Entries this day: Dream Work madPotter souperMichelle

Dream

7:42am CST Thursday 15 March 2001

(dream)

Standing behind a cement mixer, I pulled on the lever to dump out the concrete, but it wasn't full enough to dump out. The concrete was being mixed as if in the back of a pickup truck - out in the open in the bed of the truck. I asked a Mexican (*) guy beside me, "um, como se dice 'concrete'?" ("um, how do you say concrete?")

He told me some weird name that was like cielo de something, but I couldn't understand him over the noise of the mixer. The truck started to pull away and I grabbed on, allowing myself to "surf" backwards behind it. The Mexican guy and his son ran after the truck for a bit, but never caught up. They walked away. I was sad, but realized I will meet more people who can help me learn Spanish.

I rode in the back of the cement mixer for a long time, and actually fell asleep during my ride and found a high school youth on either side of me when I woke up. They were actually sitting in the cement, while I was still surfing backwards, not wanting to get concrete on my shorts. They were much more experienced at this kind of hitching a ride.

We stopped and I fell asleep again and we were still stopped when I woke up. The youth were like, "we're at a light." I looked around the side of the truck, careful to not let anyone see me, and I could see we were at a railroad crossing.

I got nervous and quietly crab-walked back away from the truck in the grassy ditch beside the road. As I backed away, two men came to the back of the truck and apprehended the youth for illegally hitching a ride. One of the men saw me and came walking toward me. I looked behind me and saw there was no sneaky place to run and hide. I was caught.

I told him I would come peacefully as he tried to grip my hand really hard and it was hurting my fingers. He let go of my hand and I just walked behind him, claiming ignorance of my wrongdoings, "We didn't ride on the train at all!"

The railroad track was exactly that - a circular track for trains. We could only see a small part of the curve - the loop must have been a few hundred yards in diameter. A few trains were moving along it.

"Can you catch that train?" he asked, indicating a single engine that was headed toward us.

It was going too quickly for me to catch, plus I didn't try too hard to catch it, faking that I couldn't possibly know how to run and catch a train. (**)

He indicated another that I should try to catch, but again it was going too fast.

Then I saw there were cars, automobiles on the tracks. A small sedan and a small pickup and a small other car. The first sedan slowed suddenly, and the pickup crashed into the back up it, and the next car crashed, jumped over the first two in a tumbling stunt movie kinda way. I ran backwards from the destruction, yelling, "I'll come back if it's safe!"

The man who had pulled me to the tracks was still just standing there, unphased by the wreckage. People had just been hurt or killed; that accident wasn't faked. He was trying to teach me how dangerous it was to mess around with trains and traffic and such. I was totally scared.

"What kind of crazy job do you have?" I pleaded, trying to smooth talk my way out of whatever trouble I seemed to be in, thinking maybe if I get to know him, he'll let me go.

Then I snuck away by waking up.

(*) From my spanish class, I understand Mexicans, or any individuals from central or south america prefer to be called Mexians, or whatever country they're from-ians, not "hispanics."

(**) When I was 8-15 years old, we lived with railroad tracks behind the house. I jumped on quite a few trains in that time. Usually they were going quite slowly and it was all no sweat. There were times however, that the train would be accelerating while we were on it, and it got scarier and scarier to jump off, and more scary the longer we waited to get the nerve to jump off!

Work

4:58 pm 15 March 2001

Today at work I convinced some old crappy code (*) to display three extra oh-so-important questions on a survey. The code was hardcoded everywhere the number of questions in the survey.

My new G3 code will totally replace this project, but they need this one done sooner than my G3 might be ready. Whatever. I just updated the source library, compiled the shit and got it online.

(*) I wrote it a long time ago.

madPotter

6:02 pm 15 March 2001

After work I visited Amy at the Mad Potter after Wende had just been there and said Amy asked about me. Fun to see her again, and I got the update on her life. She's currently interested in Business or Hotel and Restaurant Management at UH. Just core classes so far though.

At the Mad Potter, they are doing a monthly pottery contest. I asked about entering the plate that I spent 38 hours on last year, but apparently it's supposed to be only for pieces fired in the last month. Hmmm.

This is a very sneaky way to get me to paint another plate!

souperMichelle

7:49pm Thursday 15 March 2001

Wow! Wende and I are minding our own business at Souper Salad when a lovely familiar face walked up.

"Um, um, um," I stammered, "Michelle!"

"HI!" she smiled.

"I totally had a dream about you within the last month or so!"

She is married and living out in the country with their lovely baby and two dogs and two cats.

Her husband is working with plants and is quite successful and loves it. So great!!

We exchanged information and gave her the short version of our lives.

Oh! This is Michelle whose ex-boyfriend Patrick was in my dream a couple nights ago. The dream where he found Mr Spot.