Sweet Dreams

Imagine that you are alone. There's no one around, but you and an ordinary little cat. Not really even full grown yet, so he's still kind of cute. He's not like, adorable kitten cute, but he's not a grumpy old cat yet either. He's just an average cat. He's orange, he's friendly, kind of playful. He likes to follow you around begging for attention. Yeah, I guess he is a cute little guy.

Now imagine that suddenly it's dark, and that none of the light switches turn on. You leave the cat and begin walking around, trying to find one that works. The bathroom light sort of works, the air vent turns on anyway, but the light is so dim that it's basically useless.

Suddenly you realize that the cat has followed you. It's sitting across the room, staring at you out of the darkness. Now imagine the cat starts growling, and creeping toward you, pausing every once in awhile to hiss, and then creep closer. You don't know what to do. It's almost close enough to touch, and it stops, looks you straight in the eye and hisses loudly. Now imagine kicking the cat and running away, and the relief of finally escaping.

You're finally alone, but it's still dark and you don't know why. The lights still won't work. Suddenly the cat is back. The cat is back, and whole scenario repeats itself. Over and over again.

Now imagine that you're finally alone again. You think you've somehow managed to escape, but now you can't move. You can't move and it's still dark. You don't know what to do. You can't move, it's still dark, and now the cat is back. It's at it again, growling and creeping toward you. You realize with horror that any second you're going to be attacked by this normally adorable, now hideously terrifying creature.

Now imagine realizing with relief that this is a dream, the cat gone. He isn't going to kill you after all. Imagine lying in bed, glad to be alive.

Now imagine that the cat is back.

The cat is back, growling, creeping toward your bed, and you can't even move. You know this is a dream, but you can't wake up and the cat keeps coming. You know that this is the end. You know you're about to be killed by a tiny little cat, and you can't do anything about it.

So that was my night last night. Fun, huh?

What the heck subconscious? Where'd you even get the idea that cats were terrifying? You deserve a good kick in the face for that trick. Get out of here. I don't want to see you again until you learn to behave yourself.

Chicago: Day 1 - The Arboretum

I am FINALLY getting to my posts about Chicago! I can't promise to get to them all right away, but at least I'm getting to this first one.

On our first full day in Illinois, At this point it was just Wheaton, not really Chicago yet, we hung out with the family for the day. The main thing we did was go to an arboretum. It was really nice. It was kind of like a zoo, but for plants.

Here, Shaina defies a sign that clearly forbade standing on the table. Bad Shaina. Bad. Shame. Shame on you.

Okay, I confess. I told her to. I'm the bad one. Mwa ha ha ha ha.... >:D

 
Chris and Shaina examine a tree.

Sasha was enchanted by a flock of tiny mushrooms.

I can't remember what these columns were, but they were kind of cool.

There were a large number of wooden insect sculptures all over the arboretum. Shaina posed with most of them.

Yes, I know this is not an insect. Go away, trolls.

And here is where my camera battery died. We left soon after, so you didn't miss much. The rest of the day was spent shopping, and visiting the library where Aunt Linda works.

I got a new battery in the meantime, but I only ended up taking two pictures.

Her library is huge! It literally had three floors! I could just live there. I love libraries. :)

And that's all for the first day. More to come soon!

Scamming The Scammer

So today, I had a very interesting experience. It all started last night. I got a Facebook Friend request from a friend from work back in Harlan. Thing is, I was already friends with this person. I figured that maybe somehow she accidentally unfriended me and was sending a new request. I accepted the request and thought nothing more of it. Later I saw a message from her in the feed saying that she was sorry if anyone got a bad message from her, she had been hacked, but she thought it had been taken care of. So I figured that my being unfriended had something to do with her being hacked, and went on with my reading.

This morning I woke up and I had a message from her that she had sent a few hours before.

I thought this was a little strange. She'd never sent me a message before, but I thought it was nice that she was thinking of me, and I planned to write a message back to her. Suddenly I had a chat notification from her.

 Well, she was being awfully friendly, so I decided to send her a quick message back.

Then I began to get suspicious.

What was this about?

Suddenly I remembered her message the night before about being hacked.

I'm forever the grammar Nazi, even when chatting with a scammer. :p

At this point I knew this was fake, but I decided to go along with it, just to see what would happen.

The news, really? What do you think I am, a complete and utter moron?

I figured I had just outed myself by acting suspicious, but obviously I was dealing with a complete and utter nincompoop.

Wow. You think I'm going to fall for that line? You must be dumber than a sack of bricks.

I decided to keep correcting my errors. It seemed like an easy way to seem more natural.

Here he was silent for quite some time. I thought that he had given up, but after awhile I got another message.

I was sure he was going to be getting suspicious by now, but since he wasn't I decided to have a little fun with him, by asking a question that only my friend would know the answer to, and she would have known that I was asking a question with no answer.

The reason there is no answer, is because there was no Nellie back home. I just pulled a name out of thin air. A particularly ridiculous name, since almost no one is named Nellie any more. But the clueless scammer just kept on plugging away.

Oh, really!? This was a new development! He was just making up his own story now. I kept going. I wanted to see how long he could keep this up.

At this point I figured the jig was up. He was sick of talking to me and wanted a way out. I didn't want this to end. I was having WAY too much fun.

Here I decided I would throw a great big old wrench in his story and see how he handled it.

Then he was gone. I thought my fun was over. I waited a long time and sent one more message.

I really, really wanted to know how he was going to talk his way out of the mess I had thrown him in. I was not disappointed.

Wow, really?! You're going to go with the amnesia story? This cracked me up so much. I just burst out laughing at that point.

Ok, well that's plausible IF THIS WERE A MOVIE!

I wasn't going to let on that I thought the amnesia story was pathetic, so I decided to throw another wrench into his story.

He wasn't biting.

This wouldn't do. I needed to reinforce my story.

He wasn't biting at all. I decided that if this was the end, I was going to get a bit silly.

And then he was gone again. I didn't get a reply for so long, I just decided to keep getting weirder.

At this point I figured my game was over. The guy must have gotten sick of me and left. So I went back to Facebook, and noticed another message from my friend warning people not to accept a friend request from her because the hacker had make a fake account and was now pretending to be her. So now, it turns out, I was friends with two people using the same name. I decided to unfriend the fake friend, but before I did, I decided to go back and send one last message.

And then I unfriended the fake account. Not too long later I got another message.

What? Really? You want to keep this going? Fine by me, I'm loving this!

So, your sticking with the amnesia story, eh? Well, then I'll try taking this in a slightly different direction.

Well, he bought that, and then decided he was going to take this in his own direction.

Okay, really? But that was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so I went with it.

Then it got weird.

Okay, you are getting super creepy. Maybe you don't know about our age difference. Let me make this weird for you as well.

He decided to quickly backpedal.

I wanted the weirdness to keep going. I wanted this guy to feel as awkward as possible.

I think he might have finally figured out that I was trolling him.

No reply.

Silence.

Yeah, I think he figured it out. I am shocked it took him so long, but I'm guessing he's not the brightest bulb in the shed. (Intentionally mixed metaphor)

I knew he was getting the messages because Facebook lets you know that the other person has read them. I decided that if this was the end I was going out on top, with one last weirdifying message.

The end. Who knew getting scammed could be so fun!?