Oh, wow! I was just reading Sam's post about flame responses, and for some reason, it triggered the memory of a dream I had last night... And it was a DOOZY!

I wish I could remember more of the beginning details. I was hanging out by a train yard with two other RinkChat regulars (I think it was Kaz! and Nyperold, but it's kind of blurry and the identities kept changing.) At some point, we arrived at a house. It was a very nice, stylish old house. We went in because we, along with probably six or seven other Rinkies, were registered to take a class on writing fiction from the learned doctor who lived in the house. (He apparently taught out of the home, too.) Who was this doctor? None other than Samuel Stoddard himself! Here's the odd thing, though. I was VERY excited about meeting Sam, but when I did meet him, I was quite surprised-- He did not look anything like what I expected him to. In the dream, I had this mental image of what Sam looked like, and in the dream, it was a mental image I had conjured, but upon waking, I recognize that image to have been Sam's picture from the RinkAlbum page. In the dream, though, my mental image was shattered by the old man, clearly in his sixties, balding, with white hair. My mind kind of rebelled at the idea, but the dream setting confirmed several times that yes, this was Sam, and yes, he really looked like that. (Upon waking, I concluded that the image came from that of the protagonist in "Calculating God", which I finished before falling asleep last night. As well, my mind justified Sam's apparent age by telling me some mumbo-jumbo about him travelling at relativistic speeds and thus aging faster than me. This, of course, was backwards to what would have happened if that situation came about, but the protagonist in the book gets to travel at relativistic speeds near the end, so I think it all tied in. By the way, I do not recommend the book nearly so much now. It was still quite good, but I felt that the last third did not live up to my expectations from the first two-thirds.)

OK, back to the dream. I remember thinking in the dream that I should suggest to Sam that we hold a mini-RinkUnion because of the number of us there, but I held my tongue because Dave and Leen were not present, so it wouldn't feel like a REAL RinkUnion, and besides, Sam was trying to teach a class, not hold RinkUnions. :-)

Before we got started on teaching, though, Sam decided to take us downstairs to see the rest of the house and go to a more comfortable room. Sam had an escalator leading to his basement (!) and the basement was basically a really nice modern mall. There were other people there, shopping around, and in one of the store openings was the access to the rest of Sam's basement, which was just like a normal basement. (Well, not completely, but I'll get to that.) For some reason, my brother (Thagg in RinkChat) was with me, and we were given a brief guided tour. We saw the furnace room, and an L-shaped hallway with something like three or four doors in it. One of the doors led to the bathroom. Another, which was closed, apparently led into the computer room, which was where Leen was at the time. I was VERY much looking forward to meeting Leen in person, and I paused for a moment trying to decide if it would be appropriate for me to give her a hug when I met her, or if a simple handshake would be better. While I paused, Sam vanished. I was suddenly alone in Sam's basement, and I could not remember which door led to Leen. I also knew (in that intuitive way that you know things in dreams) that I had to leave now, and I had to take my brother with me. I went to look for him, and found him in the furnace room. I thought the furnace room was a pretty boring place to be, and said something to that effect, but he pointed out to me that there was another door on the other side of the furnace room which led to ANOTHER hallway full of doors. I could see Nyperold in there, playing a video game or something. (It was definitely Nyperold this time.) I knew that the rest of my "classmates" were down that way as well, but I had to leave. Kevin (Thagg) came with me willingly. He said that he did not remember the way out, but I said that I did, so he went with me. I found my way back out into the mall area, and saw an escalator, but I knew that it was not the same one we came in on, so I walked past it. After doing so, though, I noticed the mall came to an end quickly, and turned around and saw some "cool" kids going up the escalator. I realized that it HAD been the escalator we needed, and started to walk back towards it. Kevin was obviously embarrassed and seemed to be trying to hide his face from the cool kids on the escalator.

And that was the end.

In summary: I got to meet Sam. Sam was not Sam. Sam had an escalator leading to the mall in his basement. I did NOT get to meet Leen. :-(

That was my dream. Weird, eh?

Don "Weird Dreamer" Monkey