Woken by prolonged and unsettled howling. Thought for sure the house was being broken into. Of course it wasn't. Apparently another dog a few blocks off had started barking and Binks, in a show of solidarity, had thought it best to bark along with him. For twenty minutes. Loudly. I was in the middle of a vivid dream involving training to teach middle school at my old Houston area school. For months I had been trailing around a middle school geometry teacher, helping her in the classroom, and trying to learn how to be a good teacher. Then, when filling out my evaluation, my mentor teacher informed she had debated between giving me "twos or ones" but decided to give me all ones. She THEN told me that ones were the worst rating there was. I had no future as a teacher, that was the basic gist. It was very unsettling. A large amount of my dreams seem to involve failure. Is this common?
The Stephen J Gould book (
The Flamingo's Smile) continues to be excellent. Fascinating essay last night about the way flamingos eat by turning their heads upside down to dip them in water. Upside down eating posture explains their strange smile, in which the lower and upper jaw seem to be reversed. I also learned that flamingos eat in much the same way as great whales, by using filters in their mouth to remove tiny particulate foodstuff from the water. Their tongues are thick and fleshy (unusual for most birds, who tend to have thin, stringy tongues) in order to aid in the filtering process.
Long day of errands yesterday will give way to long day of work today. Doctor went fine (although I learned I now weight close to 200 pounds!), tux place went fine, it all went fine. Now it's time for TCOB.
3 comments:
A decent percentage of my dreams over the past few years involve failure. Professional failure. Emotional failure. Repetitive failure. They don't feel like nightmares, but they're almost more disturbing because of that.
Weirdly, I just recently was talking to someone about Stephen Jay Gould, and have been meaning to read him. He was a big baseball fan, among other things.
I'm also pushing 200 pounds; who knows, might be over. If I didn't live in NY and walk around so much, I shudder to think. It's alarming for guys like us, who were so skinny for a long time (you longer than me). I'm on a diet (by my standards) for the summer. We'll see what happens.
"The Myth of Sisyphus" is one of my favorite pieces of writing. This might say something about the aforementioned dreams, I suppose.
Also: Dirk.
I know (Dirk): that game was ridiculous. I figured the series was over in the 4th quarter. Then...I don't know what happened. The thing is, the Mavs have not really played great yet this series. They've missed a ton of open shots--not shots where the Miami D got to them, but 'practice shots', almost. If they can get going and start playing offense like they did in the last series, they might actually win. It's exciting.
I'm on a diet too. I've also started walking a few miles a day, in addition to other stuff. During the walk, I do books on tape. Actually, right now, I'm listening to back episodes of "This American Life." But books on tape are coming soon. And I've cut back my drinking--from two glasses of wine every night, to only once a week. And I've started doing meth.
No no. NOt really. Not yet.
Yes, I hear meth is slimming.
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