| Had a vivid dream last night -- It began as one of those third person dreams, where I am watching what is going on as if I were watching a movie, but I knew it was not a really major blockbuster movie because one of the roles was played by Bob Saget (Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos) rather than by a major name like Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis (yes, I am paraphrasing an actual thought that went through my dreaming mind, I was having a made-for-tv-movie level dream) -- These two guys were off on some kind of a search, a quest that would take them to Tibet or Nepal, some exotic place high in the mountains -- in my dream they were going to Kat Man Doo which, now that I am writing about it, my awake mind recognizes as Kathmandu, which is in Nepal. By the time they got there, my dream had metamorphosed into first person action and I was in an simple office room speaking with a guy who was some kind of parks ranger -- all of this was very vivid at the time but what was crystal clear and obvious in a dream turns very vague and vaporous when you try to recall in later on -- I remember that he had hair so blond that it was cartoon yellow and he told me to follow him out the door -- and we went out into the bright sunlight reflecting off white snow -- there was a pathway trampled through the snow and he was running barefoot along the path, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and calling for me to follow him -- and I was equally undressed, but since I never wear boxers my shorts may have actually been a pair of running shorts (at least that was my thought in the dream) and I was surprised to discover that the snow was not cold underfoot because it was such a sunny day and because the way I was running and leaping my feet weren't touching the snow for very long (again, this was a thought I was having in my dream) -- we were running and leaping along this path that ran along the upper end of a vast snow covered field, reminded me somewhat of the playing fields at Rec Park on Binghamton's West Side, but much larger... there were many people playing in the snow, building snowmen and snow forts, sledding, having snowball fights... and we were just running through the snow, bounding and leaping -- and I was having a ball, this was marvelous fun, my movements were so free and easy, it was like running when you are a kid without adult aches and pains, it was effortless and pure fun and then there was this annoying buzz buzz buzz buzz sound that woke me and I realized it was my daughter's alarm clock going off and it was somewhere around six a.m. and I had to get out of bed and go down the hall and knock on her door and ask her to shut off the noise (she has an alarm and a clock radio and her television all set to come on in the morning and none of them ever wake her up, Nancy and I have to wake her, so I don't know why she keeps setting them -- and sometimes, like this morning, she forgets and has them go off on weekends too -- why not, they don't seem to bother her any...) And then I went back to bed, wishing I could return to this marvelous dream, running and leaping through the snow... I did manage to fall asleep again, but not to return to the snow...
The world outside looks much like the world of my dream -- clear blue sky, bright sun glinting and reflecting from white snow -- but I know that when I go for a run later it will not be anything like my dream. At the best it might get up to twenty degrees... and tonight it is supposed to go back into the low single digits. It was very cold last night. In my entry for yesterday I commented that it was so cold that I would probably bring our bunny into the garage for the weekend. She has her own fenced-in yard, right at the edge of the small wooded area that divides our backyard from that of the property behind ours. After our sad experience with Mr. Funny Bunny (our rabbit in Binghamton who was attacked by a dog leaping his fence after heavy snow had reduced the effective height of the fencing that enclosed his yard) I made this fence much higher. The fence is four feet high, fastened to the trees that surround her hutch and yard. Except in the front section (where the entry gate is) I have chicken wire fastened to the trees above the heavy duty fencing, so the effective height of the fence is almost seven feet. There are also a couple lengths of nylon netting strung between the trees. (This is because, although there are no dogs wandering around the neighborhood the way they did in Binghamton, I also had some concern about owls and hawks.) Her hutch is about three feet wide by two and a half feet deep and is raised about two and a half feet off the ground (she has a wood ramp leading up to her door. The hutch had a solid wall in the back and screens on three sides. I winterized it by wrapping it in heavy clear plastic. This is what I did for her last winter and what I always did for Mr. Funny Bunny, except this year I only used a single layer of plastic and did not carry it all the way down to ground level. (She just shredded away the plastic at ground level anyway). This year I cut a doorway in her back wall and put up an addition, a small room to the back of her hutch, solid wood walls, but the back wall is hinged so I can open it up to clean and to put in new freash wood chips and straw. Winters in upstate New York could get quite cold. Zero degree weather doesn't come very often in Rhode Island, but a typical winter in Binghamton might have multiple nights with temperatures that are ten degrees or more below zero (without even counting in the effects of wind chill) and despite Mr. Funny Bunny's snug two-room plastic-wrapped hutch snuggled up next to our garage, we did sometimes bring him inside (in an unheated attic so that he would be sheltered from the bitter cold but not where he would get overheated, etc.) Then one winter we got an idea and ran a heavy duty extension cord out to his hutch and plugged in a lamp under it so that the heat given off by the light bulb could take some of the chill out of his hutch. This was intended to be a one time thing, but then there was a heavy snow storm and the extension cord was buried under 16 inches of snow.... then there was another storm... and that cord stayed buried under the snow for two months... every time the temperature dipped down the teens we would turn on that lamp. (The idea was not to have a warm hutch, but simply to take the edge off the frigid temperatures, bring it up closer to merely freezing. Not very energy efficient, but what did it really cost me? Maybe ten or fifteen cents a night?) Yes, I know, if I talk about pets, I should post pictures of them. When the rabbit goes back outside I should take her picture with my new digital camera. I gave Adam one for Christmas (not only did he study photography in college and work professionally for several years, but he collects cameras, has a couple dozen of them around his apartment) and it seemed so cool that I bought one for myself. I have been hooked on photography since I was a kid. I just realized that my "good" 35mm camera is old enough to graduate from college, a birthday present from Nancy and Adam on my birthday in 1977... For the past couple of years I've been taking a lot of pictures with those single-use cameras... they're very handy, stick them in a pocket, don't worry about them, if anything happens to them, well, it was just six or seven bucks...except, of course, for the pictures you may have taken... back in July I got on my flight back from London with one of those in my shirt pocket and I stashed it temporarily in the seatback magazine pocket and forgot about it until I was eating a sandwich at JFK while waiting for my flight to Rhode Island. (Spent an hour attempting to check with American Airlines lost and found... hell, spent most of that hour while various American Airlines people tried to figure out how to find the phone number of their lost and found counter.) I had not taken many pictures this trip (I already have tons of pictures of London) but I had taken some pictures of the Rossetta Stone (at the British Museum) that I thought might be interesting and that I think my kids would have liked. (I don't want to knock American Airlines, they seem sharp compared with the people from United the time that I realized an hour after take-off that my spare eyeglasses were at the boarding gate area back at Honolulu... I asked about it on the plane, followed their advice and checked with UA lost and found dept when we landed at Chicago who told me to check with UA baggage when I got to my destination in Rhode Island, which I did and was told "okay, I entered it in the computer, if they find them somebody will call you..." Big deal, you say, what's a pair of glasses cost? Well, with my prescription, almost $350....) I started this paragraph talking about posting pictures of our cat and our rabbit and was working my way around to saying that our scanner is attached to my daughter's computer and that I should take the time one of these days to scan in some pet pictures and post them. I mean, what is a webpage without pet pictures? Although I don't think the mild weather will be back soon, this deep freeze should moderate by Sunday afternoon so the rabbit can go back to her hutch and yard. Why, you may ask, do I keep saying the rabbit, doesn't she have a name.... Well, she has gone through a lot of names.... Jennifer brought her home one day two or three years ago as a tiny little bunny... she'd bought her for ten dollars... Oh please Daddy, can we keep her, please? Jennifer tried out a lot of different names, so many that finally I took to calling her Ms. Funny Rabbit (in homage to the memory of our beloved Mr. Funny Bunny) but that seems like a very long name to keep typing... around the house we refer to her either as Ms. Funny Bunny or (if speaking to Jennifer) "your rabbit" (as in "Did you remember to feed your rabbit this morning?" or "You'd better leave now so you aren't late, I'll feed your rabbit.") |