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11-25-94

There is a whole group of the people from the Orange County Corel - Ventura Users Group. We are all over at someone�s house waiting for the latest issue of the Style Sheet to be modemed to us so that we can edit it. We are in this giant room lake a fire station barracks only there are computers at the foot of each bed. Ruth comes in and gets in bed with me. �I�m tired of waiting for you!� I ask her about who is staying with Toby. �He�s asleep, I left him along. He�ll be okay.�

I am in Kathy's cubical at work and I see that there is a ceiling so I climb up above the ceiling and there is a sword and some flyers for dungeons and dragons. There is also a small black and white TV in the crawl way. The sword is real gaudy with lots of fake gems and looks like one of the Spanish trade jobs from the World Bazaar stores. I look at the sword and turn on the TV and then put everything back the way that I found it.

I am with my son� Cub Scout pack. We are outside in this park. We are standing under this great tree and I decide to climb it. I am worried that I will scuff my new wing tips. I climb it anyway. All the Club Scouts are looking up in the tree and asking me what I�m doing.

I climb down from the tree and one of the fathers from Cub Scouts has his motorcycle all apart and is working on the engine. I ask him what is wrong and he tells me that the brakes keep failing. I try to point out that taking the engine apart is not going to fix the brakes.

I get is the line that is forming next to the tree. I yell over to the guy working on the bike. �Have my father look at that, he is a mechanic!� The line turns out to be a food line for some kind of Mexican cafeteria. The line winds past the office where the sword is hidden. There are a lot of XQB�s in the line with me, Yeates and Ernie and Veitch.

There is this loud girl in line that keeps complaining. I say something to Tom about her and she starts to bitch at me. �You think I�m dumb don�t you? Well I�m not dumb! Just ask me a question. I�ll show you how dumb I am.� �Okay, if a particle is traveling at 5 light-years per minute how many miles will it travel in 5 minutes?�

I leave the girl trying to figure out the problem and finally get to the head of the line. The food service is straight out of high school lunchroom. These old women in hair nets are standing behind bus trays serving slop with big stainless steel spoons.

I take my plate of slop back to the table. The table is right next to the tree were the guy is trying to fix his motorcycle brakes by taking his engine apart. I hear his telling how his brother in law took out his bike and wrecked it because the brakes still weren�t working after he spent all weekend working on them.

We are setting at this folding table with this disgusting food in front of us. There is a whole table of comic book folks. I am setting next to Ernie and Tom Yeates and Rick Veitch is at the other end of the table in a Doctor Blaspheme T-shirt. �Hey Rick, I�ve got this great title for a comic book. It�s Rick Veitch Must Die!� I look at the head of the table and Rick is gone. I look back at the table and my plate is gone.

�He can�t take it. I was just going to tell him this really great plot line.� I am talking to this really heavy Black dude with dreadlocks that I always see at San Diego Con. �You see it is based on Maximortal�... {I realize in my dream that my plot is fake because my comic store stopped carrying the book after issue 3 and I have not read the end [hint, hint, Rick] } ...�so the aliens are pissed off and hire a hit alien to kill Veitch and he takes off on the Silver Surfer�s board and it is this chase across the universe!�

After I finish the plot Rick comes back and walks over to a cart at my end of the table. He picks up my plate from behind the bus tray and puts it back in front of me. I look at it and don�t know if I�m really that hungry.

Raven wakes me with her crying. She is upset because her brother, Toby, has already crawled in bed with us in the night and now there is not room for her. �You can have my place!� I say. I get up and come into the studio and launch my word processor.