An odd message from the universe to me:

A big sign that says "STOP BULLYING" in an empty storefront in the jock-y entertainment district here in the city, less than a week after I had finished up a quiet and time-intensive long-term project against bullying, and I was up there randomly for a concert.

How often am I up there?

Not much.

How often do you see a sign like that?

Never!

It really is like a message from the universe to me, telling me that I did the right thing.

A dream of packages.

Last month I dreamnt:

I'm in the social hall of the resthome sitting on my knees and opening up some packages that had come in, and a few small boxes have a few (German) chocolate bars that were shipped to me by one resident's daughter, whose name I can see on the address label when I look at it on the upper box flap.

. . .

A dream of lateness.

Last month I dreamnt:

I wake up and I look at my bedside clock, and it says "5:10pm."

I suddenly realize that I'm late for work and I can't believe that I slept so late, and I'm next outside in my kitchen looking at my cellphone where I had left it in to charge, and I see that I have a few missed phonecalls from the resthome, and that they must have been calling me to see where I was and why I wasn't at work.

And then, I wake up in a panic, and my bedside clock has a time like around 10:30am.

Later, I got woken up again with a similar dream, and the actual time that time was around noon.

Announcement of a (black) (female) subway conductor the other day...

...to someone who must have pulled the emergency 'open' handle to open the doors, after the car had started moving again:

"I'm gonna need you not to pull my doors again in my life, thank you."

Ethiopians and country music.

The other week I mentioned a (punk) concert that I was going to to my one (edgy) (Ethiopian) coworker, and I joked that she should go with me, but she was like, "No, I don't like American music," and then she corrected herself and was like, "Except country."

I asked her why, and she said because it sounds like music from her country.

I'm guessing that's why she and my one (new) (Ethiopian) coworker both like it?

It's very odd, I wonder how broadly this phenomenon goes among (Ethiopian) people.

Bedtime banter with the one resthome resident who wants to die.

The other week at the resthome, the one resthome resident who wants to die had just laid down in bed and was about to go adjust herself and scoot upwards in the bed and onto her pillow, but before she did that, she looked at it and was like, "To me, that's a mountain."

"That's okay," I was like, "We know you're from [name of the Central European mountain town she was born in], we know you can handle mountains!".

And, that got a grin out of her.

Business stories of a new resthome resident.

This one new resthome resident worked in communications, and his wife did, too.

He told me that sometimes they would go seek accounts together as coworkers, and then at the end of the meeting after they had closed the account, they'd each give the customer their home phone number so that they'd have it in case they ever needed it, and the number would be the same, and that's how they told the customer that they were married.

He said that that arrangement of working together mostly worked out, except for when customers didn't know at first and would hit on his wife.