I was moving to a new room one floor up in the Regent. I'd already started to live a few days in the new place, but hadn't gotten everything from the old room yet. I realized this after lounging too long in the new place, and ran as fast as I could down a flight of stairs and past a ton of blue-shirted RAs. I arrived totally soaked in sweat and hot as ever. I worried I'd ruin my white T-shirt. I spent a lot of time getting things onto two portable tables, including my stereo, TV, many books, lots of clothes from the dresser, and everything on my bed. It seemed very stressful since I kept receiveing hurry-up notices from one particular RA. She said I would lose all my stuff if I didn't get it out by a certain time, which made it so much worse since I couldn't remember when that was. The RA looked a bit like a girl from college - short, reddish hair, but with a harsher face, the kind you hate immediately.

After I had marginally gotten everything transferred, I went to the communal bathroom down the hall. Asha came in and washed her hands. I asked her what she was doing in the men's room since there was clearly a urinal. She left, but I heard her voice as she came back in behind me. I hurriedly finished and turned to leave. Turns out the voice came from a short, fat white girl (no one in real life) who happened to sound like Asha. She asked me if I'd ever sat on the edge of the bathtub that was there. I said no, and that I'd never even taken a bath in it. She said it was hard to clean.

I then went to class, which happened to be discussing some of my advisor's work that day. The professor was an old friend of Bill's, but I can't recall who, or even if he represented anyone real. One of the undergrad students was proud to have known Bill for a week and started talking about the "TV incident." Apparently Bill had told this story many times, and it had something to do with his daughter's TV and her thinking the student was a thief. I said, "Oh, you're the TV guy," as if I knew. I told everyone I was in Bill's lab, but no one seemed impressed. I was sitting next to a cute blonde girl. There was only one row of seats against the back wall. It was so tightly packed I had no choice but to have my arm against hers, which was no problem for me. But she said, "I like my private space," so I had to move down a seat.

The professor started to demonstrate one of Bill's experiments from the 1980's on Caenorhabditis Elegans, which is odd since Bill never worked on them in real life. The prof gave us all a glass tube - the size of a cardboard tissue paper roll - filled with live worms, and started to "microinject" mutagenized sperm into worms. To do so, he shook out long thin glass tubes which were apparently formed by the males. He then fired the ends of the tubes to get them small enough to inject into the slightly smaller glass tubes that represented the females' uteri. We all tried to follow along with our own tubes. The worms were long and shining brightly, writhing around in fascinating patterns. They began to come through the sides of the glass somehow, and hardened into glass-like projections. It was the coolest feeling as I held the tube aloft.

In a separate dream, I was at Toan's wedding and it was really boring. I began to notice that various preserved brains were hanging in jars from the ceiling. I wanted desperately to wake up, so I concentrated on being back in my bed. I woke up and started walking around my room. I couldn't switch any of the lights on, and I started to panic. Then I woke up for real and felt relieved.

In yet another dream that night, I was at Lake Mendota in Madison taking another lesson on tech dinghys. However, the techs here were like toys, about the size of my hand, and tethered to my wrist. The weather was stormy and windy, and I had to tell the instructor that I couldn't swim very well. He was flabbergasted and asked me to show him the farthest I was able to swim. Amazingly, I swam (still tethered to the "boat") with perfect form. The lake was square and arranged in lanes like a pool. I then swam out really far before getting nervous and turning around.

I was then watching it as an episode of The Simpsons with Lisa in my role. She got Homer and Marge to drive her home, but she was afraid her friends would be suspicious if she got home too quickly. She then made up a story that she got swimming superpowers from a glowing orange subdural hematoma. Suddenly I was in their house (a mansion!) and lingering about the foyer. I opened the front doors when I saw Lisa's "friends" - live action, a girl and two guys - approaching the walkway. The "hematoma" was, oddly enough, a giant glowing orange mass lying just inside the foyer, so I stalled Lisa's friends to prevent them from seeing it. I woke up.

posted by Larry at 1:40 PM

I was a guest speaker at a "school for the deformed." Most of the students, high school-age, had hand or ear deformities, but none were too bad. I was supposed to lecture on public speaking, but apparently I hadn't prepared in any way and I started off really nervously. I told them about my credentials, and that I had done some judging at Northwestern. That got a cheer from one of the students up front; she was from Evanston, evidently.

Then I remembered something I'd told a friend in real life, and I started to be more assured as I talked about how before any speech, I assume that the audience is going to like it no matter what. That gives you the confidence to speak well even if things aren't going perfectly. Anyways, halfway through that point, I realized I didn't have anything to follow it up with and started panicking. Fortunately, my first point sparked some discussion. Every time someone new would speak up, it bought me time to rack my brains for a new topic. I eventually came up with two good ones, but I don't remember them now.

However, just as I was about to launch into the next part, the fire alarm rang. We all ran up to the roof of the school, where it turns out it was a normal high school with a special class room. By the time things calmed down and I returned to the room though, everyone had started packing up to go home. I and the teacher tried to get them to stay so I could start up again, but too many people, including students from other classes, were now walking through the room on their way to the buses. I gave up, feeling disappointed, and then woke up.

posted by Larry at 10:30 AM

At a conference, I was in a giant library with suspended landings and a Victorian design. I met Sylvester Stallone who had apparently gone back to grad school. His project was to produce a Bayesian algorithm for winning chess. So far, he had succeeded in creating one that would maximize the chances of "swarming" the enemy. Although real chess players had totally destroyed him in a match, he was going to enter it into a contest against other algorithms.

The entire time I talked to him, I treated it as a real presentation. I could really feel myself thinking of interesting questions, no matter how silly the premise was. After a while, Sly turned into a guy named Ed who used to be in one of my classes. He claimed that he just needed to tweak a few things and he would be able to win the contest. His poster consisted of snapshots of games he had won against a computer by progressively fanning out his pieces in a pseudo-chaotic manner.

Then (and I'm not sure if it was a separate dream) I was with four "friends" (only one of whom is real) trying to summon a demon by drinking green gatorade and eating hot dogs in ketchup. I have no idea. Apparently though, it worked. We were in a small classroom full of college students, so when the demon came, everyone panicked. I think we did it so that we could kill the demon, but I don't remember what happened after that.

posted by Larry at 7:12 AM