Pug has a lump on his hindleg. We took him to the vet today and they diagnosed it as a mast cell tumor. He gets operated on Friday, the day after Stan gets oral surgery to have the foundation for the tooth implant put in place.

I feel so bad because he had the lump for a while, but Stan and I thought it was another lipoma or fatty cyst like he had on his back last year. But today it seemed bigger, and fortunately our vet is able to get us in so quickly. He already had a fibrosarcoma removed from his foreleg last fall. This is just too much.

Labels: Animals

First part of the dream I remember seeing buildings like some of the old school buildings in my neighborhood with taped up windows. The windows all had brown paper covering them on the inside, like maybe they were doing mass painting inside or something. Although the buildings seemed like the old school buildings in Madison, the setting seemed like Fort Collins, especially around the Remington/Plum area. (IRL, FC has no old school buildings left...they've all been demolished and rebuilt with the exception of my old high school, but it's not a high school anymore). I'm glad Madison values its OLD buildings, however Madison is a little too bulldozer happy with mid-century modern buildings, unfortunately. Some cool architecture is no more. (According to someone who talked to Stan, those buildings are supposedly "un-updatable", unlike old buildings which have structural integrity)

Second part of the dream Stan and I went to some administrative/city building to register (to vote?!?) or something. We sat down at a desk with a woman, dark hair, blue eyes, maybe in her early thirties or late 20s. The woman kept asking us questions to make sure we were "legitimate." She asked if my husband could vouch for the fact that something on my application form was legitimate. I vouched for him as well. Then she asked me something about my former work history, specifically working at Kinko's in FC. I told her that I would typeset resumes and brochures, usually 1-page items for customers using Mac computers. She looked a little suspiciously at me and said that people can do that themselves, insinuating that I was making up my job. She kept talking and then I interrupted her and said, "let me explain." Her eyes got really big, and her expression said "how dare you interrupt me!" I told her that I worked there back in the 80s (she was just a young kid...what would she remember?) when maybe 10% of the population had a personal computer. Now about 90% have computers (I dont know the actual stats...that's just what I said in the dream), so I had to do the work for them.

She was a real idiot. I can't remember how the dream ended. Sometimes I think when I'm dealing with these Palin-voting dolts in these dreams my automatic wake reflexes kick in.

Labels: Dreams

Tree color was pretty this year in Wisconsin, but what really surprised me was the color on a couple of our own trees/bushes here.

Labels: Plants, This Boring Life

I've been quiet these past few days since the election because whatever I say would come across as lame, like, "we won, yay!" Lame. I feel very proud of someone I know who voted for Obama, who I was uncertain of how she would vote throughout the season. I also feel a great sense of disappointment with someone else who voted for McPain because of ONE ISSUE. ONE FREAKIN' ISSUE (it's all about the fetus). He risked the possibility of having a geographically-challenged megalomaniac prima donna in the white house just because abortion makes the baby Jesus cry. I thought he would go for Obama in the past few weeks...he looked like he'd be doing the right thing...he couldn't STAND Palin, he really couldn't. But I think I know why he ended up voting for McCain. He, this person I know, has this invincibility about himself--he is old and falling apart--and doesn't see himself as frail or disabled. He shouldn't be driving, but he does. He should use a walker, but he won't. So naturally, since he sees himself as more able and strong and healthy than he is, naturally he'd view McCain, someone who is a few years his junior, the same way. Nevermind the deadly skin cancer history. To him, there was no risk of Palin becoming THE WORST PRESIDENT EVER because it would never happen. McCain would see out a full four years in office, and then Palin, who would've been THE WORST VICE PRESIDENT EVER AFTER DICK CHENEY, would retire safely back to Alaska where she could enjoy a whole new brood of non-aborted grandchildren.

Okay, It could've been worse. He could've not voted for Obama for racist reasons, and I'm pretty sure that is not why he didn't vote for him. I know this person very well, and he's pretty much driven by one issue since 1972. It's the whole Asperger kind of thing where you're stuck and fixated. There's no hope for the guy, so I never should've had any to begin with because I just end up getting very disappointed with the outcome.

But Holy Superlatives, Batman, the things we are finding out now about Palin...unbelievable. Words do not express...I thought she was running for VICE PRESIDENT, not SKANK RESIDENT. And the Africa thing...I am speechless! How can ANYONE not know Africa is a continent consisting of many countries? Did she confuse Africa with Australia? That's not even "stuff you should've learned in school" that's just "stuff you should just plain know, stupid." I mean, what was she thinking when she would hear about Obama's father coming from Kenya? What did she think Kenya was, a city? A region? Even if the word "Kenya" elicited a "huh? what's that?" response from her, wouldn't she even TRY THE GOOGLE? No, because as many have pointed out before all this, she has no interest in the world around her. And maybe that's ok if you want to be a small town hockey mom. But it's not ok if you have high ambitions. It shouldn't even be ok if you want to be Mayor, let alone Governor. Not even Saturday Night Live could've thought this stuff up.

What I hated hearing throughout this campaign were statements like "we don't want someone with lots of education (like Obama), we want someone we can relate to, like us." Huh? I certainly don't want someone like "us" in that office--and I even have a lot of education, but not in the political area. I'm fine for what I do, but I'd be ill-fitted for any political office, and so would the people who "want someone just like myself in office." People just like you is exactly the WRONG kind of people to have in office. You want the best and the brightest in a position like that....especially after the last 8 years.

As of today, Obama has 364 electoral votes and McCain has 163 (Missouri is still uncalled). All I can say is thank goodness it wasn't a close one.

Labels: Politically Correct, The Syndrome, WTF

Stan and I were with some other people--I don't know who--and Stan said he had to get back home because he had to take some things out of the trash. I asked him what he needed to get out of the trash, and he looked very sheepish and he confessed that he had "thrown the cribbage boards away." IRL, we have one cribbage board that is Stan's. My parents have one that is similar, but they still have it, not me. But in the dream, there were two cribbage boards. And Stan threw both of them away. Without asking me. Why the hell would you throw away a wooden cribbage board? Granted, we never have time for games anymore, but still...maybe some day when we're old and decrepit, that's all we'll want to do. So I let him have it. I reamed him a new one in front of these people who I didn't know, telling him never, ever throw away anything again without asking me if I want it. He looked really embarrassed for what he did. Then I was looking at the cribbage boards, trying to figure out which pegs belonged to which board. The pegs didn't fit in the holes very well.

----

Although completely unrelated, I somehow see this dream as symbolic for something that happened the other day. Stan told me his supervisor was disappointed because his wife really liked Palin (his supervisor, like us, are Obama supporters). I asked Stan if he told his boss that his wife (meaning me) couldn't stand Palin from day one. No he didn't. He didn't say anything about me. But isn't that what you do if you're in a conversation about a wife's politics, (especially if it's your boss), you say, "well fortunately, my wife doesn't like her," or "well, fortunately my wife and I are pretty much in sync when it comes to poltiics?" Not to make your boss feel bad, but to make yourself look good? So your boss doesn't think you also married a moron? Or so that he doesn't think all women don't care that a potential veep doesn't know Africa is a continent, not a country?

I just wish Stan would've mentioned it is all. It's not that big a deal, certainly not as big a deal as throwing away cribbage boards without asking me, but still.

Labels: Dreams

I dreamt I was in a very strange cabin on a mountainside. It's hard to explain, but it was a small wood structure that was sheltered by a corrugated aluminum or steel structure. It was like the reverse opposite of what Stan's aunt's "cabin" is, which is actually a trailer that is sheltered by a wooden structure (don't ask). Unlike Stan's aunt's "cabin", which gives us an extremely creeped-out feeling every time we go up there (so we make every excuse why not to go up there), this little cabin initially had a nice cozy feel. There was a window that I looked out onto the mountain ridge...very scenic. It started to precipitate. A white cloud was descending down the mountains. It got thicker and thicker and I realized it was snowing...very hard. I had the radio on and they were saying something about an avalanche. Then it dawned on me, the thick snow I was seeing was not descending from the sky, but from the mountains. I was scared because if the cabin was covered in show, my oxygen would be cut off. I stepped out of the cabin and into a porch area that was covered by the metal structure. I realized that is why they put up the metal structure...to protect the cabin from avalanches. There was snow everywhere. I was digging out of the snow with my bare hands until I could see sky. It was probably about 7 feet of snow on the ground. I was worried because I was all alone there with my pets (don't know where Stan was) and I didn't want to die like that.

Labels: Dreams

I dreamt I went back to work at Depressions. Most all of the people who worked there in the early 90s were still there...there were some new faces, but they looked similar to people who used to work there. There was a new "job" on my desk, with typesetters markup specs. IRL, the type would've already been "in the system" (probably input by keyers by some offshore company, although I do remember having to type a lot myself when I first started, before the offshore contracting became big and destroyed jobs for typists in this country). However in the dream, I not only had to layout the content on the MUM (Make Up Master), but also input the text on the Pentas. The strange thing was that they were having me use their old systems, not the Macs. When I left in the mid 90s IRL, they were doing a lot more w/Macs, and when they hired me in 1989, it was because I knew Macs and they wanted to go that direction.

Since it's been like...13 years since I worked on a Penta or a MUM, I had no idea how to get started, so I had to ask someone who worked there. We were strangely silent to eachother, like she didn't care how I'd been or what I'd been doing all these years since I'd left. I wanted to ask about her, but didn't now what to ask. (How about, "how come you're still working here when the company went under a few years ago?")

Even though nothing really terrible happened, I found this dream highly disturbing due to the incredible realism, down to the typesetting markup on the pages. I was tossing and turning after that dream, and when I fell back to sleep, I had another disturbing dream. I was spending the night at some other female's house, with a few other women. I don't know who they were or why I was there. I wanted to leave and go home to Stan. I remember depositing some dirty clothes in what I thought was a hamper, but then I realized I had put them in a child's training toilet and I didn't know how to get them back out.

Labels: Dreams