Two Nights of Bad Dreams

Not all bad, but, dang, there was a lot of them! Perhaps because I wasn't sleeping all that soundly. There's a door--in the apartment below me?--that started rattling sometime on Saturday, just as my bedroom door used to when I closed it and left the windows open. What I didn't realise then was how well the sound carried through the structure. So I was locked into that mental debate between knocking on doors trying to cut it off at its source and just getting over it, the end result being dealing with it, but very badly. Eventually, I dreamt of getting up and tracking it down, but I realised I wasn't really awake since my apartment looked all wrong and forced myself to wake up--which, of course, was just another part of the dream, something I realised when I really really woke up a little later.

I spent Sunday morning a little disoriented.

Last night went better. First of all, doing laundry and climbing stairs had left me truly tired. Second of all, I decide to Accept That Which I Am To Lazy To Change. I imagined myself a houseowner rather than a condodweller and whenever I heard a noise, I repeated to myself, "It's only the wind."--i.e, it's a natural event you can't change, not one of your fucktard neighbours carelessly inconveniencing you. You'd be amazed how much this changes my attitude toward things; external sounds (even boom cars and assholes honking instead of ringing doorbells) don't bother me half as much as one originating within the building, with one of my fellow tenants who should know better.

The door never ended up in my midnight movies, but it seems like everything else did. You know, I think I may dream of watching t.v. more than I actually watch it in waking life? Last night, I was watching a short regular cartoon show with the sensibility of a modern web comic. Three recurring characters were banging on about whatever have their dander up while riding around in a car. For one of them, this was the American adaption of a British comedy about two (teenage?) girls. There was a whole theme song, part of which went:

Two lost girls in the throes of imagination
Looks like they'll make it

(Beat on the bolded syllables, upstep on italicised bits. Yes, I know my quasimusical notation sucks. I only remember that much because I repeated it to myself over and over when I woke up.) Basically, he was complaining about how much they'd de-Britannicised it. After the scene ended, you heard a voice over:

Male voice 1: What's [show title]?
Male voice #2: It's this show from England.
Male voice #1: Maybe they could have subtitles or something.

Later on, a bunch of people were in a student lounge watching a crappy, squicky horror flick about a "deserted" island with prehistoric survivals. At first, it was implied from study of a bone sample that they were dinosaurs, but then there was a lurking caveman straight out of "Eegah!" (but hairier) who kidnaps the female researcher and she escapes by literally catapulting herself across the landscape and into a field of cacti. Where does all this stuff come from? Have I simply taken it so much stimulation in a lifetime that rearranging it in seemingly novel constellations is a trivial task for my mind--something that it can literally do in its sleep?

Baker's man

Now that I've gotten out all that psychic effluvium, I feel like I have no excuses for not writing a real entry--except one, which is that my prodigal student is arriving soon and I need to prepare. So, quick food entry with potential for expansion:

The first really good thing I had to eat yesterday was monshu's roscón, a Spanish three kings' bread. And it was really good. In fact, hard to imagine a more perfect result: Golden-brown crispy crust and pale yellow, soft, moist, and flavourful mie. It's true, later in the evening I did put lemon curd on a slice, but the first two pieces I ate just as is. Fantastic!

At the concert that day (about which more later), I first heard about a Greek new year's (actually, St. Basil's Day, which is January 1st in the Julian calendar) bread called vasilopita. Has anybody had this? Is it as good as it sounds? The Greeks claim credit for the whole coin-in-a-bread thing that's now a feature of three kings' cakes everywhere.

Dinner that night was arroz marinero at La Fonda, a poor Colombian cousin of paella a la valenciana. That makes it sound crappy, when really it was the bull's balls. Perfectly cooked shrimp and squid, though the scallops and snapper verged on the overdone. Unfortunately, it left me too full for hot chocolate with my last piece of roscón!