Sunday, May 29, 2011

Canterbury Tales

First of all, I must apologize if my dream post last week was very strange. I just never had so many strange dreams all at once. (This week I had a dream involving a dog that was like a plecostomus [a sucking fish] and a dream involving thirty and forty-five dollar bills, featuring Disney characters--but I won't bore you again with another dream post.)

Last Sunday night (after my last blog post), I went to a revival of "Culture Night"--a tradition started last summer by a girl in my ward, Lori. That ended when I moved out (and later she did). Last week's revival was held in Orem at the residence of one of Lori's previous roommates, Sara. I read a new poem I wrote, "I Wish I Were a Vampire," and then upon request, I told them the violent "Thoughts of Retail Employees Toward Unnecessarily Irate Customers."

Last Sunday I also had to plan the next three days so I could make sure I put in enough hours for projects for my History of the English Language class. We had to research and do Powerpoints on two English counties, spending ten hours on each. My counties were Norfolk and Kent. Spending most of my free time on the bottom floor of the library, where the sun doesn't shine and phones get no service, I did finish eventually. I found that for Kent County, there was such a rich history that I couldn't do it justice--but I did put in my ten hours.

For Wednesday I had purchased tickets to see The Diary of Anne Frank on campus. I seldom get any culture (especially with no more culture night), but I got a really good deal if I bought two (it was just a dress rehearsal). So I invited one of my coworkers (who isn't a coworker anymore, as I had my last night of work on Tuesday) to go with me. I texted her, asking her if she wanted to go to a play. She is from Mexico, working on her English, so when I picked her up, she asked me, "What game are we seeing?" She didn't understand the word play. She was fine with it, but it was a bit of a strange evening. But the play was good.

I stayed up late Wednesday to finish my Powerpoints, and emailed them to my professor. When I got up on Thursday, I had emails from her and the TA saying that my presentation about Kent was lacking in information. The presentations were supposed to talk about how these county histories affected the English language. In the email the professor asked why I didn't talk about World War II (when English was already established), Dover (which I could only deduce was famous because of its white cliffs, which don't speak English at all), or Canterbury. I actually did talk about Canterbury--I mentioned it being the setting for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and went into detail about St. Augustine's mission and the importance of the Archbishop of Canterbury. She also asked why I didn't talk about the Norman invasion. I emailed back, saying that there was too rich of a history to cover in such a short time, so I just stuck to what was pertinent to Kent itself.

In class on Thursday, I gave my presentation on Kent, and I did feel like it was lacking. Then she talked about the Norman invasion and the Battle of Hastings and told me I had to add a slide about that. I was wondering how I could have missed that, because it certainly was important. I went running Thursday night, and when I got home, I was locked out, so I went up to the library. I looked up on Wikipedia, and found out why I didn't see any of that stuff in my research of Kent: The Battle of Hastings and all that did not happen in that county! So, I will make a slide about the effects of the Norman invasion on Kent--but I will make it clear in the slide that the events happened in East Sussex (and hope that it will make them feel guilty for reproving me so much)! When we turned in our notes, we accounted for the hours we spent, and I hope that she'll accept my ten hours to boost my grade...but I don't know if she will...

A week ago, my roommate, Chase, and I were going home teaching. I got Chase's number from the home teaching slip, not knowing it was wrong on there, so as it was getting close to time and he wasn't home yet, I sent a text to this wrong Chase, asking if he would be back in time for home teaching.

This week, it got a lot more awkward. We were going to be home teaching again, but Chase was going somewhere before, so he got my number. Later on he called, and I thought, "That's funny, I thought I had him saved in here, but his name doesn't show up. Maybe I didn't save it." He asked me if I could give him our home teachees' numbers to see if it was OK if we were late, so I told him I would text them to him. Then I saved his number, and I thought it was weird when it told me it was already saved, and asked me if I wanted to save again. I said yes, thinking it would replace the old number.

So I immediately texted the names and numbers of our home teachees to Chase--not knowing it was the wrong Chase. A little later, I still hadn't heard from him, so I sent the wrong Chase a text saying, "Did you reschedule or will you be here?" The wrong Chase responded, "We will be here." I didn't know if "here" meant my apartment or where he was, so I sent another text: "Where is here?" and a little later, "Who is we?" Then, the right Chase texted me and asked me what was going on, if I had texted him the numbers, and if I had talked to our home teachees. I looked at my text history and thought it was strange that this latest text wasn't part of the same conversation, but I responded to the right Chase that I had sent him the numbers at 6:11 p.m. He said he never received it. Anyway, we ended up home teaching a little late. When we came back, I looked at my phone, and saw this text from the wrong Chase: "Are you he [sic] person that wants to see our float tube if not you sent the orig message." I'm sure the last part was referring to the fact that I had said "Who is we?" I looked at Chase and asked him what he was talking about. When he said he didn't send that, I finally figured everything out, and immediately deleted the wrong Chase from my phone, and sent a text to these strangers apologizing that I had the wrong number. And I sure felt dumb.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Enter Sandman

Besides apocalyptic rainstorms that led to a non-existent apocalypse, getting 100% on the matching portion of a midterm, and getting paid to do nothing for an hour or two yesterday, this has been a pretty uneventful week.

In real life, that is.

Occasionally, I go through spurts of having several strange dreams in a row. This usually happens when I've had a recent change in life. For example, in January when I moved back down to Provo, I had a dream that the guests for a stake conference here at BYU were Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, and I was hoping that their sojourn in Provo would inspire them to be more virtuous.

For five nights in a row this week, I had strange dreams. But I haven't been through a recent change. Maybe it was a delayed reaction, since I didn't experience the weirdness when spring term started a few weeks ago. I know how it can be tedious to hear other people tell their dreams, so I will stick to the more unusual, random events I experienced in Dreamland.

Monday night/Tuesday morning. I had a dream that I and a bunch of other people were going running on the freeway. We would get on and off on the right shoulder, but it was more desirable to run on the left, because the right had a grate on the ground that moved backwards like a treadmill. Of course, to get to the left shoulder you had to dodge cars, but in the dream they weren't going much faster than us runners, so it wasn't too bad. In another part of the dream, I was going to get in a swimming pool, and I went through a door that was intended for emergency personnel. There was a tiny sign saying that an alarm would sound if it was opened, but I didn't see it until it was too late. There I was, standing with this alarm going off, embarrassed and not knowing what to do. But then I woke up and didn't have to worry about it.

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. I dreamed I was playing a Mario game I hadn't played before. But what was unique about this game was that it was a real-life role playing game. A girl I grew up with and who is now serving in my mission, Hillary Ulmer, was playing the part of Mario. I was a sidekick of some sort. I wasn't very good, and I felt bad as I was standing back watching her battle the boss of the game, Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Ursula would shoot a gold-colored magic particle, and Mario/Hillary would get down on the ground. I assumed this meant she had been hit, and she was acknowledging that she had lost a life. Every time Mario was hit, Ursula would retreat to her lair. Then they would both play again in the same location. I assumed they were just pretending to be in a different place, but didn't want to go through the hassle of actually moving--after all, it was a role playing game. Eventually, Mario left, and I was following, but I had to hide from Ursula. I hid behind a post and was hoping Ursula would retreat and I could safely go back, but "she" didn't, and the post wasn't wide enough. I saw that the person playing Ursula was one of my E Lang professors from last semester, Book of Mormon scholar Royal Skousen. He shot one of the gold magic things at me, and I thought, "Does this mean I have to get down on the ground?" I wasn't sure, but I got down anyway.

Another part of my dream involved me going tracting by myself with no name tag. This is actually a recurring dream I have--being home from my mission but returning to missionary work, with no companion and usually no name tag.

Wednesday night/Thursday morning. I don't remember a lot of the details, but I know that Jabba the Hutt was walking around. Except he was only two feet tall and furry like a stuffed animal. He was sticking a wide, white tongue out, so I picked him up and rocked him like a baby. Then I was at a stream in the mountains with my family. We were watching a (fictional) video from AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com that involved a family getting their picture taken, and a daughter was riding a boat down a waterfall. Then the kids were playing in the stream and one fell in. I (along with some others) jumped up to help her, but then we remembered it was just a video. The other kids helped their sister, but then they fell in. This cycle continued of kids falling in and the other kids helping them, only to fall in themselves, and every time one fell in, I would jump up to help before I remembered it was just a video. Then in real life in the dream, my niece was playing in the stream. I reprimanded her, since she had just seen the video that showed how easy it was to fall in, but my mom came to her defense, pointing out that the stream now was less deep and less fast than it was in the video.

The aspect of the cuddly Jabba may be related to the fact that my brother used to call his baby son Jabba until his oldest told him that wasn't nice. I stole this comparative picture from his blog from February 2010.


Thursday night/Friday morning. I don't remember much about this dream. But I know Santa Claus and the Abominable Snow Monster of the North were in my neighborhood. My niece was scared of approaching the Snow Monster, but I had fended him off before by bopping him with a tool. But this time he was only three feet tall instead of his usual gigantic size, so I wasn't at all scared. But we ended up not having to encounter him.

Friday night/Saturday morning. In real life, I took fall semester off and came back in January. In my dream, I had taken a few months off of my mission, and was just now returning to finish up. I also found an endangered species (i.e. I found a specimen, I didn't discover the species) of which there were only three known to exist. It was a cross between a dachshund and a hippo. To me it seemed like much more dachshund than hippo. I didn't know what to do with it, but then it turned into Jimmer.

Why Jimmer? I'd say your guess is as good as mine. I don't really follow BYU sports.