Tom Squared

I’ve continued the dream journal each night. Some days, like last night, nothing happens. But more often I have some incredibly detailed, long, and sometimes interesting dreams.  I had this one just a few days ago, making me think I should think about moving so a smaller town, or at least one with a museum inhabited by monsters. I was on the Metro with Erin, though it was more like a commuter train or Amtrak train going WAY out beyond DC. We were going to some far out place for a trip or weekend called 777. Some stuff happened in our car, but I don’t remember what. At a stop we then went up to the front car (Erin and I) and were talking to some people, including the conductor. The conductor realized something was missing and sent me back at the next stop, to a car at the back of the train to get it, a Bluetooth headset or something. As I ran to the last car I overshot the train. When I turned around to run back to the last car the train had begun pulling out of the statio...

When two people are in a conversation, in reality, one person is talking, expressing their feelings on “whatever” and the other is listening. Often the shy, quiet people are good at being the listener, sharing a little bit about themselves, but mostly waiting patiently while the talker discusses their life. What’s interesting is that most often the person talking the most isn’t actually driving the conversation. More often the listener will add in a single question or comment that gets the talker to expand on one area. Most often it’s the listener that drives the conversation down a specific path or line of thought. In most cases the person talking don’t even realize it. We often think of the “talker” as the person dominating the conversation. It’s interesting that the person who dominates actually has the least control over what they are doing. How often have you realized that the times you feel most in control, are also the times someone...

God works in some pretty funny ways sometimes. I went to bed last night at 7:45 to get a nap before going to a movie. As I began waking up and thought about leaving for the movie, I got a phone call and talked to a distraught friend for an hour and a half. The nap was incredibly helpful, but not at all in the way I’d expected. I love it when a plan comes together… Even if it’s not my plan. Peace, +Tom

I’ve had a whole lot of different dreams lately.  This journal is working out somewhat well, though I find it pretty hard to actually get up in the middle of the night and write the dreams down.  Then one morning recently I was writing a dream and it took about 15 minutes to get down.  Needless to say, Erin was thrilled . When I told Rachel what I was doing the piped up with her own dream from the night before. I dreamt about where I was at school with my pajamas on and I took me panties off because they were wet and I showed my butt to the floor. She said that unabashedly and with a big smile. Maybe this is where high school nightmares of showing up at a test in your underwear are born. Peace, +Tom

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was in the middle of watching Newhart when Joanna said a useful line.  If you don’t know, Newhart is a TV show from 1982 – 1990.  It’s a show about Bob Newhart (one the the best comedians ever, check out his biography , you’ll laugh your tukus off… if you’re cheap it’s a penny used on Amazon), and is making clear to Erin where I got some of my idiosyncrasies. In any case I’m sure you’re asking yourself, how was Tom watching Newhart on TV when it’s so old? That seems like the perfect question to talk about Hulu . Hulu has been around for over a year, but it’s been a closed beta.  Now it’s finally open, and anyone can watch TV and movie episodes.  The quality is excellent (so good I can run them on my TV off of my laptop) and the shows start right away.  What’s great is that they really have a LOT of TV shows and movies. There’s old stuff like Benson and new stuff like The Office .  They even hav...

Our expectations of others is clearly defined by our own capabilities. What I mean by this is that what we expect other people to be capable of is based on what we think we’re capable of ourselves.  For example, I believe I know a ton about computers, both hardware and software.  A little about Macs, but a lot about Windows.  Whenever I talk to someone else about computers, I initially expect they know as much, or less, than I do about computers.  So when we’re talking I “dumb down” the language until someone tells me “yeah, got it, I know that.” I also overhear people who need need a few months to come up to speed on a new project.  It just takes a while to understand the client, what the application should be doing, and how everything works.  When that same person meets with someone new to the project, they expect that the new person knows less than they do about the project, and that it will take a long time to get the same u...

We’ve been going to Let’s Dish to prepare our dinners for about a year now, and we really love it.  In case you’ve never been, and never heard Erin and I gush about it, Let’s Dish is a place where they get all of the ingredients together and we come in and prepare our meals.  We split all of the meals, so that our 8 meal session lasts for 16 meals, just a little under a month. One of the funny things I always find myself doing is comparing meat.  The staff do a great job separating out meat (either chicken breasts, flank steak, pork loin), and yet I still compare all of the options.  Heck, I find it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to tell a difference, but I still compare each time. A few weeks ago our television died.  The bulb burnt out and the TV (even without the bulb) had a weird ticking noise.  So we decided that instead of spend hundreds of dollars getting it fixed, it was time to get something new. There I am at Costco about to buy a...

It’s day 3 of my reincarnation, and I have to say that strange things are afoot in dreamland.  I vaguely remember having some sort of existence years ago, when my dreamer was in college, but can’t recall a single thing he wrote.  I sure hope it was more interesting than this stuff that is now filling my pages, shaping my view of the world. Things are either incredibly boring, or new career ideas are afoot. Check this one out: 7/15/2008 I ate bourbon chicken from Let’s Dish and popcorn during Live Free or Die Hard. Read “The Terror” by Dan Simmons before sleeping Up at 6:26 I know I dreamt something about a big-screen TV and another about work or a coffee maker, but I can’t remember them. Puhleese, how boring can you get?  If this is what I have in my near future, just throw me into the fire now.  Using me as paper for the bird cage would be preferable to this boredom. Then I get nights with tons of dreams (four dreams two nights ag...

This evening I was grilling up dinner when I spied a tomato plant with only one, half-eaten tomato.  Looking closer it seemed that the half-eaten tomato was devoured by a green leaf.  Then the common sense kicked in and I looked a bit closer.  We have a huge , beautiful caterpillar happily munching on our tomatoes.  My friend Rob let me know this is a Tomato Hornworm and is relatively harmless unless you count it eating all my tomatoes and flowers within one day (apparently it’s supposed to only eat the leaves).  Apparently it will turn into a sphinx moth. I quickly grabbed the camera and got some great pictures of this gigantic, yet cute, guy.  The “eyes” on the top of it’s head are there to scare birds into thinking he’s a snake. Somehow Rachel thinks it’s not safe to touch, so I told her I’d check.  By now it’s likely moved on to bigger and better things… like our beefsteak tomatoes. All I can think about is Th...

When I was in college I took a Psychology 101 class, mainly to see if I was at all interested in becoming a psychologist.  Listening to people, talking to them, and helping them work through problems seemed just as interesting to me then as it does today.  Of course, school is a bad example for real life and having to learn about Freud, Jung and Wundt soured me to the whole idea.  I mean, four years of that would be incredibly boring and a painful practice in memorization.  So I decided to take the easy way out and major in Computer Science, those classes were cake (or pie anyway, I don’t much care for cake). There were two things I took away from my psych class though that were useful.  First, when you’re told you can work with someone else in the class to write the paper, what the teacher really means is you can do a little research together, but you can’t actually work together to write the paper.  Got my first “F” with that misunders...

I asked Rachel what she dreamt about last night, and here is what she said. I dreamt that we were at school just looking around. Ms. MaryLee was there and she was playing with our toys. She was our size. When I asked if she had any other dreams this is another one from the same night. I dreamt about a puppy that didn’t bite. He said “I don’t bite” and I said “ok.” I didn’t pet him. Sometimes I wonder how much she makes up on the fly (she is great at making up stories and imagining things) and how much is actually from a dream.  In either case though, these made me want to start up my dream journal again that I once put together for a psychology class in college. And yes, Rachel did say dreamt and not dreamed, my kids grammar is better than your kids :) Peace, +Tom

Tonight I got to do one of those rare things which are far more enjoyable than I’d really expect.  I got to play with my wife.  I know what you’re thinking…  and no, we weren’t running around the house playing tag… That’s just dangerous.  And yes, I know what you were really thinking, and that’s even MORE dangerous. Tonight, for the first time, Erin and I played on the Wii together.  I got a pinball game off the discount rack at Costco, and it’s become one of my favorite games, next to Geometry Wars. Tonight Erin saw me playing and she joined in.  I kicked her butt up against the wall, as any good husband should when asserting his power and prowess.  We won’t discuss those games where Erin got two or three or even four times more points than I did.  All I remember are the games I won…  all two of them! Anyway, it was really just fun.  We sat and laughed at each-other and watched expectantly, waiting for the other person to mess ...