Damn.

Just had a look at the previous post.  I misspelled reconnaissance.

I'm so ashamed.  Somebody spank me, please.

eureka!

Even though last night's shaolin class almost did me in - it ran for two hours - I woke up this morning feeling better than I've felt in months. I can even feel my libido making its presence known, which is not a common occurrence at 7:00 am ever.

Just 10 more days of antibiotics and hopefully I will be declared cured. Then I can officially return to my ongoing pursuit of mischief, immaturity, and breaking speed limits. Huzzah!

love and evil in Oxfordshire

Having drunk several glasses of iced tea during dinner last night, which kept me awake until around 3:00 am, I woke up around 9:00 am and promptly went back to sleep. This resulted in one of those rare dreams that are extremely detailed and extremely disturbing. One wakes up convinced there's hidding meaning, but it's sometimes impossible to decipher.

In this dream, I am in visiting England. I realize I only have one day left before I fly home so I decide to visit my old paramour John Savelle. After some difficulty, I find his number in my address book and dial it. Someone else answers though, saying that his number has changed, and if I want to see him I'd better do it tomorrow as after then he will be unavailable. Seems he's moving up north.

I head to his town and find him in his car, a large and expensive-looking sedan. He grumbles that he's been living in his car for two weeks and it's no fun. But then I get into the car with him, self-conscious as I'm not wearing any makeup, hoping he's still attracted to me. We make a litle small talk and end up at a small but expensive-looking terraced house.

We go in and there are several young people inside. One is an attractive blonde in her 20s, who I identify as John's girlfriend, although they don't acknowledge this. Instead, John gets busy collecting equipment for a strange mission. It soon becomes clear he's going to attack something or someone. He then shows me a dog collar with tag, saying "this is all that's left of last time". But I can't grasp that he would kill any animal. In real life, he's had some very spoiled pets, including a Samoyed.

Now we load up his car with an odd collection of stuff including small bowls of what I think is poison and a large empty box. We end up at a small corner store - what's called a newsagent in the UK.

Here's the disturbing bit: John has come to this agent to kill the resident cats, but he won't tell me why. My interrogation disturbs him to the point where he gives up, but I pick up the only cat I see - a large black cat - and take it with me.

We stop at another newsagent's. Seems that John has a strange vendetta going against the owner of the stores - but he won't tell me what it is. Thankfully the owner comes in when the shop's cat appears, and I promptly explain to the owner what John is up to. I tell him to change his door locks and keep a lookout. The shop owner glares at John through his glasses, but says nothing to him.

We get back into John's car and go back to the house; I still have the cat with me. The young people are still there. Things get convoluted at this stage of the dream, as somehow I come back into a room to find John attempting to drown the cat in a large box of water. I stop him before he's finished and take the cat away.  I've gone from confusion to anger and attack him, not doing much damage but throttling him until he backs off.

Now I'm standing in the middle of the room, holding a wet and gasping black cat and demanding that the others explain what is going on.

Eventually the attractive young woman speaks. She explains that, while inside one of the newsagent's shops, another customer "pinched her bottom".  When she told John about the incident, he became enraged, but didn't try to track down the perpetrator. Instead he attacked the venue's owner's cats. The victim of the pinching incident looks embarrassed about John's ridiculous attepts at revenge, but appears too spineless to even ask him to leave the cats alone.

The entire situation's become surreal to me as it's all so insane. I ask why she didn't simply slap the bottom-pincher. She shrugs. I then offer to slap them myself if she'll identify them. She admits she didn't see the perp, and didn't even know if they were male or female.

John is now making ready to depart and is loading up his car, although it's obvious he is homeless (I guess his wife has recently tossed him). The girlfriend offers him nothing, not even a sofa to sleep on.

He offers me a ride to the airport (!). I not only turn him down, I told him that he was dangerously insane and never wanted to see him again. He says nothing and drives away. I briefly considering using my knife to puncture one of the car's tires, but he's too fast.

It's 95F. Time to buy a coat.

After just spending over $1,000 on having my car's air conditioning gutted and replaced, the last thing I should be doing is shopping for clothes. But I fell to temptation at lunch today, and opened the e-mail that offered me 35% off anything at J. Peterman.

To digress a bit, one reason I've always been fascinated by the J. Peterman catalogs is that they break a cardinal rule of marketing: they do NOT show photographs of their products. Instead, they show nicely- rendered pictures. Just about anyone in advertising, from David Ogilvy to Dan Draper, will tell you that the buying public tend to distrust an artistic version of a product. This goes across the board, from chewing gum to luxury cars.  But the folks at J. Peterman have never, ever shown a photo of a product. Not even in their earliest catalogs. 

The reason I like their products is admittedly a bit childish. Most of their clothing is a bit retro-quirky. Like this coat I just spotted and may order:

It's the collar of this coat that really attracts me. I have this odd weakness for clothing with asymmetrical features. 

Out, damned b. burgdorferi!

Even though I've been told several times that I am fully curable, the last few weeks of medical treatment (antibiotics and supplements) are not improving my mood.  

What happened is that I traded some of the classic symptoms for others. Instead of skin rashes, I'm tired all the time. Instead of swollen lymph nodes, my digestion has gone to hell because of the antibiotics.  And although I don't consider myself particularly vain, I suspect I often look as crappy as I feel. 

I'm considering checking myself into some Buddhist retreat and eating lawn clippings for a few days. I'm not liking this much.

Perhaps I should just swear off bird-watching. Or buy a T-shirt that says:

I Went to Gladewater To Look for Bald Eagles and All I Got Was This Lousy Spirochete.