I decided to start a blog as a place to drop in everything that's not fiction. I imagine I'll post erratically. Having a tendancy to ruminate on things, I find writing acts as a drain. If I put the thoughts down somewhere, they aren't taking up permanent residence in my head anymore. I'm able to move on to thinking about something else. Onwards...

For my first entry, how about last night's dream? Dreams are always entertaining, aren't they?

The dream starts out that I am, for some reason, about to take a ride in a helicopter. Not a normal helicopiter. No, this contraption is basically a Tilt-a-Whirl from the carnival ride with propellers. So, open air "helicopter" with legs dangling free. I'm mildly excited about the flight. We're going a short distance from my town to an abandoned army airfield in the middle of the state. We're with a whole bunch of other Tilt-a-Whirl helicopters so as I look around, I can see them ahead of us and below us. My partner is sitting on my right and the pilot is on my left. The pilot isn't anyone we know and in my dream, I don't know why we're doing this. It's a sunny day, warm, and I'm really enjoying the ride. My partner is a little concerned. He doesn't understand how this aircraft is manageing to fly; he doesn't understand how it operates.

So far, the only authenticity is the reactions of my partner and myself. I love to fly and like taking in the sights from up high so I would be inclined to sit back and enjoy. My partner, R, was an aircraft electrician in the army and was assigned to helicopter units. He's flown thousands of hours in helicopters and it would make sense for him to be figuring out how this one works.

So, we're flying over the farmlands of the central valley and we see a children's birthday party going on. These parents have gone all out with a bunch of bouncy houses, horse rides and other entertainment. They have a few acres of land where the activities are spread out. Lots of bannners, flags, food. Very festive. We buzz by and the father is dressed as Captain Hook. The cartoon Captain Hook from the old Disney cartoon. He's very tall, over 7 feet. I wonder momentarily if he is on stilts under his costume, but figure probably not because the body is entirely proportional. The pilot says that we have to land.

I understand in my dream that he intends to talk to Captain Hook. I don't want to meet this man and am disappointed to have to stop. My partner and I go exploring and come up on this tent erected on the grounds. It's just your basic family size camping tent, like you'd put up at a KOA campground. So, we crawl in and now in my dream I realize that we're on a movie set. We're part of filming some stunt. It's been filmed before, but we have to re-shoot the sequence. R and I start rushing around the tent unzipping the window flaps, including a flap at the top of the tent. We're kind of hunched over and crashing into each other because...it's a tent. There's not that much room. So what's suppose to happen is the pilot flies the Tilt-a-Whirl in the front door of the tent and R and I hop on board and then the machine will burst dramatically out of the top of the tent and we all escape.

I don't know what we're running from or what the urgency is. In my dream, I'm a little miffed that this whole action scene, filming episode, has interrupted a perfectly enjoyable afternoon flight. But whatever, I'm going to do whatever I have to so that we can get out of here and back up in the air.

What actually happens in the dream is that the pilot has trouble manuvering the helicopter through the tent's opening without slicing it up. The director is yelling at him. He finally manages to get the Tilt-a-Whirl inside, and R and I climb aboard. At that point, though, we're told that they decided to move the rescue/escape to the garage since the tent didn't work too well for filming. So now, R and I are in the garage that's filled with boxes, tools and other miscellaneous items. No vehicles. I'm thinking that all of this is exactly what happened the last time we filmed this sequence. Again, I'm really just bored and over it all.

The Tilt-a-Whirl flies through the garage door and R and I hop on. It's suppose to burst through the garage's sunroof, but those pesky blades strike something in the garage that starts a fire. This is a planned part of the movie. We're hovering in the garage in the Tilt-a-Whirl, and I watch the fire shoot across the floor of the garage in a very controlled line straight over to an oxygen tank. It's one of those small medical tanks that's on wheels and someone can pull it around with them. All I can think is that this movie is going to be so boring with nothing atypical happening. Furthermore, we're filming it exactly as we did on the first take which means we're probably going to have to do this all over again.

I realize I'm never going to get back up in the air, on my way to the airfield on a sunny, warm day. Then I wake up.