We must be doing alright, better than we have in the past, because we just bought a "new" car. Not BRAND NEW, but it's a 2008 model with only 13,000 miles on it. Might as well be new. A white Dodge Avenger, it was my wife's choice. She'll be the one who drives it most, working out of town and all. Now we'll call it "her car" and the Blue Saturn will be my primary automobile. That's fine by me. I'll have plenty of opportunities to drive the Avenger. I've always liked the Saturn. It's got lots of miles racked up, but still motivates just fine. It has proven to be the best car I've owned and I would recommend Saturns to anyone. I need to do a little work on it, though. Stereo needs to be fixed. Parking brake's been broke for a long time. That and a tune-up is really all that needs to be done.

The new car has Sirius satellite radio that was pre-activated with a year of free service, so it's still activated but not for much longer. I will cancel my XM and use that money for the car stereo. It may just be a matter of transferring from one radio to another, since the XM/Sirius merger. I'm still not used to the new channel line-up on the XM. I've had it since Dec. 2005 and have had plenty of time to familiarize myself with where all the stations are. Now that's all fucked up, and I just don't feel like starting all over. Internet radio has replaced it. XM Online is scewing up on my computer, too. I don't know if the problem is on their end or mine...it doesn't matter. I considered cancelling it several months ago, but decided against it. This time I'll do it, because I do like having the satellite radio in the car. And I'm sure Stacie does, too.

It's been real hard getting used to Simba not being around anymore. I'd gotten used to hearing his barking welcome every time we walked in the door. Now it's too quiet. I buried him out in the backyard where my other two dogs (Snooky & Cocoa) were buried. It was really hard to dig that hole in the ground. I hope hope hope it was deep enough. I think it was. But hell, what do I know? I've never dug a grave before. I know this: I don't want to think about what the consequences would be if I DIDN'T go deep enough. I'm pretty sure it was okay, though.

I even had a dream about him last night. In the dream I was sleeping and I felt something bumping against the side of the bed. It woke me up (in the dream) and I turned over to see what it was. Of course, it was Simba. The first thing that went through my head was, "What are you doing here? You're dead, aren't you?" That's about all I can remember. It wasn't much longer until I really woke up.

Isn't it strange when you have dreams within dreams? Especially like this one where you wake up from sleeping. It makes you wonder if your reality is actually just another dream. One you will eventually wake from. And if what you woke from THAT TIME is actually ANOTHER dream. And so forth and so on. It's a mind bender to contemplate.

I scrapped one of the Acid projects I've been working on. Well, I didn't actually "scrap" it...I rendered it to an mp3 so I could keep it, but I had planned on doing a lot more with it. I broke seven different synth loops into one beat increments, pasted them together and repeated them for about 4 minutes. I pasted in a section from the old Focus hit "Hocus Pocus". It was a surprise to hear how it sounded with the synth loops. Then I took two Robert Johnson songs (I think they were "Stones in My Pathway" and "Steady Rollin' Man") and strategically placed them in different sections. I was very happy with how that sounded and I'm going to try something else with Johnson's music. Finally I added a hefty portion of Hugo Largo's "Grow Wild". The song actually sounded really good under the influence of controlled substances...very heady, kind of electronic psychedelia. But when I listened to it under less elevated circumstances the whole thing sounded like a murky mess. Too much going on, not enough real structure...I'd rather start something new than do whatever may need to be done to salvage it. I made an mp3 because I'm loathe to throw away anything I spent that kind of time on. You never know, I might want to hear it again on that sunny day when I've got some of those controlled substances on hand.

Ice storm blowing in this afternoon. It's not too bad yet here in town but Stacie called and said there were a lot of cars on the side of the road on her way home Chandler. A couple of them were actually overturned. I don't know what to think about that. I hate this kind of weather...more than any other. Especially after last year's big time ice storm. One of the weather men insinuated that this one might be of the same magnitude. I doubt it. I'm 46 years old and I'd never been through a storm like the one last year. I kind of doubt I'll see another one any time soon. I hope I don't have to eat those words.

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