10?

It's 10 degrees outside. Due to windchill, it feels like -4 degrees. I'm not going outside. I need milk and toilet paper, among other things, but I refuse to go outside, and have refused all day. Got home at 11 o'clock last night, knew I would be going out again until I had to go to work tomorrow morning.

I wonder how much stock you should put in dreams? They're interesting, and I often find that what I'm thinking in a dream is what I'm actually thinking for real, but won't let myself feel. Sometimes (mostly) they're just gibberish, but even the gibberish has to do with what's on the forefront (and sometimes, the back buner as well) of my mind. There's lots of theories as to why we need dreams, or if we even need dreams. We know we need REM sleep, and that's when dreams happen, but no one knows if the dreams are necessary. Plus, you're not supposed to remember your dreams. At least, not on a regular basis such as me. So what the hell is the point of making up stories in your sleep that you never remember? So bizarre, really.

Last night I had a bizarre 'what if' dream...except it was my roomate's 'what if', not mine. Somehow (the word with which most dream description seems to start with) I came into contact with the parallel universe version of my roomate, where she had not moved to Chicago. She was somehow living both lives simultaneously, but was by this point two completely different people with different experiences and life goals. I wondered which one would prevail as "the Noell", the final version. I didn't know in the dream, and I worried that it wouldn't be "my Noell", but the other one. That Noell was fine, too, but we didn't have this time together. Even though she seemed equally happy in the other life, I wanted MY Noell. Bizarre, really.

Yesterday Mike Vanderbilt IM'd me. I have to think hard about what Mike Vandy's last name really is, because it's not Vanderbilt. My Mom nicknamed him that near the time that she also nicknamed Mike Cruise and Mike Gimmi. It's probably been three years since the last time I talked to Mike V. I really wasn't sure why he IM'd me. We don't have anything in common--we never have. I don't remember why I ever began hanging out with the guy in the first place, really. We talked for a bit about the past, present, and future. He was finishing the undergraduate phase of his perfectly planned, cookie-cutter life. Not that not finishing this phase now and in this way was ever an option. I think I find it interesting to talk to him, as he lives in such a very different world than I. My hope is and has always been that when he talks to me he actually takes the time to think about something he normally just accepts as-is. I don't know whether I achieve or have ever achieved that, but I like to think so. We were discussing the fact that when we met he was so innocent, while I was in many ways much older and scheming, and that intrigued him. It probably didn't hurt that I was a hot 16-year-old. He really just amuses me.

I was dicussing my 'scheming' nature with Sean. I think the most interesting part of the fact that I am rather scheming is that I am almost always completely unaware that I am doing it until I look back over the situation. It's apparently a built-in part of my personality or something. I don't know whether I like that or not. I don't think there's really anything wrong with scheming, as long as it's not evil scheming, which is the way in which most people think of it. I think all people scheme to some extent, I just maybe do it more or more effectively than many. Or maybe I just think I do. Maybe I should start paying attention to other peoples' scheming.