Odd questions

[cactuswatcher]

Have you ever tried to run a ball point pen out of ink?
I've had a throw-away ball point that I've been using off and on for quite a while. I could see the ink was getting low. Really wanted to finish it off so it didn't become a nuisance in the middle of something important. It took several weeks of using it as my preferred writing instrument, but it's out of ink this morning. Now I can recycle at least some of it. It was a nice writing pen (a PaperMate), but after a long time in the drawer the grip had started to deteriorate. Too cheap to throw it out till the ink was all gone!

What do you dream about over and over again?
One of the things I dream about repeatedly is university campuses. During the Bowl game last night, Missouri's self-promotion blurb featured the Columns, the university's very own beloved ruins. Missouri has buildings with similar architecture in groups: The Quadrangle or Red Campus, in deep red brick; White Campus, mostly in limestone; and The Mall between the two with most of the post 1960-style buildings. Not the most beautiful campus ever, but nice. Ohio State has more campus landmarks as befits a bigger campus: Orton Hall, Mirror Lake, the big statue of an early president of the university in front of the main library on the Oval. Beyond the Oval, Ohio State has some nice looking buildings and some of the ugliest eyesores imaginable jumbled up together in distinctly unpleasant fashion along former streets.

When I dream about being on campus it's a jumble of the two. Inside buildings it's all Missouri's Red Campus: high ceilings, maze-like floor plans, half-hidden rickety staircases, alarming burn marks on polished wooden floors. I had dreams of oddly behaved staircases long before J. K. Rowling made them a fixture of Hogwarts. Sometimes dream staircases didn't lead the same place every time though in my dreams they didn't move. Sometimes you had to jump over the railing of one staircase on to another set of stairs to get where you were going. Outside of buildings my university dreams are mostly Ohio State, rows and rows of buildings to walk through to get to the one you want, a downtown area a very long walk from campus, and a few very interesting stores to visit nearby. I have very distinct dreams about university parking lots, parking stickers and finding parking, though I never had a car on either campus.

Unlike high school dreams, in university dreams I usually don't seem to have forgotten to write my essay/to study for the big exam/to remember my locker number and locker combination. Usually I'm showing someone around, going to classes which I enjoy that somehow last only seconds, or eagerly am off to the stores to check for any new or exciting things.

Comments

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

Don't think I've ever tried to deliberately make a pen run ou tof ink, but your reasoning certainly has some logic to it if you use pens heavily. I always have more of a given pen type than I ever need, because it's all but impossible to buy them in anything smaller than a three or five-pack, and I use them so very seldom. These days, a single pen could last me five years, if the ink doesn't dry up before that. (My hands cramp so readily, that using a pen or pencil for more than a few minutes becomes very, very painful.)

My dreams tend to have a repetitive theme for at least two decades or more, much to my chagrin, since it's an annoying one-- frustration, denial or interference with whatever I'm trying to accomplish in the dream. Whether it's trying to find my way inside a building or down a street, or speak to a certain person, or trying to build something, midway through the whatever something will occur to subvert my intent. Very nearly every dream I have is like this.

I suppose that's pretty common, but the truly weird thing about most of my dreams is the alienness of them, and I mean that quite literally. Most of my dreams do not seem to take place on this planet, or plane of existence, but on/in some alternate reality. Objects exist that I've never seen, and therefore I have no idea how my mind could create them with its available memory data. The color of light sometimes differs from the light here, as if I had eyes with biologically different retinas. There are other strangenesses.

It's hard to describe it, and it would be fascinating if it wasn't so damn inexplicable and occasionally disturbing. One of the science-fiction stories I always wished to write over the years was about someone whose mind connects with alternate/parallel universes while he/she sleeps.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I used give-away pens when needed in high school, but got particular about the pens I used in college. Hand discomfort was an issue, so I started using thicker, more expensive pens. They jammed less, and took longer to dry out, so you could run one out of ink. Bic stick pens are much better lasting than the average retractable pen from my high school days, but they are too thin for comfort. Parker Jotters were my favorite, they fit my hand nicely and refills were easy to get. In grad school I switched to Pentel Rolling Writers, because I was writing about twice as much and friction of the pen on paper contributed to hand fatigue. I write much less now, but still like to try out new pens for comfort and how the ink looks on paper. I have way too many of them in the house.