dianaschnuth

I’ve been re-reading my old diaries and journals, looking for blog-worthy tidbits to share from five, ten, or fifteen years ago. This one is just a little overdue for a Five Years Ago Today, but I’m going to share it anyway.

As a bit of a preamble: in the Spring of 2001, my step-Gary decided (for reasons best left to another blog entry) that he would go into business for himself. He hired me on contract for some graphic design work: logo, business cards, letterhead. Being in my final year of college as a Visual Communication major, I was grateful for the experience, and the pay.

This is one day’s worth of that experience, unabridged, originally written five years ago:

(BTW, Mom? You should probably skip this one.)
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Granted, this particular joy isn’t limited to only homeowners, but… I just got to clean up after my very first completely overflowing toilet! Yaye! 😛

I mean, I knew I had taken a pretty dense crap, but jeez.

I’d never actually experienced the kind of clogged toilet that actually overflows onto the bathroom tile. It’s like one of those slow-motion “Ohhhhh nooooo…” moments. I managed to keep the rug from getting completely soaked, and the overflow was luckily *not* completely nasty toilet water.

Still, though… spending quality time re-mopping the bathroom floor was not fun.

(As a side note, I had a particularly memorable bad dream when I was maybe four or five years old about the toilet overflowing and filling up the bathroom to my armpits. While I mopped this evening, I recalled that bizarre nightmare, and how I and my dream-friend saved ourselves from being swept away or drowned by pulling out straws and drinking the overflow water. I was a weird kid.)

Apparently the lifespan of a digital clock radio is about 20 years, give or take.

I got this alarm clock in 1986, for my tenth birthday. According to my diary from that year, my Aunt Sammie got it for me. I’ve used this alarm clock ever since. I’ve lived in six different cities; in a trailer, two houses, four dorm rooms, and five apartments; and my simulated-wood-grain clock radio has consistently lived on my nightstand.

Over the past few years, the buzzer has slowly faded to a weak-sounding bleating, so I’ve been setting the alarm to radio, instead. Usually, the click of the radio turning on has been enough to waken me, as I’m almost awake by the time my alarm goes off, anyway.

However, on Sunday, I awoke 20 minutes after my alarm was supposed to have woken me. I looked at the clock. It was silent. I hit the button to turn off the alarm, and it made the tell-tale click; it had been on, but with no volume. I was willing to accept that maybe I’d hit the volume knob with my book before I went to bed. Before going to bed last night, I double-checked the volume and went to sleep, confident that my clock radio would wake me in the morning.

This morning, I awoke five minutes before I was supposed to be at work. WTF? I hit the button that either turns off the alarm or displays the time at which the alarm will sound — and it read 5:06pm. Now, I *knew* I hadn’t set my alarm for 5:06pm, and I hadn’t reset the time recently, so it couldn’t have happened by accident.

Time to get a new clock.

After a failed alarm clock hunt at Meijer over my lunch break, I went to Wal-Mart after work and got myself a new-fangled alarm clock. It is now time to plug in the new clock, and retire the old.

Sometimes I’m strangely attached to *things*.

I finally located some tapes I’d been missing for a while: the very first mixtape Aaron ever made for me, back in 1996, and three 8mm videotapes from 1999-2000.

As soon as I finish compiling mp3s to correspond with all the songs on Aaron’s Music Sampler, you can expect to find a zip file of 90 minutes’ worth of mp3s for your listening pleasure. You, too, can be introduced to fantastic 90’s alternative like Frank Black, Sebadoh, The Afghan Whigs, the Pixies, Man or Astroman?, Catherine Wheel, and many more.

Eventually, you can also expect to find some mini-montages of the video footage from 1999 and 2000. Old RCC buds will appreciate RCC Fun Day 2000, and family will (possibly) appreciate Thanksgiving and Christmas 1999, including me telling CC Snyder’s “Archibald Barasol” joke, Gary reading the infamous forward about The Best Fruitcake Ever, and general fun with decorations and snowball fights.

I’m tempted to plug the camera into the TV and watch them right now.

What the hell… I think I will. 😀

Update, 1:20am: Damn… I was one sloppy bitch six and seven years ago. I look *much* better now at age almost-30 than I did back then at 23-24. Same with Aaron (no offense, honey).

Even so, I think I’ll be able to edit this stuff into something fun and amusing to watch later. Yeah.