To Devin:

Yo, I had this dream that you were visiting and we were wandering around the neighborhood near my house, and we ran into Genya, or at least I thought we did from a distance, but then that just turned out to be someone who kind of looked like her. But then we ran into Katie and it was actually her and then we all went water skiing. Except instead of skis they were these big hollow plastic things that made it easier to go in circles than to go straight. And except that we never actually made it to the water ski rental shop because the highway map in my mind didn't make any sense and I spent the rest of the dream trying to sort it out.

Different dreams:

I was hiking along some tall ridge (a few hundred feet high I suppose) with Megan C and some older guy. We were, like, doing science or some envirnmental engineering project or something. Details lost. I think the other two had been planning this project for a while already but I was new to it. Megan had made us some yummy food.

I went to my local big box store (or maybe it was Toys-R-Us) looking for post-christmas sales on cheap drones. There were several options. They even had a lamp that hovered. It wasn't that great a lamp, though. Just had a couple of really wimpy rectangular LEDs that didn't give off much light.

Then came that part with Devin. We had gone under 151 from my house and there was a pond over there and that's where we were running into people. At first I think the pond was frozen, and that's where we found Katie.

Later I dreamt that I was about to shave my head again but was having second thoughts because my hair had just finally grown to the point since last shave where I liked how it looked. Do I really have to do this, then, I wondered? But I was forging ahead with the plan anyway, I guess because I assumed that if I was doing this I must have a good reason.

And just before waking up I was in a dream about driving to hospital to pick someone up. The hospital was in downtown LaCrosse or somewhere like that. Kind of reminded me of physics conference town from that other dream. I was driving around late at night or early in the morning being confused by the roads (for a second after I made a left turn I thought I might have just turned the wrong way onto a one-way road until I finally spotted the yellow line) and I had a pocket full of protein bar wrappers. After I came to get him and we were driving off he was taking forever to get into the car while I was coasting down Flad (the hospital and La Crosse had disappeared; now we were on Flad for some reason). Eventually I had to turn back because I had gotten way too far ahead. Why was he being so slow.

In non-dream news...

Dawne and Timmy and Becky (and later Sarah and Jason) came to visit the last week of December. Mostly I played a lot of Balanced Annihilation with Tim and Becky.

A-Day and his gf Miriam (sp?) came to visit on the 31st and I took them and Sarah Cave of the Mounds. We stopped at the Grumpy Troll on the way back to Madison, which was fun. And then I dragged them (minus Sarah, plus Becky Peterson) to John Eugene's NYE party, but we took off before midnight to get back to the rents', where a much better party was going on. The Pamplins are basically their own self-contained party.

After A+M left I took Tim and Becky XC skiing at Elver Park. That was great. And then I went skiing at Odana Golf Course with Sara Beth on Sunday, and we went to brunch at Pancake Cafe afterwards, which was also really nice.

Becky threw me another surprise birthday party on the 9th, which was was awesome. We met up at Lucky's where I thought we were just going to hang out with Becky's school friends, but then I saw Jordan and Sardah there and was like wtf and then figured out what was going on. Then Joh and Sara Beth showed up and brought more cake and then we went to the escape room which was like 2 doors down, and then after we just barely got out of there under our 1-hour limit we went to Jordan's and found a table in the back and Moriah talked really loudly about her sex life and it was entertaining.

The rents have been having trouble with a worker shortage lately. They gave me the cast iron pot I wanted for my birthday. Now I can cook really big stews.

Delta Lodge packing. Last time I packed for delta lodge my work log said "testing services". Guess what I'm doing two years later! Carreer advancement FTW.