The only detail I remember from that night’s dream was watching CNN. Tells you what kind of hair-raising shenanigans I was up to in my unconscious that Saturday night, when friggin’ CNN was the most memorable piece of it.

The dream basically ended with me reading CNN’s ticker. The last item I saw said something along the lines of, “Fans shocked by Howard Stern’s apparent suicide”. I had just enough time to be surprised and puzzled by this news before I woke up and realized it hadn’t really happened.

The next day, Sunday, a friend was over. As we were enjoying potent coffee and putting a dent in my son’s absurdly oversized birthday cake from the day before, we were talking about the usual topics- military policy, foreign policy, non-fiction books we were reading, politics, and chicks- and CNN was on in the room. I happened to be looking at the tv when I saw the words “Howard Stern…” start to creep across the screen on the ticker, and I about fell out of my chair.

Holy shit!, I thought, did he really kill himself? Did Howard really kill himself?! And I frakking dreamed about it just a few hours before?! I’m a psychic! A precog! And how do I parlay this into a payday?

And then the rest of it came over “…weds his girlfriend in NYC”.

Ah.

Well, suicide after a fashion, I suppose.

I gave myself half-credit and a little more cake.

At least, I sure hope they do.

Growing up I always enjoyed Scandinavian mythology. To be sure I read alot of Greek tales as well and I found them no less exciting, what with the crazy monsters and the brave heroes and the beastiality. But the Norse tales were, I dunno, edgier somehow. That world was battle, broadsword, and blood on the ice, a far cry from the Mediterranean climes, vineyards, and olive groves of the Greeks. I knew what deep snow and arctic chills were about; I don’t think I could have picked an olive branch out of a lineup. While the Norse tales were more challenging, due perhaps to their obscurity relative to the domination of Greco/Roman sources on subsequent publication, their telling always resonated with me in a way the Greek stuff never did. They were both fantastical, but the Norse tales will always seem more…real.

Which brings me to the Ragnarok, the final war of Gods and Men.

As best I understand the Norse cosmology, when men die they go to one of three places: Hel, a horrible place of shadow and icy mist reserved for that sorry lot who die in their sleep of old age, and from which none return; Volkvangr, Freya’s hall, for folks who died in violence but not neccessarily in glorious battle, not sure what becomes of these folks in the end; and of course Valhalla, Odin’s hall.

Valhalla was reserved for the bravest warriors who fell in battle. Odin’s servants, valkyrie, would choose the greatest of the slain (and indeed may have caused their deaths in the first place, by “fettering” or otherwise crippling the hero at the critical moment- there is seemingly some overlap between conceptions of Norse valkyrie and the Celtic Morrigan here), and wing them to Valhalla. There, the spirits of the Earth’s mightiest warriors fight by day and feast by night, training to serve under Odin’s command at the Ragnarok. And even though Fate has foretold the result and the ramifications of the final battle and the end of the universe, no party- Men, the dread Jotun (giants), or even the Gods themselves- can alter it.

So where does that leave me?

I don’t have a battle, even a metaphorical one, that would hope to qualify me for Valhalla. And I’m not going to be the guy who tries to get in, you know, by default. I’m not going to tell thousands of burly vikings that I should be included because, yeah, I didn’t fight an actual battle but I *DID* improve the database interface between IT, Advancement, and Admissions and got 5′s across the board at my last annual review because of it, which was kinda like a battle because Jean in IT is so prickly and it’s almost impossible to get a meeting with Janet in the Business Office to finalize the budget.

No sir.

My only hope is that Asgard’s army will need administrators. Maybe on some fateful day the valkyrie will come, desperately in need of a chubby douchebag administrator to help do some import and config work so Valhalla’s database can talk to Volkvangr’s, and thereby contribute to the final battle.

Because unless that’s the case, I’m probably going straight to Hel.

I was the first human explorer to set foot on Mars.

The dream began with me stepping onto the planet, so don’t ask me anything about the trip, the balance of the team, the mission objectives, or even the mode of conveyance- wasn’t there.

The surface had much more terrain excitement than is seen in actual imagery. My dream-Mars was all crushed stone, almost like a carpet of gravel with bits of bigger rock here and there. It looked like the remnants of a long-extinct glacier, or huge flood- possibly two sides of the same coin, I thought. I walked around a bit, quite satisified with my spacesuit, which was very lightweight and not at all uncomfortable; in fact, I may not have been wearing a helmet at all. In short order I found that the landing site was on a shelf, really a titanic mesa, and from the edge I looked down into a huge canyon. I could see the bottom- the ambient light was pretty good, and not nearly as red as prior missions would have you believe-and one edge, but the rest of it went off to obscurity.

That’s when I saw the hut.

Further down the mesa’s rim I saw a small structure, unmistakably an Earth-type dwelling space. I walked over, perhaps a half-mile (hard to gauge Earth distances on foreign planets, dontchaknow), and walked inside. I don’t remember there being a door. The hut enclosed a single space that mimicked my own bedroom, at least in size and the layout of the bed. Yes, the bed- there was a king-sized sleigh bed in the middle of this hut.

Then things got weird.

On the bed, just kind of hanging out, was my stepfather, who has been dead for over three years now. Or so we all thought. He explained that he had faked his death and moved to Mars to just kind of get away. You know, leave it all behind for awhile, and he wasn’t particularly excited to see me. I was trying to make sense of that when I realized there were two other people in the room. I think it was one of his brothers and his sister-in-law, neither of whom at this writing is either dead or pretending to be. They knew he had been faking, and had gone back and forth to Mars a couple times to visit.

The whole scene was making me a little uncomfortable, so I went back outside to the mesa’s edge. I looked again down into the canyon, and was thinking it would make a pretty good lake if someone filled it. After some moments of indecision, I figured I’d go back inside and try to get some more details. As I turned away from the canyon I saw movement farther down the rim. I could make out two, maybe more, figures slowly walking toward the hut opposite the place I had started, but at about the same distance. In short order I found them to be tourists from Earth, startled to see not just one but several people already there. They had paid a premium for the exclusivity of the destination, and were kinda pissed that it wasn’t quite so exclusive.

My stepfather, meanwhile, was getting kinda pissed that all of a sudden all these people had showed up uninvited at his place.

Ha ha that title ought to pull in some perv traffic from Google.

But no really, I saw a big snake today. I’m out with the Li’lest Lethal who, while strictly speaking is no longer sick, he can’t go back to school until he’s 24 hours fever-free. Since he’s feeling himself and it’s a gorgeous day out, and he’s been up since 5 waiting to do something, around 10 I took him to a nearby conservation area a coupla towns over.

Now Johno and Mrs. Johno suffered one portion of that property, a largish hill (elev ~1250 ft) that we made them ascend one hot and stuffy summer day. You might have thought that when we got to the top, where a chill rain was feeding the blustery wind tearing at the bald top of the hill it might have been a little relief from the relentless sun and heat, but no not really. Just cold. And wet. Oh, and I made Johno pull a Radio Flyer about halfway up too, over the rockiest, most jagged bits.

Where was I going with this?

Oh right, I said that next time we’ll do a circuit of the pond about a mile away from the hill. It’s easy, no surprisingly miserable local weather patterns, and it’s all very Thoreau-ly pleasant. Ha. Ha. Ha.

‘Cept for the snakes.

To be fair, it didn’t try to bite myself or my boy. We were well off the trail, skirting the edge of the pond. We were gently and cautiously squelching our way along the moss and plants where the water just starts to creep up the fairly steep and rocky slope that describes the whole southern end of the pond.

We had already spooked a few big frogs who had hurled themselves into the water with a screeching “meep!” at our approach, but the Lesser Lethal hadn’t actually seen them. I wanted him to see some though, so we kept going. It didn’t help that, being not yet 3 years old, my boy finds it impossible to stay silent for more than 3 or 4 consecutive seconds.

When there was a burst of motion from the clump of fern immediately to my right; a bit of black lightning shot from it, straight across where I was about to step, and into the water: thrush rush splash.

From what I could see it was black all down its length, roughly 30″, and probably no thicker than half my wrist. And that’s about all I got from the encounter. Oh, and that it was frigging fast. Made no effort to warn or fight; went straight into escape mode, and apparently safety to this snake means getting in the water.

I’m thinking it was a Black Racer:

or a Black Rat Snake:

[Wik] And I think it goes without saying that, had that been a zombie, we’d'a both been dead. Eh, undead. I’m trying to treat it as a lesson learned, but am still feeling like I failed. Gotta be way more alert and aware than that when the zombies come.

I had inherited my mother’s house and property. It’s a decent-sized house on about five acres. But the house is in general disrepair, and in my dream I didn’t have the inclination to get it all fixed up. What I did instead was have the house razed, with the intention of building a kickass underground structure on the same spot, using the existing foundation and cellar as a template. I had in mind part bunker/catastratorium, part cozy hobbit-hole.

So with the upper structure demolished, I began cracking though the concrete in the cellar. In my dream I was alone doing all this, which is utterly ridiculous for a variety of reasons, but primarily because I have zero training on any tool or construction principle and the most sophisticated bit of toolery I ever did was installing a cat-flap in the door to my basement.

But none of it mattered in the end, because as it turned out the earth beneath my mother’s cellar was already inhabited.

A wizardly-looking fellow sort of appeared, surprising me as I was just taking sledgehammer to concrete. He looked like Gandalf if not quite so imposing…rather dumpy, really…and explained that he had been living in his own underground building for quite some time now on the very same spot, and would I please knock off trying to crash through his roof. After some back and forth, he ended up giving me a tour of his place, and it was pretty impressive. There was a very deep…shaft, I guess, but not a cold and drafty and sooty shaft, but a bright and interesting shaft, with little niches here and there with tasteful if uninspired bits of art in them. Think the inside of a very deep well, with the big stones and the curved surfaces everywhere, but without the panic that comes with falling down a deep well however tasteful the art inside may be.

We finally reached the bottom, although now I’m not sure how. I don’t remember stairs now, and I think we may have been just falling very gently. As it happened, the bottom level of his place ajoined a largish chain bookstore. I thanked him for the tour, and went to poke around the store. I ran into someone I knew inside…all I remember is she was a she…and we browsed together for a bit but ended up separating. I wound up buying a copy of The Green Berets.

This morning, not 30 minutes ago, I helped a nun up a flight of stairs.

The facilities people who clear the snow-n-ice didn’t clear the steps to their edges, meaning that she couldn’t reach a handrail. Poor thing didn’t want to risk going up unsupported, which is entirely understandable as she is just this side of 90. I happened to walk out when she needed a hand coming in, so there you go. I also confided to her that I almost took a digger this morning on my very own steps, so as not to let her feel any more frail than she already might.

So here’s my question: which specific act of evil in my long career of prickiness might now be negated? It seems that in life’s equation, I just got a +1 that ought to cancel a -1 somewhere else.

Maybe I can be made right with Vishnu for all the ants I torched with a magnifying glass. Maybe I can even get off the hook with the little green plastic god that oversees little green plastic army men; lord knows he’d want a piece of me. Then again, what if G-d is a god of war and conflict, for which there is a fair amount of evidence. This act today, then, might actually bring me backwards.

I had organized the first annual Ministry Million Dollar Carnival.

It was a large-ish, open-air affair with all manner of booth, contest, and confection. I was walking around the carnival, half-surprised that everything had gone off as planned. There were legions of people in attendance, and all appeared to be having a good time. Even the weather was nice. Well, nice according to the aesthetic of most folks.

So after a bit of all this, someone…I’m not sure who, but someone from the Ministry circle…might’ve been a Minister, or possibly Murdoc…came over and pointed out that we don’t have a million dollars to give away, or even a million dollars’ worth of merchandise; the whole thing was basically a sham. I thought that was odd, and started to argue that that was entirely irrelevant, but decided to finish out-processing from the Marine Corps instead.

As a former soldier I *have* had dreams about people I knew and units I was in, but I never once dreamed of being in another service branch.

So I walked over to the admin building and found myself explaining to a retention officer why I wanted to leave the Corps. As I recall now, it was a famous actor…Jeff Goldblum, maybe?…who was the officer in question. I said that I had done my time and it was just time to get out, to move on, that sort of rap. We finished the paperwork, shook hands, and I walked out to join a waiting expedition to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

We made the summit in rather short order, only to find that the peak was actually just level with a little, scrubby city and the fact that it is among the largest natural features on the planet really is just an accident of relative observation and associated physics. In short, after cresting the mighty mountain I was rewarded not with an astonishing view of Earth’s grandeur but an eye-level view of a rather shabby and dark empty parking lot that I could step onto from the peak.

So I looked around a little, but went back to our camp just short of the summit and told everyone what the deal was. Then I noticed that my cat had actually followed us up the mountain and was being a pain in the ass in the tent, so I bitched at him for a bit.

I went to visit Johno and the lovely and talented Misses Johno.

I was by myself, and had a rental car because I didn’t want to take my warwagon so far. Because, in my dream, they lived in Texas, I think…maybe Arizona. Someplace scrubby.

So I got down there, and they had a sweet place. It was a big second-floor apartment. It was new, but had alot of interesting spaces and unexpected nooks characteristic of older, re-purposed accomodations. The net effect was very positive. Johno even had the space to have his whole baking set-up the way he (mostly) wanted.

I guess we hung out through the night…I dunno, or maybe I just got down there really early in the morning. I got a hankerin’ for a McDonald’s breakfast sandwich, which is odd for several reasons, and I was astonished, even in my dream, that Johno wanted one too. I don’t think I ever left to get any though, because I couldn’t retain his directions to the nearest one. We ended up playing pool on the huge red felt pool table that dominated his living room that I guess I hadn’t noticed before.

But by then Misses Johno was trying to sleep on the little daybed nearby, and kept yelling at us to stop making so much noise. I was trying to puzzle through how to play pool quietly, then realized they didn’t have a bedroom at all but slept either on or next to the pool table.

At one point back in mid-April, I stepped on the bathroom scale and was surprised by what I saw. Shocked, even. I was a solid fift…no, more precisely, I was a flabby fifteen pounds heavier than I thought, or believed, or fantasized, I was.

I finally reached a point where I was not only disappointed in my own appearance, but sickened.

So I started swimming, and after a couple months started regular Nautilus circuits. I ran a little during the day, but- as expected- it’s a little too hard on my tibiae; treadmill might be better than the track in that regard, but I loathe treadmills.

Much of September was a total wash, due to a ridiculous side project I was working on, and frankly I needed that hour-a-night of gym time to work on it. I’m trying to get back into an exercise routine but that project is becoming like poop on your shoe, except for the most peritnent distinction: that the poop is paying you for being there.

Anyway, as of last Saturday I was down 31 pounds from my April grossness. Given the vagaries of the last six weeks or so, I probably scraped 30 in early September. All of my fat pants have gone to Goodwill, and a coupla pairs I bought to replace those are on their way out. But without all this extracurricular work, and a little more discipline, I would probably be closing in on 50 pounds by now. I’ve pushed that off to the end of the calendar year, but as long as my side work doesn’t go away, the weight probably won’t either.

But back on point, it’s pretty sobering to lose 12-13% of your body weight and still be a fat bastard. I mean, I keep realistic goals in mind- like fitting into the shorts I bought months ago with the 32 waist. Looking like Brad Pitt in Fight Club is out of the question for a working slob who just crossed into the latter half of his 30s. But I know though that slicing off another 20, 25 pounds is possible and achievable (besides, I did it once before as a much younger man), and if I can look in the mirror and not feel nauseous, I think I’ve won.

And those 32 shorts: I can button them, but I look like a balloon with a rubber band around it.

Which is progress.

A dream from the other night:

I was at a reunion at my alma mater, Big State U. Also attending was Bill Murray, who in the dream was a fellow alumnus (if ~30 class years apart).

We hung out a bit between different reunion events, and ended up grabbing a drink at his golf cart. We sipped on something in rocks glasses over ice, shooting the breeze but he seems distracted. He tells me that he wasn’t getting into the swing of things because his wife of many years had just been indicted for murder.

Really? Whoa…uh, tough break, man.

Totally unprepared for the awkwardness of that moment, I broke away and wound up on a train, a cross-country alumni train trip that boarded on campus. Soon after departing though I learned that the train was stopping nowhere I had even heard of, but couldn’t get off for a couple days. It was only then that I realized that none of the complimentary bags we had recieved at reunion check-in were of LL Bean quality, and I was sorely disappointed.