The (I)CRVN Blog

I woke up this morning from another migraine-induced dream, but for once, I was all to happy to have had the dream.

If you are new to this blog, or aren’t familiar with migraines, permit me this explanation.  Migraines are not just bad headaches, but small seizures of the brain (and when particularly bad, the CNS) that render the brain somewhat useless.  The brain gets rewired for the duration of the attack, jumbling the brain much like tipping over a file cabinet and putting the files back in a different order.  Everything gets affected in varying degrees, from basic language, to factual information, and even emotions (although this occurs to a far lesser extent).  This is why if you ever spend time with someone while they are suffering from a migraine, you hear them interject words that don’t work with the frame of the conversation or drop words altogether.  (This is how the word “refrigerator” became such a buzz word in my family.)

I digress.

When these changes to the brain happen while you are sleeping, dreams become the canvas of temporary insanity.  Imagine jumbling frames from the films of Kurosawa, Bergman, Tarantino, and throwing in a few frames of Sesame Street (or worse: Telleytubbies).  The dreams are usually vivid, intense, and very surreal.

However, for once, the dream was one I’d have over and over, if I could.

The dream was a mishmash of emotions and memories from various points in my life, and I could not begin to tell you why those memories were chosen.  The setting was my room about the time I was in high school, in the late 1980s.  The premise was that I was expecting someone to come over so that I could teach them to use MS Word.  (This makes sense, as computers were one thing I had a knack for, and I was often asked to show people how to do stuff in Word when they were only familiar with WordPerfect.  In fact, I have helped my wife with this to this day.)

The second component of the dream is a little odd.  As it turned out, the friend was my wife.  However, where physically she was like she was when we first met, mentally she was as she is today after our having been together for so long.  (This is what was somewhat confusing in retrospect: I was with my wife at two different time of her life.  Basically her brain from now was in her body from when we met.  If I tell you she was like Kitty in the X-Men story “Days of Future Past,” it will both help explain the situation to you, and expose my inherent geekiness.)

The third component was the one I enjoyed so much: the emotional component.  The emotions I felt when I was with my wife in the dream were a combination of the emotions I experienced from various points in our relationship: the odd combination of fear, excitement, and anxiety of the moment we met, the joy felt during each reunion during the time we would see each other on weekends while I finished college, and the warmth, happiness, and contentment I feel when I am with my wife today.  It was a heady, intense cocktail of emotions to feel all at once, but one I was happy to experience, even though it meant waking up in intense pain from the migraine.

I’m sure all of this seems silly and over the top, but it was nice to have a migraine induced dream that made me feel good before making me feel like crap… if you understand my meaning.

One thing it did was also confirm what I already knew: I married well.  Not in the sense that I married someone who makes my life easier, but in the sense that I found someone who is the perfect yin to my yang.  Or, if it’s an easier analogy, she (and lord help me for being reduced to making this quote) “completes” me.  We’re coming up on our tenth anniversary, having been together for eleven years now, and of all of the major decisions I’ve made over my lifetime, marrying my wife is the best one I’ve made.

The migraine last night gave me a nice, early anniversary present, allowing me to experience all of the emotion from one of the best days of my life, the day my wife said “yes.”

And the day I got my Dream Girl.

As I mentioned earlier, the family’s been battling a pretty heavy-duty virus for a long time now, and I am finally getting a moment to post some notes from the past few weeks (yes, weeks).  So, of course, I’m now fighting a doozy of a migraine, too…

In no particular order:

• The fact that the Bush administration’s last act was to triple the tariffs on Roquefort cheese imports is just ridiculous.  Not only is it a blatantly obvious retaliatory strike against the French for their banning certain hormones that are regularly injected into US beef, it’s also a really nasty move when you consider that the county of Roquefort’s economy is tied greatly to the export of the cheese.  Hopefully, in time, President Obama will reverse the tariff or at least reduce it so that this cheese can once again be imported at a reasonable rate, helping both the county of Roquefort and my cheese trays.
• Did any of you watch the NHL Super Skills competition prior to this year’s All Star Game?  Why were there cheerleaders?  And for that matter, did they all have to have such large breasts?  Was this Bettman’s way of making sure that he – for the day at least – wasn’t the biggest boob in the NHL?
• Many people were upset at the inauguration speech of President Obama, hoping for the next “ask not what your country can do for you” moment.  I for one am glad, and I was quite pleased with Obama’s speech.  It was direct, said what Obama believed needed to be said, and lacked the one thing that the previous administration had been shoving down our throats for years: catchphrases.
• I saw a picture of Amy Winehouse recently, and in all sincere honesty, my initial reaction to the photo was that Jamie Farr had really let himself go.  My apologies to Mr. Farr.
• Did anyone else catch the news that one of Bernie Madoff’s victims was an author who was working to release his latest book while being swindled by Madoff?  The title of the book is (and I swear this is true) Annals of Gullibility: Why We Get Duped And How to Avoid It.
• I saw a blurb recently about Heather Mills (the ex-Mrs Paul McCartney) that made me wonder if she’s just incredibly stupid.  She apparently cannot figure out why she’s become so popular with single men.  She thinks that it’s because she’s comfortable with herself.  I would think the $40 million she netted in the divorce helps.
• Get ready for Palin 2012.  Nitwit of the North has formed “SarahPAC” to help build a “better, stronger, and safer America in the 21st century.”  Right.  I’m not too worried.  First, Alaska is one of the hardest hit states in this recedepression, and secondly, PACs don’t tend to get Neiman Marcus Gold Cards.

That’s all for now.  Drive home safe.

Well, another week of hell, health-wise, with a week-long migraine knocking me out of a few days.  So, since it looks like I may not get to the computer at home for a couple of days, I’m posting picks early.  Here goes:

• New Orleans @ Chicago (From Thursday): Bears
• Tampa Bay @ Atlanta: Falcons
• Washington @ Cincinnati: Redskins
• Seattle @ St Louis: Rams (Don’t ask me why…)
• San Francisco @ Miami: Dolphins
• Buffalo @ New York Jets: Jets
• Detroit @ Indianapolis: Seriously? (For the sarcasm-impaired: Colts)
• San Diego @ Kansas City: Chargers (Although Chiefs could win it…)
• Green Bay @ Jacksonville: Packers
• Tennessee @ Houston: Titans
• Minnesota @ Arizona: Cardinals
• Denver @ Carolina: Panthers
• Pittsburgh @ Baltimore: Ravens
• New England @ Oakland: Patriots
• New York Giants @ Dallas: Giants
• Cleveland @ Philadelphia: Eagles (Unless it’s a tie…)

Sadly, the Chargers/Chiefs and Niners/Dolphins games gave me the most trouble this week.  KC could do really well against a Norv-lead-team, and the Niners are the only team to come East and win.

For the record, yesterday was spent fighting a really bad migraine that is still with me.  While I wasn’t up to getting on the computer to post the picks, I was able to tap them out on my palm-pilot and email them to Ant prior to 1pm yesterday, so these are legit picks.  Here they are:

• (From Thursday) Cincinnati @ Pittsburgh: Steelers
• Houston @ Cleveland: Browns
• New England @ Miami: Patriots
• Philadelphia @ Baltimore: Ravens
• Minnesota @ Jacksonville: Vikings
• Tampa Bay @ Detroit: Bucs
• Chicago @ St Louis: Bears
• New York Jets @ Tennessee: Jets
• San Francisco @ Dallas: Cowboys
• Buffalo @ Kansas City: Bills
• Oakland @ Denver: Broncos
• New York Giants @ Arizona: Giants
• Carolina @ Atlanta: Falcons
• Washington @ Seattle: Redskins
• Indianapolis @ San Diego: Colts
• Green Bay @ New Orleans: Packers

An addendum for my predictions for the league: ownership keeps McNabb, signs Chad Johnson, and dumps Andy Reid, who signs with Oakland to replace Cable.

Despite a severe migraine and the resulting mental fog, I managed to sit through John McCain’s appearance on Meet the Press yesterday.  Now, migraines can have a unique effect on the mind, but this time I don’t think my migraine was at work during the interview.  Saturday Night Live a week prior aired a sketch where Hall & Oates argued about which candidate to support.  The sketch was both a statement on the candidates as well as a satire on the idea that Hall and Oates are too connected to be thought of as separate individuals.

What does this have to do with John McCain on Meet the Press?  Only the fact that as it progressed all I could think of was the Hall and Oates song Out of Touch.  The more McCain spoke, the more it dawned on me that he has lost the ability to connect ideas in his mind – an inability to comprehend what he says as he says it.  For example, when Brokaw addressed the problems in having your running mate spend upwards of 200,000 on clothes in a month when she is dealing with problems involving use of public funds to fly her family about, McCain responded thusly:

SEN. McCAIN:  Look, she lives a frugal life.  She and her family are not wealthy.  She and her family were thrust into this, and there was some–and some third of that money is given back, the rest will be donated to charity. Look, Americans right now care about whether they’re going to stay in their homes, whether they’re going to have a job, whether they’re going to be able to keep their health insurance, if we’re going to come out of this ditch that we’re in.  They want change.  They want reform.  She is a role model to millions and millions and millions of Americans.

So far none of the money has been “given back,” and as for the assertion that the clothes will be given to charity…  Mighty white of them.  Notice, however, that McCain does not realize that Americans – sorry – Real Americans are having real money problems and parading Palin around in her new clothes paid for by the general public (either via taxpayer funds given to the RNC or via contributions) sends a plain message in  the attitude of entitled detachment.  (I will also say that it says a lot about how the two candidates value their campaign workers when it was revealed that the Obama campaign has spent over twice as much in salaries and benefits than McCain.)

The kicker in the interview was when about halfway through, McCain showed his cards by no longer referring to Brokaw as “Tom,” but as “my friend.”  Truly “out of touch” and “out of time.”