Friends

• 17:34 got the boys a new perch. they're not spoiled or anything... not at all :p #
• 12:06 the man who did the voice of top cat died :/ #
• 12:41 if you haven't heard, Brady Quinn is out for the rest of the season (whopping 2 games). right foot injury #

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• 03:56 good morning winter and blessed be to my fellow pagan solstice celebrators :D #

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There are some nights where just as I'm drifting to sleep I find myself set upon by a series of such detailed and vibrant images that I feel as if I've been physically impacted by them. Sometimes I am capable of recalling the images one by one as still frames, generally unrelated to one another, but more often than not my conscious mind has already strung them together in such a manner as to form a story.

I had three such experiences over the course of this past night – let me tell you of them.

In the first, I found myself in the middle of a busy subway station. The light was tinted yellow in such a way that everything red seemed to literally pop. A crowd of people moved through the space, though I can recall no train being present. There was a space near one of the entrances where a set of soft red chairs had been placed, raised above the floor a good two feet in a manner implying that they were the sort of place where people ought to get their shoes shined. Instead, there was a man there wearing a welding mask and wielding a torch of some kind, but he was using them to draw a tattoo in shades of black and grey of an Asian style sword just above a lady's ankle. I looked up and saw that the lady in question was none other than my friend Amy, who looked me in the eye and said in a manner more serious than I've ever seen her, "Gloves". Somehow, in the fleeting moments before I woke up, I knew that she was talking about heavy work gloves, rather than the medical gloves that we use at work or gloves to keep your hands warm.

In the second, I found myself in an all but abandoned church – very small with only a few rows of pews. Once again the lighting was yellow, but this time, the air was dusty and gritty. There were piles of sand between the pews – not large ones, but enough to imply that the church itself was in a sandy location (though I do not recall seeing out any of the windows). The sand itself was scattered and windswept. I saw Lindsey kneeling at the front of the church and could hear her praying, though I could not discern the words. No matter where I went I was unable to put myself in a position where I could see her face and though I called her name, she did not turn to look at me. And as she prayed, waves like ripples in the air radiated from her and as each of them hit me, it made me feel nauseous. They smelled overwhelmingly of salt.

In the third, which I had much later in the night, I was in a place that I can only describe as soft and fluffy and a pale blue. My friend Bekah was there as well and we were both naked. I was uncomfortable with the fact that she was unclothed and tried my best to look only at her eyes and face, but in spite of this, I did notice that she was wearing socks that came up to her knees with rainbow colored dragons (of the European variety, not the Asian variety) circling about them. I was under the impression that we were supposed to be having sex, but I was stalling. She cuddled close to me and said something along the lines of "I want to tell you how I feel right now" and I was taken aback by this, as she's never been good at expressing her feelings or emotions. I felt particularly honored to hear that she wanted to try to talk to me about such things.

• 18:34 consensus: the lindeman's cassis is better than the framboise but not as good as the pomme. peche is left to try. the kriek sucks. #

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• 13:51 Snowville Creamery = best milk ever. no hormones, grass fed cows and out of Athens, OH. Totally worth getting. It's how milk should taste. #

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• 20:58 anyone use the breeze cat litter system and is it worth it? #

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• 11:10 "OWLCAT" - twlol.com/tw/?v1-219276 #lol #ichc #

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My friend Krystine loaned me a copy of the first season of "Castle" the other day, and while watching it, I found myself particularly moved by this sequence:

Alexis: (enters the room wearing a pink dress) What do you think? Richard Castle: you look beautiful. Alexis: Dad, you say that about every dress, don't you think this makes my skin look pasty? Richard Castle: Sweethart, I want you to know, no matter how you think you look, you are perfect exactly the way you are. Alexis: You're not helping. Martha: (Enters the room holding another dress, this one a pale blue.) Oh! God no! Hideous! Alexis: Thank you! Martha: Here, try this. (hands her the other dress) Alright... good color for you. (Alexis exits the room) Richard Castle: What are you doing? Martha: What? Richard Castle: "You look Hideous"? Are you trying to give her body image issues? Martha: ha. Newsflash, she already has body image issues. It's an intrinsic part of being a woman. Every woman in the world has some part of herself that she absolutely hates: Her hands are too small, her feet are too big, her hair's too straight, too curly, her ears stick out, her... (she looks in the mirror) oh god! Her butt's too flat, her nose is too big... And you know, nothing you can say will change how we feel. Martha: (sits down in a chair next to Richard's) What men don't understand is, the right clothes, the right shoes, the right makeup... just... it hides the flaws we think we have. They make us look beautiful - to ourselves! That's what makes us look beautiful to others. Richard Castle: Used to be, all she needed to feel beautiful was a pink tutu and a plastic tiara. Martha: (nods) We spend our whole lives trying to feel that way again. (Alexis re-enters the room, this time wearing the pale blue dress. Both Richard and Martha rise from their seats) Alexis: What do you think? Richard Castle: (In his pause, it's apparent that he's seeing his daughter not just as she is, but also in how the dress that she's wearing accentuates her beauty) ...It's you.

I was thinking today about how the sphere grid from Final Fantasy X serves as a beautiful metaphor for life and life experience.

Everyone starts in a completely different place and goes in their own directions, but over time, as the ground they've covered builds, they find themselves, by chance or design, crossing each other's paths and learning and experiencing the same things.

No two paths are the same and no two acquired skill sets are identical. There are places where one person has to overcome insurmountable obstacles in order to arrive at the same place where another person was able to get to with the utmost of ease. And more often than not, these points of shared learning and shared experience come together for only a brief moment before once again diverging in completely separate directions.

It's a shame that I can't think of a simple and elegant method of explaining this to someone who has yet to play Final Fantasy Ten...

• 17:53 in New Bedford, MA, a 98 year old woman was indicted on a 2nd degree murder charge alleging she strangled her 100 year old roommate. Som ... #

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• 11:51 I just got in an argument in class about how the credits in the holy grail arent the best part...but that eric idol is. #

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• 16:13 this is definitely grilled cheese and tomato soup weather #

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