entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

I wanted to eat at my dream-favorite Mexican place, but they were out of carnitas AND carne asada. Ended up going instead to a somewhat fancy Brazilian place where i knew the owner, where i met Yao Ming and, with the owner, encouraged him to have his first cigar.

I'm walking down the street with Kim, a bunch of people i didn't recognize, and Peter Gammons, who is smoking a joint, which smells REALLY good. I keep meaning to ask him for a toke, but don't seem to feel comfortable with it, so instead i just shake his hand. He has a nice, firm handshake.

This is only the second dream where i can remember a strong smell; the first was a regular dream that was basically just fucking, but it was great sex, and i could SMELL her, and it was just great. Of course, this was during my sexless exile in Miami.

I wish i had dreams with smells in them more often.

I've returned from a week of camping in Fowlers, just south of Mt. Shasta (the actual mountain, not the similarly named town). I dreamed almost every morning, which is unusual. One dream involved me losing control of someone's BMW (driving too fast is a bit of a recurring theme), another had me in a white tie tuxedo at someone's wedding (no clue who, not even if it was the bride or groom or both), hooking up with old high school friends. Today's dream involved a typing accuracy test which somehow morphed into me carrying a gun trying to kill Mr. Feeny (the character, not William Daniels), who was running around school also carrying a gun (school? what's this arrested development shit going on in my brain? and i fucking hate "Turd Meets World"!) After the cops finally track him down and take him away because he's clearly out of his mind, i drop my gun into the garbage.

I read G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, very aptly subtitled A Nightmare, but in a good way, and Robert J. Sawyer's Calculating God, which, despite some major holes near the end, was still an entertaining and immersive read.

Irony: escaping the Bay Area and its air pollution to go to the clean air of the outdoors... forest fires, huh? Mmm, smoky.

I didn't shave all week, which is the longest i've ever gone since i started shaving. I asked Kim to take a picture of each side of my face, so you can share the ignominy that is my facial hair.

I was in a Mexican restaurant, and there were guys with guitars going around singing. This particular gentleman was sitting, and many people were sitting around him. He started playing Los Guaduales, but didn't sing, instead inviting everyone around him to join it. Nobody seemed to know all of the lyrics, but everyone managed to chime in at one point or another so the song proceeded uninterrupted.

Now, the trick here is that i could barely remember, while awake, how the song went except for the opening bars. Yet in my dream, the guitar played the tune, although i recall in my dream that the lyrics went "Pican los guaduales" instead of "Lloran los guaduales". But it felt as if my subconscious remembered the song perfectly, and it filtered out into my vaguely conscious mind.

Oh, Jason Giambi was there, too, and he told me he hadn't heard the song since he was a kid in Medellín.