It's been a while since I posted a journal entry (or anything, really), and the interestingness of this final journal is drying up. So, I'm going to jump to the most important entry in there; the entry that, looking back on it, in many ways kick started my life on the path that has led me here. Without further ado:

Today was the oddest/horrible days of my life. It started off fairly normal. We got ready for Mass and headed off as usual. We drove towards Tulsa in conditioned comfort. We were nearly in town when the van started acting up. Mom ordered everyone out of the van. It wasn't until I got out until I noticed the smoke billowing off the hood. As we backed away from the van we noticed flames under it. A couple of people from the parish stopped. Some other guy stopped and poked around in the van. Mom and Mary Cook were screaming at him to beat it. By the time the fire truck was passing on the other side the van was engulfed in flames. They did get it out and there stood the blackened courpse of what used to be our mode of transportation. So Jeff, Steve, Maggie and I hitched a ride to the curch with the Howzers. When the others got there, Mr. Howzer drove us home. Next to that nothing else has really happened. Okay, I scraped my knee. But it's late (and raining) and I'm off to bed.

Name spelling errata aside, the van burning up was actually a fairly large turning point in family history. I don't think any one thing that followed is necessarily directly attributable, but it was the "big event" upon which other smaller, but more important events happened very close to.

Shortly after the car barbecue, we got the enormous, 15 passenger van that is now the Hackmobile and also the vehicle with which I learned to drive. With that in our possession, it seemed like we began to do more things within the parish, such as my creating and running of their website (my first real experience doing web work outside of for my own fancy or the YPN) in addition to myself and the two younger brothers behind me becoming altar boys.

In all this, I began to get my programming skills known and also begin the long process of shedding my introversion and bringing a level of normality to my social skills (a thing that is still ongoing, it seems). Again, I don't know if the event of the Crispy Van (as it was later called) is directly involved in any of this, but it was certainly something memorable. But, the fire was not without casualties.

My brother's JamP3 didn't survive.