I HAD A DREAM that Arnold Schwarzenegger, as part of a reelection bid, was holding a raffle to take three people (each with another guest) to Disney's California Adventure. Dahlia and I were very excited about this and wanted to enter, but raffle tickets were only being sold in Australia. So we got on a very fast boat (it could cross the Pacific in about 10 minutes while everything blurred by around you) with a few other people. But our navigation was off, and we ended up in Antarctica instead. The others wanted to take a tourist stopover, since we were there anyway, but I was scared that I would "fall off the gravity" even though I knew that was silly. But I was overruled, and we spent a few hours in Antarctica, including in an elevator that kept stopping between floors.
Eventually we left Antarctica, but missed Australia again and landed in New Zealand. It turned out that New Zealand had been settled by the Swiss, so everything there was named Switz-something. But we didn't stay there very long, because the time for buying raffle tickets was running out, so we hopped over to Australia and bought our tickets.
Dahlia won the raffle, and chose me as her guest, so the next thing I know, she and I and four other people and Arnold and some press and security people are running toward the entrance of Disney's California Adventure. Arnold was in front of me, so I jumped up and grabbed him around the shoulders from behind in a bear hug. I told him, "You know, I moved to California just so I could vote for you!" He answered, "Oh, really?" And I said, "No, actually, I moved here because my fiance got a job here," and then we both laughed. We were going to have a great time at the theme park, but I woke up so I don't know what happened.
MINTY FRESH: So yesterday I bought a new toothbrush. This would not generally be blogworthy, but this toothbrush is especially cool. It is a Colgate Whitening toothbrush. No scary chemicals, just this odd-looking soft plastic ridge running between the bristles. I was skeptical, but it has this nice massaging feel. Plus, my teeth now have that smooth and polished feeling you get for a few days right after you've been to the dentist. My teeth are not noticeably whiter, but hey, it's only been half a day. I'd promise to keep you posted, but knowing me, I'll probably never mention it again.
NAME GAME: This transcript of a conversation between Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly refers to the President of Russia as Gladimir Putin. I called Sasha to discuss this unexpected but small regime change, and together we came up with the theory that Gladimir could be the masculine form of Gladys. Which, he pointed out, since Y and I are interchangeable, would mean that the feminine form of Boromir would be Boris.
For some reason, all this reminds me of the time Sasha and I went out for breakfast. When the waitress asked him how he would like his eggs cooked, he answered, "Medium rare."
CLEVER CAT: I've said before that Ethelwolf is a problem solver. Well, he's learned a new trick.
Since we moved into our Pasadena apartment, he's enjoyed sitting in the bathroom sinks. I'm not sure why - maybe the ceramic is nice and cool, maybe it's because he just fits nicely. Whatever. He's always been a water-loving cat, so maybe he likes the dampness on his fur as well.
Two days ago, he was sitting in the sink in the afternoon, and for fun, I turned the water on. I put it on a very light stream, and he jumped out of the sink, but then began to play with the water, batting at it, drinking from it, and so forth. I let him play for a few minutes, then turned it off. We played this game again for a few minutes yesterday morning and evening.
This morning, he wanted to play with the water again. He jumped up on the counter by the sink and started meowing, clearly wanting me to turn the water on. I was concerned that he liked this game too much, and that he might try to turn the water on by himself. (It's the kind of faucet where you pull a lever up to turn on the water, rather than the kind where you have to turn a knob.) So I refused to turn the water on, hoping that he'd forget about the game within a few days.
No such luck. After 20 minutes of ignoring Ethelwolf's requests for me to turn on the water, he went and turned it on himself. Of course, lacking the manual dexterity needed to turn on a small stream of water, he pushed the lever all the way up and it came on full blast. It freaked him out and he ran away, but within 10 seconds, the sink was about 1/4 full.
"Great," I'm thinking. "I'm going to go off to work and come back to a flooded building." So now all the sinks in the apartment are fastened shut with rubber bands. Even if Ethelwolf can push the lever hard enough to turn the water on, the tesion in the rubber bands will turn it off as soon as he stops pushing. Of course, every time I want to wash my hands, I'll have to unfasten the faucet and refasten it again when I'm done.
Will the cat lose interest and give up? Will he learn to remove or bite through the rubber bands? Find out next time, on Hanah's Wacky Feline World.
MORNING THOUGHTS: I also heard on NPR that there's a lot more carbon dioxide in the oceans than there was 200 years ago. They're talking about the environmental impact, and I'm thinking, "Cool, oceans made of carbonated water! Pour in some sugar and you've got Sprite! Well, salty Sprite."
I OFTEN WISH there was some sort of device that could record all my thoughts from the time I wake up until the time I arrive at work. I have so many bizarre and interesting thoughts during that time, and I can never remember them all.
Today, I remember wondering, as I got into my car, whether birds can smell. The answer is: some of them.
I also heard an interesting interview on NPR with two political cartoonists. One of them commented that John Kerry has a face that looks like he should be wearing a powdered wig. This is a brilliant idea. All people running for political office should have to wear powdered wigs during campaign appearances, speeches, and ads (including radio ads). They would look so silly that they would have to actually be more serious to make up for it. Let's put this in the next campaign finance bill!
All other morning thoughts for today are lost. Some may reappear throughout the day, as dreams do.
Speaking of which, I had a dream that the air conditioner in my apartment was set to keep cooling the place down until it got to 29 degrees Fahrenheit. I was arguing about this with Sasha. He thought 29 was a perfectly reasonably temperature to aim for. I thought it was impossible for the air to be 29 degrees, because water freezes at 32 degrees.
When I woke up and told this dream to Sasha in real life, he mumbled sleepily that I had a very good point about the freezing thing.
NEW OLD ART: Much better than new new art, in my opinion. A beautiful Renaissance fresco has been found in Spain, after being appreciated only by birds for almost 350 years.
DREAMS: I had a bizarre dream the other night in which I was at a glitzy party with all kinds of famous and important and rich people, all of whome were in my basic age group (say 18-24). I was being ignored and condescended to until I managed to say something very witty in a conversation with Prince William, after which everyone wanted to be my friend. Paris Hilton was there, too.
MYSTERY OF MORNING RADIO: I hate morning radio. Since every radio station has annoying talking people instead of music in the morning, presumably they have good market research to show that people like to hear annoying talking people instead of music in the morning, but I cannot fathom such people. This doesn't confuse me too much, since I'm pretty much unlike the average person in every way I can think of. But anyway...
This morning I was driving along on my hour-long commute to work, listening to the Star 98.7 DJ's talk about the Mystery of the Muffins. It seems that very early in the morning, before anyone but the morning show crew was in the office, some muffins, orange juice, and fruit were delivered to the station. The morning show crew assumed they were a gift, and ate them. They then discovered that there was an early sales meeting that started just after the food arrived, and were wondering whether they'd accidentally stolen the sales meeting's muffins. So they spent a good part of the show talking about this, calling various secretaries and putting them on the radio, trying to call into the room where the meeting was taking place, and so forth.
I got to work before they'd resolved this issue. And inexplicably, I'm really curious about where those muffins came from. And now I'll never know.
