The Lab Notebook

[This is a catch-up journal entry. This dream is from the night of November 6-7.]

[Fragments] Something involving making a delivery of some kind using my car. I remember wondering where my car keys were just as I was waking up from the dream. I also remember riding my old, green GT bike in the rain.

IHOP and Denny's are having a TV commercial war. I'm watching a series of commercials for the two chains, one after the other. One of them [I'm not sure which restaurant it was for] focuses on the repetition of the phrase, “Accurate fries, accurate donuts,” accompanied by images of the two items. It means that when you order fries or mini-donuts as a side item there, they always serve you the correct amount. Later, I'm at Denny's with my mom.

I'm riding in a car, passing by the fields of a local high school. I can see their marching band rehearsing, in their uniforms. Some marching band members from my own high school are there, too, also in their uniforms and rehearsing in a block.

I'm walking through the hallways of an unidentified high school. A female student is there, loudly crowing away about something political. The TV monitors mounted in the hallway are showing political advertisements. There's one pro-Whitman, anti-Brown ad that ends with the spoken line, “Last chance to come together, California.”

I'm in a UCSB dorm room, thinking to myself: What's the date today? April 9? 2 months. Meaning, in two months, I will be graduating and leaving the university forever. I think about how hard I'm going to cry when I have to pack up the contents of this room and leave it for the last time. I remember [or maybe I just inferred this after having woken up, I'm not sure] that I went to Kentucky during fall quarter, then returned to UCSB for the winter and spring quarters to finish up the last of my studies. [As opposed to real life, where it was spring quarter that I missed to go to Kentucky.] My roommate Sarah M. is in the room. I have to be on my way and go to math class without my math homework completed, because I've been goofing off all weekend.

A group of Chinese international students and teachers come into the dorm room. One of the female teachers notices a magnet I have as a decoration. The magnet has five Chinese characters on it. She reads them aloud, in Chinese, but stumbles over the last one, giving two different possible readings for it. As she puzzles over the characters, I say to her, in Japanese, “Imi mo nai na no da.” [Translation: “They don't even mean anything.”] I know this to be the case because I know that this particular string of characters came from Hanzi Smatter. The female teacher understands what I said, and agrees with me. She and the other teachers and international students then start a conversation, all in Japanese. When they ask me a question in Japanese, my reaction is, “Oh, God, now I've started it!” I'm nervous and self-conscious because I haven't spoken any Japanese in a long time. It takes me a second, but I manage to formulate an answer to the question in perfectly good Japanese. [I don't remember what the question and answer were, but I do remember that] At some point during the conversation, I say something like, “Kono kanji wa imi ga nai to itte kumatta desu.” I know what I mean when I say it, which is, “I heard that these kanji don't mean anything.” [But I know perfectly well that those aren't the proper Japanese words for “I heard that...” There goes dream!Japanese being weird again.] [Also, what I meant is that they don't mean anything as a phrase. Most likely they mean something individually, or else the teacher wouldn't have been able to identify readings for them.]

[Not sure if this one is in the correct chronological order.] I'm with my church choir, and we're singing a pretty Advent hymn. [I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist in reality, yet. I managed to record six notes onto my phone when I woke up, and someday I plan to compose it.]

I'm driving up toward UCSB with my parents. We see Dale C. performing live on the side of the road, by the exit off Highway 217 that leads to the airport. He's singing and playing the bongos.

I'm reading a little cloth book that Dale wrote about his music career. In the book, he says that he was more excited about the full-time income he would earn from being a musician than any other aspect of the career. This makes me think less of him.

I enter an unfamiliar house to get something. P. is there, and there is an unknown woman sleeping in the back room.