Write that down!!

 I work up early Sunday morning thinking about the passing of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, and felt the need to make a note of these three things:

1. I’m gonna need some stuff…

2. “What should we call this?”

3. A tribute to Taylor Hawkins…

I don’t remember much of the context of that line of thinking.  I think I was Dave Grohl in a dream or something.  I remember planning this on a warm sunny day at a beach.  That’s about it.

No idea where I was going with that.   And I’m OK with that.  No point of grasping at straws that wouldn’t get spun into gold…

What does it all mean?

Had another rough night last night...

Woke up around 3 AM, and I was having this strange dream where I was trying to write a jingle for a TV commercial. I think it was for some kind of department store, like a Macy's or a JCPenney's. The lyrics for the song were kinda absurd, but the only line I remember is "from oversocks to overclocks" (it was the last line I thought of before I awoke).

I know what overclocking is, I'm a tech geek. But oversocks? Are those bigger socks that go over your normal socks? Are they shoe-like? Am I overthinking this? (Yes, but that's not the point...)

So I got up to get a drink, but all I had was Pepsi. I didn't go buy groceries last night because I didn't feel like it. Some milk really woulda hit the spot... Pepsi did not. Wasn't cold enough and kinda flat (it was in a 2-liter bottle, about half full, opened over the past weekend).

After my less-than-refreshing refreshment, I went back to bed. Then I started thinking about this idea I had for a Beavis and Butt-Head episode where Butt-Head was a contestant on Jeopardy! I wondered what happened to the Word document I was typing up for that...

Anywho, I musta fallen asleep pretty quickly, since I don't remember the music stopping on my iPod alarm clock.

Did I stay asleep? Nope. I think I woke up once or twice more, around 5 and 6 AM. Suck.

And that's all I have to say about that.

This one ranks up there...

I had a very strange dream this morning.

I walk into the youth center of my former hometown of Carrington. About 6 PM, and it's starting to get dark outside. I walk towards the back of the building, and there are about 6-8 people from my past. In the dream, they're all my friends, even though some of them are/were my sworn enemies. And they're from different parts of my past. Kids I grew up with in Carrington, kids I went to high school with on Kwaj, kids I lived in the dorm with at NDSU, you get the point. Mostly female acquaintances, but there was at least one guy there. All dressed in bright blue scrubs, since they are all nurses.

They recently got back to town, after leaving work for the day (for some reason, Carrington is almost a home base for a massive amount of nurses that work in various hospitals within a 100 mile radius, and the youth center is their favorite hangout). They're sitting around, talking, drinking beer. I sit down and ask Carrie (yes, that Carrie) if the "LaMoure crew" (LaMoure is another town in North Dakota) has come back yet. Carrie thinks that they are still an hour away, due to long drive. Then Nick Frye (one of those sworn enemies from my past) says, "Why, what's up?". I respond that I'm looking for a friend, who goes by the alias "Dan Black". Dan Black is really actress-turned-nurse Katherine Heigl. And only Carrie and I know that (at least, out of the people sitting in the youth center). The reason I'm looking for her is that I want to ask her out on a date (I used to have a big crush on her about 5 years ago).

So I sit and debate what to do. Stay and wait for her to show up? Leave and come back later? After going back and forth in my mind about it for about a minute, I decide "Fuck it, I don't want to wait" and start to head outside. As I approach the front exit, I see a group of nurses in maroon, crossing the street and about to walk into the youth center. Katherine is in the group. They must have got back early or something. So I stop her (the rest of the nurses, which includes Jen, my friend Greg's fiance, go inside), and I start talking to Katherine and ask her out.

Now here's where it gets REALLY weird. It's almost like the focus of my dream shifts from the dating storyline to this new one. After I ask Katherine out and she accepts, we hear some loud arguing from the middle of the street, just around the corner of the building. We're curious as to what's happening, but we can't see from our vantage point, so we start walking over (this is the exact moment that the storyline changes). I don't know what they were arguing about, but cool heads prevailed in the end. They shook hands and starting walking up the street together, when an old '50's style convertible pulls up to them. About 3-4 guys and a girl were in it. Two of the guys hop out. Everyone not in the car do this kinda group hug thing, then they all put their arms around each other and walk up the street together. The guy on the left end, which was one of the two original guys arguing in the street, stops, turns around, turns back to his friends (who are about 25 feet up the street from him, continuing to walk up the street), then gets shot in the stomach from an unknown assailant (there were no obvious gunmen in the vicinity; so I'm thinking it was maybe a sniper from across the street or something), and dies.

Then the whole thing starts playing out like a Law & Order episode, complete with Detectives Briscoe and Green interviewing witnesses and whatnot. Right after Briscoe would make his smart-aleck remark before the opening credits, my dream ends and I wake up.

Last night, I had a disturbing dream. But not disturbing in the traditional sense.

It all started when I walked out of Old Chicago on a warm summer afternoon. Across the parking lot, there was Steph, in business attire. Black suit coat and skirt down to the top of her knee. Deep teal button-down blouse. Black heels. And seven months pregnant with a mischievous grin on her face.

Rewind. Steph and I have known each other since freshman year at NDSU, but grew close when she started dragging me to watch her drummer boyfriend's band play in area bars. We must have went out watch them at least 10 times, starting in Nov. '02, before he was arrested for failing to register as a sex offender less than a year later. Shortly after that, she dumped him. Then I thought that it was my opportunity to move in, but I shouldn't have picked that moment when I was drunk in Old Chicago to make my move. We continued to hang out, but mostly at Co-Ed Intramural Hockey. By the end of that school year, Steph wasn't returning any of my calls.

Due to the way that I was treated, I felt the best thing was to cut all ties with her and move on. I caught myself thinking about her sometimes, but resisted all urges to reconnect. And I didn't see her again until our friends Paul and Nikki got married this June.

So, in the dream, Steph was treating me nice. She wanted to get on my good side again. But she didn't want to be friends again for the sake of patching things up. She didn't want me. She wanted my money or possessions or something. She wanted to use me for her own personal gain. Even tried to convince me the child was mine, when we both knew this to be false. I saw right through her. And I still wanted no part of it.

Normally, that'd be the end of it. But here's the disturbing part. Once I thought about that dream at work today, I couldn't stop thinking about it. About how the dream could be some kind of omen. How I was maybe unfair to Steph. How we should maybe go back to being friends. How I might still have feelings for her. How I want to call her. Imagining possible hypothetic situations where I might run into her, like at McDonald's on my lunch break or tonight's NDSU Men's Hockey Game .

And this just seems like a horrible idea. I have to keep talking myself out of doing exactly that. I don't want to go crawling back to her and seem even more pathetic that I already am.

I really wish I had someone to talk to about this. Travis is in Texas now. Vern's in St. Cloud. Paul and Nikki are mutual friends, but I don't know if I can talk to one of them about this without it getting back to Steph and making things worse. Maxwell would laugh at me. I could ask Lyn, but she's busy with her new daughter.

So, I blog. And fret.

As I wrote this, I was listening to U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday", a song with which I will always associate with this dilemma from now on.

What have I been smoking?

I had a really strange dream last night.

I was sitting in the living room of the house I lived in during the mid 80's to early 90's. I was watching TV, and my tiger was lying on the floor close to me. Every once in a while, something would peak his interest, and he'd pop his head up, just like a common household cat. And each time, I looked him straight in the eyes and said "NO...", trying to discourage him from hunting down the object that got his attention. I could see the killer instinct look in his eyes. It scared me a little. But I kept thinking to myself, "Stay firm, don't show him you're afraid, just hold your ground, and he'll respect you and listen." He'd put his head back down and continued lounging around.

After doing this a few times, this person showed up in this strange bear costume. The "bear" sat down on the couch, crawled out of the stomach of the costume, leaving it behind to sit. It was Avril Lavigne. And she was crying. She was upset about something. I don't remember what. She sat down on my lap, perpendicular to my sitting direction. I put my arm around her and started to console her. I wanted her to tell me everything that went wrong. And she did. And it did help her feel better.

Yeah... So, I'm crazy. But I think that's a given at this point.