(Old) Hello, Mr Sandman - Dreaming in the MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Morning, mumpers! It’s currently 22c/72f with a predicted high of 26c/79f and cloudy. Weather app says “There is an orgy of clouds in the fucking sky.” Not here, it’s blue out there and not a cloud in sight.

Yesterday we started watching the latest season of The Sandman, after which I went to bed and had a weird dream about visiting my mother in a nursing home while attempting to clear out her flat (which wasn’t the same as the actual flat she lived in). Strange to be dreaming about that, since it happened five years ago (and she was never in a nursing home), but also quite comforting to feel like I spent time with her.

What’s the weirdest dream you’ve had lately?

2

First! It’s good to be juvenile!

Good Mornin’ Y’all! Up and caffeinatin’. YAWN ‘Tis 75 Amurrkin out and cloudy with a predicted high of 86 with rain/tstorms/apocalypse predicted this afternoon and evenin’. I foresee a day of stayin’ inside and dry. Sup will be poke roast in the slow cooker, veggie casserole, rice, and rolls.

We watched the first episode of the new season of Sandman and were not impressed. I am sure we’ll come back to it at some point. Maybe it will get better. The first season was really good.

Now I need more caffeine and to feed rumbly tummy. Then, onward into the day! Rah.

Happy Moanday Y’all!

3

I took a snort of generic nyquil last night and it knocked me flat out till it wore off (I guess) and I woke up coughing a tad after 6. One would think I’d have a weird dream-a-thon but if I did, it was forgettable. So apart from the sailboat dream the other night, there’s been nothing lately. My weird dreamage seems to come in clumps, but not much lately.

I was thinking about the comments the last few days about malls. We have none in our county and none in Calvert county. The nearest one is in Waldorf (Charles county) and it’s had a bad reputation for some time - teens causing problems in the mall and in the adjacent parking lot. I can’t recall the last time we were in that mall itself, and even our last trip to Sears, which has its own parking lot entrance, has to have been more than a decade ago.

Once upon a time when we were lots younger and very poor, mall walking was our frequent form of entertainment. Mostly we’d window shop and people watch before stopping at the food court for a snack. I think that was the first outing we had after Daughter was born, so we’re talking 40-ish years ago.

More recently, going to Potomac Mills or Arundel Mills would be a planned afternoon out. But somewhere along the line, it lost its appeal. Makes me wonder if the Mall of America in MN is still a destination.

Anyway, so far, the only plan for today is watering the planters on the front porch. I’m sure other fun activities will present themselves. So onward!

Happy Moanday!

4

Happy Moanday! Just past sunrise as I start to drivel. Been up and caffinatin’ a half hour or so. Many puffy clouds but no sign of rain. NWS sez 82/28 on the way to 91/33 w scattered showers later.

Right now Jupiter & Venus are only a couple fingerwidths apart in the predawn sky. They’ll pass on another in the next couple of days. If you’re up anytime in the couple of hours before dawn and can see the eastern sky, it’s pretty. The full Moon was on Sat 2 days ago and it’s still looking almost full in the late evening sky.

As to dreams: I rarely experience them. I expect I have them, I just don’t recall having had them when I wake up. But … Last couple of weeks I’ve awoken from several surreal experiences about food and eating. I can’t give a better description because the experience fades in seconds and can’t be remembered.

Yesterday’s mini-groccing went smoothly. You may recall I’d told you earlier last week of setting up Big Boy dinner for last night. We’d settled a place, but not a time. At 5pm I remembered (well, Outlook remembered) that. I contacted my planned dinnermate and he was down in Miami having utterly forgotten about it too. Same guy who stood me up 2-3 weeks ago. At least this time we both forgot. Anyhow, no harm there and now I’m casting about for a different solo adventure. Which resolution didn’t take long.

6 hours later I’d had a more entertaining night than expected, and awoke timely with no particular plans for today. With one small exception.

My old tablet has been in the process of dying. It’s traveled many miles and been dropped on its head more times than are healthy for a baby. It’s my only computer beyond my phone, so an actual sudden death would be bad. Good news is I keep all my data in the cloud.

A couple weeks ago da Jungle sold me its replacement, a refurb of the current model. It arrived last weekend and I started the process of moving into it. And doing a general housecleaning / decluttering on the way. Which proved much less painful than I’d expected. Yaay! Now to get used to Windows 11.

Yesterday I declared the move complete and wiped my old machine. Today it, and some model-specific accessories I can no longer use, will take their last ride to the recycling center e-waste drop-off. So that’s my main errand for Moanday. It’s about 35 miles round trip across the suburb-o-blob. I wonder how the pollution from the extra 35 miles of driving compares to that of simply dropping my e-parts into the dumpster? I’ll try to find some adventure to do along the way or nearby. There are two nature preserves nearby where you can wander over a wetland on a raised boardwalk. Amazing birding and a few 'gators. Walking the whole loop takes about an hour with the usual stops to gawk. If it’s not too beastly hot I’ll do one or the other of those.

Welp, that’s 45 minutes down the drain. About time to shevel and feed.

Onwards into a brave new week!

Cheers all !!

5

Happy start to the week!

The ortho PA put me on a new med, Lyrica, for the back pain. So far, it’s not working. The next option is either a consult with the pain doc about an implanted sort of TNS device or a consult with a surgeon. I opted for the surgeon because I want to know what if any surgery might help before making a decision. The pain level makes dogwalking challenging, but it’s not like pain will kill me.

I’ve been busy coordinating the family gathering this Wednesday, specifically, arrivals at the airport, rental car, and getting all 5 of us to the Chicago sister’s house. I feel like Ike planning D day…if Ike had been a ditz. (“Then our LCVPs will travel north–no, west–no, south!”) I need to call my sister-in-law to try to soften her inevitable anxiety-makes-her-hostile reaction to our arrival when we go there from my sister’s place in Illinois.

The guy who always gives me rides to the airport (It’s his retirement gig.) canceled my ride TO SeaTac, as he has to see a cardiologist that day, so Max the Dog’s person is driving me. She’s 79 and nervous, but she insists, and I’d rather not take the only commercial shuttle. She wants to pick me up at 6 a.m. for an 11:00 flight. This means I’ll spend about 4 hours at SeaTac instead of 2. We won’t get to my sister’s house until 8 pm, so a long day.

I’ve also been going to the dogs: lots of dog walks, and I had Charles the labradoodle overnight. He’s very easy. Seriously, if he were any more chill, he’d be unconscious. Throw him a toy, and he’ll obligingly fetch it, then lie in a corner to chew quietly.

The noisy neighbors will be moving in December, if not before. The manager said they’ve had way more than the allotted 4 complaints, so their lease won’t be renewed. She said whenever I’ve complained, everyone else in the building has, too, but “I think the grandkids have said screw it. She’s gonna be forced to leave in December no matter what. Might as well party!” She also said she’s “working on some other things,” so they might be gone sooner. I really thought noise complaints could get you evicted.

No weird dreams lately. Isn’t it interesting that dreams never seem weird until we wake up?

FCM, I remember the days of window shopping at malls. My friends and I were very excited about going to a brand new three-level mall in suburban Chicago. Three levels! A marvel. The nearest mall in Wyoming was 100 miles away. So where did teens hang out? The high school and when that closed, Walmart. At games with our archrival, a neighboring town 25 miles away, our students would chant, “WE have Walmart!” You take your bragging rights where you can get ‘em.

6

Last night I dreamed that we came back from vacation and they had changed the location of the door to our apartment. We went inside and there was crap scattered everywhere (not too far from reality, actually), including an old tube TV. I suddenly realized there was a strange man sleeping in one of the rooms and two gay men sleeping on the couch. No more potato chips before bedtime for me.

I think I’ll skip exercise today as my back is feeling tweeky.

7

Good morning. We’re on vacation in a rental cottage, and the landlords have provided “wildlife feed” in a bin with a scoop. This puzzled us until we looked up and saw a mama doe and her two fawns outside looking expectantly in through the sliding glass door. We threw out a scoop of corn and sunflower seeds, which spooked the deer away, but they soon returned and were crunching up the feed. The spotted fawns were cute! Later, some little brown bunnies showed up to nibble up any leftovers.

So what did I dream of when I went to sleep? That Mr. brown was knocking brown rabbits on the head and throwing them in a yard waste bin for disposal. WTF? He loves critters and would never do that. I guess the brain was discombobulated because I was sleeping in a strange bed. Also, I had more dinner than usual, which might have something to do with it. Like Chefguy, no more eating too close to bedtime.

It’s foggy and cool here, which is great, because it’s going to be almost 100 degrees back home. This is why we come here in August, to escape the inland heat of dog days. Today we’ll go to a pizza joint for lunch and take a drive in a redwood forest. Tomorrow it’s a drive to Tomales Bay for fish ‘n’ chips. Maybe we’ll go to the Point Reyes peninsula, if I can get over the memory of a phobia attack I had the last time we were there. The steep roads on narrow strips of land with ocean crashing on either side did something to my phobia center and it’s an unpleasant memory. But I’d like to see some elephant seals out there.

8

They can. But the legal process is measured in months, not days. So the lease may run before they can finish the eviction.

Wow. What an amazing variety of alien worlds exist just within our country.


Malls: I grew up near the seminal indoor mall: South Coast Plaza - Wikipedia. I recall going to see this marvel of retailing when it was brand new. It has grown ever since and is apparently still thriving.

I now live near a thriving fancypants mall. Anchors are Saks, Neiman Marcus, Nordstroms, Bloomingdales, and Macy’s. And one dead anchor space that had been the odd man out: a Sears. There is slow turnover of the smaller non-anchor spaces, but storefronts don’t stay vacant any longer than are needed to remodel and reopen as something else.

We also have a couple of thriving “outlet malls” scattered across the metroblob. Those places are absolute zoos of humanity every weekend and much of the week. It’s Christmas there year round.

Almost all the rest of the dozen-ish indoor malls are moribund. I can’t say I’ve visited them all, but I have seen most. Not a pretty sight.

All of which I take as further evidence of the destruction of the middle class. The top 5% are doing just fine, thank you. The bottom 35% never had nuthin’ and still have nuthin’. The 60% in the middle are slowly sliding down into penury. And taking the comfortable retail that was designed for their former status with them. Eventually “their” stores will consist of WalMart & Amazon, period.


FCM mentioned Mall of America. It’s right near the Minneapolis airport, and we used to stay at one of the several tourist hotels on the periphery of MoA’s gigantic parking lot. I was last there summer of '23, so 2 years ago. At that time MoA was still going great guns. Plenty of stores, plenty of visitors, plenty of eateries and tourist attractions. No closed off areas and almost no dead storefronts. I would be surprised if much has changed since then.

It was already the case that there were more storefronts than there are national chain retailers suitable for a mall. So there were 2 or 3 different storefronts for the very same brand, just scattered on different floors and/or in different wings. “Hey, wait a minute! Didn’t we pass a Banana Republic just 10 minutes ago? Yep, we did. The next one we’ll pass is upstairs on the next concourse.” You can get really lost in that place if you use storefronts as your landmarks. “We came in right next to an Auntie Ann’s Pretzels. How come now we can’t find our car in this lot? Whaddaya mean there’s an AAP’s next to each of the 8 entrances? Who knew!!?!” :woman_facepalming: :man_facepalming:


Teela: Congrats on the cool and good luck w the elephant seals.

And yeah, big exotic meals close to bedtime seem to trigger more interesting dreams.

9

Morning all. I dreamed last night that I needed to be sure not just to memorize words, but to really think about their meaning if I wanted to stave off dementia. I considered the example of passer, which I first simply tried to remember, then turned my attention to its meaning, which is sparrow in Latin. I knew this from reading Catullus in college, and also because passerae and passerine are bird taxonomy words. All of this is true. What was interesting was how different it felt in the dream to review the meaning rather than just reminding myself of the word by rote.

10

my dreams are the usual garden variety stuff.

i did have reoccurring nightmares as a child. my mother, of course, suggested prayer. when you have a bad dream say a prayer. did not work. tarzan still killed my family with a machete. i don’t know why tarzan turned into a bad guy in my dreams. but my dad would let me watch tarzan, and i really liked the show. so didn’t tell mum about tarzan, she didn’t know my dad let me watch it.

one was us driving on an expressway that dipped into a river and came to an abrupt end over some falls. the last one was my parents turning into flies, that one was easy, i knew where that one came from. for my 6th birthday i saw the vincent price version of the fly. i ran out of the room when the guy’s wife took the towel off his head. i didn’t see the rest of that movie until i was 13 or so.

mum then suggested that when i started having a bad dream to think of a commercial or change the channel. that actually worked and i was able to stop the reoccurring nightmares.

it wasn’t until i went to niagara falls in my 20s that i realized the dream of the expressway was from the us viewing bridge over the falls. my mother, “oh, don’t you remember we were here when you were around 1”. no mum, i don’t remember, except for this reoccurring nightmare! my wee baby brain must have remembered something and my child brain added the schuykill expressway near my house that has a small fall in the river, and came up with nightmare.

one of the wildest dreams i had was after taking the old recipe nyquil. the colours were amazing! i was chased by a large chocolate cookie on a glorious spring day in a beautiful meadow.

the needles i’m using for “koi pond” are size 1. the smallest i used before this was a 3. the things we do for pretty…

my mother did tatting. i have one item she tatted, and one item she crocheted with fine thread. by the time i came along presbyopia had slowed her output.

11

Good MMorning, Mumpers! It’s 79F out there, headed for a thundering 86F here in Elkhart, Indiana. We’re just a hop, skip, and a pole-vault from the Michigan border. I need a haircut, and I’m going to see the barber as soon as Mrs. Nott finishes eating breakfast.

We’ve been watching Wednesday on Netflix, and Patience on PBS. Both are weird, but cool. Wednesday commits crimes. Patience solves crimes. Thus far, Patience has not solved any of Wednesday’s crimes.

Off to the barbershop, type to you later.

12

Is there a Best Buy nearby? I believe you can recycle computer stuff there.

Well, FCD decided today was the day to clear out the jeans that no longer fit him. His closet is practically empty now, and it took me 2 trips to haul them all to my car. Some of them were hardly worn! Losing 30# means gaining closet space. While I’m dropping these off at the thrift store, I’ll see if I can find a pair of pants one size smaller than the ones he’s currently wearing. We’ll use them as a gauge for when we need to restock his wardrobe. He wants to drop another 25# and I figure that’ll be 2 sizes down from where he is now.

And since I’m going to the thrift store, I’ve got a bunch of kitchen stuff that I cleared out and a box of wine glasses that have been sitting in the garage for years. All that will go today. I did see a purse that I’d put out there - I’m pretty sure it was one of MIL’s, but it’s never been used. I’m keeping it for now - the smaller purse I bought is really too small, mostly because of the size of my wallet. So I may swap. TBD.

Well, it’s after 10 so the thrift store is open. Off I go!!!

13

Do you have a Staples close by? They offer free e-recycling. They do charge $10 for monitors, but other than that, phones, tablets, PCs, etc are free.

I rarely remember dreams. Once in a blue moon, I do, but it’s rare.

The malls in and around Nashville have changed a lot in the thirty years that I’ve been here. Three smaller ones have gone away completely, one that was once a retail hot spot on the north side of town is dying, Opry Mills was built as an outlet mall, but has become mixed in recent years, Hickory Hollow became Global Mall and very mixed use, and the suburban outlet mall in my last town was bought out by a church for their campus. The high end malls, Green Hills and Cool Springs Galleria are still out in the snooty suburbs. I haven’t been to any of them in years.

I have a call in about 45 minutes with the movers to get dispatched, then I will be talking to the insurance agent and I still need to get with the pharmacy to get a refill of night time insulin. Thus is my day and any packing done will be a bonus.

Stay safe and healthy y’all!

14

Good morning all. It’s getting close to 9am here, slept in till nearly 8 and am slowly catching up. Heading out for the usual Moanday shop-n-sammich in about an hour, and then nothing much on the agenda today. Cloudy but temperatures will be close to 90F so the AC will stay on.

Like I said last week (IIRC), I almost never remember my dreams, like Pilot mentioned, so nothing to add on that score.

As for malls, the last ones I can remember going to on a regular basis were in the UAE in the early 2000’s, given a daytime temperature of 110F they made sense there and were huge places (one had indoor skiing, one an aquarium and a hockey rink, and who knows what they have now). As for locally, the only ‘mall’ near me is an outdoors place that has mostly ‘mall-type’ stores and can be a nice place to browse about (when it’s not 95F…).

Now, let see what else is going on in Mumperland…

FCM, yeah, I can remember when mall-walking was a thing. And I’ve cleaned out several sets of jeans over the last 3+ years of losing weight, from 46" to 44" to 42" and now hopefully stabilized at 40". Do need to get some smaller T-shirts, all mine are XXL and I;m now an XL at best.

Pilot, hope the new tablet brings you much pleasure. Never have used a tablet much, just never got in the habit. And enjoy the wetlands walk.

nellie, have tried to organize gatherings before for 5-6 people, not as easy as it looks! :wink: :grin: Have a safe trip and 4 hours in Sea-Tac shouldn’t be too excessive…but I always arrive too early. And glad your noisy neighbors are getting the heave-ho.

Exactly what kind of potato chips are you eating?!!??

lucky, that’s really neat with the wildlife at your door. Long as they didn’t provide any bear chow…and Elephant seals are wondrous to behold.

lily, interesting dream, I do crosswords and other puzzles (spider solitare on the computer) to try and keep my brain active.

rocky, glad you made it through childhood OK with those dreams.

I could get along with a dream like that…

Knots, I ‘visit’ Elkhart now and then via the Virtual Railfan camera there (there’s a manifest heading west right now past the Amtrak station). But no rain yet.

red, sounds like you are in the final stages. Best wishes.

And it’s about time to get dressed and head to the Kroger for the usual 4-5 items I need on Moanday, then over to the Jersey Mikes for my #3 (think I’ll eat there today). Have a good week all.

15

The thrift store is undergoing a major remodel, so they’re not taking much in the way of donations. I did take the jeans and dump them in the bin by the door - they’ll move fast. The rest of the stuff will go to another thrift store, I guess. We have 3 in town that I know of.

And I scored a pair of jeans for FCD, except they’re 32” long and he wears 30” long. But I have the technology to hem them. He can decide if they’re to be jeans or shorts. Don’t make me no nevermind! :wink:

I’m having lunch, then I’ll water the planters and decide what else I want to do. Lest I jinx it, I haven’t had a coughing fit since I woke up, and that one might have been because my throat was really dry. Or not - I’m not a doctor, so what do I know?? Anyway, I’m feeling a bit better - dare I hope I’m over this crud?

CVS sent a reminder yesterday about flu shots. It seems a little early to me - BBBoo - does your medical expertise include flu shots? Is there a best time to get one? (Yeah, I know - before you get the flu…)

What should I thaw for supper? Maybe I’ll go the lazy route and we’ll have the veggie beef soup that’s bagged in the freezer. Tempting idea.

16

Well, that was a bust. Between us and the barbershop, ordinarily a 5 minute drive, a main thoroughfare is closed for repair. We don’t know the city well enough to find another way in, so we got lost, again and again. One of those times, we pulled up next to an Amazon truck. The driver, like us, was trying to puzzle out an alternative route for one of his packages. That, right there, should have told us to go home, but we persisted for another 15 minutes before throwing in the towel.

Ah, well, I don’t need a haircut that badly.

17

A reasonable day back. I got gas for Carmen, and did my Aldi run afterwards.

You mean the one where the Halloween candy aisle in Target turned into a flooded 2 lane road running through a swamp?

Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?

To be fair, they did actually land at the wrong beach on Utah Beach. Which wasn’t defended. So maybe you’ll have the same level of happy screwups.
and {{{{nellie}}}} on the back pain.

18

This is from the CDC, which is what I go by for myself:

… Flu and People 65 Years and Older | Influenza (Flu) | CDC

Scroll down to the paragraph on timing.

Basically it is get it first of all, early if you can’t get it a tad bit later in the fall, but get it. Ideally they are saying do it mid September through October so the protection lasts through the peak of flu season. Before Halloween is a benchmark.

If you do get the flu the vaccine helps keep it from being serious enough for hospitalization, even if it doesn’t prevent catching it absolutely. At our age the CDC recommends getting an antiviral series like Tamiflu if we do catch a flu, it shortens it by a couple of days and tamps back potential severity.

Most Mumpers are in the article’s target age range. The whole article is worth reading, talks about the importance of pneumonia vaccines for us, etc. Worth the time the time to read. Grab a cuppa tea or coffee or a Coke Zero, put your feet up and browse through it.

If you’re also due for a geezer Covid booster you can get both at the same trip.

Just the other day I read, I think in the NYTimes, an article that this year it might be recommended that if you’re a senior and get the flu vaccine early, then you should pursue a second dose early in the spring when the protection from the first might begin to wane-a lot depends on when the peak flu season begins and how long it lasts this flu season. I have not seen anything definitive on this geezer two dose flu vaccine yet but I’ll keep my eyes peeled for it.

Right now I’m planning on my second Covid booster for this year at the end of August, 6 months after my first. I have several lung conditions that bump me into a higher risk pool as well as daily contact with three grands who bring home every single germ and virus imaginable from a daycare, a preschool and an elementary school.

19

There was a really nice one in Dubai in '98.

First mall I ever saw was in the city where I lived as a teen. It was only one level. which I think was (still is, actually) a little smaller than either level of the mall here. It had two anchors – Montgomery Ward at one end, and a supermarket at the other. Not quite two miles up the street from it is an open-air shopping centre such as you describe; it’s called the Plaza, and used to have, amongst other things, a McDonald’s right next door to a Burger Chef (or King).


I very seldom remember my dreams. The strangest one I do remember was set in the back room at Sears (my last job before I retired) but included an old shipmate who was turning the watch over to me. He was keeping his log on the computer we used to punch in and out on. On several occasions whilst still in the Navy I dreamed that we were getting under way and had forgotten to bring my seabag, so the clothes I was actually wearing were all I had for the next week or two…

20

Daughter and SIL were both laid low by whatever plague the kids picked up at school/summer camp. I’ll be wrangling the grands tomorrow evening - here’s hoping I don’t get anything from them, or share anything for that matter.

Anyway, thanks for the info. I need to get with FCD when he gets home and compare our schedules. I figure we should wait at least a week after we’re both done with the coughing and snotting, then we’ll get the flu, pneumonia, and a covid boost. We’ve both had RSV and shingles shots, so we’re good there. He’s due for Tdap in ‘28, I’m good till ‘34. I guess old age is when most of what you talk about is health-related stuff… :face_with_medical_mask: :syringe: :pill:

Time to water my plants - no more puttimg it off.