A Steven Spielberg production

Last night, I had an alien dream. It wasn't just aliens running all over the place either. It was like a movie was playing out the way areas came into focus.

I was at a lakeside house along with some blond guy and a bunch of friends. I guess he was romantically linked to me although we didn't act that way. Everyone else called on me with issues related to the guy.

It was some sort of typical college-kid party where people carried red Solo cups and "rebellious" music played in the background.

Something was wrong with the blond guy's dog. He and I were in a room where the dog's leash was attached to the wall. The leash ran down the length of the room on the floor, out some sliding glass doors and down a floor to the sandy beach below. The dog had plenty of lead to run and play on the beach, but it was laying down close to the house when I looked.

As the guy told me how the dog approached some creature he'd never seen before, the leash rose off the floor as though charged with an electric current. Lights began dancing outside like something from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the camera view shifted from the second floor where we were to pan down behind the dog. The lights out on the lake danced behind some trees as the dog barked furiously.

The dog had enormous ears like no domesticated species and a horribly short, wrinkly face. It raced toward the trees where the light emanated and pulled the leash taut.

The scene shifted back to the second floor where I was with the blond guy. His eyes had become red and alternately flashing like a child's toy. I was sitting on the floor as the blond guy crossed the room, his eyes flashing, saying, "I told the dog not to go over there. Stupid dog. I don't want to lose it, though."

All at once, the dog stopped barking, the lights stopped flashing and the blond kid dropped to the floor. His eyes had returned to normal colors and he could not breathe. He laid clawing the carpet and at his chest trying to take a breath.

I called for help and knelt over him as he grew more frightened. "Breathe!" I bellowed. He took one gasp. "OK, you can do this. Come on!" I encouraged. "One, two, three, BREATHE!" and he took another gasp as other people entered the room curious as to what was happening.

Grandma wants to watch horror movies.

My Grandma Charlie is visiting from California, and she announces that today is special grandma-granddaughter bonding time. This usually means a fun day full of shopping and heart-to-hearts over her chardonnays and my lattes, so I'm stoked. Then she tells me that she wants to watch some scary movies. I'm immediately even more stoked, but then I think Wait, she probably has a way different idea of scary than I do. And she's in her 70's. Let's take this easy. She just doesn't do horror, at all, so this is a big deal. My dad has to run an errand at Lowe's and, for some reason, we go with him. There's a big bin of previously viewed movies there and she starts going through them. I'm thinking she's going to go with something like The Uninvited (1945 version), which is cool with me because it's an awesome movie and I dig cheesy 40's one-liners. No. She comes to me with her arms full, with titles like Hellraiser, Return of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (2004), The Omen (1976), Sleepaway Camp (!), Poltergeist, and... Labyrinth. She really wants to watch Dawn of the Dead. I quickly mentally scan through it. 1.5 sex scenes, some swearing, gratuitous zombie violence-goodness. Ok. But I really, really want to watch Labyrinth, and I think it's cute that she mistook it for horror. Understandable. We never get to decide on one because that's when I woke up.