Wow. The past seven days have been pretty hectic — so much so that I'm a little shocked to see that it's been a week since I posted something here. Weird. Even more troubling, I haven't even been able to play with my new toy (I'm referring to the microcontroller).

Well, hopefully it'll calm down a bit. Election day is a good, decisive marking point. My subconscious thinks so, anyway: I've been having election dreams.

It's pretty unusual for me. I don't dream very often — not in a way that's coherent enough to remember, at least. But these were vivid and occurred in quicker succession than I'm used to.

The first one involved the deaths of both Charles' mom and Sommer. Although tragic, details remain fuzzy about the fate of the former. But I can say with confidence that Sommer died in a horrific rocket attack (delivered via helicopter) on a George Allen rally. What was she doing there? I'll leave it to Sommer to explain herself.

The second dream was a bit weirder. I was in an airport departure lounge, getting ready to be shipped off to Iraq with a number of friends, Starship-Troopers-style. Only we weren't going to fight enormous insectoid aliens, or even Iraqis. Instead we were being sent as media grunts, drafted against our will to report fluff pieces with a pro-America spin. More specifically, we were all divvied up to produce television segments on the different member nations in the so-called Coalition of the Willing. I got Eritrea, which is not actually a part of the aforementioned coalition. I was understandably worried about finding an angle for my reports.

Both dreams were weirdly affecting. I woke up from the first one despairing, genuinely unsure of whether the narrative's victims were alive or not. I woke up from the second one furious (although this was admittedly more because of some frustrating in-dream boarding pass problems I'd had with security than because I was being forced to sugarcoat a monstrously immoral war — that part was dandy).

Now, I'm no expert at dream interpretation. It's possible that my subconscious is actually more preocuppied with helicopters and TV news than with the election. But having any sort of political backdrop to my unwaking escapades is pretty weird, particularly given their rarity.

So, for what little it's worth: I suspect we'll only get four seats in the senate. Because the universe is unjust, and it seems likely to me that at least one race will be swung by a last-minute helicopter attack.