A mish-mash of things

I've had a lot of random thoughts/encounters today:

* I am really sore today. I mean, like limping around the office sore. I can't remember the last time I was this sore. I remember I often felt this way in high school, as I would gingerly lower myself into my seat in 1st period English. Usually it was the result of a killer track workout or some ridiculous lunge-athon. I did not do a killer track workout yesterday, but I did do a lot of lunges. I used to relish this feeling. Today I'm rueing my stupidity. My, what 10 years will do to one's sense of adventure.

* I think I'm chickening out on the haircut. I feel like I shouldn't whack it until I'm 100% sure. My appointment is in 3 hours and I'm still not sure. AND, today my hair actually cooperated and I felt sort of pretty for like 30 minutes until I realized when I got to the metro that I had forgotten my wallet, keys, phone, EVERYTHING, and had to walk back home, knock until someone opened the door, run upstairs to my blasted hot room on the third floor, run back down, RE-walk to the metro, and then get on a train with hundreds of tourists (who can't use their day passes until after 9:30) because, guess what, it was after 9:30. My hair did not look so cute after that ordeal. And I was late to work. Really late.

* Emily started sending me quotes from The Importance of Being Earnest this morning. I started looking for some of my own and then got so engrossed that in between phone calls and other tasks I read the entire play. It is just so funny. It stands in my memory as the first play that I actually sat down and read and understood and enjoyed. I've been revisiting several pieces of literature the last couple of months in preparation for my test next week. It's been interesting to see how I've changed as a reader and as a person over the years. And how I haven't.

* On the subject of books, today I finished a book I've picked up at least once before and put down because I just couldn't get into it. However, the other day I needed a break and plucked it out of my drawer o' books at work. I haven't been able to put it down. It's a C.S. Lewis book that no one seems to talk about (Till We Have Faces). Either that or I just haven't been listening. Some quotes from it that I found particularly moving:

"Of the things that followed I cannot at all say whether they were what men call real of what men call dream. And for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream. But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, and things that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth."

"When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

As the years go by and I continue to read and search and grow, my understanding of the value of literature increases. I read 293 pages, felt confused about how this didn't feel anything like C.S. Lewis, wondered how this horribly tragic tale would resolve, and then I got to the wham of the book. I don't know that it would have had the same impact in any other form, at any other time. For me, anyway.

* My boss today asked me if I thought all this rain meant the end of the world. I laughed but turns out he was only joking a little bit. He had recently watched this special on the Mayan calendar and how it ended the world at December 2012 and that the pictures on the calendar suggested the end of the world would come by flooding. He got a little spooked. I assured him that the world would not end by flooding. I also told him I didn't think this rain was out of the ordinary for this area. Coming from a place where it rains maybe 10 times a year, out here it's just another day of what feels like nonstop rain. (p.s. The streets were on last night: 18th and Hayes!)

* I have had the craziest dreams this week. I have started emailing them to my roommates in the mornings. Yesterday one of them called my dreams "creative." I'd never thought of it that way, but maybe I should take the records of my dream and make at least a short story out of them. Honestly, I wake up and think, "there is no way I could make that up."

A little taste of one:
Jeff Harps and Matt Knight had put together a video of Leanna with some footage and dubbed-in dialogue. What was the video of? Leanna driving around a hovercraft with machine guns over Duck Beach. She was gunning down people on the beach (there was a lot of chaos on the ground perhaps related to Leanna's offensive, perhaps not). She turned to all of us as we watched it and said, "no one else sees this until I address this with them." She then tried to explain that it wasn't what it seemed, that she was merely gathering food for her baby penguins...not her pet baby penguins, but her actual baby penguins...

I think my room is too hot.