Stay tuned

I have a lot to say today, but unfortunately I also have an all-day meeting. On the bright side, though, our department's definition of all-day starts when I get to the office (about 10:30) and ends when Kevin leaves (about 4:00) so I still have a couple hours after that to get stuff done (i.e. to write in LJ while blowing off work ;-) ). So, look for a bunch of entries from me around 4 or 5 today. Or earlier if our meeting ends early, which looks entirely possible.

a further passport update

I forgot to mention on Friday that after I took in my passport application, they called me later in the day to say I hadn't signed it. Arrgh! Well, no, I didn't sign it because it said right on the application, "Do NOT sign this until the official person tells you to!" I believe I mentioned in my journal entry on Friday, that the official person was having a bad day. I had sympathy for her at the time, but then this happened, and I had to get up all early on a Monday to go in AGAIN and sign the damn thing, so now I have no more sympathy for her, dammit.

On the plus side, though, tiggrrl might be interested to know that the guy who helped me sign the form this morning said that my old passport will be mailed back to me along with the new one once it's been processed. So, that's an answer to that question.

dream musings

The only snippet of last night's dream that I can remember, because it was the snippet from just before I woke up:

I was on a sort of pilgrimage with some people (including Laura) to visit the places where various types of candy were made. We were arriving in Wisconsin to see the candy-corn factory. We were coming in for a landing, although instead of an airport we were landing in a parking garage. One of the other people on the trip said something like, "this must be Wisconsin," and I said, "yeah, you can tell because of the big sign on the airport wall that says 'welcome to Wisconsin.'" Then we went to the factory, and outside it, instead of a lawn there were big mosaics made out of candy corn of many different colors and patterns. Laura said, "well now we know how they make it in the different colors," and I was thinking that didn't make sense, but I didn't say anything. And the factory was locked so we were waiting for someone to come unlock it, but then I woke up.

The larger point I want to ramble about for a bit is why flying on planes, and specifically landing planes, has been a major theme in my dreams lately. Of course, in Freud flying signifies sex, but then, a) in Freud everything signifies sex, and b) Freud didn't really account for flying in airplanes, since that was after his time.

I don't think flying in airplanes signifies sex in my dreams. (Sometimes I dream that I can fly under my own power, but that's not the topic of this ramble.) What I'm wondering at the moment is whether it might be at all September 11th-related. My gut says no, but on the other hand, I've always been great at interpreting other people's dreams and terrible at interpreting my own.

I think the salient point is that the dreams are always about the end of the plane trip. I never dream about just sitting on a plane waiting to get somewhere, and I almost never dream about getting onto the plane or taking off. It's always about landing, and frequently making emergency landings, or landing in odd locations, or looking like we're going to crash but then pulling it out at the last moment. I wonder if this means that there's a journey ending, or trying to end, at this stage in my life, and that I'm scared about the ending. This could be a reference to my looking for a new job; the journey that the current job has been for four years -- and it's really the first serious job I've ever had -- coming to an end, or at least I'm trying to end it, and that's scary.

Or, I suppose, it could be about turning 30, but that's still two years away, so come on. I hope I'm not going to have plane-crash-landing dreams for two more years. :-)

There are plenty of other possibilities of course; that's the beauty of dreams. The ones I mentioned above are just the first ones that come to mind, and therefore the ones I find most plausible. I love how abstract and mysterious dreams can be, and then how sometimes you have a dream that really isn't a mystery at all (like the time I dreamt about having sex with David Duchovny). Heh.

(no subject)

By the way, the times on these journal entries are pretty misleading. 'Cause the livejournal web interface sets the time variable when you first load the "update journal" page, so the time on the entry will be when I started typing it, not when I actually posted it. Sometimes it takes me a long time to write an entry, so the time-stamp on the entry is far from accurate. Oh well.

slight change of plans

I decided I hate my website so I spent much of the afternoon fiddling with it after we got out of our not-really-all-day meeting. No, don't bother going to look at it; I didn't upload any changes, as I went through several different designs and hated them all. Sigh. Back to the drawing boards.

So, because of that, the Valentine's Day rant that I was going to write will have to wait. (All together now: "aww!") But I'm still going to get started on the other series of posts I wanted to do... if you don't watch Buffy and/or Smallville, bail now.

'Cause after my last two experiments in the world of LiveJournal fanfic'ing, I realized that I can use it to serve another purpose too. See, there are these fanfics that I don't really want to write, but that just won't leave me alone. So I figure I can use lj to, as it were, exorcise them. And then hopefully move on to something else. :)

So this is your last warning. These fics will be: a) un-betaed, b) probably smutty, c) perhaps angsty, d) probably bad, and e) generally spoiler-full for the last few episodes. I'm just trying to get this stuff out of my system, so to speak.

The first one will be "Buffy apologizes to Spike after the events of 'Dead Things.'" You have been warned. ( click here to read it )