Weird Dream Channel

I have been sent to a clinic to stop a doctor from performing an unnecessary surgery. He calls the procedure "manga", and it starts with the patient fully clothed, wearing a green apron, like a grocer's apron. When  I walk in he his spraying her with water from a plant mister, wetting the front of the apron completely. When he turns away to go to a counter with scalpels and other assorted small medical gear, I grab her hand and pull her out of the room, running with her down the hallway. As we run I ask her what she was going to be operated for,  she said she did not know, she felt perfectly healthy.   I watch her run out of the building, while I stand at the door. She is still running when I wake up.

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I am sitting on a padded stool in the clinic's exam room. A doctor is spraying me with water from a plant mister. I am wearing a green grocer's apron, and he is soaking it completely. I must have been drugged, because I am just coming out of a stupor. I say something like "WTF"? and a nurse out of my field of vision  says "manga surgery". I wake up.

Return trip

The return train ride was way boring. I found a seat toward the back of the last car, no cell phone users around, but put on the headphones and listened to Sarah Chang on the iPod app. Had the camera out, with the 50mm 1.4 set for 1/2000 but it was foggy all the way from Sacto to San Jose, so none of the photos are worth posting. Very disappointing, I had positioned myself to get pix of the ghost town out on the Alviso slough, but without sunlight they look like a bad episode of Ghost Hunters. Not that there has ever been a good episode.

Arrived on time at SJ, 3:15, which meant a long wait for the 4:00 CalTrain to MV. Whoever runs the sign boards for CalTrain packed it in early - every station was displaying a notice that Northbound train 429 was 13 minutes late leaving Milbrae. Train 429 left San Jose at 11 am, and there is no reason the San Jose station needed to be displaying any information about it after that. There was another sign WTF, Amtrak at Sacramento was showing a sign which said one of the trains had been "annulled".

Car was still where I left it, went home, watched some TV, petted the cats and at 6 went to meet a friend at Starbucks. Had a nice chat, was a good shoulder to cry on too. Friend retired a couple of years ago, and had planned for years to take a cruise to Antarctica. Finally set it up for this time last year, but the boat had mechanical problems and the cruise was canceled. Re-booked for this year, friend was all packed and ready to go, but it was canceled again. Here's why: clicky.

Home, watched the Sunday Night Football game which was pretty good for a change. Surprised to see Seahawks long-ago QB Kitna with a star on his helmet, but he had a good game. His defense let him down big-time. Vick was also excellent, but his front four not so much.

Reheated some Thai peanut sauce chicken and egg noodles,but completely forgot there was salad in the fridge.

Took screen shots of the way the Kenwood Garmin GPS was misbehaving and sent them to Garmin support. Their response this morning was the Kenwoods don't accept points of interest. That's not what the manual said, and I called them on it. We'll see what they say.

Got to work early today, but there is no work to do yet. The first two devices I was supposed to work on refused to load their firmware (we have a person who does this for us now), so I'm waiting for boss to assign something else.

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Keep forgetting to mention that I saw the male betta trying to court the female, which was heavily loaded with eggs, but he had not built a bubble nest. I had a filter in the tank set for a slow trickle of air to keep the algae down, but it was also disturbing the surface of the water. As soon as I turned that off the male built a huge thick bubble nest, which the female is now guarding. Babies on the way, methinks. Meanwhile in the other tank the adult jewels are still guarding the two juveniles, which are now about 2" long.

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BASFA tonight? Not sure.

Bookz

Finished The Companions by Sherri S. Tepper, on Kindle. She outdid herself on complexity, by the end of the book there were a lot of sentient races, insectoid, canineoid, gateroid, humanoid, plantoid and eeeewwww-oid. Planet Earth is a glom of high rise tenements, thanks to a law of return which said all humans who went to colonize other planets could retire on Earth. The complicated plot focuses mostly on a very clever Earth girl who is bent on saving the dogs by bringing them on "ark" ships to new colonies. Lots of things get in the way, including the machinations of the various "oids", warps in time-space, the galaxy's worst mother-in-law and  a planetary mind.

All in all a good read, but too busy in spots and much of the alien character development is lost in the final confusion.

Started reading George R. Stewart's  Earth Abides, which is the upcoming Potlatch book of interest. I remember reading it in high school, probably because there was a choice between it and that Rachel Carson blather which my big sister was in love with. I'm finding the book more stilted than I remember. I'll keep plugging away at it though. I probably will not make it to Potlatch this year, I have a previous commitment to help out on crew for a community theater show that weekend.