I’m ducking around in what looks like either a bank or hotel hallway. I’m mostly going around in circles, trying to avoid the line of sight of the guy with the gun.
I twitched awake for the umpteenth time, glanced briefly at the clock. 6:31 a.m. Guess I’ll go back to sleep.
Still evading the pursuer. Every so often, it seems like I know who it is, and why I know they want to kill me, but it disappears to fast to hold on to. Finally, I hide around a corner. They’ve lost sight of me. I creep closer and break into a run, tackling them from behind.
The dream shifts, and I’m on what looks like a first person platformer game, looking down through metal grates. I shift back, and the pursuit starts again. I run much slower, dragged down by something, and the shooter turns to see me.
I think I made a conscious decision to jerk myself awake. It’s hardly reliable, but sometimes I can wrench myself from the deeper REM cycles to wakefulness. The downside: I can’t go back to sleep at all unless I’m very lucky. It’s still only about 8 a.m., so I guess I’ll try. Not really interested in being chased again, so I settle for a light doze.
By about 9, I can’t even maintain that. Instead, I postpone getting out of my warm bed by grabbing my phone and scrolling through Google news. The onslaught of oppressive political drudgery continues. Kavanaugh’s accuser is the top story, of course. Don’t know if I believe her yet, but I do believe the process to confirm Kavanaugh is being rushed. True or not, the accusation warrants an investigation. If someone will be on the highest court in the nation for life, I expect a lot more scrutiny than the partisan crap to push him through. Political leanings aside, the Republican Congress has made a shambles of procedure for the sake of getting what they want.
Ugh. It’s too early for this kind of negative spiraling. I switch to Facebook. Due to previous choices, I still get a few political articles, but mostly I look at my friends’ post. After about a half-hour, I give up the ghost and get out of bed.
A hot shower is a cure for a lot of things. It’s also a reminder that I need a new bottle of shampoo soon. I have a brand I like, Redken For Men, but it has been sold out or shifted from the shelves everywhere I look. I’ve been putting off trying a new shampoo, but I don’t know how much longer I can. It’s a petty problem to have in the grand scheme of things, but irritating all the same.
I have a couple of hours to kill after my shower before I need to get to work. I spend them watching a little tv, and eventually playing Smash Bros. until it ticks me off. I don’t really eat breakfast much anymore, so around 11 I throw some leftover pizza from Pizza King into the oven to reheat. It comes out almost as good as it was fresh.
About 11:30, I lock up the apartment and begin walking to work. It takes about 20 minutes, and I like to arrive a little before my 12 p.m. 4-hour shift. Sometimes the walk seems longer if I have something on my mind. Today, it’s mostly just a blur as I steam about Kavanaugh and politics in general.
At work, I alternate between checking my inbox and doing some research. I build a document comparing the list of Indiana counties with what books we actually have access to. In my head, I’m running through the homework I have yet to do and the meeting when my shift is over. My boss visits me during my shift: sounds like a lack of sleep is going around.
After work, I have another brisk walk to the Burkhardt Building, where I have a 4:30 meeting with one of my professors. As I walk, I take out my phone and look at the email I sent myself containing the pdfs I wanted to talk about. The first link works but the two others…crap. It’s asking for a sign-in. That means if I can’t get to them, neither can my professor. *sigh.
I arrive at the professor’s office a bit early; he’s still talking with the student ahead of me. I’m content to wait out in the hall, but as 4:30 comes and goes without the other student leaving I get a little annoyed. Finally, seven minutes late, the student leaves and I can enter.
The meeting is to discuss materials I will provide or reference in class in a few weeks. However, it turns out that the document I had seen on Blackboard was incorrect for the week it was posted in. Between not having the original document or the ones I had prepared for the meeting available to me, it could have gone better. The professor, at least, did not hold it against me, and apologized for the mistake on his end. Still, I left the meeting with a better sense of what I needed and began the walk back home.
When I reached my apartment at 5:30 p.m., my stomach was roaring at me for food. Unfortunately, I spent the next hour dithering over what I had and what I wanted. Part of the debate involved the pile of dishes on the counter, and my unwillingness to engage with them. Moreover, it really is my sister’s turn to do something about them, and I am a stickler for principle.
Eventually, I decide to make mac ‘n’ cheese, with some small sausage coins cooked in a pan. The sausage didn’t really want to thaw, so I cut it frozen. I was also mildly concerned about the container of cheese powder I use to supplement the cheese in the Kraft boxes. I don’t know that it was bad per se, but it was clumping together a lot more than usual. Eventually I decided to bite the bullet, add it to my dinner, and throw out the leftover rather than compound the risk.
The end product was quite good. I like to layer my sausage coins within the macaroni, distributing them so that I will have a coin in almost every bite. Just as I begin eating, my sister walks in after finishing her classes and workshops for the day. She’s decided to grab McDonald’s, so I don’t have to feel guilty about not making anything to share.
We dither a little about what to watch, and settle on giving “The Greatest Showman” with Hugh Jackman a try. It’s actually quite good. In particular, I like the number “the Other Side” as it features a lot of casual acrobatics and is more of a dueling duet. As we watch, I’m ticking off boxes for circus tropes the movie touches on, including the mistreatment of performers by their ringmaster. My sister and I are both shouting at the main character not to cheat on his wife, and not to do dumb things in general.
When the movie ends, we’re both pretty satisfied with it. I retreat to my room to finish some of the reading for the next day’s class. I last about an hour, but by 10:30pm I’ve given up the ghost. Instead, I spend a few hours watching Youtube. Mostly mindless stuff. I go to bed at around midnight, a little earlier than usual, to make up for the sleep I lost this morning.