A dream of the wrong: Toenails.

The other week, I dreamt -

I was standing in my living room and was looking at my toenails, since I was in my boxers and had my socks off.

Although the toenails on the left foot were clipped, the ones on the right were not, and I stood there wondering how that had happened.

. . .

Library job surprise:

The other week, I was working at the library, and when I step into the elevator with a cart of books to go shelve, the entire elevator smells like Chinese food.

A day at my library job.

A few weeks ago, because I was working all day and I don't have after-hours access to the building where the prof I teach with works, I had to use my lunch-hour to staple student papers and run them over and put them in her mailbox.

That same day, I saw my one co-worker who had lost his hat.

"Hey, you find your hat yet?", I was like.

"No, I couldn't find it," he was like.  "I looked everywhere, but no-one had it.  I hope that whoever got it washed it!  It's not like I'm dirty, but, you know, that was a dirty hat."

Two public transit stories from like a month ago:

1) When I was leaving campus after a very long day, it was snowing heavily, and as I was chit-chatting on my cell with a friend as I got on the bus and was swiping my farecard, the (African-American) (male) bus driver was like, "Hey man, could you step outside and shake the snow off that wiper?".

And I did.

"Thanks, man," he was like.

2) A few days later, this (younger) (yuppie-ish) (white) woman was having trouble swiping to get into the subway stop as I was going in to work in the morning, so she was like, "Hey, can I scooch in with you? My card's not working."

So, I swiped, and we got in close, and shimmied around through the revolving metal grate together, and both get into the subway stop with only my fare.

(Though, as I did that, I wondered if I would have done it if she was black and more poorly dressed.)

Plight of a library coworker.

The other day when I was shelving books at the library for my one student job, I came out of an aisle only to see my one (fatter) (white) (bald) (slightly older) coworker walking around looking at the floor glowering.

He seemed startled by my popping out of the aisle, and was like, "Hey!".

"Hey, how are you?", I was like.

"I lost my hat," he was like, and then he proceeded to describe all the places he'd been that day where it might have fallen out of his pocket.

"I'm looking here now," he was like, "But I might go over to [a certain building] tomorrow to see if it's in the lost and found."

Then, he was like, "It's got a [our university name] logo on it, but it's kind of dirty, so I might be able to recognize it."

Subway sight the other day...

The other day on the subway into school in the morning, the car I got onto had only a handful of people in it, but it was full of the sound of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock."

As it turns out, this spacey, kind-of-fat (late middle-aged) (black) (homeless) guy had some kind of transistor radio playing, as he was sprawled in a seat with his light tan overalls on, one flap unbuttoned off his chest and hanging down onto his leg.

He was just staring off into space for the whole ride while I was on the train, but I found myself tapping my foot as I was seated and then again as I was standing up by the door to hop on off at the stop I was going to.

Weird (Mexican) (male) flirting.

A (young) (Mexican) (male) coworker of my hippie friend from Michigan would sometimes pause when he was done speaking and look into your eyes and smile gently, which I always wondered, was it just him, or was it a broader macho male (Mexican) thing.

Then, the other week, I was out with my one friend who coordinates Romance languages for a movie and then dinner, and when we were having dinner at the restaurant bar, we ended up talking to the (young) (Mexican-American) (male) guy to her left, and he did something similar...

He talked like a know-it-all, and then he'd do the stare thing, and eventually when my friend completely showed that he didn't know what he was talking about with politics, he said they both agreed after all, which showed that it wasn't so much the topic that mattered, but the stance of being "the guy in the know," as a kind of jockeying/flirtatious thing with her.

It's all very weird, and macho, and comes off especially weird when a guy just talks out of his ass.

So bizarre.