I CAN dream, can't I?: Sir Pat and the smart blue shuttle

And yes—I have a backlog of vidchats and other topics to post here... but I just had to get this down:

I almost never dream anymore—or, at least, remember a dream. But I sure woke up with a vivid one this morning. Perhaps it was the memorial meetup last night for our friend John Couch... or just some well-placed drink or spice...

Somehow, in this dream, I was with a group of modern-day people who had basically developed what you'd call a "smart", modern-day Starfleet-style shuttlecraft — "smart" like Trigger, Tony or Silver of cowboy-heroes'-horses smart, in the Western serials of old: you whistle and they not only come a-runnin, they know just what to do to serve or save you. Or follow hand signals.

Except this "smart shuttlecraft" looked just like some kind of blue-ice plastic freezer chiller for your drink chest on location. (Hey! Don't ask me--it was just a dream).

And we had this on display at a downtown hotel somewhere—was it for a convention? who knows?— but I was left in charge of it for some reason, when the group left to go... eat? And so I parked it in the freight loading dock of the hotel's lower innards, off the street. Though it was crowded, the craft parked itself and avoided all bumps, of course. And as I walked away to grab my own lonely, short lunch... I was asked by a hotel employee if I could move it, because the hotel was setting up tables to have an employee buffet feed... in the loading dock ... and it was in the way.  (Dream, remember?)

Oh, and Sir Patrick Stewart (!!) was coming in, very humbly, to eat with the workers and say hello. So of course now it was REALLY in the way.

But as I turned around and was about to whistle for the shuttle to extricate itself and head toward me and the street exit, here comes Patrick striding up all by himself, in dressed-down blue-collar peasant garb and a canvas travel bag a-slung, smiles and says  "Hello, Larry!" We shook hands, he asked if I was staying to eat, and moved on to the card tables when I begged off.

And so at that I just went ahead, got in, told Blue Blocky Shuttle to leave, and fretted all through those close dock quarters until it did exit...cleanly... with nary a bump OR grind.

And that's it. As they say... they lived happily ever after when they woke up.

My stardate birthdate: Have I always been doomed?

While hip-deep in the Secret Star Trek Non-Fiction Project TBA —you know, the thing that's been keeping me from posting video and blog pieces the last two months — I'm having to grab some stardates matched to actual calendar days of the year.

And naturally, my original Mike Okuda stardate memo for the VGR/DS9 writers came in handy once again. You know, the one that simply divides the 1000-unit stardate "year" by 365 (or 366) to get a three-digit range for each "real" day of a Gregorian "Earth" calendar. (And, in this case, gave the writers a usable stardate range to each of the 26 episodes of the season.) You simply paste the three-digit "day" after the two-digit "year"—where 41xxx of TNG-1 was 2364, and so on.

Just for kicks, I thought I'd look up the three digits for my birthday—which all you online stalkers know is Jan. 18. And ...

It was at that point I dropped my jaw a couple times.

And realized that my life's path, like it or not, must have always been destined to meander through Trekland.

Or at least Pomona College: