Dale Miller

Today was a bit odd. Choir rehearsal last night was good, but that meant I got home late. This morning I really didn’t want to get out of bed. But I got ready (late) and got to work (also late) and was settling in for the day when the sleet started. As I heard of state offices closing and more bad weather on the way, I decided that I didn’t need to stay at work all that badly. It made much more sense to take some vacation and head on home, so that’s what I did. I hadn’t even made it home when the phone started ringing. I handled problems for two people while driving, and two more once I arrived home. Then, with nothing better to do, I crawled in bed and slept much of the afternoon. So now my schedule is completely confused, and I find myself trying to decide whether to get ready for bed or get ready to read for several hours.  My current thought is to start “Prince of the Blood” (Raymond Feist) and stay up too late again.

I think this is a fair explanation for overeating. Okay, I don’t feel quite the angst expressed in Sinfest, but that’s part of my excuse for not losing weight.

A recurring element in many of my dreams is the men’s room. Sometimes I find myself looking for one, and can’t find one in service, other times it’s odd. Last night I dreamed I walked into a men’s room and there were three women sitting in front of A/V carts each containing a television and a VCR.  Each of the VCRs was different, and it appeared that they were dubbing a show from Betacam-SP to S-VHS and Hi8. Yes, this inside the men’s room. While I was there, several other men and women came in to use the facilities, ignoring the trio with electronics.

Ignoring the absurdity of this particular instance, this dream does point out an interesting facet of our culture. It is probable that in many cases a woman could walk into a men’s room, use whatever was necessary and then walk out, without anyone becoming overly upset. I have even seen it happen on occasion. However, the reverse is certainly not true. I’ve never truly understood why elimination should be segregated by gender, but then, I don’t agree with many cultural mores.

I was awakened from my dream by systems at work paging me, so I never learned how the tapes turned out.

Tonight is one of those nights that I just want to give up. I’m not altogether sure why. It’s not anything in particular, yet it’s everything. I feel like I’m just going through the motions of life without actually living.

My dance class is going well, I enjoy the instructor, and the class is populated with a number of attractive women. Unfortunately, those women are many years younger than me. While that’s not a problem from my point of view, I suspect it would be from theirs. As such, I’m unlikely to ask any of them out, figuring that they would at best say no and at worst look upon me as a creepy old guy for the rest of the term. It’s also likely that they already have boyfriends or husbands.

Choir is much the same way. Tonight’s rehearsal was much occupied with listening rather than singing, which gave me far too much time to both girl-watch and brood. I came away rather more depressed than usual. It didn’t help that in trying to verify whether someone had successfully submitted data to the member database, I wiped out the entire contents of the member table. That certainly didn’t make my evening any better.

I realize I should act my age, and try to make friends with people near in age to myself, but I don’t want to. People my age are boring. Having now made a blanket statement, I see no reason to consider myself an exception to that generalization.

Yes, I’m in rather a depressed mood this evening. You may safely ignore this post.

I generally don’t care for being awakened by feline altercations, but this morning was an exception. About 4:00 a.m., I awoke to the sound of Fiona and Ashley engaging in a free-for-all. This was good, since it meant that Fiona was back in the house. Being a cat, she just acted like nothing was wrong and didn’t care at all that I had been worried about her.

My morning started by oversleeping. Okay, I did it to myself. I had trouble getting to sleep last night, and knew I would be worthless if I got up at 5:00, so I turned off the alarm and went to sleep. Waking at around 7:00 felt good, but I was supposed to be at work by then. Oops. In any case, I got ready, got to work, and was busy from the moment I walked in the door until the moment I left — around 6:00 p.m. The worst was yet to come. I arrived home to find no sign of Fiona. I didn’t see her this morning, but that’s not altogether unusual. However, she’s almost always here in the evenings. I’m worried about her. I’ve gone outside and called, but no Fiona. This makes me sad.

This morning I woke up about 20 minutes before my alarm went off. I put my head back on the pillow, and then decided to be virtuous and get up early. I got up and started a shower, and… woke up again, seven minutes before the alarm went off. I have never before dreamed that I was simply going about my normal morning routine. How boring can I get?

The second time I wasn’t feeling particularly virtuous, and stayed in bed until the alarm went off.

Today i got around to scanning all the books I’ve read since October 27th into LibraryThing. I’ve noticed an alarming trend recently. I don’t seem to be able to find many new books that I really want to read. I’ve begun branching out from my usual science fiction and fantasy into mystery and occasionally romance, but I’m still having problems. The current crop of fantasy seems to be very heavy on contemporary settings with vampires, zombies, demons and ghosts. That’s okay occasionally, but not as a constant fare. My favorite fantasy in this group was Neil Gaiman’s “Stardust”.

I need to explore some new authors. Anyone have any recommendations?

Here are the books I’ve read in the past 2-1/2 months:

My dreams last night involved various work situations, all with a bit of a twist. My favorite was that the Computing Services conference room had been replaced with a a large oval hot tub, with the conference table still in the middle. Everyone changed into swimsuits for the meeting.

I went to work yesterday feeling less than wonderful. As the day went on, I felt even worse. Nothing horrible, just a headache, general malaise sort of feeling. This morning, it was even worse, with a bit of fever, so I decided to stay home. The dreams I have when I go back to sleep in the mornings, particularly with a fever, can be rather strange. This morning’s were no exception to the strangeness, but they were rather pleasant in content.

This afternoon finds me still feeling bad, but at least up and around somewhat. I was sitting in my recliner, messing about on the computer, and was joined by both Ashley and Oscar. Realizing that I had my camera within reach, I managed to get a couple of (not very good) pictures of “bookend kitties”.

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