A Quick Note

My new cell phone has a section in the "Messages" menu called "Quick Notes." I always just thought these were for business matters: "I'm in a meeting," "Meet me for lunch," "Sorry can't talk busy now" kind of thing. But today I noticed one I hadn't seen before: "I'm sorry/I love you." Ah, I thought, nothing like really showing remorse and love like sending a pre-packaged message you didn't even have to type yourself. And it's not even a comma, or a period, or an "and" - it's an either/or slash. Like either "I'm sorry" or "I love you" or perhaps you're meant to erase the one that doesn't apply...

This...is an apology fail. If you ever receive this text, I would be dubious of its sincerity.

Fall

This weekend was quintessential fall:

Apple picking and leaf peeping, tree and rock climbing, movie-going.
Festival-attending, beer sipping.
Dancing to tubas and trumpets and trombones and big drums.
Cart Indian food.
Sleeping in, breaking out the fleece.
Long talks on long walks.
And, of course, having to turn on the space heater first thing in the morning...

I try to keep these feelings with me as I'm back to work for the week, waiting until the next weekend of fun, when I get to let loose again. Sometimes I wonder how some people do this their whole lives - working weekend to weekend, trudging through until they get two special days where they can actually live their lives. This is what I'm working towards, I tell myself as I get up at 5:30 and lumber from the red line to the green line with the masses. I'm working for every day to be just as fulfilling as this past weekend.

Good luck to me, you say. Thanks. I'll need it.

It's a Good Thing the Past is Passed

This is the intro to a really really really bad sci-fi short story I started (but never finished), circa mid-1998. There is a reason it was never finished.

100 years ago, our Earth was unknown and new. Although we had been around for billions of years, this number didn’t even compare to how old some of the other worlds were. 100 years ago, we found out there were other worlds. 100 years ago, other worlds found us.

I was around 100 years ago. I’ve only been around 18. The year I was born was 83 years into the Reconstrcution of our world. My name is Wick Putnum, and my name means “new” or “full of life.” I was totally oblivious of what was going on around me and what my world had been through. 100 years ago hadn’t mattered to me.

It does not. 100 years ago, our planet was blasted by a force of what can only be described as “wind.” This “wind” blanketed the Earth in chemical tonxins, causing every living thing to die. Only two hundred survived – the 200 that were underground in an experimental housing project. These 200 lived underground for thirty years, starting new lives and sadly laying to rest the ones that lived out their last years in that living grave. Finally, they ascended to the surface, finding a barren wasteland, and nothing but dry sand, which was actually the dehydrated bodies of all living organisms.

Here they began the Reconstruction. Here they build cities anew. And here I was born, live, thrive, and grow. 100 years have passed, and we have discovered we’re not alone. We were blasted with what we affectionately refer to as “intergalactic hairspray” by what we affectionately refer to as an “ant.”

Unknowing if the ants will ever strike again, we’ve built up an army to protect our land. We’ve developed spaceships to defend our bases. And we’ve send up thousands of our willing men to man them. We hope they will never come again to this place.

Weird Dream

Things are changing around here, and I don't yet know how, but I had a weird dream last night that I hope is, if not prophetic, at least can act as a comfort.

I was at a Catholic church, but it was huge, like a complex almost. There were helicopter pads and stuff. I was in an outdoor arena, waiting for a speaker to begin. A helicopter landed very close to the arena, at about the same level as our heads, and the blades were very close. The helicopter didn't sound too good, so we all decided to leave quickly, and it's a good thing we did - it blew up just as we were leaving the grounds.

We entered the city and, lo and behold, it was like War of the Worlds - tripods everywhere. I was running with the priest and we both kind of looked at each other like, "Here we go again." We hid in a bar, behind the counter (think Shaun of the Dead). A friend brought us a party pack with a disposable camera and some chocolate, I'm guessing to capture our last few moments alive. The fighting sounds died down and we decided to get in the car, and as we were driving away from the bar we realized we didn't see any of the tripods. I called my mom, to tell her goodbye, but as we were talking we realized there really wasn't any reason to say goodbye. The tripods were actually just men in paper mache suits, and now they were all falling over. There was no real threat. We actually bumped the car into one and it sort of grunted. Dream over.

So in both parts of the dream there was a threat, and then we dodged things, and then there was a threat again, and it turned out to be not as bad as we thought. So I'm hoping this is to be applied to my current situation. Maybe, in the long run, when I have some ability to look at it closer, this isn't as bad as it now seems. At least, that's my hope.