Rodd’s nephew is such a sweetie. He just turned two. When we visited on Thursday, I read him some stories and he just sat in my lap and sucked his thumb and watched quietly. And when we said goodbye he gave us lovely messy little boy kisses. I enjoyed it way too much, which is why I found Wing Chun’s essay “112 Reasons to Lead a Barren, Childless Existence That Ends in Your Death” very helpful. Whew. I feel much better now. 🙂

Hee. So Bono’s doing his third-world-crusader bit down in Africa, right? Turns out nobody down there’s ever heard of him. Oops. I guess they don’t really watch major sporting event half-time shows down there, do they? Don’t worry, Bono. I’m sure this won’t hurt your chances for sainthood.

Friday Five:

1. What’s the last vivid dream that you remember having?
I was having one half an hour ago before I woke up. (It’s Saturday morning here.) I dreamed that my friend Little Julie and I were going to be bridesmaids for this skanky girl from my high school. The wedding was actually at the school, and we were getting dressed in the drama classroom. We had to wear these hideous navy blue flapper-type dresses. We made the wedding late because Little had to straighten my hair. (In reality my hair is straight as straw.) When we finally got to the cafeteria, my mom was yelling at me because I’d breached some silly bridesmaid rule of etiquette I didn’t know about. That’s when I woke up.

2. Do you have any recurring dreams?
Three. In one, I’m being chased. I just breathlessly run the entire time trying to avoid the pursuer right behind me. This is my persecution dream. I hate it. In another, I’m about to go on-stage for a play and I don’t know any of the lines. In an unusual twist, it’s sometimes a play that I’ve actually been in before. I’ve even had a variation where I’m up in the booth as stage manager and I don’t know any of the cues. This is my insecurity dream. Lastly, I sometimes have a really good one where I can fly. It’s never, like, up in the clouds; it’s more like I just fly a few feet off the ground while going through my daily life. It’s not effortless, though. I have to mentally strain to take off. Nevertheless, it’s a good one. (Didn’t I read somewhere that all flying dreams are really about sex?)

3. What’s the scariest nightmare you’ve ever had?
I tend to not remember my nightmares, so I can’t say definitively what the scariest was. I did have a really bad one recently where my sister killed this guy and I had to help her hide the body. It was really upsetting.

4. Have you ever written your dreams down or considered it? Why or why not?
Nah. Most of mine aren’t good, and I don’t like to dwell on them longer than I have to.

5. Have you ever had a lucid dream? What did you do in it?
Nope. I tried to once though. I got this book out of the college library on astral projection and lucid dreaming. I tried some of the techniques it gave, but I never really got any results.

Did I mention that the navel piercing (redux) didn’t work out? Well, it didn’t. See, the first time I had it done in 2000, it never healed properly and eventually got infected. I took it out and it left a little funny scar. A few months ago I had it pierced again, in the hopes that it would cover up the former damage. This one didn’t get infected, and in fact, I thought it was healing quite well. A few weeks ago I was drying off from a shower and noticed something odd: the little bit of flesh that the ring goes through was getting thinner. I could actually see the ring through it. It’s like my body was rejecting the metal and just pushing it right out. Eventually it got so thin I just pulled out the ring. I don’t get it. I suppose I might have rolled on my stomach in my sleep and somehow pulled on it, thus causing it to stretch out, but nobody ever warned me about that. I guess my body just doesn’t want to be pierced.

Eek! Jakob is coming to Sydney! Damn, I’d like to go. Of course, $700 is a bit pricey for a single day of Jakob-stalking… I wonder if I could just hang out outside the hotel. 🙂

It’s that time of year again… Eurovision! Lucky for you, Claire‘s already sized up the competition and made her predictions. Always bet on the blind chick, folks.

Gael found a cool article about inconsistent women’s clothing sizes. USA Today sent a size 6-8 woman to four different stores to try on jeans. In one place, the smallest size she found she could wear was a 12! See, this is why I buy men’s jeans. It’s harder to misrepresent inches and centimeters. This is a little weird, though, since I thought that clothing manufacturers tended to err on the side of making clothes bigger, so that women would think they were a smaller size. I can’t imagine a customer would be very happy to buy your product if it made her feel six sizes larger than she actually is.

I had a job interview of sorts today. It’s a great opportunity at a great company (doing web development work), but there’s one great big problem: a two-hour bus commute. The office is in Avalon Beach, which is miles and miles from here. I knew as soon as I looked at the map that I couldn’t do it, but I went to the meeting anyway to check it out. I almost wish I hadn’t, because now it’s just going to torture me. Do you commute? How long is too long?

Just saw Attack of the Clones again. It wasn’t as good the second time. Now I’m wondering if sitting in the very front row had something to do with my initial enthusiasm. It just seemed like stuff was happening on-screen constantly. This time (from the back row) I found myself getting bored quite a bit. Yoda and Obi-Wan still rock my world, though.

It was such a beautiful day. I headed into the city to meet up with Snookums and some of his work mates for lunch. That was fun. (I got to meet “Toast”!) Afterwards I took a stroll through Hyde Park and snapped some pictures. Why in the world have I been missing London? Even when it’s cold here, it’s still beautiful.