I'm running on minimal sleep again because Sunday night is notorious for visits by the What-Ifs. The What-Ifs are little creatures that come and whisper in your ear and ask "what if this?" and "what if that?" and as soon as my head hits the pillow, my mind kicks into high gear thinking about what's going on in the week or two ahead and worrying that it's not all going to fall into place properly. (The What-Ifs are actually an invention of Shel Silverstein's, but for purposes here, I'll assume they actually exist.) Then again, it could also be the fact that I'm up a little later on the weekends and have trouble going to sleep at "normal" times -- though normal constitutes anywhere between 11:30pm and 1:30am.

Either way, the What-Ifs apparently have been reading the paper and visiting me while I sleep, because I had one hell of a nightmare last night. I dreamed that I was in the town I grew up in (yes, the one my parents just moved out of last week) and the people there had suddenly fallen under the spell of some crazed tyrant right-wing minister who decreed that all should fully support America without question, and he had such a brainwashed following that those who were found to question him or this country would be lynched by an angry mob or brought in to see him and tortured into believing. I remember staying at a motel/gas station combo in the town with an old friend who I grew up with, and he got sick and went back to his parents' place, but he left belongings in our motel room and he left his rental car at the gas station, so I couldn't leave town because I had to make sure he got his stuff. But I was having a hard time staying because I feared for my life because if the people who were working at the gas station and the customers who came in to use its facilities found out that I wasn't entirely pleased with the way things were going with this country or its leadership, they'd take me to see the evil priest. I remember making up some story to respond to some big burly man who asked me, "Why don't you have an American flag on your car, Brother?" ("Brother" being used in the fraternal sense, of course) about how it flew off in the wind and I was getting another one, while secretly I was terrified because I didn't want to put a permanent marking on my car should someone put an American flag sticker on it. I kind of felt like one of the European Jews who practiced Catholicism in public to avoid the Nazis, but hid their true religion and true practices for fear of being carted off to a concentration camp.

This can't bode well for a Monday morning. At least it's a short week and the PowerBook arrives today...