Navigating with a Place-mat

I had an odd dream last night.  I was going through customs in Mexico and they couldn’t find a place to put a stamp in my passport.  All the pages were filled with hand-written notes and tables and numbers (I just assume research related).  Why I had used my passport as a notebook was not addressed in the dream.  Their first solution was to rip out the offending pages.  I didn’t like that idea, so eventually they offered me a new passport.  Even in my dream this seemed suspicious.  So I looked at the passport and checked for the water marks on the pages.  I didn’t find them.  I also checked some other things, then said no.

Now the notes were written in pencil.  The final solution (which I was not happy about) was to wipe off the pencil markings with a damp paper towel (well, really closer to running the pages under a facet (I don’t know why there was a kitchen (yes it was kitchen) sink at the customs station)).  I was worried they would destroy the id page and the rfid tag.  But it kind of worked and I got though.

No idea if I got back into the US.  Maybe that dream is for tonight?

Last Saturday my internet connection went down.  I didn’t know why, nothing was helping it.  After a while I gave up trying.  In the morning it was back.  Incidently, at church, someone asked me if I saw the fire last night.  I said no, they, who live on the other side of town, heard the fire engines.  Fire engines I did not hear.  It was established from someone there that the fire had been within a block of my house and required the services of 3 fire departments.  It clicks and I ask if the fire was around 6.  It was.  The comcast offices and distribution center is a few houses away from me.  Apparently the fire melted their fibre-optics.  I went by the fire on the way home from church.  The burned building was about 300 yards away from my house.

Still, no memory of anything unusual that evening.

My doctor’s office waiting room has become a recent casualty of fluffy content.  The majority of the magazines it use to have were Science and Nature.  While wait times are only a few minutes usually, it was still nice to have something interesting to read.  Now the office has gossip and fashion magazines.

*sigh*

(Yes I will admit that the former magazine selection was an artifact of where the office is located)

“You haven’t had tea today?  Was that an accident?”

Today begins the second day of the tea free week.  It was slow in coming, as several attempts to ease into it with low tea days were aborted due to social functions with tea.

What and why is a tea free week?  Every few weeks (in theory once a month) I don’t have tea so as to preserve a good level of caffeine free functioning.  Stopping periodically lends credence to “I can stop any time”.

This  week was a long time coming.  With the massive amounts of things happening in the past 4 months I have been drinking around 3Qts a day (which is higher than normal, but just happens to be one batch (which should last me 2 days, not 1)).

” What came first, the music or the misery?” — High Fidelity

So many things have warning labels. Today it was clear that an album I listened too need a label, possibly several. Perhaps “Warning, album contains good songs” or “Listening may deepen sadness” or “Song writer has grown up and this album contains a few poignant songs”. I guess I will have to revise my previous low opinion of the musician.

And even now

When I'm alone 

I've always known 

With you 

I am home 

“Did you have fun with Mr. Andrew?”

(Immediately) “Yes!”  — Zach (His twin was busy eating bread so she didn’t comment on the question)

Having gotten results from google based on random bashing of the keyboard, I posted elsewhere, and will post here, the challenge of finding the shortest combination of letters (no numbers) that produce no results.  Nat came up with the first 8 then 7 letter results and I have found one 6 letter combination.  To preserved the integrity of the contest, I will validate entries before approving comments since this is clearly a self destroying challenge.  My entry was “zqazqv”.  Can you find a 5 or 4 letter string that produces no hits?

As appropriate for this blog, see this.

The excitement is tempered by the fact that it is already released in Germany.  (Granted I have several songs from it I recorded live to tide me over, but still…)

“You’re the only person I know who’s had an actual rock star do a private concert in his apartment.” — Branson
“Oh the stories your walls could tell the next occupants” — Branson

My apartment was mentioned briefly in Cristianity Today for the afore mentioned concert (Thanks to Kyle for sending the link, you have to search some for the reference).

From the concert:

Your body is a song
You sing it every day
Singing my whole life long
And here we walk a narrow way
between the sacred and profane
I am not ashamed
I am not ashamed
It’s not in the clean life
and I know it’s not in fear
you strung yourself up for love
and washed away the tears

Somewhere around me reality is rushing on.  I think.

Somewhere the days and nights wax and wane.  Or so I’m told.

Somewhere deadlines and timelines crest and ebb.  Crest and ebb.

With the rising tide of hope comes dangerous outflows of despair, deadly rip currents of melancholy and apathy.

At the mercy of this ocean I am.  Surviving somewhere below the surface, away from the violent surface.  A small piece of me protecting itself in a bubble as the depths press relentlessly.  My body and spirit slowly being crushed by the pressure of this refuge.  Here is quiet but here is disconnection.  Events, people, places, time, thoughts, pleasures, pains, all drift by, sometimes quickly sometimes not as the currents choose.  All is muted, it is a disconnected existence.

__________________________________________

oh my god
what have I done
chasing some mirage in my Mojave sun
don’t say every chance is lost
please don’t say anything at all

lead me now
I understand
faith is both the prison and the open hand
bells on low on high
will you ring for Augustine tonight

–”Augustine”, Vienna Teng (unpublished as of yet)