Mon 29 Mar 2004 memories

Where were you when…

filched from Sheryl:

When Mt. St. Helens blew (18/5/1980)
Not quite in kindergarten yet. 🙂

When the space shuttle Challenger exploded (28/1/1986)
In Mrs. Canady’s fourth-grade class in Riverview, Florida (near Tampa). We were watching it live on TV, and there was a collective gasp as the shuttle exploded. Our classroom was connected by one of those accordion-walls to Mrs. Bateman’s social studies class next door, and Mrs. Canady quietly went to the back of the room where the wall was always partway open. She called Mrs. Bateman from her class to the back corner of the rooms and told her, “The space shuttle just exploded.” And I distinctly remember Mrs. Bateman saying, “Oh, my God.”

When the 7.1 earthquake hit San Francisco (7/10/1989)
Eighth grade—I recall the news coverage, but not precisely where I was when I first heard.

When the Berlin Wall fell (7/11/1989)
Again, eighth grade, although I didn’t really grasp the significance until the following year.

When the Gulf War began (16/1/1991)
Ninth grade when the actual declaration came out, but my more vivid memory is of being in eighth grade and hearing about Operation Desert Shield, which had an ominous foreshadowing about it. I recall being freaked out by the prospect of war, and rising gas prices, and death, and everything else that would come with war. As war was declared, when I was in high school, I was still apprehensive, and began wondering about what would happen if the school buses couldn’t run because gas was too expensive.

When OJ Simpson was chased in his White Bronco (17/6/1994)
Summer before college. I only vaguely recall seeing the news coverage. What I recall more vividly was the OJ verdict, which was announced during my semester at home from college. I spent a lot of time at home, laying on the cream-colored carpet of the living room, writing and reading and listening to the radio and watching the OJ trial.

When Princess Di was killed (31/8/1997)
Just home from my final season of drumcorps and back at college with my roomie Amy. I don’t recall any specifics about the news coverage, although it didn’t take long to get sick of hearing Elton John singing “Goodbye English Rose.”

When the shooting at Columbine occured (25/04/1999)
It was early afternoon in Kohl Hall, and for some reason, Amy and I weren’t playing video games. I think we heard someone in the hallway talking about turning on the news, so we did, and we watched the scene unfold. Shocking, frightening.

When Bush was first announced President (7/11/2000)
Living on-campus, by myself, the semester after Amy had graduated. Beyond that, don’t know, don’t care.

When terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center (11/9/2001)
Living off-campus on Ridge Street. It was a Tuesday, and I had no classes that day, but I hadn’t turned off my alarm. I automatically wandered across the bedroom to shut it off, but hearing Tom Brokaw’s voice instead of bad music stilled my hand, and I listened for a moment. As soon as I woke up enough to almost realize what was going on, I turned off the clock radio and turned on the TV in the living room. I forget who called first, Aaron or Beth, but I was on the phone with Aaron as the second plane hit. I believe the quotable of the moment was “Holy shit…”

When Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas. (1/2/2003)
Living in the duplex on South Grove with Aaron. I don’t remember the day or the time, but I remember being shocked and saddened to have seen two shuttle accidents in my lifetime.

Mon 29 Mar 2004 house

The Big Move

All hail the triumphant return of the on-site blog… kind of. I still like my LJ, and am going to continue posting there, but I think I’m going to reserve my website for major, more important and archivable posts. Like the tale of The Move.

My apologies to everyone for not posting this sooner, but now that a week has passed, I think I can safely focus on the important parts and not bore everyone with stupid details. That, and the house is pretty much unpacked and I have now downloaded Dreamweaver 4 for Mac (until I get the PC back online using the power supply Sheryl generously donated to The Cause).

So. Sunday, March 21st.

Aaron and I get up before 9am, strip the bed and gather the remainder of the we-can’t-do-without-it stuff like toilet paper and shampoo. A little before 9:00, Aaron walks the five blocks or so to the welding place which is currently the U-Haul mecca of Bowling Green. While he’s gone, Eric shows up, and we shoot the shit about RCC and other randomness. As we’re waiting for Aaron to return with the big-ass U-Haul, Kris Heath shows up. (For those of you not overly familiar with the Schnuth Friend Clan, he’s the skinny vegetarian.)

Aaron does show up shortly thereafter, driving the biggest fucking U-Haul I’ve ever seen: a 24-footer. And he manages to park it in our driveway without smoking the fire hydrant, which is jolly good form. Since we have a decent beginning to our moving crew, we opt to start hauling the big shit out: couch, chairs, mattress and boxspring. In the midst of all this, Mark arrives. (Note: he’s the tall, skinny, bearded one.) He assists with getting the big shit out, and we continue with dressers and large boxes of clothes and other light stuff to pitch into “Mom’s Attic” in the front of the truck.

Meanwhile, our designated foreman Kris Fries and his wife Kathy have not yet arrived, and neither has Aaron’s brother Matt. We’re still operating short-handed, but doing fairly well. It’s around 10:30am and we’ve gotten most of the big shit out and into the truck. Finally, Kris and Kathy arrive. Kris takes over his duty as truck-packer, and Kathy does a heroic battle with her asthma and the aftereffects of November’s epidural (right in the spine!) to help carry out some lighter boxes. I take over vacuum duty once the master bedroom is clear, and let the guys and Kathy handle the moving on their own.

The rest of the actual move-out is kind of a blur. The guys gaped over how much shit we had (“We didn’t see all these boxes in the kitchen! All this goes, too?”), and I swept and cleaned the rooms, fighting a losing battle to retain some of our security deposit. I declare it a losing battle because Aaron punched a small hole in the drywall several months ago, trying to shut up our old upstairs neighbors.

Anyway, before long it’s almost noon, and the truck is just about packed. We put the fragile stuff in the car—stuff like the remainder of my plants, and the TV, and the giant lamp, and the guitar. So, after a record 2 1/2 hour truck-loading, we prepare to head off to Easystreet for lunch… but, as Kris Fries points out, we can’t leave the U-Haul packed and unlocked. So, off to Wal-Mart Kathy and I go, for a padlock for me and some Tylenol for her. Brief trip, no mishaps, we return with lock and drugs and all is well. Lock up the truck, walk downtown to Easystreet.

Wait half an hour for a table.

Wait another half an hour for our food. Wait longer for the waitress to return after the meal with the check.

All in all, treating everyone to lunch took nearly as long as moving. Meanwhile, we were all chomping at the bit to get back to the truck, drive up to Toledo, and unload, so we can be done with it. Gah. All told, we spent an hour and a half at Easystreet.

Finally, we take care of the check and all mosey back to the apartment. Everything is in order, and everyone has been given directions on how to get to our new place, so everybody leaves separately. I get to go last, because I’m parked in front of the U-Haul in the driveway. 🙂 Kris Fries accompanies Aaron in the U-Haul, so he’s not alone driving this massive beast.

So, despite the fact that I know how to get to my own house (really I do), I opt to follow the U-Haul and watch Aaron’s fun with getting the truck to stop on funky brakes with tonnage of personal belongings bringing up the rear. Meanwhile, I have to grab the damn lamp every time I make a turn, so it doesn’t tip and break or fall in my lap from the passenger’s-side floorboard or something. No major issues getting to the house.

Once we get there, though, it’s a different story.

First off, Mark’s car stalled not less than six times en route, and he thought (at the time) it would never start again. Then, I parked with all the other cars in the grassy (muddy) field across the street, and I got out to watch Aaron attempt to back the U-Haul up the driveway… and adjust… and pull forward… and backward… and cut the wheel… and forward… and cut the wheel some more… and backward… and forward—

A little too far forward. He got the rear wheels up over the curb and into the muddy grass, and that’s all she wrote. The damn thing got stuck there. We were destined to haul everything into the house from across the damn street. We figured that maybe, once the thing was empty, it would be easier to move. So, off to unpacking the truck.

Unloading took even less time than loading: only two hours. Once the truck was empty, around 4:30-ish, we all made a valiant attempt to brainstorm a way to get the U-Haul unstuck. There were some leftover bags of play-sand the sellers left in the back yard, so we tried putting that under the wheels; to no avail. We tried pushing from the front as Aaron reversed, and Aaron tried rocking the truck from forward to reverse to forward to reverse. All this only succeeded in digging the U-Haul deeper into the mud. Finally, Aaron called a halt to the U-Haul rescue attempt and resigned himself to calling a tow truck.

Once we were all inside and perched on various pieces of misplaced furniture, and once Aaron had retrieved the cell phone (I’d had it on me, in case anyone got lost), Kris Fries suggested a tow company, which Aaron called. Yes, Ray’s Towing had the capacity to tow a U-Haul, the nice man on the phone was going to call the dispatch, and the truck would arrive in 45 minutes. Great. Kris and Kathy bailed to rescue Grandpa from the perils of watching little Samuel, and Kris Heath decided to take off, too, which prompted Mark to leave so Kris could follow him home in case he stalled again. Eric, however, was determined to stick around and see how the story played out, and we were grateful to have someone to share the insanity with.

Because Ray’s Towing never fucking showed up.

After an hour, Aaron called Ray back and got his answering machine. Nobody was even there. So, we decided to pick another towing company and call them. I believe Aaron chose the company with the largest, prettiest ad in the Towing section of the Yellow Pages. 🙂

Anyway, the nice man from Mayberry Towing arrived 45 minutes later, only fifteen minutes after their estimated time of arrival. David, from the towing company, pulled up into our driveway and surveyed the situation, telling Aaron, “All we can do is try.” Oh, boy. He secured his vehicle against the force of the U-Haul, and hooked up the chain to the underbelly of the stuck truck. On the first attempt, the hook came unattached from the chain. On the second attempt, his tow truck began moving backwards against the pull of the U-Haul, and he had to further brace his truck with wedges behind the back wheels. But on the third attempt, he actually got movement, and had Aaron get in and get ready to hit the brakes and cut the wheel once the thing was free—which he did.

So, it took $48 and three hours after the move was complete to get the U-Haul unstuck and ready to return to the truckyard. After David the tow truck technician left, Eric took his leave and headed home, but not before we decided that we really need to hang out more. We’d both forgotten how cool Eric is to hang out with. 🙂

At that point, it was somewhere around 8:00. We took the U-Haul back and drove to Ruby Tuesday’s for a late dinner. Low-carb cheesecake… yum.

Got home, put the bed together while half-asleep and grumpy and tired, and crashed early (for Aaron, anyway). So ended our epic move to The New House.

Post Script: Despite the fact that Aaron’s brother had called the day before to confirm that he would be there to help move, he ended up getting wasted that night and oversleeping until 1:00pm. Heh.

I also intend to photograph the ruts left by the U-Haul in the field across the street. They’re still there, and will be for some time.

Tue 23 Mar 2004 1 Comment house

Forthcoming update…

We just got our internet back today, so give me some play time… then I will either post here or create a dedicated page on the.details page. Highlights of the day include a superfast truck-loading in BG, an extended lunch at Easystreet, an even more superfast unload in Toledo, and getting the 24-foot U-Haul truck stuck in the field across the street. Details to follow…

Wed 17 Mar 2004 2 Comments ruminations

Fire

Every time I see Dan, I am impressed by his motivation, his drive, to do more and be more and live life to the fullest. This time, though, it occurs to me that I have several friends and acquaintances with a similar drive. Every time I see you, you’re always excited about what you’re doing in life—otherwise, why would you be doing it, after all? You’re bubbling over, it seems, not just with untold stories, but with untold vibrance for your current passion.

Usually I can say, “You know who you are,” but in this case, I don’t think I can. I don’t think you can see yourselves this way, as a direct function of the selfless vibrancy you possess. But on the off-chance that you might know…

Where do you get your Fire?

When I was an adolescent and a teenager, and was a stolid churchgoer, I was told that the Light had to come from within—you couldn’t be like a wind-up toy, being motivated and then losing steam after a while. And that’s how I’ve always felt: some event motivates the shit out of me, be it a religious experience, a personal epiphany, a change of scenery, or energized companions—and after that, I feel the Fire. I devote all my free waking hours to The Cause… for a time. After a while, though, I lose my motivation.

Sometimes I think I’m too hard on myself, or that maybe I’m spreading myself too thin. There are so many things I’d love to devote so much time to: mellophone practice (OK, maybe not so much), candle-making, updating my various websites (including my horribly-neglected drumcorps alumni site), my houseplants, photography, not to mention exercising and taking some walks outside when the weather gets nice. But I can only be passionate about one or two of these things at a time, it seems, before all my oomph leaves me. The only thing I’ve managed to maintain for a long period of time is this diet I’ve been on for six months now, and that’s only because Aaron’s doing it, too, and it’s become almost second-nature to eat this way. (And because there’s nothing to cheat on in the house, which helps…)

So, what do I do? How do I get my Fire going without getting burnt out? I’ve wondered and tried for years, but it never quite happens. Any comments would be appreciated—except Aaron’s standard, “You’re overanalyzing things again…” 🙂

Wed 17 Mar 2004 house, site-related

T-minus four days and counting

We have almost everything packed, the U-Haul is reserved, and Aaron’s picking up the key to the house on Friday. Time to let everybody know The Moving Day Schedule.

9:00am – Aaron picks up the U-Haul
9:30am – Moving commences as fellow movers arrive
after loading – Aaron and Diana take the crew out to lunch at Easystreet (our treat)
after lunch – Return to Grove Street and line up vehicles for the Schnuth Caravan up to Toledo
upon arrival – Unload at 4651 Ventura

Unfortunately, we’re not positive what time the whole operation will be over, but we’re guessing sometime in the mid- to late afternoon. So far, the moving crew looks like myself and Aaron, Kris Fries (and possibly his wife Kathy), Kris Heath, Mark Sheets, and Eric Fertel. Jason Garza may be making an appearance after lunch.

I’m kind of frustrated that I don’t have Dreamweaver for my Mac, and/or that I haven’t gotten myself a new power supply for the other computer yet. I have grand ideas for a slight redesign of “the details” page, but it would require that great search-and-replace function in Dreamweaver, so I wouldn’t have to open up every damn file in the whole site and see what styles everything was set at. For the web geeks: yes, I do have stylesheets set up, and yes, they are a linked file and not individually applied within the page. Yes, I will pretty much just be writing a new stylesheet and making new graphics. Still, though, I have become a creature of habit and I prefer my WYSIWYG program to hardcoding, despite the fact that I once prided myself on my ability to code HTML. (That was long before the days of Dreamweaver and its Adobe analog, however, back when WYSIWYG programs were awkward and clunky and required code-tweaking, anyway, to output properly.)

Anyway, as much as I enjoy my LiveJournal, I think I’m going to begin updating my actual page again, as soon as the PC is back up. I may keep the blog section on LJ, and just add updates to the page, though. I’m looking at, first, a new and cleaner design. Second, I’ll be updating long-unused sections, like the Reviews, Photos and Bio. Third, I’ll be adding new sections, like an Atkins Diet factsheet with reviews of low-carb foods and links to Schnuth-approved recipes.

All this… as soon as I get myself a new power supply.

Fri 12 Mar 2004 1 Comment randomness

I’m (kind of) a nerd…

42.857142857142854% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

How disappointing. I am a “well-balanced nerd.” I even knew all the answers to the LOTR and the Star Trek questions. Hell, I even knew the Dune questions and the Asimov questions! It was the D&D that got me, though, I think.

Now I’ve given away too much of the test, and you won’t be surprized when you read the nerdy questions. Ah, well.

…Hey, wasn’t I going to clean my desk?

Fri 12 Mar 2004 anecdotes

Dan!

Yesterday evening, Dan stopped by on his way from Cincinnati to Ann Arbor. Very cool. I don’t know why, exactly, but Dan makes me smile. He’s just got that kind of personality, I guess, where he makes everything seem exciting and invigorating. I like Dan.

We ended up having dinner at Easystreet, where Michelle from Madhatter was our waitress. She was in rare form, too, and talked up a storm. Dan wasn’t sure what to think of her… Come to think of it, neither was I, at that point. Anyway, Dan and I spent quite a while just sitting and talking after dinner. Afterward, we took a short walk (short because it was so f*&%ing cold out), and then stopped into Grounds For Thought, but decided against getting anything after staring at the menu board for a couple of minutes. Dan really wanted to see our new house in Toledo, so I Mapquested directions to my own damn house (how pathetic is that?), and I navigated while he drove. The trip was a little anticlimactic, but at least he kind of knows where our house is now. When we got back to BG, we came home and fired up the computer again so Dan could show me the scooter he wants to buy off of eBay. We talked for a while after that, and ended up crashing at 11:30 or so, which is waaay past Dan’s bedtime. 🙂

At some point during the evening, we were discussing actions vs. intentions, and how important it is to follow through on your promises, to have integrity, especially as you get older and (supposedly, theoretically) more responsible. Of course, he was talking about someone else, not me, but that sort of follow-up is one thing I’ve always struggled with. It goes hand-in-hand with procrastination (which I’m doing right now by posting this entry). I always have the best intentions, but I end up finding different or more pleasant things to do, rather than what I know I should do.

So, today I proclaimed to Aaron over e-mail that I am going to begin cleaning and packing my desk area. Anyone who hasn’t been to my apartment, let me explain: my desk is a disaster area. I write notes on scraps of paper, or I work with genealogy documents, or I read mail and open bills, or get reference books from the bookshelf. These items I then stack neatly on my very small desk real-estate. And on the defunct scanner. And next to my mouse. And on top of my tower. And on top of my other tower. And on top of my file box. And on top of my printer. And on top of my other printer, sitting underneath the desk. And, well, it’s a bunch of crap that I don’t want to throw away, but don’t know what to do with. So, this is no small feat to clean and pack. But I have committed myself to at least beginning to tackle this monstrosity tonight, and tackle it I must.

So, off I go.

Really.

…Have I started yet?

—Oh, by the way, before I go: My high school buddy Melody got accepted to BGSU as a Vocal Performance major! Wheeee! Congratulations, Mel! Now we’re going to hang out again on a regular basis, for the first time in years and years… damn, almost ten years it’s been since we really got to spend much quality time together. This is going to be cool… for both of us.

OK, now I’m really going to clean and pack. Really.

Wed 10 Mar 2004 ruminations

My Brain Hurts.

I have that weird feeling in my brain. The one that precludes either a stint of creative writing or a long intellectual conversation with Amy. I swear to God that I feel different in my brain when it feels like it wants to think. Aaron thinks I’m crazy.

Thing is, I don’t really have any pressing tales of fiction to tell, no poetry oozing from my fingers. I had contemplated busting out the Kay and strumming a few chords, but I don’t think that would do it for me. As for writing, I’m tired of writing simplistic me-disguised-as-hero stories. I’m also tired of reverting to my junior high days and writing soft porn (yes, ladeez and gents, Diana has a libido, frightening as that may be to you).

I wish I could be like Isaac Asimov (lofty, I know) and plunk out a decent short story in 20 minutes flat. Hell, I wish I could write a decent short story at all. —OK, maybe that one was pretty alright, but besides that… *shrug*

Maybe I just need to write more often, instead of maybe once every four months. Write fiction, I mean; I write in my LiveJournal (or, previously, my main blog) nearly every day. My eighth-grade English teacher once told me that, like a world-class athlete, a writer like me should practice every day.

…

Whoa. My intelligent train of thought was just completely derailed by Sir Mix-a-Lot making an appearance in my random mp3 playlist. My brain is now filled with images of a big black guy in shades dancing on a giant peach, surrounded by black chicks with much booty.

Tue 9 Mar 2004 gardening

Happy Plants

There’s some flowering bushes in the backyard of our apartment here. Someone once told me it was called a Rose of Sharon, and a little online research proved her correct. Anyway, I decided when I first saw them bloom that I love those bushes, and I decided to attempt cuttings to take with me to the new house.

A couple of weeks ago (or maybe it was last week), I made probably almost two dozen cuttings of this plant, all of various thicknesses, about six to eight inches long apiece. I planted about ten of them in a big pot full of perlite—that white, styrofoamy, pebbley substance. I covered them with plastic to keep the moisture in, placed them by a not-too-drafty window, and I’ve been dutifully watering them every day.

I peeked through the plastic (wax paper, actually) today to see if anything was happening… and some of the twigs are growing buds! Little green leaf buds. How about that! They’re not dead… yet. We’ll see if they actually root in a couple of months.

Until then, I also have another bundle of cuttings lying dormant in the refrigerator, ready to be planted outside to attempt rooting a different way. One way or another, I’m going to have a Rose of Sharon. Oh, yes. It will be mine.

Tue 9 Mar 2004 house

Moving Day

It has been decided. Moving Day is Sunday, March 21st. We have begun packing, we have reserved a U-Haul, and we have contacted the utility companies so we have the necessities of life when we arrive in Toledo.

It’s kinda damn cool.

So, the festivities will begin bright and early at 217 South Grove Street in Bowling Green, Ohio. We will pack the giant-size U-Haul with all our personal effects, then caravan up to 4651 Ventura Drive in Toledo, where the unloading will commence. All who assist will be welcome to partake in the traditional “Thank You For Helping Us Haul Our Shit” post-move meal, courtesy of the move-ees (that would be Aaron and myself).

For now, the challenge lies in getting everything packed and ready to go.