Children tormenting each other: Water fountain.

Last Sunday I was at the beach and went to go refill my water bottle when a mom and dad and 2 small boys who were biking rode up and stopped off there at the fountain just before me.

As I was waiting, I could see the younger boy going to get a drink, and then his older brother was like, "Someone peed in there."

The younger boy didn't know what to do at first, so then his older brother said again, "Someone peed in there," and then he stepped back without taking a drink.

The parents were talking with each other and really weren't paying attention, though the mom caught the tail end of the interchange.

"No one peed in there!", she was like, laughing, though she didn't notice her younger kid hadn't drunken any water.

2 Mundane Dreams: Eggs, Tomatoes.

1) I dreamt that I opened the eggcarton in my fridge, and an egg that had been stuck in the carton was now unstuck.

(In real life there had been such an egg, and it continued to be stuck; likely it's slightly broken and dried white is sticking it, or dried white that had dripped down from another carton in shipping is sticking it.)

2) I dreamt that I opened the fridge, and I had several extremely small and slightly distorted orange-yellow roma tomatoes sitting out on the top rack.

(In real life I had had a plastic bag of several slightly unripe but otherwise normal roma tomatoes sitting out on the top rack.)

Blister a 3rd time, and worse.

Last week I took like an hour jog, and when I got back, I had a blister on the left side of my right big toe again, bigger than ever.

Even worse, I had one on the left side of the next toe in from that, and in a couple places on the outside of that sole.

When I was in the bathroom before a shower I pressed all the blisters upward so the liquid crawled along under the skin before bursting out.

A few days later, I picked the skin off, and have since put iodine and then rubbing alcohol there to keep infection away.

Right now they're all like bright pink spots on my foot, though 3 of the 4 are fading.

Discovered a check in the back of a book.

For years I've mostly read memoirs for fun, but lately I've been reading novels again, and have been checking them out from the city's public library.

I love having these dogeared books, and wondering where else in the city they've been and who else has read them.

The other week, I was finishing up Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers, and there in the back of the book was a check on light purple floral-design paper, for $50, made out to a person with a signature and "PERSONAL DEPOSIT" on the back.

I returned the book to the outside dropbox when the library was closed, so I left a note explaining how I had found the check, and paperclipped that note and the check so that they stuck out together from behind the front cover.

That way, I assume the staff will see the check and maybe look up and contact the previous patron who had been reading the book.

What they're saying about Pope Francis around Rome...

...according to my one graduated colleague who's a priest, who I ran into a few weeks ago when he was visiting campus after a summer teaching gig near the city

"John Paul was a showman, Benedict a thinker, and finally we have a pastor."

I'm not sure I like that distinction where Francis isn't a thinker; it could allow people to dismiss a lot of what Francis says.

I also am now not clear if these were priests (I think that's what he meant), or regular people (a distant possibility - though why would they say John Paul was a showman?).

Got a new computer.

Like a week ago I got a new computer.

The deciding factor was that patches of my old computer's upper keyboard had stopped working.

Between that, the fact that I'd need a new power cord (again), and that every like 3-4 months it'd short out of nowhere, I decided it was time.

I had cleared minimum specs with my mom's techie former co-worker like over a year ago, and my one techie friend said not only to look at Dells since in his work experience with clients they rarely had problems, but also to go to Office Max or Depot since they have good prices, so between all of that the purchasing process just flowed:

At the most convenient Officemax location, they only had 2 Dell models, and I gravitated to 1 that met the minimum specs that I knew I needed!

Still, I got a printout on it, then ran that by the 2 techie people I knew, and went back the next day and bought it.

Then, right after I got it, I took it to school to get the installation of Microsoft Office by the tech people there.

I was *astounded* at how stress-free the process was, since technology usually stresses me out so much, especially the buying process, where you feel like the storespeople either drown you in detail or try to oversell you.

Plus, I got the best laptop bag ever, this heavy-duty but nice-looking black backpack from Kenneth Cole that is carry-on size, unzips so you don't have to take out your laptop in security, and has so many convenient compartments and pockets for other stuff that it's unbelievable.

The rest of the day I got all that shit I was crowing to everyone I knew at school about how cool my new laptop and laptop bag were.

"Look at me," I'd then say after bragging, pointing to this weird big forced smile I'd put on.  "I'm a happy consumer.  I love things."

Texts from friends (2 of 2): Low bar inhibitions.

That very night that I made my decision was the night of 8 bars, and as I got home at 3:30am (!!!) I was surprised since I thought I'd be in by midnight, and I texted my one Czech lit professor friend to ask what happened, since on the very day I had decided to only go to 5 bars a week, I ended up going to 8 bars in 1 night.

She replied -

I'm feeling like your superego.

. . .