Random Thoughts on Thursday Night

• Yesterday a knock at my door let me know the friendly, neighborhood UPS man was delivering a box of chess supplies. After opening the package, removing some of the styrofoam peanuts, and breaking open one of the bundles I was treated to a sight that not too many people these days see. Pictured above (you can click on the image to view it larger if you want) is 1,000 Correspondence Chess (CC) postal cards. Heh. These’ll keep me in business for awhile.
• Man! I over-bought this afternoon. Though I received excellent advice (thanks, Alli and Carolyn) in response to my query a few days ago re: what healthful dish I should bring to tomorrow night’s Christmas party (called a “Holiday mixer” in the invitation, though there was a smiling, waving Santa Claus printed thereon), I finally decided to go with my first thought: filling a big bowl with party mix and sticking a ladle in it. What I bought was: two big bags of traditional Chex Mix, a big bag of peanut M&Ms, a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, a big box of raisins, a bag of walnuts, and a big bag of tiny marshmallows. Now this’ll make a great party mix, but my big bowl isn’t really big enough to hold all this stuff. So… well, the bathroom scales are surely going to hate me after all the snacking I’ve been doing this evening. Drat!
• Tomorrow night’s C2C AM ought to be a pretty good show (for a change). Art Bell will be sitting in as substitute host again. His guests are scheduled to be Brendan and Barbara of the Ghost Investigators Society, pioneers in the field of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). They’ll be bringing with them a new collection of recorded ghost voices. Now, listen to me. I’ve heard Brendan and Barbara play their recordings before, and these things are truly scary! Yes, I do intend to be back home from tomorrow night’s Christmas party in time to catch this entire show!

This wave of relaxation…

…washing over me at the present moment is really quite nice. It’s not sleepiness at all, nor is it fatigue of any kind. It’s just… relaxation.

I’ve been snacking lightly on peanut butter for the last hour or so. Maybe the tryptophan effect is kicking in. Just a thought. If so it’s pretty darned nice!

Thursday’s breakfast

Cheeseburgers, liberally dosed with Valentina hot sauce, and washed down with strong black coffee. A breakfast of champions!

It should be noted that the 1/4 lb. hamburger patties from HEB that I’m using now are noticeably bigger than the ones from Walmart that I used to use. Even after cooking down. That’s interesting.

Catching and eating rats.

Last night’s two sleep segments brought me two completely different nightmares. This is rather unusual for me. Though my nightmares used to come more often than nice dreams, in recent years (well, in recent months, anyway) that hasn’t been the case.

The dream which came in my first segment was, by far, the most disturbing. It hit me with major sensations of guilt coming from a number of directions. Though it involved a fantasy setting, its cast of characters included real, private folks who are still alive. And that being the case, it’s blocked by my self-imposed content filter and can’t receive further mention.

The second dream, the one that came in my second sleep segment also qualifies as a nightmare. But the primary elements in it were desperation, fear, and physical revulsion. I’ll take those any old day of the week over guilt.

In my dream…

…I was a crewman aboard a big double-masted wooden sailing ship. The time period of this dream wasn’t specific, but it could easily have been almost any time in the 18th or early 19th Centuries.

The ship had been at sea for a long time and was stuck in the doldrums. With no wind we couldn’t move. And we had run out of food. Other than what fish we could catch, when we were able to catch any, we were forced to catch and eat the rats that were hiding on board.

That’s the horror to which I was driven in this nightmare: catching and eating rats in the dark, hot sub-decks of the ship.

How DID they fit together?

Today’s sleep came in two segments: a first segment that was five and a half hours long, from which I was roused by noise out in my hallway; and a second nap that was only an hour long, which was ended by a mailman knocking at my door. It was the first sleep that brought me a strange dream.

In my dream…

…there were three main elements that seemed to fit together seamlessly in the dream itself but which, upon remembering them after I woke, don’t connect with each other in any logical way I can imagine. But then, dreams aren’t necessarily logical, are they?

Those three elements, all of which were intimately connected to each other, were:

1. my trying to solve a crossword puzzle (I don’t do crossword puzzles at all. I have no idea where this came from!),
2. an action sequence of a scifi/anime combat situation in which I was an active character, and
3. the sensation of eating mashed potatoes covered with a delicious, spiced, creamy, chipped beef gravy.

While I was in the dream it all seemed to make perfect sense, but now… I haven’t a clue how that could be.