Cruising the Cerebral Galaxy

I had to park on the street Sunday night. I can understand the parking lot being full on, say, a Friday evening, but Sunday at Midnight? No. I just got off work. All I wanted was to park and a shower and sleep. People had even parked in the spaces with the telephone pole in front of them that you can't park in. I have no idea how they got in or out of these spaces with out monster truckinig over the surrounding cars. Due to the lack of broken glass and police inquiries I assume they figured it out.

We started selling milkshakes at work today. We hand make them with ice cream and flavored syrup. They're good, but there's a knack to mixing them unmessily. I spent the day smelling like strawberry syrup.

I went to my dad's this past Saturday to visit (and do laundry. I'm not taking advantage. He yells at me if I don't bring any. Serious.). My car had a hiccup on the way up. Thankfully it was just in need of some coolant, and the out of control temperature was not due to some more expensive problem. While I was there we talked of many things. There was even a phone conference with my Grandma to confirm some genealogical info we were discussing. My dad, as his custom, offered me numerous items from his cupboards. "They had chocolate chips on sale for 92 cents or something for a bag. A two pound bag! Do you want to take some with you?" So I guess I'm making cookies now.

The company my dad works for makes machines for other companies (stretch-wrappers, conveyors, stacking robots, etc), so sometimes these companies give them test product to run on the machines. And sometimes they get to keep the product which my dad shares around. At Easter he was giving out boxes of Betty Crocker instant potatoes. This weekend he was offering me lemonade mix. He also holds up a box of grape kool-aid mix and says, "Vodka. Purple jesuses." I said, "I know what a purple jesus is, Dad."

I had some new info to add to my +1 Binder of Genealogy from my trip to my dad's. I ended up going over again some of the paper's my grandmother had given me a while back. I realized I had more info on a couple individuals than I thought. After a little more work I can now say my family tree now covers ten generations* and goes back about 330 years**.

I slept a lot last night, but the night before I only had about an hour and a half of sleep. I was having a really weird dream this morning. I don't remember all of it (and it feels like I forgot some important part), but I do remember there were these paintings. And I had painted them, and they had magical properties, or at least the Dream People believed they did. Then I had to kick the crap out of this leopard that was going to attack. This pissed off his tiger buddy, who did not believe I had magical properties***. Run-away! Run-away!

*Eleven generations now that I think about it; my cousin has had a kid.

**Oh, and I have to work on verifying a lot of the info, but it's exciting nonetheless.

***And this all wasn't even the weird part.

Unseasonably Thunderous

I meant to go directly to bed when I came home last night. Instead I found myself making a trip to the store for some groceries, and then cooking a meal. As I was sitting, enjoying my piping hot ravioli my apartment was suddenly filled with the sound of thunder. I was surprised, it is February after all. I was unable to drag myself off to bed as the thunder proved not to be isolated, but a whole storm of lightning. It's disconcerting really, the rain and thunder is far more like April then February. There's a bit of thunder and lightning playing up tonight as well, though not as much as last night.

Speaking of shopping, why is it that you never seem to run out of just one thing? For example, I never need just toothpaste. It will be more like toothpaste, toothbrush, shampoo, conditioner, toleit paper all at once. I ask because I find myself needing to purchase more socks, t-shirts, underpants and maybe a pair of jeans. I've discovered this fact as I've been cleaning and clearing out my closets and such. I also have to ask, is 24 pairs of shoes too many? Five years ago I had probably a quarter as many, so I wonder if I might have gotten out of control since discovering the joys of cute shoes.

I've slowly been picking through my posessions trying to weed things out because of the moving this year. I'm trying to apply a critical eye to my hoard, but I think I may need to enlist someone as my personal sounding board/voice of reason. One of my major weaknesses is my books. I've managed to trim a few volumes (Grisham? I may read The Pelican Brief again, but the rest can go). I'm trying to pull out things I don't think I'll want to read again. Who will go? Who will stay? Your vote counts! Then, of course, there's the pile of stuff that I have yet to read...

Speaking of reading, I just mooched five Hiaasen books. I read Stormy Weather recently and liked it enough to come back for seconds. I think I should wait to start in on them until I finish a couple of the other books I'm reading. I try to keep it at no more than five at a time.



I know that a lot of people find talking about dreams boring. Still, I seem to be having really long dreams lately, like 2 or 3 hours long (I swear! They're very complicated!). Anybody else ever have this happen? Or am I just weird?