7-11 refugee dreams

we made signs and headed out to greet 4 refugee families until we found out there was a 5th coming in earlier so we hustled a bit quicker to get there. on the way we got a call saying the 4 families were delayed 2 hours. that would be 12:45am. welcome to tucson, sorry that i went home to sleep. sarah and corcor stayed with the other greeters until the last plane came [delayed past 1am] and my dreams — possibly influenced by the crazy rains — were rather fun.

i’m not sure how we got in the position of having to leave where we were, but we neede to travel several days across some body of water [maybe this is from the new madagascar movie, too]. we were in an old prop airliner with the top sawn off but we spent most of our time floating on 2 rows of poster board [maybe the signs we made for the refugees] on either side of the fuselage. they were somehow able to remain together and not a lot of water splashed onto them. it was kind of nuts, and i think we it was always sunset or twilight, always rich, dark colors.

at one point we stopped at a house with a trailer, and since the plane didn't displace any water it was able to travel on one half inch of water. we spent some time talking to the people there and i wondered why we couldn't just stop there and take a bus but noooo, whomever was in charge was a butt. i had to read some article that was cut out of a national geographic and we were back floating again.

then i got up a few times to check for flooding in our house as we got pounded by a stationary storm. i think i'm in the middle of this red dot at 3.47am.

though i wish i had been able to sleep like spencer. he was out cold when i got home and sleeping with his knees up. i have a friend that likes to sleep on his stomach and he puts his lower legs straight up, as if he was once kneeling and passed out. how he balances them while he sleeps, no one knows.

7 something

i came home from work and sarah left on a walk after she had been working with the pizza dough. i think i spent 8 minutes on it and got nowhere, so screw it — funky shaped pizza it is.

it looks like a mariscal doodle, or maybe the arby's oven mitt after a bar fight.

or not. go buy a shirt instead at rosa loves — they find a cause, they make a shirt, and all the money goes to the cause. they only print as many shirts as needed to help the cause. rather cool.

march 2004

yes, this is pre-blog, but still funny. we were talking about this hummingbird i found out back. i thought humming birds were fast. i am wrong. click on it for a full image.

what also made us laugh is that i was doing work for the audobon society at the time, using great photos of birds to make signs such as «have you seen me lately?» and so on. i sent it to my client and she laughed, but believed the rest of the office would find it humorous. we’ll say it either sacrificed itself to save obama back in ’04 or that it died of old age and fell from the sky like a little angel.

july15 — attractive sounds, laughs and people

i’m much more fond of attractive sounding music, music that moves me. lyrics don't. combine that with laughing and i really do like an attractive laugh. yes, and attractive laugh does not mean the person is attractive [i imagine that phone sex is the same way — just because they have a sultry voice doesn’t mean they are in any way a super model]. who doesn't like being in a room and hearing a great laugh? i made the piñata laugh on sunday and yes, it is infectious. a great laugh makes everything feel good again. our neighbors went with us to see «forgetting sarah marshall» and we all took turns laughing. clay would just burst out with his great laugh, and sarah got going with those laughs that she can't stop. i wonder if there is also the image of a great smile and twinkling eyes that adds to this idea of attractiveness.

when i listen to the laugh in the middle of beck’s «timebomb» i think amanda peet comes to mind. big smile, big laugh. the world is good.

scratch that — i can’t make a flash movie with a song. try this mp3 until i read a manual. the laugh is right about in the middle.

also try «band of horses» latest of «islands on the coast». the beginning is great, though the faux youtube video just doesn't sound like the real thing. i’ll see if i can post the beginning somehow [making the flash player above used up all my flash skills].

7.16 – yes

i may start carrying a chainsaw to church as i seem to clear out enough undergrowth. i wonder if i could.

7.16 – t-bone and the dock

i had a strange dream that i rode a mountain bike down to a dock to watch the sunrise. there was a song «lady» that was playing and all the people on the dock were singing along, swaying or dancing to the music. 4 homeless people in hoodies were sitting in the middle, swaying along while 3 teenage girls were doing ballet twirls. i couldn't pan the dock — i either looked down one side or the other. all dark and pre-dawnish.

a lady was sitting in the middle lane and not moving and right as i was passing her she decided to go across my line into a personal driveway. i locked up the rear wheel and slid sideways, staying upright. i said «what the crap» and rode on.

7.17 — oldt

we took the whole family to the apple store just to look around, and all the «kids» working there. i wanted to say «hey, i’ve been working on a mac longer than you’ve been alive».

7.18 — cops

i was going to write that i almost ran into 4 bike cops on my morning commute, but that pales in comparison to returning home from the apple story [okay, dinner at aj's and walking around la encantada]. we pull out and whoa, 3 sheriffi in the rear entrance to the la paloma resort. then two in the next entrance, then one across the street, then two more there. sarah and i wondered if they were having a massive sobriety check point or if a gang on motorcyclists shot through sunrise every thursday at 10pm or something. more cops at the intersection of swan and sunrise, then cops all down swan at pretty much every street. talk about nuts. i said we had to figure it out, and we put the kids down quickly. we walked to the end of our street and asked a couple what was going on. ah, president bush was in town for a fundraiser for some guy. we walked towards the church and i ran and got our neighbors. i then went and got our kids up from bed. back to the house one more time for lemonade, cups, otterpops and a chair, and took a moment to free up some space on our videochip. we waited for probably an hour [why not — when will i have the chance to see the president drive by? my parents have seen the pope drive by twice and once had mass with him in rome for christmas] and sarah and the kids went to our neighbor's house. moments later the bajillion cops got all traffic on swan and a quick phone call got everyone running back to our waiting point. a little bit later we saw airforce1 land, then lots of cops racing down swan. very interesting side note: closing off swan effectively put a wall down the middle of tucson. east no longer met west. i'm sure that made a lot of happy tucsonans.

soon enough, a whole fleet of motorcycle cops, then a bit later two suvs and two limos with american flags flapping on them and another 20+ chase vehicles. i particularly liked the suv with the rear window open and the passenger seemingly videotaping the crowd — just in case?

moments later 2 dozen more cop cars go by, and we left, but swan wasn’t open yet. our neighborhood became filled with vehicles trying to find the magic route across swan.

supposedly bush stayed at la paloma and then had a fundraising breakfast at a private residence. i wonder if they raised enough $$$ to offset the amount of human resources they used in security. i’m not sure. either way, i’d say they did a real good job of protecting him. way back when, my uncle was in charge of all the planning for a presidential visit in santiago, chile.

bush was to leave this morning so i got out the videochip and rode to work, filming the officers along the route. i tried to not be so obvious so the video is miserable. this one section had at least 33 officers in 1.5 miles. crazy crazy. i had to filterfy the video to make it watchable — it is pretty miserable footage. safest commute i’ve ever made.

7.18 — punked a hotel [in my dreams]

i was going to write about a crazy dream where i punked a hotel near a [dreaming] hilly williams center. i pretended i was doing research on what cool things they could do like a fireworks show or waterslides and ended up on the top floor with the entire staff asking questions. one almost got me with «why did you not meet with the gm first?» and i passed it off well [i can dialogue in large crowds]. i could draw out the whole hotel as well as people sunbathing on the brown shingled roof. i’m not going to write about any of this. my brain is baked from the end of the work for that annual conference i do every year. this time it is in montréal.

7.20

long. that is all the weekend was. woke up exhausted from the tongue dried sun concert and moved to masking of 3 huge rooms with high ceilings to that sarah and nicole could help the hoffmanns paint. i'm not really sure what happened after that, but we did do some voiceover work and then it was monday.

7.22 — whoops

we rented ira & abby, which was good but not as entertaining as forgetting sarah marshall. the girl in the movie reminded us of kim — excited for everything. while IMing about it i wrote:

not as good as sarah marshall, but the first 20 minutes with her is great

taken out of context, that probably removes me from ever being the president.

7.22 — new record!

i just set a new pr for scratch disk usage in photoshop with 33.2gigs needed. a little bit later i broke it again with 46.5, then 50.8, then at the very end maxed out a 91.5gigs. woohoo! what a day. looks like it might be time for a new computer [it has been 3 years] or maybe i should just scale back what i am trying to do.

i did draw some trees in illustrator — click on it for a slightly larger version.

7.23 — ick ick ick ick ick

i was on a race home to beat the rain and get to mrs tiggy winkles [tiggy] for a meeting. there was a huge blob of rain on the radar moving just south of my work. i needed to fly before i got some sprinkles. i flew. just before i hit the overpass i hit 33mph and i crested the pass at 24.5. it wasn't until i hit 29th that i could see the road turning silver ahead of me, and then i was in it. funny thing about it was that the sky wasn’t pregnant with rain — i could still see clear through to the mountains. i continued on, feeling for any loss in traction which would mean i should show some reservations but there was none. my glasses never were completed blocked and long strands of water were moving down my face. i only worried about my jump drive as my phone had been disconnected. the next drip of water on my lips tasted like the ocean, and then the next and next and then i realized it — this was a year+ of sweat coming off the padding in my helmet. ick! i shook my head to remove the water and it came off in golden brown droplets, like the water in sabino canyon. so gross.

7.25 — paintball arse kicking

my sleep is trading off daily. one night i churn the whole night, awake for long periods of time and the next i slip into a coma. last night was a sleepless one, and with it were the wacky dreams.

i was in the screened off staging area, trying to change into some paintball clothes [i had on shorts and flip-flops]. my head was down as i tied my shoes when i was struck in the head by some paint. some toddlers playing in the sand nearby got hit too. the paint was from 3 young guys shooting underneath the netting and trying to hit some players in a game behind me. i took off running after the kids, somehow flipped all three on their stomachs and, taking a marker from them and giving their heads a handful of welts each. i picked up all three and drug them to the officials table and bashed the face of one of the kids that fought me.

rather testy my dreams are. don't mess with my sleep.

7.25 — last lecture

randy finally died. captivating teachers are hard to come by, moreso than captivating people.

7.25 — crap, then oh!

Dear Me,

We have received your application materials for the position of X in X. Unfortunately, recruitment for this position has been cancelled. Should the position be reopened, it will be re-advertised and we invite you to reapply at that time.

Thank you for your interest in employment at the University of Arizona.

Sincerely,

The University of Arizona

then i asked my neighbor and he said it is probably because of a lack of minimum requirements [anyone could apply i suppose and maybe they did]. i'll take my resume to san diego just in case i need to repost something different.

7.25.1 — addendum