Da Bears

So quite awhile ago I had this dream.  It was a weird dream that didn't make a lot of sense.  But at the very least I could figure where a lot of the things in the dream came from, and backtrack till they sort of seemed to fit.  There were busses, old friends, pretty girls, and a gunfight.  But I sort of worked that all out.  The only thing that didn't make sense was the undeniably major presence of bears in the dream.  Where the hell did the damn bears come from?
Sometimes You Eat The Bear...and Sometimes The Bear, Well, He Eats You.

So last night I had another dream.  It was no less weird, in a lot of ways it was a hell of a lot weirder.  Only a single thing made sense about the dream though...the bears.  See there was a bear sighting in North Haledon last night and Alyssa's mom let her know about it so she could be careful to avoid it.  Of course the first thing we do is go looking for it.  We didn't find it, but I did dream about bears last night.  Here it is.  Let me know what you think.

I'm standing outside an orphanage for misbehaved children.  There's high fences and barbed wire but many overhanging trees which could possibly be climbed.  For a few moments I'm thinking of breaking in, but then I realize we're there to break someone out.  I say we because when I turn around Ryan Reynolds is leaning against a car, smoking a cigarette, and asking me what I think of the situation.  I say it's fucked up and a cute girl sitting in the backseat of the car shouts out her agreement.  We both shush her.  Suddenly we hear gun shots.  And then dogs barking.  And we see someone running across the lawn of the orphanage.  Ryan Reynolds says it's time to go.  He hops in the car and starts the engine.  A duffel bag flops at my feet and I toss it to the girl in the backseat.  I look up at the nearest tree and see someone jumping from it's branches.  I grab the escaped orphan and help him into the car, except it's not an ordinary orphan it's award winning intellect and misbehaved orphan Nicolas Cage.  I know he's an award winning intellect because the patch on his jacket says so.  I know he's Nicolas Cage because he looks just like Nicolas Cage looks like now, not like Nicolas Cage as a young child.  The orphanage guards are shooting at us, so we escape quickly.  I figure if I care enough to ask questions I can ask them later.  In the rearview mirror I see Liam Neeson shaking his fists angrily at us.

Award winning intellect and misbehaved orphan Nicolas Cage needs coffee.  So we stop at this small roadside diner and leave the girl from the backseat outside to keep look-out.  We wouldn't want Liam Neeson sneaking up on us.  Nic Cage orders coffee, and the young girl at the counter seems to recognize him, but she doesn't say anything.  An older woman in one of the booths recognizes him too though and asks if they've met.  Nic sips his coffee and points casually at the newspaper rack near the counter.  The front page of all the papers feature a picture of him in a cowboy hat and all the headlines read "Award Winning Intellect and Misbehaved Orphan Escapes From Orphanage...Oscar Nominee Liam Neeson in Hot Pursuit"

The woman looks shocked Ryan Reynolds and I look at each other and roll our eyes in a "here we go again" sort of way.  The girl from the backseat honks the horn of the car.  Liam Neeson is coming.  We bolt out the front door just as Liam Neeson comes crashing through a window snarling and angry.  The car peels off, but Liam Neeson chases us on foot for miles.  I throw things out the window at him, finally hitting him in the head and slowing him down.  We keep going.  Liam Neeson will never give up.

Later we find ourselves in the woods.  The girl from the backseat is gone, but now we've picked up another twentysomething guy.  He's a musician.  I know this because he carries a guitar and never stops talking about Jimi Hendrix.  We're trapsing through the woods in a deep snow.  In some parts of the woods it's winter and in others it's spring.  We try to stick towards the spring so Liam Neeson can't track out footprints in the snow, but he keeps catching up to us anyway.  I'm videotaping the entire event for posterity. He finally confronts us near the shores of a lake.  We think we're done.  He has a beige trenchcoat and a really big gun.  All we have is Nic Cage's award winning intellect and the new guy's guitar.  We're likely fucked.

And then the bears show up.

The first bear is enormous and it tosses Liam Neeson aside like a rag doll.  The next one jumps from a tree and lands on Nic Cage.  The bears are dive bombing us.  Motherfuckers.  I run up to the bear and punch it hard in the face (in my dreams you can do things like punch bears.  My dreams are not always smart).  The bear falls off Nic Cage and we group up to escape, but the bears have us surrounded.  There are at least three gigantor bears and a half dozen smaller ones.  The small ones don't look scary, but one of them lashes out and cuts a boulder in half with his claws.  We're fucked.

Just as the bears start to close in on us Liam Neeson appears out of nowehere looking prim and polished and not at all like a guy who just got mauled by a gigantor bear.  Award winning intellect and misbehaved orphan Nicolas Cage surmises that Liam Neeson must be an alien fucking robot sent from Mars to look over him like some sort of fucked up guardian angel.  I don't argue, because Liam Neeson is kicking some gigantor bear ass.  First he grabs on the smaller bears and throws it through three other small bears impaling them and causing them to tumble uncontrollably down a hill.  Then he grabs a gigantor bear by the mouth and uses the first bear's teeth to bite another gigantor bear over and over again.  Let me reiterate.  Liam Neeson is forcing one gigantor bear to eat another gigantor bear using only his bare hands and acerbic Irish wit.  If Liam Neeson wasn't trying to kill me I might love Liam Neeson.

Ryan Reynolds goes all Canuck on us and starts kicking bears in the stomach.  He's also grown a beard at sometime in the past few minutes.  Award winning intellect and misbehaved orphan Nicolas Cage starts speaking in Haiku because, you know, he's Nicolas Cage and therefore a fucking tool.  New guy strums his guitar gently playing a thoroughly inappropriate song for the circumstances.  I start grabbing little bears and tossing them into the lake.  All while videotaping the events for posterity.  Liam Neeson starts prattling on about how we all need to work together to overcome the bear menace, and since he's Liam Neeson and forcing one gigantor bear to eat another gigantor bear using only his bare hands we all listen.  We're escaping now but more bears are coming out of the woods  and flying out of the trees, and I swear a few of them were talking to each other.

We get split up and new guy and I end up in the winter area of the woods.  One of the small bears catches new guy and begins to eat his leg.  My first thought is tough luck new guy, but then I feel bad so I go back and get him.  Even manage to grab his guitar and his severed leg..  We find the others and decide that we need someone to decoy the bears while the others escape.  Liam Neeson volunteers because, well, you know...he's Liam Neeson.  But I say no, I'll do it.  So I take off up the hill while they all run down the hill.  The bears all follow me. 

I'm running as fast as I can and videotaping the whole thing, you know, for posterity.  When I burst through the tree line I find myself on an isolate bluff overlooking the lake.  There's nowhere to go.  The bears are closing in on me and whispering how hungry they are.  (Hey!  They were talking earlier.)  I'm back up against the cliff and I don't know what to do, but suddenly I realize I still have the new guy's guitar...and his severed leg.  I toss them the leg and they all hungrily dive on it.  I begin to gently strum the guitar and the bears all slowly fall asleep.  I'm tiptoeing through the sleeping bears trying to get back to the woods when one yawns and rolls over violently bumping me back towards, and over the edge of, the cliff.  I'm falling.  For a very long time I'm falling.  And just before I'm about to smash violently against the rocks at the shore of the lake...Liam Neeson catches me.

Liam Neeson, Ryan Reynolds, and the two one legged guitar playing less new guy get in the car, I hop in the front.  I'm driving this time.  Award winning intellect and misbehaved orphan Nicolas Cage is nowhere to be seen.  Ryan Reynolds informs me he slipped away while they were running from the bears and ran off into the deepest darkest woods muttering something about looking for the Gingerbread House.  Liam Neeson chuckles and says not to worry.  Liam Neeson always gets his man.  We all chuckle nervously.  The new guy continues to bleed on the back seat of the car.  Fade to Black.

So this time...yeah I get where the bears came from.  But there's still one question.

When did Liam Neeson become such a bad ass?

Resumption

So I just hooked up my treadmill for the first time in two months.  After this literal shitstorm that hit my basement it was no place to be spending time nevermind attempting to walk and breathe at the same time.  By the time things started to get cleaned up the basement was taking water around the new wast pipe, by the time that got taken care of I was so far off my routine that I never got back into it.

So today I went down into the basement, cleaned off the treadmill, and in just a few minutes will be getting back to work.  I'll probably only do a mile tonight, probably won't do anything at all tomorrow.  But by the end of the week I want to be back to doing a mile a day.  Week after that I want to be back to two miles.  By November I want to be doing three miles.  Maybe not every single day, but most days.  I want to get back into a routine.  I'll also be going to see a nutrionist sometime this week or next.  Tomorrow though I'm going to start watching what I eat again.  Cut out all the soda I drink at home and in the office, maybe have a soda or two at the game tomorrow.  Maybe even a hot dog.  But for the most part just trying to cut out a great deal of the crap.

Alyssa might stop by for a few minutes later to watch Family Guy.  I'm really not in the mood to go out tonight, but I'm also not in the mood to just stay in and watch a movie with the kids.  So we'll see what happens.  Cowboys are all tied up with the Broncos right now, Yankees won meaning they had 103 wins on the year which is pretty damn impressive.  A-Rod had two homers and seven RBI's...in one inning.  Can't wait for the playoffs.  I've got tickets to the Devils-Rangers game tomorrow night, third row aisle seats behind the goal.  I'll be rooting for the Rangers, my girl will be rooting for the Devils.  It should be interesting. 

October may have a few interesting things on the books.  There's a chance we'll do a small Bronx Zoo trip, inspection could be chaotic, we're going to the Headless Horseman on the 23rd and may do a few other haunted houses as well.  And there's a chance I may hold a seance at my home...you know seeing how it's clearly haunted. 

Anyway...Cowboys just lost.  Sucks.  But I'm going to head down into the basement and get a quick work out in.  Catch you later.

October

I love October.  It might just be my favorite month.  And in this October I'll take the opportunity to start my blog again...again.

I have the feeling this one might go sort of differently.  I'm certainly a very different person as I sit here and write it. To begin with there have been some major changes in my life, just the way things are going in general are different.  I'm spending less and less time at work.  I'm still putting in ridiculous hours but not the way I used to.  I'm hoping it's because I've got things going well and have laid a significant groundwork.  It could just be because I'm getting too old to force it.  I can't do 18 hours a day four or five days a week anymore.  Not without seriously damaging myself.  I've failed at several attempts at losing weight.  I beat the liver disease back down, lost some weight, and then slowly watched it get out of control again.  I tried harder.  Lost 50 lbs.  Felt great.  And slowly fucked it up again.  I'm running out of chances and starting next week I'll be working with a nutritionist,  then hopefully a personal trainer, and then in six months I'll quite possibly be undergoing lap band surgery. Hopefully the combination of a new diet, new exercise regime, and significant surgical help I'll be able to get healthy again.  I'll be able to survive.  I haven't been buying as many comics or statues lately, haven't been in a go-go bar in four months.  Sometimes the lack of those two things can be a little dull, but I've got a lot of things going on in my life that leave me little time for other pursuits.  Antioch is gearing up again, it's going to be an interesting and complicated year.  There's a lot going on in my family, most of it good.  Some of it not so good.  But all of it needing a great deal of attention.  And last, but not least, I'm in love.  Yeah, whoda thunk it?  Little old me madly in love with the girl of my dreams.  I certainly didn't see it coming.  But things are going really well and though always weary of how quickly things can go wrong in young love I'm ridiculously happy with the way things are going right now.  She's a really great girl, and no matter how much time I spend with her I always want to be around her more.  She's amazing, and I think we're pretty amazing together.  It's all a bit of a mystery to me still, as some random black guy on the streets of Manhattan shouted at us in passing last week, "How's a fat man get a girl like that?"

No idea brother.  But goddamn am I glad I did.

So yeah, work is complicated but good.  Inspection is coming up and some changes need to be made.  The house is a disaster like always and The Tuck is a smelly little shit like always.  The kids are good.  Antioch is ready to roll.  And for the first time in a long time, I'm absolutely completely happy.  And finding new and interesting ways to be happier every single day.

Night all.

Travel well.