awoke this morning to an odd dream, which I can't quite relate to anything at all.... I was in my parent's old house in VA, and was recording on my Tivo the local news from College Station/Bryan, where my sister had become their newest reporter. She was doing a live segment about some missing children, and was walking down a trail where the children had last been seen. She did her scripted piece (quite well, I might add) and threw it back to the studio, where, as always, the studio people had 2 or 3 inane questions to ask the remote person. When they asked her the questions, as she answered her hair started to spike out, as if she had put her hand on one of those tesla coil devices... literally standing straight out from her head... It was so funny that the "in studio" people had to cut off the image, and were guffawing. My sister, however, never lost her composure, and answered all their questions quite ably. Now, what in the world caused this dream? What does it mean? Why in the world did it hit me? I am not sure I'll ever know.

I got back from seeing my parents last night. It was a good visit, all planes ran mostly on time, although fairly full. I landed about an hour and a half before my brother's plane was leaving, so we had an opportunity to sit down and chat a bit before he had to board. It was quite nice to see him, since it's been a couple of years. I wish his family could have been there too. Robert and Carol are growing up, and I'd love to see both them and Fran, Norman's wife. Good people, not quite as gooberish as I am.

My mother came home from the hospital, and is recovering more at the coach. She doesn't have a lot of energy to move around yet, but her humour hasn't abated a single bit. On Saturday, she sent Bill and me out to do some things (wash the car, get books, look at stereo equipment) and get some lunch for ourselves. "Go to Subway" she said.... and I agreed, having found that I like their subs quite a bit. Soooo.... Bill and I drove around greater Grand Prairie and Arlington TX for about an hour, trying to find a silly Subway sandwich shop, to no avail. It was quite funny. We finally stopped at a gas station to grab some chips, and headed back to the coach to grab a snack there. Bill cooked all weekend, and did an excellent job of it. Susan's in good hands, no doubt.

Saturday night, my sister Joyce arrived, along with her two youngins...Allan and Scott. Two cuter kids you couldn't find anywhere. Allan's 8, Scott is 4. We went out to dinner to celebrate my birthday, and then they drove home. They had not had a chance to see Sue since her trip to the hospital, and wanted to give their love to her, which they did, in their own little ways. It's hard on both sides of the coin... being a rambunctious child, and an adult fairly weak from a hospital stay, but they all managed fairly well.

I did manage to prove my gooberishness on Sunday morning, however. I only took a briefcase packed with (somewhat appropriately) my briefs, as it were :). So, I packed up everything and stuck it in the trunk, and when I got out at the airport (Sue was strong enough, or willful enough to join us on the car ride....she's getting a bit stronger everyday), I managed to grab my bag without a problem. As I rode up the escalator, I did my customary touch test, to make sure I had everything. "Wallet, check, phone.....ummm, no phone. Oh, geez. How do I contact my folks! They have my phone in their car!" After a brief moment of gooberish frantic thought, I realized I could just call my cell phone. Even if they didn't know how to open it and answer it (which I didn't want them to do, because I was calling from one of those "insert your credit card" pay phones and would likely be charged $40), at least the ringing would let them know how stupid I'd been and send them back around for another pass by the drop off area. I made the call, let it ring 3 times (in my experience, cell phones don't start ringing until you've already heard 2 rings on the calling side) and went back down the escalator to see if they'd make the loop around. A few frantic moments of waiting, and then I recognized the headlight pattern of a Saturn, and behold, my parents pulled up, laughing at me. Ah, well. My life is a series or errors and mistakes.

Enough for now, but I did see something interesting over the weekend on the Intel Keynote speech at CES which I'm going to investigate. An item that will allow you to encode your old records and tapes into MP3 format, along with doing hiss and pop suppression. Lemme do further research, and I'll keep you posted. Ta for now!

PS. Fixed a couple of links on my characters page (Gryph and Norman). Still waiting on DSL for further checks.