I was in Sweden with my boss Ron and his assistant, scouting out new locations for the lab. But for some reason we went to a museum first. Right at the entrance was a bunch of kids surrounding a concession stand set into the wall, with the usual assortment of pretzels, cotton candy, and the like. I suddenly really wanted some cotton candy, and started pulling out my wallet, when I noticed the prices. Oddly, everything was priced in quarters: like, 28 quarters for a slice of pizza, and 43 quarters for cotton candy. It took me a long time standing there to do the math, and finally realized how ridiculously expensive it was. I figured they used quarters to make everything seem cheaper than it really was. We walked down a long white corridor towards the exhibits (whatever those were), when I suddenly had a bathroom emergency. Fortunately, the men's was right there, and I dashed into the tiny little room without even telling my boss. As I sat there, I slowly realized that I hadn't converted the Swedish money into American dollars. I googled it on my phone and found a ratio of 5.50 Swedish dollars to one American dollar. So the cotton candy would only have been a couple bucks. Meanwhile, although I was able to relieve myself, the water in the toilet was almost overflowing, which meant my clothes got dirty. I tried washing it off in the sink, but just decided to throw it in the trash and get clean clothes from my backpack.

Next thing I know, Merry and I are looking for apartments in LA, as that's where Ron decided to move all of us. We were walking down the street, calling up Craigslist ads, and luckily found a place that we just happened to be walking past. It was a large, 2-bedroom place with a huge window looking out over the city. We hugged each other and smiled, and in the next instant, the place was completely full of our old and some new furniture. It was already night, and we looked out over the beautiful skyline. Suddenly, it was morning and we headed downstairs to work. We realized we were right on the edge of Chinatown, so we decided to get breakfast at the convenience store across the street. There was a single aisle of generic goods on the left and a panel of refrigerators on the right. Merry immediately found some desserts that looked like red bean paste, in the impulse section under the cashier, which was actually quite a broad area that also had some baked goods. I kept looking for a dense cake of some sort, but couldn't decide on anything. Merry looked happy though.

We went back to the apartment and I started to set up the computer in one of the bedrooms. As I did, the room changed into a tiny office at work, and my desk morphed into a very narrow one, barely wide enough for the computer and keyboard (of course, I didn't even notice any of this morphing at the time). I was upset since it was about half the size of my old desk, while the rest of the room was empty and could easily have accommodated a larger one. My right elbow kept hitting the wall. I decided to play some Starcraft, and when it started, the game turned into a tabletop one, with me now standing at a small table in the middle of the room. I got my "troops," which were a whole bunch of live alien bugs, neatly ordered and sorted. Not being connected to the internet, I didn't have anyone to play with and walked out into the halls to find someone. I looked into about a dozen rooms, and found stereotypical nerds in each one, playing some kind of really old video game like Caterpillar or Galaga. I realized I must be in some sort of college dorm, and went back to my room. Ron was standing there at the table, his mouth full of bugs! He started talking and jerking around as if he was possessed, like in Men in Black, telling me I needed to eat some bugs and join the alien takeover. He started throwing bugs at my mouth. I saw that some of what he was throwing looked like raisins, so I caught those and ate them, hoping to fool him. I started talking like him and eating more raisins I found on the counter. He seemed satisfied and left. A while later, Merry and I realized we couldn't stay in LA and that we needed to move back to Boston.

posted by Larry at 9:36 AM