Travel, wedding, dragons
After a short weekend sojourn to LA, I got on the plane to go home. Arrived at Mary Anne's place just as a bunch of people were leaving. Said goodbye to them, had a confusing conversation about a couple of dining-room tables, and then thought, “Wait, what am I doing at Mary Anne's place? I was going to go home from LA. How'd I end up in Chicago?”
And then I thought: “Oh. This must be a dream.”
And then I woke up.
Which was frustrating, because in the real world it was 4:30 a.m. and I was still in LA and hadn't had enough sleep, and if only I hadn't noticed it was a dream I might've stayed asleep a while longer. (Not to mention I might've gotten more time with Mary Anne.)
On the plus side, I did get back to sleep, intermittently, for a couple hours after that 4:30 a.m. wakeup. (That was last night/this morning.) And I did get something like eight hours of sleep on Friday night, which was an enormous improvement over the previous five nights, when I averaged something like four hours a night.
Anyway. Good trip; got time with family; gave books to my 9-year-old niece for her birthday (The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) and Above World); attended a nice wedding (congratulations again to K and L!); chatted with a 7(?)-year-old about Bengal cats (and their resemblance to Bengal tigers), Night Furies (see below), and triops (which I had never heard of); even got a little time on the beach this morning. Now I am home and tired, and planning to spend the rest of the day relaxing, reading subs, and switching over to my new computer.
. . . I have to elaborate slightly on that conversation with the kid. In a weekend containing a bunch of charming interactions with kids, this may have been my favorite moment:
her: Can I tell you more about cats, which are one of my two favorite things?
me: What's your other favorite thing?
her: Dragons!
me [already totally charmed]: What kinds of dragons do you like?
her: Night Furies!
(And if you don't know what those are, then you haven't watched How to Train Your Dragon, in which case you ought to stop reading this entry and go watch it, because it is awesome.)