Dream Trends

Do you ever dream the same dream? Or, have the same theme recurring through your dreams, if not every night, at least weekly or monthly, or frequently enough that it could be called a recurring theme? Apparently I frequently dream about being chased, in variations. Sometimes scary, sometimes not, but I guess it happens often enough that Eric, who hears about my dreams almost daily, finally said something about how often I get chased in my dreams. I knew it happened occasionally, and in many of my nightmares I am usually running away from someone or something, but I didn't think it happened all that often. I decided to keep track of my dreams for awhile to see if he was right. Turns out, so far he is. The past 3 nights there has been some variation of being chased/running away from something in my dreams. I'm still in the middle of the experiment (I'm going to track it for at least a week) but it's starting to look like a trend. Huh. I'm no dream expert, nor do I completely buy into the theory that dreams mean a whole lot, but I'm still curious what it may mean, and if other people have trends in their dreams and if they think that represents something. Who knows, maybe I've just dreamed about running a lot lately because I know I need to get back in shape and get running again. It's as good a theory as any, right?

It's (Not) Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I feel like I'm in White Christmas, in that they get to Vermont expecting snow and there isn't anything. In fact, the weather is ridiculously nice. That's pretty much how things are right now. I know by April I'll be sick of snow and the cold, but this time of year it's cold anyway ( I don't care what other people think, 40 is not warm) and snow makes everything pretty. Plus it makes the Christmas season actually feel like Christmas, which currently it doesn't. I just feel like everything and everyone around me is so focused on the consumerism this year and not about the true holiday spirit and the fact that it's Advent and Christmas is about the birth of Christ. Ok, at work it's not so bad, and my family isn't that bad, but I just feel like the general feeling of society and the atmosphere around me is consumer-driven. Eric and I are having a more low-key Christmas this year and we already have nearly everybody's gifts, so we don't even have that much more shopping to do.

We put up our decorations yesterday and it was crazy because Charlotte just kept getting into everything. She's only taken a couple ornaments off the tree so far and we didn't put anything dangerous or breakable at the bottom of the tree. Actually, we didn't really put anything breakable on the tree this year, just in case. The worst part is the Nativity manger. Baby Jesus has been all over our apartment, thrown on the floor, put in her mouth, and who knows what else she's done with it before we've been able to put it back. I actually caught myself saying "Charlotte, we don't eat Jesus" but then I had to correct myself and say, "Well, we do, but not quite like that". Not like she gets it, but Eric thought it was pretty funny.

Even though I'm not quite in the Christmas spirit, I'm happy to have out Christmas decorations and lights up around our apartment and a beautiful tree. Hopefully it will snow a little bit soon so I finally start feeling like it's really Christmastime.

Gaslight

I just finished watching Gaslight today for what has probably been the third or fourth time. The first time I saw it was in a philosophy of film class (one of the best classes I've ever had). Eric and I Netflixed it a couple of times so he could watch it too and so I could watch it again. I love it. It's such a great movie (note: I'm talking about the 1944 version with Ingrid Bergman), so creepy and dramatic. Not creepy in a scary movie kind of way, but creepy in a "my husband is systematically convincing me I'm crazy" kind of way. That's the basic plot--her husband is a bad guy trying to convince her that she is out of her mind and in doing so basically drives her out of her mind. It's really good. The actors are good (Ingrid Bergman won her first Oscar for her role), the plot is good, everything about it is good. Especially if you like old movies, which I do.

The only black and white movie I think I'd ever seen before this film class was "It's a Wonderful Life". That class really opened me up to some classic movies and widened my love of movies to include old movies. The more movies I see coming out these days, the more I am starting to cling to these older ones. Sad, I know, but like I wrote in a previous post, most movies coming out these days are seriously lacking in many ways. Eric and I keep postponing our movie date because there just isn't anything good out, and by the time we find a day that will work the one movie that we actually want to see is pretty much out of the theaters. Go figure.

Youth Group

I can't really post a lot about my job, for various reasons, including the fact that I work with minors and can't post any identifying information. Also the fact that I don't know who all reads this and anyone has access to it and if they want to could find this blog easy enough, so I don't want to post anything remotely incriminating or risky. However, I do want to say that I feel like our youth group is finally starting to go well. I don't get very many youth showing up (today was a large-ish group with a total of 7 youth; my biggest event to date had 11) but I'm slowly starting to see both a regular group of youth and some fresh faces almost every week, which I think is a good sign. I adverstise everything pretty much everywhere, so a lot of the responsibility is now in the hands of the youth, to actually come and then to reach out to others and invite them to come too. Hopefully soon they will start to realize that they need to take some responsibility too and work on getting their friends to come. It's starting to happen, but I've come to realize that buildng a youth group takes a long time.

Today we talked about the occult (a very seasonally appropriate topic given Halloween tomorrow) and the youth seemed really interested in it. They actually asked questions and wanted to know more after the leader gave his talk, so I was very pleased. I did have one youth who wanted to veer off into other stuff so that was an interesting test of my abilities, but overall I'm really happy with the way things are going. Being a youth minister is definitely a challenge but I'm happy that I'm finally starting to use theological knowledge and I hope I'm leading the teens closer to Christ. It's really hard only being part-time, but I'm working really hard to make it the best youth group I can given my time constraints.

Too Tired

Today I am just too tired to write; however, I haven't written in so long I feel like I have to get a token post out just so people have something to read. Or at least so people know I still care about my blog. I don't know, I just feel like I should post something today. Today was a crazy day. I'm not even watching Castle tonight, even though it's the best tv show in the entire world, because I'm going to bed as soon as I publish this. That's how tired I am. At least someone somewhere invented the internet so I can watch Castle online tomorrow. Whew.

Old Friends

Who is your oldest friend? How long have you been friends with this person? I actually have 2 people who tie for my oldest friend, and the friendships with them go back to middle school. 6th grade actually. I don't think I have any friends from elementary school that I am still in contact with. And even these friends I don't always see very often or even talk to a lot, but I definitely still consider them my friends. Sometimes I'm surprised that my oldest friendships don't go back farther, and othertimes I'm amazed and very happy that I am still friends with people that I met when I started middle school. I've been thinking about this because I just saw one of them this weekend for my sister-in-law's baby shower. (It's weird, because I have 2 friends who are also friends with some of my siblings because they all went to college together. It's a funny connection, and I actually think it's helped me keep in contact with them in some ways. It's not the same 2 friends, one is a middle school friend and one is a high school friend.) We've actually been able to hang out more in the past 6 months than we have in the past 6 years due to weddings and showers and her moving back to the cities for med school stuff. It's been really great seeing her more often. I often find that having a history as friends means that when you get together, the conversation is still easy and you know enough about the other person that it just feels normal and comfortable.

Movie Thoughts

I love movies. Always have, probably always will. Old movies, new movies, comedies, dramas, romances, action, almost everything except horror movies. I can't stand horror movies. I don't care how fakey they are, I almost always get nightmares from them. I think it's because I have such a good imagination that even if they are super unrealistic I automtically imagine them more realistically. But that's not what this post is about. Actually, I'm not sure what this post is about. Mayve just my general love for movies. Eric and I used to see movies in theaters fairly regularly, but since having Charlotte our movie going has dramatically decreased. We use Netflix but have only been getting one movie at a time plus Instant, and Instant hardly has anything so we don't get movies fast enough (we're switching our plan now that the prices are changing so we'll get more dvds). Plus, now that we don't see movies in theaters as much, we also don't see very many previews, and we don't know what is coming out next. Which makes it hard to know what is in theaters that actually looks good on those occasions where we have a free weekend during which we might want to see a movie. We've even had free movie passes for a couple of months now but haven't managed to get to the theater. We're just waiting for a good movie...

Those seem hard to come by these days too. I don't know if I'm pickier or if the general population is so un-picky that they will watch any old junk people make and then advertise enough, but I think the quality of most movies has gone down significantly. Supposedly with competition and everything it should really be going up, but I don't think it has. Maybe it really is culture and people demanding the same crap in new forms along with the increase in acceptance of crudeness, but I don't need or want to hear a million curse words in a movie nor do I need to see a bunch of naked people or sexed-up relationships or a ton of blood. And I'm not a prude, I promise. I don't mind blood or a little violence when appropriate, and even I occasionally find swear words funny when used cleverly. I just don't think those things make a movie good--in fact, I more often than not find that they are overused and take away from the actual plot of a movie. Or they just serve to cover-up the fact that there is no coherent plot. Which leads me back to my point that the quality of movies have gone downhill.

That being said, there are a couple of movies out right now I'd like to see. 50/50 is one of them. I've also heard good things about Moneyball but since I haven't seen any kind of preview for that I'm not so sure yet. Courageous also sounds promising for those who are into the feel-good, Christian movies. I'm disappointed I missed Captain America and I'm looking forward to the Avengers movie next summer. I think Eric and I are going to use our free movie passes (comes with free pop and popcorn too--how have we not used these yet?) to see 50/50. Until then, Eric and I are working our way through the Indiana Jones movies. Just the first 3. The newest one, well, I think that's only worth watching once. If that.