6.27.2003
Every flat surface in our apartment is covered in cans. Having bought more soda than anything else, it is all that remains of the eight bags of groceries we bought only a few days ago. Living entirely on soda, we are each malnourished to the point where we cannot summon the will to go buy new groceries, yet sustained by the caffeine to the extent that blood continues to pulse through our extremeties. The first day we arrived in the apartment, we allocated the roof of the refrigerator to the pursuit of recycling--placing a can, upon finishing its contents, atop the tall structure, which I might add is now virtually empty.
A word about our refrigerator. It's a fine machine, the freezer especially. If you fill the ice cube trays with water, you need simply shut the door and open it again and you have ice. It's like a very dull "Indian in the Cupboard." However, whenever you shut the door to the refrigerator, the freezer door opens. If you fail to correct this exchange, the contents of the freezer lose their solid form. You return to the freezer to find that your indian--or, more commonly, the popsicles you had all agreed to buy, after some argument--has become a liquid mess, pooling in a sticky but colorful mess all over the floor. You then have to shut the door and exclaim loudly that the freezer door was left open (a cry which necessarily demands an apology from at least one housemate) before remarking quietly to yourself or those standing around you in the kitchen that the corndogs are probably still good.
Which brings me back to the roof of the refrigerator. It's covered with cans. What began as part of our routine, at least in principle--namely, the transfer of the cans from the roof of the fridge to the bin out front--has become a foolishly laughable notion and a work of modern art. Cans occupy every inch of the rectangular roof, and now cans have begun to take their place stacked upon other cans. What's more, perhaps a week ago, it became more difficult to stack a can on top of the pile of cans than to simply leave it where you finished it. Accordingly, every flat surface has become a visual beacon of our commitment to recycling. My parents are reading this and cringing, as I imagine they often do while reading this webpage. Let it be noted that we take the trash out--we keep these cans out of the trash because we are active citizens, however inactive, and we acknowledge that these cans have a greater purpose.
In conclusion, what we've discovered--which very well could serve as a point of interest for my more inactive readers--is that while three cans on a table is an obstacle, forty cans on a table is a taller table.
It took about ten days of straight work, but I finally finished the new Olde English website. I feel like collapsing. But more accurately, I feel like brushing my teeth.
If you catch any mistakes on the page--pictures not loading, links not connecting--please e-mail me at ben@oldeenglish.org. I don't know why exactly my comments are no longer working (having entered the BlogBack update code as requested), but the moment I no longer feel infuriated by sourcecode, I will get right on it.
6.16.2003 I'm sorry I haven't been posting very much lately, but I've had two major obstacles:
1. This lousy modem connection. This experience has really woken me up to what an internet snob I am. Two weeks ago I was downloading full-length films in a matter of hours, now I get excited when the modem connects at 56K. I'm such a geek. I don't know why I bother trying to hide it.
2. I've been working on a new webpage. I'm really excited about this one. It's the major major major update of the Olde English website. I've been working on it for about five days straight now, and I just keep getting more and more excited. Our server is never going to be able to handle the traffic this site is going to generate, it's really not even funny. The server couldn't handle the site for more than ten days when we had five videos--the new page will feature almost thirty.
I'll post the second I upload the site, and we can go knock the server over together.
6.12.2003
Due to our distance from anything that could be considered civilization, we've had to resort to connecting to the internet with a modem. Gross, right? So instead of paying for an ISP, we've resorted to using the free AOL trial CD we found hanging on the magazine rack at our local Wal-Mart.
I thought it would be funny to come up with an e-mail address that would cause the recipient to delete my letter without ever having opened it.
I'd really like to meet the guy who beat me to the screen name "Ben69Rules69."
6.6.2003 At nine-thirty in the morning, I will embark on the following roadtrip.
This will be the farthest I've ever driven--a title that had, up until now, gone to the Ohio roadtrip--and the longest amount of time I will have spent in a car.
