Sunday, July 31, 2005
I slept very well (with earplugs). I had a very weird dream last night. I dreamt I was on top of a hill with hundreds of other people. We were all sunbathing and/or picnicking. I heard citywide alarms going off and the ground started to shake. I looked around and people around me were looking worried quickly. I pulled out a laptop and loaded up Google. The page showed a live image of people presumably in a different but nearby location who were bewildered and looking up at the sky. I loaded another page and this one showed some shopping center, again a live image. As I watched, and as the ground around me continued to shake and rumble and make noise, I saw the shopping center crumble to pieces. I saw people crushed by the weight of walls and ceilings, and I heard their screams. That's all I remember of the dream. Most of us work early and broke camp. Tony and I joined Travis, Steve, Ryan, and Bryan for breakfast at Lyon's near Sac. Dropped Tony off at home in Sac, bought gas ($2.599 per gallon of 89), drove home. There was very little traffic, so I'm glad I left early. Napped. Finished reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, enjoyed it, but I think I need to reread it again because not everything was exactly clear to me by the end. Showered. Dinner at home with Patrick: bacon-wrapped pork roast stuffed with boiled egg, mac and cheese. Patrick and I watched an episode of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries taped from PBS. This evening, I learn from Craig Henry Dietz that lilydipping is a paddle stroke prematurely ended, and I also learn that all the paddling I did yesterday was incorrect. I had been paddling by pulling with my lower arm on the throat of the paddle. He says instead one should paddle with one's lower arm shoulder as a pivot with one's back, shoulder, and upper arm doing most of the work. The way I had been doing it works, but it's not the most efficient way to use your energy. So now I know better. At least I intuitively knew I should feather the blade (even if I didn't always do it—it wasn't windy anyhow).