Terminator v. Planet of the Apes

Well, I definitely chalked up another weird dream last night. It was a cross-over dream that involved Terminator and Planet of the Apes. In the dream gorillas had taken over the world and ruled humanity with an iron fist.

At a distant point in the past a human brain had been grafted onto a gorilla brain, resulting in a being with human like intelligence and no ethical or moral sense, which allowed it's ruthless rise to power. The graft was done with the brain of a woman who was an expert in gorillas, who was developing the process, and then was killed and so her brain was used for the experimental surgery.

As a time traveling assassin my goal was to travel back in time and kill her and insure that her brain was destroyed in the process. Given that the original event had occurred in the distant past the fear was that, rather than solving the problem in the future (the rise of the apes), it was in fact the triggering event - that the conspirators in the future, rather than preventing the future were about to cause it. The key to my success was to be not that I killed the woman, but rather that insured her brain was destroyed and the graft did not take place.

I have no idea how it turned out. The dream ended while we were discussing the ramifications of the actions being plotted and the possibility that we were the cause of the very future we sought to prevent. All in all, it was an interesting dream - a cross between Terminator and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Daily Life: A Lazy Day

I slept in this morning and then proceeded to basically laze my way through the day. Breakfast was a Mexican cheese omelet, coffee, toast and orange juice. Lunch was chicken noodle soup. For dinner I am going to meet my nephew at Chevy's down at Westgate on Saratoga.

I had intended to go to a movie this afternoon - I have been meaning to see "Sunshine Cleaning". I actually left to go to the film, but got sidetracked on the way and ended up running an incidental errand and then heading home. I spent the afternoon reading, sorting through a plastic bin of junk (most of it got thrown away).

I watched a cute little movie I had saved on the DVR called "Just Looking". It was amusing and touching and enjoyable. I don't know if it is as good as "Sunshine Cleaning" is supposed to be, but I haven't got the reference point yet. It is an older film (1999) that I had never heard of before. I happened to come across it one night while I was setting the DVR to catch another movie and recorded it - finally getting around to watching it today.

My plan tonight is pretty simple - dinner with Tom in about forty-five minutes and then circling home to watch the season finale of "Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles".

Elusive Thoughts

There are times when I sit down to write where the thoughts remain elusive. It is as if the thoughts themselves are not yet differentiated among themselves. They are there, they are moving about in their orbits, but they remain half glimpsed under the waters of a vast and still lake, currents, whose existence is only revealed in a drifting leaf on an otherwise undisturbed surface.

I think this evening is an evening similar to one of those still pools. I am enjoying it, sitting here, just watching that stillness. It is cool outside, nearing cold. The apartment is filled with small noises. Sometimes the rush of the heater fills the air with a soft white noise. When the heater falls quiet I can hear the small sounds. The ticking of the clock in the kitchen. The slight noises the freezer makes. The miscellaneous sounds from outside.

Well, I don't want to push the metaphor to far. It has been a nice quiet night that I have wandered through, reading, watching Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles on the DVR, in conversation with a dear friend, eating ham and bean soup, chasing it down with Neopolitan ice cream and a tall glass of water.

Not a bad night for elusive thoughts.

Perhaps a night crafted specifically for elusive thoughts.

Cinnamon Altoids

Cinnamon Altoids. If you haven’t tried them yet I highly recommend them. Like all Altoids they pack quite a punch and I have become semi-addicted to them over the last month.

It is late in the evening here in California and I am sitting in the living room, writing this entry and watching Fringe on Fox. I have been enjoying the series and I hope it lasts for a while. I tend to enjoy those offbeat television shows like Fringe, and I was a huge fan of the X-Files.

I almost tipped over and went to sleep earlier tonight, but in the process of moving around and getting ready to go to bed I kind of woke up. LOL - that almost always amuses me when it happens - except - when you are at the end of a long day and you are tired and you crawl into the warmth of your bed - and your eyes pop open and you are wide awake. Fortunately that is not what happened to me tonight - tonight I just was not as tired as I thought I was.

I am definitely in the mental countdown to vacation - six working days to go! I always hesitate to call my trips to South Dakota in the winter as “vacation”. It is not like I am going there to take the waters or something. Visiting family is always great - but to me, a vacation is someplace nice, preferably in a nice hotel, with cable TV, internet, pay per view, a pool, a spa, a restaurant, a bar, room service and Euro trash. Visiting family is relaxing but it is most decidedly not a nice hotel.

I always have my fingers crossed at this time of year and hope that I am not going to fly into the teeth of an early winter storm, and I do mean teeth! Two years ago I flew back at Thanksgiving (I usually alternate between Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the summer or spring visit tossed in every other year or so) and I flew into one of the worst blizzards in twenty years. That was quite an experience - being chewed by the teeth of that snow storm.

Tonight has been a very pleasant evening. I got home and had a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. The evening was cool and gray and it ached for comfort food. I chased it down with a bowl of chocolate ice cream. I settled in and watched some TV on DVR (I watched last nights Terminator and Heroes). I strummed my guitar for a while. I took a very nice phone call. I took a bath.

I popped online for a bit to read and write some email, popped into Spiritual Insights chat room on AOL to see how the evening was going (quiet), and then popped off to go bed. Seems like there was a lot of popping involved! All in all, I would have to call it a good day.