_{This entry is shifting daily.}

15 minutes later, I get an email from one of the other users in their office:

Subject: Internet not working

Message: Our internet is not working

Obviously Nam was successful in quickly restoring their connection.

I replied back to the user to let them know that a phone call was the best way to report loss of internet, since an email won’t get sent until their internet connection is restored.

_{This entry got a good chuckle.}

Here are my favorites from week one:

One thing I find that I’m fighting is my tendency to (over)use familiar techniques and post-processing effects. So it’ll be interesting to see what I can come up with over the next 51 weeks.

_{This entry has caught the shutter bug!}

I have to say that it’s been difficult for me to focus this week. My thoughts often wander into daydreams of walking in the Redwood Forests or staring out to sea from some lush-green vista.

Without a doubt, I’ll be snapping a lot of pictures along the way. I’ve added a few things to my camera bag – which is also new. So I’ll be better prepared to take a wider variety of shots this time around.

Here’s the basic itinerary for our trip:

Friday afternoon/evening: leave work early and drive north as far as we can along the I-5 and find some place to stay once we start to get tired

Saturday: get off to an early start and drive through the Bay Area, continue north along the 101 – drive to the redwood forest and stay in a cabin

Sunday: morning drive through the redwoods and into Oregon – meet with some friends near Newport, Oregon for dinner and drinks, then stay in a hotel

Monday: drive north to Seaside, Oregon – stopping at a few places of interest along the way, check in to our suite for the next few nights

Tuesday & Wednesday: check out Seaside and find something interesting and/or relaxing to do around the area

Thursday & Friday: drive up to the Vancouver, Washington area and visit with Christine’s family – check out Portland

Saturday & Sunday: drive back home along the I-5 at a comfortable pace, stay some place along the way, check out anything we find interesting along the way

One thing that has bothered me on all of our trips so far is that I don’t take the time to write about it along the way. By the time I get back home I can’t remember all the small details and the feelings I felt are diminished from when I was actually in the moment – and I end up typing up an incredibly long post that is probably not as interesting to read. This trip I’ll have my laptop with me and I’ll do my best to try and blog, or at least prepare a blog post (when I don’t have Internet access) each day of the trip. Since I’m already in the habit of backing up my pictures to the laptop as I go, I’ll even try to post some pictures, too. We’ll see how it goes this time around.

_{This entry just can’t wait to get on the road again.}

WAKE-UP: Wake up will be at 5:30am each morning. All ceiling lights in the suite will be turned on automatically.

LIGHTS OUT: Ceiling lights in the suite will be turned off at 11:30pm.

The ad has apparently been removed from Craigslist a few times and the poster just doesn’t get it.

_{This entry was considering some sexually deviant behavior.}

_{This entry giggled its ass off!}

_{This entry feels thirsty for some reason.}

_{This entry is a little sore from hiking yesterday.}

The fact is that the fires started around and mainly consumed open/ wilderness/ forested areas and homes within or bordering those areas. I live in the middle of a very suburban area, so it’s highly unlikely that a wildfire will overtake us. We’re probably more likely to get hit by “The Big One” earthquake and/or slide off into the ocean. Okay, probably not that remote of a chance, but I’m just saying. Fine … I don’t know what I’m saying.

The only real effect the fires had on us was from all the soot in the air, which made eyes itch and sinuses irritated. I imagine that people with allergies experienced more problems, but thankfully I’m not one of them.

Today is Halloween, in case you’re stupid and didn’t already know this, so I’ve been kicking around the idea of dressing up tonight. Either way, I’ll be accompanying Rece, Sam, and some of Sam’s friends for trick-or-treating. Maybe I’ll wear that dress again …

_{This entry uses sound scientific methodology in order to reach its opinions.}

Anyhow, as I expected, she was seeking money. Apparently she feels that I owe her child support, even though Rece lives with me more than 75% of the time — and I pay for all his living expenses (health insurance, clothing, food, entertainment, etc). After hearing from her live-in boyfriend that she’s been disappearing a lot lately, doing drugs (smoking and/or snorting crystal meth), and that 2 people showed up at their place at 2:30 am looking for her after they apparently loaned her $3500 a few weeks earlier; there’s no way in hell that I’d let Rece stay with her unsupervised.

Yes, I realize that this is all hearsay. When you’ve lived with a person for over 14 years and hear friends and relatives all saying the same thing, independent from one another, seeing patterns of behavior repeating themselves … you just have to realize that your suspicions are probably correct. If it looks like a duck …

She is claiming that she’s afraid of her boyfriend, that he’ll hurt her or worse. Yet she seems to find it perfectly suiting to leave my son alone with him after school and various other times. This doesn’t make sense. If it’s true, then she’s put Rece in harm’s way on numerous occasions. If it isn’t true, then it just reinforces my belief she’s unstable and not somebody I want Rece to be around for extended periods of time.

Back to the voicemails … she said that she wanted the money and that she’d come by my office to collect it around 3:00 pm – in cash, not a check. I didn’t get the money as I didn’t plan on giving her as much as a dime. It didn’t matter, as she didn’t show up and instead left another message stating that she’d be at my home at 6:30 pm.

Her boyfriend called shortly after I arrived at home asking if I’d heard anything new about her whereabouts. I invited him over so he could be there when she arrived. We talked for a good 2 hours about some of the things Sherise had done in our relationships and found that many of the scenarios were quite similar. 6:30 came and went and he eventually gave up, deciding to leave shortly before 8:00 pm.

At around 8:13 pm Sherise left me another voicemail telling me that she was running behind due to some “errands” (she uses that excuse more than any other) and that she would be at my place in 10 minutes. My friend Christine and I were supposed to meet up for a cup of coffee at 8:30 pm, so I called her to see if she’d be up for meeting me at my place instead. She agreed, arriving at my place at 8:35 pm.

Sherise arrived at my apartment around 8:50 pm. I invited her to have a seat and told her about her mother’s death. I told her of how her family had been trying to locate her so that they could do something about her mother’s body, which was still on life support the last I had heard. One of Sherise’s first responses to me was to ask what her family was saying about her and what I had told them.

I told her that I let them know that she had disappeared again and that she was likely using drugs. She became very defensive and demanded that I reveal the names of the person(s) who said she was on drugs.

The conversation was awkward and she requested that I step outside to continue the conversation in private. We went out and sat in her car to talk. It quickly went downhill from there. I don’t know why I let the conversation go on for so long, to be honest. It had been about an hour since she first arrived when I finally came to my senses and decided that it was going nowhere and ended the discussion, walking away. She got out of her car and followed me back towards my apartment, yelling at me from behind. She said that she had people depending on her to get the money, to which I replied, “the only person depending on you is your son.” The last thing she said as I was walking up up the stairs was “you are so going to regret this”.

I’m thankful that Christine was there. I don’t know if it would have gotten worse without a witness nearby. She did a great job of keeping Rece occupied while Sherise and I spoke. She also helped me sort through the mess that had just happened.

This morning, at 10:16 am, Sherise left another voicemail. Her tone wasn’t pleasant. She let me know that her mother had been pronounced dead on Friday. I didn’t know this, but it really didn’t matter, as Sherise was missing when she needed to be contacted about the situation. I guess she feels that somehow I’m to blame for her disappearing and stories of drug use and defaming her character and abandoning Rece without as much as a call to let us know that she wouldn’t be available this week for Rece to see after school (which was the working plan). She declared that our friendship was officially over and that ”it is so on, it is not even funny”. I didn’t realize we were friends and I don’t understand why my showing my displeasure with her behavior and alleged drug use constitutes a threat of some sorts.

The drama stops now. Rece and I don’t need it in our lives. I refuse to get pulled into it or to let Rece become affected with this garbage.

This entry now knows what needs to be done.