Michigan tour spawns dreams about Korean invasion:

I had a little whirlwind week recently, in celebration of completion of the MCAT (before you ask, it takes 30 days for the sword to drop, so I won't know how well I did until then). I had long been debating whether or not I should take a class or work for the last month of summer vacation; and as I had been consistently taking classes for the past year and a half, including winter and summer courses, I decided to take a mental-health month.

Last Tuesday I flew back to Michigan to go on a mini-tour with White Pines and That's Him! That's the Guy! in Marquette, Traverse City, and Lansing. On the ride to the airport, I sleepily discovered one of my plugs had gone missing, so I had to replace it with a bic pen cap: effectively turning me into a highschool student all over again. An inauspicious start to what was a fun-filled thrill ride of the summer.

Flying to Marquette was worth any of the subsequent drama of the road; being able to see my family after such a long hiatus was exactly what my mind needed. Indeed, the only thing that would have made the experience any more enjoyable would have been if Katie had been able to come with me to experience the yoop magic. Unfortunately, she had to work and it was on me to represent the von Ercks back to MI. The shows went well, and despite some monumental car drama on the way back (read: the engine is kaputzki), the whole trip was great. I got to see some old and dear friends, play some great music, get very very drunk and get very very little sleep in three days. The flight back put me in NY around 9, and then our train to Pennsylvania was at 1, to visit one of our best friends, AMC. We went to Hershey park, I got nauseated on a rollercoaster, we watched some of the cheesiest horror movies of all time, accompanied with some very strong margaritas for courage, and all was well.

Now on Saturday Katie and I are flying to Minnesota to hang out at the Erck family cabin at Swan Lake for a week. We're going to be there with Steve McQueen, having a world-class time, and I couldn't be more excited. The whole clan is going to be there, and we're going to have some awesome times.

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The real reason for this post involves the dream that I just woke up from. I'll give the details in a rapid-fire manner, as they come to me. My sleep deprivation and thorough pickling has made for some very strange dreams lately, but this one takes the cake:

I was on a cruise ship off the coast of Florida, playing music with Chris Bathgate and White Pines. Most of our good friends were there with us, which was rad; we all had a deck to ourselves, which was beneficial, because when we noticed the atomic bombs falling off in the distance, we were all together and able to formulate a plan.

The ship docked in Florida, and we were all sequestered in a hotel just off the beach, and things returned to general normalcy, We had been shuttled around on old yellow school busses from place to place, and the hotel was nice. We were able to play videogames and perform music for everyone that was there with us. Then I realized that my mom and stepdad were in Florida as well on vacation, and I wasn't able to get them on the phone. Eventually I contacted them, my mom said she was packing to try and get back to Michigan, but she wasn't sure how she was going to get out of the area because there were roving gangs of post-apocalyptic zombie types on the streets.

At this point, I had to contact the locally-installed Korean governer (as the US had been taken over by a joint task force of Chinese and Korean soldiers). I explained the situation to him, and he was remarkably understanding, issuing me a pass to travel throughout the new Korean province of Florida until I found my family. The two people who were most adamant about my not leaving on my own were Chris Bathgate (who the whole time had a mandolin strapped on his shoulder, "for emergencies"), and my sister Jodi (who is currently stationed in Afghanistan, but in the dream was on R&R and now in charge of the US detainees on the coast).

We stole a humvee and the four of us (Katie included, of course), drove off into the sunset to battle whatever may come. I woke up with "Proud Mary" by Tina Turner on my lips.