February 5, 2000 (idea)

First thing this morning, I'm being told to "hurry up" because I have to leave @ 9:00 for something I agreed to the previous night. You see, our neighbor burned his garage down, and so I was going to help tear the thing down/apart. Although it was dirty work, there was a degree of satisfaction in tearing apart a half burned building with crowbars, sledgehammers, chainsaws, and your hands. However, this was quickly balanced with the fact that most everything was covered with a mixture of soot, dirt, mud, and melting slushy snow. His dog, a friendly, lovable mutt, but also quite insistant on attention, continued to bother us while we hacked apart the building. By tasks end, he was covered in a not insignificant amount of soot himself. This left the dog ordinarly yellow with an odd blackish tinge.

I immeditly went to washing the clothes I was wareing, and so are now bumming around the house in "laundry clothes", which are much too cold for a day like today. I tried to start my assignment for school, The Scarlet Letter, but Hawthorne apparently saw fit to include a 40 page introduction where he rambles on about how he worked in a customs house which, as near as I can tell, has nothing to do with the story. This was worsened by the fact I was both cold, and continually bother by the other residents of this house who kept interrupting me to do inane and menial tasks, even though they knew I was reading. I eventually gave up, and decided to skip the introduction, as it seemed impossible then to hold my concentration for any length of time longer than five minutes.