home with stupid line, originally uploaded by kregarious.

i had a dream last night about a new house for becky and i. it a bigger house, three stories. the first floor had mainly a big livingroom and a kitchen off the back. there was kind of a large staircase in the middle and a large open area because of it. off the front of the house there was a huge wraparound porch, some of which was enclosed and some that was open. the paint was pealing up but it was otherwise gorgeous. on the second floor there was a bathroom in the back left corner and bedrooms in the other corners, again the staircase was in the middle. the bedroom that we chose for ours wasn’t exactly the largest, it was in the other rear corner, but it had a sort of secret back stairway that went down to the kitchen. there was a side door off the kitchen that led to a three season porch where the washer and dryer were and the backyard that was fenced in. The third floor had sloped ceilings and four rooms, each to a corner again. the wood floors were bright and beautiful up here unlike the rest of the house that needed a bunch of work. it was dusty and empty up here though because we hadn’t decided quite what to do with it yet. i wanted to have our offices up here in the bright area but we needed to pick which rooms. i liked them all so i was going to let becky choose first.

in my dream, my friends, dave and laura, were over for a visit. they already had their little boy. (btw, laura is still pregnant and i don’t know if they’re having a boy or a girl yet). we had two dogs but i don’t know enough about dogs to say what kind even. they looked kind of like marmaduke but smaller and i had to shut the floor to ceiling shutters on the porch so they wouldn’t get outside. it was a bummer really because it would have been nice to leave them and the big french doors to the house open for the breeze.

becky and i went for a walk in the neighborhood, which at first seemed kind of run down and bad. i thought to myself that it might be hard to resell the place if we ever wanted to move. there was a big huge church right across the street from our house. not a nice old church with lots of character though. a newer kind of ugly church. still, a church is usually a good thing to have around. . . seems to keep a safer neighborhood. however, as we walked and met the neighbors we found out that the area was really on the rise. people were fixing up their houses and fighting crime. there was even a community garden that one of our neighbors showed us. he pointed out a plot that was ours.

usually when i have moving dreams it means that there is some change coming in my life. so, maybe our lives are just getting larger, more spacious, but it’s going to take a little work to spruce things up a bit. a new coat of pain here, some cleaning there and it’ll be a bright big new house.

so i was driving around a metropolitan area looking for a parking spot. i’m not sure why i was there, i’ve forgotten that part. i decided to park in a lot. it was the kind under a large building. i drove around looking for a spot. i remember that everything seemed very white and very bright. i finally found one but before i could get out of my car there was a loud rumble noise and the building kind of collapsed. actually, the building above me collapsed somewhere. i was fine but above me there was pandemonium. i’m not sure how i knew, i just did. but i figured i had to get out of there. i found a number of little doors that were like escape hatches and open. little metal doors and inside i could see ladders going up. but i didn’t want to go in those because i was afraid of getting locked in one for some reason. so i kept wandering.

i passed a few people but they didn’t seem all that concerned. in fact, they were just going about their daily business. one guy, a cook i think, i passed and asked how to get out, he pointed to a door that led me to a stairwell. i went up to the second floor (not sure why i did that) and came out near a large concrete and stone ramp that led out to the front courtyard. it was all busted up and there were arms and legs sticking out of the cracks. i saw one arm twitching. there were people down at the bottom of the ramp so i started to climb down to them. but the weird thing was, these people too were just going about their lives as if nothing had happened. they were reading the paper, buying coffee from the little star bucks cafe, no one seemed to notice or care the disaster scene.

so i went for a walk around the block and was kind of crying uncontrollably. i felt very numb and didn’t know what to think about the people that were obviously now dead. i was kind of running at this time and i ended up being kind of at the same pace as these three guys (i think they were all actors from that show freaks and geeks) who were also crying and sad because of a friend of theirs had died. they were the only people who seemed to care.

i remember thinking that i have to remember where i actually parked my car so that i could get it later. how odd, eh?

i realized i was near an apartment of mine. i don’t know why i had a random apartment that i didn’t live in but i did and it was close. i figured i should go there and call my mother to let her know i wasn’t dead. the apt was a part of an old big house. as i walked up the front steps i heard a plane and thought it sounded loud. i turned to my left and a full sized passenger plane flew right into the ground maybe half a mile away, maybe less. i saw the big fire ball and lept to the ground to avoid the shock-wave. it never came. i’m not sure if it never came because i woke up about then or maybe i was too far away, i dunno.

i went to an apt once off the elevator. the woman who answered was named heather but i don’t know how i knew her. it wasn’t well. i had met her in passing or something and that’s why i was there. i figured that the people who were chasing me probably didn’t know that i knew her. maybe i was sitting next to her on the bus or plane or something. she let me in and offered me food. i think she didn’t have anything really so she was making me a bunch of stuff she had left over, i think there was macaroni and cheese in there somewhere.

before i could eat, there was a knock at the door. i ran to it and though i couldn’t see anyone in the hall through the peephole, i knew that the people who were looking for me had tracked me down and would kill us. i turned the deadbolt to give us a few seconds extra and said, “we have to go now!” and i climbed out on to the balcony, which is a little weird because i’m afraid of heights and like i said, at this point it was 200 or 500 stories up. my thoughts were to climb down a floor to try to escape.

now here i remembered that heather was some sort of professional mountain climber or sky diver or something. she was still inside and i yelled, “come on, we have to go now!” she came out onto the balcony and was in this all black suit thing and told me to trip the release on the um. . . well i don’t really know what to call it. it was some sort of an escape thing. i guess for a fire escape maybe. it was telescoping black steel thing that veered away from the building as it telescoped out. she held on to me as we held on to the end of the steel thing. as it telescoped out (and it did it for something like 10 – 20 stories maybe), it felt like we were in free fall. at the end, since it veered out from the building, it launched us away and by this time, heather had clipped me to her somehow and she pulled the cord to her parachute. it was one of those military types that you can maneuver thought instead of being kind of rectangular it was more ovular.

as we flew/floated away from the building into the darkness of night and the clouds, i remember feeling very relieved because we were safe for the time being at least.

2. looks like kodak will be selling printers now that are meant to take on HP. the deal is that they’ll sell the printers for a reasonable cost but also (and here’s the important part) sell the ink for a reasonable price, just $9.99 for a a black cartridge. i just bought ink for my wife’s hp the other day and it cost $65 dollars. i haven’t been keeping track but i think we buy ink for that printer every two or three months. that’s a freakin lot of money over time. we do have a kodak printer at home but it’s a little photo printer that uses weird cartridges for printing. i can say that it does print nice prints though and they come out to abput $0.40 a print, which is just slightly more than i was paying for online prints (i know you can find them cheaper but i was concerned with quality). anyway, this is a good thing and i hope that kodak’s move with bring the industry inline. i like the idea of paying for the equipment, not the “luxury” of continuing to use it.

last night i dreamt about the training session that i’m going to today.¬† i think i was¬† trying to find somewhere to eat before the session but couldn’t. and i did end up late. but the instructor wasn’t there. it was in a messy room with couches and there wasn’t any real order to the thing. there were no manuals and when the instructor did show up he started a webcast (since it’s about web based training) but also put on a tv right next to it showing “the office” which was louder so we couldn’t hear the webcast, though it looked to be kind of worthless anyway. all anyone wanted to talk about was “the office.” then we were at lunch but i couldn’t find people where i was supposed to meet them. and everyone who worked in the restaurant was off at a rice tasting party. weird, huh?

i went to school with this guy named neal obermeyer that used to keep a dream journal online. the link is to a site showcasing his comics. he’s a graphic artist among other things. i’m not sure, but i think he’s also been or is a dj and a hotel manager. interesting guy. anyway, he is the only person i know that has much weirder dreams that i do, just about every night.

well, here’s to hoping that the class is organized and we have manuals.

well one woman who was wearing big crazy-ass headphones got my attention for a question and asked, ” could you talk like a teacher instead of just some guy off the street?” everyone in the class laughed at me. i was about to say that she could better understand and hear me if she’d take off her damn headphones but then i thought they might be some sort of a hearing aid so i said, “i can certainly try, i apologize if it was hard to understand me.” then i grabbed the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes like it pained me and said, “that is without a doubt the rudest question i have ever been asked, however i will try to accomodate you.” i was feeling pretty pissed but trying not to show it for the half of the class that was listening.

i’d say at this point a full one third of the class was being rude, one half was still listening and wanted to be there and one sixth was merely being polite. the third that was being rude, asked a lot of snide questions and finally kind of broke off and were in the back of the class talking amongst themselves and working on computers back there. i was still teaching, remember, or trying to. i stopped class and moved to the back of the room so i was talking more directly to the troublesome students and said, “ok, we’re going to take a break. those of you in the back of the room, if you feel this isn’t a good use of your time, you don’t need to come back. it’s totally fine if you want to leave, you won’t hurt my feelings but we need everyone in the room to be focused on the class. i certainly don’t want to waste anyone’s time so if you have other things you would prefer to do, feel free to leave. for the rest of you, anyone who wants to keep working and see what we can get out of this application, i’ll see you in ten minutes.”

it was kind of a weird dream. i’ve never had a class that unruly but there have been a few times i’ve come close to making a speech like that. still, it felt good in the dream to just tell those people to leave the room.

then the scene kind of flipped and we were in a big auditorium for a show. i was with dave and i’m not sure who else and we were there to see ELO. i was telling someone about the time dave and i went to see ELO II*, though in not the same annoying manner as the guy mentioned above, and how awesome it was that were finally getting to see the real ELO. they had this small stage and the sound wasn’t very loud and i thought, i hope they’re just going to build and this is the intro. they had like vinyl posters of the band and stuff hanging behind the stage and as they built into the intro, the guitarist was using a remote and pointing at each screen. when he pointed, each screen kind of shook on motors. it was totally low budget, not light show even, which considering who it was was kind of stupid. kind of funny and the crowd ate it up and cheered.

that’s pretty much all i remember just now.

*the time we did see ELO II was pretty sweet. it was at a bar in some st paul suburb and i remember that the bar was much like the bar in Blues Brothers minus the chicken wire.

next i was wondering around the dorm trying to find a crapper that wasn’t occupied or really disgusting. it proved to be a fruitless search.

i went back to the “dorm room” that was an apt and not only was tom there but his old roomate randy was there as well. they were making dinner and i was really happy cuz i was hungry.

there was something else in there about walking up and down a street that the dorm room/apt was on and seeing all these really cool old three story houses but i can’t remember it. it was one of those dreams where the timing is all weird but it somehow makes sense at the time.