I had some weird dreams recently. They were weird in that they weren’t all that weird. They were continuous and made sense and didn’t break any laws of physics. That also means I get to qualify them as realistic. In fact, I ought to break it down into some categories for you.

Normal Tracey Dream:
Scenes flip from place to place, transportation between them optional (think channel surfing)
Body switching, ie moveable point of view likely within a scene or as a segue
Flying, floating, spontaneous change of outfit, all possible and regarded as usual
Emotions; alot of my dreams have very strong emotions which seem more powerful than they would be in real life
Morphing characters; one of the other beings in my dream often morphs from one shape to another, even bridging into becoming an inanimate object- sometimes I am aware that a person who looks like a stranger is actually a specific close friend from my real life

Realistic Tracey Dream:
This is when the dream doesn’t break any laws of physics. It may be a highly unlikely situation, but it is still at least possible.

Continuous Tracey Dream:
Once in a while my dreams do not cut away to a new scene or morph in any way for what seems like a long time. This is very unusual so it is striking when it happens.

Lucid Tracey Dream:
Occasionally I will become aware I am dreaming. Usually I’m not all that surprised by this and I just go with the flow and continue dreaming. It happens every single time I dream that I’ve jumped into deep water, because I can never reach the surface before I have to take a breath. Once I realize I’m not choking, I know it’s another dream. Also I can escape being killed or captured by someone because at the moment it happens I realize I ought to just wake up instead.

Repetetive Tracey Dream:
Some minute action or single object appears over and over again, these dreams usually occur when I am sick or medicated with something that fuzzes up my brain

Likely Tracey Dreams:
I almost never get these. They are dreams about something that is both realistic and likely to happen in my actual life. I guess it’s a bit of a sliding scale how likely something is to happen, but most of my dreams are so not even remotely likely. My most likely dreams have lasted only seconds.

Some brief examples of dream categories:
I had a realistic dream that Ben Folds was working in my laboratory. The lights went out at the front of the room and we had to move the analyzers to the back.

I had a continuous dream the other day. My friend’s cousins invited me to come back to Israel with them. They gave me a plane ticket and I flew over with them to arrive at their house. It was dug into the side of a hill overlooking the bay. I got wicked claustrophobia going inside the house and the boy cousin let me look at the sky until I felt ok. The mom told the girl cousin to do her hand exercises because they would help her hands get strong. She and I played inside large cardboard boxes. Someone came and threatened to burn their house up, until the dad confidently talked him down. I marveled at their collective calmness in such a situation.

I have had likely dreams that I woke up and a friend has left me a text message about something I was waiting to hear back on.

In a normal dream with morphing the following happened: I was asked to watch someone’s child which then became a small dog and then a worm and finally a spider-like creature with a body similar to fine necklace chain.

I recently realized I need to be in love with someone who can hypnotize me and be hypnotized by me. Which is good, because I am. Hypnosis, as I understand it, is guiding someone to believe something is true. You cannot be hypnotized if you don’t want to be. This also means you have to trust the hypnotist enough to actually listen to what they are telling you and want to believe it. This is something Dan and I can do with each other. There are times he sort of hypnotizes me to chill about whatever I’m nerving up about, and there’ve also been some situations in which I led Dan when he was really stuck on some problem or worry. It’s similar to the idea of mind over matter, only it let’s you rely on someone else’s mind instead of just your own. When he hypnotizes me, it’s kinda like he takes me out of where I was mentally, to someplace calmer. I respond to the use of my name (vs. honey or being non-specifially addressed) as well as eye contact and touch (hands on my shoulders). This pulls all my attention to him and allows me to absorb what he is saying. Then I just have to listen and believe. Don’t misunderstand me here- this isn’t about him telling me the color blue is actually pink or that an open door is really shut. It’s about more intangible things: what I can do, what the future will bring, how bad a situation is. The sort of answers you get for questions like that can’t be proven well and so you are almost forced to have an intangible and changeable answer. Dan helps me get better answers. And there have been times, one very strongly stands out, that I hypnotized Dan to get him through something bad by giving him better answers. And it only works because of who we both are and the fact that we trust one another.

What I’m writing on the blog inside my head:
Let Go and Let God = Zen Christianity?
Is prayer like self hypnosis?
Songs, more poem or story?

These are several. I’ve been saving up.
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You must have brass balls.

I came across the origin of this phrase and was surprised to find it is not related to male anatomy. This is a reference to pawn shops having three balls made of brass hanging outside the shops to identify them. If someone was acting like a pawnshop and driving a particularly hard bargain you might say to them, “You must have brass balls.” It has shifted somewhat in meaning so it now refers to someone who’s simply acting like a jerk.

“Of Death”

Dan wanted me to outline the proper use of the tack-on words “of death!”. It’s easy! They can follow any noun or proper noun to make it seem cooler/more dangerous/more specific.
Examples?
To get to Greg’s house I usually take the traffic circles OF DEATH!
How much cooler do they sound now? Isn’t it awesome that I’ve never gotten killed in all my dealings with them? I am awesomer now! And so are they! And now when I say ‘circles of death’ you know I’m talking about the ones by me, and not those wussy circles near Latham or Voorheesville.

Niagra Falls A, B, and C

We went to Niagra Falls (town and falls themselves) back last summer. The Canadian side has better looking falls- that lovely horseshoe shape. The American falls (ok technically both America, but just let me go with it) have a flatter contour and they are split in one place creating a tiny third falls. I decided to nickname them with A, B, and C:
A for American falls on the United States Side.
B for baby falls just next to it.
C for Canadian falls.
So Canada is happy because it has the more scenic falls. United States is happy because it has twice as many falls. And I’m happy because I get to say ‘baby’ and those are cute.

Cylons, Vorlons, Mowlons

My favorite are mowlons because I never has to do it. I don’t weigh enough to press on the safety switch. Everytime I try to mow our lawn the mower stalls.

And Finally,

This post has been brought to you by Zelda. Zelda! Because a resourceful ten year-old wearing green can accomplish anything.

I’m kinda bugged when I get hungry lying in bed in the morning. I have to get up to eat and can no longer mope around. I mentioned this to Dan who said, “Can’t you mope around in the living room chair?”I said, “No because then I’ll do stuff. It’s not really moping around if you get stuff done.”

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I called my sister to talk after Christmas. She told me what she did Christmas Eve and it was EXACTLY the same as what I did. So for your benefit I will outline the proper way to spend the Eve as demonstrated by Suz and I.

How to spend Christmas Eve:
Have some lunch
Go out to Christmas Eve mass- the one with children attending and preferably singing.
Drive around to look at lights put up by the people in your town or surrounding area. (try to find the best display)
Go home.
Watch a Muppet Christmas Carol.
Open presents.
(make sure you get dinner in there too- it can be just snacks)

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New year feels like it fell on the wrong day this year. Nothing is fresh and new. All the weird stuff is still pretty weird. I’m probably gonna move it to February. By then I’m sure I will have better ideas about how I’d like 2011 to be shaping up.

I remember enjoying this show so much…why? Not sure. Coincident with Pokemon, but thematically alot darker. Myself and the girls used to be able to recite all the incarnations of each monster in order. I can no longer do it without help, so I looked it up. Here you go:

Tai’s Digimon
Botamon, Koromon (first two are the youngest and second youngest forms, rarely seen)
Agumon
Greymon
Metalgreymon

Matt’s Digimon
Punimon, Tsunomon
Gabumon
Garurumon
Weregarurumon

Izzy’s Digimon
Pabumon, Motimon
Tentomon
Kabuterimon
Megakabuterimon

Sora’s Digimon
Nyokimon, Yokomon
Biyomon
Birdramon
Garudamon

Mimi’s Digimon
Yuramon, Tanemon
Palmon
Togemon
Lillymon

Joe’s Digimon
Pichimon, Bukamon
Gomamon
Ikkakumon
Zudomon

TK’s Digimon
Poyomon, Tokomon
Patamon
Angemon
MagnaAngemon

Kari’s Digimon
Nyaromon, Salamon
Gatomon
Angewomon

There were two episodes with bits I remember clearly. The first was a battle with one of the badder of the bad guys. As I recall the bad guys seemed not too hard to defeat at first, but then new ones kept showing up that were increasingly powerful. During season one TK’s digimon took forever to digivolve, staying littler than all the others the longest. Finally in this episode, the guy the digimon were fighting was systematically defeating all the other digimon so they were about to lose. Then all of a sudden TK’s digimon turned into Angemon for the first time and kicked the bad dude’s ass. It was such an effort for him that he reverted afterwards all the way back to a digiegg, which then took a few episodes to hatch.
Second thing I remember was an episode in which Sora falls into this mental pit of darkness. From the others’ point of view she just sits against a tree and won’t move. They try to pull her to her feet but she won’t budge. From her point of view she’s in a deep dark pit and their voices are coming to her from a distance. Finally she is able to snap out of it by listening to how her friends are there for her. Pretty memorable episode for me.

The beauty salon I go to has two doors at the exit. One of them has a sign: ‘do not use this door’. It will not open. Why even have the door?
It’s like the lever from the Emperor’s New Groove. You know, Yzma and Kronk are going to her lair and she steps up to the entrance and instructs Kronk, “Pull the lever!” He does so, only there are two levers and he has chosen the one that dumps them into the Crocodile pit. As they fall Yzma shouts, “Wrong lever!!” Then as they climb back up to use the correct lever she mutters, “Why do we even HAVE that lever?”

The beauty salon I go to has two doors at the exit. One of them has a sign: ‘do not use this door’. It will not open. Why even have the door?
It’s like the lever from the Emperor’s New Groove. You know, Yzma and Kronk are going to her lair and she steps up to the entrance and instructs Kronk, “Pull the lever!” He does so, only there are two levers and he has chosen the one that dumps them into the Crocodile pit. As they fall Yzma shouts, “Wrong lever!!” Then as they climb back up to use the correct lever she mutters, “Why do we even HAVE that lever?”

I’m no goth girl, but I recently caught two thirds of a nerdcore rap concert. (Concert? Is a rap show called a concert?) Performance by MC FrimmerFrammer- I mean Frontalot. MC Frontalot. It had it all: jigsaw jams, geek-fresh flow, mostly dudes, no entry fee because I was late, ok well there were no jigsaw jams…Here’s the setlist:

Braggadocio
Pron Song (I know, I’m just feeling anti-zero right now)
This Old Man
Tongue Clucking Grammarian
Charity Case
Goth Girls
I Hate Your Blog
Spoiler Alert
First World Problem
Yellow Lasers (Encore)

I came in as Tongue Clucking Grammarian was underway. As a song it’s catchy with ridiculous lyrics. I’d really like to mock and deride them for being almost entirely about grammar and linguistics, but I find myself unable to do that as my new very favorite Ben Folds song is essentially about the same thing.
Charity case is kind of funny. Goth Girls I seem to have inadvertantly/advertantly memorized. I like the song I Hate Your Blog because I’m in this ear training class and I was able to figure out the chorus chords by listening (1,4,6,5) and that makes me really happy. I couldn’t really understand the lyrics to spoiler alert, but I gather they are about spoilers?? First World Problem was one I hadn’t heard before but seemed ok. And the encore was not my favorite. Encores and me don’t have a wonderful track record; Ben Folds often plays (uuhhhh…) Narcolepsy as an encore.
Frontalot sort of skipped the whole encore format as he wasn’t feeling great and needed to cut the concert rather short. He told us that “Usually we all leave then you clap and maybe shout my name and we all come back out for one more…let’s just do one more.” He also apologized to the bass player who apparently really really likes encores. Greg says the bass player is awesome. But I say I wish I could see the keyboardists fingers. Good concert and well worth the money I didn’t pay to see it.

Conversation:
me- What’s IRL?
G- It means in real life. It’s a chat abbreviation.
me- So it’s internet talk for not on the internet? That’s dumb.
G- You know about internet shorthand.
me- Idk WHAT you are talking about.

Seems to be the Star Trek equivalent of ‘stick it where the sun don’t shine’-
“You can take that and toss it out the nearest airlock!”

I’m going to start saying “for all intensive and unintensive purposes” because I like it that way.

Sesame Street is very chicken-heavy this season.

And
I never imagined I would find myself debating the ethics of keeping gerbilcorns as pets. My life is strange.

So what’s tolerance?
It usually means putting up with something you don’t really like. No one likes tolerance, but everyone expects it from others. It’s annoying to have to tolerate something you don’t like. Seriously really annoying. If you liked it, it wouldn’t really be tolerating, it would be enjoying. It’s highly dependent on point of view. It is used as such an automatic positive, but I think tolerance can be negative too. It all depends on what you are expected to tolerate. Can you tolerate kids running around screaming? Yes. Ok that’s cool. Can you tolerate someone beating up another person? No. You probably shouldn’t tolerate that one.
I could give more examples. But you get the idea. Besides, I can’t tolerate sitting here any longer.