It is 5:59 AM on Saturday, April 15th, 2023. I’ve just woken up from a very vivid dream that often reoccurs but last night’s was different. I usually keep my dream posts private but will put this as a regular post as it pertains to my life and what is nestled in my subconscious.
The reoccurring dream is about my fraternity Beta Theta Pi. I decided to join the greeks in my sophomore year as a way to make friends and meet people. My parents decided that I should live at home my freshman year to ensure I adjusted well to college and concentrated on academics. In other words they wanted to make sure I didn’t party too much! Therefore, I missed out on the usual connections people make as freshmen. I thought I could make it up my sophomore year but quickly learned that upperclassmen dormitories are the quietest places on the planet where nothing ever happens. This is in direct contrast to freshman dorms which is a part all the time.
Therefore, I was in a bind joining college where I didn’t know anyone. So I figured the quickest route to assimilating into the “fun” part of college life was to join a fraternity. I went to a number of introductory parties and joined Beta Theta Pi as a senior classmate (Anthony Kich?) was a member, was smart and I respected him. It was at his invitation that I went to a party, met the brothers and was offered a bid.
I spent much less time actually in the organization than most as I was a year late in joining and I spent the better part of the next two years overseas. To illustrate just how much I was never around I never even learned the password to the secret meetings nor secret handshake. This is taught during a “special week” and I was given leave to go to work on that day and was overlooked. Usually during the special week we need to clear our schedules completely but since I worked for the university the leadership decided to let me go for a few hours.
Over time I became known as the “Beta ghost,” as I had only attended one chapter meeting and was gone for months at a time studying overseas. This is what has nestled into my subconscious: the feeling of missing out and not really being a complete member of the fraternity.
The reoccurring dream is I’m back in college but I don’t know any of the other brothers in Beta, know none of their names and still feel very much like an outsider. Upon returning from my three study abroad semesters I never really went back to the fraternity during my later college years. This was for two reasons. The first is just before my first study abroad one pledge brother who I never got along with sucker punched me in the face when I was arguing with a potential girlfriend. Being a wrestler in high school I shot in a double leg, took him down and put him in a nice sleeper choke hold to make him pass out. When I shot that double leg my skull hit the side of a door and opened up a nice gash which required staples. During the choke another brother who was friends with that kid kicked me in the face opening up another gash under my eye that required stitches.
Needless to say it was not a fun night at the fraternity and required a trip to the hospital to get me patched up. Occurring right before my study abroad in Spain my classmates overseas must have thought some interesting things about me! It was my Puerto Rican girlfriend in Spain who actually took out the staples from my head using special pliers given to me by the doctor. Given the magnitude of the event the fraternity leadership had a meeting with my dad while I was in Spain and so this added a bit to the drama.
Actually there were two other reasons that caused me not to not really go back. One was there was an issue with payment. My dad did pay my dues but the accountant didn’t record it properly. My dad had proof with a cancelled check but we had to go back and forth with Beta to get the issue cleared up. The final reason was I was living off campus in an apartment for my senior year and so going to campus for fraternity events was a bit of a pain so I never went. I was also busy focusing on my final year of studies and looking for a job.
As I mentioned, the reoccurring dream is that I’m back in college but never very welcome at the fraternity. I don’t know most of the brothers and the ones I should know I’ve forgotten their names.
Last night however, the dream took on a different flavor. Instead of being a college aged guy when returning to the fraternity I was the age I am now, 45 years old. Furthermore, I was very much welcomed and living in the fraternity house. Like real life however, there was one kid who was an asshole and I didn’t get along with him. He antagonized me by throwing a football at my head when I wasn’t looking and so I immediately fought him, won easily but this time didn’t sustain any injuries.
My roommate in the dream fraternity room was my real-life friend Dale from Australia who was my roommate when I was an English teacher in Japan. One of the strange aspects was that as part of some weird initiation brothers had to sneak into our room and put a toe ring on us without waking us. I immediately woke up and realized there were a number of nocturnal events happening late at night. I’m not one to stay up late in the dream world or in real life so was intrigued by all that happens in a college fraternity late at night. There were many “interesting” sounds as I don’t need to elaborate here.
The dream stuck with me because on the overall life was good and a positive experience whereas in real life results were mixed. It was also a big deviation from the 20 or so other dreams I’ve had over the years about the fraternity.
I imagine the dream was vivid due to all the activity I did yesterday. All the wind and rain blew off a lot of shingles from my roof this past winter and for the past couple of years I’ve just been patching them. Well, it is time for a new roof and we’ve also decided to go solar which has is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. It is an enormous expense and normally I would wait and space out the projects. However, in learning about solar I discovered that the state of California is sunsetting a generous program called NEM 2.0 where the electric company pays a nice credit for excess energy fed back into the grid. The deadline for that program is today after which it changes to NEM 3.0 where the amount of utility credit drops 75%.
The idea is that the state of California wants solar customers to store energy at the individual residences through batteries and thus lessen dependence on the energy grid. What this does for the consumer is drop solar savings from around $180K over 25 years to around $80K. This is a big deal! Therefore, I not only need a new roof which is first priority but also had to make an immediate decision about solar.
Yesterday, the solar installers came to inspect the property so I went around the roof an attics with the inspector for about an hour. In preparation for his arrival and subsequent work I decided to have a good look at the exterior of my house so I could explain what needed to be done ensure I had all necessary repairs included in the quotes I’ve gotten for the reroof, before solar is installed as well as ensure I communicated where we wanted the panels to be placed. This led to me painting the outside trim for a few hours.
My neighbor was also outside and we got to chatting as he is always doing home improvement projects and even had a contractor at his house doing a few projects. Being in construction for his entire life he knows a lot and he offered to have a look around. We noticed some areas of dry rot on the eves which will have to be replaced. This can be done by the roofer but he introduced me to his contractor who could possibly help with that as well as some areas the roofing company won’t handle. The contractor will return today and perhaps help me out with some of those areas.
Furthermore, my neighbor let me know that I really should use caulk on small gaps on the exterior to ensure rain cannot enter and create further dry rot. This is the first time ever I’ve really inspected and understood what needs to be done on the exterior of my house. It is giving me that feeling I had when we first purchased the home. I want to take excellent care of it and improve it so feel motivated to start new projects in areas I never really knew were so important. Thus I’ll be buying quite a few tubes of caulk and be working on the exterior o of my home for the next couple of months.
How this ties into the dream is I was outside engaging in a lot of activity and so was pretty tired. When I’m worn out my dreams are often more vivid then usual. Since the dream was positive about my fraternity it is mostly due to my mind being put at ease as a week of stress has coming to an end. I was stressed with the deadline to get into NEM 2.0. Last week was too late to even start the application process for most companies but the one that sold me, sold me on the fact they could still get me into the NEM 2.0 program. And they did! I received a confirmation e-mail from them two days ago along with an application receipt confirmation from PG&E our utility company. This is huge but I’ll be even more relieved when everything is approved although as I understand it the deadline was for getting the application in and not approval confirmation. All should be well, but I’d like to have that approval confirmation and then can really relax.
The second point of stress was financing two big projects at once that both require cash. I looked into financing but now that the load rates are very high it really isn’t viable to go that route. I got the financial piece figured out yesterday which is a relief. At worst I would have had to sell stock in an old IRA but there are tax penalties for taking money out before I hit 60 so it wasn’t an ideal solution.
Anyway, that is what has been going on in my life and in my mind.
