Dream management

Ugh. I wish I knew what was up with these ructious dreams. Last night's was fairly typical. I was checking on my student employee and found him playing Pokémon at his workstation. (IRL I've had to speak to him a couple times about our appropriate use of electronics policies.) I told him bluntly that he knew that wasn't allowed and instead of being abashed (as he would be IRL) he was insolent which annoyed me into escalating things to the point that I fired him and threatened to toss his belongings into the busiest of the public areas if he didn't leave.

More often, it's a rando instead of someone I know in the waking world, but the basic template of me getting enraged as someone who remains smug and belligerent is constant. In the worst instances I end up getting violent, often attacking the person as they "refuse to stay down" (though in those cases it's usually a home invader or some other criminal). Regardless I wake up with my heart racing and then struggle to fall back asleep.

I guess this is simply more evidence that I'm carrying too much anger around me on a daily basis and I need to find some healthy way of letting it go before it kills me.

Bears in town

So it was another busy social weekend. Friday was dinner with the "Begrüßungskommittee" for itchwoot et al. at Pub 626. It's not a great place, but [Unknown site tag] knew that it could easily accommodate a large group (in multiple senses). As the employees kept adding tables to seat more Men of Size, I braced myself for the Question and it finally came in the form of, "Do all of you own Harley Davidson motorcycles or something?"

I got sat near the newcomers and I think I made a fair impression. I spoke a bit of French to one of them and when he asked if I knew it, I replied, "J'parle le français comme ein chien cadien." He seemed bemused. Later, I got to show off my reading knowledge after we'd retired to their hosts' house to play games and watch videos. Their pick was a French fail compilation and we were translating the captions on the fly for the benefit of the room.

I was delighted to learn that the second of the games we played was a version of Balderdash because--as I confessed after crushing my competitors--"I'm really good at lying." After that, I strolled a ways with the couple who'd flown in from Nebraska to surprise them. We ended up having such a promising chat that I messaged them Sunday morning and invited them to brunch at Smack Dab.

To my surprise, they accepted and we ended up having a rather interesting conversation as they tried to make plans with the others who were still shaking off sleep. We ended up eight bears strong and then everyone went off in different directions--some to Steamworks, some to the zoo for a Pokémon event, and me back home.

I'm still trying to set something up with the Anglo-French duo. I think they may have just been being nice when they floated Tuesday morning breakfast but I intend to find out. I still haven't given up on meeting urso, but I haven't heard a peep since he left for Peoria so I don't expect anything to come of that either.

Better than television

As much fun as meeting all those new people was, it was nearly eclipsed by what happened afterwards. All through brunch we'd been glancing at the sky trying to determine whether rain would actually come or not. Just as I left, it started sprinkling, but I got hope before any real rain started to fall.

Moments later, I heard the wind rise and there a sudden crash. It was loud enough to be a thunderclap but without the same resonance and I realised something must have been blown free. I ran to the front window and saw a large limb down across the intersection pinning a power line underneath, so I snapped a photo and posted it to LJ.

Meanwhile, the rain became a downpour so heavy it was almost impossible to see across the street any more. I glanced at my phone to see a reply from one of my condomates. "Look out the [north] side," she said. Her apartment is just to the east of mine so I ran back to the dining room and looked that way--and saw that one of the maples on the hellstrip had snapped off about four metres off the ground.

Fortunately the trunk had fallen away from the building. It was blocking the street and lying across the hood of a parked car. I opened a window to take a picture. Rain was still falling, though not as heavily, and the sun was already out again. I saw an older gentleman surveying the fallen limb. He saw me and said, "That's my car." I offered my condolences.

I tried calling the city but gave up when I couldn't get through and texted the neighbours to the south. "Come outside" I said and ran out the back gate. He joined me at the car and we examined the huge dent near the driver-side door. The windshield was perfectly intact, however.

At the corner we noticed a man in bright brown suit directing traffic. He looked like he'd been on his way back from church. Despite his urgings, drivers kept running over the downed line. "I called the city and ComEd," he told us. Sure enough, a cop car came a few minutes later and the officers set up a roadblock.

We were like children, running around the block and inspecting the damage. I found some blocks of wood in the street and on our lawn which we determined came from the scaffolding across the way. A chunk of it was lodged in a tree high above the sidewalk and the officers were also urging pedestrians not to walk under it.

When it became apparent Streets & San were in no hurry to get there and clear the debris we ended up doing some impromptu gardening. He trimmed the grass while I pulled weeds and stuck my geraniums into the pots flanking the front door (much to the chagrin of the couple upstairs). Meanwhile a steady stream of gawkers came by, bearing reports of damage in the vicinity--another downed powerline, a tree fallen onto a building, and so forth.

Around dinnertime, I heard a chainsaw and came out to find most of the fallen tree cut up and dumped into the street by a grapple truck. I took some perv shots of the husky operator and then watched him guide the boom to hold the trunk in place while the other man sectioned it, chatting with a Canadian grandpa from up the street who'd also stopped to watch.

It's funny how an event like this brings the neighbourhood together. There's a bear living across the street who I've nodded hello to numerous times in the past decade but we'd never actually spoken. Sunday we shared reminiscences of the microburst four years ago and he shared some of the pictures he'd taken then. A woman came by to tell us how she'd been parked in the very spot where the tree had fallen only half an hour before. Another neighbour told us about having a branch hit his car last fall and causing him several thousand.

On my way to work this morning, I saw a chipper truck working its way up the street and a team taking down the tree that smacked the building. I expect to come back and find the street largely back to normal. But maybe the ice between us will stay cracked if not broken.