Last week Janine and I went to Traverse City, MI, for her Great Uncle's funeral. He passed away a week ago today. We had just been in Michigan the weekend before, and now we were headed back again. We decided to fly out since the drive to TC is almost 8 hours without dealing with Chicago traffic. We flew out Friday morning and flew back Saturday evening, which made it a quick trip but a long weekend sine we took Friday off.

It was my first time in Traverse City, and I enjoyed it. It would have been nicer if the trip was primarily for vacation and relaxation, but I tried to make do with what I had. We got into town a little early Friday, which gave us time to walk around downtown and have lunch at a really cute bistro. We also had extra time before the flight home on Saturday to run around and do a few winery tours... because when I think of Traverse City, I think wine!

Now we're back home, and we're going to stay in Illinois this weekend. Fireworks with my grandmother, kayaking somewhere in the state, and a day trip to Milwaukee for the drunken musical melee known as Summerfest.

So it's official - Shaolin Soccer is officially in US Theaters. The bad news is that it's only in limited release and there are no thaters within 30 miles of Chicago showing the flick. The good news is that there is an awesome trailer up for viewing.

The thing I find funny and annoying is that this movie was released in 2001 in the Eastern market, but only now is making it to the US... in limited release, no less. Does anyone have a clue where this movie is showing?

UPDATE: One more reason to love IMDB.com is their US map locating the cinemas that are showing the movie. Anyone up for a trip to Oakmont, PA?

The cold is finally moving through my system. I'm feeling a lot better than I did two days ago, but I'm not back to full speed. At least I'm not having those freaky dreams anymore. I was planning on taking a half-day on Wednesday, definitely the worst day, but shit hit the fan around here and I was the only engineer around who was able to do anything about it. Such is work.

Sometimes I forget how nice NyQuil and DayQuil actually are. A few pills of 'Day' help me get through the day without sneezing my nose clean off my face, and a shot of 'Ny' (being ~180 proof) is fanfuckingtastic!

Again, another night of bad sleep and a brain that had no desire to shut off. I blame it on my head cold, which I almost took a sick day for. Instead I'm pumped full of advil and sudafed, so we'll see how far this takes me.

Last night was, by far, the weirdest night of dreaming I've ever had. It was all day dreaming since I couldn't fall asleep, but a dream is a dream. Usually, thoughts and events have a logical sequence that they go through. First you drive to the store, then you find the milk, then pay for it and finally drive home and put it in the fridge. I would equate this with the feeling of a 'lateral' chain of events, left to right.

Last night, though, my brain felt like it was thinking in a 'vertical' chain. Everything had to happen all at once, flowing from top to bottom. It's hard to explain in words, but it was seriously screwey. I think this freaked me out a bit, 'cause I layed in bed wide awake for two and a half hours like this. I couldn't fall asleep because I had so much to do... all at the same time.

I'm only working on 4 hours of sleep right now, and I have to say that this, in combination with the damned head cold, definitely sucks.

I don't remember exactly what my dreams were about last night, but I do remember that they centered around hockey and that they were very meticulous in detail. There was one specific thing that had to keep happening, but I don't remember what it was exactly (I think it related to keeping the ice frozen or something).

Every so often I have those kinds of dreams - the ones where my brain will not shut down and instead runs around in it's own detailed world. Specific things have to happen, specific details have to be spelled out, and this keeps my brain running circles around itself while I try to lay calmly in bed. It feels like I'm trying to run life-altering calculus equations through my head at light speed when all I want to do is plop on the couch and watch TV.

I end up in this half-sleep zone, where I think I'm sleeping but not getting any rest because of the dream. I'll wake up every 30-60 minutes. I'm groggy, out-of-sorts, and generally exhausted and frustrated because the dream can't come to and end. After a few hours I'm usually able to get out of the dream and get my mind to shut down, but by then it's already 3am and my frustration level has passed the boiling point.

I'm sure that this doesn't come as a surprise to most, but I'm somewhat of a hockey junkie. I love playing, and I look forward to it all the time. This week, however, I may be taking this little infatuation a bit too far.

You see, I'm going to play about almost 6 hours of hockey in a 24-hour timespan. More than half of it will be on Monday night between 5pm and 10pm. Chalk it up to one Sunday night hockey clinic (I'm basically a target for this one, but it's still fun), and two back-to-back Monday night goalie clinics (An hour of physical hell for each).

To top it all off, as soon as I finish my second goalie clinic, I get to chug as much Gatorade as humanly possible before I play a full-out game. Then we'll see if I can even lift my arms to the steering wheel after that.

Does it scare anyone that I'm actually looking forward to this?