Entries this day: dream-fly-float-around-small-area pretty-good-day-at-jb-today watching-workers-lay-heavy-sidewalk-tiles

dream fly float around small area

The concept of telling a story that we told repeatedly over many years to see how the story would change over time was being tested in a long study that I didn't really want to manage. I wondered how I could keep track of how much the story (didn't) change but I didn't know what story I was supposed to tell, or how to record the stories.

In one story we were trying to understand how wastewater was treated and what characters were involved with that. There was a scene of a dirty toilet that was being cleaned by something in the water. I wondered how the toilet had gotten so dirty so quickly.

Going shopping in a large down there were checkpoints that we had to pass and only had to pay one time. I was standing in line behind one person and we were inside like a big phone booth with glass panels around the whole thing. The guard woman said "go ahead Rob" because I had already gone through the previous day and I realized I now understood a little bit more about this town.

There was a small road going through a supermarket and going through a tunnel at the same time. as I went through the tunnel my body was floating just a few inches above the ground as I could pull myself forward with my fingers and then just like skate or slide or float forward.

The song "Plittin' on the Ritz" was on repeat in my mind as I floated slowly through the shopping center on this road, then once I got past all of the aisles I was outside and able to fly + float very quickly down the street.

pretty good day at jb today

I'm glad I slept before heading to work today.

Five lessons complete:

• ✔ Aoi, Mai: "make" "made" "read" "read'
• ✔ Rin, Ayane, Ranks: "need" "think" "want" "love" "like" "hate"
• ✔ Ayane, Yuuka, Nagomi: reflexive pronouns
• ✔ Hide, Akiko: all elementary schools in Japan will have students using tablets by 2023 as part of Giga School program
• ✔ Tatsuya, Chinatsu: Cost*Co just opened a new store in Chiba and had backhoes, Harley Davidson bikes, and Porches on sale. The backhoes were priced at 7,000,000 yen, ~$70,000

watching workers lay heavy sidewalk tiles

I sent this to Lin:

I'm on the train now in Kawasaki.  I'll be home about 25 minutes later than usual.

I just stood for apparently that long watching guys lay new sidewalk "tiles" on newly laid sand on a rough concrete surface created before I started working again after COVID had me working from home.

On each side of the sidewalk they had a string pulled taught at the same level as the top surface of the tiles. I wondered how they had the string fixed on the far end so I went down there to find it attached to a tile on a mound of sand. "How do they know it's the right height??" I wondered, but then realized a simple hanging level could answer that for them.

Back at the end with all the action, four men were rolling pallets of tiles about 5x5 by ten high. I didn't think to take a picture of those pallets.

One crew laid sand down and smoothed it out at the right height to let the next crew place those tiles on top and gently tap them into a flat grid with rubber mallets. Three types of tiles were used: red ones to mark the bicycle lane, gray tiles to mark the walking lane, and yellow ones with raised lines to guide blind walkers in the middle of the walking lane.

Gosh, now I wish I had taken more pictures!