Caturday was spent with the Boy. Among other things, we finished watching Gurren Lagann. It was Epic.

Today, JJ and I saw Alice in Wonderland. It wasn't quite like the book, or even like the Disney movie, but it was good in its own way. Blatantly unrealistic, of course, but it's Alice in Wonderland. The cat evaporates. Of course it's unrealistic.

Also, I had a dream of which I do not remember much. But I remember that the dragons were large and diamond-shaped, and that they chose their riders in the most harrowing way possible - you jump, from great height. If a dragon picks you, it's fine. On the other hand, if one doesn't . . . And quite a lot of it was borrowed from PERN, but I don't get to choose what my subconscious pulls up. Maybe I'll write about them.

Doctor tomorrow. No food in the morning, since she will almost certainly ask that I get my blood done. But I will Learn why my stomach keeps trying to kill me, huzzah.

Ta~!

So, I came back from a dream slowly, which means I came back with most of it intact. The dream told me to remember that the world is an amazing place, just by being itself; and if we need things like mystic gaia-forces and sekrit covenants of the Ebon Night, we're tripping over the answer while running around searching for it.

Then I have a fairly normal Caturday. I replayed most of PoP:Sot. I say most because I am determined this game not to die once-which means reload from save every time I do. The last little bit without insta-rewind powers, is hard this way >.<

JJ, who is a high school senior, went trick-or-treating, but with a twist: he asked for cans of food, which they were depositing at mobile drop station Sam's minivan, and which will be delivered tomorrow to the local food bank. There were, as I understand it, a number of five- or six-man teams around doing this in our neighborhood. Kudos, li'l bro!

Then we went to Carebear's party. Carebear's version of a wild party is: baking cupcakes. And it was awesome. With cream cheese frosting for extra nomability XD

Not I should really go to sleep, seeing as I have a lab report and food to be taking to some friends whose mother just died and a computer to be wiping and stuff. So good night, you intarwebz you!

This is actually my dream from last Monday, but I felt the need to share it. Because it was so amazingly awesome.

( This is Long and Strange )

And then I woke up. This was disappointing because there was more dream and I wanted to know what happened, so I tried to fall back to sleep. No such luck.

Oh well. Epic dream was EPIC!!!!!

Many things.

Thing 1: The Hair.

I used company property for these! But electrons are cheap, and so that was okay.



The Hair in a braid.



The Hair not in a braid.

Thing 2: The Dream

Loooooooong involved one. I was playing AoM last night, so the first bit was running around and rescuing people and defeating bad guys and stuff. Then the Citadel in which my dudes were attacking was collapsing for some reason, so I had to get everyone out. (Most of the people there were innocent bystanders and priests and blind seers and such.) The secret passage out of which most everyone escaped let out near a large body of water.

The next part of the dream was basically, all about getting everyone fed. There was Mulan-style hand-fishing, and sailing out to deeper waters for other fish, and some kind of bird eggs. Also, for a reason that made dream-sense, no shelter was needed.

The third part of the dream revolved around some kind of big platform, maybe on the other side of the lake, which is what the water shrunk to. It was part underwater and part not underwater, but it was either very polluted or full of, like, protein scum, and everyone who lived there was some kind of monster, but not evil. They wanted to be left alone.

Then, somehow, I was in the sewers, and there was a war on up above so everyone was in the sewers. I had to stop the war, which I did by going to the Royal Scientific Research Lab, which was topside. Topside was like Regency or Victorian London, but all bombed out. I ended the war by using the Science! to make all the roads slippery, so the musket men and cavalry slipped and fell.

Then it was morning, and time to wake up. I have Odd dreams.

Thing 3: The Religion

I went to Shul today. The Torah reading was the one about How to Build a Portable Temple, or the building of the Mishkan. It was fairly boring, although I say again that god is remarkably tacky. Then the Haftorah, which came from the Book of Kings, talked about Solomon building the (permanent) Temple in Jerusalem. Interestingly, the one in Jerusalem was smaller that the one that moved around the desert.

Thing 4: The Achievement

I have successfully completed Marathon Blogging Month! I posted once every day for the last month. Yay! Now I'ma vanish for a bit to recoup.

So, say what you like about Ultra-Orthodox Black-Hatter Judaism, they know how to throw a party. But first, my weekend.

On Friday, I packed, and then at around ten we hopped in the car and headed towards Pittsburgh. The last time we were in Pittsburgh, Adrian was far too busy organizing her son's Bar Mitzvah, so it was nice that we got to spend time with her and her very cute three ear old son, Noah. And I got to know Adam, as opposed to just watch him do beautifully at his Bar Mitzvah. Etc.

Friday night dreams. I had three, but I don't very well remember the first one, so we'll skip over it and go straight to the second. It was about this man, thing, that decided to change the world into porcelain statues. Because this was a dream, of course, this worked, and so it was his world with his rules and everyone and everything was made of porcelain. Fragile, beautiful stuff, all the women dressed in fantastic costumes that tinkled as they walked. I was too, of course, and I think the man did it to me, but he seemed to have missed the memo that I wouldn't stop fighting for that. So I fought him by smashing his china people and whenever I could, catching and repairing his people, which was the one thing he could not do. It involved chewing the broken pieces to make a kind of paste, which when placed in the pits and chips dried to make a patch. And that was pretty much it, apart from me listening to one of his porcelain doll-children tell me a story I'd read in a book once, and decided to find a way to undo it.

The second part rewinds to right around the time he was turning the world all porcelain, and involves Batgirl and Lazarus Pits and zombies. As it was happening, Batgirl (there are two of her, Batman Beyond's Max in Cassandra Cain's Batsuit) discovered a Lazarus Pit, which had the power to restore her. Max was very angry and Cass kind of . . . surrendered herself to make a new and more powerful Batgirl. She decided right then that, a. she would lead all the secret societies among the porcelain-people and b. she would find a way to undo i, somehow by summoning Batman. There was some running across a large field and through a some trees and the building up of her group. Eventually, her people figured out that she was using a Lazarus Pit because it caused cancer in cats. Giving them Pit water would have cured them but reduced the time the Pit had, and she knew she needed it all. That one called the cats who died for the secret "the innocents" and Batgirl agreed and mourned them, but didn't stop. Near the end, the cabal-people were rebelling, because while porcelain people don't age they can't fix themselves and she wasn't going into the same kind of danger to bring back the clues that they were. They eventually shot at Batgirl, who dodged and showed them the grave of the cats, which she'd made to remember those whose deaths would not be in vain, including her operatives who were lost. And then, hidden in her little shed, she figured out how to rewind time to undo the damages, so she did. And the power of the Pit was mostly drained on the return journey and they still didn't make it back far enough in time, but Batgirl figured out something about a species of moth that had been used to turn the world into porcelain, and rewound time of her own will enough to catch and kill the moth. And thus, no one was ever turned to porcelain and the world was saved.

Then I woke up and had toast for breakfast. And, some hours of Intarwebz later, further sleeps.

Then we went out for dinners at a vegetarian Chinese place that also did sushi. So I shared a non-meat General Tso's Chicken with MW. Also, there were spicy tuna rolls and tuna and avocado rolls. And tea. Mmmm :9 Afterwards, we walked to this Rita's Ice Cream place and got Italian Ices with frozen custard. Yummy. And then we went back and I took a shower. That was Saturday. IT was just as uneventful as it sounds.

Yesterday, which was Sunday, we got up hella early and were washed and dried and packed and on the road at seven in the morning, and we drove straight through to New YorK by way of New Jersey. We arrived at the hotel around two in the afternoon, having not eaten since six thirty that morning, and this was a Good Thing. So we had a couple hours to get ready before the Wedding bits started at four. JJ and Dad took showers. I got MW to braid my hair, which she hardly ever does anymore unless I need a Really Nice Braid. Then we took a short nap.

A Jewish wedding is not, in any way, like a Christian wedding. There is no exchange of vows, or rings, or 'I do's. In the very simplest form, a Jewish wedding doesn't even need a rabbi; it needs the two persons being married and two witnesses. And this is because the essence of a Jewish wedding is the part where the bride and groom and witnesses sign the Ketubah (keh-tuba), which is a marriage contract, and someone recites the seven blessings. And that's it.

Of course, this being Judaism, there's slightly more to it most of the time.

Part the first - Bedekin (pronounce it like 'bedecking' and you'll be close enough)

The Bedekin is an ancient ceremony that occurs just prior to the wedding. As I understand it, it is very unlucky in a Christian wedding for the groom to see the bride on the day of the wedding before the ceremony. In Judaism, he has to, because the Bedekin is the part where the groom and a couple of witnesses go into where the bride is holding court and lifts up her veil and announces that, yes, this is the woman he's agreed to marry and not her sister. This entire ceremony stems from the biblical story of Jacob marrying Leah rather than Rachel because he didn't check behind her veil, and we do it now to make sure that kind of thing does not happen again.

This being a Graff affair, the bridal court was accompanied by (lots of) food. Lots. Cuisine from around the world, including sushi, lamb chops, sweetbread (which is not a bread at all, it's the thymus gland or pancreas of a calf), barbecue beefy bits, kikhul (kih as in kick, khul with the ch of a Sctottish loch and the ul of ultimate), which is a very Jewish kind of thing, potato-filled pastries, mushroom-filled raviolis, duck, coconut chicken, Israeli couscous (it's bigger than the regular kind), grilled vegetables, Israeli salad, and fruits. Understand that this was not that actual meal, this was the appetizer.

Anyway, the groom, Adam, came in with about fifty of his closest friends, and they sang and danced and Bedek'd and pictures were taken and then they danced their way out. And then it was time for the wedding.

Part the Second - Circling the Groom

So we all went out and sat in the son, and unlike the kind of wedding where the bride's family sits on one side and the groom's on the other, we were partitioned by gender. Only the very smallest of toddler boys were allowed to sit with their mothers. Both the bride and groom came in accompanied by both parents, which is the Jewish way. Other people came too, including all five of Joy's siblings and (if they had one) their spouses and (if they had them) children. And then Joy did her seven circuits around the groom. This probably has some deep religious meaning or symbolism or something, but I think it has more to do with the fact that seven is a very important number in Judaism. This was pretty no-nonsense.

Part the Third - Reading of the Ketubah

Next, we listened to the Ketubah being read. The Ketubah is the formal marriage contract. In ancient times, one supposes it would have specified what the groom owed the father of the bride in return for his daughter, and also what he owes his wife. (Jewish wives are entitled under law to food, shelter, clothing, and sex. No joke. Not getting laid enough is grounds for a Jewish woman to divorce her husband.) It would also specify what if anything he owed/was owed in case a divorce should occur. Then the father of the bride and the groom would sign it. This is the actual betrothal ceremony, and used to happen years before the wedding, especially in the case of an arranged marriage.

In more modern times, since we don't do bride-pricing anymore, it just specifies what the groom owes the bride, including upon divorce. Each Ketubah is different, and the bride and groom have them written up. My parents keep their Ketubah in a special case and take it out sometimes to show me. Before the modern age, in which the government of the countries ignored Jews at best and persecuted them at worst, a Ketubah was a legal document since Jews had to live by their own laws. Now, they are much more for show and are written in beautiful calligraphy on illuminated parchment, made from real dead animal skins. We take these not-officially legal documents very srsly.

Part the Fourth - Rings

Well, a ring at any rate, although there is no prohibition against ring exchanges even in the Orthodox community. They just didn't this time around. The groom said a blessing and gave Joy the ring. She'd have reciprocated then if she were going to, but she did not.

A note of newish wedding rings: we are prohibited from buying huje fancy expensive rings. It's supposed to be a plain gold band, a thing of negligible value. The ring is, after all, only a symbol and not meant for showing off how rich your spouse is, because that really is not supposed to be why you're marrying them. So most Jewish wedding bands are actually quite inexpensive, considering that they're pretty much the simplest gold rings imaginable.

Of course, no one ever said anything about the engagement ring, which is why my mother also wears quite a large diamond.

Part the Fifth - the Seven Blessings

The Seven Blessings are kind of well-wishes, hoping that God will bless the union with love and, being black hatters, lots and lots of little babies. A different person read each blessing, because it is quite an honor to be asked to read one. It isn't strictly necessary for a different person to read each one, though. It is just that in Orthodox Jewry, a wedding has more . . . call it "merit," for having well-known and respected rabbis, and more of them, perform these blessings. The wedding is not any less valid if you don't, of course. It's just a way of one-upping everyone else, saying I had such-and-such a rabbi perform at my wedding. And, because the Graffs are extremely wealthy, there were some Very Important Rabbis there.

Part the Fifth - Smashing of the Glass

This is more of a tradition than an actual requirement. However, it is Tradition, so isn't never not done. What happens is that after the blessings, the bride and groom stomp on a glass. (It's wrapped up in a towel or something to keep the pieces from going everywhere.) The idea is that the love between the two is supposed to fade when someone pieces the glass back together. Some couples buy very nice glasses and then keep the pieces, but I never really saw the point, seeing as it's symbolic in any case.

And that's pretty much it for the actual wedding.

Then we went to the reception hall, which was Big. Because this was an Orthodox wedding, there was a mekhitza (meh-khee-tzah), a kind of folding screen separating the male half of the dance floor from the female half. The men did the Horah with the other men, the women with the women. Even during the chair dance, the bride and groom remained on their sides of the dance floor and held other ends of the same handkerchief. And, yes, we did the Horah. You can't go to a Jewish wedding and not dance the Horah.

Two hours later, by which time everyone was hot and sweaty and kind of danced out and slightly less totally stuffed by the appetizer, dinner arrived. Dinner was plated, as JJ said several times, "like an Iron Chef competition." And it was, beautiful presentation. Egg rolls and fancy mango salad and duck bits. Then chikkin and beef and spargel (which is a German word, and means white asparagus. The asparagus is white because while it is growing they keep piling dirt up around the stalk so the plant doesn't produce chlorophyll in that bit. It's mostly grown in Germany, and is Very Expensive) and potato and carrots and green beans. Just about the point where you were feeling totally stuffed again beyond any possibility of further consumption, the dessert came out.

There was cake. There was fruit. There was mousse. There were cookies, and chocolate fondue. There were brownies marshmallows and cordials. There were canolis made of cream stuffed in a chocolate shell. There was bananas foster being made on the spot. There was a kind of parve ice cream called mocha mix that Jews eat because we can't have dairy right after a huje meal full of meat. The only thing thee wasn't, really, was a cake. Cakes are kin of optional extras.

Then there was more dancing.

And then we benched. Benching means doing the after-you-eat prayers, which are rather longer and more complex than the before-you-eat prayers, where I mean it takes fifteen minutes to get through benching. And then a different seven people, family members this time, recited the Seven Blessings again. They will be recited every day for the next week, just to make sure it takes. And then there was probably more dancing, but I waddled off like a penguin, overstuffed with good food and went to bed.

This morning, I got up although, admittedly, I was not happy about it. Then it dozed for a bit. Then I snoozed for a bit. Then I got dressed and went downstairs for some food. Food, in this case, involed bread rolls and tuna salad and egg salad, which I made into a sammich. It also involved further Israeli salad and noodle salad, and lots of sweet Danish-type things. So I had a tuna-and-egg-salad-sammich, plus Israeli salad tomatoes, plus orange juice, plus cheesecake, plus cookies. This was breakfast. The reason there was so much food was because it was a Jewish event, at which there is always more food.

Then we got in the car and droooove. On the way, we listened to Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men, since the family liked A Hat Full of Sky So well last time and wanted to see how it started. Then we listened to music and I fell asleep some. Then we started listening to Wintersmith, the third and last of that series, but we got home a little over a third of the way through. After eleven hours. I mean, I don't mind the Bluesmobile. Actually I rather like it, but not after eleven hours.

So now I am home and should probably be unpacking instead of being online, which is what I am doing, but unpacking can happen tomorrow provided it does not happen too much later tomorrow. It is my day to cook tomorrow too, which is not something I want to do very much. Still, life goes on, even after a wedding. Or maybe especially after one.

I still don't really wish to go to work tomorrow.

Another one of those two-step dreams where part a morphs into part b via dream logic.

Part A was about two things: The monster in my closet, and the vast that it liked to eat peas. Peas. To the point that it had organized a colony of birds (I think it was starlings, or maybe swallows) to steal them from the Tree. This was a Bad Thing, although I'm not sure why. I mean, the Tree was making the peas for the birds to eat. The birds were instead feeding them to the monster, or hoarding them. I'm not sure what they were eating, and I'm sure that isn't the point.

The monster in my closet was big, black, fungus like, an vinegar slowed but did not halt its growth. Also, for some reason, the vinegar allowed it to stop oozing and hold it's shape for a while. I know this because I dumped the remains of my apple cider on it . . .

Anyway, so there was this thing where the scientists were wondering where the peas were going, and about that time the dream moved on to Part B.

Part B involved my boyfriend, and the fact that the monster was put-out with the fact I wouldn't date it. Which, y'know. Suddenly it was me and BF and scientists vs. monster. We defeat it with the Power of Love. Or it wanders off. One of the two. There were a number of hazlenut tortes, or truffle omelets, and a Very Pink Bedroom. Like, nauseatingly pink. I kind of didn't get that, and I'd never sleep in the sheer number of ruffles and stuffed animules. This was Not A Tan Bedroom. Then again, we weren't really sleeping and the pink and ruffles kind of dissolved as the dream went on.

It was a good dream. And then I woke up, and was rested.

I know for a fact that the dream took less than forty minutes, because it was forty-minute catnap and it take more than four seconds to get to REM sleep. Interesting thing, dreamtime.

Lacha, I have a Very Embarrassing Question to ask.

I've had good dreams lately. I thought I might share them with you.

Wednesday night: It was about t he Elric brothers of FMA. They were also, at the same time, for no reason I could tell, Chip and Dale. The setting was rather a lot like "Who Frame Roger Rabbit" wherein the various cartoon characters were a. real and b. relying on the Elrics to save them. They wandered around various worlds in their quest to save the cartoons from the real people, and after beating the crap out of the Worldgates enough, the things eventually started doing the equivalent of cringing and whimpering whenever the Elrics showed up. And, even though Ive never previously been a fan of Elricest, the clearest line from the dream was "I love you in ways a brother shouldn't."

Thursday night: I don't remember much, but there was flight, and there was freedom, and there was love.

Friday night: The River Nile, or something similar, but with more tech. The plot was that the Nile never changed, and the Queen was eternal-the king changed, but she was sad because she couldn't die and join her first king, the only one she ever truly loved, in death. The other eternal was the Mage, and he wasn't nice. He wanted the powers of the Queen, even if it meant destroying the and to do it. As the ages passed, she allowed the technology to fade, because the less tech there was, the less the Mage could use against her. But it was a lonely existenece, so she send out the Boy to go south and find a way to defeat him.

He failed, but brought back with him an alliance with the desert people.

The Mage, once he figured out that the Queen would never give him her secret, would never allow the Land to fall to him, ripped apart the magic of the River. The River magic held the Land together, so it being ripped to shreds was destroying the Land. To save it, they Boy gave himself to the River . . . holding the Land together, but the cost was becoming the River and the Land, being the embodiment and responsibility of it. The Queen realized, just a little too late that she loved the Boy.

That is, until the Boy who was the River told her to jump in . . . and she found that the Boy could keep her safe underwater, and bring the first King back. So they became a big happy threesome.

The Mage kept attacking, but with the Land and the River and the Queen and the Desert people against him, he didn't last long. He was able to make the desert people sick before the Queen used Command and gave him the immortality he'd dreamed of-but the cost was that he was in the Flood and the patterns of the changing stars and seasons. The Queen had to go find Hathor to heal the desert people, and once they were healed, the dream started to go into stuff about Alexander and his gods, the gods of the Sky and Lightning.

The dream ended before I could get far into the second generation, the triple sons who remembered the future and made peace with Alexander.

Filing this one under, "Sang me in a Dream."

And now I will eat and go over and hang out with BF. I haven't seen him in a month. Sooooo happy :D!

Last night was a night for dreams.

Shortish dream: it was a farm, and I was some farmboy who was pissed with the farming and planning to run away. All the sheep were soft and cuddly, which, y'know, not in RL. Anyway, I was making my sekrit plans to escape when my mother (who was not MW) showed up and said she's found my luggage, which was hidden in the hay hanger. (I say hanger rather than loft because it was half-circle airplane-hanger shaped, not a loft). I was all set to argue, but before I could a tornado happened. We had to get everyone in the family into the shelter under the hay silo, and all of the animals into the silo, which while not terribly safe would be safer than the barn. That dream ended just after the tornado did, and we'd lost one sheep, no cows, and one little girl . . .

Very Short Dream: Myself and BF were wandering around what was, I think, supposed to be a dorm. It wasn't really, because instead of having courtyards an unit halls, there were unit halls and then where the courtyard would be huge common rooms, complete with wingback chairs and fireplaces. I think I would have preferred that, but anyway. Wandering around trying to find my room. When we finally did find it, there was a dude in it, so I went to the nearest administrator to complain. She told me to go give myself a breast-cancer exam. I don't see how this solved the problem, but hey, it's a dream. So I did, and was all freaked out because apparently I was suddenly lactating (although NOT preggers) and dude was still in my room . . . dream ends.

Long dream: happened in the ATLA world, which may be hint from my subconscious to start working my way through S2 now that we have the DVDs and demand the S3 premier, which e recorded. Anyway. I showed up at the Fire Lord's palace, which was for some reason in the frozen North and seriously was all pine trees forever, and kicked the crap out of a. the guards, b. the lizards (no, I don't get it) and c. the Firelord. Then I was all judge on his ass.

You have to get more than your fire-cutout crown, says I. You must be forgiven by the water tribes enough to earn the ice crown, the earth kingdoms enough to earn the glowing stone crown, and the air tribes to earn the (well, not a wind crown, but roll with). Then I took him flying. He kept screwing up my balance, being a dead weight hanging off to one side.

We arrived in the water kingdom, where they were all set to tech him the value of strong labor, and he had to turn several old fire nation chains into some kind of bell. He couldn't do this, actually, and Ed from FMA had to show up and transmute it molten, after which the fire lord figured out how to melt iron with firebending but still couldn't make a bell because there was no mold for it. The water tribes said, okay, move on to the earth kingdom challenge.

It was to bury all the dead, complete with proper funeral offerings. Myself, Fire lord, Sokka, and Katara (but not Aang, he was doing something with a hurricane) went through a huge thing about which I can't remember much in an earth kingdom graveyard. I do remember there were full-scale Egyptian-style apartments, and that we had to somehow get the representative dead body (which was a full-scale terra cotta statue) into the right apartment. Then the graveyard keeper showed up and kicked us out.

Back to the water tribes, where maybe they now have a mold for the bell . . . no? Damn. Dream ends.

Very Long Dream: Begins as a retelling of Inverloch, just about the point when Kayn'dar is being abducted, only both Kayn'dar and Shiara wre about twelvish and instead of hiding his memory Kayn'dar kissed Shiara, kissed Acheron (who looked like Kayn'dar's twin, but evil) and then did something that locked himself away . . .

Anyway, Shiara went back to the village, which was at war with highly tech-advanced battlesuited bugs, and was holding them off on the basis of magic alone. At about the time she got there, she witnessed one of the defending elves (Rank Major) be defeated and then infected by the bugs. She gasps. I suddenly become an entity rather than a third person observer, a bug but not an attacking one.

The elves, with stolen tech handheld railguns, try to kill me for a while, while I just hang out not hurting them. Eventually, I manage to get them to stop frickin' attacking and communicate. They are worried because Kayn'dar has vanished, so myself and the bug who infected me decide to go find him. There's lot of rocket powered flight and terrain scoping, very weird . . . eventually, we end upon a plateau, or flying above one, and I've got absolutely marvelous vision . . . like I was a hawk, or something. Anyway, we find Kayn'dar and his honor guard, but figure out that he left because he's becoming something else . . . and stupidly, we fly in to investigate.

Whatever Kayn'dar as becoming, we became it too.

Then we had to catch a train. You get to it through a marble-size hole at the edge of plateau, and something to do with the ay you think. On the train is some sort of weird crossover between Hary Potter, Neil Gamain's blog, and vampire boot camp. It's the boot camp that's important, becrause as it turns out we're now vampires, or rather, bloodsucking things although daylight is fine and they're kicking us off t London, a city that cannibalizes vampires. There's some plot about me and suddenly the two friends from last night not getting eaten, going to the burnt-out remains of the Tower of London for safety, saving another pair of newlywed vampires from the hungry fish living in the moat, and then suddenly it's me and my brother and father running from the law.

We en up in a museum to dead vampires, looking for MW, and of course she turns out to be the curators but not before we're found by the police and, being cornered, have to fight back. Just when it seems we're losing, the burger joint mascots (Ronald McDonald, the Burger King, etc.) show up, turning out to be vampires, and help us mob the humans. A tearful reunion is had by me and MW. And then I wake up.

So, yeah. Last night was quite a night for dreaming, but I'm rather confused why we're not at Shul praying, as it's eleven and we're usually there at around 10.20. Not too hungry yet, though, that's a good thing.

My dreams, they have returned with a vengeance!

Why did you present me with a Christmas dream on Rosh Hashana?

Well, okay, so it wasn't a Christmas dream until right at the end. Up until then it was just a dream about Fetches, and walking the Wild Paths. Wild Paths that lead between worlds but will not let you walk them unless you are Wild too, Wild like the Fey are wild. It's one of the ways for humans to escape the Summerlands, but they have to become not quite human to do it. Most of the dream was of myself and someone else (who I got the sense was male and trying to remain hidden) walking the Wild Paths, and of the people we met while he led me home. I'm not quite sure why, given as I was a mortal and he was Fey. It probably have something to do with the capriciousness of they who live outside the worlds . . .

I got back to a path that lead home eventually, anyway, and I was all set to part ways with him, only we got our wrenches mixed up. Mine was made of iron, his was made of something that shone like pewter but was not . . . mithril is the only word that comes to mind, but it was not silver and it was not light. It had weight, because it was meant partly as a mechanical tool but mostly as a weapon. If you clubbed someone on the head with this wrench, their brains would end up splattered over the room. Anyway. Whatever it was, this metal was just as dangerous to our world as iron is to theirs, so he had to come back after me.

The thing is, just as we can't navigate the Wild Paths, they can't navigate this world. It's too full of iron. It won't kill them, it will do even worse and confuse them and weaken them. So there's me, running around with this incredibly dangerous wrench-shaped piece of metal, and theres him running around carrying a piece of iron that is killing him but it's the only link he has to me, so he has to keep it.

I had apparently missed several months, and I belonged to some sort of post-apocalyptic society so everyone had thought I was dead. My coming back was kind of like a miracle that no one expected, since even post apocalyptically everyone knew how to operate machines, heavy farmimng equipment, that kept them alive without knowing how they did it, and my friend Cherryeh (closest I can get to the feel of the name) could even mechanic for them, but everyone had amnesia and I was the only one who even got flashes of the past. Some people thought of me as a waste, since the only thing I was otherwise good for was manual labor, but the people in charge of the community knew that if I could only remember enough, they'd be able to restore the previous age . . .

Anyway, there were trains. The trains worked by something that wasn't steam and wasn't electricity. I rode one, and thought about the inhuman who had brought me home, and visited all my friends to inform them that a) I was still alive and b) what I'd remembered while on the Paths (a lot, the Paths went past quite a bit of human history) and meandered. The Inhuman went in a straight line, which means he eventually caught up to me, or nearly did. I got on a train just before he would have. Trains are big whomping lumps of iron . . . but I saw him, which was enough to alarm me because the iron of this world was killing him, and I couldn't imagine why he'd be here, especially when some female who cared about him, who we'd met on the Paths, had told him not to come. She was some form of sybil, I think.

But I didn't have the pull to stop the train, so instead I did the only thing I could -- extended his wrench to him.

Things got weird. It was still a train, but it was moving along the Wild Paths, and he could be on it because it was not a train of copper and painted polished wood, and it was going away too quickly. I had to run to catch up, which I eventually did, and then I had to help him work it because it was only me and the female who loved him and two adults who followed me, or maybe who I followed doing it, and we were approaching an industrial-revolution town under snow . . . only it wasn't quite snow, it was more like ashes, they burnt and froze, and eventually when we got close enough, it became apparent that the train was Santa's sleigh and that I was there because the city was too full of iron and could block him out but I could make openings.

The city had Christmas decorations, but it was all commercial. Even Santa (yes, it was Santa with a deadly wrench) was all set to give up until I said that all we had to do was put faith back into the commercialism. We did it, slowly at first and then faster. And then suddenly I was in a windowbox conservatory made of glass and burnished copper, like a human-sized hamster ball, and it opened on to a room like I'd love to have, all warm wood and glowing lamps, and an absolutely huge warm bed, so I went to sleep, and . . .

Woke up. It was nine-fifty in the morning.

Services went forty minutes faster today, and the rabbi told a Good Joke. The rabbit normally tells awful jokes, so this Good Joke was something of a Rosh Hashana miracle.

Two steps to being a successful businessman:
1. Never tell them everything you know.

That's it.

Then I came home, changes into not-nice clothing, and biked off to learn Warhammer. Lacha is right, it is all d6+modifier, but I keep forgetting which modifier goes to which roll . . . and these statuettes are going to end up taking all of my time, I can tell. Oh well, there goes my free time next work term . . .

I are sad for BF leaves for Kalamazoo next Thursday, and I prolly won't see him after that till maybe Thanksgiving. [cries] Thank goodness for Intarwebz, at least.

Anyway, my day rocked. Tomorrow is Saturday, which means it will rock longer, louder, and harder. Plus, no Shul woo!

Trenchcoat, please be on later. I want to talk to you.

I had dreams last night. I can’t quite remember what they were, but I know I had them. At least one involved me explaining that the square mile bounded by Nine Mile to the South, Ten Mile to the North, Greenfield to the East, and Coolidge to the West used to be a very Jewish neighborhood. (This is true; twenty years ago, half the neighborhood was Jewish. These days, the ghetto* is slowly growing North of Eight Mile.)

I also remember that some part of the dream was welcoming some Japanese businessman and his wife. They spoke very good English, and my Japanese was terrible. Then myself and the wife went off to go make a bed . . . there was a whole shelf of Shonen Jump back issues in the bedroom, which I pointed out to my randomly appearing brother.

Is there such a thing as a research degree? I don’t think so, but somebody had one.

And I kept waking up, going “it’s too early,” rolling over, and going to back to sleep. I don’t know why. I hate it when I get interrupted sleep like that, it means my REM cycle is disturbed [senses a disturbance in the Force]

On the plus side, if I sleep with the window open I can also sleep with two blankets. I can’t stand the feeling of not being under when I sleep, which means even when it’s stupid-hot in the summer I’m still under at least one full blanket. Not sheet. Blanket. In the winter, I get up to as many as four. So I’m happy that it’s cooling off. It still smells like summer, but I like short days and leaf mold and being exhausted from raking, and I now know that Autumn is coming . . .

*Other cities, like Chicago and St. Louis, have ghettos, urban where you don't go at night unless you're packing. Detroit . . . does not have a ghetto. Detroit, the entire thing South of the famous Eight Mile and East of John R, is a ghetto.