09-21-05 @ 9:08 am EDT

My head is killing me! >_< I was writing an e-mail I owe, and got about halfway through, but decided to put it on hold another day because I have to think it all over, and after a while that completely drains me. (I'm not saying I hate e-mail. Just that it takes me a bit to respond because of this.) So I set that aside, and guess I'll just type this, just to show I'm still alive. Though my head is killing me.

I keep thinking of this place I dreamed about recently. I've fallen in love with this place. This entry may run very long because I think I'm going to use it to post some dreams I've had recently that have stuck with me, including this one. But basically, it was a Great Lake at the edge of a pine forest, and it was so beautiful. Even better than the imagery was the feeling I got from the dream. That this place was MINE and I could always return to it whenever I wished. I wish I could dream that again. -_- I would love for that place to be real.

I'm starting to feel anxious now of typing this entry because I'm starting to feel sad. This is one reason why I don't post much in Skew. I actually have a "backlog" of entries I've meant to post over the months, which I never got around to because by the time I logged on and had time to post them, I no longer felt like sharing anything publicly, and felt like a total waste. Including my last attempt at posting these dreams. So maybe this entry will end up in that long listing of non-entries...I mean to post them SOMEDAY, if I ever feel good enough long enough...I actually wrote an entry about our first DVD player, which I never posted, and since then the VCR part of that DVD player has proven to be faulty, and so now we're back to the old VCR and no DVD player...so, so much for that entry.

(I TOLD Ma to pay $10 more for the Sanyo...but NOOOOOOO.)

Anyway...do I have anything actually of value to say? :/ Probably not. I've gone looking for more Michigan webcams lately since my favorite one's been down for a while (they've had a new cam on backorder, it turns out--I am such a chickens**t reading these people's response to me asking if their cam will return, thinking that they're bitching me out for bothering them about something as stupid as a webcam, when it turns out they're wondering where their cam is too!), and found a few nice ones, including a nice one at Eagle Harbor on Lake Superior...most of them don't run all night but I can see the last shot of the day and then some early ones before I log off. I wish I knew where some more truly good webcams were, but I often don't care for webcams if I have no personal connection to them, no matter how tenuous--and those are hard to find. The Cheboygan "webcam" is actually just a stupid-ass still image from AUGUST 2004 on the TV 7&4 website. Jackasses can't even shell out for a real webcam in my home city! Cripes! And the two Petoskey cams I used to watch both disappeared early this year. :( I wonder why they got rid of them...I liked to watch them. One was of a big clock out on Little Traverse Bay and we used to drive by that all the time on my way to college. *sigh* The Shepler's Mackinaw City bridgecam also vanished last year and never came back. Where did it go? The St. Ignace one is still there, but not the Mackinaw City one. :/

Do you know what my dream cam would be? One set up by Arch Rock on Mackinac Island. High enough to catch the top of the arch and the water down below--maybe one from the fence, so it could even get a vantage point of the shore road. Awesomeness! I would kill (or send this killer headache as a sort of...hit-headache) for such a cam. One that would run all night, and throughout the winter. I would love so much to see the moon shining on Arch Rock and Lake Huron, and the snow covering the arch. I know--such a cam is technically and economically impossible. I only just realized the other day what a pain it must be to get that backordered cam shipped because this is an ISLAND we're talking about--they have to get stuff FLOWN IN in the winter! >_< Duh. But wouldn't that just be the world's best cam? Arch Rock...Lake Huron...shore road, water, moon, snow...*sigh*

After that, I could go crazy with ideas for cams at Cave of the Woods, and Sugar Loaf, and Croghan Water, but that's just getting ridiculous because what would you see but a bunch of dark at night, and maybe tourists or a rabbit during the day. Well, *I* would still like it.

Cave of the Woods cam...*sigh* -_-

Now my stomach hurts too. >_<

Another entry I meant to post the other day, and didn't get to. I made a full (?) listing of all the books I've read on Michigan, Great Lakes, and Algonquin Indians, the books I plan to read from online, and the books I'd like to read if I could obtain them (wish list). I recently won one such book...Ruth Landes's Ojibwa Religion & The Midewiwin. This book has apparently had only two printings to speak of. :/ Which I find inexcusable and strange. I bought Landes's The Ojibwa Woman a long while back, a book I'd seen before but had neglected to buy because I thought it would be dull since I only cared about the mythology. But I got curious and bought it anyway. It was a good book especially since I like to learn more about the traditional culture now and not just the myths. So I thought Landes's other books would be nice too; she has another called Ojibwa Sociology or some such. I really wanted the Midewiwin one but couldn't find it. When this copy came up on eBay I did a little looking. There was a printing in the 1930s, then another printing by a different publisher in the '60s, which was the one I was interested in. Why none since then? Surely a newer printing would be cheaper than a first edition on eBay. But Amazon doesn't even have a listing for the '60s edition! They have listings for all SORTS of out-of-print books; I can't understand why they don't have Landes's book.

Well, so I went to Google and searched there. And there are more first-edition '60s copies for sale on other sites...upwards of $100 and more!! I found THREE copies and the cheapest was like $100! :O What?? No way! But apparently so. Nobody's thought to reprint Landes's books aside from The Ojibwa Woman so they're just not available anywhere except as first editions. Hideous! Well, I told myself I'd bid ONLY a certain amount, tops, and went and put my bid in with no hope whatsoever because two other people had already bid. -_- Oddly mine was highest. Well, there was still 15 minutes left when I did this (I had the luck of it ending when I was actually online). I still figured somebody would snipe it out from underneath me...had that happen with a map I bid on once. They have software that can put in a bid for you at the LAST minute and I'm pretty sure that person did that because they bid out of nowhere with TWENTY SECONDS left. I was so upset that I shook and cried with anger; I was so sure I would win that map. (It was a Mackinac Island map...I'm no longer upset since I found Wood's Historic Mackinac online. They can have their sniped map. They probably just bought it to tuck it away in a drawer somewhere. Pfft.) Well, I figured somebody would do that with Landes's book, and I would just have to wait for a better time since after this, I couldn't bid higher because I have to start saving for my upgrade...not even sure if I'll make it, I'm cutting it so close. o_o (Though WC's server troubles lately have me wondering if another upgrade will be worth it? They got rid of chat "because of the instability of the server" or some such and "We don't know if it'll be coming back," and they seem to have removed SOMETHING from the members' dropdown menu, but I can't recall what it was. Hmm.)

Well, I told myself not to refresh the page until the auction was officially over. And I made myself do that. Then refreshed it and...I actually WON the thing. o_o Huh. I had to keep checking just to make sure. Neither of the other bidders even bothered. And they COULD have, because I checked their other wins lately and they both had more than enough money to afford it! Either they didn't think a third person would show up and bid on it at the last minute, or else they didn't want it as much as I'd thought they would. In any case, I won the book, so that's one more off of my wish list. Which is pretty good, considering it's not available anywhere else for cheaper than $100. (I think I paid $27. I outbid the others by $1.50, I believe. I didn't even notice that until the auction was over.)

I hope I'm not jinxing this talking about it before I've even received the item in question. The seller marked it as payment received just yesterday, so... :/

I lost my train of thought. o_o

Well anyway...got the book. Looking forward to seeing what Landes has to say about the Midewiwin. There was another good-looking Midewiwin book there once, but the seller was in Canada and another buyer got it so...pfft. Maybe another day. At least it HAS a listing at Amazon, but I think it's on special order there. Piffle.

I would even look into Amazon Marketplace or whatever because eBay Stores are easy to use, but it looks like you HAVE to use a credit card/credit card number in your Marketplace interactions...how lame is that! Even eBay doesn't require that, you only have to do it if the SELLER insists. That sure cancels out a lot of potential customers. I used to have a Webcertificate number I could use, but I haven't used that account in ages, so it's probably been deleted. :/ I've even considered asking for someone else's credit card number to use just to verify who I am or that I'm a legitimate buyer. ! Like I know anybody who'd be that dumb! *I* would never rip anyone off, but it's a ridiculous thing to ask, and on the other hand, for all I know Amazon insists on credit card PAYMENTS, too. Piffle on that. Especially since you can buy stuff direct from Amazon THEMSELVES without a credit card number. o_o ?