FLASHBACK SPECIAL: Day Runner Notes, August/September, 1998

August

1 - Claudia, Rich and Tascha vacation.  I don't remember where they went.(Shows they came back on the 7th)

3 - False Epiphany.  Ok, if I remember correctly, here's what happened. I was driving down John Young Parkway past nearby 33rd Street Jail when a song came on the radio. I don't remember what song but I do remember getting the chills because it was a song that for at least part of the lyrics I felt like it was "speaking to me" telling me to find Jesus' love, visit my parents and honor them. (On researching likely songs of the day that could have been the one I heard I think it may have been either "Truly Madly Deeply" by Savage Garden or "Torn" by Natalie Imbruglia. Both songs have some lyrics that could be construed as spiritual love.) I interpreted the fact this song played just as I was coming up to an I-4 on-ramp as a call to get on I-4, drive to DeLand and visit my parents. So I did drive there but they weren't home. On the ride back to Orlando, I started to re-analyze my 'epiphany" and decided I was hungover and just needed more sleep so I went home and took a nap. 

BTW, semi-related side note. IMHO, 1998 was the last year pop music made sense to me. '99 was much worse than '98 in terms of quality, originality and appeal. And 2000 saw the obnoxious overkill airtime for absolute crap like "The Thong Song", "Who Let the Dogs Out" and "She Bangs." Pop music was dead.

4 - Initialized "Trainee Input Form"  In all my managerial jobs I tried to shine by coming up with unique little forms, graphs and other junk to make my bosses think I was the best thing since sliced bread. Or so I thought. Likely, they may have snickered behind my back and thought I was a retarded noob. Oh well, this form and others I'd create as my career progressed at DM made me feel better about my abilities and I guess that's something.

6 - Sent out LAST GMAC check.  I guess this is the replacement for July's bounced check.

8 - Visited Jay Richard's house w/ Jessie.  I guess it was around this time I was starting to become friends with Jay. I do remember the condition of his apartment was deplorable. It smelled of cat piss, two cats were scampering around and there was just a shitload of junk everywhere. Jay was a hoarder-in-training. A couple years later when he'd be evicted, it really hit home for him when he had to abandon a lot of his shit since he had only a few hours to vacate before the sheriff's deputies would come.

9 - Visited M&D.  Without the glowing beam of light from Heaven this time, and they were home.

10 - Oil change 74,500. Called J&L, Steve will be mailed check this week.  Yikes, it's hard to remember having a car with that many miles on it. J&L was the bail bonds place. The bond for my little run-in with the law the prior month was $500. Steve paid it via credit card while I was in the pokey and I gave him half the day I was released and the rest when I got paid.  Now, it being a couple weeks after the disposition of my case the bondsman was mailing him a check for the bond he secured which he would cash and give the money to me.

25 - Ken moves back.  Not sure when he moved out since I neglected to record that anywhere. I think it may have been shortly after he applied to DM then quit within a few days. (I think I noted last post that he didn't take the job but I'm thinking now that he did but hated it and quit after a day or two.)

26 - Claudia suggests Jan 1 move date for all.  So I was planning to stay with Claudia, Rich et al even when the lease at the Spinnaker house was over, moving to a new place with them. Of course I didn't. As it turns out I became friendly with Ric who, right about now, summer of '98, had just been promoted from the floor to a part-time supervisor and we decided to rent an apartment together in November of this year.

27 - Bought new computer! Title rec'd from GMAC, car is mine!  Bought Mildred VII an AMD K6-2 3-D Now! 300MhZ 64MB RAM 4G HDD system with a 15" Shamrock SVGA monitor. I remember the reseller had this system configured with a 13" monitor which I upgraded to 15" and 32Meg of RAM which I paid to bring up to 64. This wasn't state-of-the-art for 1998 but it was a decent budget system. I think I paid something in the neighborhood of $850 for it. Also, notice I now fully own my little red "Gumby Honey" 1993 Geo Metro, guzzling oil, no A/C, nearly 75,000 miles and a smashed front end. Woo Hoo!

Recorded 194 as my weight on the 1st of the month but according to the two other weight notes on the 10th and 11th, it came back down to 186 and 185 respectively. No other weight recordings for the entire year after this.

Drinking looks slightly increased to around 12/week again.

Movies:

Snake Eyes
A Perfect Murder*(second run)
X-Files

September was the last month to feature any notations in these Day Runner pages for 1998. Most are now just work reminders, work committee notations and appointments. Very boring. (Like this FLASHBACK series hasn't been as well, eh? LOL)

The one interesting string of notes are jotted in for the 2nd through the 4th:

September

2 - Ken moves out (again)  Can't keep a transient in one place, ya know.

3 - Mike from New Orleans shows up: Ken stole $1000 and his truck.  So we'd already found out when Ken came back that he'd been to New Orleans, now this guy shows up and breaks this info to us.

4 - Numerous items missing (Claudia's ring, Chris' watch...)  How fucked up to steal from nice people who take you in and provide a roof over your head? I don't think he was paying rent either since he was staying in Chris' room. I'm sure Chris learned a valuable lesson from this about trusting homeless ex-cons...Nah, I'm sure he didn't, not if they had a hot body.

September through to the end of the year has nothing about weight, exercise or movies.