Today I completed, or should have completed, week 4 of the C25K program. The problem is I pooped out on the run. I normally do my runs in the evening when the sun has gone down and when I’ve been up all day and eaten food. Because of plans to see “The Dark Knight” and then have movie night with Emily, I decided to run this morning. Mistake! I’m not a morning person, the sun was shining and all I had was some yogurt. I pooped out at the very end, and feel like I have to get three complete runs in for week 4 to “graduate.” I guess I’ll be doing another!

I’m still avoiding the Wii Fit, mainly cause I keep hitting plateaus. It tells me I am not moving at a fast enough pace to reach my goal in time, blah blah blah. So then when I do finally use it, it tells me I haven’t shown up in umpteen some days, blah blah blah. I keep saying I will show it some love, since I don’t seem to be getting my butt to the gym lately, but I don’t. I just usually don’t want to do anything on the days I don’t run, cause I’m sore.

The abstract for my conference paper is almost complete. I need to fiddle around with wording a bit more, but the meat is there. I probably should have asked how long it should be, as I could probably include a bit more detail. Oh well. It’s going to my advisor and if he thinks I should add more I will. I’ll share it when it’s done for the curious. I also have to remember to register and book a room for myself. I’m somewhat dreading this conference, as in the past I always knew fellow students would be going to hang out with. I don’t think they’ll be there this time around honestly.

I was going to include a bit about the delightful pet surprise I woke up to this morning, but won’t. I’m eating lunch right now and don’t want to think about it more than I have to.

I had bizarre dreams last night that I dyed my hair a brilliant glittery red color. Yes somehow I dyed my hair and it came out glittery. My hair also was longer, down to my chin and styled like that of a woman’s cut. What the hell? Come to think of it, it looked an awful lot like Renny on “Big Brother 10.” I have to stop watching that before I go to bed!

It is time for a haircut. I’m dreading going in as I know I’ll get a lecture on the bleach job and how bad it is to do that and how if I want that done I should come to them so they can charge me 100 dollars to do it. Yeah, I think the 100 dollars is the key, it’s probably just as bad for my hair if they do it! I have contemplated just dying it back to brown first, but I really want to see what it looks like after it’s cut. It should have that cool “highlight” look to it.

Anyway, I’m off to “The Dark Knight.” My thoughts on it in the next post. I’m sure I’ll love it, I am constantly hearing how amazing it is.

I took this with my iPhone, to test out how well photos come out with it. Pretty damn good, much better than any other camera phone I’ve ever had. Anyway, this here is what is left of poor Jason Vorhees, who was hanging up on my porch last year as part of my Halloween decorations. I had left him on the porch and had PLANNED to unstuff him, wash the clothes and then sew the shirt to the pants for next year to make him look more human (he was a little top heavy last year). That never happened, and eventually I just left him on the porch thinking “Well pretty soon I’ll be hanging him back up again!” Oh yes, I’ll be doing it again this year and I’m sure I’ll even add some new stuff in.

Last night for some odd reason I had a dream that I was in a horror movie. I was in this giant old mansion of a house running around trying to get away from some monstrous freak, who for some reason was Jason Vorhees. However he didn’t look like Jason, he had no hockey mask. He did have a deformed face and long stringy nasty hair though. For some reason I was running around with some screaming little girl who wouldn’t shut up, which of course made it easy for us to be found. Oh and I’m pretty sure I was a female myself. It was more like I was watching all this happen from outside my body. Hmmmm. We were running up through the attic and then all the way down to the cellar, where we finally escaped out the back door and got to a car. As we drove away Jason watched us from a window and another woman stood in the front doorway of the house in a nasty black dress. For some reason I felt this was his step-mother, why I don’t know. I don’t recall all the details, just that I remember it was very scary. Maybe someone is telling me to make it into a story or a movie.

I realized I hadn’t updated my “dreams” blog category in ages. Lately I’ve been having some doozies, which I should post about since I don’t seem to be finding much inspirations elsewhere. I do have that farm video blog I promised though, I haven’t forgotten!

Well I thought I’d share this one as it was just bizarre. I honestly didn’t remember it until a day or two later when I was taking a run. I saw a cigarette pack on the ground (damn litterbugs) and it all came back to me. I remember having a dream where I smoked. More than that I remembered the physical sensations of what it was like to smoke: the taste and the feel. This shocked me more than anything, because I’ve never smoked! I’ve never even tried a cigarette! Growing up I had friends with parents who smoked and I couldn’t stay more than an hour in the house without getting headaches. I suffer migraines, which came on when I hit my teens, so clearly smoking wasn’t something I ever felt the need to take on. To this day I can’t stand smelling like cigarette smoke from bars and what not. I will shower when I get home before going to bed to get the smell off me. This dream was one of those whoa, past life experience moments.

So it is the end of the semester. All of the sudden it comes to my attention, I’ve been registered for 2 classes I have not attended all semester long except for the very firsts classes. Somehow with my very busy schedule, I just forgot I was registered for them and didn’t go to them . . . for the whole semester. This means of course two Fs and automatic expulsion! Nooooo! There are variations of this dream of course, such as I attended half the semesters, but didn’t do half the reading and now have books upon books to read before next week’s final. When I have nightmares lately, these are generally it!

I am supposed to graduate by the end of this semester (May), so says the school My time is up, and I either have to give up or apply for yet another extension. This takes me beyond ten years, which could be an issue. When I first started, 10 years was the limit. To get beyond ten years you had to have a really good reason and the school had to approve it after some petitioning. Now though that 10 year figure has gone poof in the guidelines, you simply have to keep applying for and being allowed to have extensions. Why the 10 year figure when away, I’m not sure, I have my theories that it might have something to do with how long it is now taking people to finish undergrad alone.

I am determined to get this dissertation done once and for all by the end of the semester, to end these dreams once and for all, to close this chapter of my life. Plus I’m currently working at getting stress out of my life, the dissertation is a major part! I’m a little over half way to finishing it. Actually probably more, since I already know the majority of the results. They just have to be typed up and proved with statistical graphs I’m currently making (but I know enough to know what the graphs will already say). Come next month I’ll be working on the dissertation full time 7 days a week (hint hint), something I have not been able to do and has dragged my progress down. Therefore I expect to have it done come May. However editing and getting my committees’ approval to defend by then? Well that’s another story at this point! My advisor though has me applying for graduation in May, when the time comes we’ll deal with what needs to be worked out.

Cha-Cha-Cha-Changes! Big ones coming up in my life, soon and fast! I’ll get that post up about that big decision too, but something tells me enough of you have enough info now to figure it out

Just sharing another one of my wacky dreams! Last night I dreamt I was in a mall, and this one store, which is where KayBee Toys used to be, had a sign out front saying “Closing, everything inside is free.” I figured hey free, I’m going to go get some free stuff! So imagine my surprise when I found a Christmas tree, almost bare, with a few recognizable ornaments left on it. Hey these are mine! Other decorations were mine too, including one broken nativity piece. I got on the phone and called home and told me brother “Go in the back room and see if the boxes of Christmas stuff are there. Gone! Someone had stolen and given away my Christmas! I was devastated. The man who apparently was giving away my stuff came in to see why I was basically frantically grabbing everything. I remember yelling obscenities at him as this was my stuff which was stolen! I soon woke up, so I don’t think I got Christmas back.

First up, everyone going on the cruise in January spoke with our new referred agent at the top company. We had to fax in all our documents showing we had paid for our cruises and were given confirmations. We are promised we are being taken care of today, the cruise won’t be canceled. Oy! As it turns out, yes it looks like a bit of embezzling, but that word of course wasn’t used. Payments were simply taken for the cruises but not applied to the cruises. Nice way of saying our money was borrowed for awhile?

Last night I had odd odd dreams! I dreamt I was in New Orleans, but it wasn’t actually New Orleans. I can still see the streets and the restaurants, but I’m not sure where it was. It’s one of those “I know it’s somewhere I’ve been, but I’m not sure where” moments. Maybe it is a past life in a dream? Who knows! I do know when I went to dinner I ordered turkey. Yeah, just turkey. I don’t know why. However instead of bringing me a whole turkey, which is what I expected, they brought me Bambi! It was a deer, dead, sitting on a platter, fur and all! EW! I guess killing Bambi finally came back to haunt me!

-Dustin

I had terrible dreams last night, ones that don’t foretell a good future for me. For some reason I kept dreaming the ghost in the house was after me, wouldn’t leave me alone. At one point I remember them materializing in front of me just like in a Hollywood movie. I remember screaming at him to leave me alone. I kept waking up, and no matter how hard I tried to force myself to dream about something else, I kept dreaming about that damn ghost! Of course every time I woke up, I was paranoid and looking around the bedroom, sure he was in there.

Needless to say I’m even more anxious about next Tuesday night when I’m going to be home alone!

So if you live on the east coast then you no doubt had the miserable day I did! It’s been cold and has been raining all day. The poor people up north are getting sleet and snow! I guess I should count my blessings, but I think I might welcome that. Thanks to the non-stop rain our basement got flooded big time. It tends to flood during heavy rains, but this time it got hit hard. It’s not furnished and everything is stored in plastic boxes and up off the ground. However we did have a good number of empty cardboard boxes down there that got trashed and will need to be taken out. Oh yeah, the cat pans are down there too . . . . bio-hazard zone!

In other news I had a wonderful school related stress dream! I was back in class, but with friends and classmates from high school. Apparently a project was due and almost none of us had done it. I don’t remember what it was, it was some kind of book report/poster thing. I remember sitting around a round table as the presentations began. The teacher was my 9th grade English teacher. I somehow had in my bag a really poorly made poster/report on Steven Kings’ “In the Eyes of a Dragon.” Oddly it was done when I was in 9th grade (but I wasn’t in 9th grade in this class). I decided it was better than nothing! I tried to get the date off of it so the teacher wouldn’t know I had reused it. I was also trying to remember what the hell the book was about so I could get up and talk about it. I don’t know how it ended, I woke up. I also don’t know why when I have these dreams lately they always seem to involve my 9th grade English teacher. I wonder if she’s dead and communicating with me from the other side?

Dustin

It was another interesting dream last night! I’m not sure why I dreamed what I did, but it was a dozy. I was somewhere, where I never really pinpointed. I for some reason felt it was Bali (I know Bollywood is not there). I was at some weird massage parlor with two girls, who I can’t really remember who they were. They were the kind of girls you think are your friends but aren’t, and then you have that awkward moment when you realize this. This would be that moment. Anyways we were at this spa or whatever and I had bought some three treatment package. The first part was a massage, the second part was some weird foot rub and the third I never got to enjoy. The woman who was supposed to do it was an hour late, then when she showed up she disappeared again. I got annoyed and decided to pack it up and leave. I made the right choice, reading about the treatment they were going to do some weird wrap where they used crushed ancient bones from actual humans! Eww!

Later the BF appeared in the dream out of nowhere and we ran into my friend Krista from school Surprise! She, her husband and their whole family where there. She was also pregnant. Surprise! They were all big fans of this place we were, which again I’m not sure but think was Bali. They were staying for 20 days and had rented the Imperial Palace to stay in. Okay! We asked what we should see while here and they all recommended the “Dueling Divas” show. All I could think was that it was some Bollywood dance battle type show.

I have no idea why I dreamed any of this.

Dustin

Another night of odd dreams! Once again they involved amusement parks and my ass. This time I was at what I guess was a resort, but seemed more like a high school converted into a resort if you ask me. Near the place were two huge amusement parks, though nobody seemed to be able to tell me how to get there or what their names were. I could see them, but I couldn’t get there. At some point during this trip I went to the gym to work out. Something happened with my locker, it was broken into or something. I was very upset as my ipod was stolen. I was more embarrassed than upset, because apparently my ipod had nothing on it but porn. To make matters worse I was stuck in a towel only and had to run back to my room like this!

What else has been going on? Well we’ve been trying to stay warm. It’s going down to 10 tonight, that’s not with the windchill. Tomorrow I think it is supposed to hit 7 or 6. Brrrrr! I’m calling the doctor in the morning to make an appointment about my eye, which I’m sure will result in me being sent to an actual eye doctor. I have to get stuff to my adviser for school this week. I had hoped to go in and meet with him, but I have no idea what will happen with the doctor so emailing him stuff will have to do until I can see him, probably next week. I won’t lie, I hate making the trek into school nowadays when I don’t have to!

I’m going to make a Nintendo Wiiiiii! post soon. It seems more and more of you all, as well as blogs I read, are getting them. We need to trade Wii numbers so our little Miis can visit each other while we sleep. Who knows what mischief they’ll get themselves into.

Last night we watched this movie “The Gathering.” It just came out at Blockbuster, but is in reality several years old. It stars Christina Ricci as an American backpacker in England. She ends up being hit by a car, gets amnesia and is taken in by the family who accidentally hit her. She begins having weird premonitions of the towns people dying and tries to solve the mystery before they all die.

My BF decided that the movie was stupid, though he watched the entire thing. I actually enjoyed it. There are some twists and turns and it has a religious nature to it. It involves the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimethia and a church he built dedicated to . . . . . and there is the twist! Once it is revealed you will quickly figure everything out, but it’s still a good movie.

Dustin