I haven't even been reading any Lovecraft lately

I'm going to write this down in case I want to refer to it in the future.

Normally,

"Normally" is probably not quite the correct word to use here, except I've become familiar (although not accustomed) with very vivid nightmares.  So...

Normally, I have these extremely vivid and weird nightmares when I'm having trouble sleeping.  They usually happen when my wife wakes me up when she gets home from work late at night and I've already been asleep for an hour or two.  I can never really get completely back to sleep for the rest of the night and seem to be locked into a dream state that never ends.  Last night was not one of those nights, so I don't know where this one came from.

I was, for some reason, being shown through the house of some extremely rich guy.  He was showing off his place to me.  It was the most outlandish house I had ever seen.  It was constructed in a series of cubes--picture a floor layout like a checkerboard.  The black squares are open areas for human habitation, with furniture and all the other stuff you'd expect to see in a house.  The red squares are gigantic aquariums.  At first, they were filled with beautiful tropical freshwater fish.  Farther in were saltwater fish.  Even farther on, it got weirder.

At one point I suddenly noticed a thing in one tank that looked like a very large alligator with armored plates covering its body something like a turtle.  It's head was shrouded in tentacles.  A large fish swam in front of it and just as I thought something like wow that's a big fish the alligator-thing's head suddenly jetted out in front of the tentacles and snapped up the fish, then the whole head disappeared back into the tentacles and although it was in a tank full of water I could hear it swallow the fish whole.  It made a sound like a large metal pipe groaning.  I don't know how else to describe it.  So I started thinking that it was time to leave and oh God I hope that glass doesn't break.  So of course, that's what happened.  Utter chaos reigned.  I was running.  The alligator-thing was out of the tank and running after me.  I knew I couldn't outrun it, but then suddenly an even more enormous dinosaur-looking thing that was all slippery, leather green skin shot out from behind it and swallowed it up like a kid would swallow a jelly bean.  That's it, I thought, it's time to wake up.  So I started slapping myself to try to wake myself up.  Everything faded and I was left sitting in the middle of nothingness.  Just an endless open field with no grass or trees.  The ground was hard-packed earth.  Well, I thought, I'm still dreaming but at least the monsters are gone.  Then I really woke up.  After a trip to the bathroom and a glass of water, I went back to sleep and slept peacefully until my alarm went off at 5 AM, as usual.

Last Monday was a really tough day of work because of the rain and the cold.  Tuesday was quite a lot better, and today was extremely easy.  I finished my assignment by 10:30 this morning.  So now I'm looking forward to four days off work.  I'm not planning anything for Thanksgiving, not even turkey (I'll eat it, but there are lots of other meats I'd rather eat).  I'm going to attempt to smoke a roast tomorrow in my smoker which I've sort of "repaired" after the fire box rusted out.  I'll try to get some pictures of it tomorrow and maybe someone out there will like what I've done and find it useful.

When my dad saw what I'd done, he just stood there looking at it silently with a small smile.  "I've done a few test fires, and I think it's gonna work," I said.  "Well," he replied, "I can't see why it wouldn't."

Stay tuned...