In other, unrelated news, last Thursday I played a session of D&D with a couple of friends, one of them taking on the role of DM. The last time I played tabletop RPG was, what, six? eight years ago? I forgot how much fun this was. Ho, Corlan! Looking forward to your future exploits.

So I'm sitting in the kitchen, browsing the net. Maybe I get lost in thought, or maybe I'm captivated by the afternoon sunlight gliding over the red, brick buildings out the window. Maybe it's something else entirely. At some point the computer screen fades and shuts down. Some energy saver subroutine kicks in and the OS takes certain steps to conserve power. As the screen faded into a black mirror I saw my reflection and didn't recognize it. You know how you look at someone else's face? And I mean really look. Not some passing glance on the street, or a dead eyed stare in the city bus. I started tracing the contours of my face, as if seeing them for the first time. the cheekbones, the eyebrows. Sagging eyelids, frozen in a perpetually half-sad expression. Mimic wrinkles growing from the alas of my nose round the corners of my mouth. Lips twisted in a frown, cracked in places from the cold. Three day stubble. When did I become a total stranger?

A recurring dream. We're leaving her parents house. It's the last rowhouse on one of many small streets crossing a hill, each street overlooking the city like a step on a staircase. The sun has just now set and you can still feel its heat permeating the air. We reach the crossing. She wants to turn right, go down the hill, but I insist we climb it for one last look at what remains of the waning day. As we climb, the hill seems to become steeper. By the time I reach the summit, she's been there for a couple of minutes. I'm panting, out of breath, as I look on the meadows and forests rolling down the other side of the hill into the distant horizon, with the huge, golden disc of a full moon, just barely risen. I wake.

Empty night streets, the warm summer air and a bike. Sometimes just that is enough. Sometimes.

I dreamt I was heading up some sort of Martian insurrection. Not much detail. Just something about being scheduled for a going to orbit via conventional rocket, as the orbital elevators were either bombed our under control of pro-Earth forces.