The New Life Notes Section

 

Located here the new Life Notes section is going to be kind of a reverse personal diary. It’s more accurate to describe it as my psuedo autobiography. If I ever become famous I’ll be able to use these as footnotes if I write a real one. The rules are as follows for posts that fall under this section.

1. There will be at least a year gap between the event and the actual post that gets switched to this category. This allows me to gain a more objective idea of the event instead of getting pulled into the emotion of the moment.

2. Some items maybe actual posts or text from that time period – if that’s the case I will do modern observations in italics.

3. I will do my best to get it accurate to the day – if not I will do a monthly or seasonal or yearly summary depending on the year and event. This allows me to keep it as accurate of a journal as I can with some posts going to be decades in the past.

4. Since I’m doing the summaries as dated in part 3 that means it will seem that my blog existed pre-internet time. I just want the timeline to be accurate. The downside of this is it means that the RSS readers will more then likely not get these feed items.

Hopefully since I can control and export this data from wordpress I can pass this down in my family. I will do my best to record family member perspectives, and would love it if the participants of any actual event would comment. Since I have constant backups and spread my data far and wide across the internet hopefully this data will never be lost.

I will be recording the good and the bad, the inane and poignant. I hope to express my soul and gives those who know me a greater understanding. Allowing my thoughts and feelings to intersect in ways that gives my readers a glimpse of the real me.

Even if the readers could care less I’m doing this as a control of my memories while I’m still somewhat young and the memories are somewhat fresh. This is who I am. I hope I’m at least interesting to myself a few decades from now.

Woolybear Parade 2006

This is part of my life notes series

This was my first Woolybear Festival since the year 2000, before I moved to Oregon.  It was an experience and the first time that I ever heard of where the local band festival was on a different weekend then  the Woolybear.

It was entertaining riding on the alumni float and playing away.  I did manage to see an old friend from high school in the crowd.  Ironically my ex-girlfriend was standing next to him trying not to be seen (she wasn’t hiding from me per say but the entire alumni band since I heard she had a falling out a few years previous).

I did manage to yell at a few people that I knew in the crowd for not coming up and joining the band, since they had marched in high school.

All in all it was good to be back and playing.

Alumni Band 2006

This is part of my life notes series

This was my first chance back to march with the alumni band since 2000. I felt honored to march under David Henry – the band director I marched under in High School. I was in his final class before retirement.  It was good to march in the Vermilion High School Marching Band Festival again.

The craziest thing was when we were during the pre-show getting ready to play the Star Spangled Banner with all of the assembled bands, Dick Goddard started singing the Star Spangled Banner himself.   Now we just stood at attention while this was going on and listened through his rendition.   He had sounded drunk or heavily medicated during his performance.  I can’t say that authoritatively though.

At the end of his “singing” Mr. Joseph Price the current band director who was leading his last festival as the band director before retirement started off all the bands playing the star spangled banner.   Out of all the Band Festivals I’ve marched in Vermilion (10 I think in total) this year was the strangest.

My 30th Birthday

This is part of my life notes series.

Looking back at my 30th birthday almost 18 months after the fact gives me a bit of perspective.   I’m not over the hill.   It’s not the end of the world.

I had a party where the family came over and had food and the whole nine yards.   By the end of the night I was hammered though.  I rarely drink, but this is one of those occasions.   I expect my wife to go through a similar thing when she turns 30.  Halfway through the night I hardly remembered my name let alone anything else.

I do remember I wandered out the back patio doors and let loose the contents of my stomach on the ground.   After sitting out there for awhile I managed to wander back in and then head up to bed.  My wife and our friend Brian both watched me – stone sober mind you – and just kind of shook their heads.

I can leave you with this thought – I wouldn’t want to turn 30 again.

Got My Gmail Account

This is part of my life notes series.

I managed to score my first gmail account.  This was back when gmail invites were selling on e-bay still.   Granted they weren’t going to hundreds of dollars anymore but they were going to tens of dollars.    Ever since migrating everything over to gmail I haven’t looked back.

I now have 4 years worth of email stored and have deleted very little.  I use gmail as a reference center for many things that I’ve done and e-mail that has passed across my eyes.   I think it’s one of the greatest historical artifacts of my life when I need to know where I was and what I was doing.

Granted this was all pre active blogging and that is now becoming a more precise record of who, what, when, where, and how for me, but some times the inprecise records can help you flush out the details.   I love gmail and though I wonder how much more we feed the google monster all the time I’m not sure I could ever use another mail service.

Started the Marcondrinkers Yahoo Group

This is part of my life notes series.

The marcondrinkers group grew out of a group of us that were close friends around this time.  We all attended an annual sci-fi convention called Marcon.  Originally it was a convention done in March so hence Marcon – since then it has changed it’s named to Multiple Alternate Realities Convention.   Nice save there.

The whole year before Marcondrinkers there was a yahoo group called Marcon Memories, the reason it went away is that one of my friends had a power struggle over different users.    Now I’m known to have my fair share of issues with people but I do not believe in censorship, his banning users and deleting posts was pure censorship.   Ironically I really wasn’t one of the ones being censored.    I started a new board and it survived for a few years.

As of 2008 the group is pretty much dead I go through every once in awhile and clean out the members who have bouncing e-mail addresses.    For it’s time it was a good run, now it is time to say goodbye.

My first post:

from what I understand is we have more cpabilities than the other board but I don’t see any yet….oh well…if anyone actually shows up welcome one and all.

I managed to convince someone to marry me.

This is part of my life notes series.

Though I’m writing this 9 years and 8 days after the actual event. Most of it still sticks out on my mind.

I had purchased a second hand suit and she wore a simple dress (she rarely wears dresses). We had arranged a few weeks before to go down to the Elyria City Offices for our marriage certificate and managed to get up and around to go to the mayor’s office. Ironically getting married by the mayor had it’s unique appeal, few people did it, we managed to keep our ceremony private, and it’s gives it the old time feel of years gone past.

A snow storm had just managed to role into town the wind was piercing through our clothes, but we persevered in the journey. I make it seem like it was far, but it was a 5 minute drive. Mayor Davis of Vermilion did the honors. The one thing we didn’t know before hand is that the mayor was blind as a bat. We manage to get to the office and his secretary shows us in, it seems the mayor hadn’t done too many weddings.

He put on glasses that were about a half an inch thick and read the ceremony from preprinted pages. While I’m sure most mayor’s would read from a book, most books don’t have lettering that was almost an inch in height. At the end of the ceremony we kissed, paid our fee to the mayor and thanked him for his time.

We went over to my parents to announce that we were official and then off to her parents to do the same. Some of our friends thought she was pregnant, but those are the type of rumors that generate when you grow up in a small town. I was 22 years old and she was 19 so by modern standards we were both married young. We were married happy though.

I did manage to carry her across the threshold of the door. Which that night we left on a piss poor honeymoon. I was solely to blame, but we were broke and managed the best we could.

Every day of my life I would do this again.

New Years Eve Party at Bear’s House in Lorain Ohio

This is part of my life notes series.

Spent the evening at Bear’s House For New Year’s Eve – went over there with Kenn and Terri.

My Second Sister is Born

This is part of my life notes series.

My sister Branda is born.   She has been a boon and a pain to my life, just like my other siblings.  I can’t say at this point which is more so.  I love her just the same though.

My brother is born

Since my brother routinely reads this searching for notes about himself. I’m sure he would be amused that I capture his birthdate into my blog.  This would be start of a few decades of disagreements on life and personal beliefs.