"Last night I had the strangest dream
 I sailed away to China
 In a little row boat to find ya
 And you said you had to get your laundry cleaned"
    Matthew Wilder, Break My Stride

I only remember my dreams when I wake up and go back to sleep. That happened to me this morning and I had a great one:

I dreamed that I was doing a cameo for a movie. The set was a pub where a bunch of people were sitting around talking. I was sitting at the bar, and after about five minutes of dialog I was to say something like: "Well, its like they say..." and then rattle off this little four line poem/limeric.

It is also worth noting at this point that the bartender was Sting (the singer, not the wrestler).

The problem was that I kept forgetting or screwing up my line, and every time I did that we had to go back and do the preceding five minutes of dialog. Finally, they decided to let me just read my lines. So they gave me this huge-ass hard-cover novel open to the page where my lines was.

They start rolling again and I'm reading and re-reading my lines over and over to try and remember them when I drop the book on the floor and it slams shut. I pick it up and open it, and quicly realize that I don't know what page my lines are on! To make matters worse: the book is actually a collection of novels by a bunch of authors and I don't even know what novel we're doing! I lean over to Sting and say:

me: Pssst! What novel are we doing
Sting: You don't even know what novel we're doing?
me: No! I need to find the page with my lines. Help me out here!
Sting: You are completely hopeless.

At this point Sting starts laughing so I lean across the bar and grab him by his shirt and start shaking him while I yell at him. He starts fighting back and so I start slamming him into the bar.

Suddenly I wake up and spend a few minutes collecting my thoughts about what this dream meant. I've concluded that it means that Sting is a dick and I could totally kick his ass.

"But tomorrow may rain so
 I'll follow the sun"
    The Beatles

I noticed something random today: everytime I've moved somewhere for an internship/real job I've always wound up living due west of where I work. This means I'm going towards the rising sun in the mornings and going towards the setting sun in the evenings. I'm not sure that this really means anything, but it sure is nice.

Romance is such an unfair game. I'm developing a huge thing for a girl on my team. She is single, but I'm just too chicken to do anything about it. I'd like to wait till June when our season ends to do something about it, but by then it'll probably be too late. She's just too wonderful a person to stay single that long.

On the other side of the same coin... a woman that I used to think might have had a crush on me asked me out on Sunday. It was apropos of nothing and caught me totally off guard. She's a good person, but I just don't feel it. This sounds stupid and I hate being on the other end of that argument, but I don't really know what to do. I'm thinking of asking her out once just to see if maybe there's something there, but my heart tells me no. Is it worse to go out with someone you're already pretty sure you couldn't fall for or to not give them the change they're asking for?

Romance is an unfair game.

"When it's midnight down in Mobile
 Shining moon beams on the bay
 They come from miles around
 To dance the jukebox down
 To hear the good time sounds they play"
    Jimmy Buffet, Stars on the Water

Funny how sometimes its just hard to drum up enough enthusiasm about your own life to want to bother writing down the details. Its not a matter of having nothing to say... more just an issue with not wanting to get too introspective. You know?

Well a lot has happened in the last two weeks. Ted and I road tripped to Portland this past weekend to dance and bum around the city. Its the first time I ever stayed in a Hostel. Pretty nice I gotta admit. We did a bunch of touristy stuff (Powells, the Saturday Market, the Rose Garden, etc.), but we also hit a good dance at the Viscount on Friday and an awseome party on Saturday night. One of the Portland dancers who Ted befriended at the exchange lost her job and is about to embark on a long trip around the world. So they had a Bon Voyage party for her. People sat around and told travel stories for an hour or so then we moved all the furniture and danced the blues till 4:00am. Crazy.

One of the stories really cracked my shit up. There was a woman who used to travel with some sort of show (musicals I think). Anyway, when they would go to a city they would by like 50 one way plane tickets so after 9/11 they were always red flagged and had to get to the airport 5 hours early so the security guys could go through all their luggage. One day in Scranton, PA they decided they were sick of this. So they took some Playgirls one of the cast members had, tore out all the pictures, and put them all through their luggage. After the little old men who were supposed to inspect their luggage came across a few of the pictures they stopped going through things so thoroughly and sped up the whole process a great deal. Hee.

One other strange event: two Fridays ago I drove up to Snohomish (read: backwater hickvsille) with some of my ECS teammates to dance to a band that we were assured was fabulous. We get up to this little rednick honky-tonk that should have been called something like 'The Dew Drop Inn' and found out that the band had called in sick and someone else was playing. Well since we had driven a good 40 minutes to get there we figured we'd stick it out. The bar was packed with tough guys in Harley Davidson clothing and their huge-banged peroxide-blonde girlfriends. We scrounged enough chairs for us all to sit just as the band started playing. They were pretty good, but the truly amazing thing is that when they started playing everyone, and I mean EVERYONE got up to dance. Nothing fancy or structured: just crazy whiteperson dancing. It was awsome. Big fat guys in overalls with ZZ Top beards dancing with short little old women with metallic auburn hair. Beautiful.

Anyway, we squeezed onto the packed floor to get our groove on and had a good time. At one point we went back to our seats after a song and saw tables knocked around, chairs overturned, and beer spilled all over the floor. Apparenly there had been a brawl ten feet off the dance floor during the last song and we were just so engrossed that we didn't even notice it was going on. That's dancing for you.

Finally, I'm toying with the idea of coming back east the third week in June. Anyone around and free?

"Must float like leaf down river of life... and kill old lady."
    The General, Ladykillers

One of my co-workers found this site last week. I was surprised at how much that fact bothered me. I always told myself that I didn't care who reads this: my primary audience is supposed to be myself. However, it did make me feel awkward so I've got ahead and added a robots.txt file to my site to eliminate future search possibilitied. I feel a little ashamed: I'd like to think the stuff I'm writing is harmless and boring, but I guess you never know.

Had a great weekend. Had a party at Luke's house on Friday. Luke is 22 and lives with his parents while going to U of W for a graduate degree in chemistry. I used to make fun of him for living with his folks... till I saw their house. They live in a big, beautiful home on a cliff overlooking the sound and the Olympic mountains. If my folks lived there I'd stay home too.

Saturday we had our second performance. We did a new piece of choreography at a Living Traditions dance. Mainly an older crowd of people I didn't know so that helped, but I was still nervous as hell because Frankie Manning, one of the fathers of modern Lindy Hop was in the audience. We did pretty well. The routine was great and we once again showed up the team that performed ahead of us. They should really stop booking both of us together.

Today I checked out the Center for Wooden Boats with Ted since he's volunteering there this summer. I have a bone to pick with Ted. Not because of the boats, but because he's the one person I know who actually picks up girls almost everywhere we go. We had brunch in the International District this morning and he got the phone number of the cute hostess of the Dim Sum place across the street from where we were eating. I really need to figure out this boy's secret.

Anyway, its the end of the second perfect sunny day in a row. I'm going up to the roof to watch the sun set behind the Olympics. Have a good week.