I'm creative, I'm an artist. I just like to do things with my hands. I like to create, so I just have lots of hobbies and -- like knitting, printmaking, sewing, quilting, like this kind of thing. And so often, people will -- like their immediate response to that is, “You could make money off of this.” And like for instance, this is, this wasn't even like a craft thing, but like I, I have very vivid dreams. I always have, so I write them down. And I wanted to make some sort of spreadsheet that could show what I can see. Like, who are the people -- sorry, there's a cat rubbing up against my phone because she desperately wants pets. Who are the people I dream about the most? Like, what kinds of things? So like, there was one time where I was reading back some dreams and I realized that I dreamt about stairs and elevators a lot. And if anyone had asked me if I had dreamt about stairs and elevators, I'd be like, “I don't know, probably not. Maybe a few times,” but it was a lot more than I thought. And so I just, like, I wanted to see common themes, common, like, objects that appear, common like -- like you know, how many times am I dreaming about flying or, you know, losing my teeth or, you know, things like that. An interesting aspect of this was that the people I dream about the most are my co-workers by far. But anyway, we were at a, at a work meeting. We were talking about, like, what's one thing that you're currently working on that you're excited about -- like, a non-work thing. And so I was talking about my dream spreadsheet and even showed a page that was like highlighted, because I was printing out all my dreams and I was highlighting things like, "Okay if it mentions a co-worker, it's this color. If it mentions a family member, it's this color, and then if it’s like, you know, mentioning a place or --" anyway. And the first reaction was so insane. You know, I know people who would pay for this like once you have this spreadsheet all worked out like, where they could just input their dreams and get like graphs and stuff, like, and someone else said that too. She's…

When I was about 14, my brother and I loaded up a steer to be taken to the market. The -- we'd sold the beef to some people. And we load it in the back of our pickup truck, which had side racks that you would use for transporting animals. And partway to the market, the steer decided he didn't want to be in there and he kept trying to jump out. There was no roof on the top of it. And so it was just side rails -- side racks that went up, and he was trying to jump over it and we had to stop the truck and my brother told me, "Get out and get on the rack and uh, keep him in,” you know, “Use --" we had, um, an ax handle, not with an ax on it -- an actual ax head on it, but you have an ax handle and if you tap them on the nose, they don't like to be tapped on the nose and we would use that to make cattle back off. But anyway, I said, "I can't do that. I'd be terrified to do that." And so, and so he said, "Well, you're gonna have to drive then." Of course, I didn't know how to drive. I was only 14, but he quickly showed me. It was a stick shift on the floor, and -- in this truck, and so he showed me how to, to put it into gear and to get it going and stuff, and I got it into gear but I could only get it into first gear. I couldn't figure out how you shifted up to second gear after you were in first gear. So here I am driving this truck with a steer in the back jumping around, my brother hanging on the side rails trying not to get himself killed, and we're chugging down the road. And then we had to turn on to the road where the meat market actually was. And when I tried to make that turn, of course, I don't know how to drive to start with and this thing is jumping around. So the, the vehicle is lunging back and forth and stuff and I overshot the corner and then I had to figure out how to get it in reverse to back up and go around…

And the postcard came in with a serial number, which is like a lottery number printed on the surface. And then the recipient of the card is invited to scratch off little circles beneath the series of numbers that are visibly printed. And if the scratched off numbers match the visible numbers then one has won a Toyota truck. So I received this postcard for many, many weeks or months on end and I kept scratching off the numbers and I never had a match until a couple of years ago. And all of a sudden, wham! The numbers that I scratched off matched the numbers that were visibly printed on the postcard, meaning that I had won a Toyota truck. Here's the catch. If your scratched off numbers match the visibly printed numbers you have three business days to call in to that Toyota dealership in Americus, Georgia to claim the truck you wi- -- you won. I visit my US Post Office box number a couple of times a week. And when I picked up this card, I picked it up on day three. But I picked it up after the close of business at the Toyota dealership in Americus, Georgia and discovered only after that business had closed for the day that I had won a Toyota truck. So I picked up my cell phone and I called the number immediately. And I was informed that the dealership had closed for the day. I called the next morning, and my call was not accepted. I had won a Toyota truck, but I had contacted the dealership just a few short hours too late.

Also on this trip, we got to -- we stayed in a hotel. And my daughter and I decided that we were kinda hungry and there was a Sonic Drive-In. And we had never been to one and it was in the parking lot just about from our hotel which was next to a Walmart and kind of a commercial area. So my daughter and I decided that we were gonna go down to the Sonic and they had some picnic tables outside and we were just gonna eat, get a snack. Well, my dad saw that we were gonna go and he wanted to come with us and I, "Okay." So he and his wife, you know, got their stuff and came along with us no problem.  We get down there and we realized that this is not a Sonic where you can go inside and order inside like you would in McDonald's or any place else you had to order from the speakers outside and they had -- even though they had this picnic area, they had speakers and one of those big boards and you ordered outside. So my daughter says, "Well, we'll just order out here." My dad says, "No I wanna order inside." I said "Dad, you can't. They don't have -- it's not open to be inside. You can't go in and sit down." "Well, that's what I wanna do." I said, "You can't do it. It's not set up that way." So he goes to the door. The door is, is a solid door. It doesn't have glass in it or anything else and it's marked kitchen in large letters, “kitchen and loading zone”. It also has words underneath of it that said the “kitchen and loading zone” that says “this is not a customer door.” Okay. Should be obvious. My dad insists no. So he, he opens the door, the door was unlocked. He opened the doors and goes inside. My daughter looks at me and I look at her and she goes, "We've never seen this man before. We don't know who he is. When all else fails, we try to run." He comes right back out and he comes over. He grumpily says to us, "Why didn't you tell us you couldn't go?" I said, "We did tell you couldn't go. Plus it says kitchen, customers -- er, no customers…

When we were in Iceland, two summers ago, I booked a tour with a group that was called, like, Super Jeep Tour Company. And they -- the tours are literally on like super Jeeps, souped up Jeeps -- or in my case, it turns out it was a Ford truck -- but they're pumped up. They have like an extended passenger cab. They have huge wheels and they are set so that they can be like inflated or deflated, depending on the terrain. And they do this so that you can go up on glaciers and other places and go like off-roading. So we booked this tour and when we were -- it was our very first day in Iceland and the way Reykjavik handles all of the many, many, many tour companies and buses that come through is that they have specially appointed bus stops throughout the city where buses can come and pick up tourists. You know, like, tour buses can come.  And so as we're waiting at our assigned stop which fortunately was right across, like, the street from our hotel, so very convenient, I kept seeing all of these tour buses pull up. And sometimes they would have signs in the window that were like easy for you to figure out who they were picking up for, but not all of them did. And I found myself like concerned that we would somehow, like, not recognize our driver or our vehicle. Um, you know, or we would get on the wrong, you know, bus or whatever, I was gonna have to, like, ask everybody. So I'm, you know, just being my usual kind of nervous self, like looking at every bus that comes by and stops. And then this big car, this big truck turns the corner and I started to laugh because I was like, "I don't know what I think I was worried about, but that is obviously for us. This is obviously our Super Jeep tour." Which, as I said, it was not in fact actually a Jeep brand, it was Ford. But it was huge. Like, you practically needed a ladder to get up into the seat. I mean, you did -- I did have to, like -- it was basically climbing up, you know, like there was, like, a running board and then, like, another thing and I'd get up and…

Oh my God! I had told them, I was like, "Yeah, I don't know about the fireworks. They're pretty dangerous." And like last time I went downtown a few years ago, I was walking around downtown. And I was crossing the bridge by the community college where the park is, this bridge. And someone just beyond the bridge was lighting off fireworks kinda like on the curb. And they did it wrong. They did it wrong. Somehow it wasn't stable enough and the firework tipped over into the street, pointing at people. And it was shooting off at the people like an explosion. I was like, "No!" It was one of those ones that is supposed to go up really high and go "Pew, pew, pew, pew! Psh, psh, psh!" But this one was going into the street, so all you heard was screams. And I was running away.

What was really surprising was how green New Mexico was. We've flown -- 'cause we're from Hawaii -- so we've flown from Hawaii over to Michigan. And the route, the flying route, the airline route, goes across the Southwest. When you're looking down from the airplane, it's all desert. That whole southwest region of the country is pure desert, it's just a beige, sand color. And you wonder, "How in the world did any life exist or survive out there?" Because it looks like -- how in -- how do you find water to stay alive? How do you endure the heat that's in the desert? So we're -- hour after hour after hour -- going through New Mexico. And it was so green. It was such a stark contrast to the deserts of Arizona and the desert of Texas. This one we didn't go through Texas, but we've been to Texas -- the room attendant on the first -- the first room attendant going to LA, he said, "Yes, don't bother with the Texas Eagle route because it's all desert. Nothing to see." But New Mexico had those big plateaus and the mesas, um, the -- it's not canyons but it's these water erosion formations. It had hills and mountains and forests and trees, shrubbery, grasslands for the cattle. And, you know, there was cattle and horses and bear. It was surprising. We just didn't expect New Mexico to, to be beautiful to look at. But the colors of the rocks, they were red and pink, besides the beige sand color. The formation of the mesas and the plateaus was, it was just really lovely to look at.