nekosensei

If there's a hungry T-rex running around outside looking for food, it might not be a good idea to stand in the window and watch. Just saying....

Also, while I know they grow a lot of strange critters in Australia, I didn't know that T-Rex was one of them. Nothing like a good ole' wild, free range T-Rex to break up a perfectly good outdoor dinner party. They should really sell insurance for that...just in case a guest or two gets eaten.

My dreams are so random sometimes.

I had some weird dreams last night. I dreamed that I was looking out at a lake or another large body of water from a balcony. It didn't have tides that crashed on shore or receded like a big lake. Instead, the water was moving quickly as if there was a swift current. Trapped in the current was all kinds of garbage: shoes, tires, boards. I even saw a white van on a wooden raft go by until the raft overturned and pitched the van into the water. I watched it sink straight to the bottom.

While I was looking out over the water, a man who looked like the Samuel from the last season of Heroes, burst in on me. I have no idea what his problem was and why he wanted me dead so much, but whatever. Cue a huge chase sequence. I manage to slip out of the building and onto a street. I was running as fast as I could (and tiring quickly), but this dude was hot on my trail and barely breaking a sweat; it looked more like he was doing a fast walk. For me, this is just another twist on my recurring theme of being chased by a monster and either unable to run fast enough, if I can run at all. In some dreams, I end up stumbling away from my pursuer on all fours.

Then, out of no where, the lady that played the Queen of Starship England stepped out in front of me, mumbled something about being the devil, and stabbed my attacker with a large knife. Sweet!

Yeah, my dreams are kind of out there at times, but the imagery can be really cool.

* Last night, I dreamed that I was at a party at a friend's house and someone slipped three NoDoz pills into my drink. This ended up going very very badly. I don't drink caffeinated coffee or sodas anymore because I can't handle stimulants: they give me heart palpitations. In the dream, my heart raced and I had bizarre heart palpitations where I'd have three quick beat in a row instead of two. Eventually, I blacked out-- most likely from panic-- and doomsey and a few friends had to cart my sorry ass to the hospital for tests.

* Did LJ change their format so that they show only ten entries per page instead of twenty? Not that I'm complaining! My pages are loading faster. My friends list has been very picture heavy ever since I joined lj_photophile and naturesbeauty.

* Here, have a bit of satire: The Front Fell Off

* BP announced this evening that top kill has failed to stop the oil spill. This is some seriously bad news. :(

* Last night, I dreamed that a friend of mine told me that she was a conservative. Then, she told me that she was going to a Sarah Palin rally and asked me if I wanted to come with. Bwuh?

* The night before that, I woke up from a dream, and I remembered thinking, "hey...this dream would make for a nice story idea." Did I write the dream down in the notebook I tucked under my bed for precisely that purpose as soon as I got up? No. Do I remember what I dreamed about? No. I guess that'll show me....

* It's going up to 85 degrees on Sunday! *squee* I love warm, summer weather!

* Somebody thought it would be cute to declare May 20th "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" to protest Comedy Central's decision to censor the South Park episode that showed the prophet Mohammed in a teddy bear suit. It had so much potential for fail, and that's exactly what happened. I wandered over to the Facebook page this morning and looked at some of the photos posted there. I would say that a good 99.9% of the material is as bigoted as all get up. Yeah...being a bigot makes you guys look so "edgy."

I'm all for freedom of speech, but can we use some common sense here? (Link courtesy of idiomagic)

* This meme is funny. Post a comment with your user handle, and a fictional character will write you a little love note.


MY THREAD HERE

* Other than that, not much has been going on with me. I've been busy with work, school work, exercise, and other outside stuff. I've been reading LJ sporadically, so if you think there's something I missed, sorry! Let me know in a comment.

* Wow did I have a bad dream last night. A group of tea-baggers were holding a demonstration so liberals in support of health care reform decided to hold a counter-demonstration. What the liberals did not know was that some of the tea baggers came armed. A couple of nut jobs pulled out their guns and started shooting at the liberals. Before you knew it, everybody was shooting, and the end result was a blood bath with the liberals getting the worst of it because so few of them were armed. This eventually touched off a coup d'état with a far right wing group taking over the government by force. Once they had control of the country, the first thing they did was repeal the health care reform bill. At that point, I told doomsey to pick a country; we were leaving.

* It's been a gorgeous day today. It went up to 81 degrees! In April! doomsey and I celebrated it by going to the zoo, which was very crowded as a lot of other people had the same idea. It was so packed that we had a hard time even finding a parking spot! I've never seen it that bad! And not enough employees were out directing traffic either. One person told us they were talking about opening up other lots by the children's zoo, but they weren't very helpful about where exactly those lots were. She told us to head closer to the zoo itself, which we did. By sheer chance, we ran into someone else who helped fanagle us a spot on a small patch of grass. She told us that they had so many visitors today that they "had to get creative." Wild! doomsey and I went to Tropic World-- the exhibit where they keep the monkeys-- first and it was packed. Afterwards, I steered us to more of the exhibits that were outside where we would have more room.

* I took a lot of pictures today. I'm going to have to post some once I get a chance to go through them.

* My zoo membership is expiring at the end of this month, and I'm planning on renewing it when it does. I spent about fifteen dollars extra in order to get the version that lets me take a guest with; usually, I drag doomsey with me. This year, we've used it enough that we've more than recouped the money we spent on it.

* ( Cut for disgusting )

* Another amusing April Fool's joke from Think Geek. And hey! Here's a second product I want to see made: the LOST alarm clock. God I love Think Geek! (Via hellziggy)

* If You Voted for Obama, Seek Urologic Care Elsewhere’ -- There are no words. I've gotten into political debates with my doctor before-- she's close friends with my husband's family-- and I know that we don't see eye to eye on politics. I'm a liberal Democrat while she is more of a Libertarian, and she *definitely* doesn't support the health care reform bill. On the other hand, she's a smart lady and an incredible doctor so I continue to see her. I could never in a million years see her pulling something like this though. (Via doomsey)

* And we're off again. doomsey and I are going to Rock Band Night at a friend's house tonight. We're leaving a little bit late because we're going to get dinner on the way there. I think they normally serve pizza at this shindig, but doomsey can't eat it because it's Passover. We're probably going to get Mexican instead.

* Nice. I'm already in a bad mood this morning because people were being obnoxious in my dream last night. I was in the store, and my sister was being a little shit, just like she could sometimes be when we were kids. Then, the sales lady gave me attitude because my sister was being a shit, which I had no control over. So...I put the item I was going to buy down, took my money, and went elsewhere. I also left my sister there, telling her that, just for that, she could find her own way home. See? You make trouble for me, I can make trouble for you.

Wow...talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed...

* Went to the dentist this morning. He didn't see anything major on the X-ray. He also thinks the nerves in my tooth are working properly. He thinks that problem with my tooth was caused by me grinding my teeth while I was sleeping, especially considering the fact that it was bad on Saturday morning, but got a bit better as the weekend went on. It should be back to normal in a couple of days. In the meantime, I bought myself some Sensodyne and I'm going to see if that helps. I might also lay off the mechanical toothbrush for awhile.

Anyhow, that's good news. Whatever's pissing it off will go away in a few days and, better yet, no drilling involved! You have no idea how happy I am about that.

* Had a bad headache this morning. Ended up doing my grocery shopping after I was finished at the dentist's office, popping some ibruprofen, and taking a nap. My head is still sore, but not as bad as what it was earlier. Still feeling grumpy too...

* This looks interesting. And if I were to find out that my mom's side of the family does have Jewish ancestry after all, I would *so* throw it in my parents' face for giving me a hard time for marrying a Jewish man. (Swiped from rm)

* This comment was the first one I read on this article about the Kevin Smith / Southwest Airlines debacle:

"I don't normally fly southwest, but if they are the ones taking a stand against obese air travelers I think they needed to be supported. Not only will there be less obese people on the flight bothering us, the average intelligence of Southwest passengers will go up!"

What the fuck? So...all fat people are dumb now? My brain hurts. I'm going to go report this as abuse just to be obnoxious.

* The author of the book I'm reading is a Doctor Who fan, apparently...

* I spent this evening studying for German. And no...I did NOT just make a flashcard with a guy sitting next to a bottle of Ritalin to help me remember the word for quiet/calm in German. And for crazy, I did not draw a grinning guy holding a meat cleaver. :)

* Okay...time to hit post now...

Yeah...aside from posting my picture-a-days and books read, I've haven't been saying very much. Lately, not much has been going on that can't be written in 140 characters or less on Twitter. I'm still reading LJ though, just don't have much to say. Having said that, here's an update.

* We have snow! Thankfully, we don't have nearly as much snow as Wisconsin. Our area stayed warm, so we got a good chunk of our precipitation as rain. Thank God. I was able to go out and get nice pictures for picture-of-the-day. Today I went to Graue Mill in Oak Brook, and took pictures in the snow. I got some good ones.

* I am sooo tired from shoveling snow today. I would have used the snow blower, but there was a lot of slush on the ground, and the snow blower wouldn't have done much good.

* I've been having a lot of weird dreams these past few weeks. Last night, I had two dreams. One was a nightmare about being married to this incredibly abusive guy. I mixed some sleeping pills into his drinks and left while he was asleep. When he woke up and discovered that I was gone, he came after me. Apparently, me leaving him besmirched his honor. Okay buddy... (I got the feeling from the dream that he was a very traditional Muslim). My family hid me in this hotel, and the dude managed to figure out where I was. I dreamt he snuck into my hotel room while I was sleeping. In the dream, I startled awake to the sound of his voice. He cornered me and I ended up fighting with him. Many things were thrown. I got away and someone in the hotel lobby called the police. I hid behind the concierge's desk until the cops came and escorted him out of the building. By the time the dream ended, we were talking about me leaving the country for awhile because the guy just wasn't giving up. We were talking about either Spain or Peru. I woke up and then complained to doomsey that I had had a bad nightmare. He was annoyed. I was just plain happy that I had a nice, rational, normal hubby and not scary dream hubby.

The second dream was an afterlife of sorts. If I had to describe the feel of it, it was a mixture of Harry Potter and art house film. Some of the images were surreal, but cool. Living people had a double because they were both body and soul. And omg! Creepy nun-like people wearing gray habits! Where do I pull some of these things out of exactly? I swear...this dream would have been perfect fodder for a novel. Anyhow, at some point, I had made some friends and we were traveling together. None of us knew exactly what was going on, but those that had been dead longer had a better idea how things worked than I did. We all got the impression that the place we were at was temporary, and that we would eventually pass on to another one in a hundred years or so. All of us looked like we were in our late teens-early twenties, which led me to believe that all dead souls took that form. I also didn't remember how I died. At the end of the dream, I was pulled into some kind of "support group" for people who had died young. That's where I found out that the jealous hubby from dream número uno had found me wherever the hell I had run to and killed me. Murder. Lovely.... (There was more to the dream, but...enh...don't feel like going into it right now).

* So...what's with all the dreams about death and dying lately? Well, I'm approaching the two year anniversary of when I damn near dropped dead. Maybe my subconscious mind is still sorting things out. Also, I think part of that second dream might have been motivated by something I had read in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which I had been reading right before I went to bed. That's a very cool book, by the way...

* cosettemonster is being barfy again. She was horking up her food last Thursday-Friday. She got better after I gave her a Vitamin B12 shot-- which is usually prescribed to animals with IBD-- but she's been puky again today. If she's not better by tomorrow, I'm calling the vet. She does have the funky kidney values, and the vet told me to watch for throwing up and loss of appetite. I'm not playing around with this.

* For those of you into photography, you guys should check out the LJ community, lj_photofile. It's a cool group. Lot's of amazing pictures. I think I might post more of my stuff over there...

Note to self: do not take Ambien and read a Sookie Stackhouse novel right before bed. It makes for a night of *ahem* colorful dreams. Let's see. Last night's dream consisted of an entire cast of ghosts, a couple of zombies, a witch, oh...and whatever that thing with furry hands was that grabbed me from behind. Bigfoot maybe?

Anybody else out there get weird dreams after taking Ambien?


And one more thing. You'd think dreams like that would scare me (they used to scare the shit out of me when I was a kid), but that's not the case anymore. My reaction is more like: "Oh cool! Ghosts!" When I wake up in the morning, I feel more like I'd spent the night being entertained. I must be one very strange nekosensei.

This poll was motivated by a post made by bkwrrm_tx. In high school and college, I read that scientists thought people only dreamed in black and white. A few weeks ago, I read an article in which that theory was being challenged. Studies were being done that suggested that people could dream in color. What's more, the article theorized that older people were more likely to dream in black in white while younger folks tended to dream in color. Why is this so? The authors suspected that our dreams were influenced by movies. When the older generation was growing up, movies were filmed in black and white whereas the younger generations watched movies in color.

I am almost certain that my dreams are in color. Not long ago, I remember having a dream in which a red object appeared. I think it was a garment. Maybe something I was knitting? At any rate, I remember that said object was red and I could see quite clearly that it was red.

[Poll #1341967]

Any thoughts?

Let's see. What have I been up to in the past week?

On Saturday, I went to davimye and Nikki's wedding, and had a blast. There was lots of dancing involved. Some of it was very silly.

On Sunday afternoon, I went to Milwaukee, WI for a day-and-a-half of canvassing. I checked in at the hotel in downtown Milwaukee, dropped off my stuff, and headed over to the Obama headquarters for the four to eight o'clock canvassing shift. I ended up getting lost both heading to the headquarters and coming back. Downtown Milwaukee is confusing, and it doesn't help that my navigation system didn't bother to tell me when to turn until I was right on top of the intersection. And in most cases, it was a one way road, I was in the right hand turn lane, and had to turn left...or something stupid like that. Grr! Stupid nav system and confusing city streets both get an F.

It turns out that my canvassing shift ended early at six because there were four of us and we were pretty fast. And it was a good thing that it ended when it did because it was raining and I didn't have my umbrella. I left it back at my car at the Obama headquarters because it didn't look like it was going to rain. Doh! After canvassing, I went to dinner at a greasy spoon not far from my hotel. Oh...the parking garage was also mostly full because there was a Beastie Boys concert at the stadium not far from my hotel.

That evening, I went back to the hotel, surfed LJ on my Iphone for a bit, read Watchmen, and then went to sleep. I had multiple bizarre sleep paralysis dreams that evening starting at about three thirty in the morning. I'm not sure if it was because I was being weird because of the Ambien, my hotel room was weird, or both. Let's see. I was startled awake by a gun shot. Then, I had all kinds of sleep paralysis dreams in which I heard a voice that imitated my mom or dad's voice. I heard it on the right hand side of me and it was saying random nasty shit. Like most sleep paralysis dreams, I couldn't turn my head to look at it. I tried to tell it to "shut the fuck up," "fuck off," and "go the fuck away," but of course, I couldn't open my mouth to make any noise. All I could make was a nguh nguh sound. I also dreamt that some dude in a suit floated across my room and out the window. Strange. Very strange. At some point, I woke up and was able to move. I turned the light on and left them on until I had to get up.

The next morning, I headed across the street to the same greasy spoon for breakfast, and then checked out of the hotel. I went back to the Obama headquarters and once again, I got lost in downtown Milwaukee trying to get on the expressway. In my defense, my nav system wasn't really being clear on what ramp it wanted me to get on, and the numbers it gave me weren't matching up with the signs I was seeing. I made a second pass and eventually figured out where I had to be. *growls*

At night o'clock on Monday morning, I went to the headquarters and noticed that they had a tv crew. Something was going on, but I wasn't sure what. Before we got our instructions, the organizers there started clapping and then told us they had a special surprise for us and that a local celebrity would be visiting us. It turns out that it was the Wisconsin Senator, Russ Feingold. Oh yeah, and I suck because I had to ask someone who that was. No one bothered to tell us mostly Illinois people that he was a Senator. He talked for a bit, and after he left, the organizers gave us our instructions. Instead of canvassing, we had to hang leaflets on doors in one ward telling people where they had to go to vote and what time the polls were open. This made a lot of sense because I doubt, it being a Monday during the day, that many people would be home to talk to us. In one neighborhood, I ran across one lady who was edging her grass using a weed-wacker. She told me that she didn't want a leaflet. You know, it's not a good idea to quibble with someone holding a weed-wacker, so I went on to the next house. :)

We dropped off leaflets until five o'clock in the afternoon. I wanted to do the four to eight o'clock shift again, but between not getting much sleep the night before and walking around the entire day, I was sore and exhausted. I checked out, donated a bag of chips to the cause, and headed out. (Oh...and they gave those of us who had canvassed for two days that weekend a t-shirt. Heh heh). I decided not to stay later because I had to drive home and I didn't want to fall asleep in the car. Also, 94 south of the Wisconsin border scares the crap out of me because it's under construction and the lanes are uncomfortably narrow. Hmm...I must be slightly claustrophobic when I drive. To keep from dozing off, I lowered the temperature in the car and blasted the music. I also sang along to the music most of the way home. You can't possibly fall asleep in the car when you're too busy signing, right? Oh...and for the first time ever, I ended up not getting lost near downtown Milwaukee. I must have learned my lesson after the first dozen times. :)

On Tuesday, I voted. I felt like I was going to tear up when I filled in the bubble for Obama/Biden. I was voting for the first serious black contender for president. I also ran into one of my neighbors who had a McCain/Palin sign in front of their house. She greeted me with, "there's my opponent!" wtf? Then, she asked me if there was a long line. At least she was being nice about it. I did teach that day, but I let the class out early so that they could vote (a few of them hadn't yet) and I could get my butt downtown to the rally. doomsey drove us to Forest Park, and we took the L downtown. On the way there, we saw a huge parade of police cars from the western suburbs-- Villa Park, Glen Ellyn, Wheaon-- heading into the city. We noticed that some of the cars had tape on their windows to reinforce them...probably because they expected rioting if Obama didn't win the election. They got off at the exit onto Western. I tried to take a picture of it, but failed. It didn't occur to me until later that I could have taken video and it would have turned out better.

doomsey and I got off the train and met sailatinu, who also had tickets, and his girlfriend. Then, we got in line and made our way through the myriad of security checkpoints we had to go through. Let's see. They checked tickets and ID twice. They also made us take off all the metal we had on and go through a metal detector. Then, we picked out a space in the crowd, and waited. Before we got into the park itself, we would hear a cheer from up ahead of us, and then later, we learned that Obama had gotten Ohio or another state on the eastern seaboard. Eventually, we got into the park, took our place in the mob, watched the CNN feed that had on the big screen in Hutchinson Field, and waited. At some point, sailatinu left to get us all water, which I really needed because my throat was parched. (It turns out that I was coming down with a cold). Just before ten o'clock at night, they called Virginia for Obama, and there was a huge cheer. sailatinu later quipped something to the effect of, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," which amused the people standing around us. Not long after that, the polls closed on the West Coast. They then announced that Obama had won the election. The cheer that went up was tremendous and I recorded some of it using my crappy digital camera. We listened to McCain's concession speech, and later, Obama's, which I also recorded snippets of. Unfortunately, we couldn't see the stage because the tent for the media was in the way. If you jumped above the crowd a bit and were lucky, you could see the top of someone's head. After the speech was over, doomsey and I headed out. The crowd was so huge that it took us quite some time to get out of the field. We also walked ten blocks to avoid the crush of people getting on the L. Oh...and as we were pulling into Forest Park, somebody noticed that Obama's motorcade was passing by on the expressway. I was busy surfing LJ and didn't see much of it. I only caught the tail end of it, and wasn't fast enough to get it on camera. Shucks.

My back was killing me from all the standing we did, but all in all it was a great experience. I was happy to be there in the crowd to witness such an historic event.

The rest of this week was spent getting caught up on work because I didn't get much accomplished last weekend. I am mostly caught up now. I also got sick. I was okay on Wednesday, but Thursday and Friday was when things really started getting crappy. Last night, I must of slept eleven hours, not including the nap I took in the late afternoon / early evening on Friday. I'm doing a bit better today and I was able to get a bunch of stuff done today. This afternoon is the costume party at voidness' house, but I'm not sure how long I'm going to be able to stay. For one, my voice is shot. (Lately, it seems like I lose my voice every time I get sick). I might end up spending a good part of the evening in the corner knitting, but I'm not going to be able to do a lot of talking. And, of course, I can't drink either. :P

Anyhow, that's what's been going on with me. One of these days, I'm going to have to post pictures of the rally and of the Halloween pumpkin I carved a few weeks ago. Only, not today because I have to get dressed up for tonight. Later!