Thursday, February 17, 2005

I dreamt that a "massage therapist" named Carlos was very interested in offering his services to me. I wasn't particularly interested in him, but I enjoyed the attention and he wasn't unattractive, so I let him flirt with me a while and we chatted about nothing while I tried to figure out if he meant he'd do it for free or not. I told him I wanted to think about it, and I asked for his card, but he didn't have one and instead gave me contact information verbally which I tried to remember but forgot almost as soon as we parted company. I was in a hallway and there was a lot of activity—people walking back and forth, people shouting out words I couldn't distinguish. Lots of objects were piled up outside (but clear) of doorways, in some cases almost to the ceiling. What the objects were in the dream weren't apparent to me. I realized I was in a dormitory. One of the rooms was mine, and I entered one of the rooms and that's when I woke up.—Joe's Os with sliced banana. E-mail migration workshop. It took 30 minutes to get a laptop working, even with the classroom support guy standing around just watching for about 10 or 15 minutes of it. Mark and Kraig did a fine enough job. Only about a dozen students showed up, which probably either means they understood the web instructions and didn't feel the need to come or they were all sleeping in. Student laptop maintenance. Went over e-mail naming issues with Cindy. E-mail migration work. Started Windows Updates on some machines. Chatted with Rodney about display names in Active Directory—our campus standard is last name - comma - first name and we have them first name last name for some of our students. Lunch at Pasta Pomodoro with Joel: he had orecchiette with sun-dried tomatoes and side salad, I had healthy chicken fusilli with minestrone soup. Stopped at the hardware store, the 5 and dime, and Wishbone on the way back. The big news at work today was that Melissa found out that she got accepted to law school at USF! The front office bought her a giant bouquet of flowers (I think some kind of yellow orchid on thick, very tall stems), James bought her another vaseful (tulips), Joel got her a single blue iris, and I sent her an iCard. Chatted briefly with BK and Tony Q. Helped David B and JWG with a laptop problem in N-225. On the bus ride home a woman got on at 9th and Kirkham with about 10 shopping bags full of groceries. The bus had to wait 2 or 3 minutes because she had so many bags and she doesn't move very quickly even without groceries. Of course, when she gets off the bus a few stops later, it's the same thing in reverse. The driver doesn't like being late, so her throwing "Sorry!" over her shoulder doesn't grant her much sympathy, but riders smiled anyway and didn't complain. I don't like the bus being late, but it's obvious this woman can't afford to drive to the store or pay to have groceries delivered, so the extra few minutes don't bother me at all. I'm usually reading on the bus anyhow. Home. Inspected a kitchen cabinet shelf which had fallen down, pulled out the piece that Patrick will take to the hardware store for replacement. Dinner at home with Patrick: pan-fried tuna, steamed broccoli, biryani, corn bread and butter. Dessert: Patrick made one of the best coconut cream pies I'd ever tasted. Today is our fifth anniversary. Today I finished K.M. Soehnlein's The World of Normal Boys, a novel about a boy coming of age in 1970s New Jersey. I thought it was better than your average popular gay fiction novel. The back cover says Edmund White says, "The World of Normal Boys carefully lifts off the roots of suburban houses to reveal the alcoholism, parental abuse, and baroque configurations of family guilt and sexual desire that are hidden behind those nearly uniform exteriors," and I think this statement is accurate except I think "roots" is a typo and the word intended was "roofs." I'm pretty sure now that yesterday's tooth issue is a chipped tooth, but I don't recall any sudden incident in which it might have gotten chipped. My tongue can't keep away from it. It grabs hold or brushes back and forth and just doesn't want to let go.