Yay

This is a short entry, just to describe the music video dream I had for "Everybody Pass Me By" a few nights ago.  I didn't do this when I did the music videos for "The Ride" and "Thru the Motion," but I decided to just go ahead and do it just to see what I came up with.  And not surprisingly, the song was based completely on the movie version of Holes.  So much so, in fact, that Mr. Sir was the one who was singing the words in the song.

The music video starts out showing a shot of the D-Tent boys digging holes in the iddle of Camp Green Lake, and all you can hear is the sound of then digging.  It's the middle of the day and the sun is almost straight up in the sky.  The camera begins panning over to the right, and the song starts up.  It's then that the water truck can be seen starting up its engine.  The lead kid in the other music videos, the kdi with the dark pink shirt and giant guitar, is sitting in the bed of the truck, leaning on the water tank and playing the main guitar riff in the song.  The truck soon roars off away from the holes.  The D-Tent boys see this and shout for the truck to wait and come back, but to no avail.

The truck drives across the desert back to the camp compound and Mr. Sir gets out of it, immediately turning and walking to the mess hall.  At this point the guitar riffs end and the lyrics start, with Mr. Sir singing them as he enters the mess hall and confronts the various chefs.

About 3/4 of the way through the first lyrics section, the Warden comes in and kicks him out of the hall.  The second guitar section begins as Mr, Sir is walking through the compound, breaking up various sorts of roughhousing between groups of boys before heading back to the water truck again.  All of this occurs with a few moment-long shots of the lead kid playing the guitar again, and as before, the kid hops into the bed of the truck as it's driving away.

At this point, the second lyrical section begins, and this time, there are different shots of the truck driving along and shots of Mr. Sir singing the lyrics as he drives the truck.  In the shots of Mr. Sir himself singing, the camera is hinged just below the rear-view mirror on the outside of the driver side, and the effect is that as the truck bounces across the desert, the view of Mr. Sir is stationary while the rest of the world is shaking.  This time, there are shots of the lead kid playing the bass of the song as the truck is driving, which didn't occur in the first lyrical part.

This lyrical part ends just as the truck reaches the group of holes where D-Tent is digging.  During the intermediary part of the song, the boys get out of their holes and refill their canteens in slow motion, and the different guitar notes fading in and out correspond to the water spigot being turned on and off.  The final 6 notes of this part are played by the kid, who jumps off the bed of the truck and joins the boys.

The last guitar riff section starts.  The kid is standing out in the sunlight, which is lowering, playing the guitar riffs while the boys dig.  One by one, the boys finish up their digging and leave their holes as the organ accomaniment to the guitar riffs starts, and by the end, the kid is all alone, standing in the middle of the group of holes.  He plays the last riff as the sun visibly moves down the horizon behind him, and walks off as the last cymbal fades away.

This music video dream was actually really cool.  I'm glad that I took the time to do it because I liked the way it turned out.  Maybe this one I'll make into a real music video someday.  Now if only I can somehow contact Shia LeBouf and Jon Voight...

Dreams again!

I KNOW I never finished the last entry, so here's the condensed version:

Writer's Workshop Final, SMNW's graduation, English and History finals, tree climbing, my birthday, PTP meeting, TJ's graduation, Memorial Day, Roman's party, dinner at Roman's house, the remaining four finals.

A lot to pack into a seven-day span, once I expand it out.  I'll do that some other time.

But first, I HAVE to write my dreams from last night before I forget them.

If I didn't at first believe that what we do in real life affects our dreams, I believe it now.  And what I was doing yesterday was watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, looking at random 4chan stuff, and going onto the Harry Potter wiki site to look up information on Tonks and the Lestrange Vault break-in at Gringotts.  And then I had some weird dreams.

The first one was that I was at home.  That sounds really boring, but I'll get into the interesting part later.  This deram related to a dream that I had a VERY long time ago but had forgotten by the time I had woken up, in which there was a girl of extreme importance staying at our house.  I'm not sure who exactly the girl was, but I have an idea of her essence, if that makes any sense at all.  I know she resembled a cross between Tonks, Hermione disguised as Bellatrix (in the film version of Deathly Hallows), and Vera Venus (if you can imagine that).  She was a beautiful girl, and kind and outgoing on the outside, but on the inside she was smart, clever, and cunning; in short, she might be a good match for Artemis Fowl, but she was lightyears beyond any league I imagined myself to be in.

There was no reference to that in any part of the actual dream; this was just stuff I recalled from the earlier dream, which I could only remember while I was in this dream.  And now that I think about it, if my memory is correct, when I first had that dream I wondered where the combination of girl had come from; now I know.

Anyway, by the time the dream started, she had already left our house and moved on to whatever else life had to throw at her.  Though I was in no way in the same league as her, she had befriended me nonetheless, as her outgoing attitude prevented anything else from transpiring.  So as she had stayed at our house, we had become good friends, and I have to admit that while she was there I had fallen in love with her.  (Of course, who couldn't fall in love with a stunningly beautiful girl only a year or two older than you that's smart, clever, and cunning, and at the same time kind and outgoing?  She was almost the perfect girl!)  Obviously, since she was so far out of my league, she didn't share the same feelings for me, but she didn't alienate me when she found about my feelings.  But now that I say that, maybe I didn't tell her...  Either way, she never stopped being my friend, even after she left.  That was another thing about her; she truly liked the people she befriended.  She didn't grudgingly befriend people for mutual advantage or sympathy for another's lower status (like myself) - she actually enjoyed being my friend.  (I wonder if the paparazzi or whatever gave her hell about her and me.  Though I don't think so, because of her personality.  Of course, there's the possibility that she wasn't the type of important paparazzi went after anyway...)

Wow, I got WAAAAY sidetracked by all that.

The point is, it was a few days after she had left, and I was in the laundry room loading the washing machine, when my phone vibrated.  I knew it meant I got a text message, so I took out my phone with my free hand to see what it read.  Sure enough, it was a text message from the girl, saying that she had friended me on a web site (I assumed it was a web site at any rate) that I had never heard of.  Something like "Sum In" or "Sum It" or something like that, but definitely something I had never heard of.  I could figure out, though, that you didn't have to be on it for someone to list you as a friend, but I guess you could access the person easier if you got an account and you were a friend of theirs.  But now that I think about it, how would you prove that you are who you say you are...?

Anyway, I had no idea how to access the site, or even if it was a site.  What if it was some different technology that was REALLY expensive?  But I at least decided to go online and see if I couldn't find the place.

I went onto google and tried about 40 different combinations of different words I thought might lead me to the site, but to no avail.  It got me really annoyed, and I think I was about to text the girl back to see if she could tell me what was going on, but then the dream ended.

To Vera Venus:  HOW IN THE WORLD DID YOU SNEAK INTO MY DREAM!?  Well, at leats you gave that girl the edge that really attracted me to her.  Thanks for that.

Though now that I say that out loud, it must be the fact that I was on the Artemis Fowl site fora  while last night.  In fact, I'm sure that's what it was.  The only difference is that Mary Sue's aren't allowed on the AF Fanfiction site, but this girl definitely was a Mary Sue, even though I realy don't like that description of a perfect female character.

Whatever.  Let's move on to the next dream.

This time I was at SMNW.  This time, the school was a cross between it and TJ, in that the architectural layout of the building itself was exactly the same as the original SMNW, but the style was reminiscent of TJ.  There were 2 stires and 3 main hallways in each story, but the floor was carpeted with the TJ carpet instead of tiled and the lockers were the ones at TJ that didn't have locks.  And the classrooms were alll furnished in the TJ style, with separated chairs and desks and other things TJ does which I can't think of right now.

So I was there, and various people from TJ, SMNW, and Carthage high school were there.  It was obviously after school, because in the normal TJ style people were hanging around, sititng and talking, some of them playing Magic the Gathering or Game Boy games.  Some people I knew to be there were Palmer, Alexis, and Ax, but I know there were others (a TON of others) I can't think of.

Anyway, I was hanging with people and I got bored, so I decided that like Roman did at the party last year, I would run down the hallways and do crazy jumps and stuff.  So I ran down the hallway and pushed myself up off the ground using the TJ-esque lockers.  I would seemingly float in the air for a while, then run on the groud even more, then run on the walls for a while.  I did that a few times, until I realized that I was defying the lays of gravity every time I was doing that.  Then I started jumping up and staying up, letting myself float in the air.  The only problem with this was that I had to keep propelling myself forward by pulling on the top of the lockers, as once my speed dropped to below a certain level, I started floarting down to the ground.

I did that for a while, until some people began to take notice that I was flying, and they asked to see it some more.  One girl came up (who was NOTHING like the girl in my previous dream) and asked if I could show her how I did it.  I dhowed her what I did to fly, but I never stopped to see if she had actually flown; that time I flew the longest distance of any point in the entire dream.

In that jump I flew literally from one end of the hall to the other, floating over to where Ax and a few other people were sitting and playing a card game of some sort.  Just as I passed over Ax, I lost enough speed that I began to float down.  I panicked and pushed upward instead of forward, and I ended up landing on the flor just behind Ax.

Coming so close to disaster, I decided not to fly anymore, so I went into one of the classrooms and found Alexis there, and her mom in the far corner.  When I walked in, she was writing something on a Kindle with a touch screen (which I don't know if Kindles have touch screens or not), so I decided to join her and watch what she was doing.  I sat down next to her and put my arm around her shoulder, and asked how much the Kindle cost, since I've been wanting one to take on the Europe trip.  She thought for a moment, and finally said that it had cost $500.  I whistled quietly and commented on how my parents were unwilling to buy me anything more than $100 for my birthday.  Alexis didn't believe me when I said that, and she eventually laughed.

I was annoyed that she was laughing, but in the end I was just glad to be in her company, so I stayed with her and hung out.  I can't remember if anything romantic resulted from her comany; I think something might have, because her mother didn't ever interfere with anything we did while I was there.

So there was one more dream, but I don't have time to write it, so I'll summarize.

4chan apparently existed in the 1970's, and they were playing a prank on this guy who was working at a universioty, so they came and pasted all these random posters on his building.  The guy walked around with a camera, filming the damage 4chan had done, then other stuff in the city he was living in.  Then I joined him and we befriended this GIANT group of kids (because the guy apparently loves your kids) and we went to this abandoned building where the guy apparently worked.

We discovered that the city was a totalitarianistic society where everything looked like it was normal but there was a VERY specific order to things that could not be broken under any circumstances.  So we decided that we would break te order and "free" the people from the society.  So we rioted, and this cleaning lady got really mad at us.  Then all o the floors disappeared in the 14-story-tall building, and we had been on the top floor, so we had to somehow get down.

Then the dreams were over.

Weird, huh?

I like the first two dreams.  A cross between Tonks, Hermione as Bellatrix, and Vera Venus?  That would be by default the coolest girl on Earth.  Still light years out of my league, but I would probably idolize her.  And if she befriended me, I think that would really fall under the awkward chart I mentioned in the last entry.

And if I can't be with a girl like that, I would certainly enjoy spending time in Alexis' company.  It's really stupid that I should get comfort from a dream, but just the thought of being (essentially) alone with Alexis like that and being able to hug her and be next to her and things along those lines...  It makes me SO HAPPY on the inside.  And I SO WISH I could do that in real life.

But whatever.  Hopefully I'll see her in the summer a little bit.  Maybe I could skip a day next year so that I could see her at TJ...

Oh and btw, you guys don't know how close I came to making this dream entry private, if only for the extended involvent of Alexis in the second dream.

Okay, I'm done.  I SWEAR.

I Don't Like It

Art Foundations, that is.

And that's because of the format of the class.

I'm not saying that I have some sort of resistance.  I am getting SO TIRED of hearing that word!  The problem with Hunt is that he's positive that he's got it all figured out, when no-one knows the entire truth about everything.  The best anyone can do is make assumptions based on repeating patterns that come up.  But that doesn't work all the time.

Take me, for example.  I think that I have a fairly good amount of artistic talent.  In fact, the fact that I could create a combination of a bird and a rabbit out of clay that would actually look halfway good, I think, is proof that there is some spark of creativity firing in my neurons.

Here's the thing, though:  I am a SLOW worker.  a VERY SLOW worker.  Hunt expects us to create something that looks like a "high school" level work, whatever that means.  And I can do that.  I can do it easily.  But it just takes me a long time.  Here's the problem, though:  I am a slow enough worker that usually, I need a few extensions to get the project done.  That's a problem, because with clay, Hunt won't grant extensions because he had to put them into the kiln.  Which means that all the other projects are in the kiln now, and mine is still only halfway done.

I could work at the pace I do, and do some very high-quality stuff, but it will be only halfway done by the deadline.  Then I only get half-credit, which is still failing.  Or I can work fast enought o actually met the deadline, and then I make a sloppy animal that gets put into the kiln just to have it explode.  Either way I don't win.  And since I don't make any of the deadlines I think Hunt is starting to think that I just don't care about the class.  Which is TOTALLY not true.

I just hate it when you are required to take this class, this class, and this class, and then all of those teachers treat you as though you have to put their class before all of your other classes if you want to even have a chance to pass.  And sometimes you have something to do that takes up the time of your regular routine, and you have to cut back SOMEWHERE.  Usually you can make it up later, but sometimes you can't.  And then your teackers say, "Well, if you can't keep up, why did you take the class?" and they give you NO MERCY.  Well, it's not that I CHOSE to take those classes out of my own free will; I had to take Art Foundations to graduate, Calculus for my major, Latin because I'd be even more inconvenienced to try to take annother language, Physics for my major, and History to graduate.

So, maybe that's why I feel like I should either be really mad or really depressed right now, but somehow am not.  It's really weird.

Maybe it's also the fact that I have (except for two obvious A's) STRAIGHT C'S.  In fact, now that I think about it, I should be doing my homework right now...

Another reason is that I have a staph (is that how it's spelled?) infection.  I got some sort of pimple-type bump on my arm.  I don't think it was a pimple, because you just don't get pimples on your arm.  I think it might have been a bug bite, but the doctor said it was morelikely some sort of puncture wound.  Anyway, I didn't even break it or anything.  But soon, it was a giany green bump on my arm surrounded by red, irritated skin.

So we went to the urgent care place.  The doctor took one lookat ti and immediately took a scalpel and scraped off the top.  A HUGE amount of puss then sat on my arm, extremely thick and disgusting.  He took some on a cue tip and said that they would get a culture form it to make sure that it was staph.  But in the meantime, he gave me no less than 3 prescriptions (on TOP of my two asthma mediactions).

Two of them are giant horse pills, and the third is an ointment.  The pills I have to take twice a day, swallow whole, and eat on a full stomach.  They leave me EXTREMELY thirsty, and I have diarrhea!

Yeah, this is the life.

Theories

I've begun to construct theories as to why I've never really found acceptance in any group ever, in my entire life, which is the case.  It seems to me that no matter who it is, no-one I know or have ever known as truly accepted me 100% for who I am.  (Ruling God out, of course.) Not that this particularly bothers me, but I;d like to know what to do in the future to be able to integrate myself into a group so that I would be accepted for who I am.  I think I've also identified a root cause for the problem.

I think that for one to be integrated into a group, 3 things have to happen:

1.  The other members of the group have to understand and acknowledge the interests of the one.
2.  The other members of the group have to share the same interests as the one actively and know basic facts about the one.
3.  The other members of the group have to acknowledge, accept, and enjoy the presence and the input of the one in particular.

I think the main reason as to why I've been as happy as I am is that I've found all 3 of these things, but spread out into different groups.  For example, in Carthage, people enjoyed my particular presence and input, and understood and acknowledged my interests, but they didn't share the same interests.  (At TJ they didn't even enjoy my presence.) Here, my friends understand and acknowldge my interests, and most of them they pursue actively as well, but I'm not sure that they enjoy my presence in particular.  (I'm not sure about that, though.  I think some of them do, but definitely not ll of them.) In my scout troop up here, too, they only acknowldge my interests; they don't pursue them themselves, and they don't care if I show up or not.

You may notice that in all of these cases, the interests are always acknowledged.  That, I think, is the easiest step in getting oneself integrated into a group.  In my opinion, it's also the first step needed.  That's because awkward silences only happen when people don't know what to talk about.

On that note, here's the process (as I view it) for one to get integrated into a group.

1.  The one meets someone else in the group.  You obviously can't know anybody if you don't meet anybody.
2.  The one and the other learn each other's interests and basic facts about each other.  This provides a basis for something to talk about.
3.  Either person researches an interest of the other.  This way, talkinga bout the subject loosens considerably.
4.  Discussions become more informal and relaxed as the one and the other become more familiar with each other.
5.  The other begine to acknowledge and enjoy the presence and the input of the one in particular.  This way the one feels a desire to come back and visit the other again.
6a.  The other, having already integrated themselves into the group, provides a segway for the one to meet the other members of the group.
6b.  If the group is too large, the one might be forced to remain in a relatively small clique that share interests actively and enjoy each other's presence and input.

I've never been through this entire process.  Not once.  Ever.  Unfortunately.

I think I know why, too.  My interests run wild.  It's like my interests in the drawing arts:  it's totally OCD.  As a result, I have a vast number of interests, all vastly different from each other.  Because I have so many, I've never invested myself enough in one particular interest enough to make it worthwhile to incorporate myself into a group that focuses on a particular field of interest as its primary purpose.  Not even my intense interest in puzzles is immune to these effects; it's been dilated enough my other interests that I haven't been as invested in the TwistyPuzzles forum as I want to be.

This seems to ring true everywhere, no matter what the goal for investing in them in the first place.  My interest in scouting was never as much as my mom, and now that I have my Eagle (as we moved), my interest has reduced drastically.  I never learned enought about aircraft to become a proper plane enthusiast.  I like anime to the point that I watch it and buy merchandise when I can afford it, but I've never been one to make a cosplay or create a fan character.  I've never been invested enough in Jazz Jackrabbit to do my own programming, create a worthwhile remix, or finish a fanfic about it.  My interest in Chip's Challenge only extended to creating levels, which almost completely stopped after completing the DanM1 levelset.  My interest in programming was only for hacking, which I only considered half-seriously in the first place.  Video games have dropped off now that the attnetion has turned to the Wii, PS3, and X-Box 360, none of which I own.  I've only been invested in physice for the math part, and I haven't been pursuing that as seriously as I should for someone who wants to go to NMT.

I think the closest I've ever gotten to being a total fan of something was Artemis Fowl, which dropped off fast after the Lost Colony came out.  That's because I'm not a fan of Artemis being a modern-day Robin Hood, which is totally unoriginal; the major appeal of Artemis, for me, was that he WAS a protagonist who was also a bad guy.  In any other situation, that would be a complete oxymoron and Eoin Colfer was the only person I knew who could actually pull it off.  And he pulled it off damn well, if you'll pardon my French.  Also, he HAS to be an only child, because then he has no-one his age to model off of, and he doesn't have to be a role moel himself.  Being an only child just makes him... freeer.  But then the time jump happened.  Stupid lost colony.

Long story short, Artemis Fowl has dropped off too.

So that leaves me as a person who only consumes things and doesn't really do ANYthing activey anymore.  What I really need to do is find stuf that I can knock off the list altogether, or at least limit the time I spend on them severely.  The only problem with that is that I like all these things too much to cut them off completely, or even limit myself on them more than I already am.  (Except for Artemis.  If you don't turrn him bad again, Eoin, I SWAER on my life I will...)

Yeah.

I mad a note on Facebook about things that people do when I'm solving the Rubik's Cube that get on my nerves.  It's VERY LONG.

I want to buy another Eastsheen 4x4x4 and get my first V-Cube 5.  Then I might be able to actively pursue 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 solving again.  I've been wanting to do tat for SO LONG...

By the way, I've noticed a trend about my puzzle knowledge:  I know a lot about mathematical aspects of puzzles (i.e. edges compared to corners, permutation, parities, commutators, cycles, orientation, etc.), but when it comes to pysical aspects (i.e. history, manufaturing process, exact mechanism, mech design, 3D printing, casting, etc.), I really suck.  That's one reason as to why I don't fir into the TwistyPuzzles group very well.

Bye.

(Update EXACTLY 2 months later:  I know now that the group I hang out with at school is definitely the closest I've gotten to have a group that totally accepts me.  But even though they've come EXTREMEY close, I still don't think I've found one yet.)

SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED

Let me start by saying that I talked to Mom and Dad about all the problems I've been having.

And they understand.

And that's good.

My faith has morphed over the last year.  I no longer consider the prime purpose of my life here to worship God by attending church, tithing, and praying.  Instead my failth has become more action-oriented.  In fact, I don't see any real point to religion (that's not selfish) other than to benefit everyone you possible can, whether you love them or hate them.  So in that regard, it seems to me that the only way to serve any diety that's not in a selfish way (when it really boils down to it) is to serve others.  And that has become my primary goal in life.

That's not to say that I don't try to show people God through my thoughts, words, and actions.  I jus hopw that if they don't they at least come to the same conclusions I have.

And I know that the order to put things in your life is first God, THEN others, then you.  But what would motivate you to put God first in your life?  Is it a selfish motivation (i.e. I don't want to go to Hell, I want to spend eternity with God), or is it a people-driven motivation (i.e. How can I help others get into Heaven?  Is there a way to make sure someone else doesn't get sent to Hell?)?  And that's the entire point I'm trying to get to:  If you're not placing God first for the sake of others, you're putting him there for your sake, which is selfish.   And doesn't selfishness fall under the sin of pride, which is the worst of the 7 Deadly Sins?

So anyway, enough of my rant.  I believe that there is a diety that knows more than we ever will, so maybe all of our interpretations, including mine, are wrong.

 Let me skip now to a crzy dream I had last night:

The weirdness started when Mom, Lizzy, and I all decided to go to Carthage.  It was either a week or so before Christmas, or the day after - I wasn't sure.  But we wanted to go down there and see what had changed, what was gone, what was new, and what was happening.

So we hopped in the van, sped down to Carthage, and drove down Garrison for a while.  Then we saw that there was a novelty/antique-type store near where the Salvation Army store is in real life (about 5 buildings down was that roundabout that has the 3 banks, the Wendy's and the Iggy's).

Inside was G'Daddy and a bunch of other older men from FUMC.  I think the Herbsts were there too, but if they were, I didn't talk to them at all.  Lizzy and I immediately went to the back of the store where all the old videos and toys were kept.  I think they had a few Bucky O'Hare videos, but I wasn't all that interested in them.  I saw that they had a smaller version of the Gordian's Knot, so I took it apart and tried to put it back together again.  The shape of the pieces was slightly different, though.  That, combined with the fact that I had suddenly forgotten how to put one back together, meant that I had to leave it disassembled on the shelf.  The shelf was the type that Book Barn used to have (the type where it's made out of wire and so there are spaces on the shelf through which things can fall), so within seconds a few of the pieces had landed on the floor where no-one except for me knew they were there.

I started looking around the rest of the store, trying not to draw attention to myself for what I had done.  Then I noticed that there were a lot of LEGO modelsscattered around different stands in the store.  I wanted to buy one, but I realized that they disassembled them before they gave them to you, and there were no instructions on how to put them back together.

So then the vantage point suddenly changed, and I found myself dropping heavy crystal balls on the LEGO models and laughing as parts flew every which way.  That only lasted for about 5 esconds, though.

Suddenly, the entire dream changed.  I think the old one ended and a new one began entirely.

Anyway, I was at a snowboarding place.  It wasn't like the classical ski place where there was a giant hill and you boarded on that.  It was more like a gianthalf-pipe that had a bunch of twists in it, and it had a definite starting and stopping place.  There was also a giant swimming pool and a place to simulate surfing.  It seemed like a giant skate-snowboard-swim-surf place that was designed for that particular purpose.  I think one of the TJ kids was having a party there, though it was up here, where I live now.

When the dream actually started, I was sitting at the top of the end (or was it the beginning?) of the snow-boarding halfpipe.  There was a big ramp going down, then a bend, then a place where the pipe was flat just for a few inches, then another drop and the acual half-pipe.  The entire pipe, from the flat point to the top of the ramp was covered in square about six inxhes on a side, and inside of each square was a number.  The numbers were all different colors of the rainbow, as were the sqaures on which they were printed.

A bunch or nerds (for lack of a better word) has set up computer all along the ramp, many of them inside the ramp itself.  They were all asking themselves the same question:  What if Jesus were snowboarding up the ramp?  Randumb, I know.  But play along here.

I found myself in the pipe within seconds, trying to help in any way I could.  I didn't know what aspect of Jesus' snowbaording they were testing for, but I tried to help.  Many times over I saw the squares and teh numbers diasspear from the ground of the ramp, only to see a holographic Jesus board up the ramp and down again, with a trail of squares and numbers forming behind him, covering where his board had actually touched the ramp and every point directly below that.

I still couldn't figure out what they were testing for, and I never found out through the entire sequence of dreaming.  But later on, I moved on from the ramp and went to where the pool and surfing area were, though from a distance it still looked like part of the ramp.

We were sitting in a garden area around a table, enjoying some snacks.  I was sitting at the table so that to my left was the rest of the park-type area.  To my front and to the left, about 150 feet off, was the swimming pool and surfing area, and directly behind that (from my vantage point) was a breezeway that marked the real entrance to the snowboarding half-pipe.  The half-pipe itself resembled not a semicircle but a parabola, not really reaching vertical at any point.

Anyway, I was sitting in the garden area with Alexis, Lizzy, and a few others (I don't remember who they were).  There was a girl who resembled Kaitlin Hoff (but definitely was NOT her), who was obsessing over all the other girls who were there.  Though no-one explicitly stated it in the dream, I could infer that she was a lesbian.  While we were sitting there eating, Alexis looked over and saw that girl wouldn't stop looking at her, and this bothered her.

This was all supposedly taking place on Saturday, Valentine's Day.  Being the day it was, I presented to Alexis some flowers.  I might have also had a box of chocolates, but I don't think so.  Anyway, I presented all this to her and wished her a happy Valentine's Day.  Flattered, she gave me a kiss on the cheek.

I was thrown off guard by this, and it left me almost stupefied.  When she asked me what was wrong, I told her that I had never been kissed by a girl in my life.  (I meant by this that I had never been kissed by a girl outside of my family.) She couldn't believe this and asked if I was serious.  I affirmed that I was dead serious.  At this news, she laughed in a shocked and sad kind of way and began kissing me repeatedly (almost like snogging), and soon we were kissing each other on the lips.  To this, everyone else said the usual "Awww..." and smiled to each other.

So apparently, this was a dream within my dream.  Which made me really sad.  But I "woke up" from this dream, but I was still at the same place, with all the same people.  This time was early evening.  I found Alexis quickly and told her about the dream, which was rather stupid now that I think about it.  At the end of my recollection, she smiled, and kissed me on the lips "for real."

So by now the place had morphed, and where there had been a swimming pool and a surfing area before, there was now a large lake with a giant fountain in the middle.  In the same way, where there had been the half-pipe, there was a large building, fancy in nature.  It was in this very building that everyone there was going to participate in a dance very soon.  And the good news was that the seniors weren't going to run it this time - we had a real DJ.

There was a very small island, maybe 100 square feet total, that was about 40 feet out from the corner of the squarish-shaped lake.  On this island was a large sign announcing that there would be a dance in the building.  When Alexis and I passed it (we were now suddenly in our dance clothes, she in a dress and I in a suit), we saw a couple standing in front of the sign, ready to get their picture taken.  I don't remember who the girl was.  Alex Bowman stands out in my memory, but I know it wasn't her.  But the guy was one of the Thespians from SMNW, whose name I've never known but who looks a lot like Rowe Hessler.  I didn't really understand even in my dream why a kid from Northwest who had never even been to TJ was at a TJ dance, but I didn't question it too much, since I didn't go to TJ at that time either.

I don't remember too much about the actual dance.  What I do know was that the chemistry between Alexis and I was perfect, and I couldn't have pulled off a better dance with her.  I knew we were truly in love with each other by the time we left.  Even if I hadn't been sure myself, I could tell by the fact that Alexis and I wouldn't let go of each other.

Then that dream ended, and the next dream started with me in the waiting room of an hospital.  Alexis had been involved in an accident, and she had apparently died or something like that.  I saw two nurses walking out of the hall, and heard them conversing about the details of the accident.  I had not heard the story yet, and I can't remember what the story actually was, though I know it was pretty fantastic.  As I heard them talking, my head fell into my hands and I began crying uncontrollably.

I was led out of the room, back to our car.  I turned around one last time to look at the hospital at which Alexis had met her end, and when I did, I saw her walking out of the front doors!

I broke out of the grip of whoever was pushing me to the car and almost literally tackled her, I was so happy to see her.  She was very happy to see me, but mostly glad that she was still alive.  She didn't even seem to have any major injuries.  So we hugged each other tightly, and I parctically carried her to the car that was waiting for us.

Weird dream, huh?  I don't even know where half of this came from.

But anyway, a few days ago I made my first 911 call ever.  There was an accident on the highway that we saw when we were driving to Carthage last weekend.  There were two cars that were right in the middle of the road, blocking alot of the lanes.  So we called 911, but before we could even tell them what had happened, they triangulated our location and figured out why we were calling.  (Apparently it wasn't the first call that had come in.)  So I thanked them and hung up.  When I closed my phone, my hands were shaking.

And that's pretty much it.  Except for that I've started learning how to play the guitar and I've gotten back into the habit of climbing trees.  And Chris Matthews broke one of my 4x4x4's by throeing it against a wall at school.  It was a particularly crappy 4x4x4 and it didn't even turn anymore.  Oh yeah, and I have VERY bad grades right now because I missed a lot of information over two days where I was really sick.

That's it.  I swear.

(Update on 5/25/09:  I just now realized that the way in which Alexis was kissing me in the deam I mentioned here is the exact way Roman and Charlotte kiss each other nowadays.  Does that now officially mean that my dreams predict the future?  It's happened enough, in indrect ways, that I think it's totally possible...)