Tuesday, January 20, 2004
I dreamt last night I was alone in a residential neighborhood looking for a particular house colored light orange where I knew I would be welcome. The house was pictured in my mind as being a single story but very long, set about 10 feet above the street on a curve. A brick wall rose from the sidewalk to meet a green lawn. However, I did not know its address or even the name of the street on which it lay. The neighborhood was middle-upper-class: clean streets, green lawns, no sign of disrepair. As I wandered up and down the streets searching for my destination, there was no one outside from whom I could ask directions. I grew hungry and tired. I came across a house which was particularly beautiful inside because I saw there was no clutter. I got closer to the house, hoping that I'd see some clutter out of view from the street, but no! Even close up it was all disgustingly perfectly clean! No newspapers strewn about, no writing instruments laying on a desk even. I cursed, jealous of someone else's tidiness. Somehow I slipped inside through a window. The house had a lot of cats and dogs or similar small pets that roamed freely on the house's grounds. I realized I was trespassing, however, and left without getting caught. I went around the side of the house where there was an opening to the street behind it. I followed it still looking for my light orange house when I came across a dock and then a boat. My friend Tina was on the boat, which had some sort of market. Tina pointed out a package of something—I wasn't sure what it was. It was orange, looked like it had the texture of a sponge, was shaped about 8 inches by 4 inches by 2 inches, and by what she indicated, I thought it was some kind of food—perhaps a bread. It was in a white stand-up bag like a sandwich bag with a plastic window so you could see inside. I didn't pick it up. Also shopping in the same room was some man I thought to be Australian. His white-man's skin was tanned. Dark blond hair, longish, somewhat unkempt. He could've been a sailor. He was wearing a shirt that said "Marni" on it which I thought was rather odd and not very fashionable but otherwise it didn't bother me. Tina wanted to go somewhere to talk with me about something important. But just then I heard my name and turned around to find Orlando Bloom saying hi to me. Like in Lord of the Rings, his hair was blond instead of dark. But unlike Lord of the Rings, his hair was short, not long. His smile reminded me of Bryan Cochran's. He was chipper despite a huge pack on his back, but it was somewhat evident that he'd been carrying it for some time and he had grown weary because of it. Had he been camping? I couldn't tell exactly. He wanted to talk to me somewhat urgently but hadn't realized Tina said the same thing just before, so I said to him, "Why don't you sit down here for a bit and I'll be right back, okay?" He agreed, so Tina and I walked off a few paces to talk, and I remember saying to her, "I can't believe I just put Orlando Bloom on hold!" But just then I had to pee really bad, so I asked Tina to wait. I ducked into the boat's restroom and started to use either a toilet or a urinal (I can't remember). As I was peeing, an older Asian man with a very round face to match his very round body leered at me suggestively then turned his back to me and pulled down his pants. Disgusted, I stopped mid-pee and moved to the shower stall (for one person) and continued my urination there, where it was more private. The dream ends there. When I woke up, it was 5:40 am and I got up to pee (funny that) and then went to my desk to write down what I could remember in my waking grogginess. Here's what I wrote down: "house cats weak dogs food orange house dock boat tina orange bread recipe aussie with marni tina talk orlando bloom bathroom short fat asian man peee in shower weary" and I then went back to bed. Patrick saw it when he got up at 6:00 am to practice Tai Chi at the park nearby and was puzzled by its mystery.—After fighting all day with Chris's new laptop, I finally fixed it's inability to connect to the network. It had a corrupted TCP/IP stack. KB 811259 fixed it for me, but not until I had tried seemingly a dozen other possible solutions. Met with Candy, Jen, Shareen, Kerry, Bill, Andy, and Susie to discuss the Medicine Question of the Month, writing for the Web. Lunch with Joel: takeout from Segafredo. We talked about pillows, Big Fish, Joel's uneventful weekend. Helped Melissa with mail merge and upper- and lowercase problems. She taught me a keyboard shortcut I hadn't known! In Microsoft Word, when you have text selected, F3 cycles among the different Change Case choices. Fantastic! The last computer parts shipment arrived today—hooray! Restored files from backup for James. Dinner at Casa Mexicana: Patrick and I split a super chicken burrito, an order of regular nachos, an Orangina, and a glass of plain water: $10.70. The neon sign for Safeway has been broken the past week or so (at least) so it now says "SAFE VAY" which I find very funny. I actually think they shouldn't fix it so that when people say on their cellphones, "Yeah, I'm at Safe vay—where you at?" then people know exactly which San Francisco Safe vay they mean. Took the L train home, and there was a white guy who spoke Spanish startlingly better than—I imagine—some people from Mexico, Spain, or other Spanish-speaking countries. Reminded me of the similar guy Patrick and I saw in Stompers—San Francisco is like that, I guess. I like that. I spent the late evening setting up our new rebuilt computer.