Writing Wrongs

Last night was another one of those waking up half an hour after falling asleep thinking it was almost wake-up time times. I turned off the lights a bit before midnight, and woke up at 1:30 with Spook sleeping on the bed, and this weird thought in my head that she wanted to go to Redwood City with me to get her DNA tested. In my dream I kept telling her it would not show anything, we are not related.

Took a while for me to get back to sleep but Spook didn't wake up. I woke up again at about 4, same dream. I did hear her jump off the bed when I got up to pee at 6:30, and found her on the floor of the guest room, between the carpet washer and the keyboard stand. Left her there - she never lets me pick her up, no sense trying.

7:30 alarm woke me up, and I got into the bathroom right away. Breakfast was a piece of coconut custard pie and a banana. No job prospects online. email from recruiters were for NC and San Ramon.

Drove downtown, had my nails done. The place was quiet, walk-in not a problem. Only one other customer.

Got my laptop from the car and walked a few blocks to Starbucks, watched storm chasers in upstate NY and Allentown, PA. Tuned into my favorite one at 1:30, heard that one of the Michigan chatters had a heart attack, but was able to get an ambulance in time. New Orleans chatter talked to her on the phone. Both are fans, neither of them stream. It's a friendly supportive group.

Long walk (for me & my sciatica) back to the car, then home. Watched PTI, had a bagel with HB egg & salmon cream cheese. Also watched Dating Unfiltered which had two hetero couples. The first couple looked like they might click but the guy was all about himself and she took him to a sushi place where he ate the edamame whole, and she fooled him into eating a California roll with a whole glob of wasabe. He was clueless. She dumped him before dessert. The other couple were made for each other, plain looks, but both had their act together and they kissed on a second date.

Cardiologist said to come in tomorrow for the pacemaker check. She will schedule an appointment with her some other time.

Looked online at the EDD site to find out where my $$ was. They don't say in what form I will get it, but it takes 10 days after they certify it, which is next week. There was also a note that I'm supposed to go in at 8:30 in Menlo Park for an appointment on the 27th. That's a long slog that time of morning.

6 pm, off to the photo shoot. Rush hour, so I took side roads, which meant I had to get most of the way there before punching in the address on GPS. The Leaf GPS has trouble hearing me, it took three tries and typing it in by hand. Got there at 6:25, early. Yay. But the pizza did not arrive for another 20 minutes. Lots of photographers, eventually lots of models, as I was leaving a couple of make-up artists appeared. It was a mess, the host had set up three shooting areas very close to each other, and a couple of the photographers hogged them. I did not get any shots worth keeping and left early. A shame, some of the models were hot.

Found out about another meetup group which uses the same studio. I may sign up for a shoot there.

Home, uploaded the pix. Deleted a lot of bad ones.

May watch The Bachelor later.

Plans for tomorrow:
The usual morning stuff
Kaiser by 10:30
Whatever

Woke up at about 3:30 am in a total panic. I knew I was going to have to clean up the mess, and pay thousands of dollars for a collection of exotic fish I had ordered from some educational supply house.

The dream starts with me opening a series of plastic sleeves, each one stapled shut on top with a paper tag describing the fish inside. The fish were alive. They were mostly the size of a large trout. I dumped each fish into a bucket on the kitchen floor, and threw away the sleeves. I was tired and not feeling too well so I went to bed, expecting to put the fish in the bathtub when I woke up.

But I woke up suddenly to a mess - there were dead fish all over the place - the bathroom, the cat's water tower, the kitchen floor.

They were all dead.

Total panic, because the agreement with the supplier said I would owe full retail price if the fish were not returned alive & well.

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Woke up in a total panic, it took a few minutes to realize I have been dreaming. There were no fish.

However, my comforter, pillows and mattress were soaked.

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Rotated the wet things so I could get back to sleep, but when I finally got out of bed around 10, I stripped the bed,  the comforter is in the wash, to be followed by sheets/pillowcases and MyPillow™. Took a well needed shower, and weighed myself. 256.3lbs. Down 2 lbs from yesterday. Mostly in sweat, I bet. Turned the ceiling fan on medium, hopefully the mattress will dry out.

Because I'm not sure if I have the stamina to finish this in the hour I have.

But to start:

This was a dream in 3 acts. In between each act I woke up, the first time craving chocolate milk, the next two times the usual middle of the night pee breaks.

Act I
I am passing by some kind of event on campus. No idea what campus, but it had a green lawn, and on the lawn were about 40-50 people all dressed in the same coverall, in aqua (imagine a NASA astronaut's jump suit only in Little Mermaid color). Each had a medium sized backpack on, also aqua but with darker green straps. They were milling around, chatting with each other.

This was a lucid dream, I consciously took myself to one of the chatting groups and asked what was going on, and if I could join.

As a tall blonde woman was about to give a friendly answer, I woke up.

Act II
Same place, but this time there are more than twice as many aquas, and there is a hedgerow about knee-high in between me and them with no obvious way to cross over. I no longer have any control of this dream.

As I watch, another group, these in light brown gear, have formed an elliptical throng back beyond the aquas. They also seem older, but other than that I can't tell if there is any significant difference.

I spend a lot of time passively watching, they spend a lot of time mostly staying put, but still chatting and milling around a little.

Act III
Not the same place. Kind of a hint of Dante's Inferno or a Soylent Green factory.  There are now hundreds of them, darker green has been added as well as darker brown. There is chaos and here and there a wimper of panic.

I am handed a coverall and backpack, and sent to a part of a field where people in coveralls are helping us get naked and into the coveralls and backpack. There is a sense of urgency, but no sense of purpose. No one is talking to me, but there is a lot of indistinct conversation in the background.  

There is a blood red shadow passing over my group. Someone, still naked, bolts and screams.

And I wake up.

A theater group is in the middle of a run of a show, I don't know which one but the costumes look like maybe Little Mary Sunshine. The lead actress is also the owner of the company, and she has an off-stage moment where she is telling me that they may have to disband if this show doesn't start attracting audiences. There are more people on stage than in the house.

There is a scene where the hero is supposed to break down a door, and for dream reasons instead he tries to smash head-first into the dryer. The dryer door opens outward, so instead of opening the door he knocks himself out. As he staggers into the green room, the owner says she is giving up.

I am in some foreign country, scheduled to take the train the next morning. At the same hotel are two older women (late 60s early 70s) who are also going to take that train. I don't know where the train goes, but I know it is a long ride and this is a crucial leg of my trip which I have been planning for ages. The three of us go down to the train station just to scope it out, and return to the hotel.

After we have gone back to our separate rooms, I start getting my stuff together and can't find my ticket. Panic. Call the ticket office and they are sold out for tomorrow's train so I buy one for the next day. Then I think maybe I don't need the actual ticket tomorrow. The next morning I wake up, look out my window and see the train at the station. After half a minute it pulls out. 

I open up my envelope with the travel paperwork. Sure enough there is a grid showing seating,  my name is on it, but there's a note below my name: "has been advised".  At the top of the page is a severe weather advisory. I guess I didn't need to have the ticket after all, but now it's too late. I'm going tomorrow, anyway. Looking at my passport because I can't remember when it expires. I kn ow my driver's license expires this year. Trying to find the page in the passport with the expiration date, but it is all a fading blur as I wake up.

---

All of which prompts me to pull out the fireproof box from the closet, and check. My passport is good through 2018. Whew.

Two days ago I noticed a blister on my left foot, just below the big toe. There were also tiny blood blisters on the side of foot parallel to the blister. All night I tossed and turned, dreaming about the USB implant in that side spot, and how I could not reach it to plug in my iPod.

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Yesterday my trip to a Honda dealer was a FAIL when the rep did not know how to activate the voice command system. I went onto Youtube and found the answer later. All night I tossed and turned, dreaming about variations on voice commands. "I need Chinese food" and "Find me pizza" were the most over-use. Regardless of what I said, the nav system would find it, and then display a map with no street names on it. Just like IRL. :-( 

There was a rehearsal in a room at the back of the convention center. I always have trouble finding that room, but I saw someone from the cast and followed him in. I sat next to Connie, who loaned me her score. I had a couple of sheets of hand outs and a pencil too. I was in the chorus, so when they started bringing the leads up on stage to show us what bits they had already learned I decided to duck out to take  look at my cell phone. I was also all WTF because this was supposed to have been the first rehearsal, so how come people had already learned their scenes?

I handed Connie all the stuff I had been holding, and left. There was a science fiction convention going on. I found a quiet corner to check out my cell phone and saw the problem right away, it was programmed for Toronto. After poking around a little I found a program on it which could set u0p the phone for several different countries, but when I tried to change it from Toronto to San Jose, it showed me an ad for Vancouver, BC which was hard to get rid of. Somehow by mistake I set the phone for Israel. Frustrated, I started looking for the app to remove it, but it wasn't listed in the "manage apps" screen. It must be on a chip. I opened the bottom of the phone and saw there were four slots for standard size SD chips, and removed the three that were there. One was a multi-colored design, and it was the one I was looking for, one was black with white writing which said English for Japanese student, which explained a lot. I had bought the phone on eBay, unaware it had been jailbroken to use in Canada by someone from Japan.

I went back to the convention, where I had a table with a desktop PC and a docking station for the cell phone. I plugged in the cell phone and used the PC connection to remove a large number of malware from the phone. There were five or six other tables in the room with guys using their laptops and desktops. One by one they disappeared - con security said the tables had been stolen. I saw a white guy in a red t-shirt with an armload of tattoos and a black guy in a winter coat carry of the table next to me. A few minutes later the white guy tried to push the power button on my desktop, but I slapped him down and he went away. The black guy came around while I was doing something on the phone and tried to take my table, but I yelled for security. Someone from the convention looked in from a far door and said there was no security. I said she should call the police.

When I turned around my table and PC were gone, but the cell phone was in my hand, so at least I had that. I had completely forgotten about the rehearsal, and panicked when I remembered I needed to get back there.

I couldn't remember how to get there, and after rushing through the hallways, waving to fannish friends and apologizing on the run for having a rehearsal to get to, I found myself at the aquarium, which in the dream was at the farthest end of the convention center.

I turned around to go back and that's when I woke up.

Apple has called me in for a screening. It is upstairs at some conference center, the logo/name of the recruiting company is printed in red multiple times in a continuous line across the top of the wall, all the way around the room. It's in a stylized script like a modernized Coca Cola font. I can't make it out, but it may say "elite".  A young man in a suit tells me my interview is tomorrow, with John Madden, in the major appliances section somewhere else. I get the impression it is a Sears store.

I am on the escalator in a department store, I find the washers and dryers and John Madden is in a white lab coat, sitting at the manager's desk, waiting for me. This is the football player aged Madden, still a redhead, in good shape. I sit down and hand him my paperwork, but he already has a copy. He asks me several computer tech questions, and I feel the interview is going well. But I tell him I am really not interested in working for Apple, I have a good job and really just came to see if it was really him.

very short dream as I was waking up:
A tall slender blonde woman (past shoulder length wavy very light blonde hair) in a black lace-trimmed dress is at my cubicle entrance, half of her is hidden behind the cube wall. She leans in and gestures for me to come with her. I say something like "it's goodbye, then?" knowing I am being laid off.

Last night I was so upset with the unsafe set and the staff's cavalier way of placing people on it, after announcing that safety was their #1 concern, that my brain refused to stop cranking. at about 2 I went to the kitchen, made some chocolate milk, sat in the recliner and watched about 1/4 of an old Star Trek episode on Amazon Prime (via blu-ray player). Back to bed around 3. Domino was on the bed a lot, but she mostly spent the night huddled under the chair in the bedroom. It's one of her favorite spots. Go figure.

Finally got to sleep. Up at 6:45, 15 minutes before the alarm. Dashed off a note to the staff saying I don't feel safe on the balcony, please re-block me to a lower altitude. Half hoping they would try to convince me to try it again, which would be my cue to leave the show, which has been a royal pain in the butt and rewardless time sink. We'll see what happens.

I'm not called for rehearsal tonight.

We also have Saturday off, so I'm going to go to Best Buy and price a new in-dash system and car alarm, and schedule an installation for Saturday. Plan A. Plan B is to go to a car audio shop Saturday and do the same.

3 pm, feeling the sleep deprivation kicking in. Dropped my car off this morning for its 50k maint. and while they gave me a ride to work, they don't give rides back. I'll hitch with one of my cow-orkers. Two who used to be good for that have started biking to work.