A night of odd dreams (1 of 2): Bedbugs.

The other night, I had a very awful recurring dream all night, that bedbugs were crawling all over me, one at a time here and there but always one on me, and biting me in various areas, like behind my sweatshirt or over beneath the elastic strap of my boxer shorts.

(When I woke up, no bites were there, but I think my mind reverse-engineered a dream to explain random itches, using a plausible explanation from my life.)

Neighborhood sights: Scrap metal pickers.

Like two times during the past month, I've been walking right around my apartment, and have seen (Mexican) people in high-backed trucks coming out of alleys, the backs of the trucks full of old bikes and discarded metal and even trashbags full of large tin food cans like from big cans of pasta sauce, I could see through the plastic.

I think they're scrap metal pickers, and must go through the alleys regularly to find stuff to sell to scrapyards.

On the one hand it's kind of a shocking profession to find in a major American metropolis, it seems so third world and must be so low-paid, but on the other hand the environmental aspects and dedication of those workers is very striking and admirable.

As I was reading in something the Pope wrote, "All work is honorable" (if I remember his words correctly).

Interesting Bar Conversation: Stardom.

The other week, I was lingering around the art school to hit up colleagues I'd never met about unionization, then I stuck around downtown to work on an article in various new bars (= mostly Starbucks with beer and wine newly offered in the evenings), and then I got a nightcap at this dive-y bar right in the smack of downtown that's relatively cheap.

The bar was decently full and the only open single stools were in places where you'd always have to sit next to someone, so I chose to sat next to this muscled-up wirey guy with very tatted arms, who was always on his iPhone on some messaging app.

After I got my PBR tallboy and stared off into space in exhaustion, I struck up a conversation and asked him how he was and then I asked him if I could share some good news, and when he said yes, I was like, "Next Wednesday I'm going to appear on [soap opera] as an extra, I'm so excited."

"You should be", he was like, and then he was like, "I'm actually a stuntman."

That blew me out of the water, and he said he was in town to work for a cop show, and he pulled up on his iPhone this video he sends out to audition for jobs, with scene after scene of him on motorcycles or doing flips or getting punched out and once even getting set on fire.

"That's me, on fire," he was like, pointing at his iPhone.

We talked about that a bit - he had worked with Sylvester Stallone and I think DeNiro, and he's doubled for a character on a major pop zombie show - and then we talked about my line of work, which he seemed oddly interested in.

At some point, though, he said something about how "the girls in [the city] are the prettiest in the [name of the national region], but they're not quiet enough," and I wasn't sure if that meant he was hitting on me.

(And if he was, what would that mean, that I should suck his c-ck and not come up for air and conversation?)

Too, he showed me a picture of an MRI of his neck vertebrae, and how they had gotten whacked and some flesh got pinched in between some, though at other times he wavered between saying that he never got hurt and that he a lot of times had no sensation in his left hand.

He later had to leave to go meet some people before flying out the next morning to the Southeast for another shoot, and at that point I asked if I could friend him on Facebook.

"Sure," he was like, and he spelled his last name for me a couple of times so I got it.

Later, I sent a Facebook friend request - and he accepted it.

2 sights on a warm morning biking in to school the other morning:

1) Over by the bikeshare station in my neighborhood, two flower pots were lying on the sidewalk, with dirt spilling out.

I couldn't see where they came from, but the building there directly abuts the sidewalk and it was very windy that morning, so I'm guessing that the wind blew them off of somewhere during the night or early morning and that's why they were lying there.

2) Later that morning, as I was biking through a major intersection, there was a (young) (black) woman stopped at the intersection in a white car with her window rolled down, and she was looking straight ahead and appeared to be talking to herself.

As I biked past, I could start to hear music, and I realized that she was rapping along to something.

Library Tidbits: My Juvenile Humor.

The other week at my library shelving job, I noticed that a "several volumes bound together" book included volumes 6, 7, 8, and 9 all put together, and not only that, but the spine also read "6-9".

Seeing 69 like that made me titter, even though I immediately felt juvenile.

Skin color story (2 of 2): Childhood crayons.

When I told the "peach Chelsea" story to my one library supervisor, he said that as a kid, he once decided to try to have a variety of skin tones coloring, so he pulled out the white and black crayons, and then he got confused because those crayons made the people look nothing at all like the white and black people he saw in real life.

Skin color story (1 of 2): A wee cousin.

So, on my one hippie friend from Michigan's birthday, me and her went out for sushi, then a beer, and then Uber-ed down to a bar actually towards her house, in order to meet up with some coworkers of hers for still more beers.

Oddly, one of her (white) (American) coworkers is engaged to a (Scottish) guy who's a joiner from the Hebrides, and not only that, but he was also visiting, so we got to hang out with him.

That coworker has the name "Chelsea", and their other coworker, who is (black), also has the name "Chelsea", and even odd beyond that, once both Chelseas were in Scotland at the same time and they both all met the Scottish guy's relatives.

"Why does [Scottish guy's first name] have two girlfriends?", his 'wee' cousin asked someone in the family after he met the other, (black) Chelsea.

When someone explained to him that no, he just had the one, the cousin was like, "Oh, peach Chelsea."

The Scottish guy found that cute, this his wee cousin perceived skin color that way, and didn't know enough to say 'black' and 'white'.