so, this weekend i did the usual, which means i worked. BUT, i also did the unusual, which means i got out of town. a friend of SOP was having a surprise birthday party up in Heber (near park city). well, HE wasn’t having it, as it was a surprise, his wife was putting it on, but you get the gist of the matter: we went up to a “cabin” in heber for a weekend birthday party. i put the word cabin in quotes in the above sentence because this place was about 4000 square feet and had so much stuff inside, that it does not qualify as a cabin in my mind, but i think they like to call it a cabin instead of “second home”. anyway, the “themes” some pillow fluffer decided to cover every square inch of wall- and shelf-space in this place with ranged from medieval (tapestries, cherubs, suits of armor) through southwestern (large native-american-stylized prints on a hallway wall so that you couldn’t see them anyway) to outdoorsy (hunting and fishing paraphernalia accompianied by birdhouses). The interior and size of the place aside, however, this was a beautiful place to be. right out the back door you could go cross-country skiing or snowshoeing. had i brought my tele skis it would have been even better than the XC skis, but who cares?! it was so much fun to be outside in the hills and snow!

sop and the object of celebration:

sop on the ridge with Chad and Charlotte

the least-decorated room in the house (the mud-room, as we prepare to head out skiing). the lack of whigmaleerie must disconcert the owners every time they come into the room:

and my favorite shot, taken on the way up the canyon, of a blurry, bouncy, blue, clear sky:

crystal pollution
masquerades as winter snow
flakes in atmosphere

hmm, are you wondering what some of the hallucinations were? yes, i’ve been bad at actually clueing you in. i know. slap slap. so here you go:

the hallucination from 12 jan was taken from a piece of bark i found on a hike last spring. the bark is about 8 inches high and has curled up inside out on itself. it is about 7 inches in circumference. i saw a couple of things in that one. a little mouse or owl peering out of a cave alternating with a hitler face.

the hallucination from 5 jan was firelight reflecting off a crack in SOPs fireplace screen. i saw the outline of a head (can you see the ear bump?).

now today’s hallucination, well … i’ll tell you about it next week!

ok, by now, you may know that i often have some rather odd dreams. this past week, for example, i had a dream where i was going to a job interview where i knew they were offering me a job and had brought my office stuff (a box of sand) with me. at the last minute, though, i left the box in the reception area so it wouldn’t appear that i was definitely going to take the job. the big pluses were that i would be paid a real salary again and that i would still be able to walk to work. everyone seemed to be wearing the blue shirt/grey pant combo - including me. that reminded me that i would be back in the ‘real’ world again.

but that is not the dream that i want to tell you about. no, the dream i want to tell you about, although without a box of sand as office supplies, is much more odd.

you know eye boogers? the things you get in the corner of your eye? sure you do. and, do you know how you get white blobs of moisturizer and such in that same corner? well, in my dream, i had white pellets that i was pushing out from the corner of my eye. they were rather large pellets, very firm and very white. soon, in that area in the bottom lid, i was pressing out sliced jalepeno peppers as well as these white pellets (cylyndrical in shape). i’d get a couple of peppers out of my eye and then more pellets, and then peppers again. hmm. perhaps i have been making tortilla soup too often?

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