The Buckeyes are now 10-0 after beating Illinois last weekend. I didn’t see it as I was out shopping for a new dining room table. This weekend is Northwestern, then that university up north (who’s name I just don’t say in polite company) comes down to Columbus for the final game.

“The Trouble with Tribbles” was the latest remastered Star Trek episode to air. I’m really getting used to the new CGI effects after watching the old versions on DVD. The planets do look a lot better, as do the perspectives from which the ships are filmed (well, they really aren’t “filmed”, but what’s the right word?). If they could somehow make the ships look less CGI-ed, they’ed really have it nailed.

I had a strange dream Saturday night that brings to mind the question “What if?”. I’m writing this down just so I can think it though, so no comments are necessary. It was one of those dreams that involves people from different times of my life that in no way could have known each other or been in the same place in real life. Do you have dreams like these? I have them more often than others. What made this one stand out is that it involved a particular girl that I knew in college. No, not involved like you’re thinking (I wish it did!). In fact, I can’t even remember how she was involved in the dream.

Anyway, when I was in college, we started off in the same class (along the way I switched to the 5-year plan). I knew who she was, and to me, she was absolutely beautiful, had a great personality (very down to earth), was in the top few of the class, and came from a very well-to-do family. (My best friend thought she talked way too much and was just another brainiac to be avoided as they ruined the grading curve for average folks like us.) I admired her from a few rows back in the various classes we took together. I assumed all along that she had no idea who I was. As time went by, we got to be on a first-name basis, but no further as we had different circles of friends. Luckily by her senior year, I was fortunate to spend some time with her at a couple of events where we weren’t with our usual circles of friends. Me, being the shy, low self-esteemed geek, didn’t try to take things any further than just spending those few days hanging out together. At the time I figured that since she would be graduating a year ahead of me and near the top of the class, that she’d not be interested in me. I wish someone would have smacked me up side the head and yelled “Get a clue!!!” (Ironically, my friend that couldn’t stand the brainiacs in the class ahead of us went on to date and marry another one of them. I guess all of my preaching to him that there was no reason to dislike them actually sunk in, lol.)

I lost touch with her after she graduated, and then I moved to another state after my graduation. By chance a couple of years later I went back to the city where I went to school with some friends, and I ran into her at a “First Friday” art gallery crawl that I hadn’t even planned on attending. We talked a bit, and, again, me being a dork, didn’t follow through. She was in law school. Again, I wish someone would have smacked me up side the head and yelled “Get a clue!!!” Long story short, I Googled her and found that she’s married and a very successful lawyer.

So I was thinking yesterday “What if…I had perused her? Where would I be now? What would life be like?” Tough to say. That assumes that she had the same feelings for me back then. Perhaps she did. Perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps she just thought of me as an acquaintance. Perhaps. But then I wouldn’t be where I am now. I would not be blessed with the friends and family I have here. I would not be enjoying the things in life that I now do. I would not be the me that I am. Or perhaps…