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June 28, 2005

The Second Part of a Dream

I was driving with Roomie on a city street, finding our way to an airport. As an airplane flies over, I point out a large lump on the top of the fuselage. "That is for the navigation equipment." We arrive at a diner and pull our plane into a large parking space.1 After figuring out how to block the wheels appropriately, my stepfather comes over and admires the plane. "It's a Jenny"2 I say. "What till you see this" say I, and I point out the restored Heinkel scooter.3 He appreciates it. He is wearing a suit.4 I ask if he wants to go for a ride and he says yes. We take off on the scooter and ride through neighborhoods very reminiscent of Palo Alto. We arrive at a corner and it is very city-like. We ride around San Francsico up hills and down, admiring the views. It is a spectacularly gorgeous day. "Your mother and I didn't really appreciate San Francisco until last year. Now we love the city." Shortly afterward, I am cruising to a stop at the bottom of a hill, intending to turn right onto Van Ness. What happens instead is that the bike stalls, or runs out of gas.5 I go into a bathroom and look in the mirror. In the part of my hair are large bumps like pimples but taller and not as painful. I squeeze them, and awaken grateful that they are but figments.

1 Roomie and I recently admired a newspaper image of an airplane taxiing on a Connecticut street.
2 My grandfather said his Jenny was his favorite plane to fly.
3 Back in the day, I had several of these. On a recent ride back from the ice cream shop, Roomie asked me if I would ride "one of these" across the country. "Not this scooter, but the Heinkel." Several months ago, I had been looking into getting another copy of Peter S. Beagle's I See By My Outfit, a cross country on Heinkel travelogue from 1963.
4 He does admire motorcycles, or did once. He is also a businessman.
5 I believe that I have never had a motorcycle that I did not have to push home, at least once.

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June 19, 2005

This Is What I Dream When I Sleep in a Tent in the Back Yard

Roomie and I were poking around at a construction site depot.1 We took a bunch of cool-looking scrap metal from the pile. The next day, we return to the pile and bring back the stuff we took, placing each item in a pile with like items (the cans of fluids with other cans of fluids, etc).2 A construction worker asks if we are returning the stuff that was taken last night. We respond affirmatively, and he seems unperturbed by the news.

Near the construction site is an industrial building that has been broken up into loft suites. They are pretty primitive, largish rooms of painted sheetrock. A young man from the video store3 helps us set up the internet connection and cable TV. I discuss with him the advantages of broadband over dialup.4 He asks "Don't you already have a house?" to which we reply affirmatively. We want to try living in a loft-like environment to see if we like it, we explain5. "But why choose one of the new rooms?" he asks. We follow him to his room, which is several times larger than ours and has two large beds and rows of computers in boxes. Some of these boxes are for the new iMac G56 When I ask him whether he uses all the computers, he explains that he uses them for holding images.7 I ask him if he is the network administrator here. He replies "Just administrator." Beyond this room is a smaller room with windows on three sides. I look out of an open door to a busy street below. There is an overpass of some sort overhead, and water and a seaport8 beyond the road. I step through the doorway to get a better view and to get some fresh air. There is nothing under my feet as I look at the road below, and yet I do not fall. This does not seem the least bit unusual.

Back inside, Roomie and I are together once more. Turns out the video store guy administers the loft altogether. A woman tells him she is there to get a video, and he directs her to the computers. There is a cash register on the counter, and we are placing armloads of goods on the counter. The bulky goods are piled so high we cannot see the clerk on the other side of them. The good are conveyed to shopping carts, which we then take out the store. Outside there are many shopping carts. We are in a small pen full of carts, and in the pen I find a metal wheel that I want to take with us. When I try to roll it out of the pen, a large magnet (evidently) prevents it from leaving the pen.

We stroll through an industrial neighborhood of older brick buildings, some of which contain touristy shops or carnival-type attractions. A large quilted map of the US hangs in one of them. Arizona extends all the way to the Pacific Ocean. I declare "That is a genuine piece of folk-art." We continue walking on.

1Much of an episode of "The Soprano's" we watched last night took place at a construction site.
2Roomie spent yesterday pricing goods for our garage sale next week. Many of these items came from garage sales.
3I have never met this person, nor do I know what he looks like in reality.
4My brother just got broadband after many months of my pestering.
5Roomie and I have discussed the possibility of loft-like living lately.
6I brought home many computer boxes from school work on Friday, including iMac G5 and Dell boxes.
7My boss has been showing me how to ghost images from computers the past several days.
8 Much of an episode of "The Soprano's" we watched last night too revolved around the port of Newark.

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