Mezzanine

10/19/2009

UVA

I feel like I'm at UVA at a party. I'm sitting on a kitchen counter talking to a hot girl about music. She says she's got some files I should look at on her laptop. I asked if they're files to use as loops in music creation software like Frooty Loops or Cakewalk. She is absolutely amazed that I know about these programs. I tell her music's my thing, I even used to be a DJ for a year at the local lesbian bar. As she's getting her laptop out to pull up the files, someone comes up to me who recognizes me. I'm talking to them and I glance at the hot girl's computer screen... it's scrolling through all sorts of porn pictures. In order not to embarrass her, I continue talking to whoever it was that came up to me.

Then I'm outside walking around the campus and it's snowing out. I lay down in the snow and say out loud, though to no one in particular, "It's so beautiful out here... I wish I had known how my life would turn out by going to VCU. I wish someone would have told me. If I'd have gotten better grades in high school, I could have come here."

Then Jamie Nelder, one of my sorority sisters, comes up to me and asks me if I got her paperwork to fill out in the mail. (Random!)

Blockbuster

I walk into a Blockbuster and I feel like I'm in Buffalo, NY. (I was watching the Bills/Jets game last night. Plus, I had just gone into a Blockbuster for the first time in a long time a couple of days ago and rented the first season of the L word... 4 discs total.) Half of the store is inside, half is outside. Instead of the category toppers on the shelves like Romance, Comedy, etc, are street names from Richmond. Staples Mill and Park come to mind. I see Chris Lennon again, the guy from a week ago who I dreamed had a sex change. I told him, I thought he said he lived in Richmond, what's he doing in NY? He said he does live in Richmond, look at the signs, he lives right down the block.

Then I'm in line with my movies and I'm with my dad all of a sudden. He rented some video games and I don't know what I got. The total comes to about $200. I'm flipping out. They said it was late charges. I said, "no way, I returned my movies, all four of them, I'll even go get them off the shelf if you want me to." So a manager comes up after two other people come and try to straighten this out. My dad said he'll pay $26 but no more than that. I'm crying by this point. I'm yelling "Do you think I'm stupid?!? I'm so smart, you don't even know." At this, the manager shakes his head yes and I get so offended by this, I don't know, I think he's mocking me or something. So I said "Fuck this!" and storm out the door.

Now I'm in New Mexico. I call information and am immediately connected to Blockbuster Headquarters. I ask for the district manager who manages the Carytown Blockbuster location. I remember thinking, I wonder if it's still Randy Stultz, who was in reality my district manager from PacSun. I find a restaurant and walk up these wooden stairs to the balcony so I can get some privacy while I'm on this phone call. But no one answers, I don't even get voicemail. I walk back down the stairs and find my dad in the middle of the plaza by a water fountain waiting for me. We walk into a shop selling jewelry and he asks someone where we are. I look at some business cards on the display case and it said some city name, NM.

Express

All I remember is being a manager of Express and setting up a window display and looking across the walkway to see the store across from me blow up.

Matt's Kangaroo Destroys the House

I have no idea what house I'm in but there are a couple of dogs running around and someone says that we should let Matt's kangaroos out. So I look and in the closet is a kangaroo. There is another on in kind of a dog crate, but with a particle board door on the front. They're not full grown kangaroos. One of them is really sweet and gentle and the other one is jumping around like an asshole knocking shit over and fucking the house up. I'm mad about this.

Express is not What it Used to Be

I walk into an Express store that I feel like I've worked at before in another dream. I walk straight up to the counter and talk to Frank who is the manager according to his nametag. On the opposite side of the counter is The Skank. I have no idea why she was there, but I think she was just a customer. It was questionable. I saw her at the grocery store during the day, I think that's why she was in my dream. So I'm talking to Frank, asking him when I can do some volunteer work there. He yelled to another girl who was working there when her next volunteer shift was and she didn't say when, but that she was making fifty cents an hour when she was doing her volunteer work.

Next thing I know, I'm actually working there. I think I just left the counter and started helping some guys pick out some sweaters. I asked someone on their way out if they got everything they needed and they said they got the shoes they wanted and thank you very much. I walked around the store and saw maybe eight or ten tables lined up. Each table had a different style of pants on it. There was only enough room for each table to hold one stack of pants. The tables were pine and oval like a kitchen table. I found this very odd and wondered what happened to the other tables we used to have. They were a lot nicer. So I asked someone else who was working there, "What happened to the square mahogany tables we used to have?" And I just got a blank stare. I found another girl to talk to and I asked her, "is the dry erase board with all the numbers from around the district still there?" She nodded yes. Then I turned to look at this display against the wall. It was a ton of glass cubes each holding I think shoes? But they were nasty dirty. So I grabbed some Windex and paper towels and started cleaning them. Then I kind of just dropped what I was doing to help someone in the fitting rooms and one guy came out in a striped dress shirt and I told him, "the size is just right, a large would be too large and a small would be too small!" He seemed very happy about this. Then a guy came out of the next fitting room and he looked great, too, and I told him so. No one wanted to get naked for me. Thank God!

Hotel John Marshall and Weed in the Truck

I'm in a truck in the passenger seat next to the guy that works at Quizno's that served me the Chicken Carbonara that gave me food poisoning the day before. We're looking at the Hotel John Marshall that was on the news last night because two limestone panels fell off the facade. Through the windshield I see Angela who works in General Merchandise at work. We're having a discussion about the hotel and that the squatters who live there are going to be shit out of luck when they turn the building into condos. I'm kind of going off about it, like I'm really angry that those squatters are there. So then she gets into the truck with us and the Quizno's guy lights up a joint and passes it to me. I see no problem with smoking with a manager from work. ha!

Army Boot Camp

I'm in fatigues! I'm in a line of like forty other girls and we're in the woods. There are chairs set up in rows, maybe ten chairs to a row, four rows facing one way and four rows facing the other rows. It's some sort of game. So we all sit down. Then the one girl who I guess was in charge leaves and says we have to find something that she kept in her footlocker. (I think she's keeping our shoes or our cell phones.) Like we're in teams of ten and we have a GPS. So my team starts off single file walking against this chain link fence that's to our right and to our left is a steep incline that is like certain death if we fall down. Six girls just take off really fast and it's me and three other girls trying to navigate around this fence. Ok, we get past the place with the steep incline then we turn a corner and it's like jungle. It looks like a rainforest... except... I look up... and there are huge bigger than person sized killer insects in the trees!!!! Ahhhhhh!!! I am now scared to death! These bugs are low in the trees and we have to kind of squat down and walk underneath them. The fence is still to the right of us. I was debating going slow and stealth so that the bugs wouldn't even know I was there or maybe I should run so that I could just get it over with. I start out slow and then get so freaked out because I brushed the underside of one of the bugs!!! I can't help but run now! I get past all the bugs and do the 'ew get them off of me' dance. I have no idea where the other girls went.