Random thoughts, bulleted

• As I was waking this morning, the folks on my bedside radio were talking about the upcoming Alamo Bowl game, to be held just down the street from my hotel on 2nd January. Even though the teams scheduled to play in that game haven’t been officially announced yet, the early word is that the teams we’ll have the Texas Tech Red Raiders and Michigan State Spartans in town. Gee, I hope that turns out to be true!
• One of the first bits of local news I found on the Internet today was of a Bigfoot sighting over on the west side of the city. Heh. As long as he stays away from the Riverwalk…
• I’m in the process of joining another chess club. Not that I’m particularly displeased with those in which I’m active right now, but Chess.com offers an interesting set of features. At this moment I’m playing through a “welcome game” there, something required of everyone who wants to join the club. And I’m looking around, deciding which of the many options available there I’ll explore first.
• There’s a steady, cold rain falling right today. According to forecasts it’s supposed to be cold and wet for the next couple of days. That means Roscoe stays home. Heck, I’m fine with that. There are lots of chess games to work on, lots of comic books to organize, and a little Christmas tree to decorate.

Taking action in a lucid #dream

The nightly routine of quiet reading, NyQuil, and melatonin continues to set the stage for successful lucid dreaming.

Most of these dreams find me as a passive observer, even though I’m fully ware that I’m dreaming at the time thus qualifying the experience as a lucid dream (at least, that qualifies them in my opinion). However, I finally made the decision during a dream to play a more active role, to enter into conversation with someone there.

In my dream…

…I first found myself being entertained by a small boy, maybe four or five years old, who was wearing an “Elvis is King” tee-shirt and singing Elvis Presley songs. He was trying to do an Elvis impersonation and was actually pretty funny.

We were sitting in the stands of a large auditorium, rather removed from most of the other people, some of whom were snacking, some of whom were chatting, most of whom were watching the action of a martial arts competition down on the main floor. The boy was standing next to has father who was busy analyzing chess games stored in a Correspondence Chess Post-A-Log, and had a book of annotated games and a clipboard on which he was studiously entering notes. When his son moved a few seats away from us to sing to another group of folks, I decided to see if I could more actively participate in the dream. I commented to the father, “Ah! A Post-A-Log. I’ve got one like it at home, but it looks like yours is a lot busier than mine.”

He looked over at me and replied, “Busy!” Then holding up his clipboard, he continued, “I’m trying to finish an article for publication and I’m right up against a deadline.” And he resumed working.

I turned my attention then to the main floor of the auditorium where mats were spread out and and the fighters and judges were busy. And then…

I woke up.

Football, Latin, etc.

Another Thursday night finds me sitting at the big work table in my front room, watching live high school football on local TV, and writing, blogging, and hanging out on the Internet with Sally, my little eeepc netbook. A typical Thursday night, this, spent just the way I like.

Work on The Latin Project (TLP) that I mentioned last night went well today. Most of that time was spent looking through shelves and storage boxes in the back room, and downloading material from various places around the Internet. I was happy to find most of what I wanted, plenty enough to get me started. And I actually spent a little time working with the language itself.

Later tonight, at Midnight, Coast to Coast AM will have the monthly show with Linda Moulton Howe. I hope it’s a good one, and expect that it probably will be. She’s usually got interesting things to share.

Between the football and C2C, I might be able to get some chess work done. I’m not in time-trouble anywhere, but with as many games as I’ve got going now, it’s good to stay on top of things.

Shifting gears

Given the quality of some of my chess moves tonight (pretty poor) and the depth into the games that I could clearly see (pretty darned shallow) maybe this would be a better night to spend on other things. Like, watching a movie maybe. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

Oops! Crap! THAT was not a good move at all!

–