The other night almost a week ago (I have extremely limited internet access right now) I had this dream. I can't remember which night because I'm not where I usually am right now, and perception is a bit distorted and confused. It all harkens back to that silly "which LOST character are you" quiz.

I dreamt that I was with Stan, except he was Charlie. It was like we were in the early stages of our relationship, because we seemed younger. We were running, and he, Stan/Charlie, kissed me while we were on the run. Just for the record and to set things straight, I'm not that attracted to Charlie...I'm a Desmond girl...but there was something really sweet about that kiss, maybe because despite outward appearances, it was Stan behind it.

That sounds really cornball.

Anyway, the dream continued in a LOST vein, because we went into this strange place like a dungeon with chains and shackles and torture equipment, and Charles Widmore was there. It was rather sinister. As I was dreaming it, I was thinking how cool it was that I was actually experiencing my very own LOST episode.

I wish I could remember more of the dream, and perhaps I would've if I could've written it down afterward like normal, but it's been very difficult lately.

Labels: Dreams, LOST

No seriously, I am Charlie Hieronymus Pace according to this "Which LOST Character Are You?" Quiz.

See, I always thought, with all the British rock musicians out there, past and present, surely I must be related to *someone* (my grandfather was from England).

As it turns out, I'm related to a *fictional* rock star. Well, that's my Karma for you. Or is that Dharma? As in Dharma Initiative?

The surnames Stratton (as in Dexter) and Stretton (as in me) are genealogically related (Dexter Stratton was Charlie's great-grandfather), and that would also explain why back in 1991 (before LOST was even a flashforward before any of the series' creators' eyes) I gave my first dog Charlie's middle name, Hieronymus. Heh. I guess it's a family name.

On a different topic, the name "Hieronymus" is a variant of "Geronimo." Geronimo, as in Geronimo Jackson, obscure 70s-era band found in LP collection in the Hatch. Hmmm, kind of makes you think it might have been Charlie in another alternate timespace wormhole universe continuum or something.

Labels: LOST

Unbelievable...I no sooner post about the unfortunate flooding in Missouri, but then hear there's a horrible wildfire in the mountains near Bisbee, Arizona. Southern Arizona was the post-Route 66 part of our vacation last spring, and we spent a morning in Bisbee and Tombstone.

So glad we're not doing that trip this year.

We're getting a blizzard today, but it'll all be melted by the time we leave.

Labels: Vacation

We are so lucky we took our Route 66 trip last spring and not this one. There is much flooding in Missouri that would have effected us. We got lost around St. Louis as it was. I'll never forget all the Redbud trees blooming throughout the beautiful hillsides.

I was craving a Creamation today, and then I realized, in a week, I can have one. I think Avo's and I will be friends a lot during this trip...they have WiFi and there's just only so much of my parent's single phone line dialup I can handle.

Labels: This Boring Life, Vacation

1) I had suddenly remembered where I had put my old solid perfume compacts from a couple posts ago, and found them inside my vanity (IRL they were not there, I checked this morning just to be sure). The scents were not the ones I remembered. I had a compact that contained 3 scents I never had, one was something called "Mandarin" (orangey, neroli-ish, I presume), another was "Caraway", which IRL was actually from the Herbs collection I never bought, and the third one might have been "Vetiver" but I can't remember precisely (mmm...Vetiver...yummy). They were rather dessicated and a lot of the scent was gone, but I was so glad I found them, yet puzzled about why I didn't remember buying the Mandarin/Caraway/Vetiver trio. (probably because I didn't buy it, and it didn't even exist). OK, that settles it, I will have to buy some Essential Oils and try a combination with those scents.

2) I was in an old university-type building, which I have reoccurring dreams about, like the buildings on Bascom Hill at the UW or around the Oval at CSU. I was standing on the steps at the front door, looking outside and waiting for a ride. A car pulls up, maybe a taxi, and the man in the back seat looks like Desmond from LOST. Then I realize he also looks like John, my former Boss from Kinko's over 20 years ago (IRL, I don't see any resemblance...John was taller, darker hair, different features, no resemblance). Then I start telling people who are there that it's no wonder why Desmond is my favorite LOST character, because he reminds me of my favorite boss. Truly odd. Actually, IRL Stan commented while watching a Larry King interview a few months ago with Eric Clapton (yeah, I know, odd, but not as odd as the Larry King/Snoop Dog interview probably was...I didn't watch that one in case you're wondering) that Eric circa the 1980s(?) resembled Desmond, and there actually is a resemblance there, but not with John my Kinko's boss.

3) I was in a reoccurring-dream mall, in a clothing store that usually has a lot of things I can find (in dreams, that is), but this time I couldn't find anything. I kept finding odd hats like maybe they'd wear in Western Asia. Then as I'm waking up from this dream, I realize that on the radio IRL they're talking about Tibet.

Labels: Dreams, LOST, Rock and Roll, Scents

This is my lucky day.

I'm Addictionary's Werd of the Day for March 17!

The word? Punditz. Go take a look!

Labels: This Boring Life

What has really sucked for the past two weeks is that our yah-hey local ABC channel has been favouring High School Basketball games on Thursday night, and playing LOST after 10pm when they are over.

WTF. This has not left me in the best of moods. Stan, who has a job that starts at 6 am and has to get up at 4:30 pm in order to do his stretching and catch the bus is none too pleased about it either. Mr. Sandman's come to put sand in our eyes by that hour for us to catch any major clues. Stupid local yah-hey high school sports anyway.

Take last night for instance. I'm looking at the Korean characters on Jin's headstone wishing I could read Korean when really I should have been looking at the Arabic numeral DATES. Just found out this AM by lurking in LOST message boards that the headstone states that Jin died 9/22/04, the date of the crash. I found screen caps online. It really does say that.

This means Jin is not one of the Oceanic 6 (as I previously believed and was led to believe by a Spoiler). Does that make baby Aaron one of the 6?

But who is this Jin walking around on the island now if he supposedly died when the plane crashed? Did he really die in the crash? Did he die somehow else and there's a cover-up? Is he not actually dead? This episode's flash forwards were fairly close in the future, approx. 9-10 months after the crash, considering Sun just gave birth and she got pregnant on the island. And it's pre- Post-Crash Mental Hospital-era Hurley (as opposed to the Pre-Crash Mental Hospital-era Hurley), as he looks great...who'd ever take Hurley for a snazzy dresser? And remember in the Hurley-centric episode earlier this season, Jack looked really good when he went to see him, so that took place pre-feral Jack.

So it appears that ever since the Flash Forwards started in "Through the Looking Glass", they've been getting closer and closer to the time they are rescued, since this last one seemed the closest yet. Soon they'll be flashing forward to a couple months before the rescue, then a couple weeks. It'll then be like that Seinfeld episode when they went to India and they essentially played the episode backwards.

I'm just intrigued with how they'll explain all these mysteries...Jin's death (how could Sun have gotten pregnant on the island if Jin died in the crash?), Kate's possession of Aaron (did Claire die, and did she too "die" in the "crash" and if so, how did she manage to give birth to Aaron?), and Jack and Hurley's mental collapses, not to mention Sayid working in collusion with the Benster!

And what about Michael, aka Kevin Johnson? We all suspected Michael was Ben's "man on the boat", but why the name change? Would the name "Michael Dawson" raise a red flag to the ship's captain as being a spy, so he aliased himself, or is something else going on? Was there recognition in his eye when he saw Sayid? I couldn't tell.

And what about the tsunami? Time's running out.

Labels: LOST

I've probably mentioned the term "Rosebud" in this journal before, my appropriated term from "Citizen Kane" meaning anything from my past that I lost, forgot, abandoned or threw out, that I crave for and, with luck, find again. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I've been rosebudding with scents and perfumes lately, and today I got part of my "Rosebud" collection that I never actually had.

Scent is the strongest sense when it comes to memory, as they say, so it would only be natural that something we crave from our past is a scent itself. It's the closest we can get to time traveling. Unfortunately, there are some scents that I'm afraid I will never smell again, that were too much a part of their era and wouldn't translate to the here and now in terms of product profitability. I remember two liquid perfumes I got when I was around 15, around the time of the bicentennial. Their packaging and graphics were hippie 1776--if you can imagine--with a round plastic ball on top and a plastic stick applicator. I'd used them up a long time ago, but somehow their empty yet still somewhat scented vessels found their way here, to Wisconsin. And stupidly, just a few years ago, I threw them out. I can still see one of them sitting on a small cabinet in the bedroom. WTF was I THINKING?!?

I won't dwell on that unhappiness. There's a bright side too. Around that same time, 1976, I also acquired some fragrances from Coty (brands meant nothing to me then) called "Sweet Earth." They came either individually or three to a compact, related scents in little rectangles. Coty released about 7 varieties of them, unfortunately, I only had 3 of them (THIS WOULD BE UNHEARD OF TODAY) and one single fragrance (hyacinth, I think). The ones I had back in the 70s were Woods (Sandalwood, "Amberwood" and Patchouli--which isn't a wood, but is often included with wood-related scents), Grasses (Clover, Gingergrass and Hay), and Colonial Garden Flowers (Peony, Lemon Verbena and Lavender). I can still remember how they smelled, all of them. I remember how the Grasses almost had a slightly grainy yet very soft quality to the wax, and how all Colonial Flowers smelled lemony, as all the Woods smelled woody, sometimes indistinguishable from each other. I loved them all. But I have no idea what happened to them.

In a newfound/renewed interest in fragrance lately, Google is definitely my greatest ally. I can't remember the exact search terms I used, but I managed to find a message board of like-minded 40-something women who were longing for the EXACT same thing! And on the message board was a link to a store, the purveyors of retrophenalia, Vermont Country Store.

My parents bought from their catalog before. They got me some nice soaps for the holidays once, and some English licorice candies (Licorice Allsorts) that I like a lot. But nothing in their catalog really hit me that much...old people clothing, outrageously expensive food that, according to my parents, disappointed them and was not to the quality of the item that they remember from the pre-technological era. But most of their items were geared toward the over-50 crowd, or even the over-70 crowd like M & P. Make that the over 100 crowd, over $100,000 year in income, that is. Some of the food they sell is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive. But they also seem to be cashing in on the under-50 crowd too, and their updated versions of three of Coty's Sweet Earth Fragrance sets hooked me in.

The other week I noticed that their "Rare Flowers" collection--Tuberose, Jasmine and Mimosa, became available, so i ordered it and received it today. I'm adding it to my other two I ordered last month, "Flowers'"--Hyacinth, Honeysuckle and Ylang Ylang, and the abovementioned "Woods." It's odd that I now have three fragrance sets, just like when I was a teen. But only one of them is a true Rosebud, the Woods, which also happened to be my favorite. The fragrances seem a bit different, perhaps not as strong as the original 70s versions, but still enjoyable. A reasonable facsimile.

I do hope Vermont Country Store decides to put out the four other sets, the "Grasses" and the "Colonial Garden Flowers'" that I used to have, as well as "Colonial Wild Flowers" and "Herbs" that I never had. I remember looking at the Herbs set when I was young, wanting to get it, but not having the cash. I missed my chance. I will stalk VCS often, just to see if they add a new scent to their repertoire. Some people want things they used to have, and then there's those of us who want things we never had.

I guess I could always get the essential oils and construct my own scents, but there's something about finding a Rosebud that can't be replicated.

Labels: Scents

I was in a park in a city where the snow was still on the ground, but a section of this park was in spring and green. I was thinking about moving my cactus plants there and there was a female deer eating grass near me. A tall hairy faced man with dark skin came to the park, and he looked like someone who was once a teacher of mine. He was hunting the deer with a pistol, and when he arrived the deer started charging at me. The deer ran right past me and stood on top of a stone wall with me between the gun man and her.

I approached the man and asked him not to hunt this deer in the park and if he was going to kill it he needed to wait until the deer left the park. The man then pointed the pistol at me and told me I was going to die a long painful death. His hand was shaking as if he was having some difficulty about pulling the trigger. Another male deer ran past us and stood by the female deer. I turned around to look at them and they had transformed into deer with human heads - both of them were African American. I was still standing between them and the gun man.

The gun man was still trying to point the gun at me and shaking. I believe he wanted to kill me so he could then kill the deer, but then I woke up.

Labels: Dreams

"I'd like to address a common question we hear - How do scammers get a bidder's email address? Unfortunately, a high percentage of eBay members have registered an email address that is very close or identical to their User ID. Fraudsters attempt to send emails to the bidders they are targeting by using the User ID, plus several of the most common domain names – i.e. userid@yahoo.com , userid@gmail.com, userid@hotmail.com, userid@aol.com. This combination yields a very high success rate for them. Subsequently, too many eBay bidders get fooled – and lose their money - as an unfortunate result."

Oh that is so laughable. Neither my buying nor selling ids are anything CLOSE to the corresponding email names I use for them, neither do I use "common" domain names for the email accounts. Yet I am bombarded with phake phishes.

Fortunately, I'm pretty experienced with this stuff, so 99% of the time I know when something is phake, and the other 1% when I'm confused I always go to my ebay messages to see if I got a legitimate message there too.

So if I am using an uncommon domain name for my email accounts, and my email names are nothing like my ebay member names, how do you suppose phishers got ahold of my email addresses then, unless they KNOW what they are, like they sold me something, or they bought something from me. However if THAT were the case, then wouldn't I get different phishing emails to my buying account and my selling account? No, I get DUPLICATE phishy messages to both accounts. meaning, it's not from someone I did business with because I sell to different people than I buy from.

Makes me think it's an inside job, someone who has access to all ebay accounts with their corresponding email addresses. I mean, how carefully can you screen your disgruntled, low-paid employees?

Labels: This Boring Life

I was renting an apartment. I don't know if I was renting with Stan as well, but I had at least one female roommate who was Asian. The apartment is on the second floor, and as I walk into it, I immediately notice that the place has changed. My roommate had taken down all my art, painted the walls light sage green (in the dream they had originally been a light golden sandy color...how did I know this? I have no light golden sandy color rooms in my house) and placed only one painting per wall, and the art wasn't even done by her, but instead a third party. There was also a large dining room table in part of this great room taking up a great deal of space. I go into a rage and try to explain to her that there will be no art by third parties hanging on the wall, that the art must either be done by her or me. Then I start hanging a bunch of my old paintings on the wall--not my recent paintings, but paintings I did over 20 years ago. There is plenty of wall space to hang lots of my art, but I try to explain to her that we have to hang our art on the walls because there isn't enough storage area within the house (which is what we deal with IRL) and that's why I don't want anyone else's art here except the occupant's. This roommate's mother is there too, and she speaks even less English, and she seems really confused by everything. I think there's another roommate there, maybe someone I shared a studio with in grad school, and she has these wall art pieces with these brightly colored fabric balls (approx. 3-7" in diameter) hanging off of them. They were kind of stupid looking, like a clown suit, except better colors. Then I go into the basement to get more of my paintings, and it turns into this reoccurring dream basement which haunts my dreams so frequently that I often forget to include it in my dream journalling. This basement seems so familiar, and I'm wracking my brain to remember if I ever experienced it IRL, but I can't recall any house that had it. It's a basement that goes on forever, it's very long and you keep walking back into it to find more and more storage. The color white is prominent, and sometimes the concrete floors slope. I don't know where I draw this from, it could be the Chemistry Stockroom, but it's very residential, not institutional and the CS was grey and green, not white. This basement is also very old, maybe 100 year, but all the old house basements I've been in have been very small. I don't know what happened next, but I hope I kicked the roommates out. How dare they redecorate the place without consulting me!

Hey, speaking of 100 year old houses, our house turned 100 this year.

Labels: Dreams