Back when I started this blog, I had time on my hands. Not so much, these days.

If I could save time in a bottle

the first thing that I’d like to do

is to save every day

’till eternity passes away

just to spend them right now

So, let’s see what I can dredge up of the past, tonight:

Three weekends ago, Brian decided that a price drop (and threat of reduced backwards compatibility) was reason enough to pick up a PS3 (or PSTRIPLE, as we’ve somewhat-fondly begun calling the system). On the way to Salem (he also jumped on a sweet bundle, thus the need for a road trip), we encountered a traffic accident that stopped I-5 dead. Forever.

To pass the time, Brian tuned in and cranked up 880 AM: mariachi music.

We even considered writing 880 AM – CRANK IT! on a piece of cardboard and trying to get others to do the same.

It took that long.

And then, on the way home, Brian’s car died just short of our exit. As in “pull over to the edge of the interstate and Praise Jebus that Brent has AAA.”

Brian has begun referring to this as The Curse of the Triple. I prefer to curse his car.

…

Been dancing, but with dance practice being held from 6–8pm and my tendency to work until (or past…) six, I haven’t been getting much dancing in. Been trying to write a backup program that I can trust*; that’s been somewhat slow going. Not the least of my concerns is with my own ability to program—should I really entrust my data to my own creation?

[*NEWS FLASH: Mac backup programs suck, especially if you like to do incremental backups. Also, the Mac is in a bad way when it comes to decent email programs. I will pay money for these things!]

…

Since I’ve never really been on the fansub wagon, I just recently got my first taste of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni—and I’m digging it. Start off with a hint of what’s to come, and then return to small-town charm/humor and let things grow from there… it’s like the B-grade horror flicks I used to watch, except with some actual quality. Quality B-grade horror flicks (would that make them A-grade horror flicks?) are still a quick way to my heart, it seems.

Of course, Brian fell asleep** when I played it for him and Nate. Still, killer lolis get my vote.

[**For a few seconds. Due to overwork and undersleep, he claims, and not as a reflection on the quality of the show. I like to sporadically remind him about it.]

I almost never dream. I also (generally) have a junky memory, make terrible conversation, and am usually the least creative person in the room. My pet theory is that all of these are actually related, as symptoms of my brain lacking in one of two ways: either it sucks at creating pathways between related neurons, or it sucks at actually sending electricity from one neuron to related ones. Either way, firing one neuron doesn’t generally get a rise out of any related neurons, meaning that reliving memories, remembering memories, making conversational leaps from one topic to the next, and putting things together in new ways is a bit more difficult for me.

Think about this: I live with The Awkward Pause every day of my life.

I mention this not to complain, but to highlight the significance of what I’m about to say next: I had three dreams last night.

The first one is lost to the mists of the ages (you might say that I forgot it…), but the other two stuck with me. One featured some sort of bacteria or virus that killed people using the figurative death of a thousand cuts—so many tiny cuts that you bled to death. (I suppose that infection would kill before blood loss, in reality—but reality need not apply!) It was horrifying to watch the entire world fall to this disease; it was terrifying to hole up in my house and hope that death didn’t visit me.

I’d describe it as a combination of Stephen King’s The Stand and the “guilt” virus from the DS/Wii game, Trauma Center. Maybe a bit of the “empty London” scene from 28 Days Later, too.

The other dream had me waking up (in a ground-floor apartment) to see an arab man peeking in my window. When he saw that I was awake, he ran off. Thinking that odd, but otherwise writing it off, I continued with my day… only to learn, later, that a fatwa calling for my death had been issued.

Talk about a downer.

Needless to say, dream-me was paranoid for the rest of my dream-day. Nothing happened, though, beyond me sweating bullets.

(And, no, I have no idea what dream-me did to deserve that.)

While walking out of 7-Eleven yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of holding the door open for a guy in his 50s wearing my new favorite t-shirt. It was a basic black shirt* with the following text printed on it:

cleverly disguised as a responsible adult

[*Now that I reflect on it, wearing a black shirt this week is pretty psychotic—we’re in the middle of a nasty (for us) heat wave…]

…

Holy smokes. I had heard this decade referred to as the noughts (though we spelled it naughts, perhaps incorrectly) back in the late ’90s. What I didn’t put together, until I read it today**, is that we could also refer to this decade as the noughties. [**Yes, that’s the kind of thing I read for “fun.” I need to get out more.]

Proof of how old I am: when I was yearbook editor, we made the call to use the term “naughts” in the yearbook based on the word of exactly one writer on staff—without any verification that it was actually correct. While we had internet access back then, it was mostly used for email and idle entertainment. (In this golden age, there was no spam (!); the closest you would get would be your friends being asses.) There was no Wikipedia to do any sort of spot-check. There was no Google. My favorite search engine, back then, was AltaVista.

I sound old to myself.

I’m still blown away at how the internet has changed from a curiosity into a major facet of everyday life in under a decade. I have a hard time remembering(/imagining) life without it, now, but it wasn’t that long ago…