ceiling tile fell through, letting debris pour in from our work area in the upstairs bathroom. I really don’t even think the person living there would have noticed if we had not cleaned up after ourselves. The cleanliness level of the house might be even worse than the structural integrity. A 20+ pound cat that doesn’t know how to use a litter box is a big part of the problem.
Our work for the day was done by 4 o’clock, then Randy dropped me off back at my apartment. Johanna and me then talked from 4:30 till 5:30. I ate leftovers for dinner after that, then posted pictures from the last week online. Greg D. from Maryland called me at about 8 o’clock. We had only exchanged a couple emails since the last time I saw him, which was in Key West almost 2 years ago. He has lived down there on a couple different occasions over the past few years, including the time when I spent 3 months there. He is now living back in his prior homestate of Maryland. He is teaching classes at a college, living in a nice apartment and still doing a lot of writing. He’s one of the most interesting people I have met in my travels and I would like to visit again sometime in the near future.

October 1, 2005
Saturday:

Randy called me at 7:30 this morning because I had agreed to work for him today. He’s now running a handyman business he calls “Ten Acre Woods” and has gotten a lot of customers by putting flyers up around town. He came to pick me up at 8:15 and we headed to a house on Owens St., which is just a few hundred feet from Buckley and Jen’s house. I saw his mom getting into her truck as we drove by.
A man that has several rental properties in town owns the house we worked at today. Randy has been working on a lot of his houses lately. The house on Owens St. is in terrible shape, as the sides are rotting and the back yard is trashy, among dozens of other things. The city had recently inspected it and ordered the landlord to fix a bunch of things, including a soft bathroom floor, moldy bathroom wall, rotting siding and a staircase on the back deck that had extremely narrow steps.
We first went onto the rear deck and knocked on the door so we could talk to the tenant, Tom. He was apparently not expecting us and at first seemed annoyed. Randy showed him a list of all the things the city wanted fixed and he showed us the problem areas. Some of the things seemed kind of petty, like a broken toilet bowl handle and a sliding door that didn’t slide smoothly. I had no idea that the city could order things like that done.
Our first job of the day was to tear some rotten siding away from the deck area. The deck was stretched across the whole back of the house and was elevated about 9 feet. The whole thing wobbled when we walked on it. Randy said that it had been about to collapse before he put extra supports under it recently.
We went to Lowe’s to buy lumber as soon as we had the siding ripped off. At the store, we not only bought lumber to replace the siding, but also to build the new staircase. Randy was walking around with his toolbelt on and a lady customer asked him where the furnace vents were. He told her where to look before informing her that he didn’t work there.
Back at Owens St., we had to ask Tom to move his car so we could get the lumber into the back yard. He was a lot friendlier now and spent about 15 minutes talking to us, mostly about stupid things that the city was doing. Randy told a story about how one of his friends had seen Cabondale Mayor Brad Cole assaulting a waitress in a bar after closing time, which I was very surprised to hear. Apparently, Cole pinned this waitress up against a wall and groped her, thinking that nobody else was still in the building. I would almost have to see this to believe it, considering the seemingly good nature of the mayor.
After dropping off the lumber at the house, we went to Malibu Village mobile home park to help Lisa and her mother move a trailer full of stuff that they had loaded up. Her mother is in the process of temporarily moving in with Lisa and Randy. We took the trailer out to the house and helped them unload it, then went back to work at Owens St.
It then took us about another hour to get the new siding cut and installed onto the house. After that, we started building the staircase, which is something that Randy was uncertain about because he had not built one in 8 or 9 years. Everything ended up turning out just fine, accept for the fact that we ran out of lumber. Making the two supports for the staircase was the hardest part and it required some basic geometry. After both of them were built, we had to dig into the ground until they would sit perfectly level. We next started cutting and mounting the steps, but noticed that they needed more support. So, we cut and placed 2x4’s under each one to make them stronger. We pulled some 2x4’s from a pile of scrap wood when we ran out. We were completely out of lumber by about 5 o’clock, so we sat on the new stairs and smoked a cigarette before cleaning up. A woman that is dating Tom came by while we were sitting and was very pleased to see the new stairs.
I made myself dinner after Randy dropped me off back at the apartment. I didn’t leave again till 7:30, which is when I went out to try and find Whitney’s house. She had told me a couple weeks ago in PK’s that she was having a party tonight. I thought she had told me the house was directly across the street from Laundry World, but the people that live there didn’t know her. A girl there opened the door just as I was about to knock on it, which really scared the hell out of her.
I now figured that I had no way of finding out where the party was, so I decided to go home and make other plans. I saw two painters working in the lobby as I was entering my building, so I asked them if they knew where Whitney lives(she used to work here). A big black man told me that he had also heard about the party and that he would probably be going too, but he didn’t know the address yet. He did at least confirm that it was somewhere on College St., so I decided that I would wait till a little later, then go down the street again looking for it.
Nic had earlier said on the phone that he wanted to go to the party too, but he never called back. I went down to Dawn’s apartment at 8 to ask her if she would like to go to the party at 10 o’clock, and she did. I then fell asleep for the next two hours.
We then walked down College St. looking for the party at 10 o’clock. We walked all the way to the Strip without seeing a house that looked like a party was happening at. We then walked back down the street to take a closer look. We passed a big good-sized brick house less then a block from the strip where we heard music coming from the back yard and saw people knocking on the front door. We asked the people if this was Lisa’s birthday party(the painter had told me it was Lisa’s party), and they said it was. We then walked towards the rear of the house and came to a gate by the garage, where a guy was charging $5 and letting people into the fenced back yard. There were about 50 people back there when we entered. We were both given cups for the kegs, but first drank two beers that I had brought with me.
More and more people kept coming into the party as we stood and drank the first beer. We then walked around to look for Whitney, and found her near a table where mixed drinks were being sold. We all for about 15 minutes, then a punk band started playing. It just consisted of a female singer/guitarist and a drummer. The girls voice was terrible and the sound equipment she was using was just as bad. Three cops came into the party at this time and gave Whitney a ticket for a noise violation, so that was the end of the band.
Dawn and me spent the next hour sitting in some chairs by a bonfire. She drank two screwdrivers after the first beer, and I had two keg beers. She started hiccupping after her first screwdriver and it got worse after the second. I felt bad for her because she was having a hard time talking, but she didn’t want to leave until she had finished the second drink.
I saw a girl sitting indian-style on top of a pillar on the front porch as we walked by. I told her she was like a gargoyle and she drunkenly told me that she was from New Orleans and had still not gone back to get her stuff. Her very large female friend then came over and told Dawn and me that we needed to eat more cheeseburgers because we were too thin.