Glass Walled Bathroom
I've had 3 of my 4 main recurring dreams in the past 10 days.

1. Tidal Wave - I hadn't had this one in a long time but I had it last week. Pretty straightforward dream: I'm somewhere on a beach or overlooking a beach and a regular wave gets bigger and bigger until it's a ginormous wall of water that turns my knees to jelly. Dream interpretation guides generally see this as being overwhelmed in some way.

2. "I forget to go to class" - Lots of people have this type of dream although usually more in the form of test trauma like the person forgot to study for the test. Mine is always that I keep forgetting to go to class and to do the homework and I can't remember where the book is and I'm worried what the teacher thinks. And it's always math. This is often seen as self-esteem thing: not being good enough, being tested or under scrutiny.

3. "I have to pee, but can't" - This is my most common dream, common being at least 3-4 times a year. It takes many different forms but generally I have to go the bathroom but I can't because I can't find it, it's locked, there's a long line, it's broken, it's dirty or in one dramatic instance, it was in the middle of a party and the walls were glass. I interpret this as being unable to express myself about something.

So in sum, I'm feeling overwhelmed, not good enough and unable to express myself. That could be my entire life. I don't feel like there's a particular crisis at hand that's bringing this all up. [Update: I just read the post below this. hm. A clue.]

4. "I'm going back to college and have no place to live" - This is my 2nd most common dream but not one I've had in the past 10 days. It also takes various forms: Which room will I have in the sorority house? Will I live in the dorms? Can I find an apartment? Who will my roommates be? Why did I wait until the last minute? I'm guessing this about feeling like I don't fit in a situation or maybe a variation of the not being prepared thing.

I have this frustrating situation going on in my life right now which I don't know how to deal with. It's caused a bit of teeth gnashing and sleeplessness.

Last night I woke up at 4am. My brain ground away and I could not get back to sleep.

I started talking to Bob, not because he was awake but because he was there. "I can't sleep," I said. "I'm [mad about this situation]." He snored on.

I said a few more things and he flipped over and flung and arm and leg over me, with great love but effectively pinning me to the mattress like a bug on a card. I stared at the ceiling. Eventually he turned back the other way.

I tossed and turned some more. Periodically I'd remind him, "I can't sleep. That thing made me mad."

At 5:30a he rolled over and told me: "You're getting sleepy again."

Fashion Medal
The only part of the Olympics I watched was women's figure skating (big surprise).

They should have had medals for the ugliest outfits. That adorable Swiss girl in the horrible outfit would have taken home gold. And the Russian skaters wore ugly pants, too. I don't think the idea of women skaters in pants has to be bad, but as executed at these games the look was just tragic.

I tried to find photos of the skaters to show you but no luck so I came up with these instead. You get the idea and if you like these outfits, the photos were mined from a catalog. You can buy them yourself. Maybe dress as a figure skater next Halloween. Look very serious, have a friend read from a card about how hard you've worked for this moment. Then fall down. HA!

Also, who was that woman commentor? Did she utter one intelligent word? If she did, I didn't hear it. And how come when an American falls on her ass it's unexpected and when any other skater falls on her ass it's Olympic pressure, or poor training, or because her "light just went out" ?

Celebrities Who Might Have Been Interesting Once, But Are Now Tiresome
Elton John
Nicholas Cage
Bette Midler
Bono
Mel Gibson
Kanye West

Debatable Whether They Were Ever Interesting, But Definitely Tiresome
Russell Crowe
Diddy
Ben Affleck

Dangerously Close to Tiresome
Michael Stipe
Gwen Stefani

(This project started as a piece of paper I left by the phone with the part about Once Interesting Now Tiresome and Elton John on it. Without even discussing it, Bob added Nicholas Cage to the sheet. He gets me. This is as far as we got.)

Lost Post
I remember what the lost post was about. Bob and I went for a walk on Friday when the outside temp. was in the 20's and with windchill clocked at a brisk: 14 degrees. After less than 10 minutes, I was quoted as saying:

Why are we doing this again?

Are we almost finished?

My face hurts.

This is like Garmisch,(hey! if you put Garmisch-Partinkirchen into AltaVista, I come up at #5) except no snow and colder.

Technology That I Don't Get or Can't Figure Out How to Make Work for Me. (Generally meaning I tried for about 3 minutes and then went on to something else.)(Not intended to be a complete list.)

podcasting
RSS
sound files
hands free
my phone at the office
BBEdit
del.icio.us
social network websites (probably due more to my relative decrepitude)
Flickr Tags
any sort of scripting or setting up hot keys for frequently used computer actions
virtual pets (yes, I realize this is so 10 years ago, but I found my Yoda pet recently and I never could figure out what to do. I killed Yoda.)
any sort of digital watch programing
anything on my cellphone not directly related to making and receiving calls

Things I Can Work
anything on my cellphone directly related to making and receiving calls
DVR
load the dishwasher like nobody's business (doesn't really count in this context but I'm throwing it in anyway)
FTP (I can FTP, that must count for something.)

Missing Post
I swear I had a post earlier this week with these three pictures. I can't remember what it was about but I bet it was really good. And it vanished. I'm very confused how this could happen.

The Lease of my Troubles
On Wednesday I found out that Holiday is closing the yoga center at the end of March. I don't know all the gory details but it has to do with the lease and the building. The building apparently thinks it can get bigger, higher paying tenants and Holiday doesn't want to wildly raise the price of classes. She's looking for alternatives but the studio as we know it will be no more.

I started studying with Holiday 10 years ago in March and I don't think I've ever been away from the studio for more than 2 months, and even then, just a couple of times. It's hard to convey, without sound like a cheesy women's magazine article, what a huge part of my life this has been. Our culture loves to stupefy everything in big dramas about how something (yoga, Prozac, TiVo) changed someone's life. But yoga has changed my life.

I'm not going to elaborate because that would be boring and stupefy it, but commit yourself to some sort of intense regular self-study over a 10 year period and there's bound to be changes.

I have a solid home practice so I look to class for continued inspiration and to remind me about poses that I avoid at home. And also, during the weekdays it's usually my only time to practice. Upon hearing this news I thought about alternatives.

I also attend classes at Yoga Bhoga and I figured I'd shift to more classes at this location. The attraction to both of these studios is the teachers but as luck would have it, they are both optimally located to the office. Once my car is parked downtown, I don't have to move it for class.

This weekend I attended a workshop with Bob and Ki and while I was there I learned from a classmate that Yoga Bhoga is moving across the river at the end of April, also the victim of a building lease problem. As Auntie would say: fukola-dola.

Now I need to find a new yoga base. One woman at the workshop teaches at Shanti Yoga in Vancouver and that sounds like a good fit so I guess I'll start there and see what happens.

Valentines in History
The first time I had a boyfriend and Valentines Day at the same time, I was a senior in high school.

I took him to Love's Barbecue. My memory's a little fuzzy on the details but I seem to recall Love's BBQ being a big chain, at least in southern California. My web research reveals only two locations now, neither the site of the date I'm about to share with you. You'd think a place called Love's BBQ would go on forever.

Love's had some sort of lovers special for Valentine's Day and I made reservations for this. It probably involved ribs and coleslaw for two with a sundae for dessert. Sadly I don't remember the specifics but I do remember this:

At some point during our meal, the manager came out and introduced himself. He was a sort of big and sweaty guy and seemed sort of nervous. Since we signed up for this lovers special, he was presenting us with a certificate of our love. And I remember people in the restaurant watching this and smiling. And I remember my teenaged "it's all about wonderful me" mind noticing the nervous manager and smiling people and how these must be glances of envy and admiration - what with us being so young and adorable with our whole lives ahead of us.

What I realize now is that all of those people could barely keep themselves from laughing to death. Can you imagine? A certificate of our love. The manager probably sat in the back clutching his belly and laughing until tears squeezed out of his eyes. No wonder he was sweaty.

Compost Me
Last night I finished my book: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. How to describe this book? It's funny, induces squirming and is super interesting. I learned a ton.

I did not know that cadavers are used in auto safety testing. I did not know embalming is very temporary. I did not know a whole lot of gruesome details about early medical procedures (used to illustrate how doctors learned about medicine without cadavers in the olden days) and I could have remained happily ignorant on that. There's a bit about studies of guillotine victims and whether they have any consciousness after the big separation. I've always wondered this: do you die instantly or do you feel your head bounce around in the basket?

There's a chapter on cannablism which includes a hilarious scene of the author visiting China to track down a story of a crematorium worker who allegedly whacked off a bit of flesh here and there and gave it to his brother who made it into dumplings at a popular restaurant around town. Can you imagine you and your translator getting a meeting with the director of that funeral home to ask about this story?

Before I read the book I was not excited about the idea of donating my body to science. Just the idea of people poking around my saggy dead boobs and shriveled privates and making jokes made it unappealing. Both the author here and the author of The Undertaking (Book #18) point out that once you die, what happens to your body is irrelevant to you so no point in getting worked up about it. Also, there is some good work to be done, like research to help develop protective gear for people who work around land mines. My cadaver could do that.

And then there's plastination -- my cadaver could be made into a big rubber model that would last for 10,000 years!

Actually my favorite is the compost. Freeze dry, shatter and throw me in the garden. After a long healthy and happy life. That would be my first choice.

SomethingAwful.com has hilarious Star Wars valentines. You should go to their site instead of hotlinking here.

Tips for Shoppers
I still felt crappy when I woke up this morning and I was thinking: enough already. That headache.

I did some yoga and took a shower and ate the rest of my peaches and felt closer to human. I dragged my butt to the grocery store so we'd have something to eat.

You know how you should avoid grocery shopping when you're hungry because everything looks so good? Pop Tarts, yum! We should eat franks and beans! Tater tots never sounded so delicious. Let's get a 2 lb. bag!

Well how about shopping when you are not and haven't been hungry for a week? I had a list so I did put food in the cart. I skipped the entire deli aisle. Cheese? We'll never eat that! Later I told Bob this and he agreed, who wants to eat cheese? I should explain that under normal circumstances, Bob and I eat tons of a wide variety of cheeses every day. But not this week.

We still had a lot of food in the fridge because we hadn't been eating much. I had to clear out some old icky stuff. This is something I am pathological about: a cleaned out fridge. I don't want anything close to past due hanging out in my fridge.

When I came home from the grocery store I was exhausted and rested on the couch for a few hours. But I'm coming around. I'll be at 100% tomorrow.

I Got The Fever
I love the digital camera. Since the weather turned nice I've been leaving the office in the afternoons and wandering around taking pictures which is a nice break for my brain.

Yesterday I felt a wee bit sketchy as I was driving to work but I thought I might be imagining things since Bob had been sick and I figured once I drank my tea and started working, I'd be fine.

I held onto this notion, even as I felt gradually worse and worse. I had one project I wanted to finish and a couple things to follow up on. But I felt tired and headachy and not hungry so I figured I'd cut my losses and go home early and go back to bed and I'd feel fine on Thursday.

By the time I had gathered my stuff and was leaving the office, there was nothing wee bit about sketchy. As I drove home I developed a rapidly escalating fear that I was going to yak in my car. The speedometer crept up to 70 - 75. I passed on the right. I rolled down a window. I assured myself that I was fine, but hurry.

Drama for nothing. I arrived home intact. My innards continued to roil but since I hadn't eaten anything, no action. I put my jammies back on, sipped some water and collapsed onto the couch with a pile of blankets and commenced to be achy and fevery and unhappy.

This morning I felt better except still a bit achy, a wicked headache and weak from not eating. The idea of food has become interesting again, but the actual eating part not appealing.

I found some bread and thought: hey bread, that's neutral. I had two bites and that was enough. Later I opened a can of peaches and picked at a toddler sized portion before putting the rest in the fridge. Maybe I'll try some soup later.

And The Cow Said Moo
Somewhere I have a picture just like this of Bob in Germany posing with a cow. I'm going to look for it this weekend.

Bob went down with some horrible non-Superbowl related flu on Sunday. He's been staggering around here with a sad look on his face. One more day at home and he should be back in action.

Crying Party Boys
This morning I finished my book The Dirt by the band Mötley Crüe. I was a big Crüe fan back in the day and saw them when the Shout at the Devil tour came to the UCSB campus. I would love to have been a bug on the wall in the ECEN (the venue) admin office the Monday after that show. I'll bet a few heads rolled. My own personal experience of that weekend lived up to the Crüe search and destroy ethos and was fun the way that the irresponsible and inconsiderate asshole behavior is when you're 20 years old. We'll leave it at that.

At one point, I owned every album up to Girls Girls Girls but I didn't think I had any of them any more. I was wrong. I still have Too Fast for Love AND Shout at the Devil. I listened to a little Shout at the Devil yesterday afternoon and it sounded fantastic.

The first 100 pages of the book is hard to read without running to the bathroom to take a shower. A phrase like pure unmitigated debauchery doesn't begin to cover it. And they went on like that for years. Drugs, booze, women and destruction. And they're pretty straightforward about their personal shortcomings.

But after awhile they're just whiny and come off as addicted to their own victim-drama. How sorry am I supposed to feel for a filthy rich and famous rockstar who's indulged himself in every urge to please himself at the expense of virtually everyone around him? Like it's a major personal insight that life is hard and less of an insight that they brought a lot of it on themselves.

After I finished the book I did a quick trip through the NY Times and there's a story about Jay McInerney and he's going on about what it was like being young and successful and famous and how hard it was to hold it together. wah.

I am already tired of Bode Miller.

Seahawk Mountain
I wish I skied. I don't think there will ever be a better day to ski in the PAC NW than this Sunday.

100 Best First Lines from Novels

#7 riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. -James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

On the basis of this I can tell you with great confidence that I will never read this book.

#17 Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. -James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

Now I can tell you that I will never read James Joyce period.

#21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. -James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

Oh. Maybe I'd try this one.

Two favorites from books I've read:

30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. -William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. -C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

Two favorites from books I haven't read:

58. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.-George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

76. "Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.-Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)

Survey Says
Last night I got a call asking me to participate in a survey having to do with healthcare in Washington. My usual policy is to refuse to talk to anyone I don't know when they call me on the phone during the evening while I'm trying to eat and watch my shows. But in this case, I'd already eaten and I did have a vague recollection of some flier sent to the house about a problem with Washington healthcare so I went along with it.

He said it was 15-20 minutes and he wasn't kidding. Geez, there are few things we didn't talk about. Both actual questions about my health, habits, recent illnesses mental and physicial and questions about my healthcare coverage and random situations in my household. Like: did we have a carbon monoxide detector? (no) did we read the little flier we get about our drinking water quality? (yes) do we have a gas powered generator in our home? (no) in the past year have we gone without phone service for more than two weeks not related to weather outages? (no) have I ever heard of radon? (no).

It went on and on. A lot of the questions were about my general health and as we were going through it was like, "I am kicking ass on this survey!" have you been so depressed you couldn't get out of bed? (no!) have you ever been diagnosed with heart disease? (no!) used drugs with needles even just one time or had sex w/ someone who has? (no!) something about chicken pox in the past 2 years (no!)

Then we got to the alcoholic beverage intake question: in the last 30 days, how many days have you consumed at least 1 alcoholic beverage? (um, 30) how many days have you consumed at least 2 alcoholic beverages? (um, 30) how many days have you consumed 4 or more alcoholic beverages (zero, yes!)