more on dreams

Much of last night's dream is a muddle. I tried to type it up but it didn't come out too coherently, so I'll just summarize a bit. It involved me being with my mom and some other people in another city, not Boston (possibly Chicago). One of the people with us was Riley from "Buffy," but he was also D., the boyfriend of my former friend B. (people in my dreams are often multiple people at the same time). B. and my other friend Mark were also supposed to be with us but we had gotten separated from them and were looking for them. There was a sinister undertone to it, like we needed to find Mark and B. but not just because they were our separated friends -- it was to stop them from doing something bad, maybe. There was also a whole bit with my coworker Ray. That's the second time recently that he's appeared in my dreams; I wonder why? Anyway, in this one, Ray had my towel and was teasing me about not giving it back. But then he disappeared.

I also remember something about being in a fancy building that was an embassy(?), and it had an office that said Al-Qaeda on the door. I can't remember anything more than that though. (I don't WANT to dream about Al-Qaeda! Why can't I dream about having sex with Drew Barrymore or something?)

travelin' fool

I've been thinking about all the traveling I do. I realized that I did a lot of traveling last year. If I recall correctly:

• In March I went to St. Petersburg, Florida, with my mom. Red Sox spring training.
  
• In April I went to the Washington DC area for Sith Academy Con.
  
• In May I moved to a new apartment (not actually traveling but hey)
  
• In August/September I went to Philly for WorldCon
  
• In October I went to Orlando, Florida, with Melissa (we did Universal Studios and Epcot)
  
• In later October I went to NYC with my mom. We visited Ground Zero. It was also for the funeral of my great-uncle Willie.
  
• In December we went to Chicago for the holidays with my brother.
  

Wow! That's a lot of traveling in '01. If only I had frequent-flyer miles for all of that! But a lot of it was driving.

'02 looks like a fairly travel-heavy year too. I might be going to Montreal with the Philips Academy choir in March. I'm almost definitely going to Oberlin for my cluster reunion in May. I'm definitely going to San Jose for Worldcon in August, and almost definitely going to Japan and Hawaii with the Cambridge Chorus in December! Whew, I feel tired just thinking about all that. I really need to get a new bathing suit before I start visiting beautiful sunny places.

It's too bad, though, that the Oberlin reunion has to be Memorial Day weekend. That's the same weekend as WisCon, which I had really hoped to go to this year. :(

I like traveling. One travel website sends me their "top ten travel deals" each week, and I always read it and fantasize. "Yeah, I could just drop everything and go on this cruise to the Bahamas! Woohoo!" I'd really like to do more traveling overseas, though. Especially London. I feel lame for never having been to London. And I call myself the English Chick!!

(no subject)

I was musing about the nature of online communication and how it can be elegant in its simplicity. I got started down this path when I was AIM-chatting with Siubhan and she said something that I wanted her to elaborate on, so I just typed a question mark. The single character really says it all, you know? It's like in comic books where they just use a simple ? or ! to depict a character's mental state of confusion or surprise or whatever.

Then I started thinking about how simple words and phrases can be imbued with deeper meaning in a small circle of friends. I'm sure we all know how that is -- you have little in-jokes with your friends based on conversations that you may not even fully remember, or that are almost impossible to explain now. You can say one little phrase that seems meaningless or harmless to others, yet to your friend it has inner meaning that makes them laugh, or nod, or whatever.

For example, when xochiquetzl and I went to Las Vegas a few years back, we developed a whole Evil Twin language to help us talk about the people around us without insulting them. Different code-words or -phrases might mean, for example, "Check out the hot babe over there" or "Dude, can you believe the ugly clothing on that one?" We also have code-words for "you're crazy" or "I'm hungry" or what have you.

And then again last summer when I was at Worldcon with Lady Lauriel and Ariana, we developed this code word "falafel" which really connotes a whole complexity of concepts around food, guilt about wasting food, and the need to let go of buyer's remorse. That really exemplified the way language evolves and develops through usage. It's one of the things that interest me most about English (and all language of course).

One of my favorite examples of interesting etymology is the word "atonement." I don't know whether this is actually true, but I read in a "word of the day" calendar once that the word came from the smushing-together of the words "at onement." In other words, to atone is to reconcile with yourself; to become at one. I just think that's so cool. I'm a geek like that.