The last few weeks of my life.. in pictures.

We had some water on the carpet.

The carpet padding was pulled up.

The maintenance lady had a laugh at the tile-work done by the original contractors.

They removed large piles of soaking wet padding materials.
(left-- carpet padding.. right-- noisy blue monster)
We had to box up and move.

While we moved out, we did the best to entertain our boy.
Including going out to the railway museum.



Where they had the "Day Out with Thomas"

I saw some cool pieces of history.
And experienced LEGO ENVY.

And to a lesser extent, HO Scale envy.

And uh.. well, we've got the blue plastic tracks, not the wooden one. We do have some of that style train. Some of these (including one we owned) were recently recalled for lead based paint. I hate China right now. And been finishing up the move since then.

Have not forgotten this

Just been crazy busy, haven't gotten around to it.

I've got a backlog of pictures to post.

With any luck

I'll have a decent internet connection to post some pics tonight. I might be a little busy.

Saturday night and sunday all day we packed EVERYTHING.

We're both a little tired.

The internet: wasting your time more every day.

Urbandead.com, for example.



or whatever memecat site floats your boat



Or even just stop by a friend's site.

My computer needs rabbit ears..

I'm currently sitting in the kitchen of my new apartment. It seems that the best solution was to move us about 200 yards into an identical ground floor apartment with no water in the padding and less available parking.

As I type this I hope desperately that the wifi connection which I have been "borrowing" will start to work once more, or I will not be able to post this, or upload the image which I had intended to go with it.

Regarding my mystery email, for those who have not heard the story I will let you know that it was a paternity scare. Not an accusation, more a family member of an ex violating her privacy by going behind her back and asking old boyfriends if they were responsible for her five year old daughter. I'm happy to say that my memory has sharpened to the point of being able to clear me of involvement, but I don't believe I'll ever be able to lose the shadow of a doubt which lingers in the back of my mind. I'm also not going to pursue this matter any further unless the people directly involved ask me to, as opposed to busybodies acting on their behalf.

That bit of vitriol cleared now, I continue to sit in a sweltering hot apartment, my heir apparent watching Little Einsteins on his dvd player, and hopefully glance at the little yellow dot bouncing underneath the wireless network icon in the system tray.

Events like this (the thing with my ex) make you spend time confronting things from the past. In my case, this includes re-reading journals written more than 5 years ago, reading with embarrassment my terrible writing, and cursing loudly that entries like "went over there just to see her dark orbs glow" don't include a date-stamp. Never mind that "dark orbs glow" is a frightening piece of language in any context.

Things like this also make you confront the old ghosts from the past, give you an inability to drink coffee til you've put them in your closet, and other song references... There is obviously something wrong with my brain, firstly I'm not self-censoring this painful stream of thought, and secondly.. well, that's about it. I would always write nonsense like this if I allowed it. Too darn hot. And there's no internet connection.

I would love to post some pictures of the night the washer flooded, but even if my internet connection was solid enough to do that, I can't find the camera I was using. Our old apartment is a shambles, and our new apartment is a much more empty shambles.

Hooray, after several careful adjustments, I'm now connected to pepper! I don't mind the sands of time and all that.

broke into the old apartment..

[edit] thanks mush, i hadn't tested the link after posting.[/edit]

Critical memory failure.

You ever try to remember whether something 6 years ago happened in january or february? One of my friends claims he does, which could get me clear of a big hunk of trouble.

Unfortunately, we have one piece of evidence, combined with an old check register, which seems to contradict this. Of course, the check register is only meaningful if the memories are valid.

So I'm going with one person's memory over another. Mine is swiss cheese when it comes to things that far back.

So I have gotten no-where fast.

SURF'S UP!

Enough of disturbing email..

For the third time this year, my washing machine flooded. It means I get a free visit from our apartment's cleanup people with shop-vacs and blowers and other free fun.

I really hope this doesn't mean a carpet replacement. We have considerable knick-knacks and such which would not be happily moved.

Pictures to come. This is a mess. I'll be up for awhile.

From the depths of the past...

Imagine if you will, it's the year 1994




(images chosen from google image results for "1994" and "grunge 1994")

A younger me is experiencing, against all likelihood, having a girlfriend. We spent considerable time engaged in forays through the first three bases, mostly at her home. I occasionally would have chances to speak to her mother, who seemed to tolerate my presence in a matronly way.

Her father, somewhat shorter than my 16-year-old self, seemed to avoid being anywhere near me. I never had the opportunity to develop any impressions of the man, let alone anything resembling an acquaintance.

Fast forward to a few years later, as the song goes. This former girlfriend of mine comes into my orbit once again (and I into hers).. we spend several months together, at times thinking of becoming very serious about where we were going. For reasons I shall not discuss, things ended.

We came together, came apart, some unkind things were said and done. I was going crazy when we were together, going crazy when we were apart. I finally decided to lose contact with her. Let her know that she didn't need to keep contact with me for my own sake (sometimes i wonder if this hurt her feelings), and went about exorcising her from my contact lists, deleting emails which could make it possible for me to track her back down again.

Fast forward to a few more years later, or something to that effect. I am married to another gal, have a three year old son. I get an email from the old girlfriend's father.

subject "is this still a current address"
this is from [name withheld]'s dad

WHAT THE HELL?

I confirmed that it was, and have been checking my email at 20 minute intervals to see if he will respond with some sort of explanation as to why he should need contact with me.

Today I obsessively searched for information on the man. By his name, by his email address. Not much to go on. Three years ago he is listed as a cemetery salesman in Louisiana. Today google has an address for someone by his name in that state. Creepifyingly, I can look at satellite images of his home. I already compulsively searched for her online a few months ago, when struck by a whim. You see, I do everything compulsively unless it's a good idea.

Really, I can see only a few possible reasons for him to be contacting me. I won't even attempt to assign an order of most to least distressing, but none of them are really happy.

1) She's suffering from some sort of physical or emotional malaise, and wishes that I make contact. (You see, if she were happy and wanted to contact me, she could do so herself.)
2) She has let slip her mortal coil, and my email address was found written down in some sort of journal or found in her email address. (Or worse yet, i'm on an apology list in a suicide note. I would have trouble absolving myself completely of guilt if this were the case. I'd still be narcissistic enough to make it about me, and not the person who died.)
3) She is missing, and he is desperately attempting to contact any of her known friends in hope that someone might be able to help find him.
4) (Suggested by my wife) This might have something to do with her daughter. You see, the last time i heard from her, I learned she had a child, who she assured me could not possibly be mine. The possibility exists that she was shading the truth or her math was bad, and she is now putting my name forward as the father. (If this was just about confession, she could contact me herself. Otherwise it's legal action, or #4 is combined with #1 or #2).

Excuse me while I go check my email again.

Right. The man has a few more days to email me again, or I start making phone calls.

[edit] Not that many calls, really. Dude emailed me from Louisiana. He's the only one of his first and last name listed in the state.

[update] Update, I got an answer.. I'm afraid I can't discuss it at this time. Apparently she's alive and well. [/update]