I mentioned this in the weblog, but I don't know if everyone reads it -- I created a Frappr! Map where you can put a virtual "pin" to indicate your location, and leave your name and a message. It's kind of cool to see where everyone is from, and see pictures, so if you can, please go add your pin!
I've had some kind of interesting dreams lately. And while I know that almost no one is interested in someone else's dreams, the one Saturday night had kind of an interesting twist.
On Sunday I went out to my parents' house for lunch. I ended up spending the whole day there--they had birthday gifts for me, one of those wonderful big stone "heads" for the garden (I'll take a picture of it once I'm allowed to get up--Dinah is lying on both of my arms while I type), a clear glass candy jar shaped like a snowman, a set of cats-in-baskets salt and pepper shakers, and a gorgeous copper bee thing for the garden--and we had a lot to talk about, so I stayed from lunch and on into and through dinner.
For some reason, while we were eating dinner, I was reminded of my dream. I dreamt that I was living in an apartment with three other women, but I was still married to Bob, who apparently didn't live there. Bob was mad at me, so he was going to go on a date with one of the other women. I asked him how he knew her, thinking that he had set up a blind date after having met her online, but he said no, that he'd known her for a long time. I said, "Well, I'm not going to tell you to have a good time!"
I was laughing about that as I was telling my folks, and I said, "Oh, and there was a Christmas tree suspended from the ceiling!" My mom said, "What?" And I said, yeah, there was a Christmas tree that someone had hung from the ceiling. We had high ceilings in that apartment.
My mom said, "I saw that on television last night!" She had been watching some kind of decorating program or something, and they showed a Christmas tree that had been suspended from the ceiling. She said it was suspended point-down, and the one in my dream was trunk down, but it seems pretty clear to me that I got a psychic message from her, that she had been thinking about a silly Christmas tree suspended from the ceiling, and I ended up dreaming about it. I mean, why else?
Later, for some reason we were talking about my Uncle James--my mother's brother--who was in the Navy in World War II, and who was on the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier which was sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz in October, 1942. My mom remembered that before they had heard about the ship sinking, she and her mother had gone into town to shop and have lunch--a rare treat, living in the country--and to see a palm reader who was visiting the town.
My grandmother, who I am named for, had her palm read, and the palm reader said, "You have a son in the service," and she said that "something terrible" had happened, but that her son was safe. And he was, he had been rescued. The article I linked to said:
A small bomber attack twenty minutes later did no damage, but as Hornet's list increased to 18 degrees, it was clear she was doomed. Captain Mason ordered "abandon ship", and over the next several hours the destroyers and cruisers were kept busy picking up the men - most of whom were in remarkably high spirits - and fending off the small attacks which continued through the afternoon, scoring two more hits on the battered ship.
I think my grandmother, and my mom, and my sisters are I are all a bit psychic. Well, even my father--I remember him telling me about a dream that he had about my brother being somewhere odd, and it turning out that my brother was actually there. My grandmother had several prophetic dreams that I know about. Every time something like this happens, it makes me wonder how many more of my dreams are about actual events, but that they just don't seem important enough to mention, so I never know. Or I don't mention them to the right people.
This morning a friend of mine mentioned someone he knew who had been asked to take care of a cat while its owner was out of town, but she totally blew it off, and said something like, oh, the cat's fine! It can take care of itself.
My dream this morning was that I was on vacation and had asked someone to take care of Doña, but the person I had asked to watch her showed up without her, and wasn't concerned about it at all. I had to rush around and get dressed and run off to see if I could find her, and I was worried that, even if I could find her, how could I keep her safe?
It's interesting how these "psychic" dreams seem to happen all at once.
Bob's in the kitchen cooking, and I'm in here polishing my toenails and staying out of his way. We have a small kitchen, and there isn't room for two of us in there. I did the grocery shopping--he was waiting for vegetables and herbs that I was buying so he could make beef stew to take on a hunting trip tomorrow--and I was hungry when I got home, but I grabbed a banana and a jar of peanut butter and came in here with my snack while he started cutting things up.
I think once he gets the stew finished and it's cooking, I'm going to make Reubens for dinner. We had them one night last week and they were really good, and I still have some sauerkraut left that we might as well use up. We're also having Caesar salad--does that go with Reubens? Probably not.
I had a good day today. I did all my usual stuff, went to the library and the post office and the bank, I went to the gym and worked out, and I spent an inordinate amount of time at Target. I love Target, although I have to say I was disappointed to read this story about Target supporting its pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.
Liora wrote and asked about which iBook I bought; it's this one, the smallest (12") one. I had always wanted this one rather than the larger one--smaller=lighter/cuter--but also I've recently found out that the larger screen isn't as clear as the small one. It's larger size-wise, but not larger as far as resolution, so I'm very glad I made the decision I did.
When I had looked at them earlier, it cost considerably more (around $300 more) to get the dual drive, i.e., CD burner + DVD player, which is the main reason that I hadn't bought one before. $1,000 was pretty much my limit, so when I saw that the new models had larger hard drives (40GB), more memory (512 MB), faster processors (1.33 GHz), and the dual drive, all for a few cents under $1,000, I decided to go ahead and get it. It's a business expense, after all, so I can sort of justify it that way, also getting it before the end of the year made sense.
And Amazon was offering a $100 rebate on it. All in all, I'm very pleased with it and I think I made a great decision. Oh, and it comes wireless out of the box now, no additional Airport card, so all I had to do was turn it on, and I was immediately online using the wireless network that we already had installed at home for Bob (and at work--I'm wireless all the time on my G4 at work).
Later . . .
With all the cooking, Bob wasn't hungry, but I was, so he made me a Reuben and a bowl of soup, and now he's back in the kitchen cooking. It's awfully nice having my own personal chef.
I ordered a new camera today.
I had been wanting one for awhile, but there were so many other things that I wanted more, and I really didn't feel like I could justify it. I had the new camera phone, which satisfied my urge to have a tiny camera to carry around, although the pictures aren't that great. But I'm all about immediate gratification, and I'll settle for a little less quality.
I took a few photos at Misty's wedding, but I wasn't really happy with them--they were dark and kind of blurry, and although Misty pointed out that it was dark, I was still disappointed.
And I'd stopped, pretty much, carrying my digital camera even on vacation, because it's so big and heavy . . . so Bob and I talked about it, and we did some research (which basically consisted of asking our friends which model they had), and decided to get the Canon Powershot SD200. That's the one that Barb has, and John has one, and several other people I know have the same brand, although I'm not sure of the exact model. But this one was affordable, $189 at Amazon. I also got 512 MB of Flash memory for it, since everyone we asked about them said to be sure to get more memory, since the memory card that comes with it holds about ten pictures.
I ordered it today, and decided to opt for the free shipping, since I absolutely HATE to pay for shipping. It will probably be here in about a week, I imagine. So I'll have it for vacation (Disney World the first week of December), and Christmas, and Mexico in February. Bob says it will be our Christmas gift to each other.
[I just checked the link to the camera page, and I see that they've reduced the price another ten bucks since I bought it earlier today! And they've got my order locked ("Shipping Soon"), so I can't delete it and reorder it at the lower price. Now I'm really glad I didn't pay for shipping!]
After I ordered the iBook from Amazon a week or so ago, when I got home Bob said that there was a message on the answering machine from Discover--I'd used my Discover card to pay for the online purchase. The message sounded very ominous. It said, "This is a message about your Discover Card account. If you do not return this call, you may not be able to make future purchases on your Discover Card."
So I called, of course, not having any idea what that was all about, except that I was pretty certain that there wasn't any problem with the card, that it had plenty of credit on it, and the order had gone through fine.
Someone answered, and I gave them my number, and they started asking me all kinds of questions, like what was Bob's Social Security number, and where had he been living when he got the Social Security number, and what was his mother's maiden name, and how old was he, etc., etc. I said, "I did just make a large purchase with the card, if that's what this is all about," and she made me confirm the amount, and she read off the last couple of things I'd bought with it before that.
I guess it was a security thing. After I got off the phone, Bob asked me how much the computer had cost, and I said it was just over $1,000. He said something like, "That's nothing!" and I said, well, yeah, it's not nothing, but it's not like I'd charged a $20,000 car on it or something.
Security is good, obviously, and I guess I'm grateful that someone is keeping an eye on things, but it's annoying to be treated like a criminal when you buy something.
Dan is currently working on-site at a client office, so he isn't in our office much lately. He came in late this afternoon to pass some work on to me that I'll be doing tomorrow, and I was going to catch him up on what I'd been doing since we'd last talked. I said, "I got an iBook!" and he said he already knew--that he'd read it in my journal. And he said he'd laughed at my account of getting lost going home the other night.
Actually, it was him who made me think about getting on 635 and finally making it home--he lives basically out in the same direction that I do, and he said that as he's driving downtown, if it looks like traffic is slowing down considerably on I-35, he'll jump onto 635 and go to work that way. I'm still not altogether sure how that works, but I did remember that when I was driving on the unfamiliar highways, and it allowed me to find my way home.
I'm basically a creature of habit. I'm not very good at remembering how to get places. I can follow directions, and I can read a map, but I don't pay attention when I'm not driving, and if, for instance, someone asked me how to get to Bennett Spring, in spite of having been there maybe 50 times, I honestly have no idea. If I had to drive there, I would get out a map and plot a route, and it would look familiar to me as I drove it, of course, but I couldn't tell you how to get there on my own.
Sometimes if I have to drive somewhere unfamiliar, I'll write the directions down so that I can reverse them and get home afterwards. Which reminds me of something that happened a couple of weeks ago, before Misty's wedding. Did I mention that I was in the wedding? I was. I read The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I was very nervous about it--especially when I found out I was going to have to use a wireless microphone--but it all worked out okay.
But it also meant that I was involved in the wedding rehearsal. It was in Olathe, at a park, and I had directions provided by Misty. I hope Misty won't be offended when I say that her directions bordered on the surreal. I was talking to David earlier that day, and said that I had to drive somewhere that I was unfamiliar with, and he asked if I had directions. I said, well, yes, but they left a bit to be desired. I don't have them in front of me, so I'm paraphrasing, but it was like, "go south on I-35 to 151st Street, then go west until you see a sign with a quail on it; if you see Target, you've gone to far. Once you pass the sign with the quail on it, turn right on the street with no name, and look for a house with a blue door . . ." Okay, now that I wrote that down, I remembered that those weren't the directions to the rehearsal, those were the directions to Misty's parents' house, where they were having a pre-rehearsal pumpking carving party, and I wasn't going to be able to get away from work early enough to go to that, so the directions were moot.
But anyway, I related my directions, and he laughed, and said, well, just be sure you pay attention and are able to reverse them to get back home, and I said, "Oh, you mean like: leave the house with the blue door and go back down the street with no name, and when you see the back of the sign with the quail on the front . . . "
