I forgot to say that the other night I dreamed I was dancing uphill across a lawn blossoming with potato chips while the handsome neighbor man played classic pop music for me and watched me from his front window.

Junk food, voyeurism, and Tony Bennett. All in one package.

I don't often remember my dreams so I'm proud that when I do, they're peculiar. This one wasn't as peculiar as the one with the lava, the garage door opener, and the governor's mother, but it was peculiar.

When I was young, I had serial dreams. I had an entire dream universe that I visited and revisited, and I had on-going story lines with characters who lived there and everything.

Say what you will about my mental stability today, I'm in closer touch with reality than I was twenty years ago.

This has been heckweek. Not quite bad enough to qualify as hellweek, but bad. Intermittent phone and e-mail problems all week long, leaving me here twiddling my thumbs and watching the minutes saunter by.

(P.S. Now I'm just writing down random scenes and lines as they occur to me. I'll make them fit into The Thing somehow. I've never written a train wreck before. It's...interesting.)