blog@cliffdweller

In my dreams last night, I moved to Chicago. It wasn't the real Chicago, but a Seattle-San Francisco-Portland-Rome-Geneva-Prague-dream-hybrid-Chicago. I woke up one morning and decided to move. So I did. That day. Sight unseen.

My new roommate was another guy I know from Portland. He's at least a septuagenerian. He and his wife celebrated their 50th anniversary about 8 months ago in real life. Anyway, he had moved just hours before so he picked out the new apartment and got us all moved in.

When I got there, I gave myself the grand tour while he cooked dinner. The carpet was green shag. He had two cats. He said he saw a rat in the middle of the floor and I kept wondering why a rat would come out if there were two cats there.

I went up the stairs and saw the bathroom, and then the bedroom. We had bunk beds and he had claimed the top bunk already. I thought that was odd because he is literally in is late seventies in real life.

Then the phone rang. I had to run downstairs to the kitchen because in "the old country" they only have black rotary dial phones and they are only in the kitchen. It was TJ calling me from Caldera. He had heard I had moved and wondered what was up.

I had some specific observations about my new roommate that I didn't want to share with the new roommate standing right there, so I told him I'd call him back. I grabbed my iPhone and wandered out the door, thru the lobby and out the gate. The doors were those old dark wooden kind that have two doors that open out in the space of one doorway. Kind of like some old-world Mexico or Italy place. Or France. But it was Chicago.

The new roommate brought me my suitcase and I had to tell him to take it back inside.

After he gave me a key so I could get back in, I wandered to the curb and called TJ back. He answered on the 5th or 6th ring. I was telling him why I moved and asking him if he was going to join me and he was real quiet on the other end of the phone. He was talking, it's just the volume was so low I couldn't tell what he was saying.

A car drove up and picked me up. It was my new neighbor, determined to show me around town with a fabulous tour. I don't remember a single detail about the tour, except that my neighbor looked like Peter Sarsgaard.

I continued to chat with TJ as we drove around, but I have no clue what we said.

It was a weird dream. I should probably stop watching The History channel before bed. It seems to screw with my head a bit.