dreams

“Oh, this Twinkie thing, it ain’t over yet.”

I woke up pretty early this morning, even if you discount the weird dream that woke me up around 4 a.m. half convinced a pizza delivery was at the door. In my dream, I was searching for cash I didn’t have, and I think my own shout of “I’ll be right there!” may be what woke me up. I can’t say with any degree of confidence that I didn’t actually shout it in real life, too.

But no, it wasn’t just imaginary pizza delivery that got me out of bed early on a Saturday. My father wanted to take the car in for its annual inspection, and right before 8 a.m. on a Saturday is the best time to bring it to our local mechanic, just as he’s opening up shop. There used to a very convenient Saturday morning train between the station a block from his garage and the station a block from our house, but about a year ago the Long Island Railroad discontinued that train. (Which I found out the hard way when a five-minute train ride became a five-minute train, ride plus a twenty-minute walk, one early weekend maybe two years back.) So I drove over in the other car so I could offer him a ride back.

Only, they didn’t have any inspection stickers today. This is not an infrequent problem, but it’s really the only one we’ve ever had with this mechanic, so I guess we can’t complain. This morning we were delayed getting to the garage, first by a car in front of us that seemed convinced green meant stop, then by a car blocking our turn because he was pulled alongside a taxi cab and was chatting to the driver, and then finally by police cruisers blocking the railroad crossing that runs near the shop. We got there just before the owner did…but there was already somebody else waiting…and he got the last of the remaining inspection stickers.

So I guess we’ll try again next weekend.

Beyond that, I spent a lot of the day reading. I finished No Dominion, the second of Charlie Huston‘s “Joe Pitt Casebooks,” which I guess you could describe as hard-edged, vicious vampire noir. I liked it, same as the first book, Already Dead, and it was definitely a quick read. With it (and a novella or two that may or not really count), I’m only up to 25 books for the year so far, out of my hoped-for annual 50. So maybe it’s a good thing that this morning I bought a copy of the third Joe Pitt book, Half the Blood in Brooklyn. Like I said, they’re quick but entertaining reads.

I also read a few stories still kicking around in my slush pile for Kaleidotrope. I’m closing the zine to submissions in a week, for the rest of the year, so I’m trying to get through what’s still sitting in my in box not yet read.

I went for a walk, did a tiny bit of writing, and then had an idea completely out of the blue that makes perfect sense for the story I’m writing…but of course does mean I need to re-write and re-think pretty much everything I’ve put down so far.

I watched a couple episodes of Breaking Bad — which I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to discover — and then this evening Zombieland –which, if not remarkable, was a whole lot of fun.

And that was pretty much my Saturday.

Monday various

  • It’s just a normal Monday here in New York, but it’s apparently Picnic Day in parts of Australia!

    Picnic Day is a public holiday in the Northern Territory of Australia which takes place every year on the first Monday of August. It was originally declared a public holiday to enable Darwin’s railway workers to go to Adelaide River for a picnic.

    I kind of love the specificity of that, the idea that an entire holiday sprung up just because that’s the day these workers had off from work. And come on, how can you not like a holiday called Picnic Day?

  • Justin Bieber has written a memoir. This is just ridiculous on so many levels.
  • Wait. Now Frank Miller worries about looking silly?
  • If Titanic II was intended as a cheap direct-to-video sequel to the James Cameron movie, that would be weird and maybe worth talking about. But since it’s just about a ship called Titanic II — and is really just your run-of-the-mill crappy direct-to-video disaster movie — it’s really not.
  • And finally…

    For the past 20 years, scientists at the Farallones have been documenting more than just puffin nests and shark breeding around the windswept archipelago 27 miles west of the Golden Gate. They’ve been keeping a daily log of their dreams, which tend to be eerily similar.

    Apparently, it’s called “day residue.” [via]

Elevator recall tests

I had some kind of weird dreams last night, starting out in a video arcade-slash-hotel (where I think my wallet was stolen), and then having a conversation of sorts with my grandfather. I think it might have been going to the funeral home last night, which as it happens was the same one where we waked both of my father’s parents in 2005. (Separately, in March and October. And I was shocked, when I went to double-check that against the blog, that it was five whole years ago.) It wasn’t a particularly sad dream, but it was pretty odd.

Meanwhile, they conducted something called “elevator recall tests” at work today, and I have absolutely no idea what that is supposed to mean. They announced it by saying they would be testing the building’s fire alarms, which is something they do, like, every seven seconds where I work, but I guess they changed their minds midway through. Whatever. Aside from that, it was a pretty quiet day at the office. Our e-mail server seems to be clawing its way back to life, and I managed to finish proofing those PowerPoint slides I was working on yesterday.

Pretty much just your typical Tuesday.

I did take this short video on my way home this evening, mostly because the car I was in emptied out and I didn’t feel too weird pointing my camera at the train’s window. This is the view from the dirty windows of the Long Island Railroad, between Merrilon Avenue and Mineloa. Enjoy.