My Life

I saw that my darling blogged about having a strange dream last night. She’s not the only one. Mine was odd too. It may have been more than one dream, but I remembered them all as one.

Normally, I dream in high-definition color, with incredibly realistic detail; sometimes even more realistic than real life, if such a thing is possible. But I normally don’t remember my dreams. Just once every few months.

Last night’s was no exception.

I think it started out with an excursion to my grandmother’s canyon (east of Seminole). Marline and I were hiking down there at night, in the cold. It was almost like a nuclear winter, the cold was so bitter. We were wrapped up to the hilt. But the canyons weren’t quite like in reality; they were deeper, with more caves, more lakes, and a river instead of a small creek.

Near the bottom of the canyon, where the canyon floor met the wall, was a small cave that looked interesting. I went inside, and found some old relics, things that I believed once belonged to my ancestors: a small, half-rotted chest-of-drawers, a wardrobe, some small wooden boxes. They were dusty and empty. Inside the cave were some of my family members, all arguing about who should “inherit” the items. I grew angry and shouted at them, saying they should be mine, since I was the only one who hadn’t inherited anything yet. (Very selfish of me, I know.)

They left the cave, going outside, where Marline was waiting. I went deeper into the tunnel, as I’m bound to do sometimes, even in real life, and found even more artifacts. Slipping past a tumbled pile of rocks, I dropped into a man-made room with concrete walls, a couple of bunks and a small dark man who hissed at me and backed away. He held a weapon of some sort in my direction. The end of the “weapon” glowed red.

As the strange man backed into a dark corner, I went on through the room and stepped out onto a street corner. (I know, there aren’t too many street corners underneath my grandmother’s property, but this one was.) It was night, but warm. In every direction, an ancient city stretched away from me as far as I could see. It actually looked like a modern city from our present time, but had fallen into centuries of disrepair.

In the city, I recognized several people that I know from Seminole County (who won’t be named in this account; sorry.) They were all dressed for the warm weather, and it was indeed warm. My coat had disappeared by this time.

I learned that there were areas in the “city” that were occupied only by the strange, hissing small people with the red-glowing weapons. They always backed away into dark corners, holding up the odd glowing tubes. Other parts of the city had crumbled into ruin, and scavengers were going through them, looking for food or bounty. Some parts of the city still had electricity, but were very run-down. Everything looked sad. Everyone was quiet. No one seemed surprised or disturbed by my presence, but hardly anyone said anything.

Throughout my wanderings in the city, I stayed close to several of my friends that I met there, and we walked the streets.

More than once, I made it back to the small man-made room with the bunks, where I again encountered the hissing man. I finally made it back outside the cave, where Marline told me that my family had been eaten by a large monster that was in the canyon’s river.

I told you. Very strange indeed.

Anyway, I was awakened from the dream by loud crashes of thunder outside my apartment, which is odd, since thunder almost never wakes me up. I got out of bed to see that rain was pelting down outside in sheets and buckets. My slightly open car windows were admitting the precipitation in inordinate amounts, soaking the interior of my vehicle. The drainage ditch in front of my apartment was full, and water was creeping across the parking lot toward my front door. Out the back window, I could see that the small creek there was overflowing and approaching my back porch.

I stayed awake about an hour, from 3:30 a.m. to 4:30 a.m., watching the rain and worrying about the water levels, which nearly got to the sidewalk at my front door. The windblown rain began finding its way under my front door, so I threw down a towel to soak it up.

Finally, I went back to sleep, though it was still raining. Then, I had several other dreams, but can’t remember them. Hmmm…

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Today, at work, I’d already finished laying out my pages, when the ad department changed the ad layout on both of them, so I had to do some minor re-working. (I had finished them yesterday evening.) Still, I got it done by 9 a.m., and headed to Oklahoma City for a Photoshop workshop.

The workshop was hosted by the Oklahoma Press Association (OPA). The woman who taught the workshop was using a Macintosh (as do about 80 percent of news media employees nationwide) and Photoshop CS. This made it a little difficult to follow since my workplace uses Windows, and Photoshop 6.0 (I have 7.0 at home, after reverting from CS, which is too difficult to run on anything but the best machines.) Of course, CS2 has been out for a year or more, but most people haven’t moved up to it yet, since we don’t have $700 extra dollars laying around.

Anyway, she started out with basic principles and tools, and I began to think I would be wasting my time, but soon I began learning things. One of the first photos she pulled up as an example was my photo (“Fire Tornado”). That was pretty cool.

At one point near the end of the seminar, she was showing us how to make editing changes to part of the photo while keeping other parts unchanged. I offered a better way to do it, and walked her through the method I used, which turned out to be easier and mostly unknown to the rest of the class. Needless to say, my head swelled a little.

And, folks, that was my day. Hope yours was as interesting.