Writings:2008 NaNoWriMo novel, Dreams
table and kangaroo girl
8:01pm JST Saturday 1 November 2008 (day 14101)
Had a chance to get a used table from a friend, so I solicited the help of some friends to help me move it. Richard (Kiwi) was helping move it when I arrived (late) with my group, and he was upset. I placed my hand on his chest and made eye contact with him for a few minutes as he changed from hot and sweaty to normal; emotionally angry to spiritually enlightened; and from Richard the Kiwi to Kim Sawyer, my warrior brother.
I then apologized to the group for making them wait again, thanked them for their help, and suggested that if we get just one person on each corner of the table, we could lift it easily, or two smaller people on each corner, and a girl went to the opposite end and just picked it up, "or one strong person to just get the other end," and we started to carry it.
She wasn't as strong as I thought and she struggled a bit to carry it; I considered asking for help again from the group, but didn't.
- - - -
Riding in a train along a river, there were plenty of people on it, but no windows to keep us all inside. We could see down the cliff into the river, and I noted with some curiosity (and excitement) that PB was sailing along the river. It looked really far away; farther away than the river itself (or the river must be really wide?)
The train driver announced something about waterfalls that I didn't understand, and then suddenly I couldn't see PB, because the river was right up at our level; because I had been looking back at the ship, I didn't see the water falls! The train turned to cross the higher elevation river, so we could see the water flowing off to the right of the train, off the face of the cliff.
Rolling across some islands in the water, we went by a family of kangaroos, one of whom was a really cute blonde girl with kangaroo body (a centauroo?), who waved to the train as we passed by. She saw how the train had no sides, so she suggested helpfully: "be careful!" as we passed by, even though normally she would just wave like a character in a theme park.
I said I was being careful, but then noted another equally cute woman on the train, just in front of me; under the guise of being helpful, I scooped my arm around her waist to ensure she said on the train.
As we progressed, I wondered if it was appropriate to have my arm around her, but she didn't seem to mind, so I just stayed there. Nice.
Arrived a a party, someone announced we could see PB, which was parked in the river, visible from an onsen. I was all excited like, "really? where? where?" because it was my first time in this area.
A guy pointed and was like, "roughly that way," pointing up a hill, so I started out, taking a dirt road that led roughly that way. He was like, "no nononono," as if I should have known better.
And I was like, "fahkoff, so show me," and he proceeded to walk straight down the little slope to go up the hill. I realized I had forgotten my camera in my haste to follow, but he had one in his pocket and threw it back to me. We were soon climbing up a rickety ladder with a goat standing on it. He made it past the goat, and I made it past the goat more quickly, and then past my friend. As we arrived at the top of the ladder, I realized we were in the onsen area, with two naked old Japanese men standing in the water up to their knees, looking at us as if we might be invading their space.
We remained quiet, to support the atmosphere, but then everything changed when I saw the ship. She was there, just beyond the onsen, chillin' in a nub of the river fed by the onsen runoff. The onsen remained, and a dinner party appeared around it, complete with cocktail dresses and a grand piano. I started taking pictures, but couldn't get very good shots, so I started running as I kicked off my shoes behind the grand piano and arrived on the other side of the ship, where I called to the driver (the ship was just a speed boat now), asking him to turn sideways so I could see the PB logo.
He did, and I took pictures, listening to the sound of the click to know it had taken. The lighting was low, so I tried to keep the PB logo in place in the viewfinder as the light meter ticked up from 0.00 to 10.00 in about 2 seconds. I wasn't able to hold it quite correctly, but a few times I got some nearly crisp shots of the ship. I knew there should be a way to set the flash correctly, but didn't know how to do it.
school
3:05pm JST Sunday 2 November 2008 (day 14102)
Classes continue as always. In gymnastics I wanted to add a new part to my routine, a double back layout. While I wore the safety harness, I was able to do the trick no problem, but it seemed to hold me down from doing it to my full ability. So when we took off the harness I launched way up into the air and overrotated so that I landed wrongly, like banged my butt and back and head, similar to my skating accident, but this time I maintained consciousness, and all my vital fluids, so that's a bonus. However, I stretched something in my spine, so our instructor suggested I find a yoga class to help it recover nicely.
Loads of homework in dj class; we are supposed to memorize the sounds on all the records in the station. I think it would be better to just download an imprint of them so we can actually see the sounds but the instructor was like, "back in my day we didn't have imprints blah blah," so if I do use that method, I better make sure I can still answer the questions in the way *he* wants them to be answered.
Blah.
Natalie the yogi
8:05pm JST Sunday 2 November 2008 (day 14102)
Overheard a woman talking on her cell phone as we walked out of the school into the U-turn pickup area. She said she was meeting Natalie, so I asked if she was meeting Natalie Ferris.
The woman didn't know her Natalie's last name, but I didn't give up there. I askd about the nature of their meeting. "What does Natalie like to do?" I asked. "My Natalie likes salsa," I offered, after hearing they were going to meet for yoga. "I guess we know different Natalies."
I kept hanging around, though, basically wanting to expand my people skills. I asked how they had met, but I don't remember the answer. Her Natalie arrived in the area and called to complete the visual connection.
We saw her on the other side of the U-turn, and walked over to meet her. After they said HI, I was like, "HI; I'm Rob," and "I was wondering if I could join, if that would be okay."
Natalie asked her two students what they thought, and when they said it would be okay, I asked how much she would charge for one lesson. Natalie said, "ten dollars, so I guess that's 1000 yen." Ah; she hasn't been in Tokyo very long.
I said, "excellent; I'd like to join," and as a joke, I gave her 1000 Vietnamese dong. None of them noticed, but the original woman I had met said, "it's actually 10,000 yen."
Natalie put the 1000 dong in her wallet, and I was like, "wha?" in my mind, and then said, "Okay wait; I have a little problem." I first turned to Natalie, "you said 1000 yen, and as a joke I gave you 1000 dong. I figured the others would notice immediately and then I'd give you the correct amount."
I then turned to Natalie and the original woman. "But she says now that it's 10,000 yen, and I must admit that at this time I choose not to pay that much for a lesson, but I would like your card, so I can pay that much in the future."
flying away from the bombs and into Sarah
6:25am JST Thursday 6 November 2008 (day 14106)
With some rebels from some arm in a field in a neighborhood, chilling on a picknic bench, one of them fired a missile from our location to a location on the other side of the houses from us. A big arc of smoke showed exactly the trail of the missle, but when it detonated, destroying all the area over there, no one knew it came from our group, except for our bosses who kept telling us (Jei) not to do that. He replied each time that he understood, and then immediately did it again.
They radioed him again and he said it was an accident. This time we saw the victims: some dark skinned guy with full beard and no shirt ran out of his house and yelled toward the fire fighters to spray him with their hoses to douse him so the imminent explosion wouldn't kill him.
They sprayed his front side, and he turned around and they sprayed his back. He ran out of the scene and then we saw the explosion from afar, brighter than the first time. ONe of the guys commented, "was that a 50 megaton?" And Jei goes "yeah."
I decided I didn't want to be near these guys anymore, so I started to leave. They were like, "where you going?" cause we were trapped inside this cafeteria sized room. I was like, "I can fly," and I flew up toward the ceiling (where I had to be careful of some high tension wires) and they were all, "whoah! he can fly! he can fly!" and they were thinking I must have some secret occult powers that they wanted. I had no plans to give them any such power, so I blassted out through the brick wall of the auditorium and basically went horizontally through the building, smashing through wall after wall.
I noted with some curiosity that I normally flew vertically through floor-ceiling after floor-ceiling. I was having a bit of trouble getting my full flying power to come, so I remained fairly affected by gravity, and ended up in a room on the far side of the building.
I thought, "I'll say in here where I'll have just three crumbs of food," but was a bit surprised/happy to see there were actually three hamburgers in the room, discarded yet intact on the floor. I explored around the room a bit and noted a propane stove was left burning, and another open flame was in the corner of the room. I turned off the flame in the sink, and noted its nozzle protective grill was still red hot.
Around that time, Sarah from OZ came into the room and started fighting/wrestling with me, as we both knew the red hot item could be used as a weapon. I was surprised by her strength, but then I did something caressing, and had a little fondle and sucked gently on her nipple. She relented and we began to kiss and make out.
Forgetting Names
5:13pm JST Monday 10 November 2008 (day 14110)
Arrived at a party and a woman was like, "do you remember my name?" and I immediately said, "Ebe!" and she was like, "nooo!" so I go, "Yuki! Yoko! Miki!" and she was like, "it's Yuko...." so I was like, "Yuko!" but she was unimpressed.
A bit later, another girl was like, "do you remember my name?" and I go, "Yoko! Miki! Yuko! Yuki!" and she's like, "It's Ebe." and I was like, "I said Ebe first a while ago for Yuko, [if that counts for anything]," but it didn't.
There was some discussion about why who remembers what names, and I told my version. I was like,
1. "First, I'm a visual learner. If I just hear someone's name, I'm very likely to forget it in two seconds unless I visually spell it in my mind, or carefully learn the kanji.
2. "Second, when I talk to people, I'm shy, and I don't look at their face. I'm like, "this spot on the ground looks pretty good; I'll just look at it." And this is even more pronounced with Japanese culture. We're not supposed to make eye contact. If she's an おばさん then I look so far away that I'm like, this," and turned my head to look the opposite direction, "oh hello, nice to meet you!" as I waved in the direction of my invisible granny. The girls laughed, so I knew they could relate.
3. "Third, and this is part of Japanese culture, Japanese don't tend to individualize themselves. When every guy has short spikey hair, and every woman has shoulder length dyed brown hair, and everyone is like, "I'm an office worker," and, "I like sleeping in my free time," how am I to make a file in my brain? "I'll just file this one in 'expensive hair tired worker,' It's not helpful when everyone is in the same file!"
I wondered about taking pictures of everyone, and really trying to make an effort at remembering names. When I was first advising in YRUU, I would spend hours poring over the mugbooks, carefully remembering all the youths' names. I could usually end up remembering most of the major cities / churches, and some addresses.
Perhaps U-cow's site could be useful in this regard.
Miki
6:23pm JST Tuesday 11 November 2008 (day 14111)
In a vehicle on a highway, sitting along the sides of the carriage. No one had to drive. I found out that the amazing tour we had of the city via ship yesterday was arranged by the mom of the family, so I thanked her profusely, and mentioned to her husband that he was lucky.
I was showing off my life-sized marble track to the group, and one guy crawled in to see it in more detail. I had parts of i covered with cloth for the party, so he couldn't see where to step. He stood on a part that was only thin wood, and it cracked as I told him as he fell through. I said not to worry about it; there were no marble track bits on that part of the track. The structure was basically made of three wooden pallets as in a grocery store, all connected in a vertical stack, like shelves.
Miki offered me another slice of pizza. Her sister was there and offered me some chocolate topping. I took the chocolate topping with my fingers and tried to eat it. Miki was a bit shocked, "can you do that???" but i couldn't answer as I was eating. I had a slight spill and got chocolate on my face. I laughingly answered her, "therefore, no. I can't do it." She giggled and I smeared a bit of chocolate on her face and she laughed.
So great to see Miki so happy.
Colleen
8:08pm JST Wednesday 12 November 2008 (day 14112)
At a UU assembly, held in a rather large collection of buildings. I was walking barefootedly outside on a balcony, enjoying the feel of gentle wooden planks supporting each step.
- - - -
On a train with Colleen, I was writing her a letter by affixing plastic letters with clothespins to a coat hanger.
S I N C E Y O U ' L L H A V E A R A I N C O A T , W H A T M O R E C O U L D Y O U N E E D ?
As I was affixing the letters, I was thinking about several different things, including how I was going to send her the coathanger, how I appreciated that she'd understand my joke, how much more time I had before arriving at my station, and how we would joke about it later when I told her she should definitely bring Monty Bear, her huge stuffed bear she won at a carnival.
Then I realized Colleen was watching from the other side of the train, so I rotated the hanger so it was pointing right at her forehead so she wouldn't be able to read the note. She laughed and crossed her eyes, pretending that would give her enough angle to read it. Then I realized we were at Motosumiyoshi, so I got off the train, leaving the coat hanger note with Colleen.
Dr Stable
7:37pm JST Thursday 13 November 2008 (day 14113)
In a hospital, hearing a page overhead: "Dr Stable, we're having trouble getting the patient stabilized for surgery. Dr Stable, we're having trouble getting the patient stabilized for surgery."
I found myself intrigued that the Dr's name was the same as the anti-condition of the patient, and that they announced the Dr's name, but not the patient's name. I wondered if it was code for something else.
9:37pm JST
I just remembered
Finally got to see Ami after her mom's death. She was finally able to cry without concern for others nor her surroundings. I felt happy that I could support her in this way.
climbing, KTRU, PB
5:18pm JST Monday 17 November 2008 (day 14117)
Climbing up a trail with janette's quilt as my only item, there are pine trees around, but a clearing in which the trail is climbing up the hill. The trail is drit while the grass around is nice and green. There are curious animals who watch e climbing. I walk up for a ways, wondering why I don't have any stuff. Have I left something down below? I don't want to go down and look for it
- - - -
I'm in a bunk bed inside a cabin, with a guy from KTRU zonked out next to me. Two female DJs come in and it's determined that he should sleep on top of me. I know we know we're all best buds and nothing we do will change that, so I say something like, "come here," with arms open wide, and he lies on top of me in my arms and we're careful not to have our faces close together, but I can feel his junk on my knee, so I'm a bit creeped out by that, and move my face a bit further away, making sure I can get fresh air, and not wanting to contaminate his air with mine.
Station manager Meg comes in as we are all four puppy piled on top of each other (with me on the bottom) and she comes in just as we've gotten ourselves arranged. She's just about to shout, "to attenTION!" and a couple of us open one eye as if to say, "you're not going to make us climb out of our comfy puppy pile, are you?"
- - - -
Watching a video starring the GET teachers from my voyage:
Kris faces Angie who asks "did you cut my hair?" and Kris goes, "and I dyed it purple."
Then Natalie faces Kris who is like, "did you cut my hair?" and Natalie is like, "and I died it purple," but in a different way than above.
This continues for a bit, and I wonder why I don't remember making this video until I notice some teachers who were *not* on my voyage. I realize this must be from their previous voyage (47th).
The video continues with a presentation from dancers right out of flying carpet Arabia. One scene of their dance featured a guy with a long curving sword, with a spiral end. He whirled it around his arms for a second and then ritually cut a broomstick into three pieces, but did it so quickly and precisely that the stick didn't fall even though it was only being held by the ends.
visa
7:23pm JST Monday 17 November 2008 (day 14117)
My visa status was incorrect, so I stamped a new stamp in my passport to fix it, but realized it didn't have all the same markings as an official stamp, so I wondered if it would work, or get me into worse trouble. Then I decided to scribble it out, but thought that might make things even worse worse, so I did nothing.
almost made it with Tamara
7:24pm JST Wednesday 19 November 2008 (day 14119)
In Tamara's experimental greenhouse, which was combined with her house, and featured all sorts of plants, mostly flowers, and bags of seeds and beakers and decanters of a biological laboratory, I was talking to her about possibly combining my seed with hers, to, just for experiment's sake, see what kind of offspring would be produced. I literally was thinking altruistically, and believed this experiment could be done without violating any social norms, nor agreements made with others. As we got into the details of how it would work, I began to realize it would require a direct deposit, as opposed to a combination in the lab. At first I was like, "ooh; this is great news!" and then I remembered the agreement I had recently made with Ami, and realized I shouldn't do this experiment, although I seriously considered doing it anyway, under the scientific endeavor of research.
Tamara began making preparations for the connection, and I began mulling over in my head if I could complete the task and what I would say afterward. Decided I probably shouldn't do it. Just as it was too late, I realized I *could* do it, for there would be no reproductions nor reprecussions, but it was too late; Tamara had left.
sandy beach with Dad
7:35pm JST Wednesday 19 November 2008 (day 14119)
About to go sailing with my dad, on a rather large cruise ship, we were waiting for the ship to arrive, but we were *not* in a port facility, nor even on a dock. Simply on a steep sandly slope that fortunately was not getting into my clothes despite having sat in the sand. I noted the sand was wet, but remembered I was wearing snow pants, so perhaps they were waterproofingly keeping the water from the sand from soaking through to my butt.
Around the point toward the right on this penninsula, we saw a large ship with KONAMI written on the side, offloading stuff directly to their sports facility. I was a bit surprised they didn't use the port, but decided it must be a lot cheaper to just haul their equipment up the hill, instead of hiring trucks to carry it across town. That gym equipment is heavy by its very nature!
Dad was playing on the sloping beach, causing an occassional slump of sand down toward the sea when he got to close to the steep part of the hill. After a bit, I could feel the sand eroding from under me, so I suggested that we move up a bit. Dad suddenly noted that he too was slipping, and I took his hand to pull him up. He had just gotten off work, so was wearing a striped gray suit, and had some papers in his hand. Likewise, I held the book I had been reading, _Bleeding Sun_, and didn't want to get that wet. So we inched our way up the hill, me crabwalking using my two feet, butt and left elbow as my left hand held the book, and my right arm extended to grab my dad's right hand, while he climbed forward up the hill, using both feet and his left elbow.
We reminded me of some sort of robot contraption, and I thought it might be easier if we had just put our respective reading material down, but then I realized the folly; they would get soaked! We made it up the hill to stable ground and I noted that a lot of people had accumulated, watching our climbing effort with some interest.
One guy spoke up, something like, "Now, check out these two, working hard to make it up the hill while not getting themselves dirty. A great effort required for such a skill!"
My dad chimed in "yeah!" with a tone of voice that says he's simply trying to make conversation, but didn't hear the details of what was said.
The guy continued, "all because our government decided not to build a dock for us. Mother fuckers."
My dad thought the guy was making fun of us, and was suddenly wishing he hadn't said anything until he knew what had been the guy's intention. I tried to explain, without drawing attention, that the guy was just angry about the lack of a dock, and was using our hard work as an example, and we shouldn't be embarrassed nor ashamed of anything; we're here having a great time! Who cares what he thinks!
visiting dad's house
7:23am JST Thursday 20 November 2008 (day 14120)
While watching a garbage truck be connected with a large trash can (or perhaps dumping its garbage out from the back of the truck), the captain of PB's new ship and I were having a casual chat when he asked a sortof weird question.
"If your father was the captain, do you think he would drink while working?"
"Well," I started looking for the 'correct' answer; I didn't know this guy well enough that I thought he might want the truth. "I'm sure that there's a lot of stress on this job, so it would be important to find a way to relax. But while *actually* *driving* the ship, I know he would not be affected by alcohol," I spoke a truth without revealing that I had never seen my dad drunk before, and think he may have stopped drinking altogether in the 10+ years that I've not lived at his house.
Later, driving Mr Van on the way to my old house in Spring, Texas, I came up on some construction right across the street from the house, but it was forcing traffic to divert such that I would have to go miles and miles around to get back to the house from a different direction. I thanked the construction guy after asking him if I could "just drive over the curb here," and into the drive way, and he said "no."
I noticed another equally short way I could get to the house, and I pulled into the driveway. I got my luggage out of the back of Mr Van, and pulled it up to the front door. One of the wheels made a strange repeated thunking noise, along with a scraping slide leading up to each thunk.
I opened the door to the house and was surprised to find Karen at home! I said HI to her, and she commented like, "I had wondered what that noise was, but I couldn't see anything through the window," which was lightly veiled with a thin white drape.
cow tipping
9:11pm JST Saturday 22 November 2008 (day 14122)
To give the cow a taste of her own medicine, he gently pushed with the two scoops of a front loader on the cow's butt, making the cow lean closer toward the fire. The cow started to squeal like a cat, but was no match for the mass and strength of the front loader. He then pulled the cow back, equally far away from the fire, and the cow continued to squeal like a cat. Because moving the cow away from the fire was less dangerous than toward the fire, he kept pulling until the cow was forced to sit down on its haunches like a dog. Then with the front loader, he gently lifted it back up to its feet.
flying, sex, roller coaster, train
9:19pm JST Sunday 23 November 2008 (day 14123)
Flying over a football field, I knew I could do anything I wanted, but had a little bit of trouble flying.
As the teacher in an unruly classroom, I went from classroom to classroom handing out test pamphlets for the students to take a test. I would give out a few at a time to students and say "pass them on; we're going to take a test." and they would hand them to the few students around them. The classrooms were dispersed throughout the floor, and the students sort haphazardly scattered throughout the area, so there wasn't an easy way to pass out the pamphlets.
I saw Jackie Purdy and gave her a kiss, saying "you're exempt from the test." and then by way of explanaion, "my dream, my choice," and everyone agreed I could do what I wanted in my dreams.
So another girl was like, "so if you want, you can have sex with me?" and I was like, "absolutely," and I gave her a kiss and told her to take off her clothes, which she did happily. I entered her missionary style and everything was good for a bit but then I lost my erection as something else distracted me in the dream.
Two more times I came back to this girl and tried again, first with a kiss and her affections toward me, but then when it was due course for intercourse I had very little staying power, just losing interest instead of making her lose her mind.
Laura Wallace was coming home, and I gave her a kiss and helped her get ready for bed because she had had a long day. Her mom and dad remembered me so I said HI to them, and they left us alone to talk for a bit.
- - - -
I had a chance to design two sections of a roller coaster and they were added to the ride.
I was sitting at the top of a hill overlooking the ride, pretty excited that it was working, and wanting to go down and ride. The coaster came by, and someone was asking how the coaster driver was trained, as if the first person in the train was controlling it.
- - - -
A new train line was being tested; it worked fine as the train rolled through new sections of tracks in warehouses. The tracks were temporary, made of plastic. The train was working just fine and then suddenly it went past all its other stops to the end of the line as the announcer guy said, "uh sorry; we have a problem with the train so we're going to the end of the line where you can get off and onto a new train."
I knew they were lying because the train was working just fine; they just wanted to get us all off the train in the wrong area so we would have to use the train again to get back. A new train came, with cameras watching it and people walking all over the track in its wake. They had made a big media event out of it, so I knew it would take a while. I just started walking down the hill toward where the train would go so I could save a few hundred yen by catching the train for a shorter duration. I noted the tracks were even less permanent; just plastic crossties with grooves in them for the wheels. Then the tracks made a hard right turn by extending some really long ties to the next warehouse. I was surprised at this, knowing the train cars couldn't make a right turn and I realized they must not turn here, but just slide sideways one car at a time.
preparation for ultimate
9:21pm JST Monday 24 November 2008 (day 14124)
Preparing for a trip with peeps from ultimate, I was in charge of having a place available for everyone to stay.
Taking a shower, I sealed the dreain in the bath tub so all the water would stay in and keep my feet warm. I hadn't brought shampoo with me, so I searched around in the shower area and found some sort of gel that was supposed to be good for moisturizing skin. I had never used it before, but I recognized the brand name and blue jar and white translucent jelly lookin' stuff inside. Someone had used a bobby pin to scoop some of the gel out, and the thin but deep groove was still intact in the jelly. I scooped out a similar volume with my finger, being careful not to cause the carved groove to collapse.
I washed my face with the jelly and noted it was alcohol based, not exactly conduscive to moisturize skin, I thought, but I was just careful to keep my eyes closed.
It was time to go, and I headed out of the apartment and off the fifth floor balcony down to the parking lot below. The lot looked a lot like a parking lot for a shopping mall, bustling with activity and shopping carts. I headed down the hill (the entire landscape was sloping down toward the right) toward what I hoped was the right direction.
Another guy called me back as he was coming out. I had thought I was the last one, so I went back to make sure he was okay, but then some people from the mall area were asking him about the location of a store, and he went toward the left out of the balcony. I had trouble seeing him for all the cars and posts in the way as I was down in the parking lot, but I sent him a mental message to come toward the right when he was finished.
YRUUers on TV
6:57pm JST Tuesday 25 November 2008 (day 14125)
Saw Adam Lock walking away from me down the hall. I knew he might be drafted to the war soon, so I gave him a long-distance reiki blessing to help him come back intact. I pretended to be asleep when he arrived at my room to say bye, but I hoped he would talk to me to wake me up. He didn't, but just said a silent goodbye, and then left. I woke up a bit later, wondering where I had left my suitcase. I got up, put a red towel around my birthday suit and found my suitcase was already on my bed; I had been using it as a pillow. The room in which I had slept was rather large for just one person. I went to another room and turned on the light. Gene was in there sleeping, so I tried to turn off the light, but the switch wasn't working the way I thought it would. Finally got the switch turned off, and then went into the main room where the plan for the day was being explained to everyone. How did I not know about this meeting? Why didn't anyone wake everyone up before the meeting? I guess it's okay to sleep through it given that Gene and someone else was still sleeping.
I couldn't hear anything in the meeting anyway, but Mandy Jacobson on TV reacted to me coming into the room, so I waved back at her, and then Abbey Tennis started speaking as Mandy Jacobson on TV started holding up a beaker of transluscent black liquid. Abbey said, "earlier today we showed this brown liquid, but it appears black on the TV." I wasn't sure what was the point of this information, but they explained it.
ice berg swimming
4:14pm JST Wednesday 26 November 2008 (day 14126)
On a large ice berg, with some large ice bergs around it, and land on one side, with PB people, we were trying to get everyone back to land, but my roommate Shawn wanted to go to the next ice berg. We were yelling to him to get him to come back, but he was already in the water, nearly to the other ice berg. I wanted to send someone after hm, but couldn't, so we just continued to yell and pleaad with him to come this way. Then he wanted to goto the *next* ice berg, and we were like, "doooood it's farther away than you think!" but he headed over to it as well.
Then a small boat came our direction and I tried to stabilize it when it got to us, but just then a big wave capsized the boat; basically a big flat canoe, and we were in the water around the ice ber trying to get the canoe back upright.
farts
6:06pm JST Wednesday 26 November 2008 (day 14126)
Talking to Ami, telling her I had had the most gaseous farts all day. I was describing them by making a long series of explosion sounds with my voice. "Today my butt was all ________, _______" where the _____ represent English-unspellable glotteral throat noises using my uvula to simulate fart noises. I kept going on and on just for effect, way longer than what was actually true, just because I like making Ami laugh.
I was writing about this occurrence in my diary and then realized I need to call my mom, so I did that and she was happy to hear from me, and had read my diary and made some funny comment or question about it. Glad to talk to my mom; it had been a while!
space soldier with stuffed animals
6:37pm JST Thursday 27 November 2008 (day 14127)
In some sort of space military, we were engaged in battle, but for some reason our spherical ships were offline for the moment. The battle was going on, and each soldier was in his spherical ship, waiting for them to be released. The ships were inside a larger ship, with rows of ports where each sphere connected.
Many ongoing discussions, and then suddenly all the spheres began to come to life, like the had all just been charged up and turned on. Inside one sphere, I witnessed it clunking out of its port into a groove with all the other spheres, and then each in turn rolling down toward the launching chute and shooting out into space to engage the enemy. The spheres didn't roll, or if they did our point of view remained steady within them. But they did have full manueverability when we got into space. Could just go anywhere any direction we pleased. Could shoot the bad guys with lasers launched out from our feet.
When our spheres went online, there was a lot of excited chatter on the radio as we went into battle. For me, the battle inspace lasted only a few minutes, and then I was inside a facility, with the sphere on my back, but it was just a heavy round energy pack I carried around. I still had pretty decent manueverability, but it was using my legs walking around on carpet instead of in the freedom of space.
A superior (by several years) was training me, and I was a bit cocky liek, "yeah yeah I can do dat" I saw a bad guy walking through the hall (indicated by red numbers floating under his feet as he walked). If I killed bad guys with red numbers, I would get that number of points added to my score. If anyone with green numbers was killed in my vicinity, I would lose that number of points from my score.
Walking toward the library, away from the bad guy who was being handled by the older soldier, I could hear people commenting about my slow pace and squeaking boots that sounded like squishing water with each labored step I took. The weapon on my back was quite heavy, and forced my posture to like a 45 degree angle as I walked. The squishing sound was leather squeaking boots.
I arrived in the library and walked in by moving a shelf open like a door instead of walking in where everyone else did. I wanted to surprise any bad guys by coming in quickly and unexpectedly. I didn't see anyone with numbers, red or green, but I did notice a woman make eye contact with me, so I began making my way over there, aware that it could be a trap, and even if not, the corner of every eye in the place would be watching me, so I maintained a professional, polite, killer face, keeping my eyes on the room as I wound around the quietly crowded tables to get to her.
Everyone in the library was studiously reading, and as cramped as a cafeteria might be. One quick glance around the room before I leaned my head close to the woman, "you called, ma'am?"
"Uh, yes, I noticed your wife's collection of stuffed animals behind the water bottle," she began, and though I knew I didn't have a wife (the animals in question were mine), I didn't react; that could be the end of me immediately (you react, you die! was our mantra), or could cause embarrassment to the woman, and require a long story to explain that they were my rabbit and cow, so I just let her continue.
"and I wondered if she would like to have my white bear named "Benny" to add to her collection?"
"Oh, I think she would enjoy that very well," I replied, referring to my non-existant wife. "You can just give the bear to the librarian and she'll take care of it."
perilous train
7:23pm JST Friday 28 November 2008 (day 14128)
Riding in the back seat of a train/bus, the back doors were open, and I was having to hold on tightly to some sort of padded table to keep myself in the train. I had what felt like half a seat under me, though it looked like a full seat when I looked down to see how perilously close to the edge I was seated. I saw my backpack equally close to the edge of the exit.
The guy next to me had sat down while the train stopped at a station, and the crowded train had forced him to take over part of my seat.
Later, I was in the same seat, but the bus was now headed to my dad's house on 249, and I was in the front seat. An accident occurred just in front of us, so everyone suddenly had to stop, and the bus started to stop really hard and I had to hold super tightly onto the padded table to stay inside. The bus curved off the main road to afford itself more time to stop, as did a couple other cars, and I stepped out onto the hood of the bus to afford myself some more space to stay off the ground. The bus driver yelled at me like, "Rob! Get back inside!" but I was hardly phased, given the choice between following the rules and staying alive.
The bus stopped, and everyone was okay.
fox wine tah
8:23pm JST Friday 28 November 2008 (day 14128)
Ami was sitting beside me in some sort of booth with a TV in front. A woman was sitting in the booth to our left, but she was too busy putting on mascara to augment her fur-scarf wearing, make-up laden, perfume overloaded look to look at us. While I looked up "fox wine tah" online, trying to find information about something a newscaster had mentioned, Ami moved to sit behind me, and I wondered what she was doing after a bit. I turned around to find she had taken off her shirt, and was applying some sort of gel to her aerola, and just about to press against me in a funny surprise attack of the tickle-fight variety. I was like, "what??" and then squirmed around to keep her from touching me with her gel-topped toplessness, and she tried to wipe the remainder of the package on me.
train cars
5:59pm JST Saturday 29 November 2008 (day 14129)
My friends and I came across a section of train tracks where we could ride/drive some handdriven cars down a small hill and then up a peak that amounted to two quarter pipes back to back. Looking up the tracks, I could see when my friend could safely start his descent. We used our phones as radios; we had one person (me) at the peak, one person driving the hand car, and a couple people at the bottom of the hill on the other side of the peak.
The first came down no problem, jumping over the peak and having a hilarious time. We all laughed and loved it. The next guy went and had the same success. For the next one, I went away from the peak and up a hill to get an overview of the whole section of track we were using. The guy decided to do several handcars all connected. He came down the hill no worries, but when jumping over the peak, the first three cars made it, but then the last three cars didn't make it, and rolled backwards down the peak. I immediately thought to call my friends and alert them of the trouble so we could get it cleaned up as soon as possible, but as I ran down the hill to the peak, I couldn't find my friends names in my phone's phonebook. I arrived down where I had been and found the hand cars buried in snow, and one of them disassembled and derailed.
A woman came down the hill and across the track, but her one wheeled car got stuck in the sand. She was worried about getting across the track so started to spin and spin her tire, only making things worse, so I helped her calm down and lifted her car a bit to get it unstuck and she rolled away.
I didn't realize how easily these hand cars could come apart; but they were actually split down the center so the wheels' separation could be adjusted to fit various sized tracks. I figured out how to put the car back together by looking at the others on the track, and found the pieces I needed in the snow.
actionscript
8:23pm JST Saturday 29 November 2008 (day 14129)
Walking around a courtyard, reading the names of some articles in the index of some actionscript tutorials, I found several that would apply to what I want to do. There's tons of information online about all the things I want to do. The most interesting article had some source code in its title: how to add tags from DB without doing <a href tag [tag ID from DB]> which I realized is basically how I would have done it had I needed to do that, so I was interested to see their solution.
code, sbstrm, keys
5:32pm JST Sunday 30 November 2008 (day 14130)
Testing and debugging Travis' software, which could display information about people's personalities.
I happened to sit by a woman who I had met, but who didn't remember I worked at 7hz. She called someone and started talking about sbstrm, wanting to create an equivalent system, completely stealig our idea. She goes, "sbstrm has 15, 9, 0, and 9 bits of data, so how much would it take to do that?" and the guy with whom she was speaking was defending the sbstrm system, saying, "well (not only do your "specs" mean nothing) there's a lot f information that we cannot get about sbstrm, like all their clients and information about them in a massive database."
The woman still thought she could build a better system, and kept trying to find ways to do it.
Jesse and I were on a tree stump, enjoying an earthquake as I was hanging from a gymnastics ring hanging from the trees above us. I pulled the ring all the way to the ground to connect it with the earthquake and see if I could detect the earthquake before it happened. I noted some fiber optic cables in the ground that were designed to do the same thing, as I was periodically interrupted by Jesse exclaiming alternate joy and anger when unveiling his new toy, some sort of vehicle or tent with a little (little!) scooter attached to the back. He got the scooter out, "woohoo!" and knocked over some tools, "God dammit!" and I was like, "Jesse! You shouldn't say that, as a self-professed Christian," and he agreed, but said he had trouble at times.
We were looking for a way to attach his tool kit to the tent so it wouldn't fall, and I could see he needed to use a screw, but which screw would attach well to one layer of cardboard? I looked at pictures of the various screws he had, which each looked like screws wrapped around other screws, twisted like pipe cleaners, and I told him those would just rip a huge hole in the cardboard, so he should use these instead, and went on to explain that the screws wrapped around screws were good for screwing into wood, as it would regrow around them and lock into place. I wasn't sure if my logic was correct in this case, thinking to myself, 'but isn't wood 'dead'?' but answering, 'not as dead as cardboard!' and certainly agreeing with myself.
A shinkansen went by and we were like, "yeah!" but it was only two cars, so not as impressive as it could have been. A woman from his church came up to me all smoochy like, "hi Rob!" and kissing me on the cheeks a bit too closely for comfort, and I just said HI, but didn't really respond back because I couldn't tell if she was like that with everyone or if I should remember her from somewhere. I went into the caravan where Jesse was standing with his friends and I go, "hmmm mmm???" meaning 'who's she?' but not wanting anyone else to understand. Jesse goes, "oh, that's Cortrina," as if that explained everything without giving anything away to others who might know who she is.
I realized I had left my keys at the camp, and was talking again to the woman who was trying to steal sbstrm, but this time on the phone. She and I had been quiet for a bit, so when I arrived back at the YRUU camp, my brain was like, "I'm home!" and hung up the phone, but then immediately called her back cause I was like, "oh yeah, we had been 'talking'" and the guy who answered was like, "good thing you called back, because her computer just died, and that's the only place she has your phone number.." oh yeah, good thing, then, I agreed. I sat down outside at a picnic table with my YRUU mates and then Samuel L Jackson drove up in his car, looked over at me, then turned off the car and put my keys down in front of me, started the car again with different keys and drove away.
My keys!
