But yeah, Saturday was great. Micah got me and Corey tickets to the Ole Miss game, not to mention getting us into the rocking student section. Yes folks. We were there.
And It was grand.

Getting wood from the shed today for our first fire of the winter. Didn’t really think about it for the first armful, but on coming back I remembered Collin helping us stack this pile, back when we got that tree back in July, from the lot where Diane put her trailer. Loading it all in the truck and bringing it home - stacking it all.







Alot of stuff, stuff he did and stuff he left lying around, stuff he helped us with and arranged – stuff of his. Every day a little bit more of it disappears, gets moved or used or pilfered. And every day a little bit more of him is gone forever.











Weird though, how we’re still benefiting from stuff he worked on – heating our home with wood he helped stack. It is a very odd and strange thing, …one of many things that are thought about in a very different way, now. Small little things that mean so much and send your mind racing around in circles of the past. I'm starting to understand how people can just, plain go crazy and insane and get extremely distant and depressed, over things like this. It is something that nobody can understand unless they've gone through it. Everybody else can semi-sympathize and apologetically reflect on it, but they don't know it. They don't know it know it. They don't understand what stuff like this does to your mind.

The good thing is, that there is a lot of stuff that I've got going for me, mostly through no effort of my own and having mostly to do with my parents and my family and friends. That kind of stuff keeps you from your first reaction, which was to leave everything behind and become a hermit, escaping to somewhere to hide for ten years. Several locations would do for hermit life. Not very many, but a few.


Hard to explain, but something like that.

It’s weird. I’ve never looked forward to the leaves changing in fall as much as I have right now. Bright yellows and oranges and dark reds.

Years past, I really didn’t care. It seems like it started last spring. I’d had an interesting winter, and was ready for spring sprang sprung be springing outside look at those flowers on the side of the road.

I’d like to be outside as much as I can whenever this fall thing goes down. And it is starting. In spots.

This weekend we’re going up to Eureka Springs, and then up to Fayetteville for the Razorback football game. I should take a lot of pictures. Lesley’s got a box full of wedding invitations for a wedding that was supposed to be this weekend, so I was going to take a lot of pictures anyway, barring some tragic event.

Enter tragic event.

I can imagine pictures of Collin make a mockery of the wedding rehearsal, pictures of everybody stuffing their faces at some kind of dinner afterwards, pictures of Collin smearing wedding cake all over everybody within cake-smearing or perhaps even cake- throwing-range, and pictures of etc etc etc.

Instead we’re gonna head upstate (like this is new york or something) and see some stuff and do some stuff and view the half-fall colors and go to a football game in a stadium that houses the largest television in the world, a television that just happens to be 13 feet longer than a basketball court. A television that just happens to be near the world headquarters of Wal-Mart. What a coincidence.

I've decided to post something every single day.
For a week.
Please settle down and change your soiled-due-to-extreme-excitement-in-response-to-my-decision, pants.

I've just looked around Terrystrek.com. Interesting stuff.

Says Gary: Have you ever wanted to quit your job, sell your stuff, and head out to see the world? That's exactly what I am going to do. On September 10, 2002, I will start a roughly one-year trip around the world, traveling by land as much as possible. I will begin in New Zealand and Australia, then work my way through Asia to Europe.

Supposedly, his web log will:

"allow me to share my adventure with you, through frequent journal entries and photos." He hopes to:

"give you a flavor of what it's like to travel independently for an extended period of time."

Good for Gary.

I have a traditional disliking for people with the money and the time and the opportunity to undertake such endeav, ...stuff. Yeah, good for Gary. His journal is interesting though, simply because he posts something EVERY day, from someplace new and maybe neat.

So I think wow, ...such halfway interesting stuff everyday, from some guy who's out there as we speak, maxing out his discover card in exchange for a hardcore, globe-circlin, Ad vin tur.

So I say, neat. Neat stuff everyday, with Gary and his little journal with occasional fo toe. And I say, hmmm. Let me post something every single day for a while, as a simple exercise in response to Gary's fun.

Ok today.
I woke up at ten and went to study my lesson with DeAnja, and walked the stupid annoying little rat-dog named Garth. Then drove to school, watched a film in class, drove home, typed this.

Oh but it gets more interesting. Yes it does. On the way home I stopped by nana's, cause I sorta don't live there anymore because I feel I need to be at home now. And get this, ...I walked in there and got my USB cord for the camera.

Is that freaking exciting or what?

It was a bad decision though. Now I could download the 100+ images off my camera. Images from the last time we went to the lake with Collin.

Nothing in life seems at it used to seem. Lately 've thought alot about the distant future, and how Collin's death will change all of that. Visions of Collin's wedding next weekend, and what that would've been like. Visions of Collin's kids coming over to my house and beating the snot out of my kids. Stuff that just isn't in the future anymore.

Great. I get to post stuff tomorow from this exciting life again. Until then.

Saturday after the funeral, lots of people came over to the house. And ate.
Relatives and friends and great uncles and aunts, ..a few of whom I'd never seen before.
It was one of those unnatural kind of things where everybody gets together for the same reason, except that nobody talks about it. "Hi everybody. Collin died. Would you like summore chicken?" etc. etc.

Done over again it would be the same way. Nobody really knows what to do, or how to act. It is nice however, that we've got so many good friends and family. You could tell by the temperature of the packed out funeral home, the amount of food that entered our house and the number of stamps that mom has used for thank-you cards.

That afternoon, uncle Bob took a couple dozen or so photos with his better than mine digital camera, and later emailed them to dad. You can always tell you're getting a crapload of photos from a close relative, when Outlook sits there for 2 hours working on the download of one gargantuan email. Bob's camera is pretty sweet. It kind of captured the day. I'm glad somebody was there taking pictures.

Some of them were really great:


Drew and Drew and Jeremy and Rachelle.



Colten bought me a Hotwheel.


Dad and Kris

Me and DeAnja. I'm the one who appears to be wearing a monkey-suit and mis-aligned tupee, sitting next to the girl whose real boyfriend seems to be cropped out of the picture. You can all easily see that she could do alot better.


Moms should never have to go to thier 20 yr old's funeral. "No thank you I've already had some of the chicken."


Collin would have thought this gathering of multitudes at the Stephens ranch to be most interesting. That little fart.