i had a dream on 990918, and when i woke up i quickly wrote everything down, thereby preserving this particular dream. here's what i wrote:

in nyc? sat with a couple of punk bike messenger kids who were turning off letters in a neon sign to make it spell out funny words. a punk girl comes up, says she wants to do it somewhere else, a guy hands her an olympus 600 digital camera. she leaves, and one of her girlfriend is worried that she won't come back. the guy asks about my shoulder slung nikon 950. i take a 3x photo of the custom house clock encrusted in snow.

i wrote it on the back of a brown derby receipt (i had the cajun roll, $3.99). what does the dream mean, though? and do dreams really have meanings? i just like the imagery, of people playing around with the letters in a neon sign. it's weird because at the beginning of the dream i think i'm in nyc, but the photo i take is that of the custom house tower, a boston landmark. dream logic. i also find it kind of amusing that i know the exact model of digital camera that's being exchanged. the kind of weird details one remembers from dreams.

mark hickey came by my house today (few have ever seen the inside of my fortress of solitude), had a problem with his cheap powerbook (he paid an obscenely low amount of robert deniros for it), wanted to see if i could fix it by reinstalling os 9. funny how this happens a lot, the machine doesn't work when they do it at home, but somehow when i restart the machine, it suddenly works. now i am no macintosh messiah by any stretch of the imagination, but i think something mysterious is afoot. anyway, yadda yadda, i do a fresh system install, it seems to run fine with my internet setup at home, so hopefully it should work fine when he goes back home and tries it out.

before he leaves though, he sees a bathroom scale and decides to weigh himself, clothing, shoes, and all. my eyes almost fall out when i see the scale reads 130 lbs. 130 lbs?! i weigh 130 lbs! on a good day! so i'm all outraged, and i climb on the scale, and guess what the scale is saying? 133 lbs. holy crap jesus christ mother of all creatures great and small! mark hickey -- who is a good few inches taller than me -- actually weighs less than i do? and that's with shoes too! either he's really skinny or i'm a big fatty! i like to think the big fatty theory is more plausible, as i've been snacking all weekend long in some sort of misguided defensive procrastination effort to not do work. mark says no, but i've been sick for a week, i didn't eat for a whole week. you don't have to try and make me feel better about my weight problem, dude, i know the truth. <grabbing a handful of gut> i think you better leave now while i strategize about how to reduce my excess baggages.

i can't stop smiling. nomar garciaparra is back! a solo homerun and a base hit that scores in 2 rbi's for the win? you couldn't have scripted a better first game of the season! check out this dream team lineup: nixon, nomar, manny, carl, dante. i pity the fool who has to pitch to that lineup! red sox fans have been waiting all year for this! and finally it's here and did i mention i can't stop smiling? sure, we're down like 3 games versus the yankees, but with nomar and everett back, nobody thinks we'll be down for very much longer.

now the question that begs to be asked is: who do you love more, nomar or manny? it's like choosing between pie or cake, you just can't! i love them all! watching the game, especially after a red sox victory, it was just a lovefest. it's not just the batting that i love, i love the pitching too: nomo, cones, saberhagen, and especially pedro when he gets all healthy and returns to the lineup.

do i even have to say anything? i am standing in my backyard and blushing while two japanese natives go at it hot and heavy with total disregard for common decency. but who is the bigger hentai? our pair of japanese beetles or moi, the entomological photographer, taking souvenir snapshots?

cabbage whites (butterflies) and yellowjackets fly around in the backyard. today i see my old friend the progressive bee fly once again. depending on your viewpoint, they're either one of the prettiest things you've ever seen with their b&w stain-glasses transparent wings, or they're one of the ugliest flies with their 1" length. progressive bee flies are harmless, they just look scary because they're bigger than most bugs. they're harmless that is unless you're a carpenter bee, then they become deadly as they lay their eggs in the bee's nest and kill off the entire colony.

solitary bees were visiting the monarda didyma plant in the wedge of perennial flowers we have growing in the backyard. these are shy insects, will fly away immediately and circle the air frantically if they detect anything else moving while they try to feed. i was not able to get photos.

i also saw a spider wasp. how do i know it was a spider wasp? because it was taking down a grass spider, had it in its jaws, the spider was struggling, and then the wasp flew off with lunch. i wasn't able to take photos, but it was amazing to see something eat a spider for a change.

apart from insects there were numerous bird sighting in the backyard. i was happy to see cracked seed cases in the dish, which meant that birds had been visiting the feeder. i saw a goldfinch singing up in a tree, and while standing next to the feeder a chickadee landed on the dish and flew off with a seed.