Oh wow...

A couple of weeks ago, a couple of friends of mine were going over their voter ID cards.  They were comparing them to see what differences they had as to what they covered.  As they both lived in the same city, the only things different between them had to do with city precincts.  But that prompted me to go home later on and find my voter ID card.  I'm rather different than them as I live just outside the other town in our twin cities.  I do share the major area with them (US House, State House, State Senate).  The differences come in local voting, mainly county board and local precinct.

Now, the biggest shock to me had nothing to do with any of that.  What got me was a date that was printed on the card and comparing it to the previous card.  I've been living at my current address for 6 years.  Where has the time flown?

Before I moved to my current address, I lived with my parents in a local farming community.  It was the same town I lived in when I went to high school in the next town over.  I had moved from there to go to Illinois Wesleyan, but then moved back to the parent's place to start looking for work.  And then the years passed...

One day around six years ago, a coworker had placed a sign up at work advertising that he was selling his trailer.  I got interested in it, investigated the place, and was intrigued.  It looked like a nice place, the park looked good, and it was incredibly close to work (around 10 minutes by car).

But before buying, I decided to have the place inspected.  Vernon (the seller) said that there was no need for that.  I insisted, however, just in case there was something wrong.  The inspection came back with only a couple of niggling problems that were easily addressed.  I went for the deal, and got a sweet loan off of my profit sharing (10 year loan as opposed to 5 years that the bank was offering).  Vernon moved to a town to the north, but had issues with that house that would have been caught if he got that place inspected (he did not).  He moved out of the area around 3-4 years ago, and the last time I tried to get hold of him the phone number that I had was disconnected.

But here I stay.  Unless something drastic changes in my life, I am liable to be here for the foreseeable future.  I know that I am paying a lot of money for lot rent, and that rent is only going to increase as time goes on.  However, I still like the place, and it is still as close to my work as I think I can get, outside of moving to an apartment.  And I am getting comfortable in this home.

My latest home purchase is a used washer-dryer combo that was being sold by a coworker who is moving to a new place.  $315 for a set is not bad.  The next step in getting the pair setup will be a stop at a hardware store for a new power cord for the dryer.  Seems that the previous place had a three-prong outlet, and my place has a four-prong one.  Then I replace a portion of the trailer skirt from Vernon's time.  He just made a square cut in the piece for his dryer vent, but that piece is now so damaged that I cannot put in my vent.  Plus the vent tube is badly damaged, but I have the replacement tube.   So the dryer will not be working for around 1-2 weeks (depends on how quick an order for a skirt piece can be delivered).

So, that is my home update.  Six years.  How time flies, even when you try to keep track of it.

What's in a (nick)name...

I saw this in my list of unpublished posts, and I figured that I really needed to work on this subject. That is,...

How did someone from central Illinois come by the nickname Tobimaro?

Well, there is a story to that. It comes from my history with the internet.

Let's go back many years (not sure how many). Back to the dark, early days of the internet (at least as far as I am concerned). At that time I was living with my parents in a very small community with no cable TV (the cable franchise that fed the next town over did not come from the east [my direction] but from the south). My first internet account was on a kiosk at Kinko's in the big (for me) city on a free net called Prairienet. It was extremely primitive compared to today, as my main interests was reading email lists and catching up on my lists. No web-surfing, as the World Wide Web was in its infancy, plus my time on that kiosk was limited. But then the group behind Prairienet could not get better equipment (for free), so they decided to start charging for using their kiosk. I then decided to get my own computer and a different account.

With no cable available, I started to look at the dial-up services that were available. The only services that I could find were EarthLink and America Online. Since I could find local numbers for AOL, I went with them and set up my account. Then came coming up with my primary name...

Well, I went with my favorite anime "Urusei Yatsura". I figured that there would be some others using the names of the primary characters from that series, as the manga and anime were being released in the US. So I delved into the show a bit further. The latest translated book had a story introducing Mizunokouji Tobimaro, so I decided to use his name for my primary screen name. (I was kinda proud to have a screen name without using numbers.) And I still use the name in various locations.

I know it's not much. But I like the name. I give full credit for the name with Takahashi Rumiko and America Online.