I dreamt that I was talking on the phone with Stephen Segal, who in the dream had nothing to do with Weird Tales, but was now in charge of editing and publishing Locus. I was explaining the details of the current Harlequin Horizons vanity publishing fiasco, and he told me that he wanted me to write an article about it for him—and he wanted me to write it the same way the late Charles Brown would have. But that wasn’t the oddest thing about the dream. No, what was oddest was that I was wearing a bracelet made of Spanish olives. Not wax ones. Real ones. A ring of small pimento-stuffed olives was looped around my right wrist. I can understand why I might have been dreaming about Stephen—he’d sent me an e-mail a couple of days ago inviting me to a steampunk event in Frederick, MD. But where did the olives come from?

Then I had a dream in which Irene and I were moving from our current house and I was doing the final packing of last-minute forgotten items before I’d pile the boxes in the car and drive off. I was wrapping up things like extension cords and putting them in boxes by the back door. Only I had no idea where we were moving to. And, hard as it is to believe, I had no emotions one way or another about the move. I woke up, turned over, and went back to sleep, and then there we were outside of our new home, some urban apartment building. I had no idea in what city it was located, I just picked up a broom and started sweeping up all the broken glass from the street out front so we could begin moving in. I woke, still sweeping.

And then I also had a dream in which I was in a meeting with the cast of Mad Men, plotting an ad campaign. As we discussed a commercial, I wasn’t any of the characters, I was actually me, as if I’d happened to get a job there. Everyone seemed to be getting along, which was strange, if you’ve seen the show. Don Draper was actually smiling! The other strange thing? Peggy Olson was wearing a see-through blouse. Don was bemused about it, but no one told her to change. There wasn’t anything sexual about it. It was more of an “I am woman, hear me roar” ’60s moment, with Peggy expressing her independence. Thinking about her character now that I’m awake, I doubt she’d ever do such a thing. But I do see her going boldly into the ’60s in other ways as the series moves forward.

So—three remembered dreams from the night, but only one with an apparent catalyst. Who ever knows where these things come from?