Today is Blaze Blind and my sister's birthday! Happy birthday to both. I decided to stay here a fully 2nd day, since the forecast calls for some nasty thunderstorms. Blaze Blind and The Purple Pirate decided to continue hiking, despite the weather. Crag and I left at 9:30 for breakfast. Only 1 car passed us the whole time, so we had to walk the three miles. As I had no cash to my name, I watched Botany Boy, Florida Dave and Crag eat. I did get a package from the post office. My mother sent me a Happy Pack. I think this needs it's own paragraph, too.

My mother runs a care package company called Happy Packs, which she started after reading an article about the woman who runs S.W.A.K. (Sealed With A Kiss.) Her care package company has done very well, despite the fact that her packages consist of, in my humble opinion, complete crap. My mother decided she could do better, and now mails out fresh-baked cookies, rubber chickens and fortune-telling fish just about everyday, the goal being to make enough to put my twin brother and I through college, a total bill of around $45,000 a year. That's a lot of rubber ducks. As long as I have this platform, I will completely shamelessly plug the business. So I recommend that you at least call and order a brochure at 1-800-260-1458. Maybe I'll have a Waldo Struggles To Pay For College web page...

As a result of getting the Happy Pack, I had peanut butter cookies and tootsie rolls for breakfast. My mother mailed me a newspaper clipping informing me that Christopher Robin had died. How very, very depressing. There are so many things that I could write, so many things that I could say on this. I will not make any connections to the Pooh stories, however, as not enough people read them anymore. So I encourage each and every one of you to please pick up your daughter's copy of "The House at Pooh Corner", or go and buy a copy. It is nothing short of writing at its finest.

I spent part of the day on the front porch of that ice cream store, passing out cookies and talking to High Tech, Trail Snail, Jetson, Red Wolf, and others. I did my laundry, unplugging a washing machine to get some juice for my laptop. I took my laptop with the updated journal entries to the Registration Office to upload my journal entries. The guy at the front desk told me that I could only use the designated beige phones bolted to the walls. That did me no good. I'll take this opportunity to further thank Motorola for their complete incompetence.

I got back to the shelter in mid-afternoon. I found that Steve Bookman (a guy in his 20s out of Anchorage, Alaska, who is a dead ringer, in character and appearance, for the doctor in that ABC show about Alaska) and Leah Filippi (from Upstate New York, a grinning, outgoing woman also in her 20s) had showed up while I was gone. A big ol' thunderstorm rolled in right after I showed up, blowing right through the two doors of the shelter. We all worked together to nail up and duct tape up tarps to keep the rain out. When the storm blew over, Brandy and Crag cooked up a big ol' nacho 'n' cheese 'n' salsa 'n' beef 'n' bean casserole over a couple of Coleman stoves. Everybody munched on that for a bit, filling up just about everybody.

I headed up to the dam just before dark with Crag, hoping to use the pay phone to call home. I spent about 30 minutes talking to my mother, father, and sister (she turned -gasp- 13 today.) My mother spent a lot of time panicking over how little money and food I have, and cursing Motorola for not having my modem cable yet. I then spent another 15 minutes talking to Jim Arnette, owner of Comet.Net about page updates, sponsorships and such, and I also talked to his daughter, Annie, for a bit.

Everybody was asleep by the time I got back to the shelter. Everybody had already eaten their s'mores and curled up, though Smokey Mo, Heidi Gone Burglar and M.C. Brandy were up giggling at a guy snoring strangely. I stayed up and finished reading a Kurt Vonnegut book. I sure do hope that his writing style doesn't affect my own, because I certainly couldn't pull that off successfully. Let me know if it does.

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