Network

The illness that's been going around seems to have missed my house, which I'm grateful for. Lily starts first grade in the morning, and I'd hate for her to miss that experience due to illness. But I do hope everyone is back to full health soon, I know this has to be miserable.

But if you want something to cheer you up.....

( Meet Yoshi )

Playboy approached me to do a shoot.

I'm...not entirely sure what I'm feeling about that.

The one thing I love about our fair city of Huntington Beach is Food Truck Thursday at the Sports Chalet off of Beach and Heil. So many good businesses to try!

Maybe Ciao Bella needs an Italian Food Truck on wheels...



[ooc: Seriously, if you live in HB, Food Truck Thursday at Sports Chalet is bomb]

Random fact that I heard today; apparently if you're in a pinch, you can use peanut butter to shave. When I heard it, I had to google it to see if it was true cause it seemed so far-fetched, but apparently the oils in peanut butter give you a smooth shave. Now, this doesn't mean I'm gonna go grab the jar out of the cabinet the next time I take a shower, but I thought it was interesting.

Future Industries is starting up a series of workshops for girls and women of any age. This is an extension of program to train and teach girls so they can enter STEM fields, whether or not they stay with my company.

Best of all it's entirely free, and anything you invent or create is yours. We'll even help you patent it. And you'll get paid and retain the patent if it's something we think we can use.

The unfortunate thing about starting a new job is that when you have the itch to travel, as I currently do, you can't go anywhere.

It's just as well, Lily starts school soon so it's certainly not the best time to jet off to Europe. But Paris would be wonderful this time of year.

Hi, I'm Alexis. I heard dad was on here so I thought I'd join to keep an eye on him. Can't trust him to behave, sometimes I think I'm more of an adult than he is. (Love you dad!)

The dreams just keep coming. Every night for the past week and a half I've had one, to the point that I understand fully what someone told me about how they so often feel like an alternate life.

In my life, my mom was attacked but she lived through it. That attack changed my life and what I was doing with it because I wanted to make sure that a criminal couldn't slip through the cracks and never pay. The justice system failed my mom, so I try to ensure it doesn't fail others. But in my dream life, my mom didn't survive, she was murdered and in response to that I became a cop, working homicides, and part of the justice system to help catch the criminals.

One monumental change. That honestly is the difference between the two. It's a bit like two trains running on a parallel tracks, both visible to one another, but never likely to collide.

For the most part, I could care less about gymnastics, beach volleyball, or swimming. Then the Olympics happen and I'm a mess over them. It's a little ridiculous.

So I've been watching the Olympics. And I for the life of me can't understand rugby. I swear they were calling penalties on shot that already happened four or five times already in the game! I google it and there are different sets of rules! The best I can figure it's football with a bit of pub brawl mixed in.

So, these dreams, have they ever....given anyone anything? Abilities, I mean. Not actual objects.

I almost don't want to know. It seems a much better use of my time cooking dinner and watching the Mets play the Yankees on the home coast with my kid but, you know, three days after my last dream and I'm still dwelling on it. Might as well bite the bullet and ask.

I've been hearing about this network and now that I'm back from Comic Con, I thought I'd join and say hi. Keep up with the latest news that's going on around here, you know? Anyway, I'm Richard Castle. I live in Huntington Beach and teach literature at UC Irvine.

I had another one of those dreams. Once again, it mirrored my life in such a way that it's hard to reconcile that this isn't just my subconscious pushing something to the forefront. But it doesn't explain why, when I woke up in tears, that I scooped Lily from bed at 4 a.m. and drove over an hour to my parents house just to check for certain that my mom was fine. She was, though I certainly scared her and my dad, but the way she had died in my dream....

I still remember getting a phone call from my dad the day she was attacked, how scared he sounded when he told me that someone had stabbed her in an alley and they weren't sure she would make it out of surgery. She did make it, and even if she's now confined to a wheelchair, she's still here. But in my dream, she wasn't. Our family fell apart and I just needed to see for myself that it was all ok.

I don't know what this is, or why it's happening, but I understand the warnings from some of you that this experience can be rough. I can't get the picture out of my mind of her lying on a table, or my dad's blank face.

I heard on the radio today that, according to one of those studies that probably aren't scientifically accurate or whatever, that only 40% of couples are consummating their marriage on their wedding night. Only 40%! The rest are apparently too tired, too drunk, or want to keep partying with friends.

I don't want to live in this bloody world anymore.

But alright, this is also an annoucement to say the Hanged Man is back up to its former glory after the demon debacle. Sorry about that, we Thedosians love our catastrophes I suppose. Anyway, come on in for a chat and the Rat Droppings ale. Brewed right there!

You can't be part of this network and miss the penchant for odd dreams. While I've noticed it, and while I've read enough to gather that people are experiencing things from what you might call other lives, I just ignored it. I'm one of those people that puts stock in what is right in front of me. Alternate realities and past lives were what I'd call nonsense.

But I had one of those dreams. Nothing life altering or changing, just myself moving to California for college when I was 19. I might have been able to convince myself it was brought on by the recent move; some weird observation from my subconscious, but it felt so real. And now, hours later, it's still as vivid to me as if it just happened and is part of my actual life.

And it's more than just the move that's disconcerting. There was an old boyfriend of mine in the dream, Rogan, and a weekend trip to Vegas that culminated in a drive thru wedding chapel. Thank goodness that's not my actual reality. What a disaster that would be.

I never thought I could actually hate a day of the year and loathe it coming around. My dreams, however, have proven me wrong on that. July fourteenth is a day that I wish did not exist. At least my wife and daughter seem to put up with my neurosis well enough.


[OOC: Talk of murder of a child possible in the comments.]

I am now officially a law graduate. Now all I have to do is find a job. That should hopefully be easy enough, it's not like there's not a shortage of law firms around.

Has anyone ever... known something was coming, but when you finally dream it you can't..

You can't.

I don't even have a word for it. I woke up crying, and like there was a rift in my heart I didn't know I had and it just got filled.

And anger lord is there anger

My kid's response to my request for her to take a bath after dinner tonight: "Okay, but I should just take one in the ocean to save water."

Been in California for almost three weeks, and she's already focused on water conservation. So either she's adjusting just fine, or she's been watching way too much television.

Some days make up for bad weeks.

I'm definitely not used to waking up to the smell of the ocean. Manhattan might be an island, but it's very easy to forget that you are surrounded by water when you are walking in Midtown or shopping in SoHo. Even with the East River and the Hudson River only a few miles away at most given points, it's nothing like California.

I never thought I'd want to live anywhere but New York City, but here I am, moved in and partially unpacked in Southern California. Someone point me in the direction of the best coffee (don't say Starbucks. Or Dunkin' Donuts. Those are both lies.)