I don't know if I'd call them sweet...

I just woke up from a dream and I also remember one from earlier this night/morning. Since it's 5 minutes before my alarm is supposed to go off I figured I'd type some of it down.

The first dream concerned me watching video clips on TV or the internet... kind of a comedy channel. It may have started as if it were on the internet but it ended with it on DirecTV. At any rate the last clip we saw was an old Abbot and Costello movie. The scene was in a bar. It may have been a western or 30's mob movie or a Mexican revolution kind of thing. I think mostly it was western without but with some anachronisms. At any rate, they were celebrating defeating the bad guys. There was some singing and at some point some of the people watching it with me laughed at some of the antics. Then the bad guys (or the relatives of those who were defeated) came in and shot everyone dead... including the sheriff and his deputy who tried to shoot their way in. There was this feeble, thin old guy who was struggling to arm his rifle by pumping it like a single pump BB gun rifle. He finally got it pumped and a hand reached in (we were looking from a first person perspective... remember we were watching this and not participating) grabbed his gun, and shot him with it. Some how it'd become an automatic rifle. So basically this comedy movie ended with the bad guys killing everyone. I thought it was a real downer of an ending for a comedy but also found it darkly funny for that reason. I would have liked to seen the rest of it.

The other big dream I had (and I think there were several other dreams or parts of these dreams that don't relate to the main story) started with a girl. A young girl went to school in the cave under a giant tree. It was an ordinary middle school except for the location. She was a bit of a nerd and got picked on some. I can't remember the reason but at some point she became sad and all the other kids were leaving. The tree (apparently an old, male tree) asked her what was wrong and she answered him. His response was to grow his roots over the entrances and exits trapping all the kids and employees inside. They continued like this for weeks with the tree basically playing god. No one could enter or leave the school so it had to become a bit of a culture of its own. I think maybe the tree let the girl out the first day and asked her to bring some stuff back. The parents weren't happy, but I guess no one but the local authorities believed them. No efforts were made to rescue the kids for some reason. Apparently communications weren't cut and somehow the tree had email because he was reported as requesting that emails be sent to someone else because it was spending all his time answering emails instead of being able to go dormant, whither and die. As I said there were other scenes not related to the storyline. At some point most of the kids were in one area and the tree was talking to the girl he apparently liked enough to do this to all the kids. He asked about the videos he requested that she bring. She evaded the question somehow. He announced to everyone that the video on Ethiopia would be shown. I think she said something to him, correcting him. At some point he started to rant. He said something about Galileo; presumably something about him being wrong. She said something to refute the nonsense the old tree was spewing and he grabbed her with a root (What else would he grab her with? He was a tree) and lifted her in the air. He was going to punish her in some way not nice I'm sure. By this point we know the tree is insane (as if there was any doubt before) and not the kindly old gent we initially thought he was. [yeah, poor sentence, so what.] This girl, who was once the timid misfit now rallied the kids to fight against and defeat the tree that held them captive. The loner became the leader. I don't know if the kids actually prevailed. I think they did. I saw a line of them facing the roots kind of sneering at them. I'm guessing they attacked them eventually, killing the tree and securing their freedom.

The story would make more sense if the kids were mice. I can imagine a children's book based on it then.

Now it's 38 minutes after my alarm went off. I have to get moving if I'm going to make my goal of being on the road to MD to PA by 8am. That's why I don't write down dreams. It takes too long. I left out stuff too. :)

Oh, I also had a dream where you bought a DVD player, I bought a large, flat panel TV and we sat cozily on the couch watching a video. Weird, huh?

breathing

! ?

deadline met

The package was dropped off at UPS with 5 minutes to spare.

I'm glad that's over.

work today is a pain

Frustrations sat fatly in the coach class airplane seat of the morning.

Post lunch, post phone chat with brown eyed, soft haired lady sees things moving more smoothly with hope that the unwanted co-traveler is moving to another seat.

This bird might land on time after. In the mean time it's a waiting game, to rhyme with cliché.

Rock on sunshine.

Thank you, God.

Late again

Another late night. What kept me so long? I'm not entirely sure. Things just slow down after a while. I should be sleeping now. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The good news

With all the money issues I've been having lately...

I've been informed that I can expect payment for the Winterfest work that I did on my own time in the next paycheck. It's a sizable chunk of money and though it won't cover the money I had to spend on my car, it'll cover most of it.

an odd duck

"'The other day we had a bird strike. We sent the sample to the DNA lab and it came back as rabbit. How do you explain to the FAA that we had a rabbit strike at 1,800 feet?'"

From an article in Wired: Bird Plus Plane Equals Snarge

I told you it was going to be an expensive month.

I hope the payment of a freelance gig I did comes in soon.

I got my car inspected today ($15) and a vibration problem checked out ($25). The only thing keeping it from passing is two of the tires, but the other two are pretty close to failing as well. That's not a surprise.

So... I'll need four new tires (~$68 each). The vibration issue is due to the front wheel bearings going bad. I was hoping it was a tire out of balance but I knew it could be a bearing issue. (2x$60 and 2x$20 in parts). It's a labor intensive process to switch out the bearing assemblies.

Due to the wear on the tires, they're recommending a four tire alignment.

All in all the estimate is over $900.

The good news is that I have another freelance gig that's been given the go ahead will cover the costs of car repair.

multitasking

I'm sitting in a portable chair in my driveway typing this blog entry. My digital camera is on a tripod pointed at the sky and connected to the laptop through a usb cable. It's taking pictures as the sun sets and the sky grows dark. The pictures are going straight to the computer's hard drive. Both the camera and the laptop are running off battery power.

If all goes well I'll have a cool time lapse shot of the sky fading to night in slightly higher than high definition resolution.

I wonder if I can change the camera settings between shots.

hmm...

+3 yrs and banking blunder bygones

Wow, I just noticed that I started this blog over 3 years ago.

I didn't think, back then, that it'd be instrumental in attracting a woman to be my girlfriend. Well, maybe it was in the back of my mind to some degree. Oh well. If only for that effect, I'm glad I started it :)

I'm past the emotions of the overdrawn account incidents. I should probably write to the bank and complain some more. The system is flawed in such a way that it hurt me (so to speak) more than I think it should've. Oh well.

simple self portrait

I posed and took a picture of myself with the camera in my phone. I then took it into Photoshop and traced over it. It's shown actual size here but due to the way I made it I can make it as large as I want.

cha ching grrr

When I checked my account this morning a couple of transactions from Monday and Tuesday had posted.... along with a $68 overdraft fee.

I went to the bank to try to minimize the damage and change my savings account into an "overdraft protection" savings account. The lady there did remove one of the two overdraft fees from yesterday. I don't know why she could only remove one and not both or two of the ones from Tuesday.

I had forgotten about the trip to Taco Bell on Monday and the $40s of groceries I bought Tuesday. Even with the money I tried to have transfered on Wednesday (the 14th) I still would have been in an overdraft situation for those two items.

The good news is that the lunch I had yesterday didn't incur a $34 fee. I DID get a $34 refund for one of the transactions that went through yesterday. Also, I won't be hit with a bounced check fee from the feds.

As for the $102 overdraft fee for transactions that went through Tuesday, I'm still paying them apparently. BB&T processes the largest item first which of course is so rent checks etc get highest priority. The downside of that is that I was hit with 3 overdraft fees even though I had enough money to cover 2 of them. Practically speaking, in this instance there wasn't enough money in the account to cover the large check no matter what order the transactions were processed. The upshot of it is I was hit with the maximum fees possible for the 3 transactions.

This week the system is against me.

cha-ching a no go

Well the euphoria of a narrowly averted diverted disaster has shifted to something rather upsetting. The check that I thought hadn't cleared yesterday did. The amount I transfered wasn't enough to cover the check + weekend transactions + overdraft fee. Because BBandT's online banking doesn't show the day's transactions at the end of the day I experienced a false hope and now, I fear, an additional overdraft fee because I used my check card to pay for lunch.

I think I'll go to the bank tomorrow to see if I can have some of the fees removed. I think $102 for an overdraft fee is too high. It's probably for the three transactions that were posted that day. If the time of day a transaction is posted doesn't matter then I shouldn't be charged for all three transactions because only the big one couldn't be covered by the amount in there. If they don't see it my way I'll probably take my money elsewhere.

cha ching

It's a good thing that I checked my bank account last night. If my estimated tax payent check were to be cashed yesterday or today I would be overdrawn. I transfered some out of savings so I'm covered. I get paid in a couple of days. Hopefully it'll be the check that includes the extra hours I worked on the Winterfest Promo. That'd be sweet. When I get that I can make another large car payment. Not $2,000 large, but sizeable still... though I may need it for other non-fixed expenses.

road work

Heavy roller smoothing out the new pavement in front of the house around 11 o'clock at night.

There's nothing quite like the drone of heavy machinery rumbling along, beeping while backing up and pounding the pavement into submission to help one fall asleep at night. At times the whole house shakes. I woke up more than once last night due to the road work going on out there. The road didn't look like it was in bad condition before. A smooth new road is always nice. Of course, it takes a while to get to that point, not as long as you might expect, but time nonetheless.

The last two days have seen uneven pavement across the four lanes of the road out front. I think that contributed to an accident a couple of houses down. I heard a little screeching of tire, the sound of (I presume) tires going across a few textures of pavement and then a thud. It wasn't incredibly loud or distinct but it was enough to get me up looking around. I didn't bother going outside to really see the damage but I did manage to see a car parked awkwardly partially on the street and partially off the side from an upstairs window. We live a block away from the emergency vehicle station so their response time was quite good in this instance.

Josh Fisher

One of my nephews made it in the newspaper.

http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/17010

"Friday night against Conestoga Valley, Fisher caught five passes for 102 yards, including four for touchdowns, in Garden Spot’s 41-21 Section 2 victory."

"Those were the first four TDs of Fisher’s varsity career."

how not to respond

Does this dress make me look fat?

No, dear. You make the dress look fat.

Why did I have so much trouble getting up this morning?
Oh yeah, I stayed up late.

http://makemedance.com

web advertising that is entertaining.

click on [make me dance] in the top menu bar of the site
click on a character (I suggest the overweight guy)
drag a song from the list to the phone and watch him dance

for even more fun, you can upload a picture of your face and watch you dance.

for even more fun upload a picture of your friend and watch them dance ;)

...on spiritual life support.

I was going to write out some thoughts on the hurricane aftermath. The morning has brought distractions that have sucked the desire to write that piece right out of me. Well, maybe I'll get to it later. Maybe I won't.

YOJOE.COM | G.I.Joe on Television

remants

once thrift store fodder now sacred relics
memories interwoven with thread and buttons
the weight and pull of sentiment fix items in space
what force can move them?
none without incurring the toll of tears