Here at PIC, we often do group projects. A few of the fellas decided it would be a good idea to chronicle a day in our lives. And we picked Friday, November 9th to do it. Fortunately, I had this day off so this piece won't be totally lame. Anyway, at the end of this gimmick, I'll place a link to where you can find other writer's days in their lives… or is it day in their life? Either way, I took a bunch of pictures. Here they are.
Imagine waking up next to this grumpy fuck, ladies.
If you can't read this, I'm waking up at 10:41 on a weekday. Usually, this reads 8:20, so I'm a little happier than usual on a Friday, which is nice.
It's 1:45 PM. I have been to the gym, eaten three eggs, a chicken breast and a plate of asparagus, put on a sweater that makes me look innocent, and I am now driving to Wal-Mart to get a new camera because this one is borrowed and the batteries are dying.
You probably can't see that, because I'm a crappy photographer, but my odometer reading has five sixes in a row on it as I start my car to head to Wal-Mart. This turns out to be a bit of an omen.
This guy's name is JP. He sold me an 8mp digital camera with video capability and a 1 gig memory card. I asked him how he felt about being put on the internet and he responded, “Everybody is on the internet.”
Interesting perspective, I guess.
My friend Ben has a theory that you could put a Wal-Mart in the middle of Beverly Hills and it would still be trashy. This Wal-Mart is conveniently located in a trashy area, so no one here has to worry about Ben's theory.
Lettuce Lake Park in Tampa features a boardwalk that takes you out over the swampland. Basically, most of Tampa is just dredged swampland, and this park shows you what the area was like back before that kind of construction work was available. Kind of impresses the value of technology on a person, you know?
Swamp.
Hillsborough River and swamp.
This picture is in here so I can tell you a little, half-informed history lesson. Legend has it that when the first Spanish explorers came to Tampa, they declared it haunted and moved on. Historians think that, based on some of the writings they studied, the explorers came to Tampa during the middle of a heat ligthning storm, which spawns alligator mating (which is loud) and looks wicked ass cool (flashes of colored light as the backdrop for crackling webs of lightning bolts). Additionally, there was all this spanish moss (pictured) hanging from the trees, which looks scary at night. Anyway, because of its legendary scariness, Tampa became a pirate cove. It was kind of like a Sherwood's Forest for a little while. Except the story is slightly less mythical and the thieves hiding out here stole on water instead of land (for the most part).
Okay, this kind of figures. At the end of my day-off walk in the park, I run into my friend Mark, who was studying for the LSATs. I hadn't seen him in over a year. And if the couple under the other overhang weren't blatantly fucking each other, I probably wouldn't have come across Mark. Anyway, we decided to cut off his studying and my park visit and go grab some beers.
We were the only customers in this place for three hours. We drank too much, created some videos (that will never be seen for a reason I will get to later) and decided to go home, him to play with his children and me to take a nap.
This is where the omen comes into play. My old, paranoid buddy from the other coast of Florida (we'll call him Leroy for this, making it his eighth alias on The Nate Way) came by and we went out to this bar and a few others before we hit up a strip club. Afterwards, while I was videotaping him at my apartment (I didn't take my camera into the other bars and the strip clubs for fear of my life, but the place pictured here is classy so it was cool), he knocked my camera out of my hand and broke it when I told him this was all going on the net.
He bought me a new camera, but because of the sweet deal I got ($89), I couldn't get the equivalent replacement (JP hooked me the fuck up, it turns out), so my new camera has no video. And there are no more pictures.
So basically, to sum up, on November 9th, I ate, shat, worked out, bought a camera, went to the park, ran into an old friend I hadn't seen in a year or so, drank with him, took a nap, went to a few bars and a strip club with with an old friend of mine from across the state who broke the camera I just got, got a new camera with no video capabilities and woke up with a splitting hangover.
Typical.
It looks like I'm the first one, but others will be writing their day in the lives, soon. And they will be on this page, if they're not already.
Oh, and not for nothing, but taking and uploading all these shitty photos was a pain in the ass.
And thanks for spending the day with me.