Glieuaeiel's DJ

[I must have woken up after just about every REM cycle last night. Not sure how I pulled that one off.]

Soiree

Some of my cousins arrive for a function my family is hosting. They brought cupcakes--chocolate and one other flavor. They ask which flavor I prefer, because somehow the arrangement of cupcakes in the baking tin will reflect the seating chart for the event. I reply, "Probably chocolate."

I've agreed to contribute to the evening's entertainment by playing a short (two page) piano solo by Gershwin. I know I haven't played piano in ages, but everything on those two pages looked sightreadable when I glanced over it a while ago. However, when Dad discovers my plan, inexplicably he freaks out. I guess he's really concerned that I'll embarrass myself in front of the relatives. It's annoying, though. In fact, Dad's been annoying me a lot lately. For instance, he's recently gotten it into his head that he should learn to play piano himself, and he expects me to sit down with him to prepare piano duets. That does not sound like fun at all.

The previous group finishes performing, and now it's my turn. I figure the crowd is busy socializing, and they won't mind if I take a minute to look at some of the tougher chords. But to my horror, I open the music and discover a third page. What I thought was the end of the music is just a thin double bar! The third page isn't unplayable, but it has a lot of fast arpeggios over several octaves which will be very, very difficult to sightread. I probably should have taken a closer look at this. I start to feel uncomfortable about the amount of time I've delayed, now; the audience is probably getting impatient.

John Green the Sponsor

I've just finished TAing for today for a two-week class for math teachers in primary education. I and the teacher for the class spend a few moments calculating in percentages how close we are to finishing the class. It's towards the end of the second week.

It's dark outside as I walk through the quadrangles on my way home. On the way, I pass someone who looks exactly like John Green! I didn't know he was in Chicago! But I pass him without getting the courage to ask for an autograph. Mere steps later I consider turning around to chase after him, but I don't.

Inside a building, I run into one of my students from a previous summer math program. We talk for a bit, but we both have to be getting somewhere, so he leads the way out of the building. The building's door is rather heavy, and I feel bad that he tries to hold it for me. The pathway outside is narrow. I follow it into a smallish quad that's packed with people. I learn that it's called "Jones Quad," and it's a popular after-hours gathering place for students. I also know that I've been this way before. A girl from my house waves at me from inside a pack of her friends. I wave back--rather saucily, to my own surprise (namely, by lifting my left hand and repeatedly bending and unbending the last two knuckles of each finger simultaneously). Someone else waves at me, but I don't recognize her, and she makes a disappointed grimace. I run into someone else from my house and we remark upon how many housemates seem to be on campus tonight, despite the fact that it's the middle of summer.

It occurs to me that the John Green I saw might just have been a very close look-alike to the famed vlogbrother. I decide that I should go find him again and look more closely. As I wander around, something weird happens with the lights and the music in the building, and I guess that must mean it's about to close down for the night. No one seems in a hurry to leave, though. When I come back a few minutes later, everyone's still there, though they leave soon thereafter.

Back outside, I walk around a street corner and see a pizza place across the street. On a screen above the building, an advertisement plays. It's this same John Green guy. He's basically sponsoring the pizza place. I guess the pizza company must have heard about the Pizza John shirt and decided to capitalize on it. I still can't decide if the guy is actually John Green, though. It seems unlikely that he would do something so commercial.

Locker Checkout

It's the Saturday after finals week, and I'm trying to do my last bit of packing before going home. I've been storing some stuff in a locker on campus, so I head over to the building to pick it up. To my dismay, the building is locked. Apparently Friday was the last day to remove your belongings from this building. I spend a few minutes mentally cursing the idiot who thought that was a good idea, but then I decide I'd better try to do something about the situation. Using cleverness, I'm able to reach the first of my two lockers, which contains a fairly new car battery. I've been switching this one in and out with my car's old battery. Only, it seems like doing the swap would be a fairly complicated operation, and I can't remember ever having done it before. Oh, well. I must have known how at some point, and it's just been so long that it's slipped my mind temporarily. It'll come back, I'm sure. I put the battery in my backpack.

Unfortunately, the second locker is definitely unreachable. I check the building's hours, and unfortunately it won't open again until long after I've left town. By that time, they'll probably have thrown out my stuff. "My stuff" includes my Tae Kwon Do uniform, so I definitely don't want this to happen. Then I suddenly notice a sign on the window proclaiming the location and hours of this department's interim office. It's open today! Until 4:00! I hurry in that direction, checking the time. It's 4:11. Just my luck. Well, maybe there will still be someone around. My mom hurries to follow me.

I enter my target building to find a stark concrete entryway with stairs going both up and down, and hallways going in a few different directions. For a moment I'm disoriented, until I remember that the interim office is in a basement room. I go down the stairs, which twist and turn a few times before depositing me in a hallway only slightly more furnished than the original one. Along the wall to my right, dozens of cardboard boxes have been haphazardly stacked. Incredulous at my good fortune, I run down the row of boxes until I find one that's been labeled with my initials: last initial first, then first. Opening the box, I find my Tae Kwon Do uniform, along with everything else that's supposed to be there. Well, that's a relief. But I should probably talk to someone before taking it, else they'll think I stole it, and I'll be in trouble when I come back next term.

I continue down the hallway into the interim meeting room, which is actually a concert hall. That's kind of funny, but unfortunately I don't see anyone in the room except a female custodian up on stage setting up the ghost light. I turn back and try searching the hall in the other direction. I manage to flag down a dark-haired woman just on her way out the door. She seems to know me from somewhere, and it turns out she's coincidentally the one who's been answering my questions over email about Study Abroad. She tells me she's not the one to talk to about locker checkout. Fortunately, she says that the right woman to talk to is still in her office; it's right back there in the direction I've been going.

Wading

It's the day after finals week, but some of us are still hanging around to hang out. A girl from my high school class invites me to visit the forest with a group of friends.

"What forest?" I ask. You'd think I'd know the forests around here by now, so I'm a bit embarrassed by my question. Oh well.

She replies with the name of the forest, which I don't recognize. I agree to come anyway, and we head out. Soon after, we enter a restaurant on the outskirts of campus. While we eat, some housemates start planning what they're going to do to earn points for a big school competition which started today. For instance, apparently this restaurant (or the hotel it's a part of) is a sponsor for the event, so you get a points multiplier for eating here. I wonder why it was decided to hold the event after the end of Autumn Quarter, when there are so few people around. Vaguely I recall that it has to do with avoiding conflict with a big Study Abroad event happening in the middle of Spring Quarter, but that still doesn't explain why they didn't decide to do it during Winter. Oh well.

We leave the restaurant. Most of the group is heading back to campus from here, but I take a different path, one that leads toward the forest. At some point, I'll have to cut across the grass. But the grass is actually flooded quite deeply with water. The water's clear, but due to refraction it's difficult for me to tell quite how deep it is. Would this be an okay place to wade across? Tentatively, I start lowering my foot into the water. But even by the time the water reaches the top of my knee-high waterproof boots, I still haven't touched bottom. I retract my foot.

My friends are calling to me from across the water, telling me to go around the way they did. Yeah, their way was probably smarter. Meanwhile a boy from the group that decided to stay on campus is trying to tell me not to wade across anywhere, because it's all too deep. But I don't listen to him, and when I try the route my other friends suggested, the water's only about a foot deep.

All three of us are in werewolf form (from Skyrim) with the silver pelt and claws of an Ancient Behemoth (from Heroes III). I splash up to them and I attempt a growl. It is rather feeble, and one of the girls giggles. I introduce myself to her, and she shakes my hand, although she points out that she thinks we've met before. "No doubt we have," I reply.

Jumping Ahead

My dad and I have been taking turns playing a 3-D platform game while one of my high school friends watches. The gameplay of this game is a lot like rock climbing. You have to move each arm or leg individually, trying not to put too much strain on any one of them for more than a split second. We're trying to get to the top of an outcrop that has a sort of half-enclosed tunnel zigzagging up its vertical face. There's this one tricky spot where you have to jump over a gap, but one of the most attractive handholds actually attaches to a section of rock that swings down on a hinge. It can really upset your balance if you're not careful. Also, in order to get enough height, you need this section of rock to stay in its upright position.

I try it for a while without much luck, then hand it over to Dad. My friend points out that we don't actually have to go up this way; there's an easier place to ascend a little bit farther along this switchback. But I'm kind of stubborn, and I'd just like to prove that it can be done this way, even if it's not what the game's designers intended. Unfortunately, it proves to be a bit too much for Dad, and he falls off the edge to his (cartoon-style) death. That means we have to start over from the beginning of the level, which is frustrating, because I really thought I would get past that section on my next try.

But Dad's bored of this level, so he jumps way ahead in the game to the last level he did on his own. That's his style: don't bother with continuity; as long as you finish all the levels eventually, you're golden. Oh, well. The level selection screen is itself a 3-D environment, and the levels are yellow dots lined up in a path laid out along the ground. He realizes that he needs to buy a new "computer," since he lost the old one when he fell. When he does, the dots change to yellow rings, rather than filled circles. Also, two new "assistants" run in from the side of the screen, get a powerup of some kind from his character, then run off again.

He selects the level he wants. A bunch of enemies start running at him from all sides, so he starts beating them up using combos. Somehow he discovers a new combo--something like "knee in the face, punch, power kick"--which sends the unfortunate recipient flying backwards for about fifty meters. He encourages me to try it, but I have trouble until I realize that I'm doing a regular kick. For a power kick you need to hold down R1 at the same time. I feel a bit overwhelmed, but it's kind of fun once you figure it out. The animation's also cool because my character looks like a Star Wars bounty hunter.

Later, we're part of a larger party in the middle of a battle, trying to help the weaker members level up. This involves passing around 5-foot playing cards from character to character, which we all hug to our sides using our arms. The cards also double as protection from enemy characters, so there's some strategy involved in how you distribute your cards. Unfortunately, I'm running low on cards right now, and a thickset, bald thug is advancing on me in a rather intimidating manner.

Frags:

• dictating to my dream diary in Spanish
• other various false-awakening-dream-journal-writing