September 2005

My marketing class was taught by a substitute today; a PhD student that I liked more than the regular teacher. Statistics class ended 20 minutes early because the teacher had to go give surveys as part of her PhD thesis. Before that class, a student that is also in my management class informed me that the weekly tests in that class closely resemble the practice tests on the textbook’s website. He let me use a copy he had of the practice test to study. Before today, I had been just using my notes, and was always missing a few questions. I am glad he told me about this, because the test I took in that class today very closely resembled the practice test he had let me look at. My scores will now always be really good.
I came home during my lunch break and ate a plate of food I had made last night from leftovers. In Chinese class, the assistant teacher had spent a lot of time sticking photocopies of different Chinese characters and sentences on the chalkboard, which she used to help explain the concepts required when counting from 10,000 to 1,000,000,000. This assistant teacher always goes above and beyond the call of duty and must be spending a lot of her free time thinking of different ways like this to teach us. Studying a foreign language is sometimes like being back in elementary school.
I spent my 1-2 o’clock break in the computer lab, then went to economics, where we were given back the tests that we had taken last Friday. Mine had been graded at an 87%, but one of the questions had been incorrectly marked wrong. That question was worth several points, so I will almost have a perfect score after it is corrected. Much better than I had expected.
After class, I went to take a survey in the computer lab of the Rehn building, which is the same survey that my statistics teacher had to leave class early to give today. She had started at 11 and was giving them till 5. Every student that participated will receive bonus points for the class, and the teacher said she would also consider it a “personal favor”, whatever that means. She has made the “personal favor” comment several times and I think it probably means that she would give participating students a higher grade in the class if they end up on the borderline between two grades.
The survey ended up being weird, as have all other surveys I have taken at this school. A room in the computer lab was reserved for survey taking and each computer had a packet of directions and a manila envelope in front of it. The teacher was at the front of the room, and she had me sign a sheet before going to sit at a computer and begin. She has a cast on her hand, which I asked about and was told that it was from beating her kids.
The directions of the survey said that the teacher had ordered a Beatles box set from a website, and that we had to take a look at the website and decide if she would be ripped off or not. We could then either guess that the product would arrive as described or that it wouldn’t. The directions said that we would receive chances to be picked for 1 of 5 $200 prizes if we correctly guessed that the product would arrive as described. We would receive nothing if we incorrectly guessed that the product would arrive. Guessing that it would not arrive as described meaning that we would have a 50% less chance of winning the lottery, but that we were still eligible no matter what happened.
Considering the nature of past surveys I have been a part of at this school, I immediately suspected that my chances at winning the money would be equal no matter what I guessed, especially considering that the teacher had already told us in class that everyone taking the survey would be put into the prize drawing. But, I still followed the directions and investigated the website. It at first seemed to be a perfectly legitimate site, but then a couple things did not seem right. First of all, none of the products had any descriptions; secondly, I tried to put an item in my “cart” and was shown a message saying that the “cart” was temporarily unavailable. An unavailable “cart” meant that nothing could actually be bought. I then logged of the website and opened the manila envelope, which asked me to make my guess about the site. There was also a question asking whether or not I believed that my answer really would affect my chances at winning the money. There were only 3 or 4 questions about the website, then there were 6 scenario questions where a paragraph had to be read and thought about. The paragraphs were all about taking risks and how much risk that we thought was acceptable in the situations described. It appears that the focus of this whole experiment was about risk taking.
I got home just before 4, then went and knocked on Dawn’s apartment door because we were supposed to go out for a beer at that time. She didn’t answer her door, so I left a note. She then came to knock on my door just a few minutes later. We walked to Sidetracks and sat at a picnic table in the sun while we drank our beers. We had a second beer after finishing the first. Our next stop was a Chinese restaurant just a few hundred feet from the bar, which I had never even known existed. The waiter there was an American guy from my Chinese class, who often goes to school wearing a military uniform.
I ordered a rice and beef dish(in Chinese) and Dawn had something with Tofu in it. I talked with the guy from my class a few times as he walked by. His boss appears to be one of the worst slave drivers in town. I overheard a conversation where she yelled at him for asking for a night off. He told her that his friend was flying in from out of town and that he would like to take him out one evening. The Chinese woman yelled, “I want go out too, but can’t. Need you here!”. She yelled at him a second time while I was in the back using the bathroom. The place is so small that the public bathrooms are attached to the kitchen, so anyone wanting to use them has to walk through the kitchen. The guy from my class and a coworker said something to me in Chinese when I walked by and I stopped to answer them. The woman said something to them while we were talking, but they didn’t hear it. She then screamed, “HELLO!” over all of us. I would have quit my first night, after intentionally ruining some equipment or something.
After leaving the restaurant, Dawn and me walked into Old Town Liquor so I could buy a few beers to take out with me later. We then walked back to our building and I went into my apartment and fell asleep for a while.
I got up at 9, then rode my bike over to Buckley’s place. He invited me over tonight to see his mom and sister(Ruth) one last time before they are both gone from Carbondale forever. His sister already lives in Nashville, and his mom is moving to Texas tomorrow. I have never really know either his mom or sister really well, but still feel like I do because I have been seeing them here and there for so many years. His sister looked a lot different than the last time I saw her because she lost a lot of weight, but his mom was still the same tiny human that I remember. And….she makes fun of me for always being so skinny.
We all watched the movie “Napoleon Dynamite” together, then I left shortly afterwards. Just after I got outside the door, I remembered that I had forgotten to take a picture with everyone, so I went back in and set the camera up with a timer for two quick pictures.
My next stop was just a few blocks away, near where I lived last spring. Steph had called earlier in the night and left me a message saying that she would be at a party on 501 Carico St.. I found the house and didn’t see anyone I knew on the porch, so I had to ask if I was at the right place. I found Steph inside, along with Elian(who lives there) and a couple other people I had seen before. I talked to Steph in the living room for a while, then talked to some guys in a bedroom for a while. I asked them about the artwork that was displayed all over the house and they said that it was all made by an artist friend of theirs who is just trying to get started. His stuff looks a lot like van-Gogh and all appears to have many hours put into it.
I sat out on the porch talking to Steph, Elian and 3 other people during the last 30 minutes I was at the party. We all traded border patrol stories for a while, then they went out to the bars and I came home. It’s cold outside.
Walking into my apartment building, I passed a room where I heard a guy behind the door talking in some unknown language on what sounded like a ham radio.

September 29, 2005
Thursday:

Today was the first chilly day of the fall, with the temperature probably never rising above 60. I made myself some eggs for breakfast and chatted with Johanna a couple minutes before heading off to Chinese class. I had a short-sleeved shirt on, which was kind of cold for the bike ride, even though it was bright and sunny.
After class, I went to the Faner computer lab to check and see if there were any new student jobs listed on the website, which there was. It’s an office position in the engineering building. The ad said to apply in person, so I went across campus and found the office. It was a big room with several desks, only one of which was staffed. The lone lady at a desk, who was very friendly, gave me an application and I filled it out.
I then came home and fell back asleep for at least an hour and a half, as I was tired from staying up till after 3am last night. Johanna called at 4:30 and we talked for about an hour. She said that she had been waiting to talk to me since 4, which is midnight her time. I apparently told her last night that we would talk at that time, but I thought she had said Friday. We won’t talk again till Sunday night because her sister and her boyfriend are coming into town for the weekend.
I went out to get a haircut and go grocery shopping after our conversation. There were two people already waiting for haircuts at GreatClips, so I put my name on the waiting list, then walked into Schnucks. I talked to Pam at the deli for a few minutes, then talked to the girl from Mogadishu, Somalia as I was checking out. She had always seemed kind of shy in the past, but now appears to be much more conversational. She had been working in the deli when I was working in the meat department, and I also had a class with her last semester. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to live in Mogadishu, which is the city that the movie “Black Hawk Down” is set in.
Back at Great Clips, the lady that cut my hair did it in record speed. She had the friendly and blunt personality of the typical middle-aged partier. After paying $11 for the haircut, I went back into Schnucks because I had forgotten to buy hair gel, which I had run out of this morning. I also purchased a two-pack of toothbrushes and a tube of Aqua Fresh for 99 cents each, and talked to William C. for a minute.
Back at the apartment, I cooked a potato, pasta and peas for dinner. I had bought a non-crank can opener from Schnucks because the regular crank kind was $4. The cheaper one was only 66 cents, but I had a hard time figuring it out at first. I’m still not sure if I am using it right because it mutilated the can I opened.
I started studying Chinese after the meal. Our assignment for tomorrow is to fill in the missing blanks of a paragraph with information about an interesting trip that we have taken in the past. I wrote mine about going to Thailand just before the tsunami. I spent most of the rest of the evening studying Chinese, taking breaks to use the Internet every so often. I registered with the website facebook.com, which is kind of an online classbook. My brother and sister are listed on there, and I also found a few other people I know, including Anna E., Cole and Keith C. Anna’s profile says that she would like to be a dancer for Brittany Spears. I was chatting with Amanda later and she told me that Anna had once said that in a job interview………..Anna is from Pomona……….

September 28, 2005
Wednesday:

School took up most of the day. I didn’t even go home during lunch because I planned on studying for my statistics test at that time. But, I didn’t actually start studying till after my last class was over at 3. My planned lunchtime studying was supposes to happen after eating at Mcdonalds, but I just ended up surfing the Internet after the meal. I saw Jan as I was walking through the Student Center. Strange girl.
At 3, I spent about an hour and a half studying at the computer lab. I needed to use a computer so I could download and watch all the PowerPoint presentations that the teacher had on the website.
The test was held in the Lenengrad building, which I had never been in before. It is the big 4-5 story brick building directly next to the library. I walked in the northeast corner of it and there was nobody within sight down a long hallway on the main floor. A motorized camera was mounted behind a glass sphere on the corner of the wall facing me. The room I needed to be in was 133, and all the rooms on the main floor were under 100, so I walked up the staircase. A young guy and an older woman were in the hallway of the second level. The floor was littered with different pieces of computer hardware, including old monitors and printers. I entered a bathroom as I was passing down the hall. A small hallway behind the first door of the bathroom led to another door, which was free swinging and resembled a saloon. Behind the second door, was a small room with very high ceilings. There were two urinals in the room and 3 darkly painted stalls. Not much light was present because one of the few lights in the room, on the wall above the sink mirror, was permanently unwired and had a green “saving energy” sticker on it. I noticed a wall-access panel was partially open as I was walking back out of the little bathroom hallway. I opened the panel and saw a deep utility shaft that dropped all the way to the basement, and rose all the way to the top of the building. Lights were on inside the shaft, and ladders and platforms were built throughout. Dozens of different colors and sizes of pipes led from bottom to top and cool air was blowing out the hole.
I found the test taking room at the very end of the hallway. It was an auditorium with about 300 seats and lots of extra space. I just love these old building on campus. All of the seats were fold-out and made of wood. The springs in the seat I sat in were completely worn-out, so I slid partially inside the seat whenever I tried to lean back. I moved to the very front row of the room when I noticed that it was the only row with newer seats, which were red and padded. I was so uncomfortable in my wooden seat that the red row just looked beautiful. I arrived about 15 minutes early and a couple hundred more people came in after me. During that time, the teacher and an assistant came in and waited at the front of the room. As usual, the teacher was telling stories and chatting while we waited. I heard her say that a student had cried earlier in the day after taking the test, that her nickname was once “mean test lady”, that students had once slashed two of her tires and that students has slashed all four of her tires another more-recent time. I haven’t yet decided if this lady is terrible or if she is a terrible people-person.
I finished the test in about an hour and-a-half; expect a B. I know I at least did something wrong because a graph was handed out with the test and I never used it. Rain was just beginning to fall as I made my way home, and a strong line of thunderstorms moved through around 7. I stood and watched the storm out my window after seeing on radar that the line stretched all the from Texas to Indiana. There was frequent lighting and a few strong wind gusts, but nothing too severe. I fell asleep from 7 to 8, then woke when a call came in from Buckley. He had earlier left me a message saying he might be going out, but he was calling back to say that he wouldn’t be. I then called Nic and agreed to meet him at the Student Center pool room.
It was still raining kind of hard when I went outside to get on my bike, so I came back in and waited a few more minutes. I left again when the rain had calmed. I found Nic playing at a table my himself, then we played 2 games. He almost ran the table on the first one, then I won the second. We next went to his house, which you may know, is the same place I lived in with Mike and Carolyn before going to Finland. I was kind of surprised to see how much the place looked the same, but maybe I should have been considering they even bought some of Mike and Carolyn’s furniture from them. Nic gave me a 2x2 foot picture of Johanna that I had accidentally left on my bedroom door when I moved out. I had printed the picture out when we lived in Macau, and it is a copy of the one that is on my website where she is laying on a blue towel on the beach.
We next headed to Jake’s place to play poker, stopping along the way to buy a 12 pack of Bud Light from Old Town Liquors. Jake, Jeff, Dan and a guy I don’t know were at the trailer when we arrived. I hadn’t seen Jeff since arriving home. He told me how he had been living in Gulf Port when Hurricane Katrina hit. He had an apartment 7 miles from the beach and did not evacuate. His apartment itself remained intact, but the building it is in has since been condemned. He did not get any water in the apartment or broken windows, but said that he noticed cracks in the walls soon after the storm ended.
Sara came over shortly after Nic and I arrived, then Dawn came over a bit after that. Dan and Dawn did not play poker, but everybody else did. I was doing fine in the game for about an hour, then I somehow let myself get drawn into a high stakes(if you consider $4 high) round with a bad hand, which cost me most of the $5 worth of chips that I had started the game with. I lost the rest of the chips soon afterwards by going “all-in” on a halfway decent hand.
After losing, I agreed to play some dice with the guy that I don’t know. He showed me how to play a game called “6-5-4”, then I put the last two dollars I had with me on the line. I ended up winning $4 from him, then everyone else joined in the game, minus Dan and Dawn, who had already left. I quickly lost $2 before deciding to keep my last 4$. I watched the games go on for another 20 minutes, as the stakes kept getting higher and higher. One-dollar games turned into two-dollar games, then two-dollar games turned into 5-dollar games. The next to last game made one person $10 richer.
Nic and I left at 1 o’clock and the air outside then was feeling like fall for the first time all year; about 50 degrees.

September 27, 2005
Tuesday:

The 1.2 gigabyte program that I have been downloading for the past 36 hours, Microsoft Streets and Trips, was finally finished when I got up this morning at 9:30. I burned it onto two cd’s, then ate 2 sausage biscuits and a banana for breakfast. The next hour was spent studying for the Chinese test that I had to take at noon. I ate more food before leaving the house; a bowl of leftover Italian flavored Hamburger Helper from last night.
I stopped on the way to class to sharpen a couple of pencils at the Faner computer lab. Isn’t this journal exciting? The manual sharpener was sharpening very roughly, so I used an electric one, which made the wood smooth as silk.
The Chinese test was more difficult than the past two, and I doubt I got another A, but still probably didn’t do bad. Randy met me in front of the Student Center as soon as class was over because I had agreed to spend the afternoon helping him and Rodger H. split wood on his property. His furnace runs on both natural gas and wood. Using both fuels at the same time dramatically reduces his utility bill, so he keeps wood on hand every winter.
Randy picked me up in a big old primer-gray pickup truck that he bought a few months ago for $900. When I climbed in, he told me that we would not be cutting wood today because Rodger had to work. So, our only plans now were to get the software working that I have been downloading for him the past few days.
We first had to stop at Kroger(east) to buy some things that Lisa needed to make dinner tonight, then went on to Randy’s house. We spent the next couple hours installing the software on his laptop and trying to figure out how to use it. Quickbooks appears to be a very large a complicated program that will probably take him a while to fully learn. He and Lisa recently got a puppy wiener dog named Cohiba, and it laid on my lap most of the time we worked on the computer. After getting the software installed, we spent some time looking at Google satellite maps of Randy’s property, but the house was completely covered by trees.
Late in the afternoon, we put charcoal on the barbeque grill so hamburgers could be cooked for dinner. Lisa asked us to drive to a nearby gas station when she realized that she didn’t have any cheese to put on her hamburger. A package of 24 slices cost $6! Back at the house, we put the burgers on the grill, then took the 4-wheeler on a ride through the woods and a field. We hit about 40 or 50 miles per hour in the field, which gave me a weightless feeling every time we hit a small bump. The weather was perfect and sunny today and I took quite a few pictures as we rode around to different areas.
Lisa’s mother and sister were at the house today cleaning out the basement so they can temporarily move in it. Lisa’s daughter, Linda, was also home. Lisa, her mom, Randy and me all played poker while we waited on the food to get ready. They have a tabletop poker board on a table in the den/family room.
Everyone ate together in the dining room, then me and the other poker players went back to our game. Lisa’s mom only played a couple more rounds before leaving, but the rest of us played for a while longer. Lisa’s daughter kept making me crayon drawings the whole time we played. I had a stack of about 20 of them in my lap by the time we were finished. A fat blue fish is the only figure that I can distinguish as anything recognizable. I asked her to draw a picture of me and she came back about 60 seconds later with a scribbled purple blob.
Randy gave me a ride home at 8 o’clock, dropping me off back of at the Student Center because that is where my bike was parked. Driving into the university, I noticed that 2 huge new lighted brick signs had recently been built at the main entrance. Each one looks to be about 50 feet long and 4 feet tall, with enough lights to brighten a stadium. I went by to take a picture after getting my bike, but the lights were then off because people were working on them.
I started a load of laundry as soon as I got back home, then used the computer as I was waiting on it. Now that I have an seemingly unlimited source of copyrighted programs, I have started to download some other things, starting with a bundle of plug-ins for my video editing program, which will hopefully give me cool new features that I didn’t have before.

September 26, 2005
Monday:

Somebody knocked on the apartment next to me for what seemed like 30 minutes last night. It probably happened sometime between 2 and 4 o’clock in the morning, but it’s hard to tell for sure. The person started out with a normal knock, then got desperate when the person didn’t answer. The peaceful knock gradually turned in to a violent double-fisted beating of the door. There were then knocking-breaks, which lasted a couple minutes at a time, before the violence continued. I thought I was going to hear some fighting at any moment, but the knocking just continued and I fell asleep again. I think the sound was responsible for a dream that somebody was walking around in my apartment with a meat cleaver in their hand.
The rain finally stopped overnight, after a 24-hour marathon that left mud, leaves and small branches all over the ground. The air was a bit cooler today, but was by no means cold. The classrooms on campus were cold. The air-conditioning and heating systems all over the university are centrally controlled, which leaves every building cold or hot in the fall and spring. The air-conditioning will be turned off very soon and replaced with heating, then the rooms will all be hot if the temperature rises again.
I came home during my lunch break and fell asleep for an hour after eating lunch. I got up 40 minutes before economics class started and went over my test notes a couple times before going to take the test. The teacher came in and gave us the tests 5 minutes late. The lateness didn’t matter at all because everything was a lot easier than expected. Many of the questions were almost exactly like what we had covered in the test review. I had this teacher for a class last semester and he is teaching in mostly the same ways. Then, I would only go to his class on test review day and test day, and I still got an A. I have been going this semester because he told us on the first day of class that he was going to be more difficult than he had in the past. I also go because he takes attendance, which is something he did not do last semester.
So, I finished the test after about 20 minutes today, and I think I can expect at least a B. I then came back home and talked to Johanna before starting to study for a Chinese test that I have tomorrow. I took a break at 7 o’clock to make myself a package of Italian flavored Hamburger Helper for dinner. I then continued studying till 10 o’clock.
I started another Bittorrent download on my computer last night and it has now been downloading for 24 hours. The file contains the program Microsoft Roads and Trips, which is a trip planning program that Randy asked me to copy for him. The file is over 1 gigabyte and the download is happening at less than dial-up speed. The Bittorrent program that I use shows both my download progress and information about other users that are uploading from me. I have currently downloaded 830 megabytes, but have uploaded over a gigabyte. In case you don’t know how Bittorrent works, users download different parts of the file from multiple other users, so someone could start downloading it from you even before you have fully received it. At least that’s how I think it works, but maybe I don’t know anything other than how to steal stuff(software).

September 25, 2005
Sunday:

I slept in past 10 this morning because I was up until after 4 last night. I had started a download on my computer when I went to bed and it was still working on it when I got up this morning. The download was a 450 meg file of the program Quickbooks, which Randy had asked me to get for him a couple weeks ago. I used Bittorrent to get the file, which is a type of file sharing program that I had never used before. It is commonly used now to share big files like movies, etc.. The download was going extremely slow this morning, but it did eventually finish about 11:30.
I then had to figure out what to do with the file I had. Luckily, there were pretty clear directions that came with it. There was a certain process that I followed which resulted in the file being uncompressed and burned onto a disk. There was then another process of finding out what serial numbers to type in when installing the program. After it was all said and done, I had a $500 program for just about 30 minutes of work. I tested it by installing it on my computer, and everything worked fine.
It was raining when went to sleep last night and when I woke up this morning, and it kept raining the rest of the day, thanks to Hurricane Rita. We will probably have about 24 hours of straight rain by the time it is over with. There were even some significant wind gusts at times.
I spent the first 5 hours of my day at home. I carried my broken TV out to the dumpster after eating some breakfast. I talked to Johanna from 1 till 2:30, then went to the library after 3 o’clock so I could check out an economics book and study for the test I have in that class tomorrow. I sat at a table with the book for almost 2 hours, and I did not enjoy myself one bit. I think I now have a good enough understanding to at least pass the test, though. My grade won’t be pretty, but I just can’t stand to study that stuff for long.
I went over to the Faner computer lab at 6 o’clock so I could use a scanner there to scan a bunch of old pictures that I recently got out of my storage area. I spent another 2 hours scanning 120 of them. I forgot to transfer the files off the computer before I logged out, and I was worried that I may have lost all my work. I remembered this as I was walking in the student center to buy some dinner from Mcdonalds. I turned around and went right back to the computer I had been using. I was very glad to find my files still on the desktop when I logged back in. I transferred them to my website, then went back into the student center. I decided not to eat at Mcdonalds while I was in a bathroom washing my hands.
I instead decided to go do some shopping at Schnucks, then eat at home.
The rain had temporarily stopped at this time, but had started back up again when I was leaving Schnucks.
Back at the apartment, I ate leftover macaroni spirals and cheese from earlier today. After that, I checked out a website that Tim J. gave me the address of when I saw him at the Murphysboro BBQ on Friday night. It is called www.eathufu.com, and it is a company that sells human flesh flavored tofu. How could they possibly know it tastes like human?
I spent the rest of the evening getting my new pictures online.

September 24, 2005
Saturday:

I think I got up at Mike’s mom’s house sometime around 10:30 this morning. Haha, that sentence sounds kind of funny by itself.
Mike’s mom and Loyd were already gone for a weekend trip to St. Louis by the time the rest of us got up. Mike cooked a breakfast of eggs and bacon before we left the house. We noticed a bunch of big mushrooms growing outside as we were walking to the car. They are the same kind that are invading the campus. I never remember seeing them on previous years, now they are suddenly everywhere. Carolyn was having fun kicking them this morning because they explode into pieces when hit. After destroying 3 of them, she noticed that her shoe was covered in a white slime, which she washed off with a garden hose.
Back in Carbondale, I went with Mike and Carolyn to do some shopping before they took me home. We dropped Carolyn off at Bed Bath&Beyond, then Mike and me went into Office Max because he wanted to buy a computer that was on special there. He wanted a new one because his ancient one lost a budget that him and Carolyn had spent hours preparing. Old computers are like bad pets……you keep them until they do something really terrible.
An employee at the door of Office Max told Mike that the computer he wanted was sold out and they would not be getting any more. The employee tried to sell him another more expensive computer, but the deal was not that good. We next went across the street and browsed Best Buy while we waited on Carolyn to finish up. I wish I had money. There is a lot of cool stuff at Best Buy. After leaving Best Buy, Mike and me went back across the street to look for Carolyn at BB&B. She had gone there to look at things she could use for the wedding reception, which will be in St. Louis the week after they are married in Mexico, I think.
They dropped me off at my apartment sometime around 11, then I spent a couple hours getting a bunch of pictures on my website that I have taken over the past couple weeks. I fell asleep from 3 to 5, as I was kind of tired from all the free beer I had last night. I was reading Fark.com after I got up, and they had a link to a website where asexual people meet. Asexual? I’ve heard of a lot of strange and unusual sexuality types, but asexual may be the strangest. I posted an anonymous message on their message board saying I was making a documentary about asexual people in Southern Illinois. It will be great if someone answers it and actually lets me interview them.
In my journal from my visit to Gulfport, I had wrote how I left an anonymous email address on a bulletin board in the church that my brother and I taken the water from. Well, I got a response from the pastor today! It was just a couple sentences asking if the address was real and if I would tell more about what happened that day. I sent the pastor a copy of my journal from that day and some pictures of the church, but I still remained anonymous.
Dawn came over a few minutes before 7 o’clock to see if I wanted to go out for a drink with her, but I already had plans for the rest of the evening, so we agreed to hang out next Friday. My dad, Chris and Brant came by to pick me up at 7 o’clock to go out for dinner to celebrate Chris’s 25th birthday, which was actually last Friday. We went to El Bajios(Mexican restaurant) and met up with Clara, Amanda and Keri. We all sat at a table in the middle of the restaurant and made a scene for about an hour. I know we were twice as loud as any of the other groups there. We started out with drinks and it took about 20 or 25 minutes before any food arrived. Everyone except Brant had something alcoholic to drink. He is a wuss, but he probably smokes crack when he goes to the bathroom.
To eat, I ordered a plate with two soft tacos, rice and beans. The waiter came out with 5 plates sitting across his left arm. He asked Amanda for ID before he would serve her a drink, then he kept speaking to her by name every time he passed by our table. I had him take a picture of our group after the meal. He could not fit us all in the shot by standing next to the table, so he made a great effort to find a good spot to take the picture. Probably very successful at his job when it comes to tips.
Amanda, Brant, Chris and Keri were all going to see the movie “Flight Plan” after dinner, but I didn’t go with them because I had already made other plans. My dad and Clara dropped me off at the apartment, then I got a few things from inside before riding my bike over to Buckley and Jen’s house. They were not home when I arrived, but Mike and Carolyn were in the yard waiting for them. I had a 6 pack of beer in my backpack, so Mike and me opened a couple of them up while we waited in the dark for Buckley and Jen to get home. They arrived within about 5 minutes, then we all spent the next few hours inside.
Carrie and Brian came over sometime around 9:30 or 10 o’clock. I have hung out with both of them on many occasions in the past, but I hadn’t seen either of them since before I went to China. Carrie is a high school friend of Jen’s, and she has been dating Brian for most of the time I’ve know her. Brian is a PHD student, so we affectionately call him Brain. Keri now lives in Louisiana, but she was in town because her home was under a voluntary evacuation from Hurricane Rita.
We had the movie Napoleon Dynamite on as we all hung out, which I had never seen before. I am always the last of people to watch movies. Everyone else always seems to have seen everything that I haven’t.
Mike, Carolyn, Carrie and Brian left sometime between midnight and one, then I stayed till about 2. Jen went to bed before I left, then Buckley and I stayed up watching TV till I went home.
It had been sprinkling when I left El Bajios with my family, and it was raining steadily when I left Buckley and Jen’s tonight, but not enough to get me very wet at all

September 23, 2005
Friday:

My Marketing class had two guest speakers today. One was the owner of the Pinch Penny businesses, and the other was the sales manager from Silkworm. They spent 50 minutes mostly telling the class what they looked for in job interviews. The woman said that she had received 3 degrees in 5 years and that a person she was once interviewing started crying during the interview. The man had said that some of his interviews were very intimate, then laughed and changed his selection of words. Yeah, I’m sure that a lot of bar owners have a lot of intimate interviews.
Walking to my next class, Lou told me that the Pinch Penny owner is the son of the man who actually started the business, and that he has been running it into the ground since he took it over from his father. As I was walking and talking to Lou, a girl in front of me turned around and said, “Are you laughing at me”. I hadn’t been, but I did when she asked.
I came home after Statistics class because Management class was cancelled today. On the way, I noticed that the campus is being invaded by big white mushrooms. I had seen a few of them earlier in the week in a soccer field, but the whole north side of campus is now full of hundreds of them, some of which are almost a foot tall and 6 inches wide. I also saw a giant puffball. Another unusual sight was bulldozers removing all the boulders from the fountain in front of the library. I was surprised to see that a couple regular sized bulldozers could move rocks that are bigger than cars.
I returned to school after lunch, stopping along the way to take a couple pictures of a couple big mushrooms. After Chinese, I spent my hour break in the computer lab trying to find websites with downloadable Chinese children’s videos. I have been looking for such videos for the past couple days, but have been unsuccessful. I would like to watch shows from China that resemble shows like Blues Clues here. I think it might be a good way to practice listening comprehension. I have already found out how to watch Chinese TV online, but the speaking is too fast for me to follow. Huh, 3rd grade speaking would probably be too fast for me right now, so I probably need to look for things at the preschool level. I was able to find a children’s website today, which has some short animated video clips and kids weblogs. I was actually able to understand a few sentences from the weblogs, but I don’t want to read those because the grammar is probably really bad. I do think it could be really interesting to translate some of them, though.
After Economics class, I stopped at Yesteryear Tobacconist on the way home, where I bought two ounces of Luxury Bright tobacco and a box of pre-rolled papers with filters in them.
I went back to school at 5 o’clock so I could attend a review session for an economics test that will be on Monday. The teacher told us a little bit about the test, but the main purpose of the session was for students to ask questions. As usual, the older student that talks a lot did most of the talking. But, this was a good thing tonight, because he got the teacher to talk about the test more than he would have otherwise.
The review ended at 6, and I stopped at Old Town Liquors on the way home to buy a 6 pack of Keystone Light to take with me to Murphysboro later. Back at my apartment, I had another hour to wait before Mike and Carolyn were supposed to come pick me up, so I ate the rest of my leftover hotdog omelet for dinner.
They showed up right on time and we then drove to Marilyn and Loyd’s(Mike’s mom and stepdad) house in Murphysboro, where we spent about 30 minutes talking to them. Marilyn was very excited about the fact that she was just accepted into grad school at SIU.
At 8 o’clock, Mike, Carolyn and me all headed to the BBQ championship that was going on in downtown Murphysboro. We parked the car a couple blocks away and walked into the area. Carolyn was carrying a bottle of rum, which we were not sure would be allowed in, but nobody seemed to notice or care. We saw Matt P. and his friend(mental block-can’t remember his name) as we walked through the festival to meet up with John and Amy, who were there with the BBQ team that John is a part of. John’s team was set up at the very end of the festival grounds and they had 50 or 60 people inside of their area. Everybody they knew was getting free BBQ and beer all night, including us. They had a Budweiser beer trailer there that was stocked with 8 kegs and 15 cases of beer. I love it that John is on a BBQ team. If you remember, this association was also very valuable when we used the BBQ teams equipment during Mike and Carolyn’s graduation party this past spring.
We stayed at the festival from 8 until 11 tonight, and mostly hung out in John’s team’s area. I saw quite a few people there that I know from Murphysboro, some of which I hadn’t seen in years, including Allen White, Courtney Rains and Gene and Beth Smout. Gene and Beth have been friends of my family since before I was born.
Also there tonight, was my brother, John R., Keri, Brian E., Christy M., Bob Eaton, Tim J. and Barb and her kids. And, I met Matt P’s dad, Mike, tonight for the first time, who is the same size as and strongly resembles Matt. I bummed Mike a cigarette and Matt tried to take it away because he wants him to completely quit. Mike said that things had reversed since Matt was in high school, as he had always been taking cigarettes from him then.
The 3 hours we spent at this BBQ was a great time, and adding to it was the fact that Carolyn actually had more than half a drink tonight. She was in fine shape within 30 minutes of arriving, and she gave me a good punch in the stomach when I started laughing at her.
We gave Tim a ride home as we were on the way back to Mike’s mom’s house. I stayed the night with Mike and Carolyn at his mom’s house, where Marilyn and Loyd had prepared a mattress for me in one of the rooms downstairs.

September 22, 2005
Thursday:

I made myself a hot dog omelet for breakfast this morning. Mike called during the omelet-making process and told me that he would be in town this weekend, when his brother will be in a BBQ contest in Murphysboro.
I went to Grinnell hall to fill out a job application at 11 o’clock, but the person I talked to told me I need not apply if I was only available for daytime hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Another person had sent me an email about the job yesterday, saying that a Tuesday/Thursday availability would be OK.
I came back home after Chinese class and spent the rest of the day and night in my apartment. I spent a lot of time studying Chinese, but not very efficiently, as I was always doing things on the Internet at the same time. I fell asleep for a while in the late afternoon. It was hot enough to turn the air conditioner on today.
My TV died tonight. The screen has been jumping lately and it has now gone to just a thin line across the center. It works OK when I first turn it on, but then just shows the line after a couple minutes. Instead of carrying the heavy thing downstairs to get it into the dumpster, I wish I could just throw it out the window, then carry it to the dumpster.

September 21, 2005
Wednesday:

I had a quiz in Statistics class today. The teacher waited until the last 10 minutes of class to start handing it out to the 100+ students in the class, which is held in a full sized auditorium. She then stopped and started talking about unrelated things just after she started passing them out. A student cut her off in mid-sentence to loudly declare we had only 10 minutes left. She replied that nobody had offered to help, but she hadn’t asked for any, either. The student that made the comment then helped pass them out. I think I did well, but question #1 was worded in an unclear way.
I saw a girl on a bike almost run down another girl that was walking on the way to my next class. The collision caused the pedestrian to spin around, but she didn’t fall down. As a matter of fact, she kept talking on her cellphone like nothing had happened, even though it appeared to have been a hard hit. The girl on the bike was black and the pedestrian was white; probably a reverse hate crime.
My management class only lasted about 15 minutes, then the teacher told us to all get drunk on Friday because the class would be cancelled. The 200+ students in the room all applauded that comment.
I used this extra 45 minutes to come home and eat lunch. I watched the Weather Channel while I ate because I was curious what was up with this new hurricane, Rita. I had been watching it from Key West radar on the Internet last night and noticed how perfectly symmetrical it was. It was then a category 1, but had grown to a category 3 with 150 MPH winds by the time I turned on the TV today. Its perfect shape makes me think of it as a saw blade headed towards the coast.
I found a book on the sidewalk as I was walking to my Chinese class. I saw it out the window while I was going up the stairs and I went back down to pick it up. It is an older economics book called ‘Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered’. I was hoping it would be a newer expensive textbook that I could sell to the bookstore. I probably would have checked lost and found before selling it, though, well maybe.
I used the computers in the Faner lab during my break between Chinese and Economics class. The university website had a couple new job postings which might fit my schedule, so I sent emails to the contact addresses that were listed. One of the jobs titles said, “Duties including handling small rodents……”, among other things. The job requires taking care of laboratory animals and cleaning some glassware in labs. The hours would be semi-flexible and I think it would be the perfect thing for me right now. I opened my email by saying something like, “I would be glad to take care of your rodents”.
I got my economics assignment back that I had asked the teacher about yesterday. I’m glad I asked because he apparently had misplaced it or something. I got a 95%, which was a lot better than all the other students’ papers that I spied on. That will probably be my best grade all semester because I hate the class.
I came back home after class, then talked to Johanna online for a while. Next, was a couple hours of translating two Chinese paragraphs in my textbook. I can sometimes translate a sentence word for word and still have no idea what it means.
I took a grocery shopping trip to Schnucks at 6:30. Keri was working at the bank, so I talked to her for a while. I have been recognizing a girl she works with lately as someone I went to high school with, but I could not really remember who until recently. I asked her today if her name was Michele, and she said Melissa. I asked her if she was in the band and played a flute, and she had. We spent a few minutes asking each other about different people that we used to go to high school with, but found that neither of us really keeps in contact with many of them these days. She told me that she is living next door to her ex-fiance…..oh…..only in Murphysboro.
Following Johanna’s requests, I bought more things that I considered healthy today, like a jar of pickles, 5 bananas, a can of corn and a can of peas. Back at home, I cooked a very healthy meal of Philly Cheese Steak Hamburger Helper and a microwaved potato. I watched the movie “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” as I cooked and after I ate. I can’t believe I never watched that before, it is hilarious. After that, I watched a new series on ABC, “Invasion”. I will probably watch it again next week, as I always like creepy shows and movies about aliens.
Clara left a message on my voicemail in the evening saying just, “Garth, Google Earth”. I thought that was just what they called their satellite-imaging search, but I checked it out and discovered that it was actually a software package to use with the satellite images. Download this if you don’t have it. You can view the whole earth, then zoom in on a certain sections close enough to see the colors of individual automobiles. Unfortunately, some of the non-United States imagery appears to be really old. I checked out Macau to see the progress of some big buildings that were being built while I was there, and found that construction had not even started when the picture was taken. And, a new 100+ million dollar bridge that opened a year ago was undergoing the very first phases of construction, so the pictures are several years old.

September 20, 2005
Tuesday:

Lots of thunder, lightning and rain last night. A couple dozen bolts were like explosions and were waking me up every couple minutes for a while.
I got up at 10 o’clock and there is not much interesting I can say about today. In Chinese class, I learned that it is OK to tell people that they are fat in China. The teacher said an old Chinese woman once told him that his legs were fat just after she had met him.
Back at home, I went over some Power Point slides to study for a Statistics quiz that I have tomorrow.
While reading news online, I came across an article about a local school that had to remove a painting that had hung on the same wall for 50 years. It was a copy of Davinci’s painting, “The Last Supper”, and an organization from New York had sent this school a letter saying that they would be sued if the painting was not removed immediately. The school complied out of fear of losing the suit.
I talked to Johanna for a while later in the afternoon, then made myself dinner at 5.
I spent time studying Chinese in the early evening, then watched the movie “Congo” at 8. It’s about killer gorillas and I had seen parts of it years before.

September 19, 2005
Monday:

I had a dream last night that I had to sell a kidney to pay tuition. I woke up to a maintenance worker blaring an oldies radio station in the hallway outside my door.
My morning classes were normal except for a piano player in my management class. Instead of the normal assistant that teaches the class, the older professor was there today. He had been present during the first couple days of class this semester, and had asked then if anyone knew how to play the piano that always sits at the front of the room. One black male student had raised his hand and the teacher joked that he should play it every day while everyone is coming into class so they will be calm and relaxed. I guess the teacher wasn’t joking after all, because he already had the guy playing by the time I sat down today. After part of one song, he asked the guy to play something more “spirited”, and the guy complied.
I wish this guy taught the class every day because he is a lot more entertaining, relaxed and knowledgeable than the regular teacher. He gives lots of weird and funny real world examples to go with what he is teaching. He is always dressed unprofessionally and he sits slouched in a chair with his arms across his big belly while he teaches.
During my two-hour break, I came home and had lunch, then talked to Johanna at 12:30. I spent the rest of my time looking more into those online survey websites that I mentioned last week, and it appears that just about all of them have some kind of catch. I figured that much from the beginning.
After my marketing class ended, I waited to talk with the teacher at the end of class, because I had never received an assignment back that I had emailed in a couple weeks ago. The teacher remembered getting the email and promised to look into the matter for me.
Back at home, I fell asleep for about two hours, then got up and watched TV while I had a hot dog and Spanish rice for dinner. My Internet was not working in the evening for a couple hours, and I discovered that one of my cables had just somehow become loose. I had thought it was because they were working on the ceilings in the hallways. After fixing it, I read an email from my brother where he reminded me that him, Amanda and some other family are all using Yahoo Messenger, so I finally set up my computer to run the program all the time and I added their names to my contact list.
I watched the movie “FreeJack” later in the evening, which is a 1992 movie with Anthony Hopkins. It is set in the year 2009, when rich people are making themselves immortal by having thier brain information stored in a computer, then putting it into the bodies of people that they abduct from the past. They abduct these people at the moment before they die. They want bodies from the past because modern ones are too diseased from pollution.

September 18, 2005
Sunday:

I went to bed just after 10 last night, then got up at 10 this morning….12 hours. I sure have been a professional sleeper lately. Looking at the clock this morning, I was really glad that I don’t work at Schnucks anymore, as I would have had to get up at 5am this morning and every other Sunday. Oh, how I hated that so much. People were not meant to get up at 5am any day of the week, especially not weekends. I’m also glad to have dramatically decreased my risk of loosing fingers(on meat saws).
Johanna and I talked for an hour before noon, taking a break so I could eat and she could have a shower. I made myself a sandwich and hot dog. After our conversation ended, I headed to the library to work on economics homework. I arrived at noon, but discovered that the building was not actually opening till 1. I did not want to go back home for an hour, so I went into the student center. I bought a small chocolate shake from Mcdonalds, then took it up to the International Lounge and killed the time by reading this weeks editions of the Carbondale Times and Night Life.
The International Lounge has always been my favorite place on campus because it is huge, plush, dark and quiet. A big, slowly-spinning neon sculpture just adds to its atmosphere. This is a great place to study and an even better place to sleep. On a busy weekday, you may see 25 or 30 people sleeping on couches throughout the area, which also adds to the peaceful atmosphere. The place is almost totally abandoned on a weekend day, which is my favorite time to be there. Before sitting down to read my papers, I walked through the hallway leading to the lounge and looked at all the artwork that is on display right now. The art is periodically changed, so I had never before seen the stuff that is there now. The current pieces are tame compared last year, when some wood was displayed that had been carved and painted to look like bloody body parts. The International Lounge is really just weird.
I went back to the library just before 1 and still had a few minutes to wait. I spent that time by reading a law enforcement personnel magazine that I found by the entrance. The advertisements on the pages were for things like surveillance aircraft and police car electronics. The advertisements were interesting, so I mostly just looked at them. I did read part of one article, where I learned that the police have the right to handcuff and question anyone that they find in a house where there are executing a search warrant for a violent crime.
Once the library opened, I checked out the textbook for my economics class and started on my homework. The book is allowed to be checked out for only two hours and I could not completely figure out the assignment in that time. I probably could have checked it out again, but I just decided that I had done enough and would just turn in what I had already completed. I dislike this class almost as much as statistics. The assignment required making several graphs showing different economic situations and I learned how to use Microsoft Word to make these graphs. I could have handwritten the assignment, but they teacher prefers typed. I wanted to use Windows Paint to make the graphs, then import them to Word, but the library computers have limited software access, which does not include Paint or any other drawing program. I was forced to learn a new way, and my graphs ended up looking nicer than I expected.
It had been cool and rainy when I entered the library, but it was warm and sunny as I was leaving. Several girls had taken up study positions inside the fountain in front of the building, which has been shut off and drained because of the renovations.
I arrived back home after 3 o’clock, then watched a movie about a government military experiment that combined dolphins with sharks. One escaped and showed up 30 years later as a mutated creature that could also breathe air and walk on land. It was a stupid movie but I kept watching it for some reason. I ended up turning off the TV about 10 minutes before the end of the movie when I suddenly lost all interest.
I started writing this week’s Chinese characters at 6 o’clock and spent the next few hours working on them off-and-on. I took breaks to make myself pasta for dinner, watch the end of a movie about World War II and to talk to Gretchen on the phone. I had called her and left a message earlier in the evening, then she had called back. She said that she almost broke her ankle right after she started her new 5th grade teaching job a few weeks ago. She has since been on crutches and a walking cast. Her car is also broken down, so she is getting rides to work every day. She did say that she really loved her job, though, and that 5th graders are nice because they are both a bit smarter than younger children and have not yet developed the bad attitudes that many older children get.

September 17, 2005
Saturday:

I got up at 8:30 this morning and cooked eggs and sausage for breakfast. My next task was to get the keyboard shipped off that I had sold on Ebay, which I knew would not be easy considering its size. I first walked around the apartment buildings in my complex looking for any kind of cardboard or packing materials that were lying around. The only thing useful I found was a pile of old broken ceiling tiles at the end of my hallway. I used a kitchen knife to cut a couple pieces that I could pack with the keyboard to protect it. The keyboard was inside of a padded cloth case, but I still needed a box to ship it in. I temporarily stuck the pieces of ceiling tile I cut in the case with the keyboard, then took it to the post office on my bike. The post office is probably a mile and a half from my apartment and getting there with a 4-foot long, 25-pound keyboard was no easy task. I carried it across my back most of the way.
Once at the post office, I locked up my bike and carried the keyboard into the Staples store that is just beside the building. They had no boxes that would even come near to fitting it. I could have bought a couple boxes and made one that would fit, but the price of the larger boxes was almost $10, which was too much considering I had only charged the buyer $25 for shipping. So, this meant that I would have to find a couple old boxes from one of the businesses in the area and make my own.
I first asked the staff of Staples if they had any boxes in the back, but they said that all of theirs had already been placed in a bailer. I walked outside to the dumpster behind the store, but only found Styrofoam there. I next walked behind the post office, but nothing was there either. By then, I was already getting tired of carrying the heavy instrument around, so I locked its case to my bike and walked off to search other places.
The next place I looked, the west side of the post office, was a success. This is a mail-truck loading and unloading area, where several mailmen were putting mail into their trucks and getting ready to drive their routes. There was a big opening in the rear of the building, which had several dozen huge boxes by it, most of which were sitting on top of wooden pallets. I walked into the opening in the building to ask if I could have a box, but I didn’t see anybody around. One of the boxes was full of other broken-down boxes, so I just took one out and walked away with it. I’m glad that nobody was there to ask permission from or they may have refused to give a box away, because the words “reuse at least 5 times was written on the side of every one.
I took my box to the front of the building and went to work. I had put a large kitchen knife in my backpack just in case I needed to do any box cutting. I first cut it in half vertically, then laid the keyboard across both halves and cut around it with the knife. A lot of people were curiously looking at me sitting there holding a big knife in front of the post office. I had a pretty decent looking box built after about 20 minutes, partly in thanks to 20 meters of packaging tape that I had bought at Staples. I never ended up using the ceiling tiles for packaging material because I thought that would be excessive. I took a picture of my box next to the “United States Post Office” sign on the building, then went inside to send it off.
An older man waited on me and he let me borrow a black marker so I could write the address on the front of the package. He at first told me that it might be too big to send in the mail, but he measured it and it very luckily just slipped by. I then paid just $21 for shipping, which was quite a bit better than the $131 price that MBE had quoted me yesterday.
I got back to my apartment before 11, then talked to Johanna for an hour. I left again at 2:30 to go to the Pench Penny Beer festival. I had bought a ticket several weeks ago because the annual event is usually sold out every year. I knew that Leslie and her friends would be there, but I had no idea who else I might see there.
I line of about 100 people was waiting to get in when I arrived. Glasses were being given out at the door that had the words “Pench Penny Beer Festival 2005” printed on them. Each glass had a raffle ticket in it. Everyone used these glasses to sample the 100+ brands of beer that were available to try. I saw Leslie as soon as I walked in the door. The event lasted 3 hours and I spent most of the time walking around and talking to some people I know, including Jamie and Stephanie, Erin(Schnucks), Nick(Leslie’s x-boyfriend), Cheech, Lucas and Kramer.
During the last hour, I went inside and tried out the free BBQ, beans and potato salad. There was a raffle at the end of the festival, but I didn’t win anything. There was a bicycle being given away and Kramer told Nick that he would give it to him if his ticket was picked, and it amazingly was, so he actually did give the bike to Nick. Nick then rode it off into the sunset.
I got home just after 6 o’clock, passing by the annual Main Street Pig Out on the way home. I didn’t leave home again for the rest of the night, and just watched the movie “The English Patient” before going to bed.

September 16, 2005
Friday:

I got up at 9 o’clock this morning; the same time that my marketing test was starting. I was out the door by 9:05 and sitting in class with the test by 9:10. I guess I should have set an alarm. Assistants were in charge of handing out the tests and I was given a test that somebody had already partially completed and turned in. One of the other assistants noticed this just as I opened the test and he gave me a new one. The test was easy and useless. I can’t complain because it was easy, but like many of my other classes, I think this one is going to be a complete waste of time, and money. Maybe it will get better as the year goes on. I at least like the teacher.
I skipped statistics class and came back home for an hour, where I used the Internet and chatted with Johanna for a few minutes. The keyboard I was selling on Ebay had only bid and sold for just $50 last night, plus $25 shipping.
I went back to school for my weekly Friday Management quiz. I was reading the school paper before the tests were handed out and saw an article on the front page about a cop who had taken a roll of film from a journalism student because he took pictures of an arrest on campus Wednesday afternoon. The film was given back the following morning, but the pictures on it had been intentionally destroyed. Sounds like some cop is on a power trip. He will deserve it if he gets fired. When taking the film, he first told the student that he could be arrested if he didn’t hand it over. The student said he was willing to face arrest, but then the cop scared him into complying by telling him that he would be expelled from school if he didn’t give it up. None of this is true. There is nothing illegal about taking pictures of people in public.
I came back home after my quiz was over, then spent some more time chatting with Johanna before going back to school so I could attend Chinese class. We got our tests back today and I got another A. I also think I did really well on the tests I took today. After class, I got a double cheeseburger and Mcchicken from Mcdonalds, then went to the library to check out the book that my economics class uses so I could copy some pages from it. There are 4 copy machines in the library and 3 of them were broken. Half of the lid was broken off of the one that was working. It deserved more severe punishment than just a broken lid. I wasted several copies just trying to figure out this copy machines personality, which was completely dysfunctional. I eventually got two acceptable copies after 5 failures and 50 wasted cents. After returning the book, I sat down at a computer and sent a message to the librarians on duty. There is a new service this year that allows students to have live chats with librarians. I sent a message saying something like, “90% of the copy machines on campus are broken 90% of the time. Even now, 3 out of 4 machines in this room are not working. The working one has half of its lid broken off. Please pass this on to the repair people or they may soon be a riot over by the copy machines”. After sending the message, I got up and left before the librarians could tell which computer the message was coming from.
I spent the rest of my hour-break using a computer in the Faner lab. I have lately been looking into websites that pay people for taking surveys. It appears that most of these sites are scams, but that there are 20 or 30 legitimate ones that do not require membership fees. I have found what I think are the real ones by checking websites that offer reviews and user testimonials about dozens of survey websites. I signed up for several today and will sign up for about 20 more over the next few days. The review websites say that you can make a couple hundred dollars a month of more if you sign up for 20-30 legitimate sites and put a couple hours a week into filling out surveys. We will see.
I fell asleep several times in economics class, then came back home to pick up the keyboard that I sold on Ebay so I could ship it to the buyer in Marlboro, New Jersey. It is about 4 feet long and weighs 25 pounds, so getting it to Mail Boxes, Etc. on my bike was not easy. I took it to MBE because it is a much shorter distance to ride than the post office. I thought that it wouldn’t be any more expensive than the post office, but I was way wrong. First of all, they didn’t have any boxes to fit it in. I was told that they could professionally pack it for $30, which I of course declined. They said that they would make a box for it using two smaller boxes. I was going to buy the two boxes and make the package myself, but each box cost $11. I then asked for an estimate of the shipping cost and I at first thought I had misheard the answer; $131. I laughed when the cashier told me the number for the second time. The post office gives estimates on their website and they are only going to charge me 19.95 to ship the keyboard. I will probably never set foot in MBE again. $131! I could buy a plane ticket and deliver the keyboard in person to New Jersey for that price. What are they thinking?
It was now about 4 o’clock and I decided to worry about getting the keyboard shipped tomorrow morning. I came home and fell asleep for almost two hours. I was exhausted all day from the 3 extremely strong rum and Cokes that I had drank last night. I cooked myself some noodles for dinner when I got up. Johanna called me at 8, which was like 4 in the morning for her. She had been out to see a band with Kaisa because Kaisa is dating somebody in the band. We talked for about an hour, then I watched the movie “Deep End of the Ocean” from 10 till midnight, which is about a family that loses their 3 year old son and realizes 9 years later that the kid is actually living two blocks away.
I realized that I had forgoten my brothers quarter-century birthday after I had gone to bed tonight, so I got back up and sent him an email.

September 15, 2005
Thursday:

Thunderstorms with explosive lightning moved through the area in the early morning. Car alarms all over town could be heard going off.
I got up at 9 o’clock and cooked some things I had bought at Schnucks last night for breakfast. I had 3 maple-flavored sausage patties, 3 eggs and two pieces of toast. I then studied for my 12 o’clock Chinese test. The teacher always tells us what new grammar structures will be on the test beforehand. These new grammar structures must then be used to make sentences on the test. This year, I started planning the sentences before the tests because there is limited time and this can be the most time consuming part. This week I wrote, “How much for one bald hamster”, “Not only do I raise hamsters, I also eat them”, and “The more bald a hamster, the better”.
As I was going up the stairs of the Faner building, I realized that I had forgotten my Chinese dictionary, which is a must-have when taking tests. I was near the teacher’s office, so I stopped by and asked to borrow one. The dictionary he lent me was different than mine and it kind of slowed me down during the test, but I did still manage to finish everything.
I went to the bookstore afterwards and wrote down an assignment out of the $130 statistics book that I refuse to buy. I then went to the library to copy an assignment out of the $120 economics book that I will also not buy. As soon as I checked out the book, I realized I had forgotten my notebook that had the assignment page number written in it, so I returned the book and came home.
I then talked to Johanna online for an hour and also chatted with Stephan for a while. I heated up my leftover Hamburger Helper for lunch after that. It was now about 4 o’clock and I planned on using the rest of the afternoon and evening to study for a Marketing test and work on Statistics homework, but I fell asleep just as Johanna had said I would. Not what I planned on, but not really a big deal either, considering I have a lot of free time these days.
I got up after about an hour and a half, then spent some time writing emails before studying for my Marketing test. An email from Josh said that he and Courtney have temporarily separated. They moved to Memphis together several months ago and both got jobs down there.
I went to PK’s to meet Leslie at 10 o’clock, stopping on the way to buy some cigarettes from Old Town Liquors. Leslie had called me earlier in the evening to say that she was in town and going to PK’s tonight, where all rail drinks and beer were on special for $1. She was not there when I first arrived. As I was waiting, I saw a girl that I went to junior high with, named Penny Smith. I talked to her for a few minutes and we agreed to hang out sometime.
Leslie got to the bar a few minutes after me, and several of her friends that I know were there also, including Lucas, Tony and Hanns. I also saw Whitney there, who is the girl that showed me my apartment. I said I would go to a party at her house on October 1st, but I think I already told Tim that I would go to St. Louis with him to visit Mike and Carolyn during that weekend. I sat at a stool at the front of the bar for a couple hours while Leslie and her friends played pool there. I ordered 3 rum and Cokes during that time and ended up getting a lot more alcohol than I knew I was. The drinks were served in glass mugs so I was using a straw, which kept me from realizing how strong they were. I came home sometime after midnight and ended up getting sick before I went to bed. Rum is gross.

September 14, 2005
Wednesday:

I really don’t think anything at all exciting or out of the ordinary happened today. I went to all my normal Wednesday classes, also coming home for lunch as usual, where I watched part of a History Channel show about gangsters cars. Did you know that Al Capone drove a 16-cylinder armored Cadillac that had holes in the floorboards for throwing nails onto the pavement and pipes that would spray oil out the back. It had a top speed of 100MPH, which was twice as fast as the police cars could go then.
I talked to Johanna online from 3 till 4. She was getting sick yesterday, but she got over it overnight. I fell asleep from about 4:30 till 6. I have to quit sleeping during the day because I am getting enough sleep at night. It’s just so nice to sleep in the afternoon too, though.
I went to Schnucks for some groceries at 7. The only people I talked to there were Lisa and Laura. Lisa was working at a checkout, but Laura was just shopping and I don’t even know if she still works there.
Back at home, I cooked myself a pot of Hamburger Helper, which had been on sale at 4 for $5. I watched the movie Payback while I cooked and ate, which has Mel Gibson in it.
I have had two emails in the past two days saying that my Gulf Port pictures and video are sad. I take that as a compliment because it must mean that I effectively captured destruction.

September 13, 2005
Tuesday:

I got up at 9 o’clock this morning and ate a turkey and cheese sandwich and leftover red beans and rice for breakfast. I then spent some time studying Chinese before going to class at noon.
A small deer was going on a frightened rampage through the crowded campus at that time. I first saw it when it was slowly walking east between the Lawson building and the library. Some people were stopping to watch it while others were moving away because they were scared. Something then happened and it took off full speed running through the grass and across crowded paths. Everybody was moving out of the way now. It stopped once in a less crowded area in front of the library, then took off full speed again across more paths and into the woods east of the Faner building, which was the last time I saw it. I had tried to record some of the drama, but it had moved too fast for me to ever get any footage.
After the deer attacks this summer, crazy deer have become a well known fact of life on campus. Some officials had advised the school to remove the deer last summer, but it was decided not to do that because it was “a permanent solution to a temporary problem”. I think it is just a matter of time until there is a serious injury, then the deer will all be removed and someone in charge will get fired. I’m just saying what I think will happen, not that the deer should be removed. I like watching them.
I came home after class and talked to Johanna for an hour. She is getting sick. I fell asleep for an hour and a half after talking to her. I didn’t plan on sleeping, but it just kind of happened. I studied Chinese for about 4 hours after getting up, taking breaks to work on a load of laundry and eat dinner. I had a smoked sausage sandwich and a package of chicken pasta.
Chinese was giving me a headache by 8:30, so I decided it was time to take a Tylenol and quit studying. I then moved several gigabytes of picture and video files off of my computer hard drive and onto about 6 CD’s. Each CD takes several minutes to burn and I burned a copy of each one, so the process took a while. I burn a copy of everything so I can store it in two different locations in case of fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, alien attack, etc.
I watched a show on Animal Planet while I waited for each CD to copy. The show was a documentary where a man found two abandoned cheetah cubs and raised them for two years in the Kenyan wilderness. He taught them everything that a mother would so they could eventually function on their own. He even had strangers chase them around so they would be scared of humans other than him and his camera crew. After two years, the Cheetahs still acted like housecats around the man and his crew, even though they acted completely wild when he was not around. At the end of the documentary, he was getting ready to leave them to live on their own when he discovered one morning that one of them had been killed overnight by a lion. The man and his camera crew of a couple locals were all crying when they found the body.

September 12, 2005
Monday:

I went home during my two-hour lunch break and fell asleep after eating. I finally mailed off Johanna’s package after my 2 o’clock economics class. The Post Office website says that a small office is located on the west side of town, but I went there and couldn’t find it today. There also happens to be a Mail Boxes Etc. store in that part of town, so I just used it to mail the letter.
Back at the apartment, I talked to Johanna online for an hour, then downloaded new webcam software to get the webcam link on my webpage working again. I cooked a chicken breast and red beans and rice for dinner at 6, then watched two episodes of a TV show on Fox. The show is called Prison Break and I had never even heard of it before.
I was going to do homework this evening, but I could never force myself to start. So, I just ended up watching more TV and going to bed at 11.

September 11, 2005
Sunday:

I slept in the spare bedroom at home last night. Clara woke me up early this morning because I had said that I would go to church with family today. From the time I was awaken, I only had about 20 minutes to get ready, so I very hurriedly got dressed, ate some cereal and drank some coffee. As we neared the church, Clara asked my dad to park the car on a side street because she thought it was too dirty to be seen in the parking lot. My dad did not completely fulfill that request, but he did park in a back corner behind some semi-trucks. Inside, him and Clara went off to do their own things before the service started, and I just sat and waited. The main room of the church was under renovation, so the services were held in a big room of the basement. I read the front part of the hymn book while I waited, which included directions for singing. One line read something like, “Sing now as you have sung the songs of Satan before”.
Just before the service started, my brother, Keri, Amanda and Brandt also came. My dad sang in the choir during the services, and the preacher mentioned that it was his and Amanda’s birthday’s. A couple other people also had birthdays today that were mentioned. The service ended by the pastor asking everyone to carry out an item from a pile of hurricane relief goods that was stacked at the front of the room. Everyone was asked to help carry the stuff out to two pickup trucks in the parking lot. The relief effort for this storm has been massive and help has been coming from all over the world. The only other comparable effort I have seen in my lifetime was after 9-11.
Out in the parking lot, me, my brother, Keri, Brandt and Amanda all stood around talking for few minutes. Bob Eaton came and talked to me for a few moments, and he told me to call him for lunch sometime. I decided to get a ride with Chris and Keri, and a man my dad knows named Bob something(I think) came and talked to me about my past years trips as we were walking to the car.
I then rode to my brother and Keri’s place with them, where John F. was watching TV and getting ready to go work a shift at his beloved pizza delivery job. Amanda and Brandt came over shortly after we arrived, and Brandt had brought Hardee’s breakfast over for everyone. I ate two breakfast sandwiches and Amanda and Brandt left not too long after eating. My brother and I watched videos online while Keri wrapped all of my dad’s and Amanda’s birthday gifts. She is whooped. Her dad came over to visit her for about 30 minutes, then we all went out to the house after he left. We stopped at Anna E.’s apartment on the way there and she decided to come with us. We had also stopped at WalMart before Anna’s apartment, because my brother wanted some golf balls to hit later.
Clara was in the kitchen preparing a big lunch when we arrived, and my dad, Brandt and Amanda were talking in the living room. Clara wanted to give my dad his gift from herself right away because she thought he would like to start using it as soon as possible. The gift was a DVD camcorder, something I would love to have one of my own of. After this gift was opened, my dad and Amanda opened the rest of their stuff. I gave my dad the 3-pack of Dutch-made cheese that I had bought in Amsterdam on my way home from Finland. I hope it is still OK because it has spent considerable time out of refrigeration. When buying it, I had been told that it could stand two warm days, and it is probably about at its limits.
Amanda gave me a gift of kitchenware, saying, “this is something you do for little kids on other people’s birthdays so they don’t get jealous and throw a fit”, or something like that. Most of the gifts my dad and Clara received were very practical. The most interesting thing was a picture of a dragonfly that my sister gave to my dad. She had taken the picture last summer at Little Lake, which is just a short walk back into the woods from the house.
My brother put a fake birthday card in the pile of cards that was going to my dad, which had a forged signature from Brandt and read, “Ron, I’m fat and hungry. Where’s the food?”. I am glad Brandt has a good sense of humor because he is constantly getting this kind of abuse from all of us.
Everything we had for dinner was great, and it included, catfish, green beans, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad, corn, bread and pickled okra. My dad and Amanda were served a special extra dish of Orange Roughy fish(excuse that spelling), which is supposedly a favorite dish of my sister’s. Clara brought out an ice cream cake for Amanda after the meal.
We all spent the next hour or so outside playing some sports. We first took turns hitting a bunch of golf balls out into the woods, using a driver and balls that my brother had brought over. We were trying to hit them over the garden, but many of them actually went into the garden, which probably did a job on some of the plants there. The banana trees ended up with holes in their leaves and my dad bit a yard lamp and broke it off its post. We next got out a softball and two mitts that my brother had also brought over. Him and Anna started throwing it, then I took over Anna’s place. My dad then later took over my brothers place. Janie kept trying to take the ball from us, and she also began to get upset when golf balls were hit.
Amanda and Brandt had already left by this time because Amanda had to get on a train this afternoon and go back home. The rest of us, minus Clara, went back to the horseshoe pits behind the house after the softball tossing died down. Our horseshoe game never actually got started because my dad received a call from my grandpa. The rest of us just goofed off around the horseshoe pits instead of actually playing. This area was thick with mosquitoes and I think all of us got bit at least a few times until we put on some Off that my dad brought over for us.
My brother, Keri, and Anna decided to leave around 4 o’clock. Clara asked my brother and me to carry in a new bathroom cabinet before they left. Their second bathroom is now getting much closer to being finished, after years and years of sitting unfinished. It now even has the water connected.
I was planning on getting a ride home with my dad or Clara later this afternoon, but Keri offered to give me a ride as she was getting ready to leave. We stopped to drop Anna off at home and to return some videos to Blockbuster before arriving at my apartment in Carbondale.
I spent much of the rest of the afternoon and evening using my computer and getting pictures and video from this weekend online. My computer crashed once and something happened to my webcam publishing program. It is temporarily broken till I find a new program to use. I am not even going to try and fix the old one because it was crashing my computer often.

September 10, 2005
Saturday:

I talked to Johanna from 8 till 9 this morning, then Randy G. came over with his young stepson, Nicholas. Randy came in to see what my apartment looked like, then we got in his truck and headed to Marion, where his mom has recently bought a 12 unit apartment complex. Randy is managing the property. Once in Marion, we stopped at a gas station to buy some drinks and snacks, then went on to the apartment complex, which consists of 3 four-unit buildings.
Two people were supposed to be coming by to meet Randy there. One wanted to look at one of the units, and the other was supposed to bring a completed rental application. Neither showed up. Randy, Nicholas and me sat in one of the empty apartments and played Star Wars Trivial pursuit while we waited for about 3 hours. One of the people had said that they would come around noon and the other hadn’t mentioned a specific time. The game of Trivial Pursuit lasted most of the time we waited and I was terrible at it. I got 3 pieces of pie out of almost complete accident. Randy ended up winning. Nicholas often laughed so hard that he could barely speak. He is a very giggly kid sometimes.
We decided to leave at 2 o’clock because it looked like nobody would actually come. One of the people called Randy as soon as we had made it back into Carbondale, but he couldn’t go back because he was supposed to pick up Lisa at Schnucks at 2 o’clock. He took me back to my apartment before picking her up, and him and Nicholas came inside so I could burn them a CD with the pictures and video from my Gulf Port trip.
Johanna and I then talked for another hour. After that, I took a shower and spent some time using my computer. My Hotmail account has been stuck in the Finnish language for months and I finally was able to get it switched back to English today. Previously, I had tried changing the language settings after I logged in, but they always changed back when I tried to log in the next time. I am not sure what I did today, but it’s stuck back in English now. Traveling can be very traumatic for a desktop computer.
Dawn came by at 6:15 to give me a box of trash bags because I had given her the rest of mine after she started her apartment on fire a couple weeks ago. I showed her all my pictures from Gulf Port while she was over. I met my dad and Clara outside at 6:30 because we had plans to go out for the evening. We were only a block away from my apartment when I realized that I had forgotten my dad’s birthday gift, so we went back to get it.
Our next stop was for dinner at Fazoli’s. I ordered an Ultimate Sampler Platter, which was very good, especially considering my extreme hunger. After the meal, we went across the street to Big Lots to look for birthday gifts to give my sister tomorrow. She had emailed out a list of potential gifts, and I had chosen to get her a light blue toilet seat cover and rug. She has the most unexciting birthday list I have ever seen, which also includes things like printer paper and sheets. Big Lots did not have toilet seat covers or rugs in light blue, but Clara found the sheets and a blanket.
We next went across the street to Bed, Bath and Beyond to continue looking for gifts. I found the light blue stuff I needed there, but didn’t buy it because it would have cost nearly $40. I knew I could get it at Wal-Mart for half that price.
After leaving this store, we went to the Yellow Moon bar in Cobden. In case you don’t know, the Yellow Moon is a tiny bar in a tiny town. We were there because a friend of the family was performing in a band tonight. His name is Rodger Ellithorpe and he is Anna Ellithorpe’s dad. Anna has been a friend of my sister for as long as I can remember and our families have become good friends over the years. Rodger played tonight with a man named Bob, whom I hear he has been making music with for about 15 years. I had never seen them perform before and found them to be extremely entertaining. Thier performance was a mixture of a comedy and music routine, and they even had one rap song. The bar was completely full of energetic people, and the audience included Anna, Keri, Katie F., my sister and Brant.
Clara was talking to some ladies that teach foriegn languages at West Frankfort High School and they asked me if I would come talk about China during an international awareness festival in November. I have never really done anything like that before, but I agreed to it.
I was sitting outside the bar smoking a cigarette at about 10 o’clock when I realized that the moon was actually yellow tonight…………At the Yellow Moon, under a rare yellow moon. My dad, Clara and me left at 11 and stopped at the Murphysboro WalMart on the way home, which Clara told me is now open 24 hours. I found Amanda’s toilet seat cover and rug there, but light blue was more expensive than all the other colors. It was the exact same design and brand, but was about $5 more. There must be a shortage of blue dye.
The cashier who checked me out was Naureen Ripley, whom I had not seen for at least 5 years. She went to school with me in Murphysboro for years, and I had gotten to know her quite well back when we worked at Mcdonalds together around 1996-97. She said that she has been married for four years to Tony, whom is another person I knew during that time. Going to Murphysboro is always interesting.

September 9, 2005
Friday:

My marketing teacher read parts of Dr. Seuss’s, The Lorax, to us today. She spent at least 10 minutes reading through large sections of it and I felt like I was in kindergarten again. When she was done, I realized that I had been paying close attention to her for the first time all day.
I came home for lunch after my weekly Friday test in Management class. All of the things that are plugged into the outlet that my computer is on were not working. It took me about 10 minutes to realize that I had flipped a switch that I never knew controlled the outlet.
I yesterday started putting different things in front of my webcam when I am not home; just to keep it at least a bit interesting. Today I placed my Muslim terrorist doll in front of it. I am thinking I need to start some kind of a contest like – “Win a gift if you know what was in front of the camera on September 3”. Speaking of contests and gifts, I still owe a gift to Tavis and Tim. Tavis solved a riddle when I was in China, and Tim was the first to post a message to my new board when I put up a request to do so. I had offered prizes for both things, but have so far failed to deliver. I must send the prizes soon or I will lose all credibility.
I spent some more time online looking for jobs after Chinese class. I went through the university’s website and the SI website another time. There were a few possibilities there that I had passed up before, so I made several calls and sent several emails. Of all my responses, only a couple were favorable; a notetaking and an appliance store position. I am supposed to inquire further about the note taking position on Monday, and I will probably also fill out an application at the appliance store at that time. I found that many positions were still available, but these are the only two that may fit with my schedule. Yesterday in this journal, I had mentioned an on-campus telemarketing job that I am wanting to avoid. Katie had read the journal in Cincinatti and sent me an email confirming that she once had the same job and it sucked, so I am still hoping to avoid it, even though the hours would still be a lot better than Schnucks would have been.
I came home after economics class because I was supposed to talk to Johanna online at that time. I saw a dead kitten in the road on the way home and took a picture of it for the website. Johanna did not answer her computer when I called it, and I fell asleep waiting. I slept until 5, with the headphones near me so I could hear when she called. The program we use makes an antique phone ringing sound when a call is received, but I never heard any ringing. I checked my computer at 5 and saw that I had somehow missed a call from her at 4 o’clock. I must have had my volume turned down too low.
I never left my apartment again in the evening. For dinner, I cut a smoked sausage up and put it on a bun with cheese and cooked a package of pasta. Between watching TV, I did next week’s Chinese character writing assignment. My TV time was mostly spent watching some A&E specials about September 11th. Tavis called at 11 and we talked for about an hour. He put Katie on the phone for a few minutes too. He seems to like his job and it sounds like he as alot of potential to advance because he is working with mostly just the management of the company. Katie just started school again and is working on a masters in History. I hope to be able to go and visit them soon, but I have to get a job first.

September 8, 2005
Thursday:

I never ended up getting sick like I expected too. I didn’t feel any better or worse when I first woke up today, but felt better by afternoon. I cooked a frozen pizza for breakfast at 9 o’clock and looked at some employment ads on the university’s website. There were 3 or 4 potential leads in the list. I left the apartment at 10:30 to go check one of them out. The ad was for a campus mail delivery position and it requested that any interested persons go to an office in Grinnell Hall, which is where the cafeteria of the dorm towers is located. I found the office there and talked to a friendly older woman, who told me that a 30-minute conflict in my schedule was going to be a problem. It’s too bad because the job would have been perfect for me; 8-3 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was hoping that I could use the lunch hour to go to my 12-1pm Chinese class, but the woman said that the lunch hour was only from 12:30-1 because 12 was a very busy time for some reason. She said that she still might call me if they have a problem finding someone.
I next went to the Faner computer lab to check the job listings in the Daily Egyptian and Southern Illinoisan. I saw only one potential lead, a retail survey position in the SI, which would entail going into stores and filling out forms about their layouts. The ad said to send an email if interested, which I did. I quickly got a response saying that there had been an error in the article and that nobody was actually needed in Carbondale. I also sent another email to the SIU Information Technology Department because they had an ad on the university website that said that they were hiring computer lab supervisors. Their return email said that all the positions had been filled for now.
I tried calling a few other places after Chinese class. Three were janitorial positions on-campus and one was for a van driver off-campus. Everything was full except for one of the janitorial positions, and it didn’t work because there was another 30 minute conflict with my Tuesday and Thursday schedule.
I also had one more lead to try today, but I am going to save it as a last resort. It is an on-campus telemarketing job where I would be calling alumni to update their contact info and to try and get them to donate money. Even though it is probably not the same as a regular telemarketing job, I will stay away from that kind of work if at all possible.
I came home at 1:30 and talked to Johanna for over an hour. I ate the rest of my leftover pizza for dinner at 5, then went shopping at Schnucks shortly afterwards. On the way there, I passed Scott, who is the guy that I met at Mark B’s house Tuesday night. I stopped and talked to him for a couple minutes. At the store, I bought some basic lunch foods and talked to Keri and Mark(produce) for a few minutes. Keri asked me, “What’s up with that dead animal picture on the website?”, meaning the sea lion. Pictures of dead animals is starting to become like part of the culture of my website. Just like Fark.com is famous for things like their “boobies” tag, I have dead animals. The sea lion definitely beats even the dead deer pictures from last spring.
I studied Chinese from 8-9:30, then called Randy G. and talked for about 20 minutes. After watching the 10 o’clock news, I discovered that my new Internet phone service has not been working. I installed a new version of the program and found that I have missed several calls and voicemails. Everything is now working fine and I should get any new calls. The number is now posted in my contact info on this site.

September 7, 2005
Wednesday:

I woke up in pain this morning. It started a couple days ago as a low abdomen pain and was worse this morning. I started feeling cold and generally uncomfortable as the day went on. I got up at 7 because I had told Johanna that we could videoconference at that time. We talked for about an hour, then I went to class. There was a quiz in statistics, which I guess I did fine on. I learned that I also did well on last Friday’s management quiz and yesterday’s Chinese test. I got a 95.5% on the test, which is better than I ever did last year.
I had lunch at Mcdonalds, then returned the Ethernet cable that I had bought yesterday at the bookstore. I spent the rest of my lunch break in the Faner computer lab. I logged onto MSN Messenger so I could tell Mike that I would not be making it to the baseball game in St. Louis tonight, but he temporarily convinced me to still go. I spent the rest of the break chatting with Johanna. I really felt bad as I walked to my next class, so I went back to the computer lab and called John to cancel the trip. Him and Amy were going to pick me up on their way to St. Louis tonight. They, Mike and Carolyn are all going to a Cardinals/Cubs game and I am sure it would have been a really good time.
As usual, I could not stay awake in International Economics class. Afterwards, I went to Walgreens and bought some medicine and a pizza for lunch tomorrow. Back in the apartment, I used the computer for a few minutes before going to sleep for about 3 hours. I was extremely tired and didn’t even want to get up when I did.
I cooked myself a chicken breast for dinner at 7 and watched TV for a few minutes before starting on some statistics homework that is due on Friday. I have no idea what the teacher is expecting to be done with this assignment and I am starting to hate the class. I had liked the teacher in the beginning, but that is changing fast. It looks like the rest of the class is starting to feel the same way and the environment is making her very defensive in class. She acts like any questions are some kind of personal attack on her. There are 3 sections to the homework and it is all supposed to be done using Microsoft excel. I was able to understand one section, which I finished a few days ago. I decided not to finish the rest of it after spending another hour just staring at it tonight. I will drop the class soon if things don’t change.
I stopped studying for while to experiment with my new webcam publishing program and was able to make the resolution and light levels a little better. You can check it out in the “Other Stuff” menu on the main page of my site.

September 6, 2005
Tuesday:

I headed to the Faner computer lab this morning at 9:30, stopping along the way at the apartment office to ask why the free cable internet wasn’t working. I talked to Tammy and she told me that the service was DSL and not cable. I was not happy about this because the person who showed me the apartment, Whitnee, had told me it was cable and I had already paid almost $40 to order a cable modem online. Tammy told me that Whitnee was no longer working for the management.
At the computer lab, I got all my pictures, journal and video from the Gulf Port trip up. I sent an email to the Daily Egyptian with a link to everything, thinking they might want to use some of it to write a story. I went into the student center at 10:30; first to the bookstore, then Mcdonalds. At the bookstore, I bought a some manila envelopes to mail a CD off to Johanna, and a 25-foot Ethernet cable to hook up my DSL Internet.
I ate my Mcdonalds at the outdoor dining area, then went to the Chinese classroom an hour early so I could study. The classroom is a good place to study before the tests because it is empty and I can spread all of my papers out on the teachers desk. Once class started, I used every available minute on the test, but I think I did better today than I did on any test last year. My summer studying has surely made a difference, but I still sometimes think I am behind the others.
I went back to the Faner computer lab after the test and spent an hour talking to Johanna online. I then went home and rearranged my apartment. I had originally arranged things on the belief that I had cable Internet access. My TV had been in the bedroom and my computer in the living room, but the DSL connection is in the bedroom and the cable connection is in the living room. The TV was sitting on chairs in my bedroom and I did not want to put such ghetto furniture in the living room, so I put the TV on the computer table in the living room. I then moved the desk in my room nearer to the DSL outlet and put the computer on the desk. I did not have to use the new Ethernet cable I bought today because I had an old one that worked. I had not thought it would because it is a crossover cable, meaning that it is used to directly connect two computers. I learned something new. So, I will be able to return the new one and get my $11 back. Now that I have Internet access, you can call my computer at 618-912-4404.
After getting everything put in its new place, I installed some webcam publishing programs on my computer. I had two of the programs and I experimented with both to find the one that was easiest for me use. I then used this program to make a webcam link on my webpage. You can now see a view from my computer desk that is updated every 10 mintutes.
I called Mark B. at 6 o’clock. I had seen him at Schnucks last week and we had agreed to have some beers and dinner tonight. I rode my bike to the liquor store on the strip to buy a 6 pack of beer, but got there and realized that I didn’t have my wallet. I rode home to get it, then returned to buy the beer. After leaving the store, I passed a crazy local that I just had to stop and videotape. It appeared that a couple’s car had broken down and this man had stopped to help. He had huge bushy hair and was wearing overalls without a shirt underneath and a white hardhat on his head. The couple was having a problem with a belt on their car and this crazy man was giving them a lecture on the past and recent technological improvements on automobile belts.
Mark was waiting outside his apartment(above Mary Lou’s café) when I arrived. We stayed at his place for about an hour and a guy named Scott stopped by. Like Mark, Scott also has some kind a brain injury. He didn’t say how it happened, but he did say that he had once been in a coma for a long time. The three of us spent the time watching Wheel of Fortune as we drank the beer. Mark called Billy and handed the phone to me, then we talked for about 20 mintues.
Scott left after 7:30 and Mark and I went to Pagliai’s at that time. The place was over half full and we sat in a booth and both ordered a beer and a fettuccini alfredo special that came with bread and salad. Mark paid for the food while I was in the bathroom and would not accept any money from me. I videotaped him on the way back to his apartment as he performed by making up some crazy story that didn’t make any sense..
I arrived back home at 9:30, then spent some time using the compute and watching TV before going to bed at 11 o’clock.

September 5, 2005
Monday:

No school today because of Memorial Day. I slept in till 11 because I had been up so late last night. For lunch, I ate some leftover noodles from last night, then went to the library at noon. I was sure it would be open today, but it was not. I next checked the Faner lab, but it was closed too, so I went into the Student Center. The only computers available there are the email checking stations and the wireless laptops. The email checking stations will not allow access to any sites accept Hotmail and the university’s mail system. The laptops are available to use only by check-out, and everybody that wants to use them has to fill out a form each semester, then wait 24 hours. I was hoping that the 24-wait policy had changed since last semester because I had never filled out a form yet this semester, but it hadn’t. I still went ahead and filled out the form in case I need to use them another day.
I decided to use an email check station to access Hotmail and I noticed that the system had a Yahoo toolbar installed on it. I typed garthkiser.com in the search box and was able to access my website this way. After using the computer for a few minutes, I used a courtesy phone to call my brother. I had a cable modem sent to Murphysboro last week and he told me yesterday that he would bring it over today. I just left a message on his machine saying that I would be home, then I went home.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching a “24” marathon on A&E as I studied for tomorrow’s Chinese test. I tried to get my cable modem set up in the evening. The software that came with it was designed for Windows 2000 systems, which gave me some problems. I am not even sure how I ended up fixing in the end. I tried installing the drivers in several different ways and something worked, but I probably couldn’t do it again. I can still not access the Internet, though, because there seems to be some kind of problem with the cable connection. The cable connection is a free service from the apartment, so I will have to go to the office tomorrow and ask what’s wrong.
I cooked myself a chicken breast for dinner at 7:30, then went back to watching “24” and studying Chinese. I did not really feel like studying much, so I spent a lot more time watching TV than reading my textbook. I went to bed after the 10 o’clock news.

September 4, 2005
Sunday:

I got up at 5:30 this morning and started driving towards Memphis again. I could notice signs of wind damage almost all the way into the city. This was one huge hurricane. But to think, they even get bigger.
I let my brother take over the driving after I got out of Memphis. I stopped at a gas station and we switched places after filling up the tank. It was nice to not have to wait for 6 hours to get gas. Before heading home, we also went through a Mcdonalds drive-thru and ordered breakfast. Chris was shorted one breakfast burrito in his meal.
I slept almost all the rest of the way home. I woke up and found that we were just south of Marion, which was not the same way we had come. Chris said that he had decided to take an alternate route. He dropped me off at my apartment around 10, then I didn’t waste a minute before jumping in the shower.
I then spent some time downloading the pictures from my camera and the video from my camcorder before going to sleep for 3 hours. I got up at 3 o’clock and spent a couple hours writing everything that happened over the past two days. I think I am going to send a link to my pictures and yesterdays journal entry to the Daily Egyptian on Tuesday.
I made myself some noodles for dinner at 8 o’clock, then spent the rest of the evening getting yesterdays pictures and video ready to put online. I didn’t go to sleep until 3, so that means I spent hours upon hours getting all this stuff ready for the website. I think it was worth it.

September 3, 2005(Gulf Port)
Saturday:

I woke up to yelling and honking sometime after 7 o’clock. The gas station had never actually been out of gas in the first place. They were just not selling it for some strange reason. The yelling and honking was happening because a few select women had been allowed to pull in and fill up, while the rest of the now half-mile long line was made to wait even longer. The employees told the mob that these women were being allowed to fill up because they were nurses, but the mob wasn’t buying it. It took a couple police cars to calm every down.
The yellow “caution” tape was finally removed from the pumps at 8 o’clock, then the gas was flowing not so freely. There was a 20 dollar limit and the pumps were working so slowly that it took about 5 minutes to reach that limit, which is a long time considering the current price. Our half-full tank did not hold the entire limit, so Chris was going to put the rest of it into our gas can in the trunk. An employee stopped him as soon as he saw the trunk open, saying, “No containers”. What did it matter what we did with our $20 worth? We felt like we were living in some third world communist nation.
We started seeing our first serious storm damage as we left the interstate south of Jackson and continued on a state highway towards Gulf Port. Last night, I had noticed some big trees down on the shoulder of the road just an hour south of Memphis and beyond, but we were now starting to see damage to signs, billboards and shingles. For breakfast, we stopped at the entrance of a highway that was completely blocked off by a large fallen pine tree. The tree had taken down power lines with it, which were stretched to the ground. The lines had not snapped, but were bending all of the poles at sharp angles. We ate ham and cheese sandwiches here and took a couple pictures before continuing on.
We came to the next decent-sized city, Hattiesburg, about an hour south of Jackson. There was heavy damage to this city, including some downtown buildings that could probably be classified as “total structural failure”. Huge fallen trees and giant steel billboards had been responsible for some of this damage, but pure wind damage also appeared to have destroyed some buildings. Mostly every stoplight in town was out due to power outage, and traffic at every major intersection was being controlled by the National Guard. It was quite a sight to see this city so destroyed and being controlled by the military.
The damage quickly got more and more intense as we continued another hour to the coast. Sections of forest now looked as if a tornado had ripped through them, mobile homes were flipped over and the sides of the road were piled with wood that had been cleared from the road. Almost every power line was down and hundreds of electrical trucks were on the job, most all of which were from out-of-state power companies.
The city of Gulf Port made everything we had just seen look like nothing. Even right behind the “Welcome to Gulf Port” sign, was a pile of wreckage that appeared to be several businesses all blown together. Military police were everywhere and a programmable road sign was set up to say, “Curfew 6AM to 6PM. Strictly enforced”. The level of destruction intensified again as we neared the coast, again making everything we had previously seen look like nothing in comarison. The storm surge had come inland about a half mile and completely gutted everything in its path, which included several shipping ports and the entire downtown area. Of all the things I saw today, this is the stuff I will remember most.
We parked the car next to a modern-looking 6-story bank building that was missing large sections of its walls. There were 4 porta-potties here and a man was standing next to a truck rubbing soap all over himself. Other than dozens of low flying jets and helicopters in the sky, the only activity in the area was a few people strolling around with cameras and some people sitting in chairs by the bank that were wearing “DEA” shirts. We first walked around the bank and took pictures of a mangled van there, then walked on towards the ocean. The police had set up “do not enter” barricades on the roads past the bank, but we walked in because sections of them had been pushed aside. Going another block towards the water, we came to a wall of overturned truck trailers. They were mangled together so tightly that we had to find a way around them, which led us past an office building that had a collapsed garage door. Chris and I walked inside this business and saw thousands of dollars worth of expensive tools and electronics destroyed on the floors. We walked up a staircase to the second floor, where there was a kitchen and a couple more offices. Most of the roof had been ripped off, so insulation and debris was scattered everywhere. We looked for bottled water in the kitchen because we had somehow managed to forget buying it yesterday and were now already getting very low. According to the people in the area, there was no water to be bought anywhere in the southern part of the state, so we really needed to find some or have it given to us.
Behind the wall of trailers, we walked towards a destroyed casino that was surrounded in every direction by an assortment of destroyed things, including cars, toys, appliances and a sea lion. I was so engrossed in looking at the damage nearest to me, that I didn’t even notice the dead 500lb sea lion before it was just a few feet in front of me. We had noticed an awful smell ever since getting out of the car, and this animal appeared to be the source of it. The last few days had been hot and sunny, which had made the smell so bad that it filled a quarter mile radius. As bad as the smell was, it was good to see that it wasn’t coming from a human. We took a few pictures of the animal, then moved directly away from it. We assumed that it most likely had died from drowning in the storm surge. It had a 2 foot long gash across the side of its neck, but that could have happened after death.
Just past the sea lion, was the remains of the huge Copa Casino. I don’t know if the name was really Copa because some letters on the building may have been missing. It was built on a cement foundation that was 8-10 feet high, but the water level had been high enough to completely wipe out the first floor of the 5-6 story structure. The water had blown out the walls facing the ocean, then swept out the other side. A few statues and slot machines could be seen inside, but it appeared that most of the first floor contents had been swept inland. There was a construction worker welding something on the side of the building and a small old woman approached us as we stopped to take pictures. She asked us if we worked in the area. Chris replied that we just lived nearby, then she said that she was in charge of keeping people away from the casino; not very intimidating security.
We then walked around the casino and on towards the water. There was quarter mile long parking lot between the casino and the waterline, which stretched as far as I could see down the coast. I don’t know if it was a parking lot before the hurricane, but that is all it is now. We made slow progress getting to the water because there was so much destruction to stop and look at. Lots of the stuff in this “parking lot” was mangled in ways that seemed impossible. The back of a newer red pickup truck was shredded like tin. A 20 foot long, 4-5 inch thick steel beam had somehow been bent and separated from its structure. It was in the middle of the “lot” and I just don’t see how water could carry something like this. Some of the smaller items here were mostly intact, including a refrigerator magnet fish and a “Mississippi” pepper shaker, which I took with me as souvenirs. Other smaller items we saw included empty cash drawers and drive-thru container tubes from the bank and/or casino. This area also appeared to contain the bottom parts of some of the truck trailers that we had seen on the other side of the casino. We thought this was the case because both the trailers and bases had the Chiquita Bananas logo on them.
At the end of the “lot”, were piers leading to two large shipping complexes. We walked down one of these piers and into the gutted buildings at the end of it. These structures had been built tough and most of the ceilings still remained. The problem was that the walls had failed and the water had swept virtually everything inside away. There were two warehouse-looking buildings on this pier, each of which was bigger than a football field. There was about 100 feet between them and this area was piled with hundreds of aluminum slabs that were bound together by steel cables. Each bundle was a square that measured about 3x3 feet. These had been too heavy to carry away, but the water had still been able to topple the piles. The building at the end of the pier had more of the kind of damage that was hard for me to comprehend; half of the 12-15 inch steel reinforced concrete floor was completely destroyed. Large upheaved cracks ran the entire length of it in every direction and the concrete in some sections was just gone. Water can be some strong stuff.
We next walked back off the pier and slowly made our way back towards the car. We were now about of water and it was very hot and sunny. Despite our thirst, we couldn’t help but stop and look at a couple of the things we saw. One of these things was the frame of a two-story building with two pools in front of it. The water in the pools was green and the outline of some unknown things could be seen underwater. All that remained of the building was some wood, plumbing and wires. All else that really remained was one sink and counter-top. The water in front of the building was filled with the posts that used to support docks for small boats and yachts. The docks appeared to have been big enough to hold a few hundred boats, but not one boat remained in the water and not one board remained of the docks. Chris and me were approached by several Coast Guard members as we were exiting this building. One man asked us if we worked there and Chris just said, “No, just sight seeing. Can we have some water?”. The friendly man said that he was not allowed to give away water, but didn’t seem at all concerned about us being in the area. Chris then asked him if he had ever seen anything like this before, and he said “no”. We talked to him for just a minute before going on.
Walking a few feet away from the building, we saw the sign, “Gulf Port Yacht Club”, on the remains of a collapsed brick entranceway. I wish I could have seen it a week ago. We found several expensive looking electronic items in the “lot” not too far away from the yacht club, including audio equipment and racks from computer servers. I was thinking that the audio equipment probably came from the yacht club and that the servers came from the shipping docks. In the middle of the “lot”, a convoy of RV’s carrying Coast Guard members was setting up an operation to replace all of the buoys that had been swept away. When exploring the shipping dock, we had seen that two new 10+ foot buoys were being temporarily stored there. It appeared that replacing buoys was just about all the reconstruction work that was being done right now. We had seen a few private citizens working on a couple businesses, but this buoy work was the only government rebuilding that appeared to have been started.
Back near the car, we passed a pile of buses and a limousine that had belonged to the Copa Casino. I walked onto one of the buses to take a picture. All of the windows were broken out of the once-luxurious white stretch limo, and the rear of it was buried in a pile of wood and debris. Just beyond the limo, was the farthest-inland yacht. This 30+ foot boat was lying just across the street from the downtown businesses and was mostly intact. A 4-5 foot orange buoy was lying on a sidewalk near it.
Chris and I were exhausted and sunburned by the time we got back to the car. The only things we had left to drink were 18 Miller Lights that we had purchased in Murphysboro. They were still ice-cold and we sat in the shade at the front of the huge destroyed bank building as we each drank one of them.
Our thirst was temporarily quenched, but we were still always on the lookout for water. We moved the car a few blocks away and parked at the post office. The steps of the post office were littered with boards and one of the doors was broken and hanging open. We spent the next couple hours exploring the downtown area. The storm surge had completely destroyed everything on the first floor of all the businesses within 2 to 3 blocks from the first downtown street, which was a quarter to a half-mile inland. A few of the buildings had completely collapsed, but most of them were still standing. Many of the ones that are left standing may end up being demolished because of the extensive damage to their roofs and bottom floors.
We ducked into a couple of these businesses when no soldiers happened to be passing by. We walked into the remains of a coffee shop and an abandoned apartment building. The abandoned apartment building was mostly empty of anything but small debris, except for a computer monitor that had floated in the front door. We walked up to the second floor and could see light coming through the roof in spots. Roof damage during a hurricane is very bad for a building. The few holes that formed had let enough water in to ruin all of the walls and carpeting of the second floor.
After leaving the apartment, Chris found a pair of Coast Guard winter overalls in a pile of rubble. We then went back to the car so he could put them in the trunk and so I could put new batteries in my camera. We next walked on to a church that is on the first street facing the ocean. This 3-story building was probably large enough to hold a congregation of 400-500. The storm surge appeared to have come through the front door and pushed every piece of furniture out through the windows. The only thing left on the floor was parts of a red carpet and small pieces of debris. Two large chandeliers hung from the high ceiling and the pipes of the pipe organ remained on the wall that the congregation would have faced. Everything above about 20 feet was mostly untouched, as it appeared that the roof had mostly remained intact. We walked up a stairway to a balcony level that overlooked the destruction. The balcony wrapped around 3 sides of the building and was in nearly perfect shape. It was so strange to sit there on the clean and soft red-felt lined pews and look down at what was left of the bottom part of the church. The church’s audio control equipment still remained on the balcony, and even it appeared to have remained dry during the storm.
At the end of the balcony was a door leading into the offices and Sunday-school rooms of the church. The roof above some of these rooms had let water onto the floors, but others were perfectly dry. There were about 20 different rooms in this area of the church, many of which contained TV’s, VCR’s and computers. Unlike New Orleans, it appears that there has been little looting in Gulf Port. Big cities are such a different environment.
We did end up looting the church, but only for liquids and some batteries. We were walking around in search of a kitchen when we came to a Sunday school room that had a table with a stack of cups and 3 two-liter soda bottles on it. We sat at the table and both had 2 cups of Mountain Lighting and a cigarette. We didn’t think smoking in the church would matter considering the other damage. I put some of the cups and two of the soda bottles in my backpack, then we continued looking for the kitchen. We found 3 bottles of water underneath a fallen painting on a table in a choir room. There were racks of choir uniforms there and I put one on and had my brother take my picture. We found 3 more bottles in another choir room nearby, then we found a whole case of water in a room that held props for plays. I took a picture of my brother wearing a king’s crown in this room. I put all the water in a basket that I found and carried it along with me.
We found a dry-erase board and markers in one of the rooms and I wrote a note on it saying that we had to take the batteries from the clocks, soda and water. I left an anonymous email address on the board, which I will create and see if I get any mail. We explored a few more rooms of the church, then sat on the pews and decided what to do for the night. Soldiers were patrolling the street on foot and stopped to look in the door of the church a couple times, but they luckily didn’t look up on the second floor balcony.
Curfew was starting in just a couple hours and we knew we would not be able to find a hotel for the night, so we decided to stay at the church and make beds out of the soft pads on the pews. As soon as the National Guard walked on, we walked back to the car to drop off the case of water. The plan had been to keep exploring the area till curfew started. We first decided to move the car closer to the church. While we were looking for a parking place, Chris decided that he had seen enough of this town and that he wanted to leave. I agreed and we decided to drive on towards Mobile, Alabama, where we had been told that gas was available.
As we left the city, it appeared that the soldiers were starting to try and clear people out of the downtown area for the evening. They were now only letting cars leave. As we passed through the residential areas of the city, we saw many families hanging out in their front yards with tents set up. They were probably sleeping in the tents at night because the houses were too hot without air-conditioning. Some of these families were cooking on grills outside and washing clothes in buckets. We saw more than one house that had a sign up saying, “You loot, we shoot”. We drove on down the highway for 30 minutes and came to the city of Biloxi. We decided to check out the coastline of this city, and passed through another residential area on the way there. We saw one woman on the front porch of her partially destroyed house with about 10 small children. We did not get all the way to the coast here because the road along it was closed. Two wildlife officers, who asked that we please turn around, blocked our path. As we turned, we noticed something that I had seen on the news several time; a huge pirate ship. The news said that the pirate ship did not belong in Biloxi, but was a casino from another city that had undocked during the storm. Seeing that big pirate ship floating among the destruction was an eerie sight.
We had planned on taking the same highway all the way to Mobile instead of using the interstate because we thought we would see more this way. But, the highway came to an end at a military base and we could not figure out how to go on. We asked a woman on the street, and she said we needed to use the Interstate because the other ways were closed.
On our way back towards the interstate, we saw another very unusual sight. We passed over a large drawbridge and noticed that there were hundreds of medium sized ships all strewn around the canal underneath. We parked the car nearby and walked back to the bridge to take some pictures. The railing on the top of the bridge had been damaged when the storm blew the masts of the ships into it. The ships that had hit the bridge were sunk under and around it. You could look through the steel grating that the center of the bridge was made of and see at lease one ship sunk directly underneath. The ships appeared to be fishing vessels and most of them were about 50 feet long. The majority of them were just all pushed tightly together, but some were also thrown up onto the banks. The water was covered with a thick film of multicolored pollution.
Going on towards Mobile, the interstate traffic came to a crawl and we passed a most likely deadly accident involving a small car and a logging truck. After sitting in traffic for almost an hour we decided to change our minds again and not go to Mobile. Chris figured that we would have enough gas to go back the way we came and fill up again in Memphis. So, we turned off the interstate and headed north on an unknown highway, which took us to a major state highway after about an hour of driving.
We wanted to eat cheeseburgers in Hattiesburg, but couldn’t find any restaurant that was open. We got really excited when we smelled fast-food and saw a bunch of customers at a Sonic. We turned around, but cars were blocking the entrances of the lot and employees and a police office were directing people away. They must have run out of food.
We passed another open Sonic a few minutes down the road. This one was accepting new customers. There was a line of 4 or 5 cars in front of us waiting because every available spot on all sides of the restaurant was full. We got our spot after just a couple minutes, then it took about 10 minutes for somebody to take our order. The girl who took the order on the intercom was not at all friendly, but the one that brought our food was extremely friendly. In her heavily southern-accented voice, she asked us where we were from and what we were doing down here. Despite her apparent niceness, she insisted that we would run out of gas before we got out of the south. Also despite her niceness, we were charged $17 for 4 cheeseburgers, 2 fries and 2 Cokes. Food price-gouging?
I took over the driving after dinner. I usually cannot stay awake when I am tired, but I didn’t have any problems tonight. I drove on for 3 hours or more and finally decided to stop at a parking area 100 miles south of Memphis. Chris had already been sleeping ever since we left Sonic.

September 2, 2005(Going to Gulf Port)
Friday:

I got up at 7 o’clock this morning so I could be at the computer lab an hour before classes started. I got to the library by 8 and spent an hour there gathering information for my planned weekend trip to the hurricane zone with my brother. I printed out material including road closure and recorded wind speed maps for the states of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.
I then went to all my morning classes. In statistics, I asked the teacher if she could possibly get a copy of the $130 textbook into the library, as teachers of most other classes do. She spent a while answering my question, saying that she was not allowed to put the textbook in the library. Her reason was that the publisher forbids it, but I think she might have just been lying. As she finished answering my question, she strangely added that nobody in her higher-level classes would ask such a question. I gave her a weird look in response to that comment and she added, “but, I don’t blame you for asking”. Some other students then spoke up for me and said it was normal procedure to put a copy of the textbook in the library.
As usual on Fridays, I had a short test at the beginning of Management class, then could leave after I finished it. I arrived home by 11:15 and made myself a chicken sandwich out of a left over chicken breast from last night, along with a cheese sausage, of course. I went to Chinese class at 1 and found that I had somehow done most of the homework wrong. This is the homework that I had spent like 3 hours doing last night. I forgot my dictionary at the end of class and the Polish lady ran out in the hallway with it. I said thanks and tried to grab it, but she momentarily pulled it away and said, “50 dollars”.
I then spent a few minutes in the Faner computer lab. I had ordered a digital camera online yesterday and had received an email from the company this morning asking me to call and verify my order. I had sent them a reply this morning saying that I could not speak on the phone and to please go ahead and send my order, because I thought they were going to try and sell me more stuff. Now this afternoon, I had a response to my email saying I still needed to call. I did so and a guy named Jeremy told me that I could not have the product shipped to an address other than the billing address. I told him to go ahead and ship it to the billing address(Murphysboro), then sure enough, he tried to start selling me things. He told me that the camera only came with a battery that lasted for 20 minutes and I could get the regular battery for half price. I immediately cancelled the order. I am 0-2 with camera companies over the past two weeks, but I did better with this one than I did the last.
I also used the computer lab phone to try and call my brother. He had emailed a phone number where I could reach him between 1-3, but I called and it sounded like a classroom. The foreign accented voice that answered yelled into the room asking if “Crise” was there, then came back on the line and said, “not yet”. I stayed in the computer lab till 2:30 and Keith came in and talked to me for a few minutes before I was leaving. He couldn’t imagine why my brother and I were possibly wanting to go to the south.
Next, I completely forgot about my last class and came on home. I had even prepared homework to turn in today, so I don’t know how I could forget such a thing. It’s almost as bad was missing my early classes on Monday because I thought it was a holiday. At the apartment, I decided to sleep because I thought I might be driving late tonight. I remembered the class and homework as soon as I got up at 3:30, but I didn’t have time to go back to campus and turn it in because my brother was coming to pick me up for the trip at 4. I took my things outside and waited for him at that time. He showed up on time; a few minutes after he got out of his last class at 3:50. We had to go back into the apartment to pick up my camera tripod before leaving. We then headed to my brother’s house in Murphysboro to pick up his things. I used his computer while he packed to send the assignment I had forgotten to hand in earlier. I also talked to John F. (currently Chris’s roommate) for a few minutes.
Our next stop was home, where we talked to my dad and Clara and picked up more things we needed. Chris had invited my dad with us, and he seemed interested to go, but decided against it because he was in the middle of installing a new sewer system. We got my inflatable boat out of my storage area in case we get the opportunity to explore any flooded areas. We got a cooler from a car that the family uses to store them in. This car is one of the hundreds of parts cars, and it has at least a dozen assorted coolers in it. My dad let us borrow a 5-gallon gas can that was full of gas. Clara made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for us and also sent some other foods.
Our last stop before leaving town was a gas station and ATM machine in Murphysboro. We got beer, ice and gas at the station. Gas went up about 75 cents in the last 3 days and cost us $3.20 per gallon. I don’t know if gas prices have ever increased so fast before. We couldn’t hold it against the gas station cashier because he was someone I had not seen for 10 years. His name is Willy Macey, A.K.A. “Mug”, and we went to high school together. I gave him the name of my website before leaving.
We saw the first indication of Hurricane Katrina even before getting out of Missouri, which was a sign on the interstate that was pointing to a nearby Red Cross shelter. The next indication was a convoy of military vehicles at a rest area just over the Tennessee state line. This was the first of several convoys we passed throughout the night, which contained a couple hundred vehicles in-all. They mostly consisted of Hummers towing trailers.
Our first gas stop was just north of Memphis. We were only half empty when we stopped, but wanted to be careful because of the potential for gas shortages in the south. This station was out of everything kind of gas except high octane, which was $3.45 per gallon. The cashier told us that she had earlier seen 7 gas stations on one street in Memphis that were all out of gas. We used the bathroom at this station and found a diarrhea explosion there. The stuff was all over the stool and floor of a stall. I at first said it was vomit, but one of two little kids in the bathroom heard me and said, “No, that’s diarrhea”. I went back into the bathroom to take a picture of it with Chris’s camera as he was shopping for some things. A guy using the bathroom said something to me like, “Don’t go in there”, and I replied, “Yeah I know about it. It’s weird”. He then said, “No, it’s not weird, it’s pathetic. It looks like someone signed their name in it over here”.
We did some things to the car before leaving the gas station. Chris checked the oil. I cleaned the windshield because I was about to take over the driving, but I think I just made it worse. Thousands of mosquitoes attacked us as we worked, and a couple dozen of them made it into the car. We tried to get them out by rolling the windows down at 70 MPH, but many of them somehow managed to avoid getting sucked out.
Continuing down the interstate, we passed a jumbo pack of toilet paper laying in the middle of the road. We saw another identical one about 50 miles later. Our next stop, around midnight, was to get more gas and go to a Wal-Mart in Grenada, Mississippi. At the Wal-Mart, we bought another 5-gallon gas container, bug spray, batteries and cookies. I also bought a 3 megapixel digital camera and a 256 MB memory card for $150. I had been planning on doing this online, but I really needed it now, especially considering Chris’s camera only had a 16 MB memory card and could store less than 50 pictures at 1 megapixels each.
Before leaving the Wal-Mart parking lot, we rearranged all the things in the car to make more room. I also used a bottle of window cleaner that I had just bought to finally get the windshield clean. We then tried to get our gas, but decided against it when we saw that the only station with any gas had a line of about 30 cars at it. The line had doubled in size just while we were in the store, even though it was after midnight. Seeing this surely made us a little uncertain.
Going on down the interstate, we stopped at the next few exits unsuccessfully looking for gas. Every station on rural exits appeared to be completely out of gas. They either were completely closed, or had yellow “caution” tape around their pumps. Our last stop of the evening was just before Jackson, Mississippi. This exit had about 8 more stations, none of which were selling gas. We asked some students standing by a car at one of them if they knew anything about gas, and they told us that they heard the stations were supposed to be getting more at 6 o’clock in the morning.
We had noticed that lines were already starting to form at some of the stations, even though it was now only 2 AM. We had no choice but to get in a line. We stayed in the line of one station for a few minutes, but then moved to the one where we had just talked to the students, because it looked more modern and promising. There were only 3 or 4 cars waiting at this station when we arrived, so we had only one car in front of us at the pump we choose. Within an hour, about 30 other cars had joined the line, so Chris and I got outside to film it. A lady “booed” at us when she saw what we were doing.
There was one man walking around the cars acting very suspicious throughout the night. He would stop and just stare into cars, whether they had people in them or not. A lady in a car next to us got out after the guy had come by and stared at her several times. She got a tire-iron from her trunk and said to another person next to her that she was going to “beat that boy” if he stared at her again.
We got a little bit of sleep throughout the night, but in periods of no more than about 10 minutes at a time. The line kept growing and growing all the time and the people seemed to be getting louder and louder. Some of them slept in their cars like us, but others just parked, then stood around and talked to each other. Two guys next to us were incredibly loud for what seemed like hours. People blaring loud radios passed through the station all night long.

September 1, 2005
Thursday,

It looks like my days with Schnucks are over. I went to the computer lab at 9 o’clock this morning and called Kevin to say that I would not be able to start working until Monday. He told me that Tom had already read my email from yesterday evening and told him that I could not work there again unless I started on Saturday. I decided right then and there that it was time for me to move on to something else. Kevin understood my situation and I thanked him for being a good boss to me in the past. I sent off another email to Tom at the same time I received one from him. He said that I had told him in a July email that I would start on the first of September and that it was a big deal because of the coming Labor Day weekend. I didn’t dispute the start date in my email because I had already decided that it would be best for me to move on. I just thanked him for always being such a good person to me in the past and said that I understood his dilemma. Despite this seemingly trivial problem becoming so large, I must say that Tom had always been the most respectful boss I have ever had.
After dealing with my Schnucks problems, I took care of some other business in the computer lab, including sending several emails and using the phone to call my bank and order a new debit card. I went into my empty Chinese classroom an hour early so I could study the homework before class. We had a small paragraph to read through and I could not even finish it in an hour because there were a lot of new and unknown characters there. Dr. Hammond teaches the class on Thursdays, so there were a lot of questions directed at individual students today. Luckily, I wasn’t called on to read or answer anything too difficult. I don’t know why, but I just hate it when that happens, and it happens a lot.
I came home for lunch after class and ate yet another ham sandwich and cheese sausage. Then, I burnt my dad’s garden video onto a CD to send to Johanna. I also prepared a letter and a $400 check to include in the package. The CD is for her parents because they enjoy gardening. The letter and check are for Johanna herself. I still owed her money from a couple things over the summer.
I went back to school at 2 o’clock to investigate some upcoming statistics homework. I stopped along the way to drop off a September rent check to Tammy and Whitnee in the office. I did my homework investigating at the library computers. A big girl sitting next to me asked me if I would watch her stuff, then left saying, “I just have to get something in my stomach”. When I told her I would watch her stuff, I surely didn’t mean that I would just sit there while she took an hour lunch break. She still had not come back when I left about 20 minutes later. She must have been really hungry.
Another thing I had done online was send a report about www.accessoriesland.com to the Better Business Bureau of New York. This is the company that last week took my credit card information online and gave me a confirmation number for a digital camera order, but never sent the product or charged my card. I also mentioned last week that they had rudely hung up on me before I could get a whole sentence out when I tried to call them about the order. Their phone manners are what bothered me the most. I reported them today for false advertising because they never actually sold me the camera that they had offered for a very good price. Through some online checking that I had done last week, I found that other people had been discussing similar incidents on message boards. They apparently only sell the cameras at the advertised prices if you buy a bunch of very overpriced accessories also. People on these message boards even reported being hung up on in the same manner that I had. Today I provided the Better Business Bureau with all this information and a street address that I found for the company. The BBB website says that they will investigate the complaint within 30 days, then get back to me.
After leaving the computer lab, I went to the Student Center Bookstore to just read a section of my class’s statistics book. I didn’t dare buy it yet at $125, and I’ll never buy it unless I absolutely have to. I would seriously consider stealing it if I new how to demagnetize or dewhatever to it that they do when you buy it so the alarms don’t go off when you leave the store. I also really want to start a book strike because this is getting more and more ridiculous.
I used the book to write down what I needed to know for the assignment, then came back to the apartment. There, I spent most of the evening studying Chinese. Nic made a surprise visit at 6:30 and we played darts and talked until 7 o’clock. After he left, I made a dinner of pasta and chicken breasts for the second night in a row. I finally quit studying at 8:30 even though I only had finished half of my homework. Luckily, most of the homework in that class is not graded because I am extremely slow at it.