Wild Dreams

At the beginning of the week, the boy and I both some pretty wild dreams, and as I've said before it's pretty rare that I remember my dreams. I heard a few days ago that it was World Lion Day, so now I've got to share.

I dreamed that I was remembering back to when we had lions. The rest of the dream was mostly a flashback to those times. They were outdoor pets, and of course our yard has no fence. We had two, a male and a female. I remembered how they would come up and snuggle us when we'd come out of the house, just like a house cat, except they are several hundred pounds and the snuggle would almost knock you down!!!

I remembered feeding them big old hunks of raw meat, they loved that!!! I remembered them bounding down the canyon across the street. I thought to myself, "Wow, that was a hell of a liabilaty!!!"

I had another dream that night, too. My dad was still alive, and a bunch of us were getting together on a Saturday, something like the third time in a month we were all going out somewhere for a big family lunch. I was thinking, wow, that's gotta be a few hundred dollars every time!!! They told me that after we ate, we were going to see Martin Luther King III give a speech or a sermon or something. Huh, I didn't even know there was a Martin Luther King III!!!

My son's dream was he was at a pizza place. Not a full-on restraunt, it was just a take-out window in the side of a wall. He orders his pizza, and it comes out, but it's not just a pizza, there's hot wings, a big bag of them!!! And hard shell tacos!!! And a video game!!!

As his order is coming out, another guy who had ordered close to the same thing after him starts to grab it, and he tells him, "Hey!!! That's mine!!!" The guy backs off, and he takes his huge haul of food and game. He says the tacos were amazing!!!

Met the Man, Shook his Hand

I had a dream thanksgiving night. It was interesting & pretty vivid, so I thought I'd share it here!!!

We were in a hotel on a vacation. It was south of here, part way to San Diego, probably around the Carlsbad area, but in my dream it was in Chula Vista, even though that is pretty much right by San Diego. It was a large suite with seperate rooms, and a large living room area and full kitchen, a nice place. It was around 11 AM and we were just getting up (you know, because we're on vacation!) My wife had made a small batch of oatmeal cookies the previous night, and she had gotten up and said she was going to make another batch up for breakfast. OK, sounds good!!! I had a couple of other places I was thinking of going to to eat, one of them Smash Burger, don't remember what the other was, and figured we'd make those lunch and dinner.

About 10 minuites later, I realized that it was our last day there!!! Ut oh!!! I told everyone to start getting their stuff together, but I'm going to call the front desk and see if we can get a late check-out. I picked up the phone that was on the bar adjacent to the kitchen, an old style touch tone phone, and hit the button for the desk. I told the lady who answered it is our last day, but we're not quite ready to go, could we get a late check-out? She replies, "I can give you a $20 credit". I ask what does that mean? Is there a charge to stay later, and we'll get a credit towards it??? Do we have to pay for another day, but we can apply the $20 to that??? She's not sure, and is going to check with someone and puts me on hold. I'm holding, and thinking I'm OK with paying for another day, I've got more time off and wouldn't mind staying another day. I grab an apple out of the fridge and start eating it, because there's no cookies yet, and I'm a little hungry. I don't know if she'd stopped making them or they just weren't ready.

Sometime around this, while I'm holding, the scene shifts, as sometimes happens in dreams. I'm still at a counter like the bar the phone was on, but now I'm in what looks like a large, open concept office. There's very few people there, and some of the lights are off. Then, in through one of the doors, comes Alex Trebek!!!

It's a younger Alex than we've been seeing lately, he has the bushy black mustache, but his hair is short and slicked to his head. He's walking into an office just by where I'm at, and I must have said something to him, because he stops and we talk. I tell him I'd shake his hand, but I've got apple juice sticky all over that hand. He replies something to the effect of, "Apple juice washes off, but you won't have a chance to shake my hand again."

So I reach out and shook hands with Alex.

And I tell him, "You son of a bitch!!!", because I'd realized right around that point that I was dreaming.

Creepy Croupier

I had made mention, from when we had been to Reno a few years back, of a method I'd come up with to fairly regularly win at roulette.

A while ago I had a dream where I was telling a couple of my friends from work about it, while we are at work.

I started in telling them, and one of them breaks in with the method he's heard of and used. Bet on the first and third twelve, and either red or black, or odd or even. Covers a good percentage of the slots. As he's telling this method, the scene transitions to a casino scene.

When he finishes, we're back at work, and I start telling my method. Once again the scene changes to the casino. My method is to place seven or eight bets on four corners in a zig-zag pattern down the numbers. Once again, it covers a good portion of the numbers, about 2/3 of it, and pays out 9-1. In the eight bets, there's going to be some double-overlaps so a few down the middle will pay out 18-1!!! If nothing else, this method causes you to lose money very slowly!!!

In my dream, I'm placing my bet, and the Croupier, a black man in a vest and bow tie with a high, tight fade haircut, looks at my wager and goes "Hey!!! Hey!!! What are you doing???" I reply, "It's a legal bet, right???" He replies, resignedly, "Yeah, it is."

Then, for just a split second, his eyes flash red, Terminator style...

Creepy Caterpillar

This was pretty cool. I probably can't really take credit for it, but I'm going to anyway!!! Back in October on the Woody Show, Greg was telling about a nightmare he'd had of caterpillars. I sent them over this text:

Well, just last week they posted this video!!!

I thought there was a detail that got edited out where there was a camera inside and Woody had a screen where you could watch inside. I was thinking of trying my hand at doing a drawing of this situation. The other scene I'd like to try to make a drawing of is when Menace fell asleep on the floor before he could make it to the couch, and have his dogs thinking about eating him!!!

Bizzarro Kitty

My younger boy had a dream over the weekend. He related it to me, and that is the inspiration for this post.

In the dream, we had a second cat, with the exact negative color scheme of the one we have. In case I've not mentioned before, our cat came with the name Leo (his age when we got him coincides with him having been born in August. Since we didn't know the exact date, I dubbed the first to be his birthday, same as Adam Duritz. He is a child of fire, he is a lion, he has desires. Mostly for cat food.), and in the dream, the opposite cat was named Oel. I was amused.

I wondered if I could modify a picture of him to look like dream kitty Oel. Here's the results, not perfect, but not bad!!!

The Random & Shirt Post

I've had these shirt pictures for quite a while. I've been meaning to make some kind of post of 'em, and finally here it is, along with a bit o random!!!



I'm up in the middle of the night after having gotten up early for the Saturday shift this morning. Hadn't planned on it, but here's how it worked out: I took an energy drink to have with my lunch today. When I got home this afternoon, my wife made me a delicious iced coffee. That would have been plenty enough, but we went to Big Lots in the evening. They were having an extra 20% off, and I bought a few more random energy drinks, as well as almost $100 worth of other sugary beverages and salty crunchy snacks, as well as some school supplies (in early July??? Blasphemy!!!). When I went to put them away, discovered some of the energy drinks I had stashed had corroded through!!! One of my my favorite kinds, Monster Mixxed, was just starting to leak, so I opened it and tried it. Tasted fine, so I iced it down and drank it. I think that was too much.



I bookended the normal work week (as abnormally normal as it was) with a couple of ironic shirts. On Tuesday (1st work day this week...) I wore one not pictured here, from the first year we did the Christmas-goody day shirt exchange at work. It merely has the words, "Don't rush me, I get paid by the hour" on the front, so it's not especially photogenic, but it is pretty amusing. All my co-workers love it, because doing what we do you won't be there long if you're not at least kinda rushing. The irony was double that day, as I was working an hour early for overtime, and I ended up killing labels, one of the few tasks where you're not quite as rushed!!!



Since I worked today (yesterday now, but doesn't seem like it to me) I was able to have one of the weekdays off. Usually it's Friday, but when I signed up I was offered Thursday or Friday. I opted for Thursday, so I worked two days, had a day off, worked two more days, have a day off. Friday they had this coming Saturday available. I can choose any day but Monday for off this coming week. Think I'll take Wednesday so I'll have another two days then a day off. Unfortunately, that will leave three at the end of the week.



On Thursday I took the family to Leo Carrillo State Beach. It's a bit of a drive, but a couple of my friends at work always go there and say how nice it is. It was pretty good, but lots of rocks. I think we spent almost as much time driving as we did at the beach. I think it was around 60 miles each way. I didn't take my camera, but wising I had did some searching for a web image. The one I've got here is from the Virtual Tourist website. The first one that really got me was from Craig Wolf's blog. I didn't feel right about borrowing his AMAZING image, but I did set it as my computer's wallpaper!!!



On the other end of the regular week, I wore my "Weekdays-Weekends" shirt. The irony here was I wore it on Friday, and I was coming in the next day. At morning break, I noticed one of the girls who used to be in our department sitting outside with a girl who looked a lot like another girl who left the company a few years back. As I was heading back from break, I got a better look at her, and it was who I'd thought, only with her hair darker. I stepped out to say hey, and remembered that she'd always gotten great amusement from my shirts. She'd already seen the front of the shirt, so after I asked her if she'd seen this one, I showed her the back. She LOLed heartily, and fived me!!!



I had a strange dream this morning. I'll not relate all of it here, but at the end of it I was bitching out a little kid, and was hailed as a hero for having done so. I woke up (like one minute before my alarm went off) and was laughing and wondering where that came from!!!



A recap of the unmentioned shirts here, the second down is called 3037, and it's my most recent acquisition (with the exception of the Old Navy flag T-shirt I bought on July 4th. My oldest got the exact same one, and my wife got a red tank with the exact same print. Youngest got the coolest of the lot, a Captain America shirt). Can you make out the writing hidden it that shirt??? Also represented it the Filthy Hippies, one of my favorites that always gets comments. The blurry question mark I don't actually have, it's the icon Woot has when they're doing a random shirt. They actually came out with a shirt like that!!!


Missing from the mix is my Schrödinger's Cat shirt. It's another amazing shirt, but every time I wear it I seem to end up having to explain who Schrödinger was & his experiment. One of my friends at work, after having heard the story, commented, "Wow, he was like, a mad scientist!!!"

I Have Dreamed of a LOLcat

I don't usually remember my dreams, and it's usually something of a treat when I do. The other night I had one, and as usual had forgotten it upon waking. While I was showering, my wife got home from taking the kids to school and was getting some food for the cat. Our cat (who is awesome) is an outdoor creature, but she ventured all the way into the kitchen this morning. When my wife told me, it immediately brought my dream to remembrance.



Two components I'm fairly sure came from pictures on Failblog and Icanhascheezburger. Both are pictured here. The third component, I have NO idea where it came from!!!



The family and I were someplace, and near the door they had one of these fancy gum ball machines where the gum ball drops through a series of passages before coming out, think of it as a gum ball and a show. It was unlike the only picture I was able to find, in that it was more of a large glass cube, much like the claw machines. Prominently in the middle of the cube area was a platform with this white longhair cat sitting perfectly still on a platform. In front of it is a wire cage vortex that the gum ball spins down near the end of it's journey. I'm fairly sure that's what the Cat's Hit toy does, has something inside that the cat will bat at to make spin around the inside.



Of course, my boys want me to buy them gum, mostly for the spectacle of seeing it make it's way through. I'm fascinated to see what happens, so I oblige. The ball drops, and as it enters the vortex and begins spinning around the edge rapidly. At this point, the cat begins to move, watching the gum ball spin around. It moves tentatively, then decisively, and bats the gum ball out of it's orbit, at which point it drops to the bottom of the machine, and then out the spout.