It ties the room together.

Many men wince slightly at the mention of interior decorating, but why is that? For me, it's because it's an unfamiliar rulebook. I don't want the wrong secondary colour accenting my cabinets, but I don't have enough of a colour vocabulary to know the difference between "spiced pumpkin" and "autumn flight". Hesitant to make the wrong choice, I instead stick with the primary colours.

That's exactly why I was dreading the move so much -- new carpets, new curtains, new couch, new cabinets. How was I going to fit my choices into the framework?

The answer? Find a vocabulary you understand. I picked out some curtains that didn't look too bad, and the salesperson complimented its rustic charm.

Rustic? I can do rustic.

And just like that, things fell together. That couch there, with the fish and canoe pattern? That's rustic. I'll take it. The end table, the deck chairs? Wood is rustic -- give me wood. The wall decorations? Let's put some aboriginal carvings up there. That's not just rustic, that's rusterrific.

It was like that for pretty much the entire weekend. Finally, though, I hit a problem: the entertainment stand. The electronics were all sleek and black. The only place the TV would fit was above the fireplace. Rustic, yes, but the fireplace was also white, as was the moulding around it. The problem, then, was that everything was spiralling towards sleek, not rustic. I'd already stained a pine shelving unit to hold everything, but the contrast was still off. It was just too much black... but then, I put my Wii next to the DVD player, and something clicked. It wasn't enough, though. I still needed something else. Something white... something electronic... something rustic. Something charming both despite and because of its years, something still practical, if no longer ideal...

And then it hit me: I still had my old Dreamcast.

And so, I learned that Interior decorating's actually a breeze -- you just need to have the right vocabulary.

That, and a decent games library. If you know anyone willing to sell their copy of Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram, send them my way, would you?

Resolution on the mount.

I don't usually talk about my dreams on this blog, but you'll have to forgive my indulgence this time. Last night I dreamt that I was on a field, and I walked down into some tunnels. They were dimly lit and the floors were covered in old bathroom tiles. There were several plaques on the walls, displaying a series of glyphs in raised ceramic. I couldn't read it, but I knew that they were some sort of military code. Not an Enigma-type code, but more of an informal slang.

Then, I emerged from the tunnel (gee, nothing symbolic there), and I was on an island. Just a few meters away, the soft grassy bank dipped down into the cool blue ocean, and across the narrow channel, I could see all of my co-workers on the opposite bank, where they were having a pleasant conversation. I turned back to look at the island I was on, and saw that it was an enormous hill -- almost a mountain. Not needing any further prompting, I scrambled up the hill to see the view from the top.

The view was indeed impressive: The world stretched out before me, vast beyond comprehension. And there, on the summit, was tuft of earth and grass jutting out of the ground in the exact shape of a podium. I then said to myself, "Well, I suppose I ought to say something..."

And then, at 9h30 on the first of January, I woke up.

Like I said, I don't discuss dreams often. Nonetheless, I've got a feeling that 2008 is going to be a very good year.

Call it a hunch.

Gadgetlust II.

In unrelated news, last night I dreamt of a titanic tidal wave crashing down on the land, throwing a giant whale onto the shore, from which emerged a cow. It would have been biblical in its imagery, if not for the fact that James Bond was there, too.