Tell Your Story – Natalie Kelly

Today’s post is from Natalie, the forth and final post in her series of the “Tell Your Story” project.

This past week I celebrated my 22^nd birthday, which was something I have been looking forward to since our world was thrust into this pandemic. While restaurants and retail locations have been open here in Minnesota since the beginning of June, I decided to spend that day outdoors and ordering takeout for dinner. I always make sure to wear my mask and respect social distancing guidelines, but something about wearing a mask on my birthday just didn’t seem ideal, so I decided to stay home and enjoy the comfort of my family! I went for a walk around the Minneapolis Rose Gardens, where a plethora of roses, peonies, and other gorgeous plants were blooming. It was a friendly reminder that there are still beautiful aspects of life in a time of such stress and unease. Spending my birthday this year with my close family and boyfriend reminded me to be grateful for the people I have in my life, and to appreciate everything that I have.

I have been on a bit of a nature kick recently, and traveled to Willow Falls State Park in Wisconsin to go for a hike. I am still living at home with my parents, and still deem gathering in large areas/indoor spaces a risk as my father is immune-compromised. Finding new spots to explore outdoors has been great for my mental and physical health, and I have gotten to see some pretty amazing places I would have never visited before because of the COVID-19 outbreak. I have been able to stay on track with my fitness goals, and have come a far way in terms of strength since the beginning of ‘quarantine’, and I am very proud of that. My experience with weight training and eating healthy has made me a much more disciplined and motivated person, and I am thankful for the time that quarantine has given me to reach these goals.

Tell Your Story – Mason Porter

Today’s post from Mason in the “Tell Your Story” project is the twelfth and final post in his series.

June 29, 2020 through June 30, 2020

I woke up on Saturday mid-morning. My sister and I went to our parents’ house to continue working on the records. After lunch with our dad, we finished getting the rest of the records that we had sorted into letter-based piles filed into the proper boxes. After that, I worked on last week’s blog post. After a while, I took a break for supper. After supper, my sister and I went home, and I got back to work. After I finished working, I continued watching that TV show. I went to bed a little before nine in the morning. 

On Sunday, I woke up at three in the afternoon. I spent the whole day watching that TV show. I went to bed a little before four in the morning.  

I woke up at noon on Monday. I continued watching the TV show until a little after six at night. That is when my parents showed up. My sister and I invited them over for supper. They left around ten, and I went back to watching that TV show. I went to bed just before one in the morning. I tossed and turned most of the night and barely got any sleep.  

I got up on Tuesday at six in the morning. I did this because I am starting a new job on Wednesday and my shift starts at seven, and I wanted to try and get in the groove of getting up that early. I watched the TV show until ten in the morning. After that, my sister and I got ready to go back to our parents’ house to continue to work on the records. After lunch with our dad, we sorted the rest of the unsorted records into letter-based piles. When that was done, we took a nap. Once our parents’ both got home from work, we had supper and then went home. Once I got home, I started working on this blog post. After I finish this, I plan on watching more of that TV show until I go to bed around ten or eleven.  

This experience has been unforgettable. Both going to school and working during this pandemic has been a unique and incredible experience. As a history major, it was fascinating to be able to live during this worldwide catastrophe. Doing this blog has also been an unforgettable experience. Having to pick apart everything that I did every day was both challenging and interesting. At first, I dreaded having to do this, but after a while, I started to enjoy it. Doing this kept me alert and attentive during a time where I probably would have just sunk into an endless expanse of doing nothing otherwise. This was an amazing experience. For the last time, that is all for today.  

Tell Your Story – Taylor Tomlinson

Today’s post in the “Tell Your Story” project comes from Taylor. This is the fourteenth and final post in his series.

The End 

This is the last time I will be writing this little COVID thing. It was an interesting experience and I know a lot of it wasn’t directly about the virus, but you can get that stuff from the news. I figure it was supposed to be about my experiences during the pandemic and I tried to be as transparent and true to reality as I could. My camping trip starts tomorrow and if everything goes according to plan, it should be really fun, but I doubt nothing will go wrong.  

I am mostly worried about camping spots, since we are doing walk in camping, we cannot reserve it online nor see if there’s anyone there already, and the campground we are going to only has 6 walk in spots. Not to mention that all reservations for every campground in the area are taken for at least one of the days we are going to be out there, so it is proving to be a pretty popular spot. I think our saving grace is going to be that it’s supposed to rain a lot which I’m hoping will deter people from coming. I do wish we could go when there was no rain but more than a couple months in the making and we really don’t have another option now. Here’s to hoping that, even with the rain, it will be a fun trip and that there won’t be too many people nearby. I’m not sure how close the reservable spots are to the non-reservable, but I personally think it kind of defeats the purpose of camping to have a little camping community. There’s something fun about being isolated. Also, while we are opening up, we are still in a pandemic and while I have gone out often, I’ve been trying my best to stay away from people and wear my mask, though I’ll be the first to admit I forget to wear it sometimes. I need to be like my friends and just keep it in my wallet. Speaking of contact with others, I’m getting my first haircut today. I was really pushing it back, but it’s pretty bad and no one at my house will do it so I’m just going to bite the bullet and get it done. Perhaps while I’m out I can get some last-minute supplies as well. Also, I think sometime today we should formulate a backup plan, since a lot of things will have to go right for the trip to work. Though, everyone’s schedules are just different enough that we probably won’t have everyone to plan with until tomorrow. I guess we’ll see. 

In the meantime, I am going to go for a walk. I’ve been seeing a lot less people out lately, I wonder what changed that caused them all to leave. Less than two weeks ago, it was another person every minute or two, but now I can finish the entire walk and not see a single person.  I am glad I’ve made a habit of walking every day. It’s a dull way to stay active but it’s more than nothing. It’s also just a good way to think and get away from the screen.  

I’m not sure what else to talk about. I know this wasn’t that great of a finale, so I suppose I will talk about my plans for the future. After I’m done writing this, starting next year, I plan to declare my major in English, possibly with a minor in linguistics since I’m kind of on my way there already. It has taken me awhile to find a major and at this point, I think I should just pick something I like and if it doesn’t work out it doesn’t work out. After I graduate, I am planning on moving out of Iowa. I don’t really want to say where to because everyone I’ve told just makes fun of me or tells me I’m not actually going to do it, so I just won’t even say. I’m not really sure what job I want exactly, I have some ideas, but my parents seem to be disapproving of every single idea I’ve talked about, and I’ve been talking about possible jobs for a long time. Maybe there’s a reason I’m so indecisive about declaring a major and finding a job. I don’t know, whatever happens, happens. I’m sure I will accomplish some things and fail at others. 

Anyway, I think that’s all from me. I hope these have been at least halfway interesting to read if nothing else. I hope that COVID starts to die off, though now that we’re reopening, I think we are going to see a huge resurgence in cases, which is already seeming to take place. Finally, I hope that the world becomes a better place. A lot of terrible things seem to be happening lately that have got me really bummed. A lot of stuff just feels pointless; hopeless. So, I hope against hope that things will get better.

Tell Your Story – Mason Porter

Today we hear from Mason in the “Tell Your Story” project. This the eleventh post in his series.

June 20, 2020 through June 26, 2020

On Saturday, my sister and I met my parents at my grandparents’ house to celebrate Father’s Day. We had lunch and then opened presents. The party got over around two in the afternoon. After that, my sister and I walked around Target for a while. After we left Target, we went to Petco, didn’t find anything, and then decided to go to Game Stop. At Game Stop, we found a few cheep games for our Xboxes. After that, we went home. Around five, I started working on last weeks blog post. I finished that around ten or eleven at night. Then I got on Netflix and watched that until I went to bed around three or four in the morning.  

On Sunday, my sister and I came over to our parents’ house to celebrate Father’s Day with our dad. We watched TV and played board games. He opened a few more presents and we had supper. Then we went home. I stayed up until noon the next day watching TV.  

I woke up on Tuesday at like four in the afternoon to a text from my sister saying that we need to stop using as much internet because we were only a third of the way through the pay period and had used two thirds of our data for that period, so I turned off the Wi-Fi on my phone and spent the whole day on TikTok. At some point that night, my sister came to my room and told me that her pet dwarf hamster had died. After that happened, she decided to just go over to our parents’ house after our parents get off of work to bury her hamster in our parents’ pet cemetery in the front yard instead of going over before lunch to spend the day working on my dad’s record collection on Wednesday.  

On Wednesday, I got up around four in the afternoon and then my sister and I went over to our parents’ house to bury her hamster and to celebrate our parents’ anniversary. After that, we went home, and I started watching a TV series that I have on DVD. I went to bed around ten thirty in the morning.  

On Thursday, I got up at two thirty in the afternoon and watched that TV show the whole day. I went to bed around nine in the morning.  

I woke up Friday at two thirty in the afternoon to a text from my sister telling me to help her boyfriend rearrange the apartment so that some of my sister’s friends could come over and we could all have a board game night. We got the apartment rearranged. I also took a shower. After my sister got home from work, the three of us went to the store to get stuff for supper and snacks for game night. A few minutes after we got back, my sister’s friends got there. My sister’s boyfriend cooked supper while my sister and her friends picked out some board games to play. After supper, we played board games until ten at night, and then my sister’s friends left. I watched a few more episodes of that TV show before going to bed around three in the morning.

Tell Your Story – Taylor Tomlinson

In today’s post we hear from Taylor in the “Tell Your Story” project. This is the thirteenth post in his series.

Waiting

The last week has been a lot of waiting. Waiting to go camping, waiting for people, waiting for repairs and packages. A lot of waiting means a lot of downtime, and to try and keep myself entertained, I have consumed so much media, or at least, so much more than I usually would. I don’t know what changed exactly, but my motivational rut has seemingly been reversed, now I want to do everything, instead of nothing at all. I picked up a new book and I’m more than halfway done, though it is not very long. The one thing I will say is that, though I think the author is really good at character dialogue and thoughts, the setting is usually briefly described if at all and she will transition from one area to the next without explicitly stating that the setting has changed. Also, some of the pacing is weird, but I like it. I’ve watched a handful of movies, some were surprisingly good and some I thought went in one direction and as it turned out, they went in the exact opposite. Rocketman for example, I knew it had music in it but I thought it was sort of grounded in reality, where they would only sing when they were singing on stage, but then it turned out to be a musical. Not knowing that beforehand, it was a little jarring when the characters stopped talking and started a little dance routine. I did like the central story behind Rocketman, with Elton John and his fame and struggles, but I don’t think the movie was for me. Not to say it was a bad movie though. Side note, I really liked the costume designs and the way the story was structured. Another movie I watched was Baby Driver. Now, I went into it expecting to just be a time waster, but it was a lot more interesting than I had expected. It was a lot goofier than I had anticipated, which isn’t a bad thing, and the characters were very enjoyable.

The ending was silly, but it was also the only conceivable way to get the characters out of the situation they were in I suppose. All in all, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Kevin Spacey’s character was by far my favorite, which is sad knowing what we know now. The last movie I’d like to talk about was Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was the weirdest movie I watched and was pretty much exactly how I had imagined it. Tim Curry as Frank N Furter is one of the best casting decisions I have ever seen. Some things I will say are that the story is very broken and things happen that are very random, including some plot points that feel like they were put in at the last second to pad the running time. However, the nature of the movie is so silly that it does work most of the time. The way my friend described it, it’s a very enjoyable movie, though not necessarily a good movie. I could agree with that. Somewhere, there’s a picture of me and friends with Barry Bostwick, who plays Brad in the movie, though I don’t know where it is, or if anyone still has it. The package I mentioned last time showed up, it is a VR headset. So far, it has been very enjoyable, though my brother and sister seem to agree, so I haven’t been able to use it nearly as much as I’d like. I think it’s kind of funny that my sister’s favorite thing to do with it is to watch YouTube, just regular YouTube. I think the biggest problem I have is that it starts to hurt your face after a while, and sometimes you can get really motion sick, but it is really fun to just mess around with stuff. I tried VRChat with a friend and we walked around and listened to people talk to each other. It was kind of hard to find each other sometimes and the game kept breaking, but when it did work, it was fun. I am eager to get some more games for it. This is probably my second to last entry since I will be going out of town soon. Hopefully,I will have something interesting to end it off on. Anyway, hopefully everyone is staying safe and informed as we transition back into society. If anyone was interested, I’ve been listening to a lot of Joan Jett and Skating Polly this last week Tomlinson 2The ending was silly, but it was also the only conceivable way to get the characters out of the situation they were in I suppose. All in all, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Kevin Spacey’s character was by far my favorite, which is sad knowing what we know now. The last movie I’d like to talk about was Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was the weirdest movie I watched and was pretty much exactly how I had imagined it. Tim Curry as Frank N Furter is one of the best castingdecisions I have ever seen. Some things I will say are that the story is very broken and things happen that are very random, including some plot points that feel like they were put in at the last second to pad the running time. However, the nature of the movie is so silly that it does work most of the time. The way my friend described it, it’s a very enjoyable movie, though not necessarily a good movie. I could agreewith that. Somewhere, there’s a picture of me and friends with Barry Bostwick, who plays Brad in the movie, though I don’t know where it is, or if anyone still has it.The package I mentioned last time showed up, it is a VR headset. So far, it has been very enjoyable, though my brother and sister seem to agree, so I haven’t been able to use it nearly as much as I’d like. I think it’s kind of funny that my sister’s favorite thing to do with it is to watch YouTube, just regular YouTube. I think the biggest problem I have is that it starts to hurt your face after a while, and sometimes you can get really motion sick, but it is really fun to just mess around with stuff. I tried VRChat with a friend and we walked around and listened to people talk to each other. It was kind of hard to find each other sometimes and the game kept breaking, but when it did work, it was fun. I am eager to get some more games for it. This is probably my second to last entry sinceI will be going out of town soon. Hopefully,I will have something interesting to end it off on. Anyway, hopefully everyone is staying safe and informed as we transition back into society. If anyone was interested, I’ve been listening to a lot of Joan Jett and Skating Polly this last week.

Tell Your Story – Taylor Tomlinson

Today’s post comes from Taylor, his twelfth post in his series, in the “Tell Your Story” project.

Summer 

Summer so far has been okay. It was nice to go out and eat at a restaurant, I wish I had brought my mask though. It always makes me feel bad when I forget it and everyone else around me is wearing one. It is interesting to me that some businesses are almost completely reopened, while others are still closed. All in all, I think we have been very inconsistent with our response to COVID, and it isn’t over yet either. I do wonder how long it will take until it is as close to gone as it will get. It will feel really weird going out without a mask and gathering in big groups, even though a lot of people already do that anyway. 

It looks like we will have to wear our masks for classes this fall. I understand the decision but I might have to find a different mask to wear. The one I have is slightly too small and fogs over my glasses horribly. I don’t know if that’s something I can change or not though. It will be hard to take notes when I can’t see the slides to say the least. Maybe it’s time for me to finally get contacts, even though I am terrified of touching my eyes. I wonder how many people will refuse to wear masks, since I know a lot of people do not like the idea.  

Switching topics, my friends and I have a camping trip about two weeks from now, hopefully it goes well, since it is the second time we’ve attempted to organize the trip. The first time, it was supposed to be rainy and then snowy and then below freezing, but we were gonna go anyway, then one friend had to work, so we rescheduled to a few days before when it was going to be sunny, but then they took the days off that were rainy and snowy, and the closer to the days it got, the worse the conditions were, so we bailed. It was probably a good thing we did too, since the bathrooms weren’t open so we wouldn’t be able to shower and would have to go in the woods. Also all the local business would be closed so it would have just been us in the woods with nothing to do in the blistering cold. This time however, it is supposed to be a bit nicer, from what I can gather. Also, the bathrooms are open, there’s hiking and a lake, and boat rentals. The only thing I am mildly worried about is that I don’t know If I need to reserve the spot or if it is walk-in camping. On their website, it doesn’t specify and simply lists the amount of spots that there are. I don’t want to drive all the way there, fully packed, expecting four days of camping, only to realize that it is full and we have to turn around. I’m gonna do more research later today just to make sure. One of my friends has been there before and he said he doesn’t remember reservations, so I don’t think I should worry about it too much. Also, different from last time, we have an added fourth person. This makes hauling stuff a bit easier but now we have to figure out sleeping arrangements. There’s plenty of space. It’s just that, at least two people are going to have to sleep together. The tent is split into three rooms and so we are trying to figure out if it is going to be 2-1-1 or 2-2 with a foyer area where we can put stuff. I think  the ladder is what we are leaning towards. If we do sleep two to a room, we have divided them up based on who’s a heavy sleeper and who’s not. Sleeping meds and talks-in-his-sleep sleep together and wakes-up-to-everything and normal sleeper sleep together.  

One thing we are aiming to do on this trip, besides to just have fun and go camping, is to catch a fish big enough to keep, and cook it with camping supplies. Hopefully the boat rental will help with that a little. Also hopefully we’ll have more luck than we’ve had in the past month, since we have been fishing many times and have caught no fish at all. I’ve heard of some places around the lake that are apparently pretty good spots, so hopefully we can at least get something, if not something big enough to keep.  

That’s all I have for this week. Next week I’ve got some plans and a package on the way I can hopefully write about.  

Tell Your Story – Mason Porter

Today’s post in the “Tell Your Story” project comes from Mason. This is the tenth post in his series.

June 15, 2020 through June 19, 2020

Saturday, my sister and I got up mid-morning and went over to my parents’ house to continue working on the records. When we got there, we picked up my dad and went to lunch. We got back around three in the afternoon and started working. We got the rest of the records sorted into piles for each letter and alphabetized those piles. We had supper with my parents and then went home. I watched tv until I went to bed.  

On Sunday and Monday, I watched tv all day.  

On Tuesday, my sister and I went over to our parents’ house to continue working on the records. We got over there just in time for lunch. After lunch, we got most of the alphabetized piles filed into the corresponding box that that letter goes in. We had supper with our parents and then left. I spent the rest of the night watching tv.  

I spent the rest of the week watching tv. My sleep schedule is still terrible. I am consistently getting up at four in the afternoon and going to bed at ten or eleven in the morning.

Tell Your Story – Taylor Tomlinson

Today we hear from Taylor in the “Tell Your Story” project. This is the eleventh post in his series.

Road Trip  

This last week has been a lot more eventful than the past few. A lot of little things but the most interesting thing we did was on Sunday. I think I mentioned it before but a few friends, or I guess just one, decided that we should go fishing in the Mississippi River, so we did.  

I’m not sure if he was expecting us to be able to catch more fish over there than here, or if he just wanted to go for an extra-long drive. Either way, my other friend and I felt that it would be a very boring trip, so we decided to make it a game so that we could have something to keep us entertained. We created bingo cards with common mannerisms that our friends have and kept track of our scores along the way. I didn’t get a bingo, but we’ll come back to that.  

To start, we were supposed to get supplies at 9 and leave at 11. We were all in the car at 9:30 but kept going back and forth grabbing stuff that we’d forgotten. In the end, we didn’t even get our supplies until 11:30. Also, the only supplies we ended up getting were popsicles. 

The plan was that we would go to Clinton, and find a river access somewhere there, but somewhere along the way, we must have taken a wrong turn because we were on a straight shot to Davenport. We could’ve just turned at some point, but the driver decided that we were going to Davenport instead now. 

The first hour or so of the drive was spent trying to get every truck that we passed to honk. We only got a couple to do it though. To be honest, I don’t know how they can even see us when they are sitting so much higher up than us. Speaking of trucks, while we really didn’t want to go to Davenport, the route we took did find us passing the World’s Largest Truck Stop. I didn’t know such a thing existed, but I found it funny that we have a tourist destination that is just a large truck stop. The remainder of the drive was expectantly uneventful. We mostly just played music and sent dumb pictures back and forth in the back seat. When we did get to Davenport, we pulled into the first parking we could find. At this point, I was very hungry, and found out there was a Popeyes nearby. I didn’t shut up about Popeyes for like an hour, but I regret to say that we never ended up going.  

Anyway, we got our stuff and walked over to the river, not surprisingly, there was a lot of people there fishing already, so we walked off into the woods a little and there was a teenager just chilling in there, so we went the other way and by this point, I think that the three of us who didn’t drive had come to terms with the fact that we really wouldn’t be fishing much today.  

Going the other way, we had to either follow a bike path that went away from the river, or duck into another wooded area. We figured that most people would follow the path, so there’d be more free space and maybe some good spots in the woods. We were partially wrong. We got off the path and ducked into the trees, where the atmosphere immediately changed. Moments ago, there had been a lot of people around us but now, we were completely isolated, as the path went off farther and farther from the shoreline. Walking along the shore, and the farther into the woods, the more and more trash there was, until we were quite literally walking on a beach of broken glass. We figure that this was where the teens went to go secretly drinking but a lot of the bottles that were still intact looked like medical bottles or weird snake oil bottles. There was also a lot of bricks and debris, including some very old-fashioned looking vents. I theorized that a drugstore must have washed ashore. We took a break on the glass beach to put on bug spray because it was brutal out there. I just wish it would have actually done something.  

We talked for a minute because there was a rope barring us from going any farther. Well, no we could’ve just stepped right over it but it seemed like we were not supposed to keep going and also it was a disgusting trash beach so I don’t think any of us wanted to keep going anyway. We walked all the way back along the glass beach and followed the bike path. Eventually it did reconnect to the shore and we found another little area where someone had recently built a fire, but there wasn’t enough room for all of us and if we kept following the trail, there was nowhere to fish so we decided to get in the car and drive a little farther north of Davenport to see if we would have any luck there, leaving behind the Popeyes. 

When we got to our new spot, it was even more populated than before. We did find a little area where we could all go fishing though, except it was swarming with bugs, to the point you could see them in the air like a cloud. I must have used two thirds of that bug spray and they just did not care. At one point I was spraying it into the air, and they would just swarm right through it to get to me. I immediately gave up fishing and spent the rest of our time on the Mississippi swatting at bugs because I was absolutely miserable. By this point, my friend had gotten a bingo and I was one off from a double, but like I said, I wasn’t so lucky. All of us gave up except the driver, who was probably very upset that we drove all the way out here and it kind of sucked, which the rest of us tried to tell him, but he didn’t listen.  

Begrudgingly, he gave up too and we left. Our fishing trip took nearly six hours of travel time (which is double what it should’ve taken) and resulted in maybe 30 minutes of actual fishing. We got on our way home and that was that. 

However, it was not all for not. We pulled into the World’s Largest Truckstop and it was in fact, quite large. It was really just a weird mall if anything. There were also a lot of people there. I didn’t think it would’ve been a very popular destination, but I guess they have to keep business going somehow. We got some food, but nobody bothered to mention the soda fountain was out of soda, so I paid for some carbonated water and we went home.  

That about wraps up the most eventful thing that happened to me this last week. Maybe on future trips, there will be a less disproportionate amount of driving time to time spent actually doing the thing.  

Tell Your Story – Taylor Tomlinson

Today’s post comes from Taylor, the tenth post in the series, in the “Tell Your Story” project.

Random thoughts 

I have almost nothing for this week. I’ve thought about a lot and experienced a lot but nothing was so prominent that I could craft a cohesive narrative. So instead, I’m just going to experiment a little bit and try to talk about all the things I’ve thought about or experienced with no central theme. I hope it’s at least not too jarring. 

To start with, a friend of mine mentioned that his dad was going to see if we couldn’t arrange to go fishing with his friend who writes for a fishing magazine. I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime in the near future, but maybe he could tell me how to catch a fish because after a couple hours of preparation and five failed fishing attempts, you have to wonder how bad you actually are. 

We are going to try fishing in the Mississippi River soon. I don’t really know where, I mean, the Mississippi River is pretty big so hopefully I’ll find out before I’m in the car on the way there. Also, I don’t really want to spoil the fun, but I find it hard to believe that we’ll have any more luck over there. I guess it will be a fun little car trip if anything.  

I wish that there was somewhere more private to go walking. I don’t have a problem running into a couple people but everyone and their dog seems to have the same idea as me at the same time as me. You’d be amazed how many entire families and dogs you pass midday on a tuesday. The worst part is that the trail I’m walking is partially flooded so half the time I have to walk out into the brush or off into the grass because seven people, a dog and flood water are blocking the path. My favorite people are the people who walk their dog but the dog and them are on opposite sides of the walkway so there’s no way to get around them without ducking off the path. The next time it rains though, I’m gonna take advantage of that. Last time it was raining and I decided to go for a walk, I saw almost no one. Except I did find two guys playing a card game under a bridge. They were also doing some work on the trail I think because one time I turned a corner and had to quickly get out of the way because I was about to get hit by a, pardon the expletive, fucking truck. I don’t know if they’re still working on it or what exactly they were doing or if that was just some random dude driving his truck down a walking path, but I digress. I need somewhere better to go for a walk.  

My friend shaved his head. I believe his grandma or someone tried to give him a haircut and it didn’t turn out very good. I think that you can actually go and get a haircut now though. My hair is pretty long now and I should probably get it trimmed, but I also kind of want to have longer hair again. Except, I don’t know if it will be worth it. You’d be surprised how much ridicule you get just for the length of your hair. Or at least in my experience. Maybe someday in the future, when I move far away, I will have longer hair again. 

I played poker for the first time recently. I am still really confused by the rules but I’m not that bad at it. I don’t think I’d ever play for money though because at best I’m breaking even. 

My dad lent me a dvd for a comedy and I thought it was his but it’s actually his friends. So he ushered me to try and watch it and get it back to him. I thought it was a movie but it’s a series. He hyped it up a lot. I believe he said, “it’s funny as fuck” multiple times. I watched the first episode and I don’t know if I should grind my way through the rest of them or just give it back now because I thought it was terrible. I guess we’ll see, but I’m gonna feel bad either way.  

A year ago I lent some dvd’s of my favorite show to a friend and asked him to watch them. He will not do it. He will only watch them when I’m there and by watch them I mean let me watch them while he’s on his phone. It’s gotten to the point where I have been asking him to watch just one episode and he won’t do it. Then my other friend invited him over to watch a different show and he goes over there every night to watch it now. He said that it is the enjoyable version of watching stuff with me, but made sure to tell me that he didn’t mean offense by this as though that made me any less sad. I mean, if he’s not going to watch it, he could at least give them back or something. 

 I wish that the face masks didn’t make my glasses fog over so bad. I can’t stand it. I need some tape so I can tape the thing down onto my face. 

The protests in Minneapolis have been really crazy. 2020 has been a really bad year so far. 

My friend’s car is absolutely busted. I feel really bad because he probably can’t get another car. To sum it up. The muffler fell off a while back, the trunk just opens itself at random. The left hand turn doesn’t work. If you turn on either the heat or AC, I can’t remember which, it just hot boxes the car with antifreeze. The defrosters don’t work and one of the windows is taped on. The couple days ago he was on his way home and it just stopped, so my friends had to escort his car back home yesterday. By that I mean they had to drive behind him while he tried to get it home, on the highway, which is under construction, stopping every couple minutes or so, because a big black puff would come out and it would turn off. I heard that when they finally, somewhat miraculously got it home, he tried to reverse it and the reverse lights came on, then he pressed the gas and it drove forward into a trashcan, then reversed. Then part of the door fell off. I didn’t know a car could so clearly state that it was done driving. I hope that he can somehow get a cheap new car, but I really doubt it. Maybe that VR headset wasn’t a very good purchase on his part though.  

I’ve been listening to Arctic Monkeys and Cage The Elephants recently. I really like the song 505. 

I’ve been wanting to get back into painting again because I’m not very good at it but I want to get better. Except I don’t want to buy a canvas and paints and paintbrushes, since I’ve probably destroyed the ones I already have. I wish that oil paints weren’t so expensive and didn’t take a literal month to dry. 

I’m stuck in a loop where I want to do something creative, I start doing it, become unhappy with it, stop doing it, and then wish I were doing it. If I ever complete anything it will be a miracle.  

I want to buy the Monkey ball game for the gamecube and beat that guitar level because I never could when I was a kid. I don’t know if anyone is going to know what I’m talking about, but it was this game where you were a monkey in a ball and you didn’t control the monkey, but instead tilted the stage and the ball would roll around. There was a level shaped like a guitar and you had to roll across the strings and it was really hard. 

I think I am about out of thoughts now, so I’m going to call it quits. Hopefully reopening won’t make COVID any worse and hopefully next week, I’ll have something more cohesive to talk about.  

Tell Your Story – Mason Porter

Today’s post in the “Tell Your Story” project comes from Mason. This is the ninth post in his series.

June 8, 2020 through June 12, 2020

On Saturday, my sister and I went back to our parents’ house to continue working on the records. We finished sorting through the rest of the unsorted records in that room. After that, we started in on the records in the room my dad uses for storage. A lot of these are either really dirty or in really bad condition. We stopped for supper around seven in the afternoon and stopped for the night around nine. After that, we went home. I spent the rest of the night watching Netflix. I again went to bed after sunrise.  

I woke up late afternoon Sunday and spent all day on Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok. I stayed up until two in the afternoon the next day.  

Monday was short. I woke up at eleven thirty at night. I watched three episodes of the show I am watching and then went to bed at two thirty in the morning.  

On Tuesday, my sister and I went to work on the records again. We had lunch and worked for an hour alphabetizing piles of records and decided that we were both too tired and in pain to work, so we went home, and both took naps (We both suffer from chronic pain). After that I spent the rest of the night watching Netflix.  

I spent all of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday watching Netflix.