Glieuaeiel's DJ

Rude Receptionist

I'm talking to a clerk at the front desk of the hotel at which we're staying. Somebody mentions cherries. I'm excited at the chance to practice my Spanish.

"Oh, oh, I know this one. . . . Cer--, uh . . . cerezas!" I grin around the room. "That's 'cherries' in Spanish. I learned that earlier today." [IRL, that's true. And during the dream, I used the memory trick that I invented yesterday for that word: "cereza" is sort of a combination of "cereal" and "cabeza."]

The clerk exhales, shaking her head. She says something about never being very good at Spanish, herself. I think she sounds too defeatist. Then someone comes into the hotel, and she calls him over. "Mr. Branagh!"

Surprised, I look closely at the newcomer. Indeed, it's Kenneth Branagh. I'm impressed at how calm the receptionist remains in the face of a movie star. I guess she's prepared for that, since actors probably stay in hotels a lot. Then she starts talking to him about all of these hotel policies about publicity posters. (He's carrying a bunch of posters, presumably with the intent to advertise his newest project by putting them up around the hotel.) It really seems to me that she's splitting hairs, and I realize she's not only being calm--she's being downright rude. Oh, dear.

Old-Fashioned Bathroom

I enter the bathroom in an old-fashioned wooden building. I'm not sure if I saw the sign correctly when I chose this door, so I might have gone into the women's bathroom by mistake. I look around to check, and indeed, most of the dozens of people in here are middle-aged women. I spot two other males, though, both my own age. Also, I'm using a urinal right now, which has no business being in a women's bathroom. As I'm looking around, one of the other boys says loudly that he thinks he chose the wrong bathroom. The other two of us assure him that there must be something unusual going on, because we made the same mistake. I wonder if maybe this bathroom was designed to be non-segregated. As in, there are two doors, one labeled "men" and one "women," but they both lead to the same room.

Runaway Grandmother

I hand my grandma a walking stick and turn around for a second, surveying the multi-story shopping complex that we're exploring. I hear gasps from behind me, and whirl around to see Grandma falling down the wide staircase behind us. It has a few dozen steps, and she bounces about three times on the way down. Then she gets up and starts hobbling away. She must have tried to put her weight on the stick and accidentally lifted herself off the ground, putting the stick off-balance and causing the whole assembly to fall over backwards, down the stairs. I probably should have given her a shoulder to lean on, or something. In any case, it's my job to go bring her back. As I head down the stairs, someone reminds me to be prepared for her to be stubborn about coming back: she gets recalcitrant if she's just been injured.

I run after her down a hallway and see that she's taken an escalator upwards. I get on behind her, but without missing a beat she climbs over the railing and onto a different escalator headed the same way. Wow, she really is being stubborn. I decide not to climb over--I'll just meet her at the top. But when I look ahead, I see that my escalator bends around and goes back down, while hers just continues straight up. Dammit, what an absurd design! It will be a disaster if she gets away. Even if I can't bring her back, I at least have to keep an eye on her. Now, there's another escalator following the same line as mine that goes halfway down before bending around to go back up. The semicircular railings of the two escalators come close enough that I should be able to climb over both of them. I'm reluctant, because the railing will be trying to pull me sideways as I climb over, so I could easily get injured. But I don't have much choice. I do it.

At the top, I realize that in all the confusion, I've lost track of Grandma. Did I get ahead of her? Is she ahead of me? Where might she have gone from here? Her distinctive gray hair is nowhere to be seen. Someone else from our original party comes walking up to me and asks me how it's going. I'm forced to admit that I think I've lost Grandma.

Pranking Little Kids

An old friend of mine laughingly shows me a small, simple geometric carving (similar to a die) with the word "BOOBS" on one side. He also shows me a table he's made, documenting the reactions of youngish kids when given this carving. These kids are all about the age where they'd be receiving their first sex education, so the idea is that they should be very embarrassed by it. It's amusing to us older kids since theoretically we know better than to be embarrassed by sex. Anyway, his results aren't disappointing: only one kid of the dozen or so he's pranked has managed to get through the encounter without blushing.

Maybe half an hour later, I give the carving back to my friend, joking that I couldn't find anyone who actually wanted to take it from me.

Meats and Sweets

I'm trying to get food at a cafeteria. I've already been through the line once, but somehow I just got a lot of different kinds of meat. Even though I'm not exactly a vegetarian, I feel bad, since I've eaten meat almost every day this week. So I need to go through again, but I don't want to wait patiently in line, so I try to dart in and snag food where there are gaps. After a while I look at my tray again, and apparently I've been grabbing mostly desserts and other simple carbs. Dammit, why is it so hard to put together a decent meal?

Bus Escape

A man's being chased. He passes a building where two female celebrity actors are having a women-only event. It's about to start and there are a whole line of women outside, waiting to get in. Most of them are topless; I guess that's required in order to gain admission, maybe. Anyway, the man pushes his way through the crowd to try to hide inside. They decide to let him hide there for a while. But eventually he has to leave. A city bus driver offers to help him escape, so the man gets in and the bus starts careening around the city. Sometimes there are groups of people visible on the sidewalk that cheer when the bus goes by. They think the bus is coming to pick them up, and they're happy about it because they've been waiting for an unusually long time.

Glacier Simulation

I'm watching an exposition of various different computer models for the behavior of glaciers in the face of climate change. The camera flies over a 3D time-lapse of different glaciers forming and moving, floating on a dark sea. The present model is vaguely unsettling, with swooping camera movements and lots of little ice formations forming and disappearing everywhere. I mutter to myself that it's kind of scary. Then there are people playing in the water, throwing ice at each other, or something. Someone accidentally dies. The creator of this simulation is shocked, saying that he never guessed something like this might happen. He'd just wanted to make a fun game, I guess.

Frags:

• eating pea soup