Dream

This weekend exhausted me, and/or I'm coming down with something. I'm inclined towards the former, however, since I don't feel anything other than tired. What I did was a big thing for me, and I expected to feel more while I was doing it. However, I didn't, which was probably good, and I'm now recovering from the huge energy expenditure.
But life goes on, and I need to be sharp today. Most of my co-workers, as I've mentioned, are Muslim, and have therefore been observing the holy month of Ramadan. Now that the end of Ramadan is here, they spend a day or two celebrating, and will mostly be out of the shop. I volunteered to come in early to open. However, I wasn't certain that today was the day I'd be doing this. It all depends on when/if the moon is spotted. So it would be either today or tomorrow. They told me they'd give me a call the evening before, when they knew. Because the weather's good, it was most likely a go. I'm fine with this, but as I said, I was exhausted, and passed out around 7. First, I was awakened by a junk mail call, which of course I thought was my co-worker when I picked it up. I'm sorry, Scott the Carpet Cleaner, but as soon as you said, "Don't hang up!" I hung up. I might have said, "I'm not interested, thanks anyway," before hanging up otherwise.
Then I fell asleep and dreamed.
I dreamed I was watching for the moon with my co-workers. I was pointing to my tattoo, noting that I happened to have the crescent and star symbol worked into it. (In real life, not really, though there is a crescent) The crescent was limned in twenty-one stars (I think. I was trying to count them in the dream and having difficulty) There were concentric circles of stars, each circle with a different number, but they added up to twenty-one, and were ultimately a single circle. I looked up and saw a tree or something with the exact same flame shape as my (actual, real) tattoo. I was overcome with emotion. I also saw the new moon, which was in the east and caused some confusion even for my dream self.

Then the phone rang, and it was my co-worker, telling me that they'd decided to do it today. Despite my sleepy state, I managed not to say, "I know."

A Brief Rant

In other news, I just started reading the latest Harry Dresden book, Changes, and I really hope that the titular changes actually take place in Harry's character, because the macho-macho thing is really starting to bug me. That and the fact that Susan is back, and I was so glad when she initally left, so long ago. Her presence reduces the narrative and dialogue to cliche.
It just seems like Harry as a character hasn't actually grown over the course of these books. New stuff gets lumpily attached to him--he gets new powers, new roles--and though he is occasionally broken, he either quickly heals or ignores the wounds. He still hasn't learned to work well with others, or that maybe his reliance on brute force might be a bad thing. With the exception of Murphy, he has yet to react to women like they're human beings and not Women. Will the ignored wounds finally come back to haunt him? Will he realize his well-intentioned chivalry actually makes him an ass? We shall see. Reviews of this book are good, but I fear the changes are going to be plot and world-based, not character-based.