June 6, 2005

Hey everyone! How's it going? Everything is going pretty well my way. It's hard to say why since there's not really a lot new going on. I moved in with Mindy, which was pretty weird. We've been dating for more than a year, which is longer than I've gone out with anyone, and this seemed to be the right thing to do. My mom got a little weird a couple weeks before I moved out, but she was cool about helping me pack and move.

Jim also gave me a hand, but he had to drive the truck. That was pretty cool of him, but he kept making sure he would get pizza and beer out of it. After he carried eight boxes and a chair into the new place, he started complaining that his leg was hurting, so he sat around for a lot of the time.

I never realized how much stuff I had, but none of it was the stuff I needed. Like, I had about 200 CDs and not one table. Oh, and I had two video game systems and no TV to play them on. Mindy had a lot of the stuff we needed, but we're still pretty sparse. Good thing the apartment came with a fridge. I wouldn't want to have to buy one of those.

Our place is above a Thai restaurant. I never ate Thai before, but since it's so close I'll probably give it a try. It's taking me a little while to get used to my new neighborhood. There's a lot of traffic outside, but that's kind of good because it's right by the bus. It helps to be living with Mindy. It's kind of cool to come home and know that you don't have to make special plans to get together. And it's better than her old apartment. She lived in a dark basement where there were only, like, two windows, and you had no idea what time it was when you woke up in the morning.

Anyway, that's pretty much the big deal. Um, I'm still working at the fabric store. I might take it online, or at least make a website so we can advertise our location. That's pretty big. My mom says that if I think it will work, she wouldn't mind putting me in charge of it. Nothing fancy yet, but I have all these ideas. I guess that's it. Oh, I saw Star Wars. It was pretty great.

March 28, 2005

Hi, everyone! What's up? Things here in Wesworld are all right. I've been trying to get some overtime at my mom's fabric store so I can save up enough money to rent a place. Well, really, I've already saved enough to pay rent for a year since I've been working since I was 18 and always lived at home. I mean it's not like I wasn't paying rent. I paid the moment I stopped going to school, but it was only like $150 a month, so I was able to sock a bit away.

Plus, I was able to make some money on the Internet. My mom had all these old buttons from the '60 and '70s in the back room that she'd put out on the sidewalk for the Crazy Days sale, but no one would ever buy them. She was getting to throw all of them out last month because they were just taking up room, and I told her to let me try to sell them. It was like about 200 little envelopes of old buttons, snaps and zippers. I put them on eBay and got a couple hundred dollars. My mom said she had no idea they were worth anything, and she split the money 50-50 with me. That was sure nice of her.

Anyway, the reason I'm getting ready to get a place is so I can move in with my girlfriend, Mindy. That's a pretty big deal. We've only been together for a year or so, but we're both pretty sure that this is the one. I've dated a few other girls, but it just didn't feel right. With Mindy, it's just happening, you know? We like a lot of the same movies and music, and she likes to read, which is totally cool because a lot of girls think I'm weird because I read. For our first anniversary in January, I gave her some flowers and a new shirt and she gave me a gift certificate to a bookstore. That was really sweet. She wants us to get bicycles so we can go biking in the summer. I've never been much of a biker, but I think it would be nice. I spend a lot of time cooped up in the house, and I think it would do me good to get some air once in a while.

Ron and Jim were razzing me something fierce about moving in with Mindy. They're saying she's going to mess up the gang by riding my ass all the time. I told them that isn't fair, since they don't know her very well. They said she must be stuck-up since she doesn't spend time with us when we're out. But I keep telling them, it's guys time, and she doesn't want to get in the middle of that.

I think they're starting to warm up to it, though. They're talking about how they want to give me a kick ass housewarming, which I suppose would be pretty cool, so long as Mindy was cool with it. I'm a little worried, though. It would be just my luck if we had a party and then Jim got loaded and trashed everything. He'd do it if he was drunk enough. Sure, he'd apologize afterward, but he'd think it was pretty funny at the time. I guess I shouldn't worry, but I just don't want anything to get between me and Mindy. You don't want to mess up a good thing like that, especially if you're me.

November 1, 2004

Hi, everyone! How's it going? I'm trying a new introduction since I don't want to be the guy that imitates Jim all the time. So, you won't catch me saying "Hola, amigos" anymore.

Anyway, I've had a hard time updating the website lately. Jim had a broken leg, so I was dropping in on him, making sure he had enough food. He kept telling me that he'd pay me back for all the beer and groceries as soon as he could get to the bank, but it's been two weeks, and I haven't heard anything from him.

Last time I stopped in with some provisions, I dropped off some celery and peanut butter. It makes a good snack. If you add raisins, you can make ants on a log. He took it out of the bag and threw it at me. Well, really, he chucked it at me. He didn't whip it hard or anything. He just sort of tossed it underhand and told me he wasn't paying for any "rabbit food." It didn't go to waste since I ate it, but it still sucked since I was trying to do something nice.

Anyway, things have been going all right. Me and Mindy are still going strong. I get ragged on by Ron for not coming out as much, even though I hang out with him at least once a week. And, even though his leg is healed, Jim has been scarce. I think he'll be out in a few weeks, once he thinks I forgot the money he owes me.

Besides that, it's a lot of the same old same old. I'm working, hanging out, saving up money to get my own place. Living at home is okay, and my family is cool, but my mom wants me out. She says I'm putting a dent in her social life. I told her I didn't care if she had friends over, so long as I could have friends over. Then she said she didn't mean her regular friends. I finally figured out what she meant when she said "social life," and it's totally weird. If that's the case, I agree. I don't want to be in the house if she brings some guy home. Hell, I can't bring Mindy home, so that makes sense.

Anyway, I have enough to rent a place, but I want to buy a house. Every time I think I have enough saved up, I look at the prices on houses and the cost has gone way up. I figure in two months, I'll have enough for a down payment and I can get a little house. I'm not going to turn into some sort of homebody, though. I'll have the basement all tricked out so I can have people over to party. I already have a big screen TV with surround sound. I have a couch in the garage just waiting for a space to fill. Oh, and I have a neon sign that says "Open." I found it at a garage sale, so I had to pick it up. Anyhow, if you know any place for sale, let me know. I'd put some work into it, so it doesn't have to be perfect.

August 16, 2004

Hola, amigos! What's going on? When I started this, I thought that I would be able to write this more often, but you never know how things are going to go. Since I wrote the first one, I got my first real girlfriend in six years. It's pretty cool. Her name is Mindy Dawes. We met while I was visiting my mom's fabric shop. There was this cute girl there asking my mom all sorts of questions and holding some rayon weave. She had brown hair down to her shoulders, glasses, and a great smile, but she had this skirt covered with NASCAR cars, which was a little weird. She didn't wind up buying the rayon, but she picked up a bunch of fabric remainders around the store since they were marked way down. I was quiet, since I don't like to get involved with my mom's business, but I wanted to find out something about her. When my mom asked me to help her carry them all out to the car, I almost fell over. She did me the biggest favor ever.

When she opened her trunk, I was looking for anything to get some information from her, so I asked her about why she was buying fabric. She told me she just likes to tinker, and so she likes to have different fabric lying around the house. Then she told me she made her skirt. I didn't know what to say, except that she must be good since the cars lined up at all the seams. She got super excited that I noticed, which I suppose I did because I've been hanging around in a fabric store since I was a little kid. She told me her name and we wound up talking about all sorts of stuff, like different fabric and movies that we like.

That's when Ron drove by. Since I was actually doing well, I didn't want anyone to come in and walk all over my chances of seeing this girl again, so I tried to duck. Didn't work. Ron spotted me and slammed on his breaks. He rolled down his window and told me that I had to get in the car right then because there was a sale on oil filters and he needed to buy a few cases of them so he could sell them to Jim later. I told him that I was sort of busy, and that's when he noticed Mindy.

He gave me one of those exaggerated winks, like he was being all sly, then started talking about what a great guy I was, except most of what he was saying was lies and stuff I would never say. Like he told this story about how I used to date all these cheerleaders when I was in high school, and when I tried to tell the truth, he wouldn't let me finish my sentence. I'm sure he thought he was helping, but I wanted to crawl away.

Finally Ron said that he was running late, but he would be stopping back to pick me up. As if all that wasn't enough, he squealed his tires. I was feeling pretty low, so I mumbled something and started to walk back to the store. Mindy stopped me and asked me if I wanted to go out on a date. Which was a good thing, otherwise I was going to kill Ron next time I saw him otherwise.

Since then, we've been pretty tight. I haven't been spending a ton of time with her lately, since I have to look in on Jim a lot since he broke his leg. Mindy doesn't much care for Jim since the time that he almost threw up on her and never apologized. I told her that was just Jim, and that's just the way he is, but really, she was right. It's pretty lame for him not to even say he was sorry for making an ass of himself, and us as well, but I gotta stick up for him. He's my pal, and I know he'd do the same for me. But as soon as he's healed, I'm gonna need like a week break.

Hello, amigos. How are you? I know that you always get Jim's side of everything. This is my chance to give my side of the story, for what it's worth. I hope you like it.

I started doing this because Jim said to me, "Wes, I need to make an Internet page." Then he went on to say that he wanted it to have hot girls and hot cars, plus kick-ass rock and roll. He was kind of drunk, so I figured he'd forget all about it, just like he did when he wanted me to help soup up his Dodge Omni and race it. The next day, though, he called me and asked me how it was going. I wasn't even sure what he was talking about, until he said that he had some new ideas about how he wanted to make a ton of money off the Internet. Because so many other people were doing it.

I tried to tell him that he wouldn't make any money, but he wasn't having any of it. He told me again that he wanted hot girls, hot cars, and kick-ass rock and roll. Since I've been taking correspondence classes on designing web pages, I thought that I'd give it a go. When I called him a few days later and asked him what he wanted on his web page, he yelled, "Just make it kick ass!" and he hung up the phone.

So, the way it works is that I put stuff up, and Jim then comes over and tells me what's wrong with it. Then, he tells me to forget all the stuff I did and gives me some phone bills with some handwritten junk on the back and tells me to type it into the Internet. So that's what I do, I suppose. If you have any ideas or suggestions or just want to say hi, let me know. You can email me at wesbaumgartner@yahoo.com. I hope I get paid for this.