When I was dreaming

I didn't watch the Oscars last night. I might have if I hadn't been working, since I like Chris Rock and all, but awards ceremonies generally don't mean much to me. I don't watch all that many movies anyway, especially in the theaters. I mean, nowadays, there has to be a good reason to see a movie on the big screen, since it costs so much, and the films are usually out on video in another few months. Anyway, I'm kind of amused that Million Dollar Baby won Best Picture, just because I remember seeing a preview for it and thinking it looked pretty lame. bethje and I made fun of the line, "I'll try to pretend you're not a girl!" or whatever it was. I also saw Bill O'Reilly bitching (sorry, "opining") about how terrible it was that there was something about euthanasia in it. So, yeah. I don't really have anything else to say about that.

Beth's classes were cancelled today because of the snow (again), so we went out to eat at Friendly's. The woman who seated us there had a name tag identifying her as the "District Micro Trainer." I wonder what, exactly, a Micro Trainer does. If it's anything like micromanaging, I don't think it's something they should be advertising on their name badges.

On Sunday, I played a little bit of The Minish Cap at Target, and it inspired a dream where I found out that the Minish all looked like Pac-Man. On the same night, I had a dream about alien monsters getting into a fist fight with some guy at a pizza parlor. I wish I could remember what the aliens looked like. The only dream I can remember from last night involved looking at an old map of Oz from a Ruth Plumly Thompson book. I think it might have had a color plate glued over it, but I'm not totally sure. There was something in the dream about color plates being glued over stuff, anyway. Anyway, I was comparing the map to a newer one, and I noticed that the older one had some kind of maple syrup streams where the kingdoms from The Yellow Knight of Oz (Corumbia, Samandra, and Corabia) were on the newer map. One of the maps also identified the habitats of some of the odd creatures of the Winkie Country.

I've started work on a new Oz story, but I'm not very far along yet. For that matter, I haven't worked on my Oz novel manuscript in months. I'm sort of thinking I should concentrate on short stories for the time being, but I don't know. Someday I might actually write a full-length piece that isn't Oz-related. Oz is kind of crutch for me in my writing, since the background is already mapped out, yet there's still a lot of freedom in the details.