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Sometimes when I'm walking through the apartment late at night with all the lights off and my laptop in hand, I will open it and face it outwards and pretend I'm in some Discovery Channel show using a night-vision camera to investigate a haunted house. And then I freak myself out and shut the laptop really fast.

I have not showered since Sunday. I have, however, taken 3 baths. That is not my usual proportion of things, and I feel a bit indulgent using so much water.

Today has been filled with surreal daydreams, intensified by an afternoon nap and quasi-lucid dreaming involving a familiar stranger and an old friend and a home and a passionate affair, those dreams that bring bliss in quantities dreams usually reserve for terror and panic. It was so hard to wake up, even more so because, really, I had nothing to wake up for, I had the day to myself and could sleep it away if it brought me pleasure, but it seemed like a bad sign, the symptom of depression, and I got ticked off that I ended my reverie because of medication commercial warning signs blaring through my head. So I've poked around the rest of the day, enjoying myself still almost because of the longing and the occasional moment of closing my eyes and slipping back into the sensations of that otherworld, remembering minute details likes the fabric on the couch, the smell of the room, and focusing to make out the details of faces. I am horrible with faces of real-life people, I can often remember names and conversations and hair and outfit and the circle of the face is a flesh-colored blur, like an anonymous whistleblower being interviewed on the news. However, this time I could do it with such perfect clarity, I felt almost the pleasure a sculptor might, in so perfectly capturing the proportions of a face that you can run your (imaginary) hand over and around and feel your success. Keep touching and get hairs tangled up between your fingers, its quite real, for a split second, before I nod off and muscles jerk, splashing the bathwater and waking me up from not-quite-asleep. I close my eyes and do it again.

Synthetic happiness is possibly superior to so-called natural spontaneous happiness, its longer lasting, so perhaps this moment in the tub of remembering a memory of an imaginary event serves an even better purpose than 'authentic nostalgia'. The imaginary sort of longing in stories can be worked and worked and worked over until a proper resolution is found.

The other day on the train, I felt like people were giving me lots of "sizing him up" glances and I couldn't figure out why. Then I remembered my choice of winter gear and my sunglasses and know exactly why they are looking at me. I'm That Guy.

I know its sort of ridiculous how much Chicagoans talk about the weather and how much of a legitimate conversation topic it is here, but honestly, its because so much weird stuff happens around you when it starts to get this cold. Like, you know how heat makes the air wavy and watery? I first noticed it as a kid when watching the charcoal grill flame up, and in the summers, steam rising off the hot asphalt. Well, tonight on the way home from work, the train got above ground, where its currently -11 degrees outside and hasn't gone above 0 all day, and everytime the doors opened on the platform, the ENTIRE ENTRYWAY OPENING was watery and wavy from the heat of the 60 degree train car air hitting the cold air.

8-Blog-Posts-In-1!

Girl Talk. About 1/3 of this guy's songs are FCKING BRILLIANT. The other 2/3 sometimes give me an aneurysm. But what I love about the ones that work, is that he takes the mash-up concept to this whole other three-dimensional and viable level. About 2% of mash-ups are really great, but the large majority of them I find great for the first 30 seconds.....then I get exhausted and bored by them. His tracks takes this 30 second golden window to the nth degree. Several Girl Talk songs are on my summer jam rotation.

My Officemate. Today, she asked me about "provisos" and whether it was a general grammar term or a legal one, and then I was googling it and we were talking about plain language/new english, etc., as well as words losing meaning from misuse, and I talked about my biggest pet peeve, which is the word "factoid" and how it was misused so much that now its an acceptable definition, and then she said, "yeah, its like fat and phat - f-a-t and p-h-a-t." Um, no, actually its nothing like that. And I said as much. And I said, I have no problem with slang, with creation of words, with language evolving, because it always has and always will, and her response was, "did you ever hear that Tim McGraw song about Back in the Good Old days when a hoe was a garden tool? I liked that song." See, just when we were starting to bond over something, she has to remind me that she's a high-strung nervous suburban republican white lady. I stood up and went to get coffee. And promptly made myself giggle because I kept hearing Gladys Knight's voice saying "you know everybody's talkin' about the good old days, the good old days....well, let's talk about the good old days."

Therapy. Why does it always have to go back to my abandonment issues? I hate being cliche. I'm a special and unique snowflake. Right? Right?? Well, that and my skills at emotion stuffing. I'm getting better about it though. And by better, I mean worse, since perhaps its not a skillset that is so desirable. So my therapist claims.

Clothes. I need to accept that all my dress pants are probably going to have permanent grease stains on the cuffs after this summer of biking to work every day that it's not raining.

Herbal smokes. Last night I tried out some dream herbs, that pretty much tasted like smoking ginger and was a bit harsh on the lungs. These particular ones were relatives of tumeric, and supposedly were supposed to help bridge the psychic gateway. I fell asleep quickly therafter and had a long night of dreams, some that were kinda cool and two that involved snow or the arctic. This was probably because it was the first night of sleeping with the a/c on and the door shut. I did dream that dommeyourass was not going to work because of a snow day, that she was calling in sick, and then a few hours later she e-mailed to inform me that she's taking a sick day tomorrow. Scary! Or not. I mean, we have lots of psychic things like that in our hosuehold all the time, so its really hard to know if the root herbs did anything. However, I enjoyed the pre-bedtime ritual of it. I love a good ritual.

Over the weekend, when taking a break from cleaning the house, I tried out this: which is exactly what I wanted in a hand-rolled cigarette that made my mouth feel a little tingly and didn't hurt my lungs and made me feel relaxed afterwards without putting me too sleep. It was basically the inverse of tobacco, which is what I wanted. However, it is EXPENSIVE. $20 for a pouch that is only half the size of Bali Shag! Granted, I'm not smoking it everyday, but still. That will definitely fall into the "special occasion" category. Which, I think said special occasion will be my writing residency in two weeks.

Ragdale. My writing residency is in two weeks!! I leave on the 31st and come back on August 13th. I will primarily be incommunicado, mostly by choice. I'll have my cell phone with me, but I'll probably have it off except for maybe an hour a day to check messages. I'll have my laptop with me and there's some wireless access, but its not guaranteed and I hope actually I can't get it in my room. Again, I might check in periodically and make some scrabulous moves, but if I'm up in lj making posts and starting word twist games with you, please tell me politely to go the fck away. I actually don't think it will be a huge problem. I have a problem with compuslively checking these things when I'm in my house or at work, but when I'm away and in a different environment, I welcome the opportunity to not be plugged in. Also, I found out there are community bikes in the house where I'm staying!! I was going to try and figure out bringing my own, because I'm rather attached to it these days, but that didn't fit into my plan of packing light.

Damon. He's in town next weekend! July 26-28. I want to take him to Feed. And Smoque. And we're doing karaoke on Sunday night at Sidekicks when it won't be crowded so we can sing as many songs as we want and still leave by midnight. So even though its a school night, please consider coming.

The past couple weeks have been primarily about being kind of freaked out in my head when alone and sitting still, but okay when around people or in motion. So I've been fairly busy and social and moving at the gym or in the woods or on my bike, and all of those things have been amazing and fun. But one can only do those things for so long, other responsibilities come up, or just things like, night and being in bed and surrounding yourself with pillows to create a sort of soft nest to surround me and hope I fall asleep quickly, without too much time spent subject to my brain. But a couple things have made me happy while I'm alone, and they include:

1. Lars and the Real Girl. Well, first off, Richard Roeper hated it, so that says something in its favor. I've been mildly curious about this film, almost saw it when it was playing at the second run theater near my house but missed it. Then anjibobanji started talking about how much she loved it, that she's watched it multiple times, and so I bumped it up on the netflix queue. I watched it yesterday and I just loved it so much, it was unexpected. When the movie was over, I missed the characters. I'm also on season 2 of Big Love and feeling sort of similar, where I get really sad at the end of a disc, because I can't spend any more time with them.

2. Trader Joe's Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches. Trader Joe's is not very convenient to me, and all of their parking lots are horrifically designed (every location in every city I've been to seems to have this problem), but I go specifically for their pear sauce, which is rare in other stores. I always buy two jars, sometimes three. They didn't have any yesterday. I was a pretty heartbroken. But then I got home and ate lunch and afterwards opened up a box of these ice cream sandwiches. When I was a kid, and I first saw the image of a "chipwich" on the ice cream truck, I was so excited. I loved chocolate chip cookies. I loved ice cream. I loved the idea of putting one between the other, and then adding EXTRA chocolate chips? Genius. Except then I had one, and the cookie didn't taste like cookie, the ice cream was that hard, dry cheap kind, and even the chocolate chips tasted fake. I've probably only had four chipwiches in my entire life, I was so disappointed. But these ice cream sandwiches from Trader Joe's are exactly how I dreamed those chipwiches would taste. The cookies are soft bakery style, the ice cream is perfect, the chocolate chips are real. It is perfect. There are only 4 in a box. I should have bought two.

3. I'm going to build my own house. Seriously. Ok, I'm eyeing the giant barn houses and loft houses, to create the super dreamhouse for our 5-10 acres in southwest michigan with dommeyourass, but the more realistic option is just build the one unit cabin on our property that comes with a house, so it will actually be more of a writer's studio, but I can't wait to sit on the porch out front in a rocking chair and be like, damn, I built this. Seriously. I'm building a fcking house. Ok, it'll be in a few years. But still.

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I biked to work, because all this week its sunny and 70s, which is my ideal summer weather because its hot without sweltering. I didn't even bring a change of clothes, I figured I'd get a little sweaty but nothing unreasonable, so I was feeling pretty amused, biking to work in my dark dress pants and white checked button down shirt, then when this elderly woman smiled and waved at me along Milwaukee, I waved backed, but wondered what inspired the friendly outreach until it occured to me: I looked like a mormon guy on his mission.

The week before last, I went out for gelato with blondestallion and got a mix of two flavors: whiskey and salted peanuts. When I placed my order, when I was eating it, and also several times after when it came up in conversation (it was good gelato), I sang "salt peanuts! salt peanuts!" And every time, most people looked at me slightly startled/confused and then acted like I hadn't just done that. I mean, I know my brain is a sponge of random information. But still, sometimes I forget. Luckily I have a blog, so now everyone can know about Salt Peanuts and I will be less alone in the world.

When I went up to the concession stand in the movie theater to order a soda, the clerk immediately said, "is it raining outside or are you just really sweaty?"

Later I couldn't help thinking, how would that have felt if it hadn't been raining?

Earlier today there was a news headline that said: Possible twister touches down in Texas.

Hello, vague. Also, wait, this is news? Tomorrow it will say, rain fell in the pacific northwest.

This headline made me snort coffee: Justice Scalia opens up about Bush v. Gore, says 'Get over it'.

Yeah, that sounds about how good ole Nino would open up and share his feelings.

I walked halfway to work today and right when I was almost here, I got sucked into Rock Records because everything is 50% off and I have no CDs here in the office. For $10, I got two best-of collections: Kenny Rogers and Olivia Newton John. There is going to be some significant mellowing happening this evening.

ETA: Except the CD player doesn't work. Back to "The Drive". ONJ and Kenny will have to wait until I get home.

I did the holiday shopping for the in-laws today. The wine shopping was the best part, because I got meander and mull and finally choose multiple things, since it was a gift. Then I tried to go to Sherwyn's, but it is permanently closed. Fck. Where are the non-Whole Foods places to get supplements/herbs/etc.? Kramer's, yes, which is convenient when I'm downtown, but that's it. I went to Whole Foods anyway and got a neti pot for DYA's brother and had a funny conversation with the cashier about me making him use mine during his visit, and the strange intimacy of such an act. She was then REALLY enthused to wrap it, but I said no thank you, and she got really bummed out. Then I felt awkward. Luckily, I was leaving anyway.

Then I ventured to Target to pick up the remaining items on the shopping list and I called up Noriko while pushing the car around. Ten minutes into the conversation she said, "I can't believe I'm on the phone with Raymond. It happens so rarely. I don't really know what to say." I told her it was a Christmas Miracle. Actually, I told her it was 2007 resolutions starting early. We shared recent query rejections and discussed the price of irons. She thought $25 was unreasonable. I think it's worth it for me to stop constantly feeling disappointed by how my wardrobe looks. I'm not talking about a bit rumpled -- I'm talking about dress shirts coming out of the dryer looking like they got balled up and left out in the rain.

I am doing a survey at work and learned there is a "No Asshole" rule for the partners. There are just too many setups for that.