Optimus2g

I've always had dreams in which I pictured myself dying young--specifically during my 20s, which is scary since I'm at that stage right now. I've only revealed this recurring dream to my cousin and maybe my brother since he may have been with my cousin and I in his room when I told him, if I can remember correctly. I do know for a fact though that I did tell my cousin. He was very surprised to hear this from me when I revealed this to him about 3 or 4 years ago. He said the typically cliched things one would expect to hear, such as: "God forbid" and "Don't say that" and not to forget "It was just a dream."

The scary thing is that I have had a couple of close calls over the years and thank God nothing happened, but I always had this nightmare lingering in the back of my head. I try not to talk about it, but it pops up from time to time. I'm sure I'm not the only one out there that has dreams that come true or painfully close to coming true, so much so that they make you think that you actually saw a glimpse of your own future---which by the way has happened to me, to make this even creepier.

I was dreaming that my ex-fiancée was shouting at me and was grabbing me and screaming at me how I was a "failure" and was "no good." I was sitting in a room and she just came in and began a blistering barrage of bullshit that I could not withstand. In the dream I was underneath her and she was directly in front of my face, no more than a few inches away. It felt very real and shocked me into waking up. I fell asleep again and then continued to experience something even stranger when this dream continued. This happened about 2 weeks ago and has lingered with me since then. I'm not sure if the second part of this dream occurred on the same night or the night after. I should have written it down in a dream journal, which may make things like this easier to recall when it comes time to transcribe it for the sake of the blogs. I'll say this though: The dream did NOT feel surreal. It felt as if she were right there in front of me.

The second part of this dream was also very realistic. My ex, all of a sudden, has a new man, who comes into the room where she was verbally scathing me and starts to beat me down, interrogation style. All of a sudden, she jumps into the fray and starts to kick my ass too, making me feel like a total piece of crap! During the dream I felt a mixture of sadness, despair, betrayal, hopelessness, and anger. It's all proabably related to the guilt I carry around during waking life, but keep to myself.

On the vain side, the strange thing about this guy was that he was not better looking than me (not that I'm arrogant about my looks---I think I'm average lookin'---but I know a better looking dude when I see one, especially when it relates my ex). I would have at least expected her to "trade up", but I thought to myself, "was this the best that she could do?" I was thinking about this, mind you AFTER I woke up, and NOT during the ass whopin' that the two of them gave me during the dream. It felt SO weird, and made me want to check and see if I was in the looney bin when I woke up afterwards. I just hope that this was a dream that was based on my over active psyche, and pray that it is in NO WAY true. If it is, then this dude better prepare for a beat down from me in waking life, provided I find out who the bastard is.

P.S. One more thing: Oh yeah, my ex-fiancée was beating me and egged on the new guy to kick my ass with a virulence that was reserved for serial killers. It made me feel like I was her life-long enemy or something, which really bummed me out during the dream and after I woke up, considering all the time we spent together and the memories that we shared. Ugh...

This is obviously a big portion of our grade (30%), but it's not like it's something that we're doing for the first time. It's based on our research papers that we've spent MONTHS working on. We should all be starting off in a good place as the result of all the hard work that we, our writing groups, and the Professor put into writing and revising them. In speaking with Prof. Tougaw, this project will be a condensation of our papers to a web document consisting of no more than 1,500 words---making it roughly a third the length of our papers. We'll be adding images & links that correspond to the various sections in our papers that would arouse any specific interests, the way we would if we were blogging, except it will be on a website.

I would imagine that some basic knowledge of HTML will come in handy, but without it I doubt that it would screw people's course projects up (just correlate it to the blogs). I've already started reducing my paper down, using the MS Word auto summarize feature, to see what it would look like if I only used it to shorten my paper. It helped a little, but not that much, when I saw how some of the things that it chose were not things that I would want to include in the final version of the web project document. Needless to say, I'm going to have to work on this a lot more to get it to where I want it, and not where MS Word wants it.

I feel confident in working on this, but would like some guidance during class in narrowing down the scope of what I have somewhat. Hopefully we can get some feedback and assistance on this when we come back, but we won't have much time when we do because the class and the semester, for that matter, are rapidly coming down to a close (would you believe that?).

While waiting for the official email from Prof. Tougaw about this final major project, which is due before the conference on May 16th, we should all start to "trim down" our research papers to their bare essentials and look up images & links (I'd aim for 5 of each right now) that would be most appropriate for visitors who would be interested in our respective topics for the course project website. In the meantime, if anyone is interested in brushing up on their HTML skills, here's a link that might come in handy (if it's even necessary). I've used this website over the years to help me hone my own HTML skills---or lack thereof. I think you'll find it handy, regardless of if we even need it for this class. But hey, who the hell am I to make such a bold statement? As the great LaVar Burton said: "But you don't have to take MY word for it!" Check it out...HTML:An Interactive Tutorial