June 24, 2009

Bear Handlers and Wine Powers

My family, most of whom were apparently from Arrested Development, was trapped in a room like a dorm room, with two bunk beds. The mother had apparently decided it would be a good idea to hire someone to kidnap the family, in order to spite the father. At some point my sister and I decided that this was ridiculous, and we attacked the assailant that was guarding us. I wrestled with him, successfully disarming him of his gun, and we took him out. However, he'd already sprayed me with some kind of liquid. I realized that he was a bear handler, and that the liquid was a scent that would lead his bear to me. I briefly saw an overhead view of the area, and saw that the bear was awakening in his camp.

Soon the bear was in our room, and after poking around a bit it started making it's way to the top bunk where I was. I was suddenly very, very sleepy, and really didn't want to have to run from a bear in this condition. A howto page flashed before my eyes, detailing how to escape from a bear that was trying to climb the bunk bed you were on, so long as you keep running ahead of it as the bunk rotates. Someone pointed out to me, though, that I could escape through the window, and so I soon found myself hanging to the ledge.

Getting to the ground proved easy enough, and then I was peeking inside the long and fancily adorned camper-like vehicle that our kidnappers were staying in. I opened the shutters and peeked in several times before I found the kidnappers themselves. Around this time I started to realize that I must be in a dream, and I looked down at my hands and rubbed them together to try to stabilize the dream. But I was only mildly lucid, if that, so when I tried to fire some sort of lightning out of my hands at our kidnappers it didn't work. Instead, my lucidity quickly fading, I threw the glass jars that somehow contained their souls to the ground. I couldn't get them to break, but the act seemed to remove the kidnappers from the picture for a bit.

Inside the camper, I found a glass of wine. Apparently one of our close family friends, who was about my age, could turn into a glass of wine at times. Before the kidnapping incident, our father had been saying that she wasn't a very delicious glass of wine, but as I drank the glass I found it to be very tasty.

As I left the camper by it's normal exit instead of the window, the rest of the family was waiting around. I saw the friend who could turn into a glass of wine, and suddenly she looked very cute, with long, slightly curly hair and rose-colored cheeks. Still sipping on the wine, I walked up to her and told her that the wine was delicious, and that the she was as "charming as it is sweet, and as beautiful as it is flavorful". I then tried to kiss her on the cheek, but she shied away, telling me that there would be plenty of time for that later, when I was sober.

Seven Eleven vs Wawa

I was at college, and was looking for some food. I decided to get some from the 7-11 that had just opened up instead of the Wawa which was the usual standby. I went there, and they had an interesting brew-your-own-soup station that used a coffee carafe. I selected a soup (skipping over the "brown" flavor) and put it in the elaborate paper-and-tin cups they had for the dish. I then picked up some other snacks for my meal, remarking to someone that they only seemed to have sweet things here, in contrast to the Wawa which also had savory things like cheese and pepperoni.

Getting in line, we had to wait for some time, and things got pretty trippy. Whenever I interacted with the checkout employee I apparently sounded quite drunk, and they didn't do much more than laugh at that, but eventually someone behind the counter took my money and I left. I was rather perturbed at the selection of food and the extremely long wait as compared to Wawa, and I looked around for someone who I could complain to and walk home with.

I found someone, and soon was feeling better about my dinner. We stumbled on some other people we knew, and talked to them a bit.

Biting my Music

I had a part in a prestigious classical music performance, one that was premiering a work that I'd had a hand in completing. I was playing piano, while my piano teacher was singing and playing flute. Some well known composer had written the theme and the other musical material, and I'd filled in the blanks to complete the piece.

We'd already had one performance, which had apparently gone great. But the next night, after a rough sleep, I was having trouble getting my music together. I tripped on something while I was carrying the music around and fell, bitting off a corner of the music in the process. This greatly annoyed me, since apparently I did that a lot accidentally. I went off to print a new copy of the score, primarily of the first page which had been bit particularly badly.

I couldn't find the score on my laptop though. I went online to download it from the composer's website, but he only had a new version, with different lyrics. I wasn't sure if the music was different or not, but I didn't want to risk it. I searched through my computer's temp files for the PDF that I'd printed off before, but didn't have any luck.

Eventually, with the room already full of audience members and the time a little past when we were supposed to start, I decided to just improvise something, perhaps on ukulele instead of piano. I saw my piano teacher come backstage where I was, having just given a T-shirt to the winner of a little pre-show contest, which had been won by my roommate.

The performance went alright despite the mishap with the music, although I felt very guilty that I couldn't find the score.