Of Droughts and Thunderstorms

Never got to doing much of an introduction. Don't intend to.

I live, for the time being, in the sixth largest urban area in north america. It's called Toronto.
The problem? It's been a killing summer. Temperatures easily in the mid thirties, humid, and no rain.
Don't get me wrong now. They've forecasted rain, thunderstorms, but it's rained all of three times here. Three times in the past two months. And in most cases it barely counts. Dribbles.
That's why I'm awake at one in the morning. It's too damned hot. And it feels like it's about to rain.

I love the sound of rain. It patters on the streets, on the sidewalks, on the roof. Thunderstorms are even better. There's nothing quite like stepping outside into a thunderstorm. Even better is that moment, right after a few rain drops have just hit the ground, and then all of a sudden "woosh", everything starts falling down at once, just sort of forces the air out of the way.

I've got pictures, from a few years back and a crappy camera, of the moment a lightning strike up in the clouds went off. The camera was set to take a series of pictures. One shot, it's black out, the next looks like it's mid-afternoon.

Thunderstorms

Physician HEAL THYSELF

Not really. Since, not a medical student.
I have a headache. Which is odd. I get headaches from time to time. You know? Usually because I've skipped 2+ meals. To the best of my knowledge though, I haven't done that today. Had breakfast, had a *very late* lunch. To the best of my knowledge I have no allergies that would explain this, for lack of a better word, cold. I wake up every morning with a stuffed nose and a cough. It's usually gone by breakfast (two hours later).

Great way to spend the day off of work.

Down by the lake.

A friend persuaded me to take some pictures while visiting my grandparents. I don't particularly see why.

Most of it is farmland. Very flat, short of the Midwest, probably the flattest part of the country I've ever seen.

And trust me. The prairies are very flat. Incredibly flat.

Went up to the lake, there's a small river that runs into it, the lighthouse there is pretty neat.

The downside! I didn't have my camera with me, had to borrow a point-and-shoot. I think they still turned out all right. I think I messed something up with the crops, there's some weird pixilation or something in a few of them. Crappy camera is to blame. I suppose some of the shots are neat though. I've tried to clean them up.

Lot of driftwood out there. Though it could just be that the lack of rain has dropped the water level some. Looks like bones. Kind of neat.

No Sleep

At work. Not enough sleep last night. Trying to avoid a caffeine binge, because that will only end badly. I have two hours to kill (read "murder viciously") by watching youtube videos.

I've got to say, some of these arrangements of the Eleventh Doctor's theme? They sound even more awesome than the original.

Third night for that dream of the forest. I can feel a storm coming in the dream; there's that absolutely brilliant moment, right before a thunderstorm starts, where the air sort of rushes in every direction and the sky blackens, thunder rolls a little and then *BANG* the rain starts. Only, I get this weird feeling. I don't think it's a storm coming.

More pictures later.

Dreams. Again.

The same forest. The exact same. I can tell because apparently you can tell in this sort of thing in dreams. It doesn't seem to take as long for me to get to the wall. Maybe I just know where I'm going now?
The trees are all oppressively close near the centre. They seem to have gotten closer together. It's rained again. More recently. The water is dripping off of the "leaves". It's hard to see around the trees, there's never a clear line of sight more than ten feet long. There's this... noise. Like an old air-raid siren. And then I wake up.

Rained again last night, but it looks sunny out now.

Typewriters & Tea

2:50 AM- Writing this while I wait for the kettle to boil. Making chamomile tea to help me sleep.

So, the layout of the modern keyboard is based on the layout of the keyboard of a typewriter. Remember typewriters? Ink? No backspace key? Goes ding when there's stuff? Well they also have arms that hold the little reversed imprint of the character that actually makes that mark on the page. And if you push the keys in just the right order, or maybe the machinery isn't very well greased? Those arms get stuck. So the keyboard on a typewriter was laid out to minimize the possibility of someone pushing the keys in precisely the wrong order and getting them trapped.

We've picked it up on computers because *everyone already knows it*. Little sad when you think about it. I had a high school teacher who continually went on about having learned to type on a typewriter. There are probably people out there who learned to work on a mainframe computer with punch cards, or can fix a dot-matrix printer. This doesn't mean they know what they're doing.

2:57- Water's boiled now, but need to make the tea. Has to steep. And then not burn my tongue. Letting the tea cool down is important. So, there's all these shadows. It's really rather disconcerting. And I keep getting the impression that somewhere, just out of the corner of my eye, there's something moving. I'm getting just enough of it that my brain has this picture. Of this... I suppose person is as good as any, in like a coat or something, just walking by the window along the front of the house. I'm going to chalk it up to lack of sleep.

3:10- Water's cooled down. Drink the tea fast. Plains apes aren't meant to work in the dark. We really just aren't suited for it. We depend entirely too much on our eyes. Probably half the reason dogs were domesticated. They're strong in the two areas that we've let fall by the wayside. They hear well, and they smell well. I mean, hell dogs and cats both have that creepy reflective layer behind their eyes that actually *projects light* that it reflects out in front of the animal. Their eyes are like little flashlights.

3:20- Racial memory, or something like it, says that I should lock my door, draw the curtains, turn a light on and then go to sleep and not leave my back facing the door. I think I agree with it. I'm spooked. And also tired.

Dreaming

It's important to note. I don't dream.
Not precisely true I suppose, since if I didn't dream I'd be dead by now. True story.
I don't remember my dreams. Eleven times out of ten.
So of course, the rare time where a dream sticks with me long enough to write it down is a little like finding an unsoiled twenty dollar bill in a ditch. It's worth the trouble to grab it, even if it means getting your feet a little wet. Speaking of wet feet. Well more on that later.

So without beating around the bush (too much punning)

So there's this forest. Tall, spindly trees. The leaves are black, shrivelled, hanging from the branches like a bunch of corpses or something. It's rained recently. The whole place smells, damp. Earthy.

The trees get closer together the further in I get, until it's just a black wall of branches and trunks.

And then it starts to rain, and I wake up.

The drought seems to have ended. It rained last night.

Can't sleep

I can't sleep. There's a persistent feeling of being watched. It's raining outside, and the atmosphere is oppressive.
I suppose it's my own fault. Watched a few too many horror shorts, got my hackles up. Been spending the last hour or so calming myself down. I like being scared. The adrenaline rush a little addictive to be perfectly honest, but the crash is its own discouragement.
Whatever this cold is, it's started to affect my appetite. I still get thirsty, but I've been eating less. Wish I could shake the damn thing.

I seem to have taken ill

A rather unpleasant cough. Stuffed nose.
Drinking plenty of fluids. I don't have allergies, but maybe it's just the dry, hot weather we've been having. Easier to catch a bug if you're not well hydrated or something.

Could do with the rain.