Nerd dreams

I mentioned recently that I seem to go through these periods where I have dreams I remember. I seem to be in one at the moment. Last night’s dream wasn’t what I’d call one of my classically weird ones, but it was one of the compelling, interesting ones, in which the world’s just a little askew.

In this one, I had the silver car I had previous to this one, and I was driving it back to 1970 to take photos of a construction site. I was puzzled when I arrived there, trying to figure out where it was, and I finally decided it was the reconstruction of the intersection of Winston Churchill Blvd. and Erin Mills Parkway. I can’t show you what that intersection looked like before the reconstruction, nor afterwards, for that matter, because it doesn’t exist. Winston Churchill Blvd. and Erin Mills Parkway are Peel Region’s sixth and fifth west concession roads respectively, and as such they run parallel to each other 7/8 of a mile apart. Big points to anyone who can tell me the Freudian aspect of this detail. :)

Anyway, when I got there, Erin Mills Parkway was in the process of being upgraded from Fifth Line. It was a scar of reddish-brown dirt six lanes wide, with big yellow construction machines scattered on it, momentarily stopped for lunch or something, I guess. The road dipped down under the railroad underpass they were building, and at the top of the hill, beyond what had been the level crossing, was a very busy Winston Churchill Blvd. that reminded me more of Queen Street in Streetsville or Dundas Street near the Junction… lots of low-rise storefronts/apartments that don’t actually exist on Winnie anywhere (went straight from country road to suburban drive with no little towns on it in between).

This is where it gets interesting. Right in the middle of the road was this old farm house. It was due to be razed, but hadn’t been just yet. A family was still living there. I was with them on their porch, shooting the scene with a digital SLR camera. They knew I was from the future and were impressed the camera had no film. It was no big deal to anyone I was from the future; in the world of the dream, that kind of thing happened. It was like living in the old country and being visited by relatives from the New World or something. They didn’t ask me questions about what was going to happen. They were more interested in my impressions of the time they were living in.

And suddenly my dad was there, looking like he does today. I have the impression he’d come with me. But when I looked at him again, he seemed younger. The next time I looked at him, he looked like he would have been back then, a man considerably younger than I am now. He seemed really happy and self-confident. I didn’t think of it in the dream but I wonder if he meant to stay.

Anyway, that was pretty much the run of the thing. Nothing wild or truly weird. Just stuff I found nerdishly interesting. I love dreams like that.

My dreams are against me!

Another aspect of dreams I’ve been having lately stems from the fact that I went on the wagon for a year in mid-December. I’m trying to see if I can go a year without drinking at all. I used to drink by myself when I was bored, or on weekends, just to get a buzz and sit back and enjoy movies. It was never a problem, but it was A) expensive and B) kind of disquieting. It wasn’t hard to imagine it going from chillaxing to something necessary to get through the day if it went on long enough. So I quit drinking at home last summer. Made it strictly a social thing.

Then I noticed I was really looking forward to the weekends… getting out with guys to heft a few. One day one of my friends baled at the last minute, and I recruited Larry, my roommate, to head out and go instead. He was game, but afterwards I started wondering if I was drinking to be with my friends, or going out with my friends to drink. Unrelatedly, and at about the same time, Larry mentioned that a bunch of his friends had just come off a year of self-imposed sobriety, and I started wondering if I could manage that myself. So, a week or so before Christmas, I just decided to give that a go myself.

We’re coming up on three months now during which time I haven’t touched a drop. Except in dreams. I can recall about a half dozen dreams so far (including one last night) – and who knows how many I don’t remember – in which I’m out with friends at a pub, and I order a beer or a mixed drink, and I’m two or three mouthfuls in before it dawns on me I’ve blown it. My dreams keep rapping me on the knuckles. I’ve been out with friends to pubs a dozen times since I went dry and, of course, I’ve never once made this mistake. I haven’t found it at all difficult (this is not to say I haven’t thought it would be really nice to have a drink or a beer or two from time to time, usually at the oddest times). And yet, for all that, I’m a miserable failure at even this simple and obvious task when it comes to my dreams. I must be masochistic or something.

John Lennon and his what??

I had a weird dream last night; the first dream I’m able to remember in quite a while. I was out at a mall with Larry and we passed this kind of kitschy, junky storefront. There was a little TV there running an ad for these weird, cartoony Beatles action figures. The ad was kind of light and 60s-style and some guy was singing a little ditty about each of the figures, including the following:

♪ “…John Lennon, and his phallus…” ♪

I kid you not. So Larry and I both looked at each other, laughing our heads off, and started going through the figures. We found some, ostensibly of John, but they looked instead more like Albert Einstein or Mark Twain (I guess it was John in disguise, like in Yellow Submarine). The figure was posed like an Oscar statue, and sure enough, there clutched in his hands was a large, black, rubber dildo. Well, it was hilarious, and we had to have a couple. Larry shelled out, using his bank card. But instead of $7.14, the girl put in $714 (I have no idea why I remember the number so exactly), and he didn’t notice till sometime later when we were in a restaurant (a sort of faux 1950s greasy spoon with high tone 21^st century prices) and he looked at the receipt and started freaking out that he wouldn’t be able to pay his share of the rent. He went off to find the salesgirl and somehow she wound up in the restaurant with us. She was a plump, good-looking 20-something with freckles and short reddish hair (kind of a grown-up Peppermint Patty, I guess), a good sport about it all, and she and Larry started flirting and getting into one another. I remember starting to feel jealous of them and like a third wheel. Well, there you go; my dose of surrealism for the night. :)

Weird dream follies

This one's a three-parter, what I remember of it.

Part one: I was driving down to the southern US to visit my folks, who were apparently on vacation there. Following the directions down a lovely back road, I ended up on a dirt trail across a hilly field with tall radar towers disguised, at the top, as palm trees. I figured, whoops, must be on an army base. I guess I turned back.

Part two: With my folks, and some of their friends, at a small restaurant. At some point, I decided I needed a drink, and just stood up and went to the liquor store next door. But as I stood there, I decided I didn't need it and changed my mind.

Part three: This is the interesting one. Cut to the sunlit lobby of a fancy hotel somewhere. Feels like I'm in a movie. I'm part of a band, trying to make a decision with our manager, who is Tom Hanks. The manager has decided our band needs a second bass player, though I'm doubtful, and manager Tom is telling me that a second bass player will liberate the guitars and free them up artistically (whatever that means). So we're rehearsing guys, and some scraggly 20-something in a Lollapalooza-style t-shirt covered with band names (including the one he's currently in) is there trying out for the gig, and manager Tom tells me we should give this guy a break, because (pointing at the guy's shirt), he says, "Who in their right mind would fuck a band called 'GET CHUCK'?" And at that point, I swear to you, I woke up laughing, and I had to scribble that line down on the pad in my night table in the dark. I kid you not.

Hallucinating Pluto Neptune

I had this weird dream this morning about them using neptunium to make frying pans; I think on the dream-sensible notion that, as a radioactive element, such a frying pan could cook without needing to be put on a stove.

I also remember trying to convince myself — in the dream — that this was a nonsensical notion. I decided that the half-life of neptunium was something in the range of about 1800 seconds or so — something approximating 20 minutes (yeah, I actually did math in a dream!) — so in a couple of hours, the frying pan would no longer be made of neptunium anyway (not to mention that anything in its vicinity would be dead of radiation poisoning).

Turns out I'm wrong about the half-life anyway... its stable isotopes seem to have half-lives ranging from about 13 months to just over two million years. Ah, well. There goes my Nobel Prize, I guess.

Fusebox magic copier?

I had this weird dream this morning about moving things around in the basement of the house I used to live in a long time ago. There was someone there with me, but I don't know who. I wasn't even quite me, if you know what I mean. Anyway, there was this fuse box sort of in the middle of the floor, and we realized that anything you leaned up against it, you could get it to make copies of for you. We were doing this with small appliances, things like cell phones and laptop computers and that kind of thing. We tried it with a grandfather clock, but the copies we got were half-assed, like only partially varnished, with parts missing from the face, or with some of the gearworkings missing. That's about all I remember. Oddly enough, when I was dwelling on it getting ready for work this morning, I realized that this probably meant there were limits to how big or extensive the object to be copied could be. I know it sounds trivial, but it just seemed so weird to be working out the dream logic while I was awake, rather than in the course of the dream. I think it might make a good basis for some kind of story, if I can work out what the gimmick is.

Weird dream time again

I've been having a lot of them lately but one this morning was really intriguing.

It was a dream about two 20-something guys, and I had the impression they were kind of small-time hood kinda guys, who, somehow, had managed to snag this diamond about twice the size of the end of your thumb. Just massive. At first they seemed surprised they had it. The ended up holed up in this concrete students' residence, and someone was trying to break in through the door (crowbar, I think). They barricaded it and the guy(s) never got in. They managed to sneak out and get away, and ended up at a sunken-level ranch-style house with these little windows in the downstairs right at lawn level. It was a family residence of one of them, I think. Their pursuers caught up with them again, and either attacked unsuccessfully or overlooked them. They grabbed everything they could that might identify them in case the guys came back and took off, getting away again.

They ended up in at the house of one of their mothers, shaped kind of like the letter G (the street, not the mother). The house was on the inside stem. The neighbourhood knew these guys were small-time baddied but they were kind of heroes, and all the neighbours came out to have some kind of rally in support of these guys and their big score as they prepared to take off for good. There were cops around, but because of the crowd, they stayed back. One of the guys, the one whose mom it wasn't, was really anxious to go, and to force the matter he headed out to the car (already loaded with stuff) and sat in it. This cop leans in on the driver's side, seemingly friendly, and asks if they can have this little leather-padded table to pose the dog on for photos (like I said, it was a dream). The guy somehow suspects that's where his buddy hid the diamond, so he hedges, but the cop sits in the driver's side and starts to drive him away, leaving the police car behind. I had this idea that they found this guy's body three years later, evidently tortured, and the other guy is now living under an assumed name somewhere in the world. The fake cop and his clique got the diamond back.

Sad, but it was really interesting.

Phone me to the Moon

The last thing I watched before going to sleep last night was my copy of In the Shadow of the Moon, a movie I saw in a theatre about a year ago, in which many of the Apollo astronauts themselves give their impressions of what it was like to train for and undertake journeys to the moon. As a result, last night I had a dream in which I was watching the movie in something like a cramped little college dorm room, while on the phone with Neil Armstrong (who does not appear in the movie). I’m not sure how it was arranged, but it was a privilege, and I got the impression we were both embarrassed; me asking him those same, tired old questions he must have been asked a hundred thousand times by now, and him having to politely answer them yet again. That’s just like me, though. I couldn’t dream about going to the Moon myself; no... I have to dream about inconveniencing one of the people who actually did.

Cat on a Soft Box Roof

I had the weirdest dream last night. I don't remember much of it, but I remember I was down in the finished basement of some suburban home. One room was kind of set aside for ping pong and that kind of stuff, and in there, one of cats, who had in the dream recently begun making herself almost passably understood in English, had begun unfolding the big boxes used for moving and was building a kind of fort with the unfolded boxes for walls. She wanted us (me, her, and my other cat) to play inside it; a big round area inside the ping-pong room. My mother was in the dream and she couldn't see how amazing it all was... she thought it was just messy nonsense. Well, that's my mom for you. :)

It was really strange. It was surprising how persuasive it was. I woke up feeling really disappointed when I realized it was, of course, absurd... and that I wouldn't be able to converse with my cat in reality. I hate when I get sucked in by dreams that deeply.

Another weird one

Odd one this morning, but not too disturbing. Kind of interesting, actually. I was in a large motel somewhere in the States, loose t-shirt and shorts and barefoot. I don't know what I was there for, but it was like one of those conventions I used to go to years ago.

Anyway, I wandered the town a little, and I came to this street opposite a huge lake, the other side of which was so far it couldn't be seen. All the houses on it, built after WWII, were condemned. They were being torn down to build hotels or condo towers or something. I was intrigued, and I went to explore one; a robin's egg blue one that was partly collapsed by the construction work, I guess. It was number 68. As I stood in the porch, it suddenly collapsed like a trap door. I fell into a pit about four and a half feet deep, but wasn't really hurt. It wasn't too hard to climb out, but I realized a had a bit of a gash on my right foot, and I was a little concerned it might become infected.

That's about it. Again, nothing profound, but if I write it down, I'm more apt to remember it. :)

Maybe you can go home again

This morning I had a dream about going back to a place I went for years as a child to be looked after while my parents worked. When I got there, the family was gone, and their house was a library, filled with the myriad books I remember there. I enquired after the family and learned that the woman who'd looked after me had passed away, and that saddened me deeply. But her daughter and adopted son, who'd been like older siblings to me, were still in town and I got leads on tracking them down. I spent some time in the library, going through the old rooms and remembering what had once gone on there, all the living and learning and growing. For the most part, it was a happy, hopeful dream. Oddly realistic; I woke up almost believing it was so.

Weird dreams for everyone!

Okay, I had this strange one this morning. I was in this older suburban neighbourhood, and there was a dog living in a tree. Not like up in the branches, but a big hollow cavity in the trunk, like some kind of snack stand, you know. And part of the opening was glazed… someone had put a pane of glass in it. The dog could get out above and below it, and lived inside the space with a squirrel. The dog came out and joined us on a walk. Didn't belong to anyone, but was accepted as member of the community and the people kind of looked out for him. Or her.

…Okay, it's not exactly War and Peace, but it was delightfully weird. And more like the kind of dreams I had when I was a kid, that were more about my yearnings than my fears. A welcome change.

More weird dreams :)

Last couple of days I've had three dreams that I can remember. Here's what I can recall...

This morning's dream was about places I know well that looked different from what I remember. It was December, but unseasonably warm, so I was in the jean jacket, peddle pushers, and sandals again. I was going to my old university library. I remember there was a collection tray for some charity at the bottom of some stairs (that have nothing to do with the library where I went to university), and people were dropping loonies and other change in. I dug in deep, hauled up a big fistful of change and dumped it in. I went up the stairs, looked around in the stacks for a while.

Afterwards, I took my DSLR out with the 300 mm lens because I could shoot off Bayview Avenue bridge down to the old one (which is actually not a bad idea; I should give that a try). Then I decided to get both bridges in the shot, so I pulled back to the heights of the university (oddly enough, York University does have a campus in the vicinity, but I went to university nowhere near there, and not at York anyway). I set up the shot and noticed there were all kinds of kids, dressed for winter, lining up and falling over backwards off the bridge and the bank into the water. It was like some kind of weird "polar bears" thing, except with heavy clothes on. They were having a blast, waving to people taking pictures, and falling in again and again. I think the idea was to get in the papers or something.

...Yesterday, the first dream I had was about catching a mouse in some small apartment above a storefront. The mouse tried to bite me and get away but I held on. It turned out the mouse could talk, but in a voice that was believable for a mouse. I talked the mouse into being a pet, since I could assure him a soft option in life. I remember a long conversation but I don't remember its nature. He was afraid of my cats but I assured him they weren't hunters and were no threat. I have the impression that near the end, the mouse was discontented with it all and wanted his old life back.

The second dream was about coming home to some well-appointed home, and finding a homeless man had broken in and was asleep on a settee near the door. I woke him up and told him to leave, but he wouldn't. I threatened him with outside assistance, and I picked up the phone and called my dad, who worked for many years as a security guard, and loudly asked him what I should do. He gave me a phone number with three numbers, two more numbers, and two letters. I asked what the letters were for and he said they were a security device so that not just anyone would be able to dial that number. Uh, yeah, okay, whatever... made sense in the dream. Well, both I and the homeless man knew that if I dialed that number, I meant business, so, cowed, he left as I ended the conversation with my dad.

And there you go. A lot of significance with not much sound and little fury, but a whole lot of nothing. :D

Maybe the strangest one yet

Okay, here’s a weird dream for you. Had this one this morning.

A Russian gymnast dies at the Olympics. She’s cremated, and for some reason, it’s up to me to get her ashes back to Russia. They’re heavier and bulkier than I expected, and I managed to knock them over in one of the upstairs bathrooms of my parents’ house. The ashes go everywhere. I have to get a Dust Buster to gather them all up… and a new one, so it’s clean inside!

On the trip I end up at this tiny restaurant in southwestern Ontario (somewhere in Cambridge, I think, for some reason). Two men are arguing at the table in the window, and the one with his back to the wall shoots the one with his back to the counter by the door. A lot of fighting, a lot of confusion for a few moments. The dead man and the murderer are taken away. With some reluctance, I take a seat in the dead man’s chair. The other people in the restaurant are shocked at my being willing to sit where a man was murdered, and some resent my presumption. But I sit there quietly, every second more and more certain I have every right to have done so.

I’m in a car, being driven along a country road westward somewhere up in the forests and farmlands of western York Region. The driver of the car is Jody (Jody is a friend of mine who died of cancer in June, 2004; we knew each other for ten years over the net but never actually met in person in life). We’re both anxious to see this over and done with. I have the box of the gymnast’s ashes in my lap, but suddenly I notice all the ashes have disappeared, probably blown away during the trip, and all we have left is a horrible skull, grey with ash and still kind of pink with its newness (are newly defleshed skulls pink?). It’s too terrible for either of us to look at for long. I’m worried the police will think we murdered her if we get stopped. What will the Russians say if we show up with just this, having lost all the rest? We start thinking about just burying the skull somewhere.

That’s about all I remember. A couple of points I’m sure tie in… I actually do have a small vial of Jody’s ashes; they were given to me by his roommates at his memorial service in Texas. Second, I also have a copy of the state-issued certificate declaring them human remains… Jody’s Uncle Jesse was pretty insistent that I would want to have that while transporting his ashes, especially across the border.

Baby I won't drive this car...

I had this really weird dream this morning (well, aren't they always?). I was on the web looking at cars. I saw one that was interesting and priced around $5900... strange price; I wonder where my mind came up with that one. Anyway, I clicked "BUY", the way you will when you don't really want to buy something but you want to see the bottom line. But this one was like eBay on 'roids or something: you click, you commit. Instantly. Suddenly there was some kind of notification that the car's price had been charged to my line of credit! I had two cars, two payments... and there's only me to drive them!

I called them up and spoke to this woman, explaining and begging them to reverse the purchase. The dream segued to the office, where she told me there was no way to reverse it. I was on the hook.

I semi-woke up at that point and convinced myself it wasn't real. The telling point is, I don't have that line of credit anymore; I dumped it last summer. And there sure wasn't six grand of room in it. :)

Sweet dreams are made of these

Another dream I remember. This one from early this morning. I think it was partially inspired by seeing Hot Fuzz last night, inasmuch as, for some reason, I was in England in the dream.

I remember being in a dilapidated house at night, lit by candles or very low-wattage bulbs, huddled there with several other people. At some point, we all left, heading out into a dark plain. Bright lights in the distance, pointed at the sky. Search lights? Anyway, we joined dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of others, all heading in the same direction in the darkness. There was a sudden pillar of flame in the distance. At first I wasn’t sure what it was, but presently I realized it was a nuclear detonation. Others followed. They were small yield, like tactical weapons. The hot orange mushroom clouds towered in the distance, each one seeming closer as they went off; maybe half a dozen. I remember sensing one was about to fall near us and dropping to the ground, drawing snow up to my face to reflect the heat and radiation. Funny what occurs to you; any feeble defense… but in the dream it did seem to work. I had no idea what the radiation might be doing to me, but as it was happening I felt no ill effects, no pain, no burns. Just this terrible realization that the great experiment of civilization was pretty much over, and things were going to get far more brutal and desperate for us all.

Nerdy dreams

I've had a couple of weird dreams lately. I don't ordinarily remember my dreams... if I can recall three in a year I'm doing above average, it seems to me. But I can remember a couple from just the last few days.

The first was rather surreal. I was out in the countryside and I stopped my car at the edge of a two-lane highway (by that I mean, one lane each way), with trees on one side and an wide open area on the side on which stopped. It was overcast, a little windy, threatening a storm. But I got out because I'd seen what looked like the remains of the old road surface. Anyone who's glanced over this blog knows I'm a sucker for lost roads. I got out to explore it and photograph it. I was in shorts and a t-shirt, walking along it barefoot; after a few moments I came to where a driveway crossed it, adjacent to a large, comfortable-looking farmhouse with its attendant buildings. There beside the ruined cement of the old road (just a few yards from the current highway) was a woman in late middle age. She seemed to know who I was and was both amused and perturbed. It turned out she was the wife of former Ontario premier Bill Davis (aside: I have no idea whatsoever to whom Bill Davis is married or what she looks like, but I would imagine that she’s older, whoever she actually is). She sort of invited, sort of insisted me in, and so I followed her into the house, where some kind of gathering of friends and family was going on. I was introduced to a 50-something version of Bill Davis, who again seemed to know who I was and, again, met me with mingled irritation and amiability… it’s hard to describe. It seems he was aware of my criticisms of his decision to kill the Spadina Expressway, expressed on this very blog in rather blunt terms. Naturally, I was embarrassed, but it was pretty quickly set aside and he spent time explaining his reasons for his decision. I don’t remember what they were, but I do remember understanding them, if not being persuaded by them; I guess we agreed to disagree. Eventually we joined the party, lively and friendly despite the gloom inside and the storm outdoors. Even though I was an outsider, I felt oddly connected to it all, a natural part of things.

Sometime this morning, I had another dream. I was back in my university days in a class somewhere. The class shifted to a pub setting (I remember a professor taking us to the campus pub on his last day before retiring; it always struck me as so delightfully adult and European). The professor was being heckled by someone else in the pub, and I and a couple of others began to take umbrage. Our professor seemed to have morphed into a woman without anyone noticing the change, and when the lout began making obscene passes at her, I and at least one of the other students attacked him. I remember hitting the guy on the head with the carved oaken leg of one of the pub chairs; he was hurt and bleeding and fought his way out. I realized what I’d done and fearfully resigned myself to waiting to be charged with assault, though it seemed right to have chased the guy off, and someone said the guy probably wouldn’t involved the police for exactly that reason. I woke up, anxious, and relieved it was only a dream.

Weekend weirdness :)

Before I forget, I want to record a weird dream I had last night. Remember that guy from Third Rock from the Sun, the communications guy who used to say "Incoming message from the Big Giant Head"? Well, in my dream, he was running some little space-themed tourist spot I was visiting. He seemed really nice and personable, enthusiastic about what he was doing and helpful to folks. He started the spiel with that line from the show, too. Quirky little dream. I barely remember it.

Anyway, this weekend I didn't do much. I took off Saturday morning to photograph the Jane and Finch street signs for R-Lang. While I was there, I walked a little ways up Jane St. and saw a sign for the Montego Jerk restaurant. Someone had rearranged the letters of the special to read "JERK ME OFF", and I got a shot of it. Okay, juvenile, but I got a good laugh out of it reviewing the pictures later. I also went to the bridge at Morning Star Drive over the 427, and took a few pictures of what used to be the intersection there in the middle of the superhighway. Part of the road surface the led up from the highway to Morning Star was still there, but all cracked up and beginning to grow over. I still find it utterly amazing there was ever a stoplight there, but there was. I stopped it myself, years ago, when Alan and I used to visit Brad in Malton and get off the highway there. That chunk of dying pavement was a road we drove up and down, dozens of times.

Sunday I just stayed in. Rained pretty hard for a while. I just drew, watched movies, ate too much, goofed off. Well, it was Sunday, after all.

I've heard good things about Madagascar lately... the animal movie, that is. Both R-Lang and Alan (guy at work here, not my high school buddy) both give it thumbs up. I might go and see it cheap tomorrow night. Maybe I'll suggest it to P-Doug and G.

Oh yeah, at one point, Larry was over. Brought his new MST3K DVDs. They were pretty funny. Rum, otter chow. All in all, a good evening.

Hot tramp, I love you so...?

I had a dream last night about David Bowie, believe it or not. He was visiting the city and giving little concerts. This particular one was in some little concert hall, or convocation hall... you know the type. Wooden seats, wooden stage, wooden actors. That kind of thing. I was there with some girl I don't consciously recognize but apparently knew in the dream. She was young, heavyset, and ethnically Asian, as I recall. Kind of bubbly. I liked her. Anyway, the David Bowie who was there was the younger, androgynous Bowie. He was on stage alone, no band, and there were only about 30 people in the audience, but he was still playing up a storm and going down like gangbusters with the crowd. Joking with us, making wry observations, and singing his ass off. At the end of it all, this girl and I hung around talking with him, and he was really friendly. I ended up helping him put his equipment back in his van. Nice dream. Worth the price of admission, I'd say. :)

The onward march

It's eight months today since Jody passed away. This, too, is a Monday. Like then, it's overcast. It's quite a bit colder, though.

Last night I had a dream about Jody. He was with me on a Greyhound bus, or something of the kind, roaming up and down southern Ontario. In real life, Jody never made it to Canada, but we mused on occasion about him visiting. He was talking about doing so, tentatively, in the summer of 2004, when he would have been well for a year. As it turned out, he died that summer instead.

In the dream, we were riding the highways under threatening skies. I remember us stopping at some sort of restaurant or hotel. It was built completely of wood, in some sort of faux cabin style; the wood stained a deep red-brown... very dark inside. I remember another scene in which we stopped at a gas station. The gas pumps gave change, like a vending machine. Dollars and dollars worth of coins that people had just walked away from. Jody and I went from pump to pump, scooping up change. I don't remember too much more of the dream. In fact, when I woke up, it took me a moment to even remember it was Jody who'd accompanied me in the dream. Jody and I never got together face to face in life, though we spent the equivalent of months, maybe even a solid year, together online. Last night's dream is the very first I can explicitly remember being about us being together. Naturally, I don't have a very well-formed idea of what that would be like. Jody was quite a bit shier on the phone with me than he was on ICQ or online. I suspect our initial face-to-face would have been an awkward adjustment.

It's the first monthly anniversary of his passing that doesn't make me feel really down. It's because of this dream. I can't explain it. I know he's gone. I do understand that. But somehow, I feel like we... I... accomplished something in our relationship last night. Does it have to make sense for me to be happy? Well, no... happy's the wrong word. Soothed, maybe. Eased, somehow.

On other matters, last night, I slammed my DVD remote down in frustration. Now it's not working. The DVD player is, just fine. But since there's no way to control it, it's now essentially a three-pound perfectly-functional piece of garbage. I can't afford to replace it for a couple of weeks, but when I can, I'm going to look for something that's got at least basic selection controls right on the unit.

On Saturday, P-Doug and I wound up buying the same 19" monitor... HP 91. They were $129 each, and in really good shape. Unfortunately for me, my digitizer card doesn't seem to like monitor settings higher than 1024x768, so I have to keep changing the settings when I want to record anything. I also picked up a couple of cheap speaker sets, powered by my USB 1.1 ports (oh, which I superseded with 2.0 ports a few days ago). The don't have much chug... in fact, they suck... but they do allow me to modulate the signal leaving the digitizer and entering the sound card, so I can finally (I think) tape stuff without ever spoken "s" sound bursting my speakers.

Friday night I went out with Alan for the first time in over a year. He looks thinner than he did. He works in Vaughn now... long drive... close to that new mall, Vaughn Mills. Ha ha. How clever (it's a rip off of fifty-year-old Don Mills, if you're not from around here). It's a huge mall, stuffed to the gills with yuppie clothing stores. He and I ended up eating in a bowling theme bar. No kidding. Lucky Strike, I think it was called. We had a couple beers and — shame on me — burgers and fries. Man, that was a good burger. First I've had in ages. Before that, we wandered into Cinema One, a movie store that used to be in the mall near me, but left. Now I know where it went! I got the 3rd season of King of the Hill for $38, and an old tape of cartoons of The Inspector for $4.

Sunday... jumping around here a bit, aren't I?... I went to Wal-Mart and bought a water purification system for the 10-day purge I'm trying out. Maple syrup, lemon juice, cayenne, and water. Stuff's hard to get down. We'll see how it goes.