the zombie horde

I had a series of weird dreams this morning in between repeated snooze-button punchings. In the first, I had been obliged to attend a high school reunion and was not happy about being there. In hopes of avoiding being seen and having to fill people in on my current news, I escaped to the library (not my actual high-school library but a dream library). The rows of shelves were very low, about shoulder height, which dismayed me since I couldn't conceal myself without hunching over.

I was still vainly hoping that I was somewhat hidden when I noticed that a group of older people had come in. I'm not sure what they were doing there, but they had some connection with the reunion or with some other event that was going on. I sensed that they were trying to get away from the action and into a quiet spot. However, lined up evenly spaced between the rows of shelves, they just looked alarming. They all had salt-and-pepper hair in exactly the same shade, were all about the same height and weight (short-to-medium height and skinny), and they all moved very slowly and had vacant looks.

I shouted, to no one in particular, "look, it's the zombie horde!" In real life, of course, this would be extremely rude and not funny at all, but in the dream it was absolutely hilarious and I couldn't stop laughing and congratulating myself on my wit. I was also relieved to have had a bit of comedy to take my mind off my undesirable situation.

I don't remember much of the other dream, except that the protagonist was a rather nondescript man in his mid to late 30s. He had somehow gotten himself employed as a telemarketer, calling up a narrowly defined target demographic (doctors or engineers, something like that) to try to interest them in some very specialized consulting service. Of course none of them were interested, which made him hate the job even more. He was sitting at his desk trying to assemble his lunch, which consisted of sliced turkey lunch meat, sliced cheese, and some kind of flat bread*, and having a meltdown. He was yelling at his boss about having to call these people who weren't interested, how that wasn't what he wanted to do, etc. etc. I really felt sorry for him, because I knew that he was highly educated and had gotten himself into this job by mistake and necessity.


*This was undoubtedly thanks to a recent viewing of the remake of The Prisoner, wherein the only food available was "wraps" (I recommend it, by the way--the program, not necessarily the wraps).

short

i can't remember any of the details, but last night i had a dream that i carried on a very long phone conversation with senator claire mccaskill. i have no recollection of what we were talking about, but i remember she was very pleasant and helpful.

Parking, Calling home, Dialing the wrong number

I was somewhere killing time. I drive in and out of the parking garage of this building two or three times and then would go to a cafe. The last time I went into the garage, I hit the garage door opener, but the rolling steel door did not go up all the way. I thought my SUV could fit, and it barely got through the opening. I went to park, but stopped so I could decide which parking stall to choose. There were a few spaces open in front of me, but I didn't want to other people to park in front of me because I thought I would need to move for them to get out. But when I pulled closer to the space, I could see there was another way to get out. I saw cars come down a ramp from higher floors, drive around the corner to exit on another street. So I parked, got out and went into the cafe.

I saw a clock - the time was 6:47. Suddenly I remembered my writing group was meeting at 6:30. I was already late. I started to call the workshop leader on my cellphone, but then I got a call from home. I answered the phone and heard my brother say, "Where is it?" I didn't know what he was talking about. I was frantic about getting to the workshop since I was already late and asked if I could call him back. I called the workshop leader's number. It took three or four rings to her answer. I feared she might not because the group was probably working on the first prompt. When she did answer, I apologized for being late. I didn't introduce myself and wasn't sure she recognized my voice, but she said in a low voice, "Hello PT". She said I could come for the second part.

I tried to call my brother back on the cell phone, but I didn't get through. When I looked at the phone, I realized I had dialed the wrong number. I tried dialing on a land line and still kept dialing the wrong number. The key pad was sticky - so I would press a number once and the same digit would appear on the screen two or three times. My friend came to help me, but the numbers still came out wrong or transposed - too many 7s or 8s. I finally decided to use the voice command on my cell phone.