Tag: change

The Lost Tables Dream

This was obviously a dream about change. Anxiety. Confusion.

My wife and I were young people. We had a habit of driving to work together. We were taking turns driving. One would drive one day, the other would drive the next day. The dream showed this happening. Different cars for her and me; my car was a black sports car. Don’t know any details of it. Less is known of her car.

Although always going to the same place, part of our daily drive process was to consult on our phone about where we were going. That’s because the path changed every day. So whoever wasn’t driving was tasked with looking up the destination on the map and give driving instructions.

The dream showed this. I drove, she drove, I drove, she drove, etc. She looked up the directions, I looked them up, she looked them up, I looked them up.

Traffic was busy each day but the weather was good.

Our daily destination was a parking lot by a restaurant. We’d park near there and go on our separate ways to work. After numerous days of this, I was driving. My wife was looking up the instructions. But she was struggling with a signal and I, meanwhile, had made some guesses and found the way. She announced, “Got it,” right as we arrived at the restaurant.

But as I pulled up, I noticed that it was completely different. All of its tables were gone. The usually thriving place was completely empty.

Stunned, I told my wife, “Look. Something happened.” She was busy getting out of the car and heading to work so I repeated myself several times, further elaborating, “There’s no one there. The tables are gone. The place is empty.”

She left for work. I walked over to the area and then walked through the empty place, wondering how it had all changed, seemingly overnight. What I wondered most was, where are all the tables? They had so many tables. There was no sign that any tables had ever been there. As I stood there looking, I saw others hurryng by in the sunshine.

None gave the place a second look.

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Sunda’s Theme Music

Mood: coldasfrickinice

Winter left frosty white prints all over the valley this morning. Well, on the house’s western side. Out back, it’s green and almost springlike in appearance, until you step out and the 21 degrees F slaps your face.

This is Sunda, January 19, 2025. A freezing fog advisory is in effect but the crazy frog has vacated my area. Sunshine is instead smooching everything, causing stretches of vapor clouds to rise in the air as the frost hastens its escape with the sun’s urging. Gonna be 50 today, ‘they’ say. Well, yesterday didn’t see us get over 39 on my home’s system or my friend’s system. But today seems like it has more of a chance, if the scene outside of blue sky and sunshine doesn’t change when I look away.

News: TikTok is going dark today under the government’s orders. Three hostages were released in Gaza. Kansas City is advancing to the AFC championship game and a lot of fans seem displeased about it. The Washington Commanders shocked the NFC’s number one side, the Detroit Lions, with an almost flawless game. Another new wildfire was reported in southern California while the Palisades fire still burns, although the latter is 52 percent contained. WaPo is circulating rumors that the new administration wants to replace DeJoy as the nation’s Postmaster General. Just an aside to that, Democrats and many Republicans revile DeJoy for what he’s done to the USPS but he’s kissed the ring and threw lots of cash at Trump, so I’m surprised to hear it being discussed.

One news story that disgusted me is about Jefferson Griffin. The Republican ran for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat in 2024 and lost. Now he’s asking the state to throw out 5500 military absentee ballots. His reasoning is that they don’t provide a photo ID with their vote. Their vote in the mail. The same voting method that this character used in 2019 and 2020, BTW. Oh, and he’s only challenging these absentee ballots in heavily-leaning counties. This feels like it transcends hypocrisy. Feels like it’s absolutely venal in its naked desperation and hunger to win at any cost. If others’ rights get screwed in the process, well, that’s just too bad for them.

Musically, The Neurons have an Al Stewart song playing in the morning mental music stream. “On the Border” was released in 1977 and has a folk-rock flavor, which is flock in my vocabulary. (Folk rock, right? Flock.) There is some jazz flavoring to it as well. I have no specific reason for its inhabitance of the morning mental music stream. I was just tidying up in the kitchen some after feeding the beasts when I realized it was in my head. But these lines may have been the inspiration:

Late last night the rain was knocking on my window
I moved across the darkened room and in the lampglow
I thought I saw down in the street the spirit of the century
Telling us that we’re all standing on the border

h/t to Genius.com

And that is because many of us simply feel like the nation’s spirit underwent a significant change when PINO-elect Trump won in 2024. Particulars include a substantial number of Americans showing vast disinterest or apathy by not voting and enough supporting a convicted felon to give the U.S. a new low as a first: a convict POTUS. As billionaires and the less wealthy line up to get on his good side and laws are proposed or passed to erase decades to centuries of change, it feel likes we’re standing on the border of becoming somthing other than the founders’ original intentions. I’ve said all of this before. Now it feels like I’m just cryin’ in my coffee.

Coffee and I have brokered another treaty for the day and I have commenced sipping out of the mug. Here’s the tune. Hope you enjoy the melody and have a terrific Sunda. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Mood: Youngishfeelin’

I checked the outside. Sunshine and blue sky. No clouds in any direction. This Friday, 1/20/2024, seemed like a spring day. 37 F around my place, it’s 43 in another part of town, and 51 in the field down by the ScienceWorks. Today’s high will be 49, I’m told. Your experience in this town might be different. I made a mental note to see if we’d received any snow in Ashlandia this winter and compare it to the historic records.

Alexa greeted me with news of four notifications. Rain was expected tonight at 9 PM, a dense fog warning had been issued for Ashlandia, a stagnant air advisory was out for the region, and Felon Trump will not get any punishments for his conviction. Alexa asked me if I wanted to hear more about that last story. “No, I don’t want a reminder of how our justice system and election process failed our democracy,” I replied. “I don’t understand your answer,” Alexa answered. “Many don’t,” I said. “Many don’t.”

Today’s song is “Used to Be Young” by Miley Cyrus from 2023. Pretty good summary of the shifts many of us experience, I heard it on the car radio several days ago. The Neurons keep singing snatches of it since until it ended up dominating my morning mental music stream (Trademark old).

Reflecting on a dream I had, I shouldn’t have been too surprised about the song being in the MMMS. The dream was about being younger, too. Did the music influence the dream, or was it the other way? Or were both responding to some other wishing well inside me. Yeah, chuckle.

Here’s the music. Coffee and I are friendly again. Time to rock through another day. Hope yours is a good one.

Oh, look, fog has arrived and hides the sun. Don’t worry, I think it’s gonna change. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

Feeling a hungim, I went out and picked up breakfasts burritos — egg, cheese, and potatoes — from our local Market of Choice. A ‘hungim’ is a ‘hungry whim’ for the uninformed.

I’m just trying to keep the language moving forward, or movfor, if you will. Hey, come on, how do you think they emerged with words like ‘yesterday’ in the past?

Now I’m back to drinking my blafee. Yes, black coffee. Cheers

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Dad’s 92nd birthday is Wednesday. Mom’s birthday is tomorrow. I’ll be calling her tomorrow, so I called Dad today, as I’ll be pretty busy Wed. with planned surgery.

Dad and I had one of the best chats I recall having with him. We chatted about aging, financing, and Mom. Very satisfying.

Dad has always been a level guy, staying mellow, keeping things in the moment. He’s never gotten too worked up over any of life’s tumbles and twists. And he’s been through his share.

He’s in okay health. Had some stents put into his coronary arteries some years ago. Suffers some COPD. Went through some edema issues twice. Now he’s on a low sodium diet. A cane is employed to walk around. He sometimes needs a walker.

But we laughed a lot about these things which happen to us as we get older.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

Back in the day…

Such a broad, specific expression. Back in the day for me is specific to a time period for me and others of my age, but when you’re a different age, well, back in the day is a different time.

Quick sidebar: while the youngest generations take up the expression, or will back in the day fade away?

Well, back in the day, it was easy to keep up on the news. Read a newspaper, turn on one of the big three network’s nightly news offering, and watch the local news.

Complications arose with the information age explosion and the digital age tsunami. Suddenly, I’m clicking on a story and there’s ten thousand variations on it. What was said, who said it, and what does it mean? You click and read and click, chasing the crumbs to learn what’s right.

Tough work these days, keeping up on truth and facts, and dodging lies and misinformation.

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The Car & Suit Dream

Dreamed I came into a windfall of cash. The amount was never specified but I bought a new Porsche 718 spyder and paid cash.

Next, I purchased a Dior pewter gray suit. Though off the rack, it fit me perfectly. Oh, and this was a young thirtyish me. Along with the shirt, I bought new shirt, tie, and shoes. Wearing these things, I drove the car around. In one odd sign, however, I seemed larger than the car.

I stopped and exited the car to chat with some people I loosely knew. They admired my suit, guessing, “New?” Yes, I proudly answered. I realized I had the price tags attached. I fretted about my wife finding out how much I paid for the suit. I believed it was thousands but I couldn’t read the price tags. Each time I tried, something imposed to prevent that from happening.

I decided that I wanted to remove the price tags. I needed a knife or small snips. Looked for both, roaming around, but found neither. Did receive many more compliments about how the suit looked on me.

Getting back into the car to leave, I found that while the cockpit was as expected, the rest of the car was expanded to be an open-air bus filled with people. Didn’t surprise me. We were leaving a museum. I saw a woman who I wanted to intercept walking toward another vehicle exit. I decided I would circle around and chat with her.

“I just have one stop to make,” I told the rest. “Then we’ll be on our way and I’ll drop you off at your destination.”

I was driving down the road while making that announcement. Lovely day of blue sky, sunshine, and clouds. The roads were spacious and well-maintained, concrete with curbs, abutting parks, plazas, and museums. I circled right and went under an overpass and came back around to where I was.

That surprised me. I’d expected there to be a turn off that would take me over to the other road. I tried again — three more times in all — and met the same result. With the fourth time, my passengers said, “Oh, no, not again.

Asking for their indulgence, I gave it one more effort, but this time shifting over by one road which I’d noticed. That worked, taking me to where I wanted to be.

Dream end.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: waitinitis

Tuesday has slid in safe on October 8, 2024. Autmer continues holding the skies. Temp now feels like it’s 65 F but it’s only 56 F. What kind of madness is the weather doing to us, making the temperature feel so different from its actual temp? Makes me suspicious of the weather. Next thing you know, it’ll be raining but will feel like snow. Or it’ll be snowing or it’ll feel like sun.

The high will reach for the upper seventies and maybe get to the low eighties. Depends on its reach. Who knows what it’ll feel like? I think it’ll feel pretty good, no matter what the final temp. That range is ideal to me. Sky is again solidly blue. Yellow and red leaves are drifting from trees. The mood is shifting toward fall. People are decorating their houses for Halloween. So really get into it, but we’re more circumspect.

The price of candy is shocking us. My wife pointed it out at BiMart the other day: 5 pounds of candy for almost $40. Wow! Costco has 30 candy bars on sale for $32. Like, those are crazy prices to the boy who first began buying candy bars as a nickel treat. A nickel now won’t get you within smelling distance of the wrapper.

But this is change’s nature. Older friends talk in amazed tones about how the housing prices have changed. One was offered the chance to buy 6 acres for $50 grand decades ago. The deal outraged him. “Are you crazy?” he asked his friend. “I thought you were giving me a deal.”

“That is a deal,” the friend replied.

My buddy eventually bought a decade later for much, much more. Divided into quarter acre lots, those lots were now going $20 to $50 grand each. Things change, and prices are part of it.

Since I’m on my box and ranting, used to be that I got a haircut for one dollar. One dollar! Now I exit $25 to $30 lighter.

Housing, of course, is center stage in the price debate. Out here, ‘affordable housing’ is jumping over $200 to $300 K. Solution: built more housing. Problem: land. Water. Infrastructure. Rising costs of building more getting pushed further up by the rising need to build more.

Like many, I’m watching Hurricane Milton ploughing toward Florida. Was a cat 5 but has weakened to a 4 and may be a 3 before it hits, thank goodness. Fingers crossed.

Forgot to mention the SOU Pride Parade which took place the other day. I was kept from attending by other plans but I hear it went well. Here’s a link to the Ashland.news coverage with some pix. We also didn’t attend the OSF Gala but we heard from friends who didn’t attend that it was fun and raised $750 K for the festival’s 100 year celebration coming up.

We’re down to 28 days until election day. 28 days. We could make a movie about it. Call it “28 Days” or “28 Days Later”.

Thinking of that gap from here to there and the waiting, news, campaigning and hyperbole which must be endured encouraged The Neurons to fire up Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. “The Waiting” from 1981 is rolling through the morning mental music stream (Trademark delayed). Wikipedia’s entry quotes Petty as being inspired by something Janis Jopin said.

Frontman Tom Petty explained that the song’s title was inspired by a quote from fellow musician Janis Joplin, who once said of touring, “I love being onstage and everything else is just waiting.”[4] He recalled:

That’s where I think I got it from … [Roger] McGuinn swears that he said it to me. Maybe he did. I don’t think so. I think I got it from the Janis Joplin quote. That’s where it stuck in my mind. I don’t think she said, ‘The waiting is the hardest part,’ but it was something to that effect: ‘Everything else is just waiting.’ And so that’s where that came from.

Got me to thinking…imagine Tom Petty and Janis Joplin performing live together. Would that have been cool or what?

Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has cast its magic in me. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Play the taps. It’s that time. Another tee shirt is being retired.

The apparel in focus is a black tee shirt with Michael Schumacher in an F1 Ferrari in the rain at Spa. Bought in 1996. Not so much that I’m a Ferrari or Schumacher fan — I was rooting for Damon Hill in the Williams — but I liked the shirt’s colors and action. Its style.

I wore it for playing racquetball. Used to play three or four times a week back in the you know. Then it became part of casual Friday work clothes while toiling for start-ups. Spent the last ten years as yard work uniform and then sleepwear.

I’ve gotten my use out of it.

One underarm yawns with a huge hole. Otherwise fine. The hole appalls my wife, who is sensitive about worn clothing.

I won’t throw the tee away. Sentimental attachment. It’ll join a few other aged worn tees in my bottom drawer. Let ’em toss ’em after the flames feast on my body.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: Postsunday

Proceeded through the morning essentials. Complained to Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) about the stench of some of his essential. Both floofs begged release from the house to the rear yard. I headed out with them.

September 30. 2024. Monday. Cold autumn morning. Even the rising solar orb gave a little shiver. Cats sought sunshine arrangements for grooming. I launched back into the house, thinking, cold now but will cap at the mid to upper 80s F today. No clouds effing with today’s blue, either.

This is it. September’s last shout. Like other months this year, September of this year will be able to brag to historians about disasters, politics, and violence. History will give it a glance and reply, more of the same but intensifying. Probably ask, “Couldn’t the people see the direction they were heading? Did they not give a fuck to try to change it?” We’ll defensively huddle together and reply, “Well, it’s complicated.” If MAGAs and the GOP ever emerge from their holes of irresponsibility and weirdness and wash the cult off, will they be able to understand how they contributed?

The Neurons offer a slice of song from the South Pacific musical: “Gonna wash that cult right out of my hair and send it on its way. Get the picture?” I thank them for the mild snicker they induce.

Moving on to music, thoughts about waiting and patience impell The Neurons to move on from “Bali Hair” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark sinking) because they kept on going with South Pacific tunes (once they’re on something) to a 2003 Audioslave song. The melancholy rock song, “Like A Stone”, is about waiting for the afterlife, patiently at that, where they’ll hope to be reconnected with someone. Doesn’t purely translate to today’s situation ‘cept for that idea of patiently waiting for some of this mess of 2024 to clear up, patiently waiting, as it’s sung, like a stone.

Be positive, patient, and strong. Test neggy and lean forward. Vote blue. Coffee has washed down the breakfast components. Here’s the music part of the post. Cheers

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