Author: Michael Seidel

Science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. Singer (sorry, no shows) & nudist (in my home). Beer, cat, cheese, coffee, pie and wine friend. Left IBM and Silicon Valley for the southern Oregon life but I miss the ocean. We're too far inland. Gotta move.

A Driving Dream

My wife, SIL, and I needed to take a trip. I procured a car for us, paying cash for it. It just happens that it looked just like the 1968 Camaro RS I owned in RL in 1975, complete with stripes and black vinyl top, a fun, reliable, and sporty car. In the dream, I didn’t know that it was like my Camaro of my youth because we were youths.

I don’t know why we were traveling by car, other than going from point A to B. Tucker, a current RL cat, was traveling with us. My SIL and I took turns driving, although I did most of it. At one point while I was driving, I suddenly couldn’t control the speed. I was telling them that in the car as I tried braking, kicking the accelerator, and then trying to take the car, an automatic, out of gear, attempting to put it into neutral. When I couldn’t move the center console shifter, I concluded, “I think we’ve lost the transmission.”

I managed to get the car stopped. We got out to talk and stretch our legs. My wife was inattentive and left the car door open. Tucker immediately leaped out. I caught him and then scolded her for leaving the door open and letting Tucker out. She dismissed me and what had happened, which irked me. We decided to go on. I thought for a moment that she was going to drive, which I didn’t want for some reason. I then drove again.

We arrived at a hotel and in a dream blink, we were checked in and up in our room. I think it was in Chicago. It was a large, lavish suite, which included a butler of sorts who was also pressing us to eat or drink, telling us each time, “It’s free.” I didn’t think it was free, but included in the room. At one point, we discussed going out to dinner. The butler started making suggestions about where to go. My SIL was reading about our room during the conversation and asked, “Do you know what floor we’re on?” As my wife replied, “No,” SIL said, “We’re on the 668th floor.”

I went over to the huge windows and looked out. Seeing how high we were, I gasped. “Wow. Why are we so high?”

Dream end.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Today is June 10, 2023, a Saturday in this reality. Blame Pope Gregory XIII and the Gregorian calendar for that one. Although, since he’s just behind a mod for leap years and based his calendar on the Julian calendar, you can extend blame to Julius Ceasar. Of course, the seven-day week can be traced to the Babylonians even further back but diēs Sāturnī comes back to the Romans, although the Germans take some blame for popularizing and standardizing the name. Really, let’s just throw it on all the ancients and go from there.

We’re into summing, the season that follows sprimmer just before summer. Whereas sprummer is primarily springish with summery accents, sprimmer is summery with springish accents. It’s a subtle thing, a difference in blowing winds, overall temperatures, and expectations. 67 F and sunny now, with long, hazy white clouds drifting like a navy armada across the sky, Ashlandia is expecting a high somewhere in the low 80s today, with no rain or thunderstorms being mentioned in anyone’s forecast.

Oh, but the housefloofs, Papi and Tucker, are delighted with sprimmer. Both leave via the pet door at night, coming and going a bit until Tucker plants himself in front of said door and sleeps. That curtails Papi’s activity until he goads me awake with repeated beating on the slider’s screen door. Oh, that Tucker. That passive-aggressive Tucker.

When they’re out in the day, they’re asleep. I enjoy checking on them in their secret locations. Tucker haunts the front porch almost exclusively. He moves around according to temperatures and sunshine. He’ll often be found half in sun, half in shadow. Papi moves around. One favorite spot is on the house’s side under the dining room’s bay window, among the vinca, but morning finds him under the hawthorn in the back, below the center living room window. Other times of day, he’ll relocate to the front porch or the bushes under the office window.

Today’s music is “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult, 1976. I quite enjoy the song, with its layering of guitars and vocals and the intriguing lyrics and the story being told. But The Neurons planted it into today’s morning mental music stream because in a dream last night, I told another person, “Don’t fear the reaper.” Unlike several other dreams, that’s almost all which is recalled from that dream, but it was an astonishing moment.

Stay pos and enjoy your diēs Sāturnī . I think I’ll start with a beverage. Coffee, perhaps. Yes, coffee. Okay, ready. One, two, three, go. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Running Dream

First, my wife and I were in a department store, one like the late K-Mart. We were some variations of our real selves. She was shopping and I was just hanging around, hovering, waiting. As I meandered, hands in pockets, I spotted four young woman. Nothing remarkable about them, they were short young adults. Each was different from clothing to hair, except they were all dusky, with dark hair, and all seemed happy. I gathered they were planning some prank. Something overheard made me think of them as security, as in law enforcement, which baffled me because nothing in their appearance, age, or demeanor declared, Security!

So I kept wandering, watching them, trying to understand what they were plotting. Each produced a toy gun. One noted my presence to the others. They talked and laughed about me — I could discern this although I didn’t know what was being said — and then, guns raised, they walked toward me and started shooting. Their ammo were small eraser like pellets. They didn’t hurt at all. Nonetheless, I hunkered down, turning my face away and covering my head with my arms and hands to protect myself.

Laughing, they walked away and I stood. My wife came up and asked what was going on. I explained it all, finding her one of the many pellets on the ground and showing it to her. She declared that I should turn them in. I didn’t want to, thinking them harmless. My wife returned to her shopping. I watched the girls more as they separated, then decided to leave. As I was leaving the store, going down a small set of steps to the door, one of the girls shoot me a few times in the back and laughed. I shook my head, dismissing her.

The dream shifted. Someone unspecified and unknown asked me if I was interested in some event. Details were sketchy. Bored, I agreed. I then met up with a young man, no one from RL, I knew him. He was tanned, with a thatch of thick, black hair, a wide, toothy white grin, short and pudgy. We went to catch transportation to the event. The running shoes I wore were new and hurt my feet. They just felt too narrow, pinching the sides of my feet.

We got on an old school bus with many others, all males, and were taken to a field, a short journey. There I learned that we were supposed to be taking part in a running event. I was annoyed because I didn’t know that’s what we were going to do. If I’d known, I would have worn different shoes. But I was stuck with us. Waiting, many of us took our shoes off. We were all wondering why we were waiting. I realized that most of the others were in military uniforms, variations of desert style camouflage. Unshaven, they were in the US Army. I held myself away from them because I as ex Air Force, but didn’t say anything.

I wanted to get running and get it done. Several others were expressing the same thing. My young friend was saying no, wait. I kept asking why, what are you waiting for. While he would explain, I gathered he was waiting for other friends, which annoyed me. Finding my shoes, I announced I was going to start running.

My shoes fit much better. I was surprised how comfortable they were and then realized, that was because they weren’t my shoes. Taking them off, I found my shoes and fiddled with them, pushing out the sides and loosening the strings to make them more comfortable. That worked to a moderate degree.

Feeling like the shoes would work for a distance, I announced that I was going to start running. Others were saying the same. A few began jogging. I decided I was going to run the entire route and took off running fast. As I ran, I heard others talking about how fast I was running. That prompted me to run faster and harder. I vowed that I was going to run fast the entire way. Everyone was going to be amazed by how fast I ran.

Then I was off, by myself, running.

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Friday’s Theme Music

It’s raining again, a light falling, bringing up SuperTramp’s song from fifty years ago. Today is Jun 9, 2023. Friday. Last night’s thunderstorms skirting us. We could hear them like someone shouting from far away. “What?” You should back. “I don’t know what you’re saying.” You strain to hear and then just shake your head and walk away, muttering, “I can’t understand them.”

As for rain last night, it spit on us a bit a few times, but left us alone. Temperature topped 84 F locally, for the record.

Of course, yesterday started with a blue sky. Blue is as rare today as snow on a summer lawn. Clouds of different colors, depths and textures, ranging from flat white with a tincture of gray to billowing, curly, unkempt clouds edgy with dark pockets, have blanketed the sky. It’s 61 F now and the weather gurus tell us 79 will be the high, and there will be rain and thunderstorms later today. As always with weather, we’ll see.

Several songs inhabit the morning mental scream. “Wipe Out”. “Sweat Pea”. The Neurons are mixing weather, writing, and dream inputs. But I went with the song which came up after the dream sequences finished, “Fly Like An Eagle” by The Steve Miller Band, 1976.

Hope you stay pos and enjoy a most excellent Friday. I’m enjoying a most excellent cup of coffee. Establishes my baseline for the day. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Ecfloofsiastical

Ecfloofsiastical (floofinition) – Of or relating to animals.

In use: “Although laws protecting animals have been established for several decades, the net has been a catalyst for more ecfloofsiastical laws, with growing insistence that these laws also be staunchly enforced.”

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Unsolicited

We come to the matter of shaving. I’ve been doing it since I was fifteen years old. Being in the military for twenty years meant that I shaved my face every duty day and never went more than one day without shaving.

I used to try new ideas whenever they came on the scene, trying to achieve that closer, smoother, more comfortable shave they were forever promising. Little helped. I started with throwaway razors. Then there were double blades. Triple blades. A little lubricating strip. Swivel head. All okay but nothing that made headlines.

Meanwhile, prices, lordy how the prices went up. Used to buy a five pack for about three dollars. Now I was buying thirteen razors — Gillette somethings with three or four blades — for almost thirty dollars. At Costco, where low prices rule.

Walking into Costco last week, I saw a display for Harry’s razors. I’d seen them advertised at different places on the net and TV. And yeah, they interested me. These were on sale, thirteen blades for thirteen dollars. Since I was running low on razors, I decided to give them a shot but I wasn’t expecting anything shave-changing.

Well, first, they were a little weirdly shaped, enough of a difference to make me wonder about how they were going to go over my face. Had five blades, but yawn, who doesn’t? Ditto, lubricating strip. Well, I used it and holy cow, it was so much more comfortable. And yeah, it did give me a closer shave.

I stared at it in my hand. What witchcraft was this?

Whatever it was, I recommend trying them. They impressed a jaded old grizzly like me. Might impress you, too.

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Twins

After leaving the garage, he looked down the street. There, in the middle, was a doe with her twin fawns. Appearing almost brand new, they were adorable. He called his wife out so she could see. Watching together as the doe and her fawns came up the street — mama walking slow, the fawns galloping in spurts — they wondered if she was the same doe who’d been hanging around their yard.

After the family disappeared behind the neighbor’s house across the street, he left in his car. Arriving at a stop light, he saw a mother with her twins on a bicycle. Wearing helmets, blond curls sticking out, the twins looked like they were about two years old, tiny perfect human replicas.

It was a good day for twins. It felt like the world was making a statement. As often with the world’s statements, he just wasn’t certain what the statement was.

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Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts

After taking some meds, he learned again that if some is good, more isn’t always better. The rule of moderation was proven again. The question for everyone, with everything, was always, what constitutes moderation? Difficulty comes because it changes with age, health, and circumstances. Re-consideration and adjustments are often required.

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