This morning started off with a blaze - almost. I was making cheese toast for Rebecca (one of the South Beach recommended breakfasts) and managed to toast the cheese a little on the charred side of done. We do not own a toaster oven because I refuse to add even more clutter to the countertops, so I have to make the cheesy toast under the broiler (which should have an alarm or shut itself off if something is in danger of igniting). I tend to get distracted in the kitchen when cooking - there is always something else that needs to be done that is so much more interesting than the actual cooking. And thus we had cheesy toast flambe for breakfast.

This evening I came home to something much more exciting - a new vacuum cleaner! Despite my sour mood toward most of humanity, it actually takes very little to please me, especially when that something is purple and called "The Animal" and sucks up enough cat hair from the carpets to make a whole new cat! This is an amazing machine with even more amazing technology behind it. You have to read through the entire site to get an idea of how dedicated the inventor is to the concept of building an ideal vacuum cleaner to have an appreciation for the engineering in this device. Finally, a technology that seems to live up to its claims. (Yeah, yeah, there's a gratuitous "It sucks!" that could follow that, but that was way too easy.)

Dreams: A few nights ago I had a dream in which my father appeared. Actually he showed up as two different versions of himself. One was a shorter, older, slower version, and the other was younger, taller and moved and talked faster. Both versions were wearing a really hideous 70s-era plaid sport coat in shades of cream, brown and peach. My father did have such a sport coat and wore it with a peach shirt. He also owned several leisure suits, embarrassing as that is to admit. (When I was in a college one of my roommates and her boyfriend were going out to dinner - this would have been around 1978 - and he showed up in a denim leisure suit with black platform shoes. I complimented him on how nice he looked, despite thinking that the suit was atrocious, just to be polite. My roommate smacked me later, telling me not to encourage him in his poor dressing habits. She later did not marry him.) Anyway, back to the dream. That was it. My two fathers were walking with me to some destination, jabbering on about something, although I could not hear them. Perhaps I fear I am becoming the older, slower, shorter version of me.