Last night I didn't get much sleep due to some nagging back pain, so in desperation this morning I took some (legally acquired) pain meds and laid back down for a couple of hours.

I'd forgotten that even small amounts of codeine give me very weird, very vivid, dreams.

I remembered that after I found myself getting off a plane in Minneapolis to get in a car and drive to Whistler, BC with my mother, my father, my step-dad and my step-mother. (The airport looked nothing like Minneapolis at all, but it was Minneapolis nonetheless. Why I flew halfway across the country to drive to a place a couple hundred miles north of Seattle, I have no idea.)

I love my parents very much, but you cannot imagine the sheer terror I have of being trapped in a car with all four of them. I woke up in a cold sweat.

i'm heading out to get a haircut and run to my client's office for a few hours. Hopefully somewhere in there I will remember that I'm in my mid-thirties and am supposed to be a functional adult by now.

There are, literally, thousands and thousands of crows in my neighborhood right now.

This happens every night in winter. Something like nine to ten thousand crows roost in and around the neighborhood, and right around dusk, the whole murder of crows emerges all at once. You'll walk down the street, and see crows on every rooftop, wire, and branch, all cawing to each other so loudly you can't hear yourself speak. After about an hour, they all disappear again.

It's very eerie. Fortunately, they leave the people in the neighborhood alone. Mostly.

Tonight was apparently a Corvidae community meeting, complete with speakers. One lone crow would caw for awhile, while all the others remained silent. Then the whole flock around our house would respond, all at once, screeching and cawing and making an incredible racket. Then all the crows would quiet down while another lone crow cawed for a few minutes.

I'd ask what they're meeting about, but I'm afraid they might answer me. I suspect species dominance may be involved.

This morning I was climbing an endless set of escalators, and getting shuttled from ticket agent to ticket agent, in a desperate attempt to catch a train from New York to Philadelphia that was leaving in five minutes. The station was an unholy combination of the dirt of Penn Station and the impossibly long escalators of Washington D.C.'s Metro, and I found myself shlepping all the baggage I could carry across distances that seemed like miles.

Then I woke up.

Sometimes the symbolism is a little obvious.

Now, about all those phone calls I have to make....

Say a prayer to the deity of your choice tonight for New Orleans. I'm heartsick.

My mother-in-law says she hasn't heard of a hurricane this bad since Camille, thirty-five years ago. She's in Pensacola, FL, about two hundred miles away, and she's battening the hatches herself due to the heavy rain.

I've never seen NOAA forecasts like this; they had one earlier that was predicting most buildings would be destroyed, most livestock destroyed, anyone or anything outside unprotected would be killed by flying objects, etc. etc. etc.

Let's hope they're wrong, or Katrina suddenly weakens before it makes landfall.

EDIT: Here, have something beautiful to take the taste out of your mouth: The Earth, receding. (5 MB .MOV file, dial-up folks should avoid or go have a cup of coffee while downloading.) Thanks to jwz for the link.

Many, many years ago, when other reading material ran out, I read the novelization of the movie The Last Starfighter. I don't remember anything about either the novelization or the movie, except for one scene. ( If you're easily squicked, best skip this part. ) Needless to say, that scene never made the movie.

That was about how I felt yesterday. I lost an entire day to a migraine headache that just about damn near killed me. Consider ice-picks being driven slowly and steadily into your skull at equal points just behind your eye sockets. Fortunately, I'd recovered by the evening. If you were expecting an IM or an e-mail from me, I apologize. I'm still playing catch-up.



Courtesy wispfox, a cool gizmo: Pinpoint your LJ friends' locations using a Google map.

Also, courtesy Boing-Boing, Darth Vader meets Japanese schoolgirls and Yoda chats up the ladies. *fear*

Some days I do not love humanity.

Today, for example.

( Description of abusive behavior follows; skip if this is triggering )