It's 7am and I can't sleep. Wasn't able to go to bed until 2am. Supposed to work in a couple hours. Having major stress attacks over this god-damned house situation. I should have listened to my intuition and said "no" when I saw that first damn leak and just been a bastard about them fixing it and everything else. I'm just too fucking nice, wanting to make everyone happy and needing a larger house.

I eventually managed to drag myself back to bed after about two hours. I crashed for a bit, had a mostly unrecalled dream that ended with my being an up-and-coming movie star supposedly dating some snobbish blonde starlet who, honestly, I didn't think was all that and wanted to change me into some materialistic prissy-boy.

I ended up, I think, walking off with Lindsay Lohan. Which was better than spending the morning tossing and turning thinking about the house issues and having unrecalled-but-vaguely-unsettling dreams. Then the kids started the usual morning's World War between themselves in the living room, which destroyed all further chances at either sleep or nailing Lohan ("he crudely suggested in a fit of rude humor and provocative pique meant to lighten his own weighty mood").

Unfortunately, I'm so messed up over this situation that -- er, the house situation, not the Lohan one -- despite intellectually knowing I was supposed to work at 11am today, I set my alarm for...11am. Yep. Luckily, Jen remembered at about a quarter-to and came in to wake me up. So I rushed about to get ready, didn't have time for breakfast, and made it to the station at about 5-after, which thankfully didn't cock-up the afternoon scheduling too badly.

But I'm hungry, tired and stressed, and I have a nine-hour shift ahead of me. Then another restless night before our realtor and lender are back in their offices and we hear more about what's going on and can make plans based on that.

Oh, and icing on all this: my XP install didn't last. I couldn't get any of my programs to install properly so I need to blow away the partition again and do a clean reinstall.

I had the coolest geek dream ever this morning: I was a ninja-assassin kidnapped and raised by pirates, and I had a faithful dog. You hear? I was a ninja-pirate with an animal companion. Clearly, this is a sign and means I am the Prophet of Geekdom.

At least until the guy comes along who has the dream of being a ninja-pirate with a faithful animal companion and rides a dinosaur-monkey that shoots lasers from its head. Except that's just crazy.

I have now completely forgotten what the heck I was going to write about. Oh well, here's a run-down of things I recall from the past week:

Damn cold. Fifty below zero. Kids stayed home from school and actually let me sleep-in without destroying the house. Amazed. Then they went berserk in the afternoon. Not amazed at all.

Jen and I getting one night a week to ourselves with my work schedule and card game, in which I have finally ended my months-long losing streak (begun in November) with a table-sweep.

We are using our time together to play Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires, and I am currently loving the nunchaku! Holy gods, the devastation they work!

After eleven years, mounds of paperwork, waiting, more waiting, and more waiting, a hearing, and then more waiting, finally a favorable judgment. Now? More waiting. Jesus.

Couple of dreams:

I'm upset I'll never know where the Tardis went! (alien planet, zombie alien infestation, Night of the Living Dead, Doctor Who mash-up) Our ultimate escape from the zombie cockroaches and weirder things was the Tardis, which the Doctor has supposedly stored in the upstairs...but which he now can't find until he cryptically solves the problem of where it is right before I wake up.

Then there was the dream about being trapped in a dream-world where we were being experimented upon by aliens, except the dream world had rules even they couldn't figure out allowing us to escape and enlist what turn out to be memories against them, and with that we were fighting a guerrilla war against them all while completely uncertain anything we were doing was actually happening or if anyone else (or even ourselves) was real.

I don't know why, but I've had a number of vivid zombie dreams lately.

The other night I had this dream where zombies invaded a large city, possibly New York, where we were living in an apartment in one of those high-rise skyscrapers. It was almost Christmas-time, a warm one but with a little snow. There was blood and screaming and running.

And there was a cabal of mad scientists with skinless zombie-gorillas in cages, all their muscles red and bared for the world to see, ready to be released upon the unsuspecting public.

We desperately sought out supplies to stock our shelters -- large steel boxes with time locks and all the amenities of home -- created to try and ride out the invasion. Then our neighbors discovered our shelters, and my wife said she couldn't abandon all of them, for she was the last library of the world.

The dreams may be because I've been thinking about and working on The Children of Uru a bit lately and because I watched both I Am Legend and The Last Man on Earth around a week ago with my oldest daughter.

I've also ordered History is Dead -- an anthology of zombie-related stories set throughout history. I admit, I ordered it for the story about Viking zombies.

My oldest daughter is really getting into the old horror movies; she liked "Last Man..." up until the ending, I quote, "That's the end? That was stupid." And I was forced to agree; it kind of was stupid. Too abrupt, not enough build-up.

We also watched "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" over the last two nights, at her insistence. She fell asleep half-way through the first time since it was so late (well after midnight, if I recall correctly), and so we finished it yesterday afternoon. If we'd had it her way, she wanted to finish it that night when I woke her up ("No, my eyes betrayed me. I'm not falling asleep again.").

My other two daughters also watched the ending half with us. My middle daughter sat with her hands balled up in front of her mouth in that unconscious "nervous and worried" pose people fall into when they are really focused on something -- it was cute. And despite being scared, the younger two refused to be chased out of the room, though my son ran out the minute he was told it was a horror movie.

Oh, and my oldest daughter also wants to do a short film for Chiller's next Halloween film contest.

Last night I dreamed I was interviewed for a gaming podcast, but it seemed kind of like it was being done as a favor, not because the interviewers were interested in talking to me.

This was after sitting at home playing this odd version of Super Mario Bros. where you didn't die if you fell, but entered this weird, tilted cloud world. Then Steve, from work, was leaving and I was showing him out, but ended up having to try to lock an evil ghost-presence back up in the (does not exist in real life) basement/garage of the radio station because Steve accidentally left the door open as I was showing him out.

It started to try and escape into the house, so I had to Thor's Hammer it back into the darkness, where it lurked almost invisible, angry and waiting.

At first, when I woke up, I couldn't recall what the interview was about...as the invasion of the mutant seahorse-shaped leeches with neon fins and edging -- produced through natural selection after reckless biosphere contamination of the local fishing pond by these other gamers -- took priority.

Then I recalled they were interviewing me because, like a couple of others, I had split off from some local game company on friendly terms and formed my own company, and we were discussing the movement of company diversification through the train-and-split tactic. And Clinton R. Nixon was there.

Frustratingly, after two of my daughters showed up for me to babysit and the gamer girls present at the interview-cum-party-cum-fishing-trip ooh'd and ahh'd over them, one of the gamers took my wallet and cell phone. They turned up on a coffee table after some searching, but it was rude that someone had simply taken them and moved them without saying.

Then the leeches came.

The fools! They should have never allowed the leech-fish to interbreed!

I don't remember more than this: I was fighting the Master with Dr. Who, and "Kiss Me Deadly" was playing in the background, as though it were a movie soundtrack. Apparently, I have been listening to too much 80's rock and glam metal lately.

Also, I doubt anyone is actually reading my NaNo entries, but the last one was pretty good, I think. The part about zombies, at least, was fairly funny. Anyone actually read it?

So I had this dream the other night that was a cross between Spongebob Squarepants, Ned's Declassified, and Mad Max (what a mix!). Obviously, I have been watching too much Nickelodeon lately, and the rest must be from all my recent musing regarding The Children of Uru.

I was trying to escape Earth with the last woman alive, alternately, I was the last woman on Earth trying to avoid capture -- the dream was never quite clear on that -- regardless, there was a forgotten rocket-spaceship I knew about waiting. Crazed, Nickelodeon-style hijinks in underwater middle schools and car chases across desert wastelands ensued. And Barry White was a neon-colored, spike-throwing electric eel (you know when you get something like that, you can't go wrong).

No, this is not going to be this year's NaNo entry.

The universe just gave me an early birthday present: three days of being bedridden sick and missing work (still not completely recovered), and today the backlight blew on my relatively new 19" LCD. Grouse. Bitch. Complain. ADDENDUM: Monitor is surprisingly still under warranty (positive!), but repair requires sending in the ORIGINAL invoice which I almost certainly no longer have (negative!), but I can probably use a copy printed from merchant's website (positive!).

Because you should never have a negative without a positive, I have had freaky surreal dreams the last few days (more so than usual). Chasing singing whales swimming down a slide-river to the ocean. The next night detective crime story mixed with Care Bears, Battlestar Galactica (the original), and black witchcraft. From floating islands to fascist carnivals to the dark woods of Northern Minnesota: a story of slavery and freedom, discovery, sound effect banks, pre-teen cartoon shows, time travel, teenage hijinx with evil Pokemon and horror. Quote: "Well, I want to know how she got gold nipples." GOLD NIPPLES! Holy crap.