We're All Fine Here, Thanks. How Are You? - The FanFic Social Thread

That and being shot with a BB gun isn't a walk in a park.

Anywho!

Still stuck in the Christmas doldrums. I've dreaded Christmas for years. I don't like the holiday, I don't like the annoying music that stores play beginning in November, I don't like the rampant commercialism, I don't like the crowds, the debt, or those overpowering cinnamon pine cones that are freakin' EVERYWHERE or the other overpowering scents that cause my asthma to act up when I walk into a store. I don't like it.

However, I do like seeing the reactions of people when I give them gifts. It makes me happy. I like pine, I like Christmas trees and having one set up makes a place look homely. I also like Christmas Eve Happy Hour, hosted by HalfBroNar.

I'd set up my Christmas tree, but I'm in such a meh mood that I see no point.

Oh hell, I'll scarf down dinner and do it anyway.

 

I didn't do it for 2012/2013 and 2013/2014, but this time I will. And I have two Ewok ornaments, which further motivates me.

 

My foot being sore today (and yesterday) is complicating matters, mainly because I don't want to walk on it unless absolutely necessary. It sometimes gets a burning pain, which I really don't like. Most of the pain is an ache in the fifth metatarsal, below the first pinky joint. Stupid foot.

Anywho, here's part of a dream I had the other night that I found amusing.

The Chicken Dance is played over footage of two people facing each other and doing the dance. The first part is of an adult and a child and they do the dance. When the part of the dance where they clap comes up, the adult slaps the kid four times in the face. Then the kid is doing the dance with another kid and slaps that kid four times. Then they're an adult and they do the dance with a woman and slap her four times. Then the same with a kid. The sequence ends with STOP THE SLAPPING and a little message about preventing domestic abuse.

My dream was a PSA.

Freakin' what.

 

Well gee Trak, have you perchance thought about slapping someone in your family?

 

It made me wonder if there actually is a variation on the Chicken Dance where two people face each other, do the dance, and slap each other in the face.

Because I can see that being a thing.

 

OH YEAH! The Chargers won!! Sudden death overtime. Bam!

 

Good morning!

I'm sorry about your teacher SabyneAmberle

It's OK, I think I got the message by now And yes, I'm in your club and I feel very awesome

Okay, here you're opening a can of worms on which I could write a dissertation... In Greece the official minimum wage is €586 per month before tax for people aged 25 or more for 40 hours a week (€510 for younger people) but that's on paper. In reality, there are so many loopholes in labour law (hell, I'm not sure we really have labour law anymore!) that a lot of people get less than that for more working hours, and often without health/pension and probably with several months delay in payments. If you're self-employed, forget it, there's no minimum wage and health/pension contributions are also €140 per month (not that you get any decent health services for that). In general salaries are very low compared to the cost of living -- Athens isn't expensive in absolute terms the way Paris is, but compared to the salaries we get it is. To give a few examples, a monthly public transportation pass costs €45, or the cheapest mobile phone package (200 minutes talk, 50MB internet, no SMS) is €25/month. I'd say that to cover your basic needs (housing, utility bills, food, transportation) without taking in account hobbies, interests, social and cultural life, you need at the very least €800 (after tax), and very few people I know make that. And then you have to add the crazy taxes we're supposed pay because of this ridiculous austerity policy we have in place -- I say "supposed to" because I know a lot of people who gave up on paying taxes, and that's not because they want to evade tax, it's because they can't afford to pay taxes anymore.

I asked the relevant authorities 1/2 litre water/stock, 2 big tablespoons rice, 1 egg, juice of half a lemon. If you want it thicker, add more rice.

jcgoble3 Yikes, things sound pretty tense where you are With the crazy stories I read in the news recently about the US, I also imagine the demos have to do not only with the specific case in your city and but also with the general context though. Looking at it from the outside, it feels a bit like a pressure cooker letting out steam. I'm talking on the social level here -- on the legal level, although I know that the US system and mentality is very, very different from what we have in most European countries, I can't help but be a bit baffled by the grand jury process.

Anyway. I shipped off the last Chyntucks today and now I'm home alone. I'm going to read some good fics here, then have a look at the news (with the presidential election in full swing, corrupt Greek politics are highly entertaining) and then I'll do some writing. That's my idea of a Sunday

Have a nice day!

 

I agree that BB guns can be a serious threat.

As for dreams, I've been having some oddly vivid ones recently, and this is coming from the person who almost never remembers her dreams/dreams at all. A couple nights ago I dreamt that I was on a Home One type aircraft with a friend of mine and a bunch of other young adults and we had 36 hours to save the world from WWIII so we split into 12 groups and came up with a 12 step solution. I was tasked to going around all 12 groups and making sure it all worked together. I woke up on step 9. It was kinda an awesome dream and gave me an idea for an original story.

Then last night, I had a nightmare: bridezilla decided to have a second wedding and we were forced to wear the same bloody dresses. This wedding went just as badly as the real one.

Which brings me to my "what the kriff?" of the night. So I had a friend call me at like 8:30 in the evening - a bunch of people were going to go to the late showing of the Hobbit and they wanted to know if I wanted to join them. I said yeah sure (great movie BTW). The movie didn't end till like after 12. We get out, I check my phone and the former bridezilla had texted me at like 9:45 (like 5 minutes after the movie had started), simply asking if I was awake. I texted her back but didn't get a reply. Now I'm trying to figure out what she wanted/needed. We aren't ones to "just talk" over text, and we just hung out on monday (where we said we probably wouldn't see each other till after Christmas) so I don't think she wanted to arrange something (and if she had, she would have just said it). I know she works at like 8 am every sunday morning, and pretty much everything was closed by then so I don't think she wanted to hang out that late (and now that she's married she's not one to say "hey do you want to hang out right now"). Which makes me think it was something actually important, but if it was, I would HOPE she would have sent other texts or try to call, but she didn't.

Anyways, I blabbing because I'm tired, confused and slightly worried.

 

I'd share one of my other recent dreams with a coherent plot, but it's really long. I typed it up elsewhere, so it's just a matter of copy-pasting it and throwing it into a spoiler.

Oh hell, here it is:

Spoiler: Long dream is long. Also body horror

Double-post of weirdness! I had a weird dream that I must share!

So! I'm a scientist in hiding from the government, after many of my colleagues turned up "missing" since the development of a nasty new chemical. I was chief in that development and had designed the formula itself. My notes were destroyed, but I kept all the information in my brain, and for some reason, my team and I were targeted for elimination due to this project.

As I was hiding out in a group home, I happened upon one of my former colleagues. We realized that we'd need to go back into hiding because government agents were after us. He was surprised that despite my handicap (my character had cerebral palsy), I lasted so long after the rest of our team "disappeared."

Then, the owner of the group home realized who we were and attacked us. He came after me with a garden rake and said that if I don't leave town, he'll kill me because my presence will cause government agents to descend upon the house and flush out other renegades who were hiding there.

So, I leave and eventually join up with another group of political refugees as we're trying to make our way out of town. The rest of the dream was just a drawn-out chase scene.

Then, the focus shifts to a penal colony where my scientist character was locked up. An ovoid craft crashed outside the colony, and the prison's staff tried to get inside of it, but couldn't find a door. So, they cracked open the top of the craft and found a gelatinous green-gray substance covering the interior. The substance shrank into a large globule once exposed to air, and the dead occupants were found. The team takes the globule and through whatever plot contrivance, I end up with a fist-size piece of it, which I try to protect from the other inmates.

The inmates know about this stuff and want to eat it because it gives them a high and psychic powers or something. Another group were possessed by the globule and started creating poisoned versions of it which they planned to use to kill the rest of the general population.

Somehow I end up with one of the guards and he is trying to get information from me about the piece I have. We happen upon some of the poisoned globules and he's about to touch them and I tell him not to, as they're a potent poison. Then, a riot breaks out between the possessed inmates, giant cave rats, and the guards, and I'm caught in the middle of the crossfire.

As I lay on the ground, I look to the globule I had and it starts pulsating. It extrudes tendrils that go into my flesh and come out of my skin in little wormy strings as it covers me in a large green-gray gelatinous mass, which protects me from the riot.

After the riot is controlled, the mass reverts back to its small globule form and I realize that it's alive (sort of) and because I protected it from the rest of the inmates, it decided to protect me from danger.

I try to tell the guards that I know what it is and why it was found in the craft. It was a shield for the craft and it was trying to protect the occupants of the craft from the crash, but the force was too much. The guards question how I know this, since knowledge of the craft and its occupants were kept hidden from the inmates.

I don't quite remember the rest, but there you go. Conspiracy, SCIENCE, the Colour Out of Space on a prison planet, and body horror combined with the power of friendship.

...what the hell did I eat last night?

I felt it wise to not talk about the dream I had before Thanksgiving. The end of it involved me carving up a demon lady with a chainsaw in full graphic bloody icky gloppy horrible detail.

 

I hardly ever remember my dreams - when I do it's usually because I'm in an unusual/new place, or because I've actually managed to get enough sleep. And even then it's never in as much detail as the ones you guys are recounting! I did have one a few weeks ago in which I was taking the final exam in my linguistics class, which for some reason involved telepathy. It wasn't a stress-dream either - I was pretty good at the telepathy, as it turned out.

Once during my senior year of high school, though, I remember my friend told me she'd had a dream the night before in which I got married for scholarship money. And then my husband and I both got pregnant.

 

I dreamed my roommate stole my car and drove it drunk and I found it abandoned in a snowbank just packed with snow. Meanwhile, in this dream, my roommate is wandering around the house drunk, screaming and being a total jerk and I am left to ponder whether I call the cops and tell them what happened and get him in trouble. Also, in this dream, I was wondering how I was going to put a claim for my messed up car into the insurance company without a police report. Even in my dreams I am faced with dilemmas.

I had a friend in college that dreamed that we hijacked a flying saucer and we took it for a joyride around the planet. That was a cool dream. Those aliens probably deserved it. I bet they were intent on probing us.

 

Back when I was in high school, my mother came into my room one morning yelling at me. Apparently I had gotten pregnant in her dream It was very confusing for me.

I'm slowly getting into the holiday spirit. I got rid of the dead tree on my table, I've wrapped most of the presents (I think I just have to wrap my sister's), and we finally have snow again here! Like a week ago it was crazy warm here for a couple days, like 10 C (50 F), and it rained and all the snow melted. But it's a bit colder now, right around the freezing mark, so I'm hoping what we got today will stick. Now if only the dishes in the sink would clean themselves.

The unfortunate thing is I may have to bear Wal Mart today. DO NOT WANT. Since I decided not to spend the week at my mom's, I have very little food here. I'm debating whether I can survive the next few days on eggs, cheese, a chicken breast and some pierogies. But I have also yet to get my brothers their traditional gift of pop-tarts.

 

You could always order a pizza, Briannakin...

I'm debating whether or not to go ahead and write one of the key entries in the wrap-up to my Dear Diary Challenge '14 today, or wait until tomorrow. There's good reasons for both, and it's not like my muse has a timer as far as finishing up a year's worth of entries (there've been 127 so far). I guess I'm really waiting for a certain someone to offer up an opinion on the last couple of ones before I take the plunge.

 

Is right now enjoying the DVD version of the Royal Swedish Ballet’s and Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra’s 1999 adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker (who based his ballet on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King).


This version have replaces Hoffmann’s characters with the characters from the books by the beloved child author Elsa Beskow.

 

(Re: the dream posts)

The weirdest anxiety dream I can currently remember involved being zapped back to junior high (apparently in dreamland you can never move on!) and stuck in some kind of science class. The teacher informed us that everyone had to win the science fair to pass. How that was supposed to work for a class of at least several people... well, maybe they only passed one student a year. Great odds.

 

I actually made pizza last night and the majority of it is still in my fridge, so I guess I also have that. I think I also have some gnocchi somewhere so I don't think I'm going to go. The Briannabros are probably going to be out of luck when it comes to their pop-tarts. Oh well. The Wal-Mart here sometimes stays open 24 hours in the few days leading up to christmas, but they aren't this year, which is a shame because I totally would have gone at like 2 am.

I still gotta decide what I'm doing for next year's diary.

 

I used to have frequent recurring dreams where I had to keep on repeating high school even though I was in my mid twenties, because I would only show up when I wanted to and would spend most of the time flying (yes, actually flying) about the corridors on all three floors. And it kept taking place in my old high school, which as of March, 2012 when I moved into my current domicile, is only a stone's throw away from where I live. Oddly, I haven't had that dream come back since I moved here.

 

Apparently that dream was telling you that you needed to move back to that area.

 

Actually the idea to move into my current place wasn't mine, it was an offer that was really too good to pass up.

 

MUAHAHA! My sister had to run out with my mother to get a couple things, so I sent them off with my debit card and a list of stuff I wanted. WIN!

So, flying is apparently a common thing in dreams, yet I've never experienced it.

 

Why am I not surprised that a Goodwood dream would involve flying?

On the chapter of dreams, I don't have much to say because I forget most of them and I'm usually left with a small detail that I can't make sense of out of context. Maybe I couldn't make sense of it in context either, come to think of it, but since I don't remember the context... you get my point. I'm amazed at the detail in your story TrakNar -- that's the blockbuster edition of dreams!

There's only one tidbit I'm pretty confident I remember correctly from dreams where I see people who passed away and I want to talk to them. Something always happens in the dream -- a phone rings, someone else turns up to talk to me, or I sneeze and have to look for a handkerchief -- and by the time I want to catch up with the person, they're gone.

Other than that, I had a quiet day today. Home alone, reading, writing, and unfortunately watching the news. Greek politics are more disgusting than the worst cesspit, especially now with the presidential election. Today the prime minister made a televised address to the nation, where he called on independent MPs to support his candidate to the presidency and added that he'd reshuffle the cabinet to widen the government coalition after the president is elected. Translation: vote for my guy and I'll give you a ministry. Oh, well...

 

The vast majority of my dreams involve flying of some sort or other, Chyntuck, so yeah that's a pretty good assumption. Two significant types are my favorites: when I'm flying a fighter craft of some kind into battle (most often as the lead character from the Star Fox series), or when I'm flying Superman-style for long distances over and among very interesting landscapes or urban settings.

Addendum: There's a third kind of flying dream that I've had a number of times, usually with interesting twists, and that involved taking frequent commercial flights to visit a relative of mine (at least once a week in some of them). A weird variation of it involves jumping out of the plane I happen to be flying in for some reason or other and then having to hitchhike to whichever place is closer, my origin point or ultimate destination. Those were always fun.

 

When I remember my dreams, it's usually that I can remember them when I wake up, but after a few hours I've forgotten them. It's odd.

And all of my recent dreams have been about girls I know. Each dream is a different girl. They're not inappropriate or anything, but still. Odd.

 

Just putting this out there, but is there really such a thing as an "inappropriate" dream? The vast, overwhelming majority of us can't exercise control within our dreams, and even less so can choose what we dream about, after all. There are lucid dreamers who can influence their dreams and can rouse themselves from them, but those are rare and I bet even they can't pick the topic.

 

My roommate is driving me crazy with his yelling. "Xbox off! Turn off Xbox! Xbox off!" Then he starts yelling louder, like the Xbox is hard of hearing. He is sitting two feet in front of the off button. He can't lean forward and push that button. Now he is cussing at the game player. I finally screamed at him to turn it off by hand. That resulted in more cussing. Obviously the Xbox is kriff'n stupid and doesn't know how to do anything. I am sure it is the Xbox's fault.