3/22-
Couldn't surf my current favorite website (www.theonering.net) a few nights ago, because a pregnant rhino that escaped from a transport truck, broke into the ISP and gave birth. The stuff of my life!
Looking at the Telluride Film Festival Page, I noticed that they accept entries for screenplays. I'm half considering sending in a plot summary and paying the entry fee. Maybe that'll get my lazy, uh, self into writing action. Could you picture that? Getting 60+ pages written in less than 2 months. Oh wait! I did that once during semester finals... in less than two weeks. My friends thought they had horror stories about final exams. Ppphhhffftt! I guess I just need the motivation.
12/10-
It's really annoying when there's no one around to tell your good fortune to. There's this store-- well, really, there's a string of stores-- on the way to the library. This particular store looked like nothing special. I thought it was a pharmacy, and since i already go to CVS, I never bothered to stop in. It has high shelves stacked with their backs to the windows so you can't see in at all. So I must've walked past this store near a hundred times, since the time I've been living here, which isn't long. Today, I went in... It was-- I'll tell you all later, maybe. *suppresses smile* If I told you what I saw, I'd get a flood of emails. Probably. ... and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
12/2-
"We live in an age of extraordinary dullness, where people lack the strength of their
convictions for fear of being politically incorrect."
I think I was the first person to say that; I claim this quote as my own... and it's every
bit as true now as when I thought it up 15 minutes ago!
11/28-
This morning I had a pretty strange dream. I shall try to retell it as best I can here.
I was part of a team that had pulled together in order to execute a heist on a bank vault located in the middle of a pool. Queen Anne�s Memorial Pool. Everything thing in this place was named after the beloved monarch. She was queen of a small European country that isn�t often heard of in the news. Like Belgium or Norway. There were five people on our team: Me, Shelly, this guy named Luthor who looked like the guy in Mission: Impossible, Maria and the little Baron*. (*Name changed because this is someone I used to know; also I was feeling silly.) Maria was our leader.
I vaguely remember walking down three levels on a gang plank to get to the rooms we were renting in a hostel. Maria, the little Baron and Luthor got their own rooms. Shelly and I had to bunk together. So Shelly, the little Baron, Maria and I go down to the pool late one evening to case out our heist. The little Baron and I are on a ladder going into the pool. I�m passing down equipment to Shelly in the water, while he�s watching Maria who is acting as a lookout.
The thing about Queen Anne�s Memorial Pool is that it is illegal to go into it or to throw stuff in it. Even pennies are prohibited. It is a crime that is punishable by lengthy imprisonment maybe even death. I�m holding onto the ladder around the little Baron�s waist. I take notes from Shelly and handle all these objects into the water, but I�m having trouble doing all this and holding on, keeping my balance with the little Baron right in front of me. From time to time he shifts his position, his weight from one foot to another, on the ladder. This causes me to lose my grip more than once. Through sheer luck or maybe good balance I manage to catch myself from falling into the water each time he does this. The last time though, as Shelly is getting out, I drop two things into the water: a penny and my miniature Swiss Army knife. The knife goes into the still waters with a loud *ploosh*, and we all panic and get out of there.
Because of the noise, the guards come to inspect the area, and we have to leave the knife and the penny there or be caught. Maria was fuming at me when we got back to the hostel. The hostel was really just across the square from the Memorial Pool. I go to visit the little Baron in his room for a while and we do God knows what. Talk among other things.
Leaving his room, I tiptoe down the hall to get back to my room, and I�m attacked by Arnold Schwarznegger. Or someone who looks very like him. Luthor hears me being tackled to the ground right outside his door, so he steps out and he shoots the Arnold. I wonder who the guy is� is he police? Is he a spy? Someone sent to track us down? Luthor and I go into Arnold�s room and look around. For some reason (remember this is a dream) he had a horse in his room, and it attacked me and I killed it. He was a covert agent and we hope it�ll be a while before his disappearance is discovered. We hope we will finish the bank heist the following evening, and we�ll get out. Let me just say that Luthor got the nice room. It could be that because he�s the big guy, he always gets his way. But he�s really nice, too.
The next morning we woke early hoping the guard had relaxed and we�d be able to recover the knife. No such luck. The number of guards had increased and they were searching for the person who had violated the law. To make things worse, news of the knife incident got out, and now the Queen�s loving subjects were throwing in all sorts of objects as part of an homage to their Queen. They believed that it would all be collected in the end and given to the Queen as a present. The scene was really a complete pandemonium, as people were pressing against the police to throw their presents into the pool.
Maria, Shelly and I sat glumly on the edge of the pool, contemplating the situation and mulling over what could be done. We could wait, but they were searching for the person who started this off. A flock of little boys ran by behind us, shouting and screaming. In passing, they knocked me off the edge, and I almost fell into the pool. Somehow I raised myself back onto the rim with my arms. I didn�t touch the water, but now the guards were looking at me suspiciously and in a moment they would have the inspectors over to question me as a suspect. We decided it was time to leave this city. We hurried back to the hotel to tell Luthor and the little Baron and we started packing.
I had so much stuff!!! I loaded it all into a suitcase and still had extra. I tried stuffing the small things into a purse and into the pockets of my trenchcoat. My purse was small and black, with a fake diamond studded strap. I had a small, blond wig, and I tried to stuff it into my purse, but it wouldn�t fit with everything else. So I draped it over the purse, and it looked like I had a hair purse. It was very weird looking, and it freaked me out, so I finally decided to wear the wig. I had to get my backpack out of the wardrobe. And my friends were all outside waiting, telling me to hurry up. Leave it behind. Luthor came in at that point. He picked me up by the backpack around my arms, and he turned me around. Toward the door. He picked up my small suitcase, handed me my purse. That wig looks nice, he said on the way out.
We left just before the inspectors came for me. We ran to catch the subway as it was about to leave, and we all collapsed into our seats with our belongings. What would we do next? Maria and Shelly wanted to leave the country. The heist just wasn�t feasible anymore. We should try and get out before they catch us. Luthor went with them. The little Baron and I decided to go to ground in a different metropolitan area till the heat wore off. So we lived in a small 2nd or 3rd floor urban apartment above a drugstore for about a year. We didn�t hear from Luthor, Shelly or Maria in all that time.
I woke up.
I went back to sleep.
We�re all gathered for some reason at a posh resort. Maybe to regroup after being in hiding so long. We are still being hunted or we are being hunted again. We�re trapped at this resort. The government has a list of organizations that are paying their members� bills at this hotel. Our rooms are being paid for by an organization. That is, the money is all coming from the same source. The organization paying for us is not a legitimate one. It is only a matter of time before they discover this. We have to leave the resort, but we can�t because we are being watched. I escape; I tell the little Baron I�ll come back for him before I go. When I come back, they have been captured. They are all pinning it on me as being the mastermind of the attempted Queen Anne�s Memorial Bank heist.
I wake up again.
11/12-
Today was... interesting; this is quite a mixed bag of goodies. I was upset when I woke up,
because I had a bad dream. I was in a plane with some friends and something happened. The
plane started to fall. This was upsetting because I knew I was going to die and there was
nothing I could do to stop it. Nevertheless, I resorted to prayer... "Ave Maria, llena eres
de gracia," I prayed in spanish (in RL I pray in spanish), "El Senor es contigo, bendita tu
eres entre todas las mujeres y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesus. Santa Maria, madre
Dios, ruega..." and that's when I hit ground in the dream. The dream changed and I was on a
tour bus on vacation with friends from all stages of my life (among them Linda, 'The Black
Rose'; haven't thought of her in a long time!) telling them about my dream.
Then I woke up. Veterans' Day. My brother was off school for the day, and my dad planned to
take us to see some caverns and then to see a cousin he hadn't seen in 30 years, so he woke
us up early. We dressed, showered, got into the car and drove. Not necessarily in that order.
There was something comforting, I thought--in the middle of the morning's activities-- in
knowing that I had prayed, even when I knew there was no hope and was not expecting to be
saved.
We were in the car, and I was flipping through the radio stations when we heard of the
accident in NY. A plane crashed in a residential area in Queens; 260+ people were killed.
We listened to the news until we reached the caverns.
As we pulled up, four buses of school children pulled in as well. How frustrating! I was
very much dismayed at the prospect of having to share our tour with dozens (possibly above
a hundred) young and annoying school children. My dad hurried in to buy the tickets, and
fortunately we were sent off on a separate tour of the caverns.
The caverns were caverns. As much as I had enjoyed a good cavern in my youth, the thrill was
beginning to wear off. This made me feel sad. My last cavern tour was 3 years ago; I had
enjoyed it, and now I wondered what was wrong with me. Three years isn't that much older!
The cavern tour wasn't so bad. There was a large, but shallow lake that gave such a
perfect mirror image of the stalagtites above, I wanted to reach in and prove to myself that
the water wasn't there.
Then there was the incident in front of the stalagtite organ. A man had hooked wires to the
stalagtites to create and amplify musical pitches when the rock
formations were struck. That wasn't the incident I was referring to. The man guiding the tour
had stopped at that point to give his spiel on the stalagtite organ. I had taken my position
in front of the speaker, innocently unaware that I was standing in a small puddle of water. As
I stood listening, a large drop of water came hurtling out of the darkness and struck my
right temple. My head recoiled at the impact. I touched wetness on my temple, like the victim
of a shooting, in shock... and muttered plaintively, "Ow!". I caught my brother looking at
me and grinned sheepishly. Thinking that stalagtites take millions of years to form (which
they do!), I figured I had at least another five minutes before the next drop, so I craned my
neck to get a better look at the culprit stalagtite. Imagine my surprise when I looked up
to see another drop coming straight down at me. I jumped out of the way. I jumped!
My brother snickered.
(Whoa! Long entry.) We had lunch; my dad asked us what we were giggling about during the tour.
I had to explain. :D Then we went to visit my dad's cousin who lived in the area. It was
interesting. Really. He was a retired from NYPD and the Secret Service. He showed us pictures
of Montana, where he was having a house built and told us tales of the hunting, the wildlife,
the movie stars that were all 'out there'. He told us of his tour of duty in Algiers and El
Salvador, showed us more pictures of his puppy (now a grown dog), which came from a litter
that had posed with Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright. He told us a little about a nearby
driving range where they teach SS motorcade driving protocol. He showed us his Harley and his
extensive collection of guns and knives... Smith & Wesson. Small handguns, pistols with long
barrels, a "survival rifle" that folds into a neat package. Long blades, short blades, with
and without hilts, double-edged blades, switchblades, dependent on gravity to extract the
blade, and throwing knives of all sizes. He had a good-sized arsenal in a safe in his garage.
And he had more upstairs. He was not threatening, but he had muscles on his arms. He made
great, light-hearted conversation and pursued hobbies that he enjoyed. Weapons aside, he seemed
like someone whom it was fun to hang out with. I enjoyed myself.
10/20-
Started up this diary as I figure I must have some interesting anecdotes or observations about me somewhere... *checks pockets*
