Flames a flickering curtain

2004-02-07 - 8:57 p.m.

I'm fairly happy with myself today, as far as the whole diet thing goes. I managed to stay within my points limit and get in 6 activity points as well. I jogged to the post office and back this morning. It was 3.9 miles and I did it in 42:02. I was reading my "One Year Ago Today" entry yesterday and in that entry I mentioned that I had run 4.07 miles in 40 minutes. So I'm not up to where I was a year ago. But the difference is that then I was running on a treadmill and now I'm running outside. I think it's got to be easier on a treadmill. I've been thinking of getting myself back to the gym. Not necessarily for the treadmill, though. I am now in good enough shape that I think I could jog to the gym, do a bit of a workout, and then jog home without dying. I don't know if I'll really do that though. I like exercising outside.

Today I went and saw "Cold Mountain." It's actually a pretty good movie. I hadn't read the book so I didn't know how it was going to end. I think my favorite quote from the movie was by Ren�e Zellweger's character. I believe she was speaking of the idiocy of men. She said, "They make the weather and then they stand in the rain and say, "Shit! It's raining." She had a great character.

There's a Mexican joint where my parents and I sometimes go for dinner. We went through a phase where we were going quite regularly, but now our visits have gotten fewer and farther between. There's a little Mexican dude who works behind the counter and his name is Sergio. Sergio always notices me and has some special comment just for me. I, unfortunately, have all the social grace of a rhinoceros. I like to think that my social skills have improved since junior high, but I often fear they haven't. The fact that he notices me makes me very uncomfortable. Usually from me the most he gets is a "Hi, how you doing?" But anyway, last weekend, while I was in LA, my parents went to this restaurant without me. They later reported that Sergio asked them, "Where's your lady?" My dad is never one to be stingy with details to strangers. He told Sergio all about where I was. OK, so yesterday I volunteered to go through the drive through at this place to bring home dinner for my parents. I get there and Sergio looks out the window and sees me. His face lights up and he says, "Oh hi! How was Disneyland?" I don't know, why does stuff like that make me uncomfortable? I don't think it's cute that he always has something to say to me. I think it's creepy.

I'm going to end this entry with a dream. If you'd like to skip the dream, feel free to stop reading right now, 'cause that's all that's left. In my dream last night I was with Zorro, who is a Korean girl and in real life was my roommate freshman year and we went to pharmacy school together. In my dream she was becoming the queen of her people. There was a big ritual that she had to go through to become queen, though, and she had asked me to take part in the ritual as her "second." I agreed, of course, and I was honored to do it, but I really had no idea what was expected of me. The ritual took place inside a giant arena. In the middle of the arena was a metal pole maybe ten feet in diameter and several hundred feet high. Hanging from the pole were ten or fifteen carts suspended by long cables. Zorro and I got into one of the carts and each of the carts was filled by other pairs of people. The pole started spinning, swinging all the carts out in great circles around it. I could see the stands were completely packed with Zorro's people. Since Zorro was the queen and I was her second, the first thing we had to do was get naked. We were both wearing elaborate robes, which conveniently enough opened right down the front. I was shy and didn't much like the idea of being naked in front of all these people, but I had agreed to be her second, so I didn't resist when Zorro reached across and began opening my robe. Once I was disrobed, I realized that Zorro was staring at me. She had never seen blonde pubic hair before and she kept trying to touch it. I wouldn't let her and she finally realized she was making me very uncomfortable and stopped trying. Then we got down to the ritual. The next thing she told me we had to do was to try to catch the other carts. We were all swinging around in circles but we were swinging at different altitudes and different speeds. "Like this?" I asked as I reached out my arms and grabbed the cable of a passing cart. Zorro was amazed. "Hold on! Don't let go!" she screamed over the roar of the cheering crowd. I didn't let go. I looked down into the cart below me that's cable I had caught. Inside were Arnold Schwarzenegger and a woman I didn't recognize. Arnold was pissed. He looked like he was going to climb up the cable and hurt me, but he didn't. Instead he grudgingly followed the rules and he and the woman jumped out of the cart onto the padding on the floor far below. "Nobody has ever caught a cart so quickly," Zorro told me. Then she told me that now we had to catch the rings. I had no idea what she was talking about. What rings? I looked around and then I noticed that there were golden rings about the size of donuts swinging around the pole in the opposite direction from us, moving about twice as fast as we were. I reached out my hand just as one flew by and I caught it. The crowd erupted in cheers again. Zorro was ecstatic. "Keep catching them!" So I kept reaching out and snatching golden rings out of the air. It took almost no effort on my part, as though if I stuck my hand out a ring would hit it and all I had to do was close my fingers around it. I was working on my second dozen when I realized that nobody in any of the other carts had caught any rings yet. Zorro yelled happily over the cheers that nobody had ever caught so many rings and nobody had ever caught any so quickly either. Our success was a very propitious sign that she would be a great leader.