A dream of journalism.

The other week I dreamnt:

I'm talking with someone about the failed ownership of the New York Times and how it's being sold, and I know both the current and the future owner of the company as random people from my past...

And then, I wake up.

. . .

Two people on the subway the other day:

Two (teenaged) (Asian-American) girls in t-shirts and shorts and drinking boba tea, and they're talking about GPA and what level looks good enough to where college application people don't pay attention to that anymore, since GPA doesn't do anything by itself, but if it's too low, it hurts you.

And, one of them talks way too loud.

They're also from the suburbs, it turns out, too, since one of them mentions what she had told someone about meeting them while she's here for the day in the city.

A Tinder stalker.

So, my one librarian supervisor friend went on two dates with a woman she had met on Tinder, and that woman turned out to be a stalker.

My friend didn't realize that at first, and so at the end of the second date she gently let her down and suggested that they be friends, and she said that she liked people who know their goals and their values.

So, like a week after that, they hung out in a group as friends at something-or-another, and this woman is there, and she hands my friend a list of her goals and values.

"Here's my goals and values," she's like.

And, my friend started reading the list and it was like:

- Marry [her first name].
- Buy a house with [her first name].
- Have a baby with [her first name].

And so on.

Eventually, the calls and the contact got too much, including at work, and so she contacted the police, and they were like, "Are you [some woman's first name]?", and then when she said "No," they'd be like, "Ok, are you [some other woman's first name]?", and so on, and it turned out that the woman had had 23 women request 'no contact' orders about her.

Anyhow, I'm also friends with my friend's one cousin and she came into town from out-of-state to go testify at the 'no contact' order trial about some stalking stuff that had happened during her last trip to visit, and so she was there when my one librarian supervisor friend was narrating this whole ordeal to me and some other friends of hers when we were having a night out and went to a comedy show and then grabbed drinks.

When that narration had finished, my friend's cousin just raised her finger up and very matter-of-factly was like, "Don't swipe."

We all laughed, and she just shook her head and her finger and was like, "Don't swipe."

Good news from Ethiopia.

Last month, I was really taken by the story of the mass tree-planting in Ethiopia, where even government offices shut down for the day so civil servants could go and plant trees.

So, of course I shared the story with my (Ethiopian) coworkers at my one resthome job.

My one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker had heard of the story, and she was like, "But there is no plan, how many trees die because no plan, they plant them here, they plant them there, no plan," and then she shrugged and was like, "Africa is like that."

A sleepy mistake at my one resthome job.

The other week I was running around a ton to replace my laptop and my smartphone, so I was exceptionally tired one day when I got in to my one resthome job to go start work.

And, I went to go get out my earpiece and plug into a walkie-talkie, and when I couldn't find my earpiece in my little plastic bag that I put into my satchel to carry it in, I realized that it was because it was already in my ear, I was that tired!

So, I laughed and told my coworkers who were there, who were my one (Filipina) coworker and my one (older) (Tibetan) coworker, since I thought my mistake was pretty funny and I thought that they would get a laugh out of it.

"That is bad," my one (Filipina) corworker was like, and then she gestured to our one (older) (Tibetan) coworker and was like, "She is more than sixty and she doesn't do that, imagine how bad you will be when you are her age!".

On great coworkers.

Since there's no nurse right now in my department at the resthome, another nurse from another floor has been subbing in, and the other week she came in and asked all of us on a shift for our opinion about how things are run and how they're doing, and my one (Filipina) coworker and my one (older) (Tibetan) coworker both told her that we're busy with a lot of work but everything goes fine since we always help each other out if one of us is busy.

Later, too, we were all talking about that kind of thing since the meeting had gotten us to talking, and my one (older) (Tibetan) coworker said that she appreciated our "teamwork."

Conversely, I was emailing back and forth about this one higher ed article with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair that I'm friends with), and he wrote:

was it in the second [short essay] that the guy spoke of camaraderie? which university did he work at?! the closest thing to camaraderie I ever saw was somebody offering to comment on a paper. otherwise it was just each to their own (neurosis). 

. . .

On the pharaohs.

The other week at the resthome, I was chitchatting with people about this one book I was reading on the history of ancient Egypt, and I really got into a conversation about it with the one (Bulgarian) private aide who's so nice and who it's always fun to talk with.

She is kind of fascinated by ancient Egypt, too, and I was saying that a lot of times the primary sources that we have are bad for understanding what actually was happening, since the pharoahs would just put up stereotypical inscriptions saying how bad the world was when they took over and now how everything is great since they've been in power and that there's been no one like them in history, etc. etc. etc., and though they all lived at different times and stuff, they all say pretty much the same thing... -

"All the pharaohs are Donald Trump!", the one (Bulgarian) private aide interrupted me and said, busting out laughing.