Dream 8

In the dream, I was on some sort of massive space ship or space station with bright white walls. I knew there was something wrong on board and so I was creating a sort of personal space ship out of space suits to escape. The suits contained some sort of rudimentary AI and I could almost communicate with them. By connecting and molding the suits together, I could create a single suit that would allow me to survive in outer space and move around. I could even fly around in the ship/station while wearing my suit and it was very light, as if filled with air. This was a pleasant experience at first, until I discovered what I was fleeing from: they were large hulking shapes, either robots or men in bulky suits like my own, except they were a dull orange metal and my suit was a soft white fabric. They chased me and at first I was able to fly away from them, but as they got closer, the suit's ability to fly got weaker. Soon I was only able to take bounding leaps, like the astronauts on the moon, while my enemies were so close they could almost touch me. I was so filled with panic that I woke myself up.

RIP - My Amazon Account

A couple of weeks ago, I started having problems accessing my Amazon account at home. I could log in, but all the account history - recommendations, previous purchases, wish lists - was empty. It was as if I had never purchased anything from them. What made this so strange was that I had no problem accessing the account history from work. I emailed them three times, but got no response.

Today I logged in at work to buy a textbook and yes, my account history is truly gone. No previous purchases, no recommendations, no wish lists, no preferences, no nothing. That might not sound like much except - I've had the account since 1998. That's ten years, which by Internet standards is positively antique. Ten years of someone's life is nothing to sneeze at anyway. I feel strangely violated.

The Great Lunch Experiment

This last weekend, I made a sad realization. I am broke.

Well, OK, I didn't just figure that out. What I did just realize is that I have to do something about that. NOW.

It's not that I'm being overwhelmed by bills. I am able to pay them on time and with a minimum of fuss. It's that the little I have left over is difficult to make stretch. I started really looking at where my money was going and I didn't like the answer.

I sat down with my friend Doc Midnite, with whom I have lunch almost every week day. We work in downtown Chicago, just a block from each other. We are surrounded by all sorts of cuisines, from the nasty fast food variety to the truly sublime. And it is killing us. Ruling out the truly horrible (McDonald's), it is very difficult to buy lunch for less than $10. Even going the fast food route, the prices are such that you are going to spend about $7. That's a minimum of $140 per month, but more likely closer to $200. That doesn't even include my Starbucks habit or food I consume at home.

I did the math and I realized I can no longer afford to go out to lunch. So I came up with a plan. Yesterday, I bought $113 in groceries from Peapod. If you're not familiar, Peapod is a grocery delivering service. Before anyone gets on my case about saving money, I'm a single girl without car. Not only will those groceries probably last me at least three weeks (edit: three weeks of three meals per day, mind you, not just lunch), but also, going to the grocery store is such a pain that it makes sense to use a service. I'll be more likely to stick with the plan this way. I got some fresh stuff, including deli meats and some favorite veggies, but also a ton of frozen meals. I've come to really enjoy Lean Cuisine. Before I started losing weight, I could have eaten two of these things and still have been hungry, but my appetite is now at a much more reasonable level. A little more math determined that a lunch of a turkey sandwich with tomatoes, a side of baby carrots and hummus and blueberries for dessert would cost about $5. Not only is that a better diet, I could not buy that much food around here for the same amount. If I don't feel like making all of that, I could also just bring one of the Lean Cuisine dinners, which normally cost around $2.70 to $3.50, or a can of soup, which runs about $2.50. Any way you look at it, I'm coming out ahead and all these meals have already been paid for.

OK, so what about that Starbucks addiction? Here's what I'm trying. I only buy one coffee per day in the morning anyway, so I got one of their gift cards and put $20 on it. This will last me not quite 2 weeks.

So I started this today. Because I was in a hurry, I just grabbed pop tarts for breakfast and a frozen dinner for lunch. I even went to Starbucks for my morning Americano. Pretty painless so far.

Luckily, I can still meet Doc on my lunch hour, just not at Chipotle, Au Bon Pain or any of the other hundreds of restaurants in the four block radius of work. And maybe I'll get closer to my goal weight, too.

Dream 7

In this dream, I was still living in the house I grew up in. My mother was alive and doing things around the house - maybe the laundry. I went out to get the mail and discovered something like looked like a legal notice or a ticket. It was a warning about an alarm clock that our neighbors had been complaining about for being too annoying or loud. It listed several suggestions for better alarms. I got the feeling it was my alarm clock that was causing the problems. I looked everywhere on the ticket, but didn't see a fine. Knowing my mother would get angry and yell at me, I decided to hide it in my closet. It was very dusty in there and I had crawl back behind old prom and bridesmaids dresses to find a good spot to hide it.

Dream 7

In this dream, I was still living in the house I grew up in. My mother was alive and doing things around the house - maybe the laundry. I went out to get the mail and discovered something like looked like a legal notice or a ticket. It was a warning about an alarm clock that our neighbors had been complaining about for being too annoying or loud. It listed several suggestions for better alarms. I got the feeling it was my alarm clock that was causing the problems. I looked everywhere on the ticket, but didn't see a fine. Knowing my mother would get angry and yell at me, I decided to hide it in my closet. It was very dusty in there and I had crawl back behind old prom and bridesmaids dresses to find a good spot to hide it.

Dream 6

In the dream, I was at a party in a large house. It was very "California:" white walls, high ceilings, glass walls that overlooked a large city (Los Angeles?). It was night. People were drinking or dancing or drinking and dancing. In one room, a television show was being taped. It reminded me of Wayne's World with higher production values. For some reason, there were cavemen involved. I wandered onto the set and realized one of the stars was Jason Mewes, who kept coming onto me. I was very puzzled by this, as I couldn't imagine him being interested in me, and I kept wondering if he was drunk or making fun of me.

A post that was supposed to go to 50 Book Challenge

Hmmmm...this was supposed to go to the 50 Book Challenge community, but I've just discovered it's being moderated for...people who post nothing but lists of books. The irony is that I don't usually post just lists of books, but I was feeling too tired to write proper reviews of these books. I have a feeling I'm going to be rejected, so I'm posting this here for archival purposes.

25. Incredible Hulk: Prelude to Planet Hulk by Daniel Way - 144 pages, 7 out of 10.
26. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami - 607 pages, 9 out of 10.
27. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger - 368 pages, 9 out of 10.
28. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling - 309 pages, 8 out of 10.
29. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling - 341 pages, 8 out of 10.
30. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling - 435 pages, 8 out of 10.
31. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling - 734 pages, 8 out of 10.
32. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling - 870 pages, 8 out of 10.
33. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling - 652 pages, 8 out of 10.
34. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling - 784 pages, 8 out of 10.

I had a fit of madness just before the last Harry Potter book came out and decided to reread the first six books again before reading the last. This was a very good experience - I had forgotten a lot of the plot of the books, since I had read them so long ago and I discovered things I hadn't realized the first time around (like Sirius Black being mentioned within the first 10 pages of the first book). I also realized that I no longer had a "favorite" book; books that I didn't like the first time seemed much the better the second reading. I felt at the end like I had lived with these characters for ages.

---

# of Books Read: 34
# Total Page Count: 14491
Average rating: 8.07
% towards total books for the year (60): 56.67%
% towards total pages (18,000): 80.5%