Thursday, December 16, 2004
I dreamt last night that Tina Luu met me at some kind of an amusement park. She had brought with her a bunch of shopping bags with goods within—or maybe just one with a bunch of items—but still it was a lot of stuff. I thought we could put it in the trunk of my car, but I didn't have my car with me. Then I thought we could put it all in a locker, though we'd have a hard time finding a single locker big enough. I don't remember in the dream that we resolved that issue, but next thing I remember we were looking at a large map of the park on a kind of wall display trying to find a restaurant. The map we were looking at didn't seem to have what we wanted until I discovered that I could spin it to see more information. It wasn't intuitive that you could spin it, and I thought it was a poor design. We spun it to find a menu of a restaurant, but it was very American and very basic—fried chicken, etc. I don't remember what we decided, but next thing I knew we were going down an escalator. As we were descending, I saw Chris De Lay sitting in a coffeetablish lounge area on the floor we were just leaving. I turned to Tina quickly and asked her if she wanted to go back up and say hi. I don't remember hearing her response in the dream. I recall thinking in the dream that it was really easy for Chris to fly over from Hawaii just for a couple of days at an amusement park.—Met briefly with Cindy—a very quick meeting. Holiday luncheon and party at the Faculty/Alumni House. Shrimp skewers, roast beef, spinach salad, salmon, chicken drummettes, marinated mushrooms, various cheeses and crackers and breads, savory and sweet crepes, various desserts: yule log, cookies, petit fours. Holiday gift exchange (secret santa) at the office. This year was a flurry of gift stealing, so much so that I couldn't keep track of every turn in the stealing. Joel ended up with the much coveted square glass platter and cocktail napkins brought by Cindy. Cindy ended up with (plant) brought by ?. Melissa ended up with a leather picture frame brought by Debrah. Debrah ended up with Rite Aid frosted checkered glass coasters and assorted pharmacy-logoed tchotchkes and a $10 gift card to Starbucks. James ended up with the starting-to-bloom amaryllis plant brought by Melissa. (He named the plant "Seymour" even before the game had ended.) Ena ended up with fine yarn and purple knitting needles brought by James. And I ended up with an Umbra magnetic flower photo and note holder brought by me. (Ha!) The work room had an overdose of holiday sweets: a 2-pound box of See's Candies from Lloyd Young (thanks!), assorted muffins, James's pralines, candy canes, holiday rice krispie treats from Cindy. Helped Melissa with a serious problem with her laptop (the following blue screen of death BSOD: "STOP: c0000218 (Registry File Failure) The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoom\System32\Config\SOFTWARE or its log or alternate. It is corrupt, absent, or not writable. Beginning dump of physical memory Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or technical support group for assistance." -- see Wed Dec 29 for the solution), she gave me a ride home. Iomega Rev drive for home arrives. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover chicken, new mashed potatoes. Worked on Lodestar.