2003-05-28 - 9:28 p.m.

We had a neighbor named Creapau, who my mom called "Creepy Creapau" because she hated him so. He would mow his lawn literally every single day, which gets to be really annoying after a week or so. But he sold his land to the local bank, and is having his ugly house hauled away, so we're happy.

He seems to have moved away without taking any of his furniture with him, as there's a whole bunch of it piled up in his driveway with a sign that says "Free". Most of it's pretty cruddy, but there was a desk that caught my attention. Well, the first thing that actually caught my attention was a display case, but I really have nowhere to put a display case right now, and no justification for having one. But I do need a desk, and the price was right (free!) so I got my dad to go help me move it.

We underestimated the weight, though. My dad's tall and in good shape, and I'm disarmingly strong for my size, but the desk is made of total metal and wood-patterned particleboard and weighs approximately 500 billion tons. It has enough mass that small planets constantly orbit it. Also, it's huge. There was no way we could fit it in the car, so we decided to carry it across Creepy Creapau's back yard and across to our yard, so we could shove it in the garage and be done with it. However, there's a small brook, maybe about three feet wide, between our house and his. It's no problem to hop over, but difficulties arise when hauling around a 754 sextillion ton desk. My dad ended up getting a plank and making a crude bridge, which worked but was rather scary because: 1) We didn't know if the plank could hold 900 googol tons, and 2) I couldn't actually see my feet when I was crossing.

So the brook-crossing part ended up being a sort of spiritual experience, trusting that my feet would know where to land on the plank, that the desk would not slip, the plank would not break. We got the desk across and into the garage and left the plank by the brook, in case we need to move any more desks or something. Or a display case.