It’s Sunday am and I am not trying to remember my dreams. I know there were car/space ships, a corpse in my trunk that I needed to take to work, a woman in a matrix style body suit fighting the ghost of said body with a sword. All images fairly tv/movie related. Oh, there was this bit where we were walking a huge white tiger into the Galleria for an auction since the research facility at which he had lived had been closed from lack of funding. Friday night’s dreams had the recurring fish tank theme – where I built several interconnected giant fish tanks as a public aquarium for people to come and enjoy and I began transferring my fish into the tanks which rapidly grew and multiplied – there was an odd moment when I had a bucket full of fish and the water was thick with shedding dog hair from Sebastian and I had to get the dog hair out of their gills before I put them in the new tanks. What does pet overlap mean? Once the fish were in the big tanks they grew into gigantic fish on the premise that some fish grow to fit their environment. Over the course of the dream the public aquarium turned into a bar and then a gas station and then we went into a back room of said bar/gas station/aquarium for a political debate – we were in a red velvet room with antique couches and curtains everywhere. On one couch there were five democrats and on another couch there were five republicans. A moderator sat in between and a large group of my friends sat facing them. I was having a hard time following the debate and eventually when they took a break I found myself taking pictures with a box camera from the early days of photography. Odd. I don’t remember enough of these dreams to make sense of them.

The other night when Angela was over she made a comment that reminded me of this friend of mine Beth from undergrad years. I knew Beth was living in Seattle so on a whim I called information and got a number for her. When I called the number it turned out to be a fax line, so Friday at work I sent a fax to this number – I wrote in big messy letters, “Is this Beth from Chicago who went to school in the ville? Karl wants to know. If this is not that Beth please ignore” and then at the bottom, my phone number. She called last night while I was out so I called back at the new numbers she left (she asked about my spleen so we know it’s the right Beth) and left silly messages and this web address, so say Hi Beth everyone, as she could be reading this right now. My best Beth story has to do with a trip we took to White Sands New Mexico, but that will have to wait. It would make a great chapter in a book filled with the postmodern sense of journeying.

Yesterday I was indecisive and couldn’t muster the energy to make a plan. It was eventually gorgeous out, but the rainy morning had me feeling like hibernating. After opening all the windows and doing dishes, laundry, and cleaning the grout in the upstairs shower I decided to sit outside, read and drink beer. A nice afternoon and then into evening it got windy and cold. Angela came over and my indecisiveness prevented us from going to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as we missed the start time so we decided to surprise Mary at her new place down in south city. Mary lives right by the Bevo Mill –

From the Bevo website:
Prior to World War I, August A. Busch, Sr. and his architects studied Flemish architectural styles with the intention of building an authentic windmill in St. Louis. In 1915 he chose a spot exactly halfway between the brewery and Grant's Farm, his home. Mr. Busch used the beautiful Mill Room as his private dining room for many years, while the remainder of the restaurant was opened to the public in 1917.
From the beginning, the Bevo Mill became a favorite family restaurant, boasting of several unique architectural details. The exterior is finished with stones personally gathered by Mr. Busch from Grant's Farm. Following a German and Dutch tradition, a pair of storks are mounted on top of the chimney to ensure good luck. The vaulted ceilings of the foyer and Mill Room have groined arches which end in stone-carved gnomes, originally exhibited at the Paris exposition of 1889. All tiles, light fixtures and millwork are original, carefully restored through 1984-1986. The brewery spent 20 months and over one million dollars to renovate what is now South St. Louis's favorite dining facility. It is now operated by the Hanon family and can be yours for any special occasion.
I went to Bevo for happy hour on my twenty first birthday, a tame night as I was flying out to California the next day for my brother Andy’s wedding.
Last night we thought about ordering a pizza, but couldn’t get through to Mary as she was online, so we got two sacks of White Castle instead. We stopped by shop-in-save for Gin, tonic, Red Bull, Potatoes to make hash this morning, and a ham bone for the dog. Mary was surprised that we dropped in. I was able to put up a blind for her in her kitchen that I’d been meaning to get up and we checked out all her improvements. We flipped on her tv and Repo Man was just starting so we watched that with gin & tonics until Angela was falling asleep and that was it for Saturday. South city, particularly around Bevo, is real old St. Louis. All of Mary’s neighbors were out doing BBQ with kids on bikes zooming up and down the street. She planted several kinds of roses yesterday and I hope they’re safe from this weeks cold snap. Angela just asked me to turn the heat back on, so off I go to make hash from scratch – a first attempt for me.