Dreams within dreams within dreams

It is without question the result of me reading too much Lovecraft lately, and possibly eating some unusually sweet foods, but I had the most bizarre dreams last night. Naturally it's hard to piece together even though I've been thinking about it since I woke up, but a mere 10 minutes certainly seems to do a lot to extinguish the the memories of dreams. I'll piece it together as best I can.

Something about a bronze ball that said "Love is Cthulhu and Cthulhu is Love." Innocent enough? I had a new apartment in what I knew to be the second layer of my dream world, where I was continually trying to break through to the mysterious fifth. I had a safe underneath my bunk bed (bunk bed?!) which held some precious item underneath the protection of plastic clothespins. At 3am the sun was out fully and I was sitting under a highway bridge with my friend Gabe, explaining to him that about my mission and that this could be the third step. Then a giant mardi gras parade broke out on the streets above and I slipped from what must have been the third back to the second layer, back into my room with the bunk bed. I kept getting these physically written tickets for noise complaints at strangely inopportune times. The rest of the dream was a struggle to try and maintain the ground I had already broken, but the urge to urinate is the last thing I remember upon waking up. So yea, I'm completely nutso!

In other news I'm getting sent to what could be my favorite school for pseudo-sub duty today: Shiki. It's a little place and is awfully quiet but the staff are so pleasant and I always have fun hanging out there. I'm hoping to get put there next year on my new contract, keeping my fingers crossed! Oh and it's only 15 minutes and one train ride away, which is pretty convenient compared to my average commute.

Winter's coming! But I can't feel a thing, and it isn't because my toes are numb this time! Nope, the weather here is much milder than New York has ever been even in its most subdued of winter seasons; It was in the mid-60s for the better part of this week, now moving down to mid-50s. We've had a few nights hit around 40 last week, but even when winter does come in full effect here I doubt it will be a big deal for me, a well-seasoned polar bear.

This brings me to things I don't miss about home, and how about a shot from the latest Noreaster (North Eastern Storm) that tore up New England but apparently missed NY, even though I've heard reports of some less-than-desirable weather there too:

Ice storms.

To finish off this segment I need to recount a story about when I visited my friend Rich in February of this year, which sure seems like a long time ago now. I was on my way through the windy mountain roads to the Castle de Hartshorn, doing my usual 40mph or so since I knew all the roads by this time. The sun had just set, and it had been raining quite a bit. I likewise hadn't noticed that as the roads gradually wound their way up into the mountains, so too did the temperature just decrease enough to create some incredibly dangerous sheets of black ice (ice so thin it can scantly be seen on pavement). I noticed the hard way, by almost losing control and skidding off the road around a fairly sharp corner! Lucky for me I slid my backwheel into an easy area to pull out of, but with at least 5 miles left to go it was not looking particularly good for me. I figured that continuing to go up was however safter than trying to turn around and go down in this kind of situation, so I continued with extreme caution. As I trucked along slowly the ice got thicker - the thickest in fact that I have probably ever seen on pavement in my entire life, looked like nearly an inch solid. Cars sat idling at the ends of their driveways, waiting for some kind of plow truck to salt the way. I pulled to the side for a minute to try and call Rich, but he didn't answer. Or maybe I didn't have a signal, I don't remember. After a minute I saw a pickup truck heading in the same direction as me, and decided it best to follow at a distance. If I went off the road at least someone would see it!

As our path wove on we continued to cruise at about 5-10mph, the ice not heeding in the slightest, and it seemed strange that this truck was heading in exactly the same direction as me, since Castle de Hartshorn is located in kind of an obscure area even for these mountain roads. Feeling safe enough I tried calling Rich quickly again, and upon his answering I started explaining my situation when he said: "You mean that hasn't been you behind us for the last 20 minutes?"


"Swallow all the planets, the profits of doom! Quarterly projections, the prophets of doom! A colleague, rabbi and a bishop walk into a bar, one says to the other: 'hey now brother we haven't gotten very far'" - Clutch