Trying to figure out exactly what I'm adding to this little formula that's got us so stumped. Or even approximately what I'm adding. Or subtracting. All I really know for sure is that the balance is tilted heavily in my favor.

My wins, they're all so fucking huge. I've become a spoiled brat. And sometimes I forget just how fantastic things are. And sometimes I throw a tantrum when things don't go my way. I threw a tantrum all day today. It's a wonder I didn't give myself a heart attack.

But, I'm better now.

It doesn't take much. Just a little tug on the line, as if to make sure I'm still here. Still hooked.

That curiosity, it means something. I think it might mean that I matter, just a little.

Though I can't for the life of me imagine why. Or for what.

I can't figure out what I'm good for, is I guess what I'm trying to say.

The whole thing is so lopsided, so unfair. I shouldn't be the one who gets to be happy. At least I shouldn't be the only one.

---

I had a dream today.

I accidentally wiped a smile off a beautiful face, and the world wept. I dedicated my life to bringing that smile back, but it wasn't meant to be. For I was the destroyer of beauty, and its restoration was beyond my abilities. Years later, I looked at the gray place that the world had become, that I had created with one selfish act, and I dreaded death. For that smile survived only in my memory, and when I died, it would be lost forever.

---

Crap, it's 1:30 already. I suppose I should go stare at my ceiling for a while.

I feel all deep and contemplative tonight. Like I could really grab hold of something and make it important through thinking about it and writing about it. I'm not really sure what that something might be, but I'll be up for a while longer, so maybe it'll come to me.

---

I had the strangest dream earlier. It was all bits and flashes. I was married to some famous chick, and the dream was a bunch of snapshots of our life together. But it wasn't sequential at all. We'd be old and retired on a beach, and then we'd be young and just meeting for the first time. It was kinda like a documentary or something, but really weird. Like this one time I was in bed, and I opened my eyes to see this thing coming toward me. You know those inflatable boxing dudes that you punch and they keep standing back up? It was one of those things. It was coming towards me from the far end of the room, holding a shotgun. But then my wife came in and popped it with a knitting needle. That was nice of her.

In another, much later scene, we were at some fancy party, and my wife was crying because she was supposed to sing (I think that's why she was famous, for her singing) but some whore had just sang the exact song she was going to sing. So my wife was very upset and crying. She was so upset, in fact, that she dove into this trash barrel to vomit and hide. I ended up rolling her back to our suite (I think we were at The Rio in Las Vegas) and the police were there asking questions about the popped boxing dude.

---

ArtGirl and I are supposed to go see some band Saturday. I never heard of the band before - it's called Rufus Huff - but MusicalYuppieDude highly recommends them. I'm kind of excited about it. I haven't been to see a band for a song time. Plus, I like ArtGirl. It should be fun.

---

Tonight there were all kinds of storms around here. The tornado siren went off for about two hours straight. All I got was some hard rain, though. Enough to get some water in my basement. I hate it when that happens.

---

My sleep schedule is seriously hosed.

There's a pattern to it, I think. Or at least a series of relationships; one stacked onto another. Towering skyward, but unsteady.

The base is quite stable, thank you very much.

---

Last night, I dreamed of a conversation in which I was asked a question. I've dreamed about this conversation before, and the last time, I gave a decent yet indecent answer for that particular dream moment.

But that time, in that dream, it was someone else asking the question. This time, in this dream, there was a new person asking with both fear and hope in her voice, "What is it you want with me?"

Last night, I awoke thinking that the question itself, coming from that particular person, was flawed. By merely asking the question, she answered it. I wanted what I had at that moment. Which, at that moment, was her presence, and her acknowledgement, and her conversation. I wanted her to ask me that question, just as I'd wanted her to pause a few seconds earlier. Just as I'd wanted her to smile a few minutes before that, and breathe throughout the time we were spending together.

Awake now for several hours, I'm struggling a bit, trying translate these muddled thoughts into words so that I will understand them when I read them later.

---

Whatever it is, as long it's more than nothing. During those wonderful times, when it's more than nothing, I'm perfectly happy. And I'm too busy being perfectly happy to think of anything more. The base is stable.

It's only during those other times, when there's nothing, it's only during those times that my wants start to stack on top of each other. Presence, below acknowledgment, below conversation, always upward. Friendship, below acceptance, below lust, below passion, below love.

The base is stable, but the tower itself teeters. There's an almost constant rain of debris falling from the top. And then, when nothing is finally replaced with something, the entire thing comes crashing down.

But not the base. The base is stable.

What that I want?

Sometimes I want exactly what I have, as long as it's not nothing.

It's only when I have nothing that I find myself wanting everything.

So, I quit my job.

I'm not really sure what led me to make the decision, I just did it. I was in a staff meeting, a meeting no better or worse than the dozens of other meetings I've endured every week for six years, and I'd suddenly had enough.

I got up, and I walked out.

Luckily, I got a new job right away, with a start-up company specializing in outfitting corporate jets for Internet and video conferencing. A couple of my old bosses from Seattle were running the thing, and they were glad to have me. They knew my value, from before. So that was cool.

My first day, I met a few other people. There actually weren't very many people to meet. Only about six of us total. This gave me some cause for concern, but I figured that maybe they were still looking for other hires.

The thing that really freaked me out was when I remembered that I'd left all of my pictures at my old desk. Some of those pictures, I realized, were irreplaceable.

I tried to think of a way that I could go back to my old desk and get my pictures, but I knew there was no way they'd ever let me in. I'd burned that particular bridge too thoroughly. There was no going back.

Anyway, tomorrow I go back to work, after nine days off.

Yes, it will suck. Mainly because my sleep schedule is all screwy, and I probably won't sleep tonight until after 3:00.

This entry is not meant to be used as a timetable of my last several days. I can pretty much guarantee that I've got the order of some things mixed-up - especially for Friday and Saturday. So, unless I specifically say that a certain thing happened on a certain day/night, it's just a guess. You have been warned.

---

Thursday for lunch I went back to The Pub for AlliDay, take two. It was much better - they weren't nearly as crowded and I got to talk to AlliGirl several times. Note that I've switched to calling her AlliGirl instead of BikerGirl. I doubt that I was really fooling anyone.

---

Either Friday or Saturday, I got to see TeamHotness for a bit. They'd been hiding out over at the Sportstime side of things, but I caught them in the parking lot as they were leaving. So that was cool.

---

Oh yeah, Friday night my sisters and I had our Christmas thingy. One of the things I got was a six-pack of bottles of Harpoon Winter Warmer, and I'm told that it can be purchased in Louisville.

Yay!

Neisha's husband Chris and I had a bottle each. It was as good as I remembered. Now I've got four bottles calling to me from my fridge, and if I ever get over this damn death-flu I'm going to drink them.

---

Saturday night this one fucker who I hate decided to sit with me and HatGirl and LuckyFucker. He then decided to try to talk to us. As if. What a shithead.

---

This morning I had a sex dream. It was more of an orgy dream, actually. And a lot of girls I know were in it. I wrote a draft entry about the dream, then sent it to RockGirl for her opinion on whether I should post it or not. Her advice was to change all of the girls' names. I've decided not to post it at all, because changing the names would render the dream meaningless.

---

I've been sneezing today, and sometimes I've sneezed out my eye. I don't mean that my eye has popped out - just some of the snot comes out of the corner of my eye when I sneeze. Gross, right?

---

Dina just came by and got the shrimp tray for tonight's festivities. She also bought me a thingy of nasal spray. I hope it works. And I hope I don't sneeze the stuff through my eye, because I bet that would really burn.

---

I'm going back to sleep now.

Today was Wednesday, otherwise known as AlliDay. One of the highlights of my week, when I can sneak away from work and go have lunch at The Pub and talk to BikerGirl for a bit. Work has been crazy lately, but today I did manage to spare an hour. I had a nice Newcastle (8109) for lunch, and talked to BikerGirl for a bit.

At the end of the day I got my hairs cut, then I stopped at Rich O's for a quick Schlenkerla Marzen (2056). I don't think that my spiffy new good mood quite fits in with going to Rich O's after work anymore. I haven't felt happy there after work for a long time.

Anyway, I had a dream tonight. I think I can remember enough about it to describe it. I'll try.

I was at Rich O's. But it wasn't the real Rich O's. It was the same one from this dream. Instead of there being a single living room area, with couches and stuff, there were dozens of them scattered about. I was sitting in one such area when she came in.

Some hot blonde girl. I never saw her before in my life, but she seemed to know me. She certainly acted like she did. Within about 10 seconds after her arrival, we were making out like teenagers. So, pretty much exactly like my waking life. Not.

The blonde girl and I went outside for some reason. I asked her what her name was. "Zwanka," she said.

So that was weird.

When we came back inside, there was a huge crowd waiting to hear some band play, and Zwanka and I got separated. I was looking around for her and I saw a baby sitting on the floor all by itself.

I somehow knew that this was LaptopGirl's baby. But I hadn't seen her anywhere around, and nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the baby. I was afraid that somebody might step on it or abduct it or something. So I scooped it up and started walking around looking for LaptopGirl.

The baby and I talked as we walked around. He was about a year old, but quite a good little talker. He helped me look for his mother, but it seemed that just about every girl in the place had dark hair and glasses, so we kept going on little wild goose chases. It was fun though. I remembered thinking that I hadn't held a baby in a very long time.

Then I saw that Dan was bartending, so I asked him to put the baby up on this shelf behind the bar. That way, if LaptopGirl came in, she'd be sure to see her baby up there. I asked the baby if he wanted to go play with Uncle Dan for a while, and he agreed. So Dan put the baby up on the shelf, and I went looking for Zwanka some more.

I never did find Zwanka, but the next time I glanced at the bar, the baby was gone, and Dan gave me a thumbs-up.

But, Zwanka?

Where did that come from?

Well, that didn't work very well. Not that I really expected it to, but I'd have taken it anyway. It would have been a nice surprise, if it had worked.

---

All of the chickens are dead. I'm not really sure, exactly, what happened to them, but if I had to guess I'd say that they starved to death.

Who knew you had to feed even imaginary chickens?

---

This most recent incarnation of my mood, it's certainly my fault. I expected the impossible. I dared to have hope, of all things. You'd think I would have learned by now.

---

I had a dream last night, during one of my two-hour naps. I don't remember many of the details of the dream, and I don't even remember the exact words spoken, but I do remember the gist.

"What is it that you want with me?" she asked, her voice managing to convey both fear and hope.

"My wants vary widely," I answered. "But right now, I want to use my tongue on you, until you're nothing more than a quivering puddle sprawled atop your bed. I want to make your body vibrate with the anticipation of ecstasy, so that my most gentle kiss, the lightest graze of my fingers, even the softest sound of my whispered voice, sets you off all over again. I want to melt you."

"That sounds fun," she said. "Do that, please."

I keep having dreams about moving away to a different city. Usually it's Las Vegas in my dreams, but sometimes it's not. Last night, for example, I dreamed that I'd taken a job in Seattle, so I moved back there. Then, later this morning, I had a dream that I'd been transferred to someplace in Northern California, so I moved there. Over the last couple of months, I've dreamed a lot about moving to South Dakota.

I'm very interested in dreams. I think they can, at times, display pretty interesting interpretations of what goes on in our heads and in our lives. It seems that I read somewhere that dreams are what we experience as our short-term memories and thoughts are filed away into long-term storage. I suppose that's as good an explanation as any, of the biochemical process involved. Not that I really care about that - I just like the symbolism and the metaphors.

And sometimes there are hot girls in my dreams. And I get to have sex with them.

But I digress.

I don't think that I keep dreaming about moving to a different city because I want to move. Or even because I fear moving. I think it's yet another metaphor. New jobs, new cities, those are just the symbols that my brain chose to use as it processed my desire for a new life. I could have a new life right here, with the same job, with mostly the same friends. A new life which would be entirely self-contained, in my own head. It can consist of nothing more than my own attitudes and interpretations of the world around me. All I have to do is choose to start over, and my new life could begin.

I think that's what I want. To start over. But I'm afraid that would require a leap of faith that I'm not ready to take. Just as dreams can turn into nightmares, so can lives.

---

Saturday afternoon, I took a nap. I dreamed that I'd gone to this guy's house, and he was cooking steaks for us. Problem was, he'd forgot to ask me how I wanted my steak cooked, so it came off the grill too rare for my tastes. So I put it back on the grill to let it finish cooking.

Once the steak had cooked, I took it from the grill and put it on my plate. It looked and smelled delicious. Then I woke up, before I got to take a single bite from the damn thing.

After I woke up, I was starving for a steak. I figured that I'd go to this Tucker's place and have one. I haven't been there for a while.

But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my dream hadn't really been about a steak at all. It had been about my own stubborn quest for perfection, and about my annoying tendency to wait too long for that perfection to arrive.

About how I wait too long, and how it's suddenly, terribly, horribly, too late.

I suppose it's a good day when the worst thing that happened was that I woke up from a dream too early.

I was at Rich O's, of course. It seemed like it was just after work, but it must have been later than that because it was already dark outside.

I was sitting with NotHideousGirl, making small talk with her as she ate a salad. I was having some beer but I don't know what it was.

When NotHideousGirl was ready to leave, I offered to walk her to her car. Because it was dark, and also because there were hoodlums hanging around the car wash at night.

We went outside, and she didn't have the slightest idea where she had parked. So I took her hand and we started walking. There must have been a million cars spread out across ten thousand parking lots. But that was okay. I'd walk with her and make sure that she got to her car safely. Because I'm nice and shit.

After we'd walked about a gazillion miles away from Rich O's without seeing any cars that looked even remotely like hers, NotHideousGirl suddenly remembered where she'd parked.

"Fuck," she said. "I'm parked right outside the door. We must have walked right by my car."

So we turned around and started walking back toward Rich O's. It was really quite nice. Walking along, holding hands with a pretty girl. All of the hoodlums were staring at us, but they weren't doing any of their catcalling or any of their other usual antics. I was protecting my friend from crap like that. I was useful.

Then, all of a sudden, NotHideousGirl saw something off to the right. I didn't get a good look myself, but there was something going down. It was some gang thing. Some revenge that one gang was exacting on another. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but I knew that it was dangerous for NotHideousGirl and me to be there.

NotHideousGirl let go of my hand, and she started running back towards Rich O's. I ran after her as well as I could, but it was like I was running underwater or something. NotHideousGirl was literally running circles around me - desperate to keep moving, but unwilling to leave me behind. As she ran circles around me, she kept grabbing my hand and trying to pull me along with her. I wanted to go faster, but I just couldn't.

After a very long time, we finally got to NotHideousGirl's car. She got in and sped away.

By this time I was pissed. There I'd been, having a perfectly wonderful time, and then those fucking gang-bangers had gone and ruined everything. There I was, in my own fucking dream, and these punks had spoiled everything.

I decided to go and kick all of their punk asses. I started walking back to where the commotion had been taking place, but I woke up.

Those punks got soooooo lucky. I was going to mess them up real good. I was going to grab them by their ankles and swing them around and slam their heads into the ground. I was going to fucking kill them for ruining my sweet hand-holding dream.

But instead, I woke up.

All day, I looked forward to drinking the last Schlenkerla Marzen in my fridge. It was a nice feeling, knowing that, no matter how boring the rest of my day was, I'd be able to end it with something special.

But noooooooooooo!

Apparently, I drank my last Marzen last night, while Eric was here. So tonight I had a new (for me) Belgian instead:

Chimay Rogue (Red)

(bottle) Cloudy dark amber. Smallish head. Faint aroma of dark fruits and malt. Flavor fairly mild, consisting mostly of apples and plums. A little drying at the finish. Pretty good.

Anyway.

I don't know that I have enough material on any single subject to make an entry about it, so I suppose I'll just list some random crap.

---

At the hotel in Philly, there was some kind of showbiz-people convention going on. I know that television news was represented, because one of the guys I talked to a lot had been a TV news reporter in Chicago for like 38 years. And at least one guy I talked to was some kind of theatre performer or director or something like that.

Wednesday night, I was sitting at the hotel bar. I glanced over at the big TV, and they had The Larry King Show playing. I didn't think too much about it until I looked at the table directly in front of the TV and saw Larry King sitting there.

At least I'm pretty sure that it was Larry King. People always look older in person than on a screen. So it might have been Larry's great-great grandfather instead. Either way, it was kind of interesting.

---

I had a dream this evening about one of my female friends. The dream was disturbing to me. Not, as one might expect, because it was a sex dream. I'm actually used to having sex dreams about some of my female friends. This particular dream was disturbing because it wasn't a sex dream. Instead, it was one of those touchy-feely hugs and soft kisses dreams. And it was very nice and sweet. So, shit!

---

Today I bought a new George Foreman grill and a deep fryer. Then I grilled a couple of hamburgers and cooked some fries. I don't know why I do these strange things. I hate cooking for myself, and I'm perfectly happy going out to eat. So now I've got two new appliances that I'll never use again.

---

Some things in my life are starting to turn around. So I don't have much grief these days. This whole being in a good mood thing is something I might have to learn to accept. No matter how boring it makes the stuff I write.

---

But still, I find myself wanting more. All the time. That desire will probably keep my creative fires burning for a while longer. I hope so, anyway. A life without desire wouldn't be much of a life, I don't think.

---

Tomorrow is going to be a long day. I've got to leave extra early because of the construction traffic, then I've got to stay extra late to give NotHideousGirl a ride home. I'm sure I'll be pretty exhausted by the time I get home tomorrow night.

---

I should try to sleep now.

I was at Rich O's.

The place was much larger and more elaborate than in real life. I went to go to the men's room, and it was (a) huge, and (b) packed with people of all genders. I went over to a urinal and did my thing. While I was doing my thing a big giant fat dude stood at the urinal next to me and did his thing. Except he was so big and giant and fat that he was basically leaning against me and causing me to miss my urinal about half the time.

When I went up to the sink, there was a girl there that I was supposed to know. She clearly knew me, at least from the past. All I knew was that she (a) was hot, and (b) looked familiar. Even now, wide awake, I have the feeling that I should know who that girl was.

Anyway, she wanted me. She wanted me bad. But she was working at the door to the men's room, and she didn't have a break coming for at least an hour. So she flirted with me, and stroked me, and kissed me several times. I got a little hot and bothered, and I was going to splash some cold water on my face, but there was a little girl taking a bubble bath in the sink. The little girl saw my dilemma and scooped up some water from her bath into her hands. She then poured that water into my hands so I could splash my face. It was quite a touching gesture, and several people said, "Awwwwwww."

Then the hot girl had to go direct some people to the back of the men's room. It turned out that all the hubbub was because there was some cult guy in town, and he was getting a ceremonial bath in one of the back stalls. That's why they were letting everyone into the men's room, so they could see the cult guy.

Since the hot girl was busy all of a sudden, I decided to go back to my waiting beer. But first I wanted to show everyone a trick. At first I was going to walk through the closed door, because I can do that in my dreams, but they had the door propped open so the throng outside might catch a glimpse of the cult guy. So, instead of walking completely through the wooden door, I figured I'd just stick my hand through it. It would still be impressive, just not as impressive.

I stuck my hand through the door, almost up to the elbow, and everyone gasped. Then I tried to pull my hand back but GlassesGirl had grabbed it from the other side and I was stuck.

Then I woke up.

---

We were at a drive-in theater.

I don't know if it had been built on top of a volcano, or if it was a new volcano springing up. But, regardless, there was lava erupting from several holes in the ground. Everyone around me just kept watching the movie, so I decided to watch it too. Then this little girl, the same one who'd been taking a sink bath earlier, said she couldn't see the screen so I put her on my shoulders.

Then the big giant fat guy from the urinal tried to take the heavy cooler from the back of my truck. The exertion was too much for him, and he had a heart attack and died.

Then I woke up again.

I think I can still remember this well enough to write about it. This was Friday morning.

I was asleep in my bed, and for some reason I woke up and looked out my window. It was pretty dark outside, but I could still kinda see. I could kinda see a large shape running away. Like it had seen me at the window and been spooked. I'm pretty sure that it was a bear, from the size of it. I guess it could have been a deer, but it kind of lumbered, so I pegged it as a bear.

I continued to look out the window, in case the bear came back, I wanted to see it. A bear sighting would be pretty rare for me.

Well, the bear didn't come back, but another pair of animals did. It was, I thought at first, a wolf and a dog. They came to the ground below my window and laid down. I don't think they saw me. I spent some time looking down at them, trying to see if it was a real wolf or just a Husky or something like that. It wasn't really that big, so I figured that it was probably a Husky. Still dangerous-looking though. The other animal was a St. Bernard or a Malamute maybe, and I didn't pay much attention to it.

Then I had to pee, so I did that. Then I was thirsty, so I went out to the kitchen.

On the way, I noticed that my cats were all lined up at the door to the deck, their tails twitching like crazy. They were looking at a racoon that was out there eating something. So I went up to the door to look at it, because I like racoons. They're pretty cool. Much cooler than the opossums I usually get on my deck.

Once I got down on the floor with my cats I saw that it was actually just a racoon skeleton with its pelt draped over it. It was gross. All red and bloody. Every time the racoon would take a bite of what it was eating, the food would just fall through and hit the floor of my deck.

Then I figured out that the racoon was actually eating its own meat and guts, and I became a little scared of the racoon. My main fear was that whatever autocannibalistic zombie disease it had would spread to my three cats. So I turned on my outside lights and the raccoon scampered away.

So I guess it was a sex dream, in a weird way.

I like sex dreams.

I had an odd little dream tonight. One to which I wouldn't have paid much attention except that it's kinda recurring. Kinda sorta.

I was at my home, in my living room, taking a nap on my couch. My mom was there, sitting on my loveseat and doing crochet. There was a black kitten in her lap, trying to attack the yarn.

I wasn't quite able to get to sleep, and I was tossing and turning on the couch. I fell off onto the floor. Mom looked up from her work and asked if I was okay.

I couldn't answer her. I tried very hard to answer her, but no words would leave my mouth. Just a croak is all I could manage.

I crawled up under the coffee table, where I figured it would be dark, so I could go to sleep. I was so tired.

My mom put down her stuff and sat on the floor and talked to me. She told me that I would be okay, that I'd had a bad dream, and that everything was fine. She tried to reach in to stroke my head, but I kept moving away from her for some reason. I guess I didn't want comfort, I wanted to sleep. I somehow knew that once I'd had a good nap, and after I'd woken up, everything would be good again. If only I could sleep for a little while.

Mom started singing a song to me. Some childhood lullaby. And I started to cry. Mom asked me why I was crying, and this time I was able to speak.

"Because it hurts," I said. "Because it hurts so much. It never stops."

"There there," she said. "It will all be better in a few days."

And then she told me about Thursday. How she and Dad were going away together. On a cruise to the Virgin Islands, for a sort of second honeymoon. How excited she was about the trip, and how she was going to buy me lots of presents, and she'd be back in a couple of weeks.

I felt a little better then. I was very happy for her and Dad. They'd saved up for this trip for a long time. They deserved it. I started to smile, and I started to crawl out from under the coffee table..

But then I remembered that Dad had died.

I became frantic with fear. I crawled under the couch. I couldn't face my mom. I couldn't tell her that Dad was gone, that their dream vacation wasn't going to happen.

But then I remembered that Mom had died, too.

Under the couch, there was a sort of display. Like in a museum. There was a door with a big rusty padlock on it. There was another door, painted red, and slightly ajar. That door scared me. I shied away from it. Between the doors was a pedestal, and on the pedestal were two tickets for a cruise to the Virgin Islands. Both were stamped with the word "cancelled" in big red letters.

Then the black kitten meowed at me, and started climbing up my leg, and I woke up.

First, the black kitten. It had no tail. I've dreamed about kittens like that before.

Second, I was under the coffee table crying about something in particular. Someone in particular. My grief in my dreams is so much stronger than what I feel in my waking life. I definitely notice when I dream about her. Even when it's bad.

But the most recurring thing about the dream was the part about Thursday. I had another dream about Thursday a few days ago. And another one about a week before that. Always the same Thursday. Always the 19th of April. Always the second Thursday after Easter.

This Thursday, I'm taking a day of vacation. Maybe I'll sleep all day long. Maybe, when I wake up, everything will be good again.

I just had the nicest little strange dream.

You said something sweet to me, and I kissed you ever so softly.

Then, when your lips parted, I kissed you much more passionately.

I'm awake now, but I like to think that our dream selves continue that kiss, even now.

Friday, I was in the best mood. I'd had the most amazing dream.

It was some kind of lavish party at the home of one of the PBDs. People were scattered around in their little cliques. I found myself wandering from group to group. Never really fitting in. Always trying to join conversations too late. I'd just arrived at the party, and I was already looking for an escape.

There were some guys out in the field. I didn't recognize them. They were towing people around behind a motorcycle. Not for anyone else's enjoyment, but for their own sick fun. The people who'd already been towed were in a bloody group off to the side, shaking and sobbing.

The motorcycle guys asked me if I wanted to be towed. They laughed amongst themselves. I shook my head and I flipped them off and I moved away.

Then I saw her.

I froze.

She was talking to some people I didn't know. She'd just arrived herself. I overheard her say that she was going to go see what the motorcycle guys were up to, and I saw her turn in their direction. In my direction.

She saw me, and she smiled.

I grabbed her arm, and I told her what the motorcycle guys were doing. I asked her to stay away from them, to stay with me.

She smiled again, and she took my hand, and we went back into the house and got some beer.

We sat together on the floor in the corner of the basement. For hours and hours we touched and we whispered and we leaned against each other as we watched all of the PBDs making drunken fools out of themselves. We were the way we used to be, only better. We were the way we might have been, if only.

If only.

As the night wore on the injured people had been making their ways from the field to the house. She thanked me for saving her from a terrible night, and I thanked her for saving me from a meaningless life.

I never really knew what had happened, or even how I found out about it. The dream started too late for those details to be revealed.

There were hundreds of people there. Mostly strangers to me. People from her new life, I figured. Except for some of her friends from Rich O's, I didn't know anyone.

But they all knew me. Or they knew about me. When I opened the door, they went completely silent.

I'd arrived late, like I always do in my dreams. But the crowd moved aside for me. They turned their back on me. Not from disrespect, but to give me the privacy that they knew I needed. Like prisoners turning their backs while their cellmates take a shit. Or so I've heard.

I couldn't believe it. I stood in the doorway, and I estimated the distance. About twenty yards. Maybe thirty paces. Thirty paces, and it would all be over.

So I dropped to my hands and knees, and I crawled. I needed it to hurt, and I needed to make it last as long as possible. Delay the inevitable as long as I could.

Plus, down on the floor like that, I couldn't see. Just the carpet in front of me, and the backs of the people around me. And, when I was stupid and forgetful, when I raised my eyes, a wooden box on a platform draped in red.

When I reached the coffin, I tried to make myself wake up. I tried very hard to make myself wake up. But it didn't work. So I lied down on the floor, and I wept and I waited for the dream to end on its own.

My sister came up behind me, and stroked my hair, and said soothing words. And, when I was ready, she helped me get to my feet. I stood up, and I looked into the coffin.

She was as beautiful as ever. So peaceful. I envied her.

I was at work, but it was at my old elementary school too. I know, weird.

Anyway, I walked up to this one section, and there was some kind of assembly going on for the kids. When I arrived in the area, there was a pretty woman on stage. She was completely nude except for something she was wearing on her shoulders. Like football shoulder pads but not as bulky. She was also completely hairless.

I think she was the mistress of ceremonies or something, because she introduced the next act right when I got there.

It was a Samoan guy, dressed in tribal getup, and he had a foot-long boner. At the end of his boner was tied a string, and he was jiggling the string to make his boner go up and down. All the kids were laughing hysterically.

I remember thinking at about this time that perhaps this wasn't a proper show for elementary school kids. The Samoan guy started saying something, but I could hear because there were two people in front of me who were talking too loudly. A couple of people behind me kept making shhhh noises, but the loud talkers ignored them. So then the people behind me complained to a teacher, and the teacher told the loud talkers to shut up.

Then the loud talkers went back to confront the people behind me, and the people behind me did some kung fu moves and beat the shit out of the loud talkers. That's also when I noticed that the people behind me were obviously retarded.

When I finally got home, it was 7:30. It was my old house in Lanesville, and my parents were there playing cards with my uncles Wayne and Stan and my aunts Carol and Helen.

Dad asked me where I'd been so late, and I told him school. He didn't believe me, so I said I'd call the school and they'd vouch for me. But when I looked in the phone book, there was no listing for my school.

I asked my dad what year it was, and he said it was 1969. I remembered then that my school hadn't existed yet in 1969, so that made sense.

I asked my dad how he thought my goatee looked, and he said it looked good.

I said, "Especially for a four-year-old, right?"

He said, "Just wait until you turn five."

Then I went to work. To real work, not the work/school I'd been at earlier. It was still 1969, but one of my coworkers was there anyway. He was all excited because he'd added a new disk drive unit the size of a washing machine, and so now we had a whole 120MB of storage space on the computer floor. Then I told my coworker that I could predict the future. I wrote "34 terabytes" on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope. Then I gave the envelope to my coworker and told him not to open it until 2007, and then he'd see that I was telling the truth.

I was in some little trailer with a bunch of people, and I suddenly felt strange.

I knew what was going on. I was turning into a werewolf.

So I quickly shooed everyone out of the place, so I wouldn't mangle and/or eat them. I also found a box of kittens in the closet and I dumped them outside too, so I wouldn't eat them either. Then I locked myself in the trailer.

My transformation was a weird one. Quite unlike all the perfectly normal werewolf transformations you see in the movies. What happened was, I was myself, still human, but the wolf would be next to me for a while. I'd pet the wolf and he'd nuzzle me. We were best friends, me and the wolf.

Then for awhile I'd become the wolf, all alone in the trailer. I'd shift to all fours and I'd pace the walls, trying to find something to eat, or to find a way out. My breathing turned to growls.

Then I'd be myself again, next to the wolf. Then I'd be the wolf again.

Then I had to pee and that woke me up.

---

Then it was the next day or something. I was with a couple of girls and we were repairing the damage I'd done while I was the wolf. Mostly roof damage, it seemed.

I was telling the girls about how heightened all of my senses had become, now that I was a werewolf. How, for example, I could tell that one of the girls had been very frightened but the other had been very aroused. The girl who'd been aroused got all shy and tried to deny that she'd been turned on. I told her it was okay.

I told her that I could smell her arousal right then and there.

I told her that she was allowed to want me even if I was a monster sometimes. That she couldn't hide her feelings from me so she certainly couldn't hide them from herself.

Then I used a pretty great line.

I told the girl to stop being so hard on herself. That she should let me be hard, on her, for a while.

And she agreed, with a shy little smile, and I moved to her, and then I woke up.

The girl who was aroused had the same name as BadPickleGirl, which is also coincidentally the same name as that of my old high school girlfriend who I recently wrote about. But this girl was clearly neither of those real-life people.

The box of kittens had nothing but black cats in it, and none of them had any tails.

At one point while I was the wolf I tried to look at myself in the mirror, but all I could see was a pair of glowing eyes. When I was still human, I could see the wolf, and he was mostly white with some big black splotches. Seemed more like a Husky than an actual wolf.

I'm really hoping that this is the last time I bore you with boring dream crap. But this one I can't get out of my head, and I fear that I'll explode if I don't write about it.

You know how dreams can fade so quickly that sometimes you're not even sure that you had them? How, for a minute or two, you can remember them, but after that it blurs and fades?

Yeah well that's usually what happens with my dreams anyway. But not tonight.

Tonight, I remembered. I remembered, and with each passing minute that memory has become more and more clear.

I wish I could say that it was a beautiful ceremony, but I'd only be guessing. I only got to see the end, after all. The part where it was already over with. The part where they kissed as husband and wife for the first time. That part, the part that I saw, was pretty nice.

She was so beautiful in her wedding dress. He was so dashing in his tuxedo. Everyone was smiling and clapping as they kissed. Everyone was so happy for them. I was so happy for them. This had been a long time coming, after all.

Their lips parted, and I noticed that her veil was still down. That's weird, I thought.

She turned to her left to face the crowd, and she lifted her veil, and she saw me, and she looked at me.

He turned to his right and he looked at me.

The pastor, looking oddly enough like Cheech Marin, looked at me.

Everyone in the room turned and looked at me.

It was as if everyone there knew something that I didn't.

As I pondered this, I noticed one of the groomsmen, smiling and smug and fat. He certainly doesn't belong there, I thought. He's an asshole. Why is he up there, and not me?

Because, I reminded myself. She didn't want me to be here at all. Because it would be weird for her. For them. For me.

Everyone in the room was looking at me.

At first, at first I tried to convince myself that it was only because I'd arrived so late. So unexpectedly. So unwelcome. I was the turd in the punchbowl.

I tried to convince myself of that, but I could feel that lie slipping from me like sand though my fingers.

Everyone in the room knew something that I didn't. But I was starting to suspect, and certainty, certainty was the last thing I wanted.

But I was too late. Just as I'd been too late in the dream, I'd been too late in waking up from that dream.

A wise man once wrote that dreams are the result of the brain, trying to make sense of the nearly random firings of neurons that occur during sleep. That the brain will conjure up imagery and sensations that, while not exactly relevant to the waking world, are often a very close approximation. At least if you tilt your head and squint a certain way.

Dreams are not a glimpse into the future. They are psychological manifestations of simple biochemical reactions.

At least, that's what I hope they are.

I kinda wish that I was the kind of person who prayed, because then I'd pray that it was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream. Please, God, let it be just a dream.

I was on some beach somewhere with some friends of mine. At least in my dream they were friends. I wouldn't recognize them in real life.

One of the guys seemed a little bit slower than normal. Like he was slightly retarded or something. He'd come to the beach clutching an envelope, and we got to talking about it. Apparently he'd been on some television show, and they'd given him the envelope. It was his most prized possession, and he carried it everywhere. He carried it in his hand, not his pocket. He wanted people to ask him about it.

So we were talking about his envelope, and I asked to see it.

Opening it up, I found a card, like a greeting card, with some certificate of appreciation or some such on the left, and a glob of goo on the right. I asked my friend about the goo glob, and he said that there'd been a little pretty rock stuck there, but it had fallen out.

I told him that I could get him another rock. That I had one I'd gotten from SassyGirl's house. He said that rocks were stupid anyway.

Well I wasn't going to stand still for that.

I took my own rock out of my pocket, and I told him about all of the things that I'd gone through since I got my rock. All of the things that should have destroyed me, but didn't. I told him about how my rock had had a calming spell put on it, and that if not for my rock, I probably wouldn't be there sitting next to him.

My friend kept rolling his eyes with everything I said. There I was, telling him about all these painful experiences, and all he could do was roll his eyes in disbelief.

It pissed me off.

So I threw his precious envelope and card in the bonfire.

Fucking retard. What a jerk.

I only turned my back for a second, and they all died. All of the hot girls, dead.

This party had suddenly taken a very bad turn.

What could I have been thinking? Rat poison is, by definition, poison, and who was I to say which small amount might be safe and which would not? Which would bring a nice high and which would bring death?

As I moved my hand over their bodies to check for any remaining signs of life, of hope, it was as if darkness flowed out from my fingers and onto everything around me. I could no longer see their faces. This might normally have been considered a good thing, what with them being dead and all. But this time, this time it was not. For as I reached to check for a pulse, I instead found the toothy grimace of agonizing death, seemingly about to bite down and rip at my flesh. Instead of the faintest of breaths, I instead found hands contorted by pain into claws that seemed to grasp at me, as if to pull me in with them.

But it was only my imagination. The dead do not bite. The dead do not grasp.

The darkness flowing from me continued to spread. The lamp in the corner served only to illuminate itself - its light no longer reached the walls, or the floor, or the ceiling. Or the grotesque scene on the bed.

I knew that I had to get away from there, from that macabre display, from the darkness.

So I ran.

I ran, and the darkness continued to flow from my body. It became an expanding wake of nothingness which I pulled along behind me.

I ran faster.

I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, but it was not fast enough. I bent forward, and I began to use my arms as well. I dug my fingers into the ground and I pulled with my arms as mightily as I pushed with my legs. I became something else. Something no longer human. A beast. Running from darkness that I myself had created, that I myself continued to spread.

A moment of clarity struck me.

I stopped.

The darkness caught up with me, surrounded me, enveloped me. It began to contract and flow back into me.

As I stood, panting, in that shrinking circle of darkness, I saw lights in the distance.

Then I woke up.

I dreamed that I was swimming upstream somewhere, and it was hard, and to keep myself focused I was singing a song to myself.

It was a fucking awesome song. Kind of hard rock with ballady parts thrown in, or maybe it was a ballad with hard rocky parts thrown in. Whatever. It was awesome.

Also, I looked up ahead of me to see where all the water was coming from, and some whore had opened the valve on a dam. And she was laughing her ass off. What a whore.

I don't know if I can remember enough of this to make the posting worthwhile or not. Oh well. I suppose that worthwhile isn't something that's expected to go with this type of post anyway.

I was in Louisville, getting ready to check out the new building that I'm moving into for work.

While I was walking up the sidewalk I ran into my cousin, and I invited him to come along.

So we went into the building and took a little self-guided tour. When I was ready to leave my cousin went and opened this one door. I knew that it was a door that I wasn't allowed to use because, even though my company owns the building, there were still some parts that were off-limits to peons like me.

Beyond the forbidden door there was a big fancy room, like a hotel lobby or something. And beyond that there was a fancy restaurant. I kept trying to get my cousin to leave before I got into trouble, but he walked purposefully to a table and sat.

He kept thanking me for bringing him to that place, telling me how much it meant to him and how long he'd dreamed of being there.

It was about then that I remembered two things:

1. It was New Years Eve.
2. My cousin was a lunatic.

I decided to ditch the psycho and I started looking for an exit. At one point I found myself in a glass elevator with a few other people. All of a sudden my cousin was in the elevator too. He was wearing a bathrobe and doing a really bad Elvis impersonation.

The other people in the elevator were groaning and telling him to shut up, and he starting waxing philosophically about some bullshit or other and he whipped open his bathrobe.

The crowd gasped.

My cousin had mutilated his genitals. His penis was just a bloody stub, and his testicles were just hanging there with nothing around them. Just blood and gore.

Yes, it was gross.

Yes, I got the fuck out of that elevator.

I went running out into the street. I was going to flag down a cop, but then I remembered that it was New Years Eve and they probably had better things to do.

I have this sort of recurring dream. Not the dream itself, really, but the theme of the dream.

It pisses me off.

What happens in these dreams is that I find myself getting back together with a certain person. A certain person who, in my waking life, I hope to never even see again for as long as I live. In fact, I've told my sisters that I don't even want this person coming to my funeral, should that opportunity arise.

But in my fucking dreams, we get back together. And I'm happy. And then she cheats on me. And then I'm miserable.

And then I wake up and I'm pissed at myself for having the dream.

Why I dream about that whore, I'll never know.

Clicking the image should pop up a larger view, if you're really bored.

Okay, this is a little disjointed.

That field to the right of the highway - that's where I grew up. There used to be a house there. There used to be a lot of shit in that area that isn't there anymore, and there's a lot of new shit that wasn't there when I was growing up.

Anyway, I had my pillows and my sleeping bag, and I was camping right on the edge of the road in front of my old yard. The pillows that I had - I had three pillows with green pillowcases, which is weird because I only have one pillowcase like that in my house.

There was a kind of theme to what I was doing. "Roadside 'Blogging" or something equally nonsensical. I kept getting annoyed because passing cars would keep zooming by me without even slowing down. I kept thinking that I was going to get run over, and I didn't want to die in my sleep like that.

I was trying to get some sleep, but there were some kids across the street setting up for a concert or a huge party or something. Also, I was right near this drainage pipe (you can barely tell where it is in the picture) and there were rocks that were digging into my back.

So I gave up on sleeping, and I decided that I was thirsty and that I'd go to Polly's Freeze. Polly's is the building at the top of the picture. So I walked passed my grandmother's old house (center right of the picture) and I was almost to Polly's when I realized that it was only 10:00 or so, and that I could go to Rich O's and have a yummy Rogue Chocolate Stout instead.

I picked up a ladder and I started running back to my old yard, where I'd parked my truck. Some black guy came out of Mildred's house (on the left side of the road in the center of the picture) and he started hollering at me about something, but I couldn't understand what he was saying.

When I got back to my old yard, there was a big giant house that was being delivered. I couldn't get my truck out because the big giant house delivery had the driveway blocked. So I tried to drive my truck up the hill at the front of my old yard, but the hill was too steep and I flipped my truck.

I had the strangest dream.

I hope I can remember it later, when I have more time to write.

But not now, because now I've got to get ready for work.

I doubt that I'll ever be able to look at her the same way again. It might have been just a dream, but my subconscious doesn't know that. To my subconscious, it was incredibly real.

So now, now I know how she kisses. I know how the weight of her body feels when it's pressing down on me. I know what she tastes like. I know how soft her fingers are when they lightly stroke my skin. I know how she sighs and smiles after she's climaxed.

I know what becomes of distractions after that distraction becomes unnecessary.

They move into my head, and they inhabit my dreams.

I can still feel her tongue against mine.

I'm not a bad person. It was, after all, just a dream.

I dreamed that I wrote a pretty good entry.

I knew it was good because half my readers got pissed off, and the other half were saddened.

Me?

I was both.

I was pissed that I'd written such cruel things, and I was saddened that it was all true.

I got this stupid premonition in my head last night, and slept fitfully because of it. Just one of those things that would be pretty cool if it happened, but it's so unlikely that I could never be disappointed if it doesn't happen.

That's the best kind of premonition, I think.

---

I dreamed about a pretty good movie with C. Thomas Howell and Jennifer Aniston. The theme song of the movie was a country song, and in the dream it was one of the best songs ever. Now I'm sitting here at my desk with the song running through my head, and I realize that it's one of the stupidest songs ever. Still can't get the fucker out of my head though.

---

I also dreamed about how I was working with some cops on some case or other, and there were pod people involved. They blew up part of a building to cover up the fact that MixedSignalGirl's mother had been replaced by a pod person. Then I had to put her cat in her car so I wouldn't have to carry it around while I searched the rubble for evidence. And later some bitch wouldn't let me back into the parking garage because I didn't have a pass. After I told her about Puddles being in the car she was nicer about it, but she still wouldn't let me in.

It was all very intense and dramatic. The whole thing had something to do with these transistors that had been used on a certain type of computer cabling back in the 1970s. The same transistors, it turned out, had also been used in these doohickeys that attached to soda cans to keep them cold.

Damn pod people. I hate them so much.

---

I was hung-over all day yesterday, so I didn't do anything but work and watch TV.

---

There's a chance that the Rogue Chocolate Stout and the Rogue Smoke will be on at DaveFest tonight. I'm afraid to ask though because it'll put me in a bad mood if they're not available yet.

Well now I can't sleep anymore.

Okay, maybe I'll be able to sleep again at some point in my life, but it certainly won't be before I write this dream down. I'm a little bit freaked-out.

It was the usual crowd at Grandma's house. Not really a party, just a get-together to recognize that it was Grandma's birthday.

I was there, as were my sisters and their kids, my uncles and aunts, and a couple of cousins. I remember being surprised to see my sister Neisha there because the event wasn't being held in Salem.

We were all just sort of milling about trying our best not to say anything that would make Grandma cry. A tall order, that's what that is.

I was sitting in a recliner, and my uncle Stan plopped right down into my lap. Like he didn't even see me. But then he realized that I was there and moved over to the chair next to Grandma. He was trying to reach around her to get to the phone but his leg or hip was bothering him, and I could tell that it was causing him pain to reach like that. So I got up to get the phone for him. He saw me doing this, and just before I reached the phone he summoned some extra strength and grabbed it himself.

I thought that was weird.

I hadn't seen anything yet.

I went into Grandma's bathroom to splash some water on my face and get away from the crowd for a minute or two. When I turned away from the sink Grandma was shuffling toward me from the toilet. Yikes! I hadn't even seen her there! And the door hadn't been locked!

I started to stammer out an apology as I reached for the doorknob and pulled the door open to see...

Grandma shuffling down the hall, coming toward the bathroom.

Well her presence there startled the shit out of me, and my flinging the door open had startled the shit out of her, so I helped her get back onto the couch in the living room and we talked for a bit about how startled we'd been. About how I'd been especially started to see her in the hallway when I'd just turned away from her in the bathroom.

So that was another weird episode.

I still hadn't seen anything yet.

After a few more minutes, I moved over and sat on the hearth.

The front door opened, and my parents walked in.

Well of course they did, you might say. It was a family gathering after all.

The problem with having them walk in that door is that they've both been dead for years. Dad for almost eight years, Mom for eighteen.

And this dream was unusual because this time I knew they were dead, and everybody in the room knew they were dead. Usually when I dream about my parents they're alive like nothing ever happened.

Anyway, they walked past all of the shocked relatives and they sat on the couch, one on each side of Grandma. They each put an arm around her. Neither of them said a word, and nobody said much of anything to them. As for me, well I just sat frozen in shock.

One by one, people would come up and give Mom and Dad a hug. I sat and I waited for everyone else to finish. I hate lines, always have. Even for something like this, I prefer to wait until the line's gone.

After my sister Dina had hugged them, and introduced them to her son - their grandson - Gehrid, I stood up and walked the few feet to the couch.

I went to Mom first. I really really really looked at her face. Her eyes were intense, her jaw was locked. She was really struggling with something. I wondered if it was just the strain of joining the living that was doing this to her, or if it was something else. Like she knew a secret that she wished she didn't know.

I hugged Mom, and in a strange show of formality I kissed her hand, then I stepped over to Dad.

His face was the same way Mom's had been, even worse. He clearly had something pressing on his mind, and he looked like he was about to burst into tears.

I gave him a hug then I continued the strange formalness by shaking his hand. I looked him in the eyes and I said, "I'm not even going to ask where you've been, or how long you can stay. I just want to thank you for coming."

Dad looked back at me, and he said something to me.

Neither of them ever moved their arms from around Grandma's shoulders.

I suddenly realized that Neisha had been outside with the kids this entire time. I ran out back to get her, to tell her, Come quick! Mom and Dad are here!

I couldn't find Neisha, and I went back inside the house to see if maybe she was in the bathroom or one of the bedrooms or something.

But when I got back to the living room, Mom and Dad were gone.

And they'd taken Grandma with them.

I realized, at that point, that it hadn't been a birthday party at all that I was attending.

It was a wake. Grandma had passed away earlier that day.

And Mom and Dad had come to help her move on.

But I've had weird dreams before and I haven't jumped out of bed to write them down.

This one I had to write down though. This one was special.

What made it special?

Well, Dad had said something to me. Something that didn't really hit me until after I woke up.

In my dream, Dad had looked me in the eyes, his entire body shaking from whatever stress he was under, and he told me, "I'll see you again soon."

A quick show of hands, please. How many of you read this entry all the way through?

Okay, good. Now, those of you with your hands up. How many of you just felt a chill run down your spine?

Okay, you dream experts figure this one out for me. I have no clue.

I was a black kid. This wasn't particularly important and I probably wouldn't have even noticed it at all except that my mother and my grandfather and my older brother were black.

I got the sense that I was around ten years old.

We were living in a trailer park somewhere in New Albany, and we were all outside. It was a warm day. My brother and I were playing on the jungle gym and my mother was grilling steaks, and my grandfather was listening to something on the radio.

He had headphones on.

The sound of gunshots filled the air!

One of the neighbors called out, "They've got guns! Everybody DOWN!"

So I hit the ground and pretended like I was dead while the sounds of running and screaming and bang bang bang moved past me.

When I raised my head, I saw that my mother was lying on the ground with blood pouring from her head. My grandfather was still sitting in his chair with his headphones on and a small bullethole in the center of his forehead.

I looked around for my brother, but I didn't see him anywhere.

At first.

The gunshots started coming close again, so I laid back on the ground and tried to stop breathing so it would look like I was dead.

That's when my brother walked up to me and said, "You always were a little shit."

Then he shot me.

Well, I guess I'm sleeping better. I'm certainly sleeping more. Turning my schedule upside-down has allowed me to sleep when I want and/or need it the most - right after work. And, since I have TiVo, I'm not missing any of my favorite shows.

So the falling asleep problem has been eased quite a bit. The other problem, the waking up because a mouse farts somewhere outside problem is still there, and that is probably keeping me from enjoying the really deep sleep that I need.

Because of that, I'm spending a lot more time in REM sleep than normal. More dreams, and more weird dreams.

I was in my bed and I suspected that I might be dreaming, so I stuck my hand through the wall to make sure. I was indeed dreaming.

Like I usually do, I took off flying through the window and out into the world. Usually I'll just zoom around the neighborhood for a while, but this time I decided to go straight up. I went up until my house was nothing but a dot, and I hit my head on something.

The sky wasn't really the sky. It was like in the movie the Truman Show where it was just a painted dome.

I tried several times to pass through that dome, but it just wasn't working. This disturbed me a lot. My ability to pass through solid objects is one that I've spent a lot of time perfecting, and it's given me an awful lot of freedom. So I became angry, and started scratching at the ceiling, and I managed to dig into it a little.

Encouraged by this, I started ripping at the drywall and eventually had a fairly large section of it removed. Next there was a very thick layer of insulation to tear away, and after that there was a grating to pry loose.

Finally, I had a hole big enough to get through. I climbed up through the hole, and it was like being above a suspended ceiling. There was ductwork and machinery all over the place. There was no room to stand up, so I just started crawling. Eventually I reached another wall. Once again, I couldn't simply pass through this wall, so I had to kick away at this grating until it fell away.

I crawled through the new hole, and I fell into the snow.

Snow?

I found myself in a large open field, laying in about a foot of snow. There were trees off in the distance. It was pretty damn cold. I stood up and turned around to check out the hole I'd just come through.

On a railroad flatcar, there were a dozen or so suitcases. The carry-on kind with wheels and extendable handles. At the base of the suitcase nearest to me was a small hole, no bigger than my fist. I knew that this was the hole I'd just come out of. I also knew that there was no way I was going to be able to fit back through it.

A small part of my brain also registered that my entire world was apparently contained in a suitcase on a railroad flatcar in a snowy field in some kind of uber-universe, but that wasn't important at the time. What was important was that it was cold and I just wanted to get to someplace warm.

There was a passenger car in front of the flatcar, and a bunch of people got off. Nobody would pay any attention to me except this one guard. When I told him that I'd gotten there by accident, he asked me where I was from.

"Earth," I said. Then I added, "The year 2006."

So the guard nodded and pointed to a little shack off in the distance. He told me to go there and warm up, and somebody would stop by to help me later.

I went over to the shack, and I opened the door.

It was my bedroom.

I went in and crawled into bed, and I knew that I'd never really left.

It was really a riveting dream to be in the middle of. I remember thinking that they should make a movie out of it.

I found myself walking down a dirt road, one so overgrown with weeds that you could hardly tell it was ever a road at all. Only the deep ruts running into the distance betrayed its existence as anything but just another field.

Ahead of me, the road stretched to a horizon hidden in fog. I turned my head to look behind me and saw the same visage. I was on a road between two nowheres.

How did I end up here?

Where did I come from?

Where was I going?

I kept walking. There was nothing else to do.

Eventually, I came upon a fence that slanted in from the right and then turned to parallel the road. Just a picket fence, once gleaming white perhaps but now the faded gray of neglect, the fence accompanied me on my journey. The fence became my companion as I walked the road. Its gaps and its raggedness and its general state of disrepair, these all gave it character, gave it a personality that resonated within me somehow.

I knew that the fence meant something. The fence was important.

I continued to walk, and I continued to wonder.

(to be, um, continued)

You know what the highlight of my day was?

I went to Target and bought some clothes hangers. Twenty-six regular ones and four of the clippy kind for hanging pants.

I also bought The Fog on DVD, just so it wouldn't look like I'd made a special trip to Target just to buy hangers.

Then to rest up from that adventure, I took a nap and had this dream:

I was in Chicago or New York or some other big city for some boring work thing. I decided to sneak out and do some exploring.

For some reason I didn't have any socks on, and my shoes were hurting my feet, so I figured I'd try to buy myself some socks if I saw any stores.

I got into this elevator and tried to push the top button (floor 101) but it wasn't working. Then some Hispanic guy came in and slid his card into the elevator control panel and the 101 button worked for him. I guess he was special or something.

The elevator, when it got to the top, turned into a sort of slow-motion roller coaster or something. It wound around the top of the city for quite a while. All of the walls were glass and I could see that there was all kinds of touristy shit up at the top of whatever city this was. The Hispanic guy kept pointing out all of the good stores and bars that I should check out. I thought it was nice that he was so down to Earth even though he was special enough to carry the magic elevator card.

Once the elevator/ride stopped, I got off and saw this building that looked like it was from the Flintstones cartoon up the hill. The building and its landscaping was molded out of some yellowish plasticy stuff that felt like it had a five o'clock shadow, plus it was pretty greasy feeling.

I climbed the very steep hill to the Flintstones building, but once I got there they were charging admission to go in and I didn't want to spend my sock money so I just sat with some lady and her kids and we watched the goings-on there at the top of the city.

Did nothing all day but sleep and sweat and dream, so I've picked the most interesting of those activities for my daily entry. Proceed at your own risk.

There was this old abandoned school, a big one, like from the seventies or something. A sprawling one-story affair.

There was an older dude with us, a Brian Dennehy type, and also a girl that looked like Jennifer Aniston but was named Neela. She was my girlfriend or something.

There were some kids with us too, but I think they were with Brian Dennehy more than with us.

We broke into the school and went to this one part where somebody had painted a Neela mural on the wall. There was door there so we went in.

The place beyond that door was something besides an old school. It was this huge mansion or castle or something. We ended up splitting up and doing some exploring.

There was this one room that had two beds set in an "L" shape and raised up on antique dressers to make what I told Neela was the coolest bed I'd ever seen. She found this plaque on the wall that said some lady had built the bed so her grandkids could share her bed without kicking her all night.

There was this other room where there was a painting of a cat's face on the wall. If you threw a cracker or something at the cat's mouth the painting would come to life and catch the cracker in mid-air, then it would go back to being a painting.

Just beyond that cat face room was a room with a little miniature coffin - like a kid's coffin would be - with a Batman sticker on top of it. A sign leaning against the coffin read "Do you dare to open the box of doom?"

So of course I opened the coffin right away. There was a smaller box inside, along with a record player and a record. Neela played the record and it was Adam West's (the dude from the 1960s Batman series) voice talking on and on about how opening the smaller box would unleash evil upon the world. It was all very cheesy like a county fair haunted house attraction.

Not deterred at all by Adam West, I opened the smaller box. Inside there was a mirror, and a pinkish sheet of plastic the same size as the mirror, and a big paper key, and a small metal key.

I was trying to figure out how to unleash the evil upon the world - mainly by spinning the metal key on the mirror, when this guy that looked like Steve Guttenberg came and told us that his best friend in the world has just been killed. Eaten by the cat in the cat face room I think.

Then all this rumbling started and Neela and I knew that we had to get the hell out of there. So we took off running back the way we'd came in. Once we reached the original part of the building - the part that just looked like an old abandoned school - the walls started moving around and trying to block us from leaving. I, of course, can just walk through walls in my dreams but I forgot that I hadn't taught Neela how to do it so we got separated.

I made it outside just in the nick of time, but I never saw Neela or the kids or the Steve Guttenberg guy again.

The cops showed up and while they were trying to figure out what to do one of them hollered out for everyone to look at the sky.

Instead of stars, the sky was full of comets. It was very pretty. We also saw that a couple of airplanes were leaving contrails that stretched across the sky. We also saw that the Batman symbol was being projected onto the Moon.

So I just kind of played it dumb because I didn't want the cops to know that it was me that had unleashed the evil upon the world.

The next day I broke back into the school to look for Neela. I was up in the cool bed room and I looked out the window. I could see that, one floor up and one window over, was the Brain Dennehy dude, but he didn't see me so I couldn't ask him what had happened to Neela.

*** Warning! Boring dream description ahead! Proceed at your own risk! ***

I was at some kind of campout except it was in a house. I don't think I knew anyone there.

At one point this girl had snuggled up against my back for warmth, and I ended up sleeping with my arms around her.

The some time passed, and the girl and I slept together every night. Literally slept. We were very happy together. There was no hanky hanky but eventually we started trying to mess around.

Problem was, it wouldn't fit. No matter what position we tried, no matter what lubricating oils we used, the damn thing just wouldn't fit.

So I got frustrated and went to take a shower.

When I came out of the shower it was dark, and the girl was under the sheets, and I tried to wake her up, but when I moved the sheets I could tell that there were just a decomposing body there. I tried to turn on some lights, and I tried to put a floor lamp near her face, but no matter what I did she was still in darkness.

By this time I'd realized that the house was my grandmother's old house so I flew outside to explore. It was raining very hard, and the entire neighborhood was completely flooded.

I was trying to decide between the decomposing body and the cold and flooded Earth when I woke up.

The second moral of this story is don't mess up a good thing by trying to turn it into something it's not meant to be.

The third moral of this story is not to take such long showers.

*** Warning! Boring dream description ahead! Proceed at your own risk! ***

There was this house. Can't really say what the house looked like, because it was always changing. Every few minutes all of the walls and siding would sort of slide down into the ground, revealing a completely different house underneath. One minute it would be a castle, the next a log cabin.

After a while, I noticed that there was a huge stadium, and the house was in the center.

Thousands, maybe millions of people had crowded into the stadium to see the house. It was a huge party. A "house-party" you might say. Ha ha.

Apparently, the house was going to run out of new forms to take very soon, and that's why everyone was there. Everybody wanted to see what would happen when that last facade sank into the ground. Everybody wanted to see what the house would look like after its illusions had all been stripped away.

As the house's end neared, the dropping of the veneers sped up considerably. One, two, even three times a second the exterior would slide into the ground and briefly reveal a different house before it too would start to slide.

Near the end, the house became a blur. The very ground shook from the constant falling of the house's exterior. The noise got louder and louder.

At the very end, the house was a white two-story farmhouse. It kind of reminded me of my grandmother's house. It paused in that form for three or four seconds, and the crowd held its breath.

The walls started to slide, revealing...

...nothing.

Those white walls slid into the ground, and when they were gone, there was just a big empty square patch of grass in the middle of a stadium full of people.

Then I woke up.

Well I don't think this one needs much in the way of interpretation at all.

The bus is old, like a Greyhound from the 1950s or something. I enter the door and climb up the steps. The bus is about half full. It's all of the people from the bar. I wonder where we're going, and I sit nine rows back, on the driver's side, next to the window.

The living room area was a study in contrast. On the loveseat sat MusicalHippeeDude, Nerdlinger, and ButterFace. The sofa and the chair held a bunch of strangers/assholes/idiots.

I sat at the island with WomanRepellant and OldBob's wife. I had a Spezial (800) to start the night.

The doors creak closed, and the bus shudders to a start. Everyone seems pretty excited that we're finally on our way. Conversations start up all around me, but I can't make out what they're saying.

CoffeeDude came in at about the same time that WomanRepellant left. He joined me at the island and we bullshitted for a while about nothing in particular.

The shitheads ordered another round of beers.

I still don't know where we're going, but wherever it is, we're taking all these backroads instead of the expressway. The bus leans crazily with every turn we take.

One of the bartenders was in a shitty mood. That's pretty normal, but it's usually not this guy that's like that. I wondered what was bothering him while I waited 15 minutes for my beer to arrive. I guess it was probably all the strangers running around out front. I'd be in a bad mood too I suppose.

I look around the bus, and I don't see any of my friends. It's just a bunch of people that I recognize from the bar, but there's nobody I feel like talking to.

Oh, great. Now the shitheads finally decided to leave. MusicalHippeeDude was left alone in the living room area. Meanwhile, CoffeeDude and I had been joined by several PBDs, so I was feeling a little claustrophobic. I grabbed my shit and moved over to the sofa.

The bus pulls into the Rich O's parking lot. Some people get up and leave, but I can't leave because there are new people getting on that are in my way. The doors close and I settle back into my seat.

So the four of us sat and drank our beers and rattled on about nonsense. We could have been any four guys sitting in any bar in the world. I wondered, for about the zillionth time, just what the Hell I was doing there. I left the sofa and went to stand at the bar while I finished my beer. Then I paid my tab and left.

I make my way to the front of the bus and ask the driver to take me home. He takes me to a ranch house in a subdivision. I try to tell him that I don't live there anymore, but he's not listening to me. He keeps looking at his watch, and tells me to either get off or stay on. He's got a schedule to keep.

I get off the bus, and I start walking home.

Today I employ one of my standard methods for trying to beat mental constipation. Here's this week's horoscope from Free Will Astrology:

A Pisces woman I know has heard harassing voices in her head for years. They've often urged her to commit suicide or commit other heinous acts. Three weeks ago, they mysteriously stopped, and have left her alone ever since. Meanwhile, another Pisces friend recently received a letter from an old lover who unconditionally forgave her for hurting him while they were together. A third acquaintance, also born under the sign of the Fishes, had a lucid dream in which she buried the dress she was wearing during the saddest moment of her life. Subsequently she has felt an exhilarating release from the weight of the past. I see these three events as examples of a theme you too are enjoying: a burst of liberation from a demon that has plagued you for eons.

I was actually thinking about writing an entry about something similar before I read this horoscope. Strange, but true.

For over a decade at least, I've had this recurring dream wherein I visit some place where I used to live. Sometimes it's a house, sometimes it's an apartment, but it's still always the same place in my dream. I don't suppose that it matters where it is or what it is because, in real life, I never lived there.

So in my dreams I'd go to this old abode. A lot of my stuff would still be there, and I'd have an enjoyable time going through all of my forgotten possessions and just exploring the place for a while.

Sometimes I'd imagine moving back into that old place. After all, I'd think, so much of my past was already there. Waiting for me.

Like I said, I've had this theme pop up in my dreams for a long time. I never paid much attention to it except to notice that it was always a pretty good dream.

Last night, I dreamed of the old place again.

This time it was a house. A regular ranch-style house that sat in a subdivision among a bunch of identical ranch-style houses. I did the usual exploring. I remember marveling at the fact that I had three pool tables in the basement. I wandered around the house, touching everything. I dreamed that I took a nap in what had been my bedroom.

This is the point where this dream became different.

This is the point where the moving company arrived, and I helped the movers load all of my stuff into their truck.

Once the movers had left, the real estate agent was there, and she was putting a "For Sale" sign in the yard. She told me that the old place was a little run down, but that she expected it to sell rather quickly.

"A fixer-upper," she called it. "May I ask why you've decided to sell after all this time?" she asked.

"I guess I just realized that I was never really coming back here. Having two houses is nice, but you can only live in one of them," I replied.

I woke up shortly afterwards.

I've slept two hours since Monday morning. Just like old times, I say. Go fuck yourself, I respond.

Because my day has been spent in this half-dead daze, I really have nothing of interest to write.

I dealt with some bullshit earlier today the best way I know how - I completely ignored it except to vent about it here.

I guess the only thing that really happened to me today was that I managed to sneak in a dream this morning.

*** Warning! Boring dream description ahead! Proceed at your own risk! ***

I went to the grocery store and, as I was approaching the doors, I saw a sign announcing that Danny DeVito would be signing autographs. Sure enough, I could see Mr. DeVito already. He was inside the store, talking to a couple of women who were stuck outside. They ask him if they could PLEASE come in and get his autograph.

Danny DeVito looked the women up and down and told them, "No, not today. Maybe some other time." Then he disappeared into the store.

This just struck me as completely rude and unfair, so I vowed that I'd get Danny DeVito's autograph for these women.

The doors to the store were locked but, you may recall, doors and walls and windows mean nothing to me, so I just went right in.

Now, for some reason I knew, just knew, that the best chance I'd have of getting Danny Devito's autograph would be to find a box of Honey Nut Cheerios and have him sign the box. So I went looking for such a box.

This took a loooong time, but eventually I found the cereal aisle and scored a box of the stuff.

Next, I had to figure out where the autograph signing was taking place.

This also took a loooooooong time, but after exploring the entire store, I found Mr. DeVito sitting at a little table next to the smoking section.

As I approached him with my Honey Nut Cheerios box, my alarm went off and I woke up.

Well, my muse has been nagging me once again to write something. I've tried to explain that feeling nothing is often quickly followed by thinking nothing, and that thinking nothing is inevitably followed by writing nothing. But she'll have none of that nonsense apparently, so I'm going to write.

I'm going to write about this dream I had last night.

I tell you this now so, if you're like me and hate reading about other peoples' dreams, you can leave now before it's too late.

Still here? Well don't say I didn't warn you.

I was at a party at ElPresidente's house. Just about everyone I knew from Rich O's was there, including a certain girl that I may have mentioned from time to time in this 'blog.

I was sitting on a couch, talking with this certain girl about something or another - I don't remember what exactly. What I do remember is that, in a single sentence, she said the word "kiss" four times. There was just something about the way she said the word. The way she drew it out and added syllables.

She wanted me to kiss her.

My dream self is quite a bit more brave than my awake self. I leaned over to her and gave her the softest kiss I could manage.

I was instantly hard, and so I instantly regretted the kiss. I'd tried to do something sweet, to be a good guy, and my body was trying to turn it into something completely different. I pulled away and started to stammer out an apology.

But she, she would have none of that nonsense apparently, because she followed me as I pulled away, and she followed me as I leaned back as far as I could. She kissed me several times, then we kissed each other several times. Tentatively at first, like we were both just feeling things out, but after a bit our lips parted in unison.

I got to first base with her, and I was nearly weeping from the relief and the happiness - the joy of it. She was crying openly, and telling me that I had no idea how long she'd been hoping that this would happen.

So at that point, we both knew that things were going to progress beyond the point where the middle of ElPresidente's living room would be the appropriate setting. Luckily for us, the FirstCouple had planned ahead, and were taking reservations for the numerous bedrooms in the house.

Unluckily for us, we were told that we had at least a two-hour wait. Must have been a randy bunch at the party.

We spent the next two hours waiting, cuddling on the couch, sneaking kisses when we thought nobody would be looking. It was both the happiest, and the most frustrating, period of my life. I got some under the blouse second-base action, but I wanted to SEE.

Eventually, FINAL