3rdragon: (Default)
crazy convention dream behind the cut )

And three nights ago, I dreamed about accidental time travelers to WWI. I wasn't actually a time traveler, more of a techie working the net or whatever, but for some reason I couldn't pull them out yet. I was also in contact with future-now, but at the same time I could talk and interact with the WWI people (one of whom was a love interest finally goaded into declaring his feelings by the prospect of being drafted). I think I was sort-of simultaneously in WWI-time and future-now, but only in that one spot?

I do not approve of Miss Eliza's new habit of sometimes shutting down without warning when she has less than 20 minutes of battery left. That time I definitely still had 19 minutes; I was paying attention! At least lj auto-saves these days.


Edit: Also? The restaurant menu, while it had a very fancy layout, was printed on newsprint, which was just folded and taped to the tablecloth (so it didn't blow away). Real linen tablecloth, white. Newsprint menu.
3rdragon: (Default)
Last night was the first time in a long time that I woke up before the alarm feeling fully rested. Not surprisingly, I dreamed )
3rdragon: (Default)
Well, this evening of babysitting has so far gone much better than I expected when I arrived to discover the seven-year-old crying on the living room couch because he couldn't decide between a cookie or a popsicle for dessert. The three-year-old was extra clingy, and I was suspicious that it was going to be Just One Of Those Days, but so far it's been the usual gig, right down to the quiet-footed visitor half an hour after bedtime, and everything has been quiet upstairs for the past while, so I might escape a second iteration of the "Go to bed. They'll be back late. Don't wait up for them. Yes, they'll be here when you wake up in the morning." etc conversation.

We went to REI this afternoon. For those who don't know, REI is to camping supplies and outdoorswear as Ikea is to home furnishings, although not quite so overwhelming. And dad was very patient while I tried on what seemed like every boot in the store (I have wide feet, and they didn't seem to have women's boots in wide, but the men's boots didn't seem to come in wide until size eight, and one of the two kinds that came in wide were cut narrowly, and the other kind was cut large - so I wound up in a 7 1/2 men's . . . I got the blueish ones that were cut large and hope that they will stretch enough that I do not regret this purchase). I also got useful things like wool socks and a bike light and a new bike lock and a father's day present.

And the dreams. I blame the science-fiction-y-ness on the fact that I was reading The Risen Empire this week (and it was excellent!) and watching Babylon 5. Judge for yourself . . . )
Speaking of science fiction, there's nothing quite like explaining Moodle to a room full of adults, many of whom would rather just keep using Blackboard, using examples like Swanick's "The Dead" and [livejournal.com profile] kadharonon's post on "Geeks in Space."

And speaking of books, I've also been reading The Dresden Files, Robin McKinley's Chalice, 1984, some stuff that's not coming to mind right now, and The Screwtape Letters, which is interesting, if, on occasion a bit preachy (if something narrated by a devil can be preachy in a Christian way).
3rdragon: (Default)
I do still exist, yes. But posting to lj is more procrastination than I generally feel that I can justify on work time (yes, I know that I did it all the time at Smith, but I was usually being paid to sit there, not to do actual work unless it happened to come up). However, the video is rendering right now (probably a fruitless effort, but since no-one bothered to leave a note as to the status, it's what I've got . . . oh, the joys of video-editing by committee).

I do have a question for y'all: if you were taking a class titled The Digital Native (a digital native is either anyone born after 1982 or anyone who grew up surrounded by computers/technology/etc and is comfortable with it), a class which so far is basically Teh Internets and Technology: The Course, what would you expect to learn?/What do you think would be covered?/What's the most awesome piece of awesome that you've seen lately that should totally be in the course?

Speaking of awesome, this morning I got to play with a Dell Latitude XT2, which is a netbook/tablet pc. It was pretty neat (mind you, for that much money, I could definitely wait a few versions until they iron out the kinks). And last week my supervisor handed me a video camera smaller than many digital cameras. The shiny technology in this job is shiny (don't worry, my heart still belongs to the Smith computer labs; there would need to be a Whole Lot More Shiny before I would parcel any of my loyalties over to a Windows school).

When I started this post, I was going to talk about the dream I had last night.Read more... )
3rdragon: (Default)
It was snowing heavily, possibly a snow day. I needed to turn in my tax forms, and in my dream, you couldn't turn in tax forms online, you needed to go to the tax form office and turn them in in person. Usually there was a big line at the tax form place, but because of the weather there was almost no one there. The person (or maybe it was two people) in front of me was/were talking to the woman at the first desk, so I went around that one to the second desk, which was the only other desk with a person at it. President Obama was sitting there, so I handed him my tax forms, and he looked them over for me, and then we chatted. I can't particularly remember what about.
3rdragon: (Default)
There was a young woman walking down an alley in a low-rise inner-city neighborhood. It was an odd sort of alley, in that it abruptly became rather narrower partway down when buildings started sticking into what had previously been alley. The woman was pretty and affluent-looking, and did not look like she belonged here.

A group of people filtered into the alley behind her, perhaps six men and two women. They did not look friendly. The lone woman became aware of them and headed away, but found herself backed up against the faux end of the alley. The welcoming committee drew closer.

Sound of a vehicle. A police car drove down the alley towards the group of people. The gang scattered, leaving the woman backed up against the wall. The police car continued steadily forward. It seemed somehow a very blind and featureless police car. It wasn't that no one was driving it, but rather that one couldn't see inside to see if there was a driver. It continued onwards, as inexorable as death, on a course that would crush the woman against the wall. She began to scream. The car drew closer - closer - and somehow slid down the narrow part of the alley, passing the woman without hitting her.

The woman continued to scream as the police car disappeared down the alley. Gradually the screams resolved into words, which were, "Why is that woman still here?" She was pointing at a woman who had her head sticking out into the alley from a window. Thinking back, I became aware that the woman had been there the whole time - had, indeed, taken no notice of everything that had passed. She pulled her head back in, then shortly afterwards disappeared down the alley, possibly walking through a building.

The two women who had been with the gang were still standing a ways down the alley. The affluent woman looked at them with wild eyes and said, "She's not real - she can't be - she's dead or something," and disappeared down a side alley.

A very nineteen-fifties, very Jewish-grandmother woman appeared from another building, and headed briskly towards the center of town. Walking past the two thunderstruck women who had formerly been with the gang, she scolded them for taking up the entire street, leaving two very confused women who had never seen her before in their lives.
3rdragon: (Default)
Let's start with the haiku:
Haiku2 for 3rdragon
consider this a
victory in miriam vs
pa bureaucracy
@
Created by Grahame


You have to be a bit creative with pronounciation to make the syllables work, but I like it anyway.

And another, which rather encapsulates Spain:
Haiku2 for 3rdragon
what I'm going to
do when supper may not end
until 10 or 11
@
Created by Grahame


Dream and rambling )

And of course, dragon:
Adopt one today!
3rdragon: (Default)
I was dreaming a lot when I first got here, but not so much lately. (Read "lately" to mean: for the past month and a half, since I started taking bookbinding classes that start at 8:30am and are a twenty minute walk away. Those tend to cut into sleep time, even if I never show up when they start.) It's occurred to me that I'm not getting quite enough sleep in Spain. (probably no less than I usually do at Smith, but less than I got all last summer. But what are you going to do when supper may not end until 10:30 or 11 at night and the alarm rings at 7:15 on the early mornings?) It's not so much that I'm chronically sleep deprived here, but more that I don't wake up at the right point in my sleep cycle to remember dreams.

But I remember my dream from last night. I'm not sure why. Maybe it took me long enough to fall asleep that I was still back in the previous sleep cycle when the alarm rang. Anyway.

Yes, I can remember to add lj-cuts. )

Brrrr

29 October 2008 09:28 am
3rdragon: (Default)
While it may not get properly cold here, it was still WAY too cold this morning to take a cold water shower. Or even really to wash my hair in cold water and not shower. But it was time to wash my hair, and it needed it . . .
It's days like this that I really envy people with very short hair.

Maybe I should have just stayed in bed with the ewok-type creature who came over from Ron and Deb's house. Even if Gandalf wanted us to go on some huge quest type thing, and the cardboard box the ewok traveled in kept bursting into flame, and there was some sort of overarching Adam and Eve metaphor. At least it was warm.
3rdragon: (Default)
Okay, dreaming about meeting with profs to discuss my class schedule probably means that I should send out the e-mails, decide that I'm definitely taking what I'm taking, figure out when I'm supposed to register (and what to do if I have class during that time . . . 8:00am there is 2:00pm here, and I have class 1-2:30pm every day except Friday.), and ignore it until then. I mean, it was a good dream-meeting, but it's the principle of the thing.

There was something else I was going to say here. I don't remember what it was, though.

At any rate, there's a religion class next semester on the Inklings (Tolkien and Lewis and ~Sayers and some others). It sounds really cool and I'm pretty definitely taking it.

On the subject of classes, can someone please convince Bill Oram that he really needs to teach a class on fantasy. He was talking about thinking about it when we helped him move over spring break last year.
3rdragon: (Default)
one of which is a Doctor Who dream! )
3rdragon: (Default)
I had two dreams last night. The first one was about children in a castle. I remembered it when I got up, but now I can't remember anything beyond that.

The second dream was about a peasant couple who worked in the king's castle. I was the wife of the couple. Stuff happened, and I don't remember much of it until one night when my husband came home with some harebrained idea about getting me to be one of the king's favorites. My response was, "We already have eight children! Isn't that plenty? And why are you, my husband, trying to convince me to cheat on you with the king? Even supposing that the king, who I've barely seen and has probably never seen me, could be persuaded to pay attention to me?" He told me that the country was going to war, and that the castle servants were being recruited to be valets and maids in the field because "we already knew how to deal with the nobility." He produced a letter which he had received explaining all this (and the wonderful benefits we could receive if we went to war). (Apparently we were literate peasants.) We did not want to go to war. It seemed to be a very uncomfortable business with a high risk of DEATH, and we were happy here. We also had a definite suspicion that after trying to bribe the peasants, they would move to um, more forceful incentives. I began to see why my husband was coming up with crazy ideas for forestall this (and before you say, "I still don't see how that would help." it did make sense it the dream. Politics, or something, I think).
We decided that the best time to try to intercept the king would be right after his evening play with the prince and princess, which was a sort of hide-and-go-seek cum war game that they played in a large maze constructed for the purpose. Some people said that the king was cold to his children, but we palace folk knew that he always made time to play with them before they went to bed, no matter what else was going on, and that he loved them dearly (which is completely irrelevant to everything, but one of those things you know in a dream). The royal play took place in the fancy part of the maze, with elegant walls and decorative railings painted blue. No one was allowed in that part but the king and the children. The servants were allowed in the plainer part with simple blue rails to mark the paths, and often clustered there after work to watch the games. As I approached, I learned that today was an exciting day - the king had been by, near the servants section, and had traded his red woolen cloak for a plain homespun brown one. I, in turn, traded my plain cloak for the red one while the others were distracted. Returning the cloak would be a good excuse to approach the king. As I was waking up, I came to the conclusion that I must have been a fairly beautiful woman, life of hard work and eight children and all, or this plan wouldn't have had a dream of working (not, mind you, that it had a great chance anyway).

So that was my dream.
3rdragon: (Default)
I must be getting enough sleep. I'm getting weird dreams again. pool cue threats and cat-aliens under the cut )

In other news, my birthday and a trip to Sevilla tomorrow
3rdragon: (Default)
belatedly cut because it's way too long to inflict on your friends pages )
3rdragon: (Default)
I dreamed that I was at a ¿bead shop? a store, anyway, with decent window-shopping and a sort of glass-fronted counter. Anyway, my bag was behind the counter (I really don't know why; it's not the sort of bag that's big enough that they make you leave it at the front of the store - not usually, anyway), and I wanted it back. So the sales clerk asked me to describe what was in it (in Spanish, mind, because the dream took place in Spain). And while that's the bag in which I carry everything that might be useful, I couldn't actually think of what I kept in it. I finally came up with "a camera in a little black bag (I meant case, but can't say case in Spanish)." And she looked, and found it, among a surprising number of other oddiments that shouldn't all have fit into the bag, like the little stuffed kangaroo that I got in Australia when I was three, and a glass water bottle partially filled with wine that belonged to my friends (I don't know why I was carrying it; I had a bag and they thought that it was sketchy to carry a bottle of wine around the street?), which gave the sales clerk some pause, although I don't know of any reason that I shouldn't be carrying around a water bottle with wine in it (it was a funny-shaped bottle, too, like one of those Pom bottles with big lumps). I offered it to her if it would make her feel better, because my friends weren't around to claim it and I was tired of hauling it around, and I suspected that they had forgotten I had it, and anyway, it's not like I cared about it (this, folks, is why you should never delegate me to haul around drinks that I have no interest in) but the sales clerk said she didn't want it and kept going through my bag. And as she rooted around, I kept thinking things like, now why didn't I remember that I had my teal bandanna in here? But she eventually found the camera in its case, and gave me my bag back.
3rdragon: (Default)
Last night I dreamed that I was back at Smith. Only, Smith may have been in Spain. I don't really remember.

Also, on the bus yesterday, my iPod's shuffle theme seemed to be Songs That Remind Me of My Friends. So I'm having lots of fun here, but missing all of you folks.
3rdragon: (Default)
But before that, a quick update on my life:
Dear Microsoft Word automatic table-of-contents feature: FAIL. Catastrophic, terrible FAIL. As in, you rolled a .5 on a D20, in a system where low numbers are a bad thing. Okay, just wanted to get that out of my system.

I dreamed that I was supervising a young girl named Elizabeth (yes, [livejournal.com profile] vorindi, that Elizabeth) and teaching her how to drive. No, she was not 16. Or even remotely close. I think that her parents orchestrated this somehow with lots of money because they thought it was important. Mind you, I'm not sure why they picked me. I was, I think, a teenage boy (I maybe had a paper route?), and while I was Responsible, I certainly wasn't qualified, or anything like that. At any rate, Elizabeth's mother dropped her off with me and a large red minivan, and went off with a guy (who she was having an affair with, or who was her brother, or was just some random male acquaintance or friend of the family). Someone (not me) had given Elizabeth the basics of driving already. I started off slowly and calmly "You could slow down a little bit, Elizabeth," "You might want to be careful of that corner," "I suggest that you look behind you before while backing up," but soon realized that Elizabeth was not the sort of new driver would would easily be intimidated or freaked out by her passenger. In fact, she was reckless and overconfident (but still not very good at driving). The parking lot wasn't really very big (like, a large sort of small parking lot, not the giant kind of parking lot you have at the mall) and there were a lot of cars in it, not to mention pedestrians, among them Elizabeth's mother and the man (who must've really failed their spot check, because they did not seem unduly concerned - about anything). I found this situation somewhat worrying, since while I thought that the minivan could probably handle most things on the road, and I didn't doubt that Elizabeth's parents could buy her out of most sorts of trouble, I didn't really think that they would care much about me.
And have I mentioned that, being a small child, Elizabeth was rather short and so not only didn't have great visibility, she could barely reach the peddles, let alone the floor?
After a few swervy lunges around the parking lot and a scary k turn or two in the process of trying to orient ourselves properly to get out, accompanied by several suggestions that she slow down a little, I decided that this was not working, and told her firmly, "Elizabeth, 40mph is too fast to be driving in a parking lot. You should not be going above 25 in a parking lot, and not even that, a lot of the time." She grudgingly brought it down to somewhere between 24 and 27, and I figured that that was at least an improvement. We got out onto the road, and I started looking for somewhere that I could tell her to pull off so that I could explain the physics of why speeding around corners was a BAD idea, because I was sure that she wasn't going to pay any attention to speed limits on corners otherwise. Then I woke up, and it occurred to me that the problem with this situation was that I was a lawful person trying to teach a chaotic person proper driving procedure, and that I followed laws because they were there and a good idea, but that the only way I was going to get her to do anything was to either convince her that it was a smart thing to do or intimidate her into doing it.

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

December 2018

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031     

Most Popular Tags

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Style Credit

Page generated 16 May 2025 12:06 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios