hrj

So you know that genre of dreams where you're doing something ordinary and everyday and you suddenly realize to your horror and embarrassment that you're stark naked? I didn't have that one. I had a dream where I was doing something ordinary and everyday and suddenly realized to my horror and embarrassment that I was wearing clothing. At this point you need to remember that my job involves entering clean-room environments where I'm supposed to be wearing scrubs covered by sterile coveralls. Yup, in my dream, there I was in a clean production area wearing street clothes. Horrified and embarrassed. And wondering how long it was going to take for someone else to notice. Context is everything.

So it started as a standard travel anxiety dream (although I have no impending trips in the near future). I'm at work; I have a flight somewhere in about four hours; I'm thinking, 'Ok, an hour to tidy things up here, an hour to go home and get my bags and get to the airport, leaving me with a couple hours for security delays and whatnot -- I'm right on schedule.' And, of course, now the standard anxiety dream events kick in with folks at work delaying me, paperwork not being ready, and so forth, but I still make it out to the parking lot well on schedule.

Then as I'm pulling out (and, by the way, my beautiful green Element has firmly ensconced itself in my dream-landscape at the default vehicle)there's a thud and scrape. I look over to my right, and I've slammed into the side of the car next to me. I'm thinking, 'What the heck? I had plenty of space.' Then I look to my left and the ground has opened up revealing the reason for my erratic driving. It seems that at some point, someone had left a backhoe in a pit in the parking lot and just filled in dirt over it, but now the dirt has settled leaving deep holes around the now-revealed backhoe. And it was the seismic shift of this earth-movement that caused my car to ram into the other parked car. I hop out of the car and start taking pictures to use as evidence for the police and insurance company.

But I still need to get out of there and get home so I can get to the airport, only now the parking lot has transmogrified into the interior of a cathedral (and the backhoe is revealed to be sitting in the crypt below the nave) so I have to wait for services to be over before I can extract my car and leave. This is the point where everything goes fuzzy and I think I woke up. Originally there were a bunch of much more specific details about the delaying issues at work before the parking lot/crypt incident, but they slipped away while I was trying to hold onto the main plot thread.

No interpretation on this one: the lack of real-life travel plans to map it to makes it impossible to figure out the symbolic equivalence of a backhoe in a church crypt.

So there we were -- some portion of my immediate family, including at the very least my parents and I, but I think a brother or so as well -- in a hotel in New York City (not that it's important that it was NY, just that in the dream it happened to be). The initial part of the dream, was primarily just me, wandering around looking at museums and things. There was one very odd incident where I was crossing a street and stepped in some extremely gluey mud which pulled my shoe off. I went to retrieve the shoe, but there was a whole pile of shoes that looked exactly like it except for being different sizes or the wrong handedness. A policeman on foot patrol wandered by and I enlisted his help in trying to recover my lost shoe, but instead he confiscated all the shoes, including the one I was still wearing, and took them away. So I had to make my way back to the hotel in stocking feet.

But here's the really weird and vivid part. My family was sitting in the hotel lobby in these overstuffed chairs. One entire wall of the lobby was a long picture window facing on the street, but it was separated into large panes, and along the top edge there was a narrow part that louvered out to open for ventilation. Outside, over the sidewalk, the window was shaded by one of those canvas awnings, and there was a supporting strut-work structure underneath holding the awning up that was absolutely crawling with roosting pigeons (as these things often are, in or out of dreams).

Suddenly there was the sound of a very loud flapping of wings and the noise of agitated pigeons and a large vulture flew in and perched on one of the struts under the awning. This wasn't an American turkey vulture -- more like a European griffon vulture: grayish with a long neck and the little ruff of feathers at the base, and very very large. The effect was like an elephant among a flock of sheep. It sat there on the awning support, right next to the open louver, turning its head this way and that and sniffing the air. I joked, "Ok, so who's hiding the road kill?" Then it hopped through the open louver and flew down to perch on the back of the lobby chair my mom was sitting in. It sniffed the air a few more times then took a tentative peck at her forehead. At that point I grabbed it by the neck, right behind the head (gently -- just so it couldn't peck) and tucked its body under my other arm (so it wouldn't flail around and hurt anyone, including itself). And everyone is in an uproar ... and then I woke up.

Analysis: This one's just plain about the fear of mortality. No stereotypical motifs, though -- this is all brand new imagery.

**Google "Hinckley" + "vultures"

Vivid dream last night with lots of current real-life details but no flavor of a “meaningful” or anxiety dream. A sense of mischief inspires me to note that the person described herein as “Ms X” is an actual person who, in fact, happens to be on my LJ friends list, although I have no particular reason to suspect that the opinions expressed by Ms X in my dream correspond to actual opinions held by that person.

The setting of the dream was this coming Saturday: I had spent the morning at the Slow Food Nation festival in SF and was about to head off to a party at some friends (both actual real-life events on my schedule). But for some reason, in between those events, I was talking to Ms X. Seemingly out of nowhere, Ms X noted that she was jealous of how much time I spend on my journal talking about Ms Y. I retorted that I was surprised she hadn’t mentioned how much time I spend talking about Ms Z, where there might be a better cause for jealousy (note that Ms Y and Ms Z are also actual people who happen to be on my LJ friends list) but that I was frankly rather surprised that jealousy came into the matter at all since Ms X had had ample opportunity to engage my affections (and, in fact, was aware that I was attracted to her) but instead seemed to delight in paying romantic attention to other people in my presence, which I had taken as a pretty explicit message of disinterest. There followed a somewhat detailed analysis of our history of interactions, but without any resolution regarding possible future involvement.

An odd dream, but in an odd way a rather pleasant dream despite the flavor of annoyed frustration I felt. (Look: if anyone out there actually does harbor a secret longing for my romantic interest, just say so. The statistical odds are too stacked against me for me to take game-playing at anything but face value.)

Dream with a "meaningful" feel to it just before waking this morning. I should note that I don't believe the actual supporting characters in the dream are intended to represent themselves, but on the other hand I haven't managed a reasonable "reading" of it yet.

I'm packing a car for a trip -- the car appears to be my as-yet-unbought new car. There are large amounts of SCA camping gear strapped to the roof (I specifically noted my camp tables and pavilion fabric) and I'm being accompanied by my mother and at least one brother (identity unclear). In addition to packing the car, I have large amounts of food to prepare for something and the only offers I get to help with it are of the form "I'll cook something, but it'll be something I feel like cooking, not your carefully planned-out dishes."

We get on the road and as I'm pulling onto the highway, things start falling off the roof of the car: long swathes of tent canvas, tables smashed on the pavement. I pull off and investigate and it turns out that someone (identity unknown) had undone the lashings to get access to something on the roof and then hadn't tied things down again. I start ranting and raving.

I'm still ranting and raving when we arrive at the house of some (identity unclear) fannish friends. My memory has gotten fuzzy but evidently the trip was for the purpose of attending some sort of convention at which I was some sort of guest, because the next thing I know, my mother (I repeat the reminder that supporting characters do not appear to be representing themselves in the dream) is harranguing me for being autocratic and egotistical, one piece of evidence for which is that evidently I'd asked her to write up a several-page biography of me for the program book (in addition to bossing everyone around about the packing and cooking). And as I'm trying to explain to her that it's normal for guests to make their own arrangements for a bio to be available, and that the page count was so that they could edit it down into the available space (rather than having to write more to fill the space), our fannish hosts start harranguing me about something entirely different which, again, turns out to be based on a complete misunderstanding not only about what had happened but about the context in which it occurred.

And I wake up with a looming sense of trying to get something done while everyone around me not only is failing to support me in the project but is hindering the work by careless actions and thinking badly of me for reasons that are not only unfair but outside my control. Woah.

Possible interpretation: I've been feeling a little bit guilty about not being as energetic in doing grunt work and research for the Perfectly Period Feast as others are (I'm still struggling to get my new clothes finished and doing the readings for my own role), and there has been a small problem with some people having mistaken understandings of what the feast is trying to do that have resulted in prickly feelings. So if you rearrange the dream roles such that I'm one of the persons "failing to support" and the main leaders of the feast project showed up in the dream as "me", then this might be a reasonable working out of my feelings and anxieties around the event. My meaningful dreams don't ususally transpose point of view that way -- it would have been much more straightforward (and in line with previous dream manifestations) if I'd had the usual imagery of preparing for a trip and not being packed, not having tickets, being too far from the airport, not having my passport for an international flight, etc. etc. Curious.

Just a few miscellaneous items that I kept forgetting in the last few posts:

( Dream journal -- yet to be interpreted )

( Fitness and nutrition at the con )

( On the Art of Cheeblemancy )

Too tired to finish up the language creation notes yet. The sofa-bed delivery has been moved up to Saturday, so no dawdling on getting the space ready. I took a crowbar and sledgehammer to the two old sofas and got them loosened up enough to fit out through the sliding glass door into the back yard. The living room is now arranged more or less into the new couch configuration, although I expect to do some further tweaking after it's in place.

I had two dreams last night that were interesting enough to journal. The first was a very Indiana Jones-esque adventure, complete with evil Nazi plots and a mystical artifact. The artifact was some sort of statue of an eagle that ... the only way to describe it is that it "sweated" some sort of metallic compound that you could peel off periodically and use to make preternaturally powerful weapons. So I had this statue and was trying to hide and escape from the evil Nazi plotters by going into a secret passage behind a fireplace. It wasn't exactly a "passage" -- more like a semi-natural rock chimney that I ended up descending as if rock climbing. And about when my claustrophobia seriously kicked in I woke up. Or rather, because my claustrophobia kicked in, etc. That one was early evening -- when I woke up it was one-something.

The second dream was right before I woke up in the morning and was a sort of reverse travel anxiety dream. I was in England with a random assortment of people from rasfc, so it may have been for a convention or something. In any event, it was the day to fly back to the States and I had a vague recollection that my flight wasn't until 8pm or so but I couldn't find my PDA to check on the time and flight information. There were a lot of random PDAs lying around and I spent a lot of effort trying to figure out how to operate them until I realized that mine would just feel "right" in my hand, so of course none of them were the right one. Finally I found it attached to my hip just like it always is -- except I'd looked there repeatedly previously. But the odd thing about the dream was that travel dreams are normally about leaving home (and being unprepared), not about coming back.

The squirrel follies seem to be in ratings week this morning. To visualize this properly, you have to know that my deck (off the 2nd floor kitchen) has a railing about waist high with posts that rise to about head-height (the builder was planning to trim them to just above the railing but I said to leave them in case I wanted to use them as an anchor for something else at some point ... but I digress) with a variety of trees snugging up next to the railing on the other side. So I'm sitting having breakfast right next to one of the posts when there comes a violent rustling in one of the trees at the other end of the deck and suddenly a squirrel pops out onto the deck floor. Just about nose-to-nose with a very interested cat. The squirrel does one of those teleportation things up onto the deck railing and runs like mad ... straight at me. Says me to squirrel, "Did you really want to do that?" Squirrel teleports to top of post and we have a brief and amicable stare-off. Squirrel then does a backflip into the apple tree and scampers off. Cat stares longingly.

Another squirrel (or maybe the same one) is currently sitting in the birch tree, just in tantalizing distance from the cat, nibbling on seed-thingies. Another is checking the ripeness of the green almonds in one of the almond trees. I haven't quite figured out whether the squirrels actually find unripe almonds nutritious or whether they just nibble at them reflexively all through the season out of habit.

I day-tripped to Crown Tourney yesterday and did the butterfly thing -- if I take a chair, then I'm much too inclined to plunk it down and stay in one place, and one of the benefits of daytripping is doing a lot of circulating and talking to different people. That I did in abundance. Saw the brothers and all the usual suspects. In addition to general schmoozing, I offered the leftover games booklets from the Games Tourney to the Princess, since she's very interested in promoting games in general and she was delighted to take them off my hands to pass out. I've been drooling over acanthusleaf's jewelry for quite a while, but nothing had ever quite grabbed me by the throat, although I was quite enamored of the little "hat jewels" she makes and had talked a bit about maybe getting something in that line. Well, I've also mentioned to her in the past that I'm quite fond of emeralds (#1 they're green; #2 they're my birthstone) -- not necessarily the top-quality ones, but I quite like the low-grade ones as well. And she has kept pointing out that they're enough more expensive than the usual run of stones she uses (e.g., in the garnet range of prices) that they're hard to sell. Well, this time she pulls out a little box with four small round emeralds -- just perfect for the corners of a hat-jewel -- and they grabbed me by the throat. So it'll have a square garnet in the center and a pearl drop. Now I need to think about what sort of 12th night dress would go well with it.

In the end, I decided to bug out before evening court, since it was shaping up to be long and late as usual and the peerages that I knew and cared about had been taken care of earlier in the day. So I even got home before dark and got a rather good nights sleep ... interruped only somewhat by vivid dreams of hordes of cockroaches in my house. Not sure what that's a metaphor for.

Why is it that the more relaxed a weekend I have, the less likely I am to get caught up on my sleep properly? Three-day weekend. Mostly unscheduled. Went to bed at a perfectly reasonable hour. No need to get up at any particular time. Lay awake until well past midnight, tossed and turned all night, and bolt-awake at 6 am with no hope of getting back to sleep. Well, ok, so maybe residual dental pain, having cramps, and eating an overly rich dinner may have contributed. And maybe the fact that I woke up at 6 am dreaming in PHP code suggests one teensy tiny contributing mental pre-occupation. But I'm still grumpy.

I'm actually having a lot of fun with MySQL and PHP -- it's been a few years since I learned a new computer language. And I've been mentally planning the database interface for long enough that it's just a matter of figuring out what bits of code I need to make it jump through which hoops. My current problem is that the coding examples in the tutorial are all very simple, so it's hard to know which bits need to get repeated for each additional complexity and which parts only need to get done once per program. I'm drafting it up in individual building blocks and figure that I'll start debugging with a couple of blocks and then start adding more until the tower is either built or it falls down.

It helps that the only interactive aspect of the database is the search function -- no on-line updating or editing of the database, so I can skip that part of the complexity (as well as skipping most of the security functions, since the worst case scenario is that I re-upload everything).

Garden: No garden update. Rain showers all day. But the weather people promise this is the last storm for a while.

This week I completed the fourth iteration of the 8-week housecleaning cycle (if I've calculated correctly) and as with previous iterations I'm doing a review and adjustment. A few new tasks added and some rearranged. The major modification, I think, is to change from the original 5-day-a-week schedule to a more compact 3-day-a-week one. I'd started testing it and found that certain clumpings of rooms worked very naturally. This means that I have a bit more freedom to schedule time-consuming evening plans without disturbing the Overall Plan. It's also time to attach some more of the stubborn Clumps that I've been working around (as is allowed by The Plan).

Time to swing by IKEA and shop for a bedside lamp. I'm tired of the really rather broken thing I'm currently putting up with.

I was picking up some paperwork from QC this morning and noticed that one of the cherry trees had recently exploded into bloom. A couple days ago I was thinking of performing the First Lawn-mowing of Spring this weekend, but it rained again last night, so that's postponed for at least another week.

Wednesday night I had another one of those vivid and transparent anxiety dreams: for some unknown reason, I was moving to Arizona -- immediately, like, today -- and I need to contact the mortgage company to tell them to cancel the whole deal. I'll be glad when the paperwork is all done and I can move on to anxiety dreams about blocked plumbing and termites. Obviously, the mortgage didn't close this week, but we're moving steadily forward. The title company got the last of the documents they needed yesterday and forwarded it to the mortgage company. I talked to my underwriter this morning and she's harrassing the relevant department to keep things expedited. It's pretty much down to signing the actual contract and telling them how much money to send where.

Yesterday evening I went off to Thread-walker's study group to do a presentation on surviving garments of the 11-12th centuries from non-Scandinavian Europe. It's always fun to infect new people with the surviving garments bug. And now I'm getting excited about doing my in-depth look at surviving albs of the 12-13th centuries and how/whether the ecclesiastical material can be used in to illuminate secular garments of the time. I really want to get back to working out how to do the pattern-gathered gores that several of these garments have. And I'd love to track down better information on dress attributed to Saint Clare, which appears to have the same basic construction and -- if the traditional description of it is accurate -- is a secular garment as well as being the only woman's garment of the type that I've found. Hmm, the original page I found it on is gone, but the wayback machine has it here.