Good and bad recognition:

1) Twice in one week, two different customers at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work turned to me from the table and were like, "I think I attended a lecture that you gave...," referencing my one informal lecture that I put on at the local brewery to celebrate a major discovery that I made about the one ancient language that I've been studying intensively for the past number of years, now, and have made myself into quite the expert in.

(On the posters and advertising I didn't mention my name, or even what I do now, so it was really like the most random thing ever, though the subject matter was quite serious, and like 80-100 people showed up for it. Apart from my like 30 friends and acquaintances who came, my sense is that the other people didn't know quite what it was and showed up out of curiosity, only to find out that it was not only a fun event, but also quite serious, so it must be another added layer on top of it all, to find out later that I'm just working at some local restaurant.)

2) When I came across some cool modern artwork and texted an image of it to my one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature, it turned out that she already knew it, which surprised me, so I told her as much, and she said that it shouldn't surprise me, since her specialty is "lit and art."

"Does that mean you're super lit-art-ed?", I was like, to no response from her, to which I was then like, "OMG, you're super lit-art-ed!"

Two gags and an observation...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) As I deliver the last entree to a table of three, I muscle in among them to reach that patron and am all like, "Quack quack quack, here comes the duck curry!"

2) After a (large) (early 30s) (biracial) (black) guy says that it's his (large) (early 30s) (white) girlfriend's birthday, I make sure to get a candle and I put it in her rice bowl and I deliver it to her, when we bring out their teriyaki -- a gesture that they appreciate, even though the flame blew out, right before we deliver it, and then the lighter wouldn't work again when we go to re-light it.

(I also see traces of pink candle-wax in her rice, as I pull out that small candle, to take it back, though I am not sure that they ever see that, and I sure don't point it out to them.) 

(When I deliver their teriyaki, too, because they both ordered the same thing, I deliver it to him first, and I'm like, "Here's the teriyaki...", and then I go to her, and I'm like, "And here's the birthday teriyaki!".)

3) Some portion sizes seem to be shrinking -- the raw carrot slices for the pad thai are now cut thinner and shorter, so a tong-scoop put on the plate gives you less overall carrot, and some salmon fillets seem a little bit thinner than usual, though only just a bit, and some stirfries have more onions in them than usual and less of the expensive vegetables, and the peanut sauce is soupier, too, with less chunks of real peanut, to the point where some of my coworkers go and put extra raw crushed peanuts in the sauce, now, when they get the sauce for customers that they know and like. 

(Egg rolls seem smaller, too, and now you get one less crab rangoon per order, when you dine in.)

On the nature of Katy Perry.

A few months ago I was talking with the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM postdoc) who I know from around town, and, like many (Brazilians), he is a fan of Katy Perry.

Like, he even says that she mentioned in some interview or documentary or whatever, how special (Brazilians) and (Brazil) are to her, and she is just immensely popular and beloved there, even as people have just started to dislike her, for some reason, in the U.S.

(He mentioned something about Dr. Luke and rolled his eyes. He also said something about how she chooses to debut many things in Brazil, before anywhere else in the world.)

Anyhow, as we were talking about her and her music, I observed that she is very "pure," and he immediately disagreed, and he said that she is innocent, but she is not pure, like, she has tried a lot of things in her life, so she is certainly not pure, but she is innocent.

And, I immediately had to agree with him.

"I've always felt she's gotten a free pass for a lot of the content of her songs," I was like, and I told him about the one time that I attended a concert of hers, how it was like me and a bunch of moms and their twelve year-old daughters, and how I was genuinely shocked how everyone was singing along to "T.G.I.F." and those young girls were singing stuff like "AND I HAD A MENAGE A TROIS - LAST FRIDAY NIGHT" and no-one else seemed to be noticing that that was happening, not even their moms.

"Exactly," he was like.

He also said she has that one song "Peacock" that's about big dicks, and it's like her looking at a big dick, just looking at it and being like, "Oh, what is this?".

Somehow, I feel like all (Brazilians) must understand this about her, and it doesn't make them like her more, but it also doesn't make them not like her, it's just a part of who she is, and they know it, even as they like her for their other reasons, whatever they are.

It's a very weird thing to be able to intuit something that subtle about someone's character, but somehow, many of them perceive that about her, it just seems to me.

It's just very odd.

Three recent-ish dreams (3 of 3): Van.

A month or two ago I dreamnt --

I'm in the converted van that I live in, an old Scooby Doo-like van with a beaten brown patterned couch set along the right side in the back, and it's temporarily parked in a dilapidated wooden garage set on a hillside where I'm living, and much of the small faded brown curtains are drawn in the van and I know that the windows are closed in the garage, too, along with the garage-door, but suddenly in the dim sunlit afternoon I know that a van window is off, and I look around the edges of the curtain, and there there's a small-paned side window that's cracked open with several panes missing, and I suddenly know that I am unable to lock my van, and I hear voices coming from outside, but not thieves's voices, just voices of people who are somehow nearby, but nevertheless I somehow know that I need to attain a means, somehow, of securing my place, and soon.

. . .

(. . .)

Three recent-ish dreams (2 of 3): Tooth.

A couple of months ago I dreamnt --

I am playing with a loose tooth towards the front of my lower-left jaw, and it has always been set slightly askew in my jaw, but suddenly I notice that it's come out, and I'm holding it there and it's just out of the rootline, so I set it back in, but it's too late, it's out, and I know that I will have to consult a periodontist or a dentist or whatever, to get it set back in so that it will take root and grow again, or so that I have a replacement tooth for the gap, because it will be embarrassing, to be one of those people who lacks a visible tooth at the front of their mouth.

. . .

(. . .)

Three recent-ish dreams (1 of 3): Leak.

Like two months ago I dreamnt --

I'm in the shower in my cottage trying to use my laptop, which is kind of propped up on this small shelf that juts to the high left of my body to the left of the shower nozzle, and as I'm in there taking my shower, I keep worrying about getting the laptop wet, and as I'm having difficulties with that, I notice that the leak in the ceiling has returned, and there is this large rectangular hole high up in the bathroom ceiling with a cheap plasterboard resting askew up above it, as some sort of attempt at fixing it by covering it up from within the ceiling, but it's all hasty, with a thin line of a gap along two edges, and that corner of the board there is drooping down a bit, and you can see across the cross-cut the cheap material that it's made out of, and it's been like just dripping water down all that time, and in the center of my bathroom there's like a large sheet of water just standing on the tile-floor, with just heaps of wet toilet tissue sitting in the middle, since someone had used simply rolls of it to try to sop up the water, but they couldn't, but they kept trying, and they left just all of that sodden toilet tissue there in the middle of the bathroom floor, in heaps, and all of this slowly becomes apparent, as I'm standing there, in the shower, doing my best to use my laptop without getting it wet at all...

. . .

(. . .)

Some recent human-caused decay.

My bed-top quilt is getting torn and shredded around the edges, from how I've had to wash and dry it over the past number of years, to ward off the various bedbug and flea infestations that I've had.

A couple of months ago, too, I was flossing, and when I was getting out some stuck pineapple bit from in between the tips of some of my teeth down on the front lower left of my jaw, suddenly everything became unstuck, and the floss suddenly flew down and it like gashed like a sharp straight line deep down into the gum there, between those two front teeth, and for several days afterwards, I had swelling there, and it was like spreading down from there on my mouth-floor to the soft and meaty part where my tongue is rooted in, like an infection, almost, and my teeth in that part of my mouth there were achy and even a bit loose, for the better part of a week.

It didn't help that with other pineapple I ate, too, I take a bite of the fat slice, and the hard pineapple core at the top of the slice jams down below my incisors and right into that soft and sore part, causing further swelling, or inciting it again.