bugs

I was in the backyard with my mom, & we were shooting electronic ducks with this strange contraption. The ducks were basically small planes with props in the front, & our gun was about the same, the trigger controlled how fast the prop on the front of the projectile went. As we were shooting it was getting to be dusk, & we noticed this strange red band of color in the sky. We shouldn’t figure out what it was. Then we figured it was the sun shining through something, & we turned to see what. Again, it just looked like a band of red. Only a couple of seconds went by before we realized it was a swarm of insects, and it was headed right our direction.

I held the prop-end of the fun close to my face & my mom got close enough to it to, so that when the swarm finally hit us, the prop pulverized the insects & we had plenty of bug-free air to breathe. My sisters ran in from different parts of the yard & joined our little group as we headed towards the house. Some insects were smaller & some were about hummingbird size. At one point there was a worm-type creature about 6ft. long that rose up & tried to eat us, but the prop on the gun made short work of it.

After a minute there was a lull in the swarm & we made it to the house, but there was still another wave on the way. We tried frantically each door to discover it was locked, until finally we found the door in the back of the garage was open. We all piled in the house safely.

OK

I might as well do this. . .
here's 2 of me and 1 more of Chris.

silly christin

last night mini, christin, and I drove to st. george to visit my grandparents. a couple funny things christin said on our road trip:

After finishing our meal at Arctic Circle: "Let's roll this joint."

Mini and I dared Chris to flip off the guy in the car next to us, when she confessed she'd never flipped anyone off before. Then she qualified that statement with, "The poeple I love are the only ones I've felt comfortable flipping off."

2 men, a woman, & a boy

2 men, a woman, & a boy. 1st man seems to be the leader of the group, the other talks like Charlie from Lost. The boy has certain special powers. He can use his mind to fix alternate dimensions once he’s there.

Man & boy are fighting a demon in this world – demon is at least 10 feet tall, built like a truck, ram’s horns on his head. He’s also just one solid color of red. The man & boy aren’t getting anywhere with the demon, so the boy says he’s going to try to find a weapon to fight him with. The man says that a certain world is full of rocks good for skipping (I guess so they can slay the demon david & goliath style). The boy transports to this other world, and man #2 goes with him. There’s a beach made entirely of small, flat, round rocks, and the ocean is all around. The boy picks up some rocks and skips them into the ocean. For some reason he dilly-dallies – says he’s thinking. But as he walks over a hill of rocks, he can see the ocean dropping out of existence, and the effect is moving toward him at an alarming rate. He runs back toward the portal to take him home & yells @ the other guy to do the same. At the same time he says a prayer (for lack of a better term) to save the planet from this destructive force. They both made it through the portal & arrive back in a big city, where they almost immediately run into the man & woman.

Time runs differently in the 2 worlds, and whereas a few minutes passed in the alternate world, much time has passed here. The boy simply says, “nothing happened” to the man and walks away. As the man & woman stand in line for a hotdog or something, they discuss what exactly the boy meant by it. In the background is a bridge that looks a lot like the Golden Gate, and the sound of breaking steel cables is heard as the bridge systematically collapses from one end to the other. Then a vortex appears & starts sucking the bridge in, then the roads, then the people as it gets bigger & closer.

The action freezes at this point & I hear the voice of another man. He says, “My name is X. When you do math problems, your teachers tell you X is a variable. You are really just using my name.” Which, at the time I was hearing his voice, scared me.

adorned, that's a weird word, isn't it?

A Chinese couple had a son about 6 years old. The son was very knowledgeable about the afterlife. Bandits required the life of the boy in exchange for something. So at a predetermined time, the uncle brought the boy and met the bandits in a field near a high brick wall. Various trees grew around the wall. As a sign of the exchange, the uncle and the bandits exchanged flowers, one white, one yellow. As the uncle rode off, the bandits tied a silk scarf around the boy’s neck and sliced his head off with [a] sword. Two of the trees around where the boy was slain were surrounded by blocks, kind of like legos. Some were adorned with shapes of flowers. The blocks were all sorts of colors, which would change occasionally. The parents kept a painting of the field & the trees & the blocks in their home. The colors of the blocks would change in the painting. [I wish I could draw what the trees surrounded by the blocks looked like. They were pretty cool.]

arches

There was a kid who was doing repelling. One [route] he did was delicate arch. While he was repelling he would have these spectacular views of arches & stop to take pictures. At the bottom was a landmark. There was a group of rocks that looked similar to Stonehenge, but with a pile of rocks in the middle, and carefully placed stones that formed a ring around the whole thing. The ocean tide would form a perfect ring around this at one point, and cover the whole thing up at high tide. This happened so fast I didn’t even have time to pull my camera out of my pocket & take a picture of it [partly because i seemed to be moving in slow motion].

I was walking around on a wooden staircase next to the landmark. Someone else was telling the story about how this landmark had a strange effect on people. One guy always looked over his shoulder when he met you. [I'm not sure what this means, exactly, but I think he was just really, really paranoid.]

swimming and statues

Somehow Christin had scuba gear & we were in our backyard. There was a big body of water & we were swimming around. Mini was there, too. I put the scuba gear on. The water was dark & dirty looking, but after putting the goggles on & diving, everything was crystal clear. There were tons of fish swimming around of all the brightest colors. I wondered how this colony of fish came to our back yard.
After I was done swimming around, there was a group of people that had gathered in our garage and were looking at something. I joined the group, and as the sun was setting in the sky, there was a formation of clouds that looked just like the statue of liberty.

Moab Half

Just a quick post for those running the Moab Half in 5 weeks. These are pics from last year at the starting line - it really is beautiful race. Ya'll ready for it?

a new pet

My cousin Matt was talking about how the dog that littered their new puppy had a second litter, but it wasn’t nearly as big. For some reason, all of a sudden we had a new little pet cheetah. Wasn’t much bigger than a household cat, but man, the little thing would just run everywhere. As I was walking by it, I noticed it was chewing on a wad of toilet paper or something, so I snatched it out of its mouth and headed into the bathroom to flush the wad. The whole toilet was filled with garbage, but I didn’t care. I tossed the wad on top and flushed it all down. The cheetah had followed me into the bathroom to see what I’d do with its precious wad, and jumped up on the rim of the toilet to watch everything swirl around & disappear. Then the cheetah did the stupidest thing possible – it stock its paw into the mess & got sucked in – I watched as the pipe first swallowed its head, then its body, then its tail & legs. I was horrified! How was I going to explain to the family that I’d flushed & drown the family pet? I reached in, & luckily the pipes were small enough that the animal didn’t get far – I was able to grab hold of the end of its tail and pull it out. When I got it out, however, the thing wasn’t breathing. A horrible thought went through my head – I’d have to give it CPR & bring it back to life. I plopped the dripping wet cat onto the tile floor and positioned myself to give mouth to mouth. Luckily, it woke up by itself & went scampering into another room. It was still soaking wet & scared & looked half its normal size with all the hair stuck flat to its body.

another nightmare

I was staring at a wall of photographs – all B&W. One of them seemed off to me. One picture had tilted & bumped another, and the pictures seemed to blend together – like one had started to take over the other. My friends & I both commented on how strange it was. As I walked around it to get a better look, it was almost as if I could see more of the picture than I should – like it was a hologram or 3-D or something. Then the little girl in the picture was kneeling beside the couch I was on, with a crumpled figure beside her (she was still B&W), which I assumed was her mother. Then we started talking. I said, “You’re impossible.” She looked at me and said (philosophically) “YOU’RE impossible.” I said, “But you’re really impossible.” She said something about Beauty & the Beast & I said, “And you’re the beauty, right?” She smiled & said “yeah.” I said, “And you play the part very well” and patted her head. Someone asked, “how’s the mother?” That crumpled figure really scared me, so I tried to play it cool and said, “oh, she’s all right.” And of course, like any horror movie, that’s when the figure shot out a hand, grabbed my arm, and turned her hideous face towards me. It chilled me to the bone. She sprang into action. I wasn’t sure what she was doing to me, but I knew she meant to kill me. I fought back with everything I had.

12/1/05 - Zuul

Part 2: I went to Justin Hatch’s house and up to his room. He had a really bad sunburn and he wanted me to take a picture of it. He gave me his camera (not a digital) and hiked up his shorts so I could see the burn line. For some odd reason, I couldn’t quite get a picture of it. The camera would make all sorts of clicking noises, but Justin would check the camera after and say it hadn’t taken a picture at all. Needless to say I was frustrated with it. All the time Ryan Hatch was wandering the room, setting up lamps and such so that we could get a better shot.
At some point it was just me & Ryan in the room. Ryan caught hold of a loop of string that led under the closed bathroom door, and it started to drag him along. I wasn’t amused because I knew it was Zuul or the ghost of Zuul pulling on the other end, but I figured it was Ryan’s house & he knew what he was doing. Besides, he was smiling & laughing and having a good time. But he doesn’t let go of the string and gets pulled under the door & into the bathroom (there seems to be quite a lot of clearance under the door, but still Ryan must have been very thin or magic to fit under it). I lie on my stomach and peek under the door to see what will happen, & to see if it’s an actual Zuul or just a ghost on the other side. Ryan is still holding on to the string & I watch as he gets dragged behind the toilet? or some object. I can see Zuul’s head at this point and it chomps Ryan’s feet off. [It seems like I remember another string coming out from under the bathroom door, but after what I’d seen I don’t bother with it.]

12/1/05 - Jocks love nature

Part 1: Some jocks had used my camera for the day. I hooked it up to the computer to see the pictures & to back them up, but most of what they used it for was movies (whether on purpose or not I don’t know). One movie showed a plant or a bush of some kind, that was the most brilliant yellow I had ever seen. Then it cut to the country side and the whole valley was filled with brilliant colors. The jocks were filming out the window of a car at this point, and driving along a road. My sister, Mini, yells out from somewhere behind me, “That’s Washington Blvd!” At first I didn’t’ recognize it, but then I did. It was strange because I had never seen the place before, but in my dream it was familiar.