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August 5, 2002 It never fails, does it? The nicest day of the weekend will ALWAYS be the one you leave. This has held especially true for me this August long weekend, as throughout these past 6 days we've set record low temperatures for this time of year. Although we didn't see any at the lake, many places experienced SNOW! Is this crazy or what? I've never known an august like this. If I hear the phrase "Global Warming" again I'm going to scream... As far as I'm concerned, we could use a whole lot MORE global warming! But bad weather aside, my only other complaint this weekend was the discovery that my tube has yet ANOTHER hole in it... I don't know what I'm going to do, I need to get a full sized, tube-shaped patch and just put that on it. I've repaired 5 tears in a 10" square section, and I don't know as of yet where this latest one is... I simply cannot believe the trouble I've been having with that thing this year. Luckily the weather hasn't been conducive to using a tube anyways, so no one has been missing out on it. But I would like to have it ready for when the weather DOES get nice enough to go out on the water, and so far I've been unsuccessful. Be that as it may though, I did manage to get a lot of work done on my web site (I'm such a geek!) which you may already be noticing. I've created a new menu system for the left hand side of the screen, and added some more entries to the journal. I took a few pictures this weekend, but really there was not much going on. I don't think there are even any people in the pictures, because most everybody was inside the whole time. Oh ya, I almost forgot!  The Who's Who is now open! I still have a LOT of people to add to it, and a lot of information to get from people too, but for now it is open and you can take a look to see Who's Who in my life. If you want to contact me, you can write me at john@cubeinc.net. Enjoy!August 4, 2002 - 1:31PM Not much has changed today, it is still quite cold outside and equally windy. There are white caps all over the lake and foam has gathered in big chunks on the beach. I doubt today will be the day I go home either, but now with the heater working in Ed's trailer, I am quite content to stay inside and catch up on some of the work I've been putting off on the web site. Every so often you need these sort of breaks to catch up on stuff you can never find time to do normally, such as add comments to the pictures in the photo album or write in the journal. So that is my plan for the day. But first, when I woke up this morning I had vivid segments of two dreams from last night stuck in my head, so I thought I would try to write them down for you to read and maybe interpret. I have no idea what they mean, and they are pretty wierd so I will warn you of these two facts now. Other than that, there is not much more to write for now. We'll start off with the first of the two dreams. It starts off with me living out the roll of the main character from some book I've read. Now the catch is that I cannot for the LIFE of me remember what book this is from, or even if it is from any book! But that's how I remember it from the dream. Now the interesting part was that because it was me acting this story out, I knew how it was supposed to go, but several aspects of the story were taken directly from my own life, not the supposed book. I'll explain more of that once we're into the story a bit. The story starts off with a boy, me in this case, wanting to run away from home. Accompanied by a number of his friends, he manages to escape his house, and the group of kids find themselves on the adventure of a lifetime. Not long after they escape, they run into someone or come across something that sends them on a mission of some sort. I never got this far in the dream but the whole time I knew it was comming. Now the twist in this story was that I was the main character, like I said, but my dad was not my real dad, but rather Shauntelle's dad! I'm not sure if my mom was Shauntelle's mom in the dream too, I didn't really see her. But it was definately her dad! So the story starts out, I'm trying to run away. Apparantly I'm a marathon runner in the story too, and I've told my dad about my desires to leave. He dares me to, but swears he'll catch me if I do. I take off, and am running down the street. But get this: I have a pylon and my bike helmet in my hands! NO idea why... Realizing they're going to slow me down, and that since I'm running away I won't need either, I decide the best thing to do would be to leave them at the house. Plus, my dad won't be expecting me to run towards the house, so I figured it would also help lose him. I'm running through a residential part of some town, with houses close together and back yards with alleys behind them. I ended up in this one Culdesack (I'll have to check the spelling on that one...) and thought I might be cornered, but then I found one of those walkways that takes you through to another group of houses. I could see my dad in the distance behind me, so I was trying to take as many corners as possible. I came to this one part, and the best way to describe it would be to imagine a square building; I'm running towards it and my dad is chasing me. Now, I run around one corner of the building, but I'm pretty sure he's seen me do so. I'm on one side, and he's on the opposite side. I can run to either way, and possibly get away, but if he second guesses me and runs to the same side, we'll meet. I decided to try and peek around the corner to see if he's there, but when I stick my head out, he's right there and grabs me! The next thing I remember is sitting on a couch talking to him about the whole thing, and I don't remember what was said but he lets me go. I remember at this point my mom talking to him and saying, "You mean you were going to let him go the whole time and you didn't tell me?" and he simply replies, "Yes..." So then the scene changes and my friends and I are floating down this waist-deep river running between the trees of a forest somewhere. There are lots of bushes and grass reaching over the banks of the river, and I'm hiding in little nooks around each bend, letting my friends float past me before sneaking up behind them. I've accomplished the first part of the story, but am waiting now for the events that lead up to the beginning of our quest, but not long after our river-floating experience the dream changes. Now I am running around in a mall where all the stores are classrooms. I'de had this dream before sometime, and had an idea of how it was supposed to go. In this one room we entered, there was a number of kids sprawled out around the room. In one corner there was a kind of fort, like the ones I used to make when I was a kid, made out of a few desks (I'm guessing) stacked up on top of each other and then blankets hung over top of them making a kind of, well, fort. You could see several faces poking out of this fort, and this one girl was kind of lying on a big pile of blankets near the front of it who seemed to be the ring leader. I entered this room with a number of other guys, and the ringleader started complimenting this one guy who came in with us. For some reason I felt like I had lived this dream out before, and I knew that you couldn't trust this girl. Looking around the room, I could see several other guys lying doubled over on the ground, so I told the guy she was now complimenting to get out of there and I lunged at the ringleader. The wierd thing is that as I recall the events of the dream now, although they seemed to make perfect sense in the dream, I think I am missing sections because I cannot recall what happened next, except that now I am walking through the halls of this mall-like school, and am looking for someone now. I poked my head through the open doors of several rooms, but sensing uninviting atmospheres in each, I quickly moved on. I came across this one room that had the stick end of a hockey stick, all taped up and everything. Remember, this whole time I could swear I've had this dream before, and I kept anticipating confrontation from someone. I remember seeing this couple, both looked like punks -- She had piercings on her face, but less than he did. Most of his exposed body was pierced in one form or another. The most noticible of his piercings was the small screwdriver pierced horizontally through the tip of his nose. (Man I have wierd dreams sometime!) He was apparantly trying to get her to have another piercing, and she was resisting. He was trying to give her the piercing himself but she escaped his grasp and ran out of the room, with him following. Angered by what I had seen, I decided to go after them. Hockey stick in hand, I too ran out of the room. I couldn't tell which way they had gone, but I went out in search anyways. Eventually I found the girl dancing on some sort of pillar by herself, and never did find the guy. Seeing she was OK, and that I couldn't reach her where she was now, I left and went off again, searching for something. I came across what could be described as the tip end of a missle, combined with a stick on the back of it. Its' shape would almost resemble a baseball bat. For some reason I figured the people I was looking for were in this one room so, Wielding this strange missile stick, I burst in. There were three guys in the room, and I took a swing at one. Catching him off gaurd, I got the hit, but the other two were quickly opposing me, and I realized that these were not the people I Was looking for. But, now they wanted to fight, so I figured it was only fair to carry on... There was a struggle for the missile stick, as none of them were armed at all, and I remember having locked hands on the stick with one of the other guys repeatedly. Neither of us could break loose the other's grasp, but suddenly, in one deft move I twisted a full 360 degrees, both forcing him to let go and throwing him to the ground at the same time. With the missle end of the stick, I stabbed it through him, and quite surprisingly it went through with almost no effort. Even more surprisingly, he seemed relatively unhurt from the wound (Kind of reminded me of Terminator 2) but they all gave up the fight at that point and ran away. I don't remember much more to this dream, and I still have no idea what it means, if anything at all. August 3, 2002 - 7:32 PM Did I sleep through August? I can not believe how cold it is out there! I am presently at the lake, and its so cold outside you can see your breath! The worst part is that just about everywhere else got snow!!! Yes, SNOW! We were 'fortunate' enough to only get rain last night, some places got several inches of snow! This was not how I planned on spending my weekend. Last week I was sent to Red Deer to do inspections on both Wal-Marts, which we anticipated would be a full week's work. I rode my bike up on tuesday morning, figuring that I'de be zipping out to the lake in the evenings to relax and enjoy some additional time out there. Tuesday was pretty nice, but when we got to the hotel after work that first day, I flopped down on the bed and didn't wake up until 1:30 in the morning! At that time, I took off my boots and work clothes and climbed back into bed, where I slept through till the following morning. The weather just went downhill from there, and I didn't even touch the bike again until our last day when I rode it to Wal-Mart. We got most of the work done at each store, except what we could not complete for lack of equipment or materials. It rained all day on Friday, but it wasn't the rain that was so bad, it was VERY cold. You could see vehicle exhaust. You could see your breath! Having only the bike for transportation, I decided to go to the lake; it was the shortest distance, and I haven't missed a weekend since the May Long Weekend of this year. It was raining and I could barely see, but I pressed on anyways, knowing I was fully soaked. When I got there, the lake was steaming, and now the water feels cold. I set up my tent in the rain, and brought my stuff down to it, but I didn't end up sleeping there. Given the freezing conditions and the fact that I couldn't have a fire since EVERYTHING was drenched, I decided to sleep in Ed's trailer for the first time ever. Today was nearly as cold, although it hasn't rained at all so far, and I don't think we ever did see snow. With little else to do, I pulled apart Ed's furnace and figured out what was wrong with it. The pipe that the gas gets shot into to mix it with air before burning had become so full of sediment that some gas would seep back out and sink to the bottom of the compartment. Once enough gas accumulated, it would explode, blowing out the fire entirely. To fix this I simply removed the pipe and cleaned it out. Upon reinstalling it, the furnace has worked great and the trailer is actually quite warm now. Considering you can still see your breath outside, I'll admit I have no real desire to go and sleep in my tent now. The only thing is that I believe the fan in the furnace is toast, the bearings feel quite worn. Still, it works just great without the fan. Pretty soon I am going to venture up to Whispering Pines to have a pizza, and a few games of Terminator. I'm pretty much stuck out here until the weather warms up because I do not want to freeze myself trying to ride to Calgary. Its supposed to warm up, but then again it's also supposed to be August! Not November... Anyhow, I will probably write more on my weekend while I'm still here, there hasn't been a whole lot to do outside. I found yet ANOTHER hole in my tube, so I applied my patch stuff to this new one... Actually I don't think its a new hole, but rather one I just missed last time I Was patching the tube. I've seen sevearl people out on the lake tubing today! They have got to be nuts! Anyhow, that pizza is calling! BACK to Journal Index |