[p] and I were hiking along a river that was partially frozen. We found a surprising number of large, furry spiders among the rocks and ice. I was disappointed to notice that my camera's battery was dying, and that I had forgotten to bring a spare battery. We ended up climbing more than hiking, and I was slightly nervous when I had to place my hand ( Read more... )

While crossing the country, we stayed in a mansion owned by some acquaintances of acquaintances of ours. It was a sort of an informal hotel. They allowed pets, and they even permitted our cats to walk freely around the house. When night came, however, we were told that we needed to shut the cats in a cage in the basement kennel. I had a very hard ( Read more... )

A friend had asked me to purchase a used textbook from someone. I had heard some negative things about the area where the seller lived, though I had never been there ( Read more... )

At a far end of the shopping mall, we watched as a hole formed in the air a few feet off the ground and a trolley emerged. It stopped when about half of it was outside the hole. The end door opened and a conductor inside asked us whether we were boarding. We said that we were. Because only people with certain occupations could ride the trolleys, we ( Read more... )

The most interesting part of the compound we were visiting was the pool containing a beluga whale. The whale seemed very happy and friendly, and I wondered whether it could be transferred to the larger rectangular pool in another building across the road ( Read more... )

We visited another city, this one more populous and with taller buildings. As we were walking around downtown, [wg], [jm], and I were drawn to a three or four-story building that seemed to be abandoned. We didn't find anything on the first floor or the second. But before we made our way to the third floor, a ceiling air conditioning vent dropped a ( Read more... )

I hadn't noticed anything distinctive about the city where we were staying during our vacation. But when my family split up to walk around and find things to do, I came across something that surprised me. A man stood by a large creature that looked like a combination of a manta ray and a turtle. It looked as if the man was offering rides on the ( Read more... )

We went back to our old apartment one more time to clean out some more of our things. We had left many of our belongings there because they had degraded to the point that we didn't want them anymore. Everything was blackened and moldy--even the light seemed dimmer that it should have been. When we had lived there, we had at least kept the place ( Read more... )

The woman in the wheelchair acted as a sort of leader to everyone living in or visiting the mansion. Our current work was to cut wood and carry it to the house. To do this, we had to cross the stream that ran a few hundred yards in front of the house. I was wading in the water, trying to arrange several large logs with flat cut sides so that they ( Read more... )

An unoccupied truck rolled down an incline just as I was driving up to our apartment complex. I couldn't avoid it, and it struck my car on the front right side. It hadn't been rolling fast, but the impact was enough to lock the vehicles together. I got out and walked up to the apartment, thinking that I should call the police. I searched for a ( Read more... )