I dreamt last night that I was approached in the graduate library and asked if I wanted to be in a band. Apparently someone's entertainment had fallen through and they needed to form a band quickly. So I ended up in a band with Matt and with Joe from Team America: World Police. Joe was a human rather than a puppet in the dream, but that didn't really make it much better because we were still completely unmatched. Our "manager" found a piece of tape to put on Joe's face and lip so that he would have a permanent sneer, like Elvis. We put a whole lot of eye makeup on Matt, including blue mascara with peach highlights. I don't think they did anything to me, but I was wearing ripped jeans and a flannel shirt.

Once we started playing, I started to wake up a little, to the point where I could hear the dream-music my brain was generating interlaid with the radio station my alarm clock was playing. I still haven't gotten around to changing my alarm away from the station that has already switched to their All Christmas Music, All the Time lineup, so it was some kind of awful mixture of Elvis/hair band/grunge AND Christmas.

My dreams last night were full of frustration at receiving counterfeit money in change ($3 and $4 bills!) and being bored at a friend's summer camp. I wanted to wake up just to escape the malaise.

I dreamt about President Bush again last night, perhaps influenced by one of Bryan Adams' latest posts. This time rather than campaigning, the president was in the Oval Office, sitting down to start some work again. The Oval Office had fences and bulletproof plastic all around it so he was very lonely and kept trying to start conversations with people who walked by. While I hadn't minded him being stupid in my last dream where we were just hanging out together, it really bothered me that he had the mind of a small child in this one, because he was supposed to be working.

Jez has already heard me tell people about this dream at least eleven times, but here's one more.

There was a political event going on in my front yard. George W. Bush was already there, then John Kerry arrived in a hot air balloon and sort of rappelled down to the yard from it. People stood around being political, but it was really boring and lame and it wasn't going to affect my vote, which I think may have been the cause for the big rally. So I just grabbed John and George by the hand and we went for a long walk downtown. We went to a weird occultish museum, we went to a café and we got lost. We all got along pretty well - I found that they weren't very bright but that they were nice and they meant well, so we had an enjoyable afternoon together.

I dreamt last night that Mr B------ and I were going on a road trip to New York City. We were trying to figure out if we should drive his car all the way or if we should drive to Greenwich, CT and take the train from there... but as we were discussing this, suddenly we were on the train (and somehow the discussion was continuing). Rachel and Nnnick were also in the train with us.

We were getting near the city and could see lots of buildings, when suddenly a huge dart (almost like an arrow) came shooting through the air and hit the train window next to me. It went partway through and just stayed there. I started to point the dart out to people in the train, saying, "Oh my god, did you just see that dart just hit the train? What's going on?" but everyone else in the train was paying attention to the huge evil monkey at the front of the train car. Apparently whoever shot the dart had been aiming at the monkey and had missed. The monkey may have been rabid - all I know is that it was dangerous and that people kept saying it was a puma and I was the only one who could see that it was a monkey. We had a nice little monkey of our own with us near the back of the car and whenever I tried to point out that the "puma" was a monkey, people thought I was talking about my monkey.

I dreamt last night that I was sitting in a movie theatre, watching a movie, when the lights came on and Mr T walked in with two deliverymen. Mr T started announcing that he had some flowers for someone who was a geek and some other things that made me suspicious that it was me, so I sank deeper and deeper into my seat until Mr T found me and presented me with a bouquet of red roses, plus two brown ones (not dead, just roses that were brown), a black one and a white one. The four extra flowers were wearing little paper hats to protect them. It turned out they were from Jez.

Later in the dream, I was staying at Jez's house again, but he wouldn't let me change my clothes in his house so I had to change in the driveway of the house across the street (which was my friend Cheryl's driveway in the dream). Then I came back into the house without my glasses on and someone was sitting on top of the radiator with Jez. I couldn't see her so I had to feel her face like a blind person and it turned out to be Jen, the old office manager from the abbey.

Sometime later in the dream, a group of my friends including Matt and Rachel and I don't know who else were picking me up after I got back from France and I had to collect all of my luggage and stuff from the checkroom at a dance club. There were several things sitting around loose, including my orange shirt and my black boots, which I almost forgot, and when the attendant took my boots down from the shelf, I found that there were baby shoes tucked inside, which apparently I'd been bringing back from France as a present for CKane's sister.

I use a lot of long, comma-rich sentences when recording dreams. Sorry.

I dreamt that my family bought a used car sight-unseen from some guys at the mall, then went to the movie theatre and bought tickets to some movie because you got a coupon for free cigarettes with every ticket. We didn't want to go to the movie - we just wanted some free smokes. We bought the tickets from Slater from Saved By The Bell, then walked out the exit to the parking lot to look for our new car. It was this pimped-out futuristic car with domes over the seats - sort of like the 1960s Batmobile, except painted red. I was convinced that there was cocaine hidden under the floorboards and that we were being set up, but I woke up before I could find out.

I dreamt last night that I was walking through an airport with a bunch of people including my mom, friends from home, and my sleazy boss. At one point, I just turned around and started ripping into my sleazy boss, telling him what was wrong with him and what was wrong with the company. My mom was later concerned that I would lose my job, but I pointed out to him that I have three weeks left and that I was going to finish my projects before I left. He actually took me seriously and got really depressed. Someone told me later that he had pulled the commercials he had made from the airwaves because they were sleazy and dishonest, then he lost the presidential election, having somehow turned into George W. Bush somewhere in the course of the dream.

I dreamt last night that I was telling Becky I kept almost walking into our bathroom even though it's not ours anymore... then I looked around and I was standing in our bathroom as I said it. Later, another of my colleagues was wearing an awful green kilt and tossing me up in the air like a baby, but high enough that I almost hit the ceiling.

Clearly this dream means that my subconscious is tortured by the lack of hygienic facilities. And the overwhelming fear that Chris is going to turn Scottish and throw me around.

Somewhere in my dream last night, I ran into Donald Rumsfield and felt obliged to be nice to him. When I first saw him, I made a face, but then when he called me out on it, I made up some garbage about how I didn't agree with his politics, but I thought he was a pretty nice guy and I wouldn't hold it against him.

I am such a wuss.

I've only been retaining bits and pieces and impressions from dreams in the past few days...

I dreamt that I had to take all of my old orientation group from Albion to Meijer at the beginning of a new school year. It was lame that I had to do orientation or take them to Meijer, because they've all been here three years and know what they're doing. They were also shipped off to Meijer before they had a chance to drop off their luggage, so we had to lug it through the store.

Then I was walking down the street with my dad when this car drove up with "Blogger" written on it. I pointed it out to my dad and the guy inside thought I was waving so he stopped, but then realized he didn't know me as I said something like "No, I... I don't... I love blogs. I blog! I want to... I love Blogger!"

So he thought I was a crazy person. My dad and I sat down at a picnic table to eat sandwiches and more people arrived and they ended up having an interview right at our picnic table. The Korean interviewer would ask the Blogger representative a question, his translator would translate, and she would respond. There were such zingers as "Our president uses a different software to blog. What do you think of that?"

I was rudely awakened by someone demanding that I tight-roll some jeans. I wish that had been another dream, because it sounds like it, but it's 80s day at Señorita C's high school.

I'm having trouble distinguishing dreams from reality lately. I was awoken yesterday by a human voice saying "beep" and I don't know if it was something that happened in my dream or if someone really beeped at me.

I dreamt that MaTT said he was going to call me between 6 and 7, emailed him about the dream but thought he'd already left for home, then freaked out when he called me at 6:45. Apparently he had actually read the email before he left.

Now I think I dreamt that I got a mix CD in the mail from Krista. I hope I dreamt it, because otherwise I put it somewhere and have no idea where it is.

I dreamt last night that I was at my middle school and I had to wait around for something among all the middle-schoolers and I was annoyed because they weren't respecting my authori-tye. Then there was, like, a tidal wave and suddenly the edge of the sidewalk was now the edge of the Atlantic Ocean or something.

Next I was in France and decided to go for a walk, then turned that walk into a run because I could run quickly and for a long time if I didn't pick my feet very far off the ground, but then I got self-conscious and started walking again. I probably shouldn't have been running anyway, because I was wearing boots. I had the opportunity to go to La Montagne des Singes but I decided to go to the gas station instead. I was going to buy Junior Mints but they looked like they'd been there for years, so I didn't buy anything. There were stands all around selling carnival food like hot dogs and caramel corn and then I got caught in the middle of a really pathetic, crappy parade where someone threw a horrible cinnamon candy at my head and one guy made me run up ahead of his group so that I could take a digital photo of him.

I dreamt last night that Lewis (friend from Albion) picked me up to take me to school today, but I was running late. He said that was okay because he was still in his pyjamas too - but he'd brought along his clothes so he could change while I was in the shower.

Next I was at Bubble Island and an editorial or letter to the editor that Ursula had written was pinned up on the bulletin board. I pointed that out to the counter-guy, who had been hitting on me, and he got excited and made her go through and highlight every time her name appeared in the article. She did, but she didn't highlight my name when it appeared, so I got mad and went and sat at another table.

While I was sitting at the other table, a big group of people came in, lots of whom looked vaguely familiar and one of whom had on an Albion t-shirt. I asked them if they'd gone to Albion and they said they had. They seemed to be excited to see a fellow alum, then I said, "I'm Sarah M------! I graduated in 2002!" and their faces fell and they started ignoring me.

I never blogged the dream from earlier this weekend, where I was in a submarine that was taken over by terrorists. They were dressed all in black and had machine guns and they never said a word to us, but just handed us bright, multicolored flyers identifying themselves as the Clown Brigade or some equally ridiculous clown-related group that was in no way related to terrorism. This was just a cover, but we never found out what their real goal was. They didn't do anything bad to us - just held us hostage. And we were free to wander around on the level we were on, so really the extent of their terror was that they wouldn't let us on the elevator. I was still scared and wandered around our level, looking for people I knew. I finally found Matt and Alfie in the submarine's clinic, where a large group of hostages were huddled, discussing the most horrible sports injuries they had ever seen.

I dreamt last night that we moved to the house across the street, which was bigger and had a finished basement, but just had empty wall behind all of the closet doors and had no doorbell.

I also dreamt that John Stevens' next performance involved him a) wearing a ponytail, b) wailing on the banjo and c) wearing a Utilikilt.

Remember what I said about being psychic? Yeah, now I'm praying doubly.

I dreamt last night that I was in the audience for this week's American Idol. It was not on the usual stage - I think it was the stage at Pioneer High School. The judges weren't there, but I guess they were watching it on TV and would call in their comments.

I was only able to see the first contestant before I woke up. John Stevens came out in a yellow bell-bottomed suit with a ruffly orange shirt and was surrounded by a pack of children who were supposed to chase him around the stage like adoring fans as he sang "Tenderness" by General Public. Given the 70s decor and the 80s music, I have no idea what the theme was supposed to be, but it may have been Sing Like You're On Crack because while John sang very well, he also danced all over the stage, which is quite uncharacteristic of him.

I couldn't decide whether the judges would like it, because he sang well and was full of energy this week, or whether they would hate it because it was manic and full of screaming children ripping his jacket off and because WHY THE HELL was he wearing that horrible bell-bottomed suit? Paula called in, but I was too busy trying to figure out where she was (and then realizing that she had a tinny-phone-sound in her voice and that she wasn't there at all) to hear what she had to say.

If John Stevens really sings "Tenderness" in a yellow bell-bottomed suit this week, I will first be shocked and awed because I am psychic and I will vow only to use my powers for good. Second, I will throw up.

I woke up this morning and remembered a dream where I had been travelling. I had a layover at O'Hare airport in Chicago so I went to a bookstore and browsed, ran into Robin and Johanna, then I realized I didn't know when my flight was, so I left and went to find my flight. Then I woke up.

What an incredibly boring dream. Later I remembered a part where I had visa problems and they didn't want to let me into Chicago (what? Visa for Chicago?), which made it only marginally more interesting.

My favorite part of my dream last night was when it was raining and the dog had wet feet, so he put Señorita C's slippers on when he came into the house. I also enjoyed seeing all of the white skyscrapers of Nice, which are covered in cartoon characters.

Amanda and I woke up this morning because Cari was screaming in her sleep, followed by little whimpering moans. She can’t remember what she was dreaming about, but she remembers she was still afraid when she woke up. I think there must be something in the water*, because I had the earthquake thing, Amanda dreamt we had to drive back down to DC from Ann Arbor and didn’t leave until 4pm, and I had some more strange ones last night.

I was hanging out with one of the members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I think we may have been filming a movie because John Cleese kept wandering by in the background. He was very old and pale and wrinkly and sickly. We went to some kind of school and each member of Monty Python had a booth, sort of like a science fair. Each was advertising a different Monty Python sketch. Michael Palin was deathly shy. This 13-year-old kid came up to one of the tables and was being a jerk and trying to be funny, so all of the Monty Python members ganged up on him and made him cry. I’ve had “Every Sperm is Sacred” in my head all morning, but I don’t know if it was actually in the dream or if I just started thinking about it later through association.

There were a lot of dreams and strange things happening throughout the dreams, to the point where I would wake up – or at least be conscious that I was dreaming – and think ‘I should remember this, because my dreams are crazy!’ Now I’ve forgotten a lot of the details, but I remember something about a portable plastic shower that folded up and you could take places with you.

The last thing I remember was that it was Eboni’s and Jenny Angel’s birthday, so the whole DC-ASB crew went out to dinner to celebrate. It was also Britney Spears’ birthday and she showed up at the restaurant and sat at a table in the back with her manager, because she had no other friends. I hated Britney, but I also felt bad because she was all alone on her birthday. So I suggested to the group that we invite her to join us. She was depressed and melancholy until we invited her, then she came and sat at our table and stole the spotlight from the other two birthday girls, whose party it had been, and commanded everyone’s attention for the rest of the night. I hated her even more for that.

-----
* Oh wait... it’s LEAD!

I think I dreamt last night that there was a new reality show with two members of ABBA teaching in a high school and causing all kinds of hijinks with very heavy, faked Swedish accents.

I hope I dreamt that.

I had a dream where my mom, my sister and I went out to dinner. Mr B------ had a second job bartending at this restaurant, but he didn't see us when we came in. I ordered a Coke with lemon and lime slices in the hopes that he would recognize my drink order and realize I was there. Unfortunately, our waiter filled our drink orders himself.

This restaurant had a floating appetizer buffet. All of the tables in the restaurant were arranged around a pool in the center that had a rotating current, like the duck pond game at carnivals. The appetizers were on floating dishes, so you had to reach in and pull them out. There were also ducks and swans swimming around in the pool among the appetizers.

I dreamt I was shopping for a Christmas present for Keith, since the one I'd gotten him had fallen through. There was a lot of pressure to come up with a great gift immediately. Then I discovered that one of the shop assistants was the Urstodian's friend Lauren, so I just sat on the floor and talked to her instead of shopping. She tried to sell us stuff in the store, but none of it seemed like stuff Keith would like and she said the food was all way too old to be edible.

Then I went to the ATM and I was annoyed because my bank doesn't print the balance at the bottom of the receipts (it doesn't, and this does annoy me) so you have to waste time and paper by printing out the balance separately and you have to remember to do this before you do a withdrawal or else the machine will spit out your card and you'll have to do it again. Anyway, it's annoying and in my dream, I was suddenly struck with a spirit of difference-making, so I went up to the counter, ready to fight and get them to change this. I didn't know exactly what to do, so I sort of stuttered over my words.

"Do... do you have, like, a hmmmm, a complaints form? Or comments? You know?"

The teller looked at me with disdain and repeated my words in that "mee mee mee mee" mocking tone that you really can't capture on the Internet, handing me a piece of paper which may or may not have been a comments form but I didn't get a good look at it because I was distracted by getting pinched on the butt.

I turned around and it was Rotolu, who I haven't seen since high school. He disappeared to get some food from the food court and I left the bank area and told my friends I'd gotten a comments form and that I'd been sexually harassed. "... by HIM!" I said, pointing, and Rotolu came over to where we were and we went to Kroger's together.

I was on a road trip with my family, including my grandma. We got lost and were travelling down this dirt road, which turned out to be a dead end. We turned into this driveway to turn around, where there was a sign that said "Beware of Brownies".

My family was speculating about whether this referred to the chocolate kind of brownies or the magical kind in Willow when this cow came rushing at us. Apparently "brownies" was slang for "cows" wherever we were, because this cow started chasing us. My dad put the pedal to the metal and just as she was about to ram into the car, we started to pull away. We were faster than her only because she was missing a leg and had a very fake prosthetic one made out of steel and clear plastic that wasn't quite long enough.

At some point later in the dream, I was looking for something or someone and everywhere I turned, there were people dressed as Wookiees, with varying levels of believability.

Later, Mr B------ and I landed on Mackinac Island in the pouring rain. We got a taxi and the driver wanted to know the address of our hotel. I told him I didn't know the name or the address, but I knew how to get there. It made him mad and he was going to kick us out of the taxi.

Kathy Howe reminds me that I haven't blogged last night's dream...

I was in some kind of science facility's locker room, bothering all of the scientists. I think I may have been stalking one of them and baked him cookies. I ran into Keith and Tiffany in the computer lab, where they were making a stop-action film about R2D2 using Legos. Keith begged me to make him crêpes. I told him I couldn't, because I didn't have any whipped cream. He made a face and informed me that he didn't want whipped cream - he wanted blueberries and "miced" onions.

I dreamt that my User Interface Design class went on a field trip to the Amish reservation. It wasn't just an Amish community - they had been rounded up and forced to live in this place. When we arrived, the women were wearing heavy aprons and German WWI helmets and searching the hills for spent cartridges. They were actually dressed a bit more like Pilgrims than like Amish. They were eager to talk to us, and the one who talked to my group was MF, who I went to high school with. Apparently she had "gone Amish" soon after graduation. She was not very plain at all - I think she had curled her hair. She was interested to learn if I had ended up a librarian, the way I wanted to in high school. I was interested that she cared enough to remember what I wanted to do, since I never liked her much back then.

I don't remember the beginning of my dream very clearly, but there was a part that took place in a museum and I either had seen a movie of my life or my life was like Groundhog Day, but I knew that some prisoners on a field trip were going to escape, somehow blend in and get weapons, and go on a murderous rampage that would kill my family. So I spent the whole time trying to avoid this situation and getting déjà vu and trying to change things from the way I knew they had been before. I only knew we were safe when the heroic happy-ending music began to play.

Later, I know that Mr B------ and I were sitting on our 540 prof's deck in the cold and talking to him through the window about our homework questions.

Even later, I was walking through Vichy and ran into SM and JA (from school) in the middle of town. They called me over because JA was having some problems with her ATM card and they thought I could help. So I came over and it turned out they were using one of the self-checkout machines from Meijer's (still, mind you, right in the open in the middle of town). Everything on this machine was backwards, so you had to swipe your card and sign (SM had to sign for her for some reason), then scan all of your food. Her problem was that she was starting out with everything already sitting on the weighing part, so nothing would scan. I taught them all about self-checkout machines and they were very grateful.

Then SM and I got onto the top deck of a double-decker bus and rode away, comparing our schedules for next semester. SM said he wished he'd gotten to know me better this semester, since we were only going to have 503 together next semester.

I dreamt last night that I flew back to France to be an assistant for the second semester, but I didn't prepare anything. I didn't wait for my paperwork to find out if I was accepted or where I was supposed to go to, I didn't tell my host family that I was coming, and I left my stupid cell phone back in the States.

I dreamt last night that Robin and I were living in France. Every day we would go into this apartment building, lure this guy out onto his rickety balcony by making him think that his dog was out there, then the balcony would collapse and we could dance around his apartment. This happened over and over and over again every day, but we were always afraid it wouldn't work.

After we left his apartment one day, we ran into my Humanities History teacher from high school, the one I run into every single time I go back to visit my high school. He was vacationing with his family and wouldn't stop talking to us.

I was watching TV with my grandma and the rest of my family (I don't remember why, but it was significant that my grandma was there) and flipping uncontrollably through channels. Something about Jamaicans came up - a TV show or a reference or something.

Then I was at Meijer with my sister and my high school nemesis and her mom. We were buying peas, but I was carrying everything in my arms for some reason and as we neared the checkout, I started dropping everything. I dropped two cans of peas and they broke, so I had to go back and get new ones. I was hot, so I took my pants off and left them and my wallet with Becky. I wandered the aisles, unable to find the same peas we'd had before. They had large bulk food aisles with enormous cans of peas, but not the ones I wanted. I finally found something, then I ran into a friend who had gotten new piercings. We went back and got my pants, then went looking for somewhere private where I could put them back on (apparently I can take my pants off in the middle of Meijer's but can't put them back on in public). We found this construction area, but it was full of teenagers who thought they were ninjas and wanted me to do their homework for them.

Then the construction site within Meijer turned into a construction site in a housing subdivision. We and the teenagers watched a video of a kid with a jar stuck on his head, then went outside and saw brightly-colored Technicolor vultures. The kids in the subdivision were just getting home from school and they all got off the bus with mattresses on their heads to protect them from the vultures.

While we were studying last night, Mr B------- kept plying me with enormous glasses of water. When I remarked upon this, he said that he was trying to flush the evils out of me. The evils being washed out of me seem to be taking the form of insane Japanese-themed dreams, which is quite understandable, considering I

a) just watched Lost in Translation
b) spent the whole weekend watching this stupid video over and over again and
c) watched Spirited Away last night (we certainly are a serious study group).

So last night, the evils left my body/mind in the following dream-form:

In the first part, I was in the kitchen at work and poured water into the sugar bowl. Once I realized what I'd done, I tried to pour the water out but keep the sugar in. It worked better than it would have in reality.

Then I was in a sushi restaurant, and I ordered a dish called "Jennifer Juniper". The person at the counter where I was ordering didn't understand me because I couldn't pronounce it any way other than the sing-song, Frenchified way that Donovan does. I was there with my family and with someone else, but I can't remember now who it was. This person and I got kicked out of the restaurant and we went driving off in a car.

We drove and drove and found ourselves in the middle of flat farming country. The car broke down and we had to walk until we could find help. It was a scary place and we finally came to this farm. No one was around, so we went to the barn. Inside, there was some kind of party going on, where everyone was dressed in kimonos, dancing and drinking tea and waving little fans like people do in Japanese comics.

I dreamt last night that my family was in a parking lot with a little crying Indian girl. My sister tried to cheer her up by showing the girl her teddy bear (my sister's, that is), Elizabeth. The little girl snatched Elizabeth and ran off with her, so the whole family had to chase her down. When we got to where she'd stopped, she was standing there with her mother, who spoke in speech bubbles written in some kind of Indian script. Only I could read it, so I had to translate for my family. She told my sister that she would pay her whatever she wanted for the bear. She could pay in cash, check, or even credit card, if my sister would take it. Becky refused to sell Elizabeth, though, and the little girl started to cry again. The mother told her that she would buy her whatever she wanted to replace the bear, and she brightened up immediately and demanded a pinball machine.

I dreamt last night that I was at Valéry Larbaud again, just for a visit. My visit coincided with the 1AHOTs' class, so I sat in. They were all surprised and embarrassed to see me there, and one told me that a student in another class hadn't signed my cahier de souvenirs and wanted to.

The most impressive thing about the dream is that I only spoke English. Some people get excited when they speak a foreign language in their dreams; I get excited when I don't.

I dreamt that I was in a parking structure, driving my old car, Roger. Alex was in the passenger seat, and I laughed at him because the attendant was on his side, so he had to pay. I hate paying parking attendants, then quickly trying to get myself together to drive under the bar.

So Alex had to do it, but as soon as we'd left the attendant, we came to a barricade where some kind of agent asked me to shift my weight back and forth from one butt-cheek to the other. When I did it and the car didn't move at all from one side to the other, he decided this was because the car was packed full of drugs. He asked me if the car had enough oil in it or if it was leaking, and I said I hadn't noticed. He thought I was being sassy, so he made me get out of the car.

I must have forgotten to put the brake on, because the car started rolling backwards down the street. I thought it would stop when it got to a hill, but it rolled uphill, too. I set off chasing it with my dad, Sébastien (one of my students), and Sébastien's older brother that I didn't know he had. We chased the car until it rolled into a lake and started sinking. I wasn't really that upset and gave Sébastien and his brother la bise for helping me chase the car, even though we didn't catch it.

Then I caught sight of Carla Bruni's Quelqu'un m'a dit through the back window and realized that all of the CDs I own were in the car. Even when I woke up, I was upset about this and overjoyed to find that it was just a dream.

I dreamt I was out in a snowstorm, looking for my glasses. I found two other pairs of glasses on a snowbank and I didn't know if I should take them with me or let them be buried. It occurred to me that maybe the owners knew exactly where they had left their glasses and would miss them if I took them with me. It didn't occur to me that if I left them there, they would quickly be buried and never found again. Philippe was there, skiing away. He always seems to show up in my dreams that take place in the snow.

Next, I was watching a video about a famous Chilean skiier nicknamed "Hot Dog", who had freakishly enormous forearm muscles. The video talked about how he had somehow mislearned how to move his arms when he was little, which made his muscles have to work a lot harder and grow to enormous size. The weird thing was that every time the video showed muscles and should have been talking about muscles, the word "muscle" was replaced by "hot dog".

I dreamt last night that Robin and I were lurking around John Hannah's country home, trying to find things that belonged to him to quickly steal as souvenirs before he got home and caught us.

Inspired by my post about the similarity between Vichy Sundays and Art Fair, my subconscious decided to supply me with an even better comparison: Football Saturdays.

I was driving my car in Ann Arbor, but I was having trouble getting anywhere because pedestrians were taking over the whole street.

"I've lived here... twenty-three years!" I exaggerated, as if that would impress them. It didn't.

"Maybe you should get out more!" someone yelled back. I got free of the pedestrian hordes and continued along my way, but ended up at Michigan Stadium.

I saw two of my students, Rémy and Eric, going towards the stadium and it occurred to me that I had a ticket to the game at home and that if this was an important game, I might be able to get some money for it. I went through a door and ended up in the teachers' lounge at Valéry Larbaud. Another student, Dorothée, was there, so I asked her if she liked football. She seemed to have only a vague idea of what the game consisted of, but she was able to tell me that U-M was playing Waterloo, so I realized my ticket wouldn't be in high demand. I went to clean out my locker and found a book about a talk show. Flipping through it, I came across a color photo section entitled "Why we're glad Alec Guinness is dead" and a chapter devoted to the strengths and weaknesses of what they called the "Terrieses" from Monty Python.

I feel like I dream about Monty Python a lot. Odd. Could it mean something?

I dreamt night-before-last that I was walking down the street and this guy en rollers with ski poles started harassing me and skating very tight circles around me. I got mad, tore the ski poles out of his hands, and pushed him off balance, so that he fell on the ground. He just smiled in a particularly evil way, then people started yelling at me. Why had I attacked this fine young man for no reason? His dad was upset because he would never play hockey again - but he hadn't even broken anything! They started demanding recompensation for his imaginary injuries and I was screaming at them at the top of my lungs in the dream when I woke up and yet, according to Renata and Jennifer, I had not made any noise at all in real life.

Last night I dreamt that math was a requirement at Albion and I didn't understand anything that was going on in the class. I had left my worksheet blank, but I had another copy that my mom had started, just for fun. The professor claimed I'd been trying to cheat by having my mother do my homework. I replied that I hadn't planned on handing in my mom's copy and that if I'd been trying to cheat, I wouldn't have handed in a paper with my mom's name written all across the top. To punish me for whatever I'd done, the prof called a pop quiz, but I couldn't even see the questions through my tears, much less understand them. I tried and tried and sobbed and sobbed and finally got up and went to the bathroom, where a group of girls were talking about their answers to the quiz. I didn't understand anything they were saying and I was crying too hard to pay attention, but then the prof came in and the girls said they were trying to help me, so I got in trouble again. When I woke up, my face was perfectly dry, even though I'd been sobbing all through the dream.

I dreamt last night that I pinned one of my students down on the ground and tickled him. I won't identify him here, and that way all of my students can fantasize that they were the lucky victim.

I dreamt last night that it was the last day of class and I ran out of things for my students to do, so they ran amok. Then the principal showed up and saw I had no control of the class. As if it couldn't get worse, one of my students then told me that she hated English and it was all because of me. I hope it goes better than that in real life.

I was in the rue de Paris with Renata and Jennifer, just chatting, when a big mob came and turned down the rue Dacher. We gathered that they were up to no good - they were collecting urine in big jugs and I think they were planning on burning down the Hôtel du Cygne because they didn't like a woman who was staying there. They were milling about in the street, and we kept expecting the police to come, or at least for a passing police car to spot the mob. But they didn't, so I called the police, then we left the area and went to a restaurant.

A woman tapped on the glass while I was in the restaurant, trying to get my attention, so I came outside to see what she wanted. She said, "Do you want a virus?" then grabbed my hand so I couldn't run away and started coughing on me. When I got back to the restaurant, Agnès asked me to "adopt" one of my BTS students, who she said was having troubles at home but had always looked up to me as a sister.

The next day, I went to school and the TV2s started asking me questions like "What's your favorite hotel in Vichy?" and "Made any phone calls lately?", trying to get me to confess that it was I who had called the police.

I dreamt I ran into Lindsay Roe again, this time in an airport elevator. I wasn't actually going anywhere and I was acutely embarassed at being caught hanging around the airport for nothing.

Later I was in an English class with Jennifer and Renata. The students didn't understand what the teacher was saying and she was teaching them things that were wrong, so they turned to me and asked me to take over the class.

I also dreamt that Alex and I visited his host-aunt (in the world of host-families, you can have such mammals), who was a jeweler and lived in some combination of a medieval castle and a rambling farmhouse. I upset her tray of rings and thought I had lost one, but she found it and was very nice about it. I went out to the stables and watched some insane geese attack each other, then met Alex's host-cousin, who started hitting on me. He was a kid from Valéry Larbaud who is not in any of my classes but who I kept seeing yesterday.

I dreamt earlier this week that Alex and I were in London and I left him to go buy bread at Piccadilly Circus (?), but it started to rain, so I ducked under some kind of shelter. One by one, the surviving members of Monty Python took shelter with me and we started talking. They liked me so much, they decided to adopt me as a sort of mascot. When I went back to the hotel/apartment, Alex was wearing a kilt and wanted to show me all of the used books he had bought from the restaurant downstairs.

Last night, I dreamt that Queen Elizabeth II had died quite suddently and unexpectedly and the British people refused Prince Charles as their king. I got annoyed and wanted to tell everyone that putting up with kings you don't like is the price you pay for having a monarchy. This was particularly odd because in real life, I have no such opinion. In fact, I have no opinion at all with regards to Prince Charles as King of England or with England having a monarchy at all.

In another dream last night, Jennifer, my dad and I were in Paris or London, looking for a lesbians-only p0rn shop. We kept missing buses or getting on buses that were going in the wrong direction. I think my dad wanted to do some genealogy.

I dreamt last night that I was in a ski station and there was an avalanche. The snow kept falling and there would be blue flashes like when you bite a wint-o-green Life Saver. Apparently it was the Worst Avalanche Ever.

As soon as the snow settled, the Jews came out with their banners, claiming that the avalanche was a sign from God that Israel belonged to them. Then the Muslims appeared with their banners, saying that it was a sign that Palestine belonged to them. Then the Christians showed up with their banners - not to put a claim on the Holy Land but just to sing songs and generally be chiants. The Italians showed up with banners too, but I don't know what they wanted.

I was pissed off that everyone was trying to profiter de l'avalanche and that I couldn't get to the stupid garbage can to take the stupid garbage out and that I didn't know if Philippe had been killed in the avalanche or if he was hiding from me. I went to the kitchen where my grandma was and I was so mad that I threw an empty beer bottle at the wall, where it shattered. Then I had to go pick up all of the little pieces of glass because I realized Grandma didn't have slippers on.

I had a dream last night that was disappointingly easy to interpret. I was shopping for prom dresses with Robin, Cheryl and Harini, but the saleswoman kept bringing us suits instead, then we had to model them across the pont at Valéry Larbaud. When we were done, we sat down to have a cup of tea with Philippe, who was speaking very bad English.

I am disappointed that my dream was not as insane and uninterpretable as usual. Clearly I want to remain in a high school frame of mind instead of growing up and I am feeling guilty about always speaking French to Philippe when he wantes to practice his English.

I dreamt I was at the emergency room and I couldn't get to the desk because there was a gaggle of rednecks trying to hand in job applications. One of them asked me to babysit for her kid, although I thought at first that she wanted me to babysit for her husband. I refused, but then I met the kid, who was fourteen and very serious and mature. I liked him, so I took the job.

One day when I was babysitting him, we went to a mall that was inside of Valéry Larbaud and full of optician's shops. We ran into Latrina, who was upset because I never email her to tell her what's going on in my life. I told her I was working in France and I was just home for my break. She was upset because she thought the kid was my new boyfriend and no one had told her that Alex and I broke up.

Next part I remember, I was taking a picture of Celine, Aline, Sebastien and Cheryl in front of a yard full of snakes, including pythons, cobras, and all kinds of awful things. No one but me seemed to be terribly concerned. Cheryl kicked a snake that was short and wide and looked more like a dinosaur's head than a snake.

I dreamt that I ran into Le Yu in the rain at the bus stop in front of Valéry Larbaud. We ran and hugged each other in a big dramatic embrace. She never told me what she was doing there and I found it odd that she was in France because she had taken Latin in high school.

Later, I was in a department store with my parents. I had a giant tomato and a saleswoman was coveting it. When I went downstairs, I noticed that it was starting to get squishy and rotten so I had to take it upstairs to ask the saleswoman who had been coveting it to take it and dispose of it. She was dressed as a tree.

I had a dream where I was supposed to teach the S2OLs in two groups. I was late to class to teach the first group, who I was going to force to like Dave Matthews Band. When I got there, I discovered that someone had turned on a TV and Whose Line Is It Anyway? was on and everyone - including Agnès - was glued to the screen. When it was over, some blond student in a suit - who looked like the blond bartender at Le Comptoir - had a bunch of questions. I don't remember if they were in French or English.

Then I had to go to the second group, which was full of people who didn't belong there, like Encarna (the Spanish assistant from Moulins), her French boyfriend Loïc, and Cheryl, old friend of mine and frequent blahblaher. We were all sitting and lying on a mattress and no one was saying anything, so I made them tell me what they wanted for Christmas. Philippe wanted peace on Earth and a successful year for his parents' optical shop. Cheryl said, "I want a Degous. It's a baby. But it's not. It has paint on it. I would make it drink paint." Everyone was confused and shocked by whatever Cheryl was talking about, but she didn't get a chance to explain before the plumbers woke me up.

My dreams last night were full of blasts from the past.

In the first one I remember, I was sleeping and when I woke up, someone was kissing me. I didn't want to kiss him back because I thought it was Joe Mangan. If I woke up and discovered someone was kissing me, I don't know why I would assume it was Joe Mangan because I've barely seen him since middle school and even then he wasn't really anyone I wanted kissing me. I was flattered that Joe wanted to kiss me, but I didn't want to kiss him back. When I woke up a bit more, I realized it was Alex and we were on a camping trip.

During the next part, I think I was at some sort of pep rally. I sat next to Jenn Sautter but I was supposed to be meeting Jen Dively so I sent her a texto on my cell phone and she replied that she wasn't coming after all. Jenn Sautter was disgusted because I didn't know anyone at the pep rally, including Albion's sprinters from the Track team, who were apparently The Shit.

A float went by, tossing inflatable plastic animals into the crowd and I got a very adorable dog that everyone was fighting over. I hugged it and told Jenn, "I don't care about anything at this pep rally. I only care about my dog." I buried my face in the dog to try to escape everything around me. Next thing I remember, my inflatable dog had become two inflatable monkeys, which held hands and walked across the grass all by themselves. They had less success on carpet, but I don't know why I knew that because we were outside.

I watched them for a while, then I ended up at the back of the pep rally where a bunch of other people were ignoring it to listen to Lindsay Roe's CDs. Robin and I were annoyed because Lindsay was being bossy and wouldn't let us look at her photo albums so we could see what she'd been up to since we graduated from high school.

I dreamt that I was in the movie or the game of Clue, and my mom was about to send everyone home because we hadn't found the murderer. I had an idea of who it was, so I tried to keep everyone from leaving. I was afraid to wander through the house alone, so I grabbed my sister, who was Mrs Peacock, to accompany me and told her I knew who it was. She rolled her eyes and looked disparaging. "Of course you do," she said, "You've seen the movie about a million times."

I had a dream where I was trying to have class with the THOTs in a classroom I had built in my house, but they were completely out of control, so I hid in a little closed-off area at the back of the room and watched them on security camera feed as they ran all over the place, made a mess, and ate all the food we had.

What is with this déluge of remembered dreams, not that I'm complaining?

I came home from work today, wrote the previous blog-post, and then fell into bed face-first. I dreamt that I was squatting a little pink house that no one wanted because it was pink, so I was pretty safe squatting there. I lived with a boyfriend who was not Alex, but I don't know who he was. Maybe he was no one I know in real life.

Renata and I had joined a literary discussion group, so we took a bus from a bus station located inside the Centre Jaude mall in Clermont-Ferrand, heading off into the wilds of Auvergne for our meeting. Most of the other buses, interestingly enough, were going to New Jersey. I don't know how that works.

It was a long ride to wherever we were going, so at one point we all got off the bus and learned all of the passengers were in the book club. We were sitting around a waiting room, and someone asked me how I liked the book. I got defensive and started yelling that I hadn't read it yet, but I was going to, so don't worry, and get off my back, and anyway, I prefer to hear the discussion and then read the book, plus I had already read Shall We Tell the President? and I wasn't a big fan of Jeffrey Archer anyway. Luckily Agnès called and woke me up before I started getting violent.

What a dreamful week I've been having! I'm sure you don't care, but I like to record them and perhaps in reading them, you will realize exactly how bizarre things are in my head.

First I was on a tour bus in England and Neil Dudgeon, John Hannah and Joanna Roth were there as well. Neil was right behind me, but the other two were way at the back of the bus.

The tour guide announced that we weren't going to be able to watch the video she'd planned to show in the bus because she'd left it at the tour office. I had a video in my bag that I thought about suggesting we watch instead, until I realized it was the "Laurels are Poison" episode of The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, and thus two of our fellow tour members would be easily identifiable as celebrities.

We finally got to our destination, then we had to cross fields to get there. At one point we had a choice of going through the poopy, horse-filled stables or across open ground, so I chose the latter, but it turned out that involved crossing a "bridge" that consisted of one log and that had an enormous, poisonous spider building a web just on the other side. Then I woke up.

When I fell asleep again, I dreamt that I was at this Lord of the Rings museum with my mom and sister. There was an interactive movie with some trolls and whatnot, so we sat down to watch it, but my mom and Becky kept leaping up and coming back later. At one point a shemale came along and sat in Becky's seat and when I told him/her that the seat was taken, he/she glared at me with hatred in his/her eyes.

The next time I saw Becky, she had acquired a wheelchair. "What happened?" I asked my mother, horrified. "Nothing," she answered, "She just wants attention." Becky got frustrated quickly, though, trying to navigate the chair through the crowds, where everyone was concerned with getting where they were going and didn't notice her.

Next thing I remember, I was in a big city. It may have been near Leicester Square in London or Times Square in New York. There was a big back-to-school barbecue dinner going on in the middle of the street and members of the Star Academy kept showing up in the windows of a building above and making the crowd cheer. Jillian (my friend from Albion) and I were looking for seats. I was upset because they'd "borrowed" my table and chairs and I still couldn't find a place. We decided we wanted to sit at the table that Mathieu (a BTS Optique student from Valéry Larbaud) was at, because he was kissing everyone and apparently we wanted some of that. So we sat down next to Antoine (former French assistant at Albion), but he was saving the seat for Fanny (his wife, former Spanish assistant at Albion). So I asked Annamaria (classmate from Grenoble) if there was any place near her, but she claimed there wasn't. It was an odd mix of people and I don't know what any of them were doing there.

At some point last night, I dreamt that Renata, Jennifer, Gandalf and I went to the Raelians' headquarters, which was a lot more like a Michigan Militia compound than an alien-worshipping cult. The cult members were all rather grizzled woodsmen with guns.

Later, I had a nightmare last night where I was being attacked by a dressmaker's dummy in a bathroom, but someone was controlling my mind and trying to make me insane, so he had somehow convinced me that it was me who was attacking myself. Then the mind-controller came into the bathroom, naked, and I thought he was going to finish me off, but I woke up, before I got to find out who he was.

I had a dream last night where I was an assistant for my own high school graduating class. Veronique was my teacher and we spent a lot of time watching videos. I think the school was on a boat, too. Alex kept giving my underwear away to my students, but I don't think he knew it was mine. I was much more popular with the students than I was when I was in high school or than I am here, so I hung out with all of the cool kids, who in this alternate reality were not junkie smackheads. At one point, we went to an "authentic 50s diner" (like in Ghost World) and someone remarked that "this is really authentic" (like in Ghost World).

I had a horrible dream last night where I went to a fair full of rednecks. Someone set off an illegal firework next to the parade route, which rather than going up into the air, flew across the fairgrounds and hit someone. An ambulance took off at top speed across the bumpy field, but then it too got hit by a firework. The ambulance driver jumped out of the burning truck, put a missile launcher on his shoulder, and shot at the guy who was setting off the fireworks. He missed and the missile went towards a shed.

As the missile was flying through the air, the canvas covering one wall of the shed was lifted and we discovered that the shed was full of fireworks as well. My dad and I started running, but there was nowhere to hide. We knew that when the missile hit, it would bring about the end of the world.

We went to hide behind the burning ambulance, but there was a fenced-in area full of dead bodies there. My dad thought it would be safe there, but the bodies turned out to be live, and a bunch of murderers who had been locked up behind the fence. I woke up crying because I'd been begging the murderers not to kill my dad because we were all going to die anyway and then they wouldn't go to heaven.

My latest ambition is to become Prince William's best friend. I don't want to marry him, unlike every other girl between 15 and 25 on six continents, but I want to be his pen pal. This all came about because I had a dream where I went to an English cousin's wedding and met a million second- and third-cousins I'd never seen before, and one took me to a garden party where QE2 and her grandson were present. I will be William's best friend and confidante, talking about Chile and what it's like to be a royal or an English assistant, and he will get Alex into Oxford and Becky a meeting with his brother. Mwah ha.

I had a dream where an enormously tall guy was in love with me but I was trying to convince him that one boyfriend was enough for me. I tried to set him up with CStimpso because she looked so tiny standing next to him.

I spent all night dreaming alternately about teaching in a girls' boarding school where everyone wanted to learn English and wanted to be my best friend and have me go swimming with them, and about running into people from high school on the streets of Vichy.

I dreamt that Lauryn Hill was une assistante and that Robin, who was also an assistant, was all excited because we were going to go out for pizza with Lauryn. Then Lauryn stood us up so we went out for some really bad faux-Chinese food and had to walk home in the dark.

I dreamt that I discovered a plot against my life by a cult that hated gay music. I have no idea what I had done to upset them - I think they had me confused with someone else. But I couldn't trust anyone because I didn't know who was in the cult and who wasn't. It was very scary and I did not want to get up when I woke up from it.

I had a very pleasant dream last night where I was watching the first episode of MDs. Dr. Dalgety arrived at the hospital and Dr. Kellerman, the reckless rule-breaking doctor already installed at the hospital, didn't like him. He didn't trust Dr. Dalgety because he suspected he was one of them. I was rather disappointed that Dr. Kellerman wasn't better-looking - he looked sort of like a ferret.

There was a sort of segué as the show started to focus on the medical students, à la Scrubs. Now I was in the dream and was the main character, who was male. There was one other male and one other female student. We went to a bar with the female student's friend, who I was madly in love with.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I found myself (my actual self) walking down the street in Vichy, and overhearing a conversation between two 2002 Huron High School graduates where one (who I used to call the Snowman, because he had a round head and a round body) was confessing that he was pining away for my sister. IN the dream, I thought it was a shame that this was only a dream because Becky would have been interested to know that.

Then it was back to the Scrubs-dream and I was a sort of omniscient narrator who occasionally jumped into the characters' bodies. I could tell that the main character had a crush on the friend and that the friend had a crush on the narrator, the was one can tell these things while watching TV. They didn't know it themselves, but the female medical student wrote a note to the main character on a strange clear plastic envelope, telling him to go for it. Somehow when I, the omniscient narrator, then jumped into the main character's body, I took my brain with me, and he could see the situation the same way I had. He burst into the room and grabbed the friend and kissed her.

It was very satisfying to watch, as it always is in movies and TV when two characters finally get together.

I dreamt last night that there were these people who were having a lot of problems adopting a child. I don't know if I, myself, was in the dream at all, but it made me very sad.

Then I dreamt I had to go back to Albion for another semester and they put me in Wesley Hall (which didn't look like Wesley in my dream). I knew which hall I was on, but not which room. I wanted the big room because I was a senior, but I thought it would be unfair to my roommate because I was leaving for France in two weeks and it would be sad to be in that big room all alone. I wondered why they had given me as a roommate to a Native Speaker if I was leaving. I went in search of my RA to see which room was mine. I must have walked through a mall, a hospital, and an airport. Finally I came to my elementary school gymnasium, where a gang was hanging out, led by Horatio Sanz from Saturday Night Live. He pinched my butt really hard; which didn't hurt so much as it made me feel embarrassed and violated. Somehow I escaped, then I woke up.

I was so sad and frustrated after those two dreams that I went back to sleep and luckily had a happier dream, which I don't remember at all.

I dreamt last night that the apartment I rented in Vichy belonged to Alan Cumming and that he was just renting it out while he was out of the country. I kept wanting to dig through his stuff and leave him little notes.

I also dreamt that the author of ann arbor sucks decided not to write about Ann Arbor anymore, because someone in another blog had said that Ann Arbor and Chicago were the best cities on earth. In my dream, the author was a girl named Nelly. I have a feeling this is not the case.

Great. Now I'm dreaming about weblogs.

I dreamt last night, in my allergy-drug-crazed sleep, that I was about to go to France when the Euro-dollar conversion was suddenly thrown off so that it took 20 dollars to get one Euro. That would not be fun.

I have changed my morning wake-up CD, but thankfully I didn't have dreams about World War II or French Polynesian plantation owners.

I dreamt that Alex was still living with Rob, but there was some kind of problem between the two of them. Rather than talking it out, Alex was going to kill Rob. He was going to chloroform him first, because Rob is too big for him to kill straight out. He had it all planned out, but then Rob came in a different door. So they ended up having to talk it out, after all. I think Alex was a little disappointed.

I dreamt last night that this guy from my high school, Eric Bodley, was 6'8" and had built a big maze at Albion, full of mirrors and magic doors and masking tape. It was a spectacular creation. My sister and James Davidson were trying to go through it at the same time and were doing pretty well. Once you got through the mirrors, you got to the doors section. You had to do certain things to get the doors to open. At door #1, you had to do something (I was watching from the viewing area, so I couldn't see exactly what), then suddenly the ground under your feet and the door would raise up several feet and the door would open. They went on and on like that until they got to door #6. There were about four doors marked with 6s, and you had to figure out which was the right one and how to open it. Finally, they gave up and I ran down and tried. One of them was made out of aluminum foil and masking tape, so I just broke through it and looked at Eric like "Was that the right way to do it?" Apparently it wasn't.

I really need to change the CD in my alarm clock.

I dreamt that I was at work. I got a package from a friend in the JHAC, but the box had Karen's name on it. Apparently she had sent something to my friend and my friend had reused the box. I think the dream was reminding me to send my tape chains to her.

I walked past Tom, who was singing songs from The Music Man (hence my need to change my wake-up music). He knew all of the words and I could barely sing along.

I went into the back, which was the new addition to the library that hasn't been built yet. Jim's latest conservation volunteer was using the phone and her husband came in. They were from the Philippines.

Suddenly I was outside in a group of about fifty people. They were playing this game where you threw a ball to one person and they threw the ball to someone else. No winners, no point to it at all. My kind of game, but I wasn't planning on playing. I was just sort of trapped in the middle of the game while I was walking through. I saw Becky there, then Ben from work threw the ball to me and I said, "Aw crap." I threw the ball to my sister's ex-friend Halley and saw Doris from work in the background.

I dreamt I was in an English mining town where a strike was going on. The striking miners were going to sneak into the mine area and do some kind of violence. A truck drove to the beach behind the mine, carrying old-fashioned beach cabanas - the kind that people would change their clothes in in Victorian times, the kind that The Sims have in Hot Date. There were only four cabanas, but miners started pouring out of them like clowns out of a clown car. They were a bit like clowns, too, in the way they were dressed. They were all wearing old-fashioned bathing costumes. Where do striking miners have the money to buy old-fashioned bathing costumes and cabanas?

We landed on the beach, then climbed up the hill to get to the mine. "Which way are we going?" someone asked me. "Same way they are," I pointed, quoting Ringo Starr in a Liverpudlian accent, "oop!" I don't know if Ringo has actually ever said that in any of the Beatles movies or if that was just for the dream.

Then I was in a dingy, horrible hotel room with another of the assistantes from my region. For some reason, we were both trying to take a shower at the same time. She kept trying to make passes at me, but luckily it was a big shower, so I would just run to the other end. We got out and she became CKane, who was looking at maps and telling me she would buy me the CD of the song she had in her head.

I dreamt last night that I was trying to figure out what the Spanish word capa meant. As far as I know, there is no such Spanish word and I wonder if my subconscious was thinking of Capa, which is how my name is written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

I was in that half-awake state again this morning, and the soundtrack from The Music Man was playing on my alarm clock.

I dreamt I was in a production of The Music Man, playing a travelling salesman in the opening scene. The cast went to dinner at Mary's Fabulous Chicken and Fish and after dinner, we were standing on the corner of Packard and LaSalle, singing songs from the show (but I think we were dressed in Victorian costumes, for some reason). I was excited because the guy who said "Wheredayagitit?" wasn't there, so when that part came, I jumped in and said it. The other salesmen gathered around and patted me on the back.

I also dreamt that I had an enormous tuft of hair growing between my eyebrows. It was completely separate from, and much longer and bushier than, the eyebrows themselves.

I dreamt this morning that I was at Meijers and there was a CD player there that was loud enough to play in the whole store. I got everyone at Meijers dancing to Pink Martini's "Brazil". It was very satisfying.

I think I was in that half-asleep, half-awake state, because the song was playing on my CD player at the time. That's a weird state.

I'll continue real blogging when I get back to work and when I go back to living in my room (tomorrow). For now, here's the dream I had last night:

It was Christmas Eve and we went to church. They were doing a new project where they made the pews narrower and narrower so people had to sit closer. One of the ushers came by to take away everyone's hymnals, and while trying to take mine, he actually lifted me into the air and shook me around a while before giving up and letting me keep it.

Next thing I remember, my friend Robin had a farm in the country and I was there with a whole bunch of friends. I think we may have been canning. I went out behind the house and saw that they had these enormous vehicles, like the ones the Jawas lived in in Star Wars. They were covered in aluminum foil to keep the aliens away. Some were in one section of the barn and others were roaming around the farm. I think Robin's family was using them to store gifts and supplies for poor children in Venezuela. Then we went to the next door of the barn, which was where Robin's brother kept his illegal hockey rink.

Suddenly this girl I vaguely knew from Albion came parachuting onto the farm. She asked me if I spoke English and I replied "A little." We weren't sure if she was just a lost parachutist or if she was a spy, ready to tell the government about the hockey rink and the Venezuela project...

I was at my middle school, looking desperately for a tissue and I ran into Becky's old French teacher. She made me ask for it in French and I was like "Essuie... essuie-nez... essuie... argh, mouchoir" so she gave it to me, but then she told me to follow her and she drove away into the countryside. It was a strange countryside where everyone except me was wearing big frou-frou dresses and bonnets and driving buggies.

Then, and more disturbingly, I dreamt I was dating Jerry Seinfeld, but I couldn't stop flirting with everyone around me, including a high school boy and George from "Seinfeld".

I dreamt last night that Robin, Cheryl, and Harini were freshmen at Albion and lived in a suite in Wesley. Then I made a big group of my friends (I think them, but also Antoine, Christianna, CKane, etc) go to see "Panic Room" with me even though it was midnight already. There were so many ads and previews that the movie didn't start until after 1am. When we got out of the movie, I had no idea where we were. I thought it might be Spain, but I saw a sign in French and German. I recognized a landmark (something I'd seen before in the dream but not in real life) and decided it was either Geneva, Switzerland or Vienna, Austria. Since I've never been to Vienna, I decided we were in Geneva. We came to a roundabout and there were two traffic police directing traffic around the roundabout. Each one had a card that had one symbol on one side and another symbol on the other. Neither symbol made any sense in the situation, so I didn't know whether to go or stop when she kept waving at me as I crept towards the roundabout.

I dreamt that my mom bought the whole family tickets to a Marilyn Manson concert. I don't know what she was expecting, but I don't think she got it. And I'm not exactly sure what she didn't like. The place was full of grownups like her, who all had their own boxes in the balcony. But all the little teenaged Marilyn Manson fans in their makeup, etc, had standing room only. Well anyway, Mom didn't seem to think much of that, even after MM left and some jugglers/acrobats came out. Apparently it wasn't just a MM concert, but a big extravaganza. And my mom wouldn't tell me what else was going to be there, so I got mad because I thought I was going to miss out on something I would want to see. But she dragged us all away, down the stairs (which were the stairs of the Kellogg Centre).

Next part of the dream I remember, I was lying on my side at the edge of the swimming pool and someone swam by. I couldn't remember her name and the first thing that came to mind was "Latrina". Yes, I do know someone named Latrina. Moving on. So I called this woman Latrina and that rather upset Latrina, who was standing right next to me, and I was convinced that I was a racist because I had called this other Black woman Latrina and she thought it was because I couldn't tell them apart.

Then somehow I was at a computer and I was looking at someone's old weblog designs, which they had screenshots of on their current weblog. Most of them had a Red Riding Hood theme, with the wolf in bed and the blanket being covered with the weblog text. The earliest incarnation of the site had a video clip with the three Enlows singing songs at their grandma's house.

I dreamt night before last that my car went through the car wash without me and I had to catch it on the other side. Then later I was driving around in a yellow cardboard box with one pedal.

LAST night, I dreamt that I had to close Neptune because Gilles was leaving early. It was located in a strip mall where they also sold possessed ice cream. I didn't manage to get any, but I was encouraging my grandma to get some. They were shopping in another store and the owner closed up and forgot to bring down the metal closing thing because s/he was possessed. Then I realized I had forgotten too, so I went back to do so. I went into Neptune and suddenly it was the Gap. CKane was there with a friend from home and there were billions of other shoppers who wouldn't leave so I couldn't close up. Then everyone in the store went and sat in the cubicles of the dressing rooms and they became the compartments of a train. Christianna was sharing one with my mom's boss, who was amused that Christianna was going to eat a whole pizza-sized spinach pie by herself.

I had a dream last night that Alex's parents were coming so I was hanging out at this gas station/café across the street from the airport and looking at the clouds passing by, which had penguins dressed in suits floating on them. I made the observation that penguins are the only animal besides humans that wear clothes.

Then I did some kind of switch à la Parent Trap with this complete stranger and had to go live in her host family's house. Her parents had a lot of good travel books but they were insanely strict and my roommate kept having to sneak in and out of the house to see me. Just before I woke up, the mother caught me with four people in my room (Roommate, Roommate's new best friend Bob Simmering, and Alex) and just looked at me wide-eyed. I said defiantly, "Is there a problem? Were we talking too loudly and woke you up?" She just pursed her lips and asked if I was coming to Mass in the morning, at which point I turned around and looked panicked at the others in the room because I don't know how to fake being Catholic and I didn't want to have to for the rest of my life (which is apparently how long the switch was going to last).

I had a very dreamy sleep between 9:30 and noon today. Here are some that I remember:

1) I was staying in a hotel in Grenoble and the landlady had decided to keep all of her pets there, so my closet was full of aquariums that had guinea pigs, bunnies, cats, and mice in them. One of them was full of just PILES of kittens and when they woke up, it was quite an adventure because there were kittens popping up from the bottom of the pile. There were also these blue stuffed dogs but one of them jumped up and bit onto my finger and wouldn't let go no matter how much I shook him around. The landlady came up and said "Oh, I see you've found the coyotes." WHAT???

2) Alex was walking across campus carrying his cat Quijote in a blanket. I was going to ask him what Quijote was doing here, but then I saw the cat in his arms had a grey head. I got really upset that he had picked up another cat somewhere. I think this (and maybe the previous dream too) express my concern that there are way too many cats in my life.

3) I rode my bike to Saline from Ann Arbor and was quite proud of myself. When I got there, Nasko was there with a friend of his who had a pickup truck. They went and found Alex walking down the street and started throwing things at him. They started out with just dandelions and things like that, but then they went back to the truck to look for more stuff to throw. By the end of the dream, they threw a stuffed (taxidermied) red bird at him, but I think it missed.

I dreamt last night that I was in a play at Albion. I was playing a rather major part - something like the brother of the main character. At one point, the director (who reminded me of a mean Bille Wickre in Jabba the Hutt's body) was chewing out every member of the cast. For me, it was "I know you're only 16, but that's no reason why you should stare at the floor while you deliver your lines. I don't believe in this letting people into college before they're old enough, anyway." The whole cast looked at each other and giggled because they all knew I was 20. I'm not sure why I was 20 instead of 21 in the dream, but that's the way dreams are. I called her "la baleine" (the whale) under my breath to the star of the play, who was in French House in my dream (she wasn't actually someone I knew in real life) and she laughed. We had never had a dress rehearsal before opening night and I had only practiced the scenes where I had lines. There was one scene where I was supposed to be on stage, but I had no lines. And no one told me which costume I was supposed to be in for that scene - so I just didn't go. Later, my co-star and I were hanging around backstage, talking about all of the trips that Christianna and Antoine were going to take us on in French House.

It's been a long time since I've remembered a dream. I wonder if something is blocking me at school. I love my dreams.

Finally finished my paper at 3am. Yuck! I don't think it was very good, but I hope it made some sort of sense and perhaps vaguely resembled what Dr Wyss wanted from it.

Crashed on the couch while it was printing and had a dream where Roommate and Rob were going to the Cake concert together, except it was Rob who was my roommate. There was a lot of other extremely strange stuff going on, but I lost it all in the process of waking up.

I feel so free now that those papers are done. Mwah ha. That would explain why I've spent the past several hours reading random blogs and finding these fun sites to recommend:

Japanese Engrish
Bunny Survival Tests

Someday, if BlogBack ever decides to stop being broken, you will be able to click on [you blah blah] to respond to my blog entries and share your own thoughts or opinions or to say "This blog is a complete waste of time, you loser."

I had a dream last night that Alex, John Turturro and I were outlaws. We took over these people's house while they were out and locked/blocked all the doors. Just before I woke up, I was panicking because we hadn't closed the blinds.