In which I view hoarding and panic to be signs of solidarity.

My brother and his wife are stranded at a hotel in Blacksburg, where they travelled for a job fair that may or may not be cancelled by the Snowpocalypse that is burying the mid-Atlantic region.

I'm sure they're thrilled to have made the journey from southern North Carolina for such an event. I assured them that, according to news reports, there is no food to be had anywhere in their area and that two feet of snow would soon shroud them and that I was certain they weren't nearly as panicked as they ought to be.

After reading about how people lined up outside of Trader Joe's before it even opened and how stores up and down the Atlantic coast were out of everything from milk and bread to cheese and wine (I'm glad to see that some people suffer and ration in raised-pinkie style), I feel almost compelled to hit Wal-Mart after work tonight to stock up on things I don't need because the White Apocalypse is not heading my way. Not yet, at least. March and April are when we do it up big out West.

In other news, I had a dream about Lisa From AP Prep Scores. That's the only name I know her by, and she calls a few times a week to get high school scores that we don't have.

Here's how it goes down:

Phone rings. Sarah answers.

"Hi Sarah, it's Lisa with AP Prep."

"Hi Lisa — how's it going?"

"Good. Listen — I was wondering if you had the Rock River/(fill in a school name here) score ...?"

(Sarah cups her hand over the receiver and shouts over at Bob/Ryan/David: "HAVE WE HEARD ANYTHING ABOUT THE ROCK RIVER GAME??")

Heads shake. No.

Sarah gets back on the phone: "Sorry Lisa — we usually don't get those 'til a day or so after the fact."

"OK. Thanks. Have a great weekend."

"You, too."

Lisa really is a nice, sweet person, and I don't think I could be paid enough to call all the rinky-dink newspapers in a region to get all the even rinkier-dinkier high school sports scores. I really admire her for doing it and for at least sounding as though she's smiling when I talk to her.

I hang up, and one of the guys (the same one, every time), sighs a big, throaty, gross sigh and says something along the lines of: "I don't know how many times we have to tell her that we don't get that information for a couple of days ..." And he does it trying to sound all pious about it.

"She's just doing her job. I wish more people were like that," I retort, feeling all pious myself and rather defensive of a very nice lady whom I've never met and probably never will meet. Doesn't matter. If everyone I dealt with on the phone was half as nice as Lisa With AP Prep Scores, I think I could be a little less cynical of people in general. Maybe.

So now my dream:

Scene: A derelict old building in downtown Gillette, which suddenly has all these great, old, narrow streets lined with towering brick buildings. And a great sushi place (none of this exists in Gillette). It's raining/hailing/ice storming so hard that windows are being shattered all over, and I'm trying to run down the streets, apparently from the house I grew up in, to get to the downtown area, passing a coworker's house that I broke into in a previous dream, when it was in another town (horrid tiny stairwells, by the way — like a dollhouse). I get downtown, and I don't want to take the alley, because in another previous dream, a creepy guy was there, and the alley took me to China, where I didn't know how to drive, and I wound up in a cheesy shopping mall with a bunch of obnoxious American tourists and Arab shopkeepers trying to get me to negotiate for jewelry I didn't need or want. So I duck into the first building I can, shattered windows and all, and it's a dormitory that doesn't belong to any college or university, and I lived in it in yet another earlier dream. So I'm navigating the nonsensical hallways and stairwells, flooded with water and hail, trying to get to Gillette Avenue. And when I get there, suddenly, I have to answer the phone, and it's Lisa With AP Prep Scores. She wants the Rock River score, and I shout down the street for someone who can get me the score. My pious, sighing coworker is there in a heartbeat, shouting at me and trying to grab the phone so he can scream at Lisa that we NEVER get those scores until at least the day after the game and to QUIT ASKING FERGODSAKES.

I really wish Gillette had a great sushi place.

And now, regarding reverse type:

Reverse type (sometimes) works in headlines. Big'uns.

Where doesn't it work? At all?

Blogs.

White-on-black blogs come dang close to inducing an occular migraine every time I try to read them. I swear they induce a little bit vertigo, too, if the reader stands up and tries to walk shortly after reading them.