Two years ago today, Geena and I were driving down Van Ness, on our way home from a book fair. A large building loomed in front of us blocking the horizon. I looked up at the San Francisco landmark and said "can you imagine what the skyline would look like if that building just disappeared?". Three days later, and after the smoke cleared, the once-obstructed horizon was again visible in a city three thousand miles away.

There was an incredible lightning storm! Lightning is very rare here in the bay area, but last night was the exception. I saw a bolt every 20 seconds or so for at least 45 minutes before I got tired of standing in front of the window. The lightning storm was probably about 5 miles east of our house, and traveled very slowly from south to north. Most of the lightning hit the ground somewhere behind the hills.

On the news, they were talking about a bunch of fires started by the lightning, so I went up to my window and saw this big plume right where the lightning was last night.

Smoky Dream Coincidence?

When I was about 12 to 14 years old, one of my fish grew some type of weird tumor near or on its eye. It couldn't swim too well anymore, and after a few days, it really couldn't do anything but slowly swim around on it's side. It was difficult for me to watch this fish slowly die, but there really wasn't anything I could do to help it.

One afternoon after school, I checked on the fish, and it wasn't moving much at all. I felt that the end was near, but I really didn't know for sure if the fish would just linger for days in that pitiful state. That's when I decided to try to communicate with the fish.

keep reading...

Ellie did something real cute while I was talking to Kevin on the phone. I wasn't there to see it, but Kevin says she reached out and petted Oliver twice. Go ahead and get your ooooh's and ahhhh's out right now (AHH!!! HOW CUTE!!! :)), cuz now you're entering the 'Dave is a freak' part of the story.

After he said Ellie was petting Oliver, I told him he should record that in the baby book so they'd never forget this day. About 15 minutes later, I went to the Baby website, and I noticed Kevin made an entry a few hours before. In the entry, Kevin refers to the Baby website as the "baby book". I don't recall either one of us ever refering to the website as a baby book before (at least not recently), so I was a little surprised. Why did we both independently call the website "the baby book" at the same time? Coincidence? Probably. The next story is freaky, though.

keep reading...