I received an email from my junior high violin teacher, Mr. Zhou. I had apparently signed up for new lessons with him this past year, and had only gone to one. Still, he was billing me for all the lessons I had missed, about eight or so, for $43 each. He gave me a discout of $125 for being a former student. It took me a while to understand why he would charge me for missed lessons, but I later realized that he had blocked out all those timeslots for me that he couldn't fill with other students. So it made more sense.

I took a cab to work, and who was my driver but Mr. Zhou himself! He was very nice to me, and I told him to wait in the cab downstairs while I filled out his check asap from my lab. As I entered the building, I was struck by the absence of elevators to the left that I usually take, replaced now with an upscale dining club. I kept walking past, on through a large glass atrium containing the lobby (breathtaking, really, now that I think about how different it is from the real one), and on to the elevator there. Now my colleague happened to be coming in at the same time, and suggested I play a bit of a prank. I had a bucket of dry ice and liquid nitrogen in my hand, and he suggested I put a whole glass shaker full of salt in. As soon as he did, it starting smoking and melting, releasing a choking stench into the air. The elevator, then my floor were completely full of this, and everyone was coughing like mad. I didn't think it was such a great joke.

Later, in another dream, the food court was closing and I was in the last open one, apparently my favorite taco place (not in real life). My friend picked up his food, and I hesitated about ordering since I knew they wanted to close up. In my one second of silence, the cashier walked over to me, hit the light switch while staring me dead in the face, and drew down the steel curtain over the counter. I sighed and resolved to be more decisive in the future.

The next night, I dreamed that I took some foreign guests of mine to a food court in Chinatown, that looked suspiciously like the one from the previous night's dream. We wandered about for a while, but they didn't find anything they liked. We next went to a New England seafood food court, where they had both lobster and steak available for less than $10 each. They liked this more, but as we sat down to the highly polished wooden tables, it irked me since it still felt too expensive.

posted by Larry at 5:55 PM