Ozempic is taking its toll. Donna keeps telling me I’m losing weight, but it wasn’t until looking at this mirror selfie that I noticed a difference. Sorry about the resting glum face, but hey, there’s a wristwatch!
Speaking of, the birthday watch (yet to be worn or revealed) has been running since it arrived. I wind it every morning and evening and check it against National Institute of Standards and Technology official time. It’s about average … average, that is, for watches in my collection, meaning if I kept it running 24/7 I’d have to adjust it by a minute once a month. But as with my other mechanical watches, once I start wearing it in rotation it’ll run down and stop between wearings and have to be wound and set every time it goes on my wrist. Where I can’t wait to see it.
For the first 50 years of our married life, Donna and I would surprise one another with thoughtful birthday and Christmas gifts. These days we just order the things we want and pretend to be surprised while ripping open the Amazon packaging. Donna wanted to give me something for my birthday beside the watch I’ve already given myself, so I suggested a Sac State coffee mug to replace the one we broke a while back. I’ll order it from the college’s online bookstore and she can give it to me on Halloween.
At the moment, I’m drinking coffee from a Tinkerbell mug. Our friend Mary Anne once gave us a set of Disneyland mugs … nice ones at that. Donna asked why I didn’t grab the Mickey Mouse mug and I said it was because Tinkerbell was sexier. What boy didn’t grow up thinking Tinkerbell had a cute butt?
I rarely remember dreams, but every now and then one survives the shock of waking. More so nap dreams, probably because since I never nap more than an hour they’re still fresh when the dogs jump on the bed to remind me it’s time for their afternoon feeding.
Donna and I had been hired by a giant defense conglomerate and instructed to report for training and indoctrination at a secret compound. The compound was a county-sized restricted area, walled and surveilled by live guards, dogs, and sensors. Like Area 51, only forested and mountainous.
The escort who met us at the gate took us through security and sat us in a little two-seat self-driving golf cart, then led the way in his own cart. The path into the compound was narrow and winding and quickly began to climb the side of a mountain. Some kind of optical trickery was in play, meant to discourage intruders or unauthorized personnel from following the path … high up the side of the mountain, with sheer cliffs to either side, sections of path appeared to have been wiped away by landslides. The path was still there, though invisible, and the carts, Wiley Coyote-like, kept rolling over what seemed thin air. Near the summit the path, visible again, suddenly climbed vertically … that too was an illusion, because the carts handled it with ease.
The top of the mountain was a giant human face sculpted in rock, facing upward toward the sun. We drove up its cheek and to the tip of its nose, then entered an underground conference room through a nostril. In the conference room a man from HR met us. I was bewildered when Donna ran to him and gave him a hug, then realized the man, now grown, was once the kid who cleaned and serviced our swimming pool.
We signed the required paperwork and made our way home (apparently we weren’t to report for work right away). Once home, I couldn’t remember the name of our new employer. It was a short techy name beginning with a T, not Teledyne or Textron but something like that, but every time I tried to say it what came out was Tesco, which I knew was wrong and not even an American company to begin with.
Relating a dream is the lamest kind of story, because the story has to end with the realization it was a dream. Which is, as everyone will agree, inherently lame. It’s even lamer to claim the dream was so vivid you still think you’re in it after waking. But there it is … it’s been two days and I still think I’m working for Tesco. That Donna might have been banging the pool boy only just now occurred to me.
Elon Musk’s core constituency speaks up:
Imagine having a housekeeper that doesn’t vote ANC, doesn’t have 55 uncle’s funerals to attend every year, won’t steal your food, and you only have to pay for it once?
Sign me up pic.twitter.com/IW8XrREn5Q
— Keanu (@Keanubtc) October 11, 2024
Jesus. Kamala better goddamn win.