Addendum.

That same night, I previously had dreamt that I was in the upstairs of a busy Chinese restaurant built into a hill, and I had to push between tables to get to stairs leading down to a pale blue-walled ground floor that was overoptimistically used as a dining room and rather empty apart from some gray-blue scuffed tiles and a few booths against the far wall and a back wall opening up into the kitchen over some metal trays, on which food was put out and through which I could see a bright yellow and well-lit unadorned kitchen with a few cooks in white moving around the metal tables in it.

There in that lower room, I walked from the stairs past a quizzical looking (female) (Chinese) waiter who was standing around, and then past some potted plants and old leaflets on the front window ledge, and then strolled out through the double set of doors in an interior glassed-in foyer and onto the street.

And, I knew that although that was how you got outside from where I lived, I felt very awkward, and that I wish I didn't have to do that so often.

Pre-dental cleaning nightmare.

A night or 2 before my last dental cleaning I dreamt:

The hygienist had the pick and was applying pressure to my back upper left molar.

Suddenly, the pick just went through the tooth, not even a bursting through the enamel, but rather a gradual sink and then a quick push in, the tooth was so decayed towards the center.

She pulled the pick out and went to rinse it, and clumpy black stuff like soil just kept washing off the pick into the tiny white sink's drain, and I knew that that was everything that had been inside my rotting tooth.

. . .

(A few days before, I was sorting black beans and found a clump of soil, and had noticed earth streaming into the sink as I initially rinsed the beans, too; that memory must have gotten mixed up with my expectation of my upcoming tooth cleaning to form the nightmare.)

Great text exchange: Horror movies.

Like a month ago on a Saturday when I had on Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" and I was pulling out all my summer clothes from storage, I texted my one modern Czech literature professor friend to see what she was up to, and it turns out that she was cleaning her apartment while watching horror movies.

As she explained... (and these texts may be inexact, I'm quoting from memory) -

I just did a Saw marathon.

Immediately, I texted her back if that was better than the previous weekend, when she "saw a Did marathon."

She liked that, and so I clarified that she must have watched Did, and then the sequel "Did Too".

Next, I suggested that she must almost certainly be a fan of "the commercially unsuccessful but artistically provocative Did Three: Did Not".

She then made some joke about a sequel "Done", and I parleyed that the series ended with "Did 4: Done" - to which she replied, "...which came *after* Done Four", which made me laugh out loud.

I then replied that they rebooted the series afterwards, with "Did 5: Done Wrong".

She then said there was a knowing comedy spin-off, "Will Do", and I replied that there was also a low budget scatological parody, "Do".

She liked that.

I love texts!  So much creativity and joy in so few words!

One post-doc's biggest impression of Manhattan.

Like last month I met a (Mexican) laboratory science post-doc who worked 8 months at a hospital in Manhattan.

His biggest memory is on the Upper West Side this very poor (black) man was begging in the street for change and no-one was giving him any, and then it starts to mildly rain and someone pops into a very pricy designer shop for a "thousand dollar" umbrella, which they then use to cross the street and go into another door.

"I was seeing these things at the same time with my own eyes," he was like, "The homeless man, and the person with the thousand dollar umbrella."

(I asked him how he knew that the umbrella was a thousand dollars, and he said that he didn't know, but that it was at least hundreds, it was that type of store.)

An obvious "Oh no!" moment...?

I hadn't seen my one (Asian-Canadian) friend in a while, and he was asking me how all my campaigning during the city's recent mayoral election turned out.

I told him about that a while, then I mentioned how I cried the night after the (truly fun!) election results party where I got to meet cool activist progressive types from all over the city.

As soon as I got to the part where I said I had decided to put on Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" CD to cheer myself up, my one (Asian-Canadian) friend was like, "Oh no!  Bad idea, bad idea!".

He said he wasn't sure why, but that seemed like absolutely the worst thing someone could possibly do in that state of mind.

Very Odd Ice Cream Truck Music:

"Oh Come, All Ye Faithful"

(= heard one spring day while sitting at home at my dining room table doing work during a weekday).

2 Parts of Town, seen through Bars:

1) A bartender at a newly-opened Italian-ish themed restaurant-bar in the hipster neighborhood told me that he used to work in the city's elite residential neighborhood, and the worst types were the people who'd ask him, "Do you know who I am?".

He once had a pretty famous ex-football player from the city's team ask him that at the club that he managed there, and just to be a dick, he was like, "Wait, weren't you in some band?".

He did say, though, that apart from those people, the rest of the people who lived in that neighborhood were just really normal condo buyers and "salt of the earth".

2) At this vegetarian restaurant (with a bar!) on the far west outskirts of the hipster neighborhood, the 2 (male) and (female) staffers who I was talking with said that they weren't expecting anyone for Mother's Day since everyone's mother lives on in the burbs, but actually all the new hipster mommies got brought in their by their husbands, and all up and down the restaurant were (aging) (white) (hipster) couples in their mid-to-late 30s at every table, next to high chairs with babies in them, all very well-behaved.