Last night, I dreamed all sorts of weird things. The most troubling one concerning the latest assassination in Israel and the recent outbreak of anti-semitism in Toronto. People kept demading to know my feelings on Israel's policies and making accusitory remarks about how the vandalism is related to them and how Jews deserved this, etc. As most of my friends know, I am never quite able to put my feelings into words, a rare thing for me, as I simply cannot come up with how things in Israel should be handled. I believe in the Homeland and a little part of me always believes when we end the seder with "next year in Jerusalem", but do I support the policies? The state sanctioned murder? The wall? No. Do I feel for the victims of suicide bombings? Yes. So? Well, here's where I can't put it into words. I simply cannot fathom how anyone can get out of the mess that is Israel and Palestine. It was like this in my dream and people were yelling at me and hurling insults at me and then telling me it was my fault that Jewish cemetaries were being desecrated.

I am glad that when I woke up following this dream, there was a soft, fluffy cat curled up against me under my covers. Melody, as a cat of the ripe old age of 17, has no such worries, no understanding of those things that trouble my mind. She just offers love and attention and is generally available for kisses when needed.

Anyway, this past weekend was very nice. On Thursday night, my four year anniversary of being with Rick, he and I took the Greyhound out to the Petes where Mom picked us up. On Friday, as it was such a lovely day, all three of us went out for a walk along the Otonabee River. The usual photos were snapped in the usual places by the water, with the exception of a couple my mother took of Rick and I rough-housing. I guess it says something of my level of comfort with Rick, now, as opposed to in the past, as we have never really acted like that. We were flinging each other about, dragging each other around, all because I wouldn't relinquish my mother's cane to him. At the end of it, my arms kind of hurt, but I was smiling. I'm really happy with Rick and it shows. We went for dinner that night to a new Chinese (American-style) restaurant near-by and it was pretty darn yummy. Kind of like a scaled-down Mandarin, there were some very tasty things. On Saturday, Rick and I went off to the mall. Woo. He bought me the DVD release of Schindler's List as part of my present and I bought some small accessories and a card to send off to my little-sister, Gina, in Brooklyn.

We took Bernadette into Toronto on Saturday night so that I'd be able to work on Sunday and be able to drive out with our big present for Mom: a new (refurbished) 17" monitor. Rick was a Saint, picking it up for me as I had to work longer than I thought and would have otherwised missed the store hours. He waited for me at Kos for over two hours and I met him there. I had all-day breakfast and then we packed the monitor into the car. Stopping briefly chez moi so that I could pick up my school bag, say hi to Stew, and play with Willi, Rick took a moment to figure out why Natasha had suddenly gone from a half-empty harddrive to a nearly-full harddrive. It turns out that Stew's been storing stuff on it that he plans to burn for his friend, but he had failed to mention this to me. So, we deleted some un-used programmes and then I drove Rick home before returning to the Petes.

Mom and I will be driving into Toronto tonight, she staying at Julie's house in order to come to the ROM tomorrow. I'll be giving both of them the 'education' tour through Eternal Egypt. They're both looking forward to it, so much so that I actually feel some amount of pressure to really make it count. I've only spoken about three zones in the exhibit, four as of tomorrow morning, and I've got some studying to do, before I'm ready to do that. So, I hope that my tour for Mom and Julie lives up to their expectations and that they ask questions about things I actually know. *laugh* We shall see. Anyway, that's for tomorrow. Right now, I think it's time for a nice relaxing bath before my return. While I do that, you should check out my recent self-portrait. I'm quite proud of it. :)