Currently browsing: Dreams

Fears

I think I’ve mentioned before that I have irrational fears. Most people I know are afraid of “normal” things … you know, snakes, spiders, clowns, zombies, etc. Me? I get hung up over the intangible, or improbable. Ever since starting this job, one of those irrational fears has become heightened — being trapped in a free-falling elevator. Remember the first Resident Evil movie? Yeah, I always turn my head during that scene.

If I think about it logically, I know that the odds of one of the elevators at work experiencing a major harm-causing malfunction while I happen to be in it are astronomically low. In addition to that, all of the elevators have safety measures in place in the case of an emergency, such as power outage, cable or brake failure, etc. But the thought creeps into my mind every single time I step foot into one of those things.

Once I made the mistake of sharing this with one of my coworkers. Funny enough, she won’t ride in the elevator with me anymore.

So today I had overslept and didn’t have time to make my lunch, forcing me to head down to the mall to grab something from the food court. I boarded one of the elevators just like I do every day — this one happened to be one of the glass elevators (which I hate even more than the others). About halfway down, there was a loud “SNAP!”. The lights went out and the elevator screeched to a halt. “No big deal,” I kept telling myself. They’ve stopped before and would sometimes get “stuck”, sitting on certain floors, so you’d just have to get off and board another one.

But then it dropped. DROPPED! It wasn’t but just a few feet, but it was enough to make my heart skip a beat and suddenly every elevator nightmare I’d had came flooding back in an instant and I panicked.

OK, ‘panicked’ doesn’t even cover it — I. Flipped. My. Shit.

Sitting quietly for a second, my mind raced looking for answers:

“What should I do if I can’t get the doors open?”

“Where is the button I press to let someone know I’m trapped?”

“What do I do if it drops again?” Followed immediately by “No, don’t think like that, stupid!”

As if the elevator had read my mind, it dropped again for a few more feet, then opened its doors. Apparently the elevator had only dropped just enough to reach the next level so the doors could open (seeing out the window made it seem worse than it really was). I quickly leapt out of that thing as if my life depended on it. (which, in my panicked state of mind, it did!) I paced for the next minute, trying to calm myself and stop shaking — and trying to squelch the horrific scenarios playing out in my head.

About a minute later, I heard the power flicker back on, once again illuminating the car, and could hear the other cars moving along the levels above and below me. I could also see the other glass elevators moving along just fine … but I didn’t trust the motorized metallic bastard just yet. I decided it was safer to walk the next 9 stories down to the mall level, and kept a close eye on them as I ate my lunch.

Feeling a bit braver after I ate, I took the elevator back up to my floor. Thankfully the ride was uneventful this time, but I’m sure this will make for some more intense nightmares to come.

OK, new item added to the “someday job wishlist” — no elevators!

Dreams are cruel

It’s been a while since I’ve posted “personal stuff”. There are a myriad of reasons, the biggest being that I work for a company that has a huge online presence — including blogging and social networking. Being at UAB, I was always selective with what I shared, but I’ve found that I have to be even more so now.

That … and I tend to go “anti-blog” when there’s a lot of family drama and other things going on.

I had a dream earlier this week that UAB called me and wanted me to come back. The details of the dream are very faint to me now, but I distinctly remember waking up and feeling very down. That feeling has pretty much stuck with me all week. I can’t shake it, and what’s worse, I don’t yet fully understand why it’s bothering me so much.

I once told someone that I didn’t know that I wanted to be a web designer until I was hired there. Sure, there were things that I didn’t like about it. Higher management didn’t think much of my department. The pay wasn’t that great, but the benefits were awesome. It was close to home, and I had a very flexible schedule.

What I loved most about the job: I got to create things. Sure, it wasn’t as often as I’d like, and the majority of what I created I couldn’t show off to anyone … but for me it was just a great feeling being a part of the team. I felt appreciated. My opinion mattered. I loved my coworkers — they’re great people. Some of my “customers” I could have done without, but there were several that I just adored and loved working with.

And before I knew it … all that was gone.

Sure, I like where I am now. The people are nice. The facilities are nice. The pay is great. The benefits are less than UAB’s, but nobody’s perfect. But I miss the creative stuff.

I think that’s what’s eating me up, and I can’t yet let go of it. I mean let’s face it, with the way the economy is right now and the local government’s current financial state being in the toilet, there’s no way I’m going to be hired back. And to be totally honest, I just can’t go back to work under the current administration. My department is full of great people, but the people in charge all the way up the hierarchy don’t appreciate them, and sure as hell didn’t think much of me.

Or, that’s the impression they ALWAYS gave me! Several people have tried to convince me otherwise. It’s hard to listen when their actions tell me something totally different!!

I recently heard from a friend who’s still there, and I’ve been replaced — well, sort of. My actual position still no longer exists, but my duties have been taken over by someone. She was brought in during last year’s “merger” and took over most of my workload when I was laid off. I unwittingly trained my replacement. Thanks to me, she’s got some SharePoint and HTML experience, so she was naturally selected to pick up my stuff.

I don’t think that’s what she wants, but I definitely get the impression that she feels she can’t do anything else there and is just doing what she’s told so she can keep her job. Not that I blame her. She’s a good friend of mine, I love her dearly, and I can’t bring myself to be mad at her. It’s not her fault that I was let go, but I still can’t help feeling like shit when I think about how easily I was replaced.

Thinking about it now, I guess that’s why I’ve been trying like mad to stay preoccupied with new obsessions. They’re distractions to keep me from thinking about how unhappy and useless I feel. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s probably my own for not keeping my options open during my time at UAB. I was so happy to finally be there, that I shied away from any new possibilities because I felt loyal to my employer and refused to hear any offers from anywhere else.

That’s something that keeps biting me in the ass: being loyal to my employer. You’d think I’d have learned by now …

Vividly tsunamic

Had a weird dream last night. For whatever reason, I was living in the home I grew up in on the outskirts of Mt. Olive, Corner, that area. I remember that there was some sort of catastrophic event and somehow the house was suddenly near the sea (maybe Gulf Coast?) — things and people have an odd habit of changing places in my dreams. Something caused a flood, but it was no normal flood. It was more like a tsunami. I remember that the waves would creep up, then recede outward, then come rushing in again very quickly. I remember being inside the house and seeing the water level rising, covering the windows. (which is odd in itself because this was a two-story house!)

I distinctly remember the color and smell of the water. It was dirty, almost muddy. (think Mississippi River banks in New Orleans, pre-Katrina) In my dream, I was trapped inside the house for some reason and remember panicking when the water broke through each of the windows and started pouring into the house. I don’t remember much else, except that towards the end of the dream I was standing at the water’s edge on the shore and someone was explaining some new anti-wave barrier mechanism to me that had just been put in place. I remember telling them “it’s not enough, they will still come.”

Weird.

I’m not sure what it signifies, but it’s one of the first dreams I’ve been able to remember being that vivid since going on the Amitriptyline. Usually I’ve forgotten my dreams by the time I wake up.

I’ve thought about it off and on all day. Something that struck me was when I was watching the water cover the land in my dream, I thought about how odd that it was covering that amount of real estate so quickly! However highly unlikely that we’d ever experience this kind of event up here in B’ham, it was still kind of creepy.

To Frank Warren

Every Sunday morning, I:

• look forward to the new Post Secret submissions sitting in my Google Reader
• have a good cry
• have my hope of faith in humanity restored
• and feel not quite so alone in this world

Thank you for this.

~ Nicki

Ok, where’d I leave off?

Ok, now for the catch-up — am trying to remember where I left off …

Jim and I had found our reception site. The booking is pending, no big thing, but due mostly to discrepancies between the original quoted terms and the actual written contract we received, so we’re awaiting word from the Marriott rep. No deal breakers or anything, but mainly that the contract contains wording that reads as having additional costs which were not in the original quote or we were told that would not apply to us. Lesson learned long ago: Get it in writing! Jim and I don’t want any surprises (financially speaking) so we are being particularly anal about getting every single thing in writing “just in case.”

We had tried booking it last weekend, but their system was down. (Something about some kind of bar code verification equipment they were replacing, so the invoices couldn’t be printed or something like that…) No biggie getting the contract later via email gave us a chance to sit down and really examine it.

I’ve been having nightmares almost every night … just about all are wedding-related (or family-related). I dreamed last night that a particular party who isn’t invited to the wedding showed up anyway, and was stinking drunk (very true to his “real life” form). So I guess I’m obsessing and worrying about every little thing. I know, I know, I should relax — and everyone else is telling me this, LOL!

I was supposed to go work out last night, but didn’t because I had so much to do, and am feeling a little guilty about it now. Jessie left last night to go over to Jim’s mother’s house. They are riding down today to go see Jim’s brother and his family. Both Jim and I had really wanted to go with them, but taking off work just wasn’t feasible. (And it’s nice to have an extra “night alone” once in a while!)

I’m enjoying the new phone mobile device. :mrgreen:

Jim and I spent most of the 4th looking at various places for Bluetooth headsets, but found little in stock (or that we liked). After looking online this week, we’ve settled on the Plantronics Explorer 350. Jim likes the Discovery 655, but after researching each, it looks like the Explorer 350 will be more comfortable.

I did manage to get a nice case for my Ocean. CompUSA was one of the places open Wednesday. They had several foneGEAR models that I liked and their Leather Case for Blackberry 8700 fit the Ocean perfectly.

This particular case has a magnetic flap and the magnet activates the Ocean every time I open it. (It was designed for this very purpose for the Blackberry and the Motorola Q … yay it works with Helio devices too apparently!)

Work is going well. I’m up to my elbows in SharePoint documentation at this very moment and am already scheduled to take several programming classes, so I’m really looking forward to that. I’ve also started on my web developer’s certification — it’s mostly remedial stuff, but the classes are free and it’ll be another piece of paper I can add to my resume. (A funny thing I think, but I don’t have ANY degree or document certifying that I can actually do my job, so this will be nice!)

I’m finding that I sit in meetings more than anything else, and a good bit of the time it’s for projects with which I’m either not involved, or cannot even start on yet. *shrug* I sat in one earlier this week for an OCR project that one of my coworkers had been working on. It was kind of nice because my MACESS experience came into play for that one. It seems they were having some trouble with the bar code verifier and a manager of another department had wanted to get a hold of some bar code verification software, so I was able to help out there.

Great view, on the lake … so what’s missing?

Got an email from a realtor I had contacted about a year or so ago, looking at lake houses. I’m not at all fond of beach properties, but lakes I can do.

Check out this listing Branson real estate just sent me:

It’s 3 bedrooms, 2 baths. I’m not crazy about the layout or the color of the exterior, but it’s got a great view and it’s just under 90 grand. That’s not bad!

However, they said nothing about the local schools; and not to mention the area population. If I had to guess it’s very rural, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I grew up in a rural area, and it was ok. However, I think we’ve been spoiled by having everything so close to us. Where we are right now is far enough out that we’re not crowded, but close enough to the city so that anything and everything we want or need is just a short car ride away.

:razz:

Old habits die hard

I’ve been having really vivid dreams lately … when I do sleep that is. For whatever reason I’ve woken up at almost exactly 3am every night for the past 2 weeks. I can’t for the life of me figure out why … I go to bed around the same time, get up at the same time, have even tried staying awake late to “tire myself out” and nothing seems to have helped.

That aside, I’ve had recurring dreams about Hobie. Night before last I woke up and realized that I was leaning over the side of the bed looking for her. In my dream, I could hear her but couldn’t find her .. she was softly “growling” the way she would do in her sleep. I always liked to think she was dreaming about chasing prey or something like that. She was a little she-devil diva and expected to be treated like royalty, but she also used to LOVE to go outside every once in a while and chase things. It didn’t matter what it was — from preying on squirrels, chipmunks and birds to chasing off neighborhood dogs.

It never ceased to amaze me how fearless (and territorial! LOL) she was.

Anyways, I woke up saddened because at first I couldn’t find her, then realized that she had already passed away. Even though it’s been several months, I still find myself lying in bed at night and listening for the pitter-patter of her little paws on the kitchen floor, or moving around gingerly in the dark so that I don’t step on her.

Old habits die hard, I guess.

Like I said before … I’ll be glad when dream contents become as everyday a commodity as say, soap.

Mr. Sandman, I’d like some Tuscany Villas for next week, please. :cool:

How much for a normal dream?

It’s often said that a dream’s content isn’t necessarily its meaning. For instance, when I’m worried about something, I dream of tornadoes or other natural disasters. I sometimes dream about falling, or someone close to me dying. From what I understand, these are pretty common themes.

But what about if you’re a developer and you dream about certain applications? A couple nights this week, I have dreamed about ASP, .NET and Sharepoint — because that’s what I’ve been working in at work. In fact, two nights ago I had a nightmare involving Sharepoint, LOL! I dreamed that Sharepoint somehow jumped the digital bounds and somehow “became real” … and I was clicking like mad to try and put it back in its place! :lol:

I’ve dreamt in code before. I’ve dreamt up solutions to various programming problems. I’d dream of something and say to myself while dreaming, “It’s so simple, why didn’t I think of this before? This is perfect!” and when I awoke, I’d be pissed at myself for not remembering the answer or solution to the problem I had been working on. LOL!

So what I’m wondering is … when will dreams become a marketable commodity?

Sir, I’d like a week of dreams about villas in Italy, please. :mrgreen:

A different kind of ad

I’ve spent the better part of the last couple of days cleaning out my subscriptions … from emails and mailing lists, to feeds, to twitters, etc. Over the past 6 months, I’d signed up for so many things, it’s getting harder and harder to read every day/week, and it’s really starting to clutter up my email/feed reader.

One of the emailing lists I had signed up for was for deals and discounts for travel agencies, cruise packages, etc. — hey, we still haven’t planned the honeymoon and considering that I can get a digest every other week, that works out perfectly! One entry made me chuckle … it uses a quote from one of my favorite authors growing up and I thought to myself, “That’s different … an ‘intelligent’ ad.” LOL!

George Bernard Shaw once wrote “On the last day of Creation, God desired to crown His work, and thus created the Kornati Islands out of tears, stars, and breath.” We can show you Shaw’s vision. Come aboard our bareboat yacht charters, crewed yacht charters, and flotillas (bareboats following a lead boat) that will show you why savvy sailors have been trying to keep this gorgeous coastline a secret!

I’ll spare you the rest of the ad, as the offer has since expired, but I thought it was kind of cute.

Weird dream

I had a weird dream last night. I dreamed that I was back living at my parents house — only parts of it wasn’t their house. There were some parts that were my grandfather’s house. I remember hearing the grandfather clock chime. I think I was around 12 years old or so, I was playing outside with my brother. Then suddenly I was grown, and for some reason I was “training” someone who looked like me how to “be” me. This was weird in the fact that she looked just like me, but at the same time looked nothing like me — this made sense in my dream, really! ;P She was my height, with tan skin and blond hair. (Two things I’ve *never* been: tan or blond!)

I woke up afterwards feeling very odd … I don’t remember what the purpose of training the look-alike, but I remember explaining what to do, or not do, in order not to upset my father when he’s in his “moods” …

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