bad dream!

So, yesterday I read this.

So: nightmare. It really shouldn't have been so convincing because in the dream, I woke up in the dead of night in our bed EXCEPT this bed was located in the front room of the house I grew up in. I woke up to strange noises. Pointed these out to MSH; he seemed unconcerned. Then a figure emerged from the shadows wearing a light blue T and khaki shorts. He was shortish for a man.* He held out his left hand palm upright, fingers outstretched, like "wait a sec" or "quiet down." In his right hand he had a revolver. I can't remember what his face looked like or what he said, but he was shouting and MSH and I had to go out of bed and walk out the front door into the cul de sac so he could rob us. All our neighbors had been similarly rousted out of their beds and were standing in the cul de sac, watched over by more criminals with automatic rifles while their comrades stole their belongings. I was incredibly calm the entire time and kept telling MSH that it would be OK, and that the men just wanted our money and valuables and to stay calm. I stopped talking, looked up at him and realized that as long as he was not hurt, it really would be OK, and I didn't really care about all our stuff. At the same time, I felt the asphalt under my feet so vividly and thought, "Still, this is a terrible thing to have happen and the people around me are so scared." And then POP! I woke up. I was really scared and couldn't stop thinking about the dream. It was 5:12 AM. I had a typical post-bad-dream exchange with MSH:

ME: Bad dream! I had a bad dream, honey.
MSH: ..ferfle...grunt...
ME: Tell me something nice...
MSH: Flowers are pretty. [corny, but this works!]
ME: What else is pretty?
MSH: You.

But still tossed and turned until my alarm went off half an hour later. On the bright side, had no trouble getting up to meditate, although my mind was a bit muddied with the unpleasantness of the dream.

I get to leave work in two hours to head out on a road trip with Alabam, huzzah! It's not just getting to leave work early--wasn't it sweet to leave school early back in the day?--it's the Call of the Open Road! The companionship! The tunes! The snacks! The winding asphalt through the hills!

I heard a public service announcement on KEXP that reminded me of the new voting requirements and as a sidenote, the date of the general election: November 8. Yikes! and Duh! and Doh! Am going to be out of town. (And I've known this for...at least six months.) With a few tippity taps of the keyboard, located the phone number of the King County Elections Office (had I been more patient I would have located the information/form I needed on the website) and ordered a one-time absentee ballot. Phew. If I can't vote on Initiative 901, I will be sorely disappointed!

*At first I thought he was this guy I went to college with, Andrew. Except we never called him Andrew, we called him Bushwick Bill.