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I wrote in September about my little obsession with having a romantic dinner, one where I’d be cooking and otherwise hosting dinner for someone that I… right.

The other night this dream, if you will, came true. I never imagined I’d be making him dinner, particularly in that sort of setting, but in retrospect I cannot think of anyone I’d rather have done that for; someone that in a sense would deserve it, and more importantly someone that would appreciate it. The goal wasn’t to be snobishly impressive, but to do something elaborate and thoughtful. I achieved that.

He has cooked for me before, though not individually, so I did have a fairly good grasp of the sorts of flavors that he likes, but still, it was a bit of a learning experience and I did approach it with trepidation on certain aspects. I think, if anything, him appreciating that I took the time to come up with something I was fairly certain he’d like, in addition to the appreciation of ‘holding back’ in certain areas because of my uncertainty, is more satisfying in the ‘I did this right’ respect.

I suppose I’d been preparing for the last year for this, though I wasn’t able to put a point onto it until I’d met that stupid boy from near Baltimore at the end of summer. I know now, also, that my desire to obtain quality items in terms of both function and appearance while I can, versus when I absolutely need them, has been a very good course of action. I have a quality set of cookware, a quality set of flatware, and a quality set of china… granted the china is from IKEA, but it’s all about the price versus quality ratio, and while it isn’t “fine china” by any means, it isn’t stoneware, nor is it earthenware, it is procelain and it is white.

I took a certain level of pride in the fact that nearly everything used in preparation and during the meal was owned by me, with the exception of major kitchen appliances that are part of the house, of course. I also used a ‘family’ pyrex dish for roasting the potatoes, but I quickly remedied my lack of pyrex on Friday, yes, braving the holiday rush.

Overall, the experience was amazing. It’s the classic good food, good conversation, good company, but elevated even more, such that I can say excellent all around.

I haven’t been writing my dreams down lately as much as I had in the past, mostly because they’ve rarely made enough sense to me to even worry about trying to remember.

The night after Patrick and I broke up, months ago, I remember clearly having mentioned to Matthew that I’d recently dreamed about this particular interstate exit that we drove past, one being redone, under construction. It certainly made no sense then, was just a random bit of conversation, but I found myself asking him about a week ago if he remembered me mentioning it; he did.

Perhaps slightly more than a month ago I had this similarly vague dream, one where I simply had my arm around someone, but I couldn’t figure out who it was, it was either someone I’d never met, thus being a composite character, or it was someone that I hadn’t seen for a great while. I remember, if anything, being distinctly happy that I was with this person, very comfortable.

Fairly soon after that vignette I had another dream, with this same person, but this time we were laying in a bed next to each other. It was early morning, the walls were a very distinct colour from the sun rising and starting to light the room. I was on ‘the wrong side’ of the bed, as compared to the side I normally sleep on. Our arms were wrapped around each other, and I felt overwhelmingly this feeling of love between the two of us, it was so strong as to be unquestionable.

I asked Matthew if he remembered my dream about the interstate exit because I used that very exit as part of my travels within the last month. I was actually rather disoriented as I’d never used it before, having always used a different one to get to that part of town. While exiting the interstate that dream flashed into the forefront of my mind, but for all I knew it was just a feeling of deja vu, and no real indicator of anything.

I had my arm around the person I was visiting, and again a dream flashed into the forefront of my mind, it was starting to make sense.

Sounds of the city, of which I am no longer acustomed to having lived in the country for the last four years, woke me earlier than him. I glanced over, I was on the ‘wrong side’ of the bed, I had my arms wrapped around him, the sun was rising to illuminate the walls ever so slightly. I did feel love.

I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but as with writing of the epiphany, it has all started to make sense.

I walked down to the door, hoping he would still be there…. but he wasn’t. I knew he wouldn’t be, but I wanted to run to him, as if I had to tell him something so very important to the both of us. I had already said everything there was to be said, but still, I stood there, at the door, hoping he was still there.

The mantra repeats, nothing is ever as simple as we may want it to be. The idealist, thrown into the world of true reality. Sink or swim, but I want to float.

A month ago I had three harddrives bite the dust, randomly, without warning. I filed and received RMA for two of them, but wouldn’t you guess, they’re both still sitting here… I think I’d rather just go buy one big drive than deal with two little 40 gig ones.

The irony there is that the other night the drive in my router died, but that wasn’t random, nor without warning; I’ve known it was on the way out for months now. Since that drive holds nothing important, just serves as a way of loading router software and keeping logs of detected intrusion attempts, swapping it out was simple. I also took advantage of that downtime to switch over to smoothwall from clarkconnect. Thus far I’m really digging smoothwall, it seems much more… polished, versus glitzy. It is slightly disconcerting that the smoothwall.org website has been hacked though, lol.

Right, so this new 40gig drive, as in new for that computer, but recycled from another, is the noisiest fucking thing I’ve ever come across. Forty gigs for a firewall/router is totally overkill, but it was also the smallest thing available, so… oh well, we live with it. I can’t actually live with it, because it’s driving me nuts. There is this constant highpitched whir being emitted! This is in my bedroom, btw, because that’s just coincidently where the “technology nexus” is for the entire house… blegh! Everything goes through there, from power, telephone, cable, and all that is network related.

Sound deadening attempt number one consisted of my wrapping of thin non-conductive foam around the drive. I’m well aware of the heat concerns, but the drive does practically nothing, and in a way, if it’d blow I’d be happy, because I’d be forced to get something quiet. Well, I did this while the router was running, because I saw no reason to turn it off… I shorted something out, go figure. The router powered off, I figured I just accidently hit the power button — even though I realize now that it won’t power off so easily — and once I was done with my little procedure I noticed it wouldn’t power back on.

That’s when backup plan went into effect and I started using the old hardware/standalone/purchased router. I hate that thing with a passion, even though it does make a nice switch, lol.

It then occured to me that perhaps I should reset the BIOS, and I did, and it powered on, but with this long hideous beep indicating something is terribly, terribly wrong. I brought it upstairs, because the computer is lighter than even my Sony flatpanel display, and because I needed to connect it to a display to see what was wrong and reconfigure the BIOS of course.

Nothing wrong, it powered up and went into boot process like it should… so, panic ceased, my router works again.

Also the night when the router died my cellphone just mysteriously turned off. More mysteriously it failed to turn back on. I didn’t recall hearing any low battery beeps, but I tried to charge it, that didn’t help. While the phone is plugged the LED backlight pulses, but it still won’t turn on. Thankfully that cellphone came as a pair, with one belonging to my brother and the other to his girlfriend. They had not use for them for quite a while and thus I replaced my dead phone with an identical model… yay for swapping sims. Major frustration, in a sense, was that once again I lost ALL of my ringtones, because they stored in the damn phone itself… so another $10 out the window, making $30 in total for the past several phones. If you’ve not been reading along, my original, beautifully clad in shimmering white, wonderful, and very old nokia 3390 (I think) died while outside gardening this spring after working flawlessly for several years. I then persuaded the T-Mobile people to send me a new one for free, but it turned out to be a total and utter piece of shit, I couldn’t stand it, and thus I became the second owner of my brother’s Samsung X105.

I don’t generally consider a kitchen stove to be technology, but it is electronic and it isn’t working properly, so I’ll include that here too. Notice I said it was electronic, it has a thermostat and it will read out the temperature inside the oven, that has always given me a sense of security, falsely as I’ve discovered to be the more likely case. I’ve been complaining to the woman that there is something wrong with the oven, it could be that the heating element just needs to be replaced, but I’m just not sure yet. The point is, everything with the exception of boxed cake mixes take absolutely forever to fully bake/cook. This became painfully obvious early Monday morning while I was attempting to make a deceptively simple dessert for a dinner I was having that evening. The baking time was to be approximately forty-five minutes, that period of time came and passed and it barely seemed as though any cooking had taken place. Fast forward to approximately an hour and a half after putting the dessert into the oven and finally it was done… yeah, that isn’t right.

I tell the woman tonight that it is time to get an oven thermometer, particularly with the ‘eat-a-thon’ holiday coming on Thursday. She agrees with me, noting that the pork roast the other night took painfully longer to cook than it should have. Finally what I have been complaining about is finally registering with her. No offense directed to my mother, but the only thing she ever uses the stove for on a regular basis is to fry an egg, so I’m dealing with this faulty piece of kitchen equipment and it is driving me crazy.

So, once we have the oven thermometer and it proves that the temp is off I will feel vindication, but if somehow it reads the proper temp, well, I’m going to look like a moron, plain and simple.

It has been long established that the “house drink” here at the IAM Lounge is a Bombay Sapphire Gin & Tonic with lime. There is also a second house drink, that being Vanilla Vodka & Tonic with orange, Absolut has always been the Vodka of choice for that. As you can see, quality alcohol is of high importance.

While shopping for what I had dubbed our “Birthday Boozathon” I had a conversation with a man at my favorite liqour store, and let me tell you, it isn’t a state run one. He saw me carrying around the bottle of Bombay Sapphire, and coaxed me over to this other, considerably more expensive, gin known as Magellan.

It was a birthday celebration for two boys that love quality gin, thus it was not unreasonable to go highend, especially considering that is the general fare around here anyway. I purchased the Magellan, though with slight trepidation, if it happened to be awful I would be out quite a bit of cash and by the time we’d figure that out there’d be no option for getting another bottle of Sapphire. The remaining one quarter bottle of Sapphire just wouldn’t have cut it.

The end result, that new bottle of Magellan is now at one quarter, and the Bombay is only slightly less full than it was beforehand. Magellan won the gin battle, without doubt.

The interesting thing about Magellan, when compared to Sapphire, is that Magellan is actually blue. Many think that Sapphire is blue, but no, it is just a clever bottle, the gin itself is as clear as any other. Iris flowers are used as part of the flavoring process to hue this delicate shade of blue to the Magellan.

Needless to say, we have a new house gin. I have also determined that my compatibility with someone is directly related to their appreciation of quality gin.