Sunday, February 10, 2013

31 year old running in a high school cross country meet? Seems normal...

First, I dreamed that Miles all of a sudden had two full sized teeth.  One was sharp.

Then I was back at the Priory, my old high school.  It was the league championships for cross country, and the meet was being held on campus.  For some reason, I was expected to run in the meet, even though I'm 31.  But I wasn't going to run the race since I haven't been running and I'm out of shape.  As it got closer and closer to race time, I started rationalizing more and more, thinking that as an out of shape 31 year old, I could probably "wing it" and do great just based on pure adrenaline.  I was nervous because deep down I knew this wasn't true, that I was out of shape.  But the race is only 3 miles, so I thought I won't even notice by the time I get tired.  I decided to jump in and race it.  My dad told me that it was starting in a minute.  As I was rushing around trying to find a jersey, race number, etc...  the gun went off.  I thought about hopping in late but then noticed it was only the girls race.  The guys race was going to start about 15 minutes later.  I got to relax for a second.  I found a jersey but it didn't match the one the rest of the team, including my brother Johnny, were wearing.  I took a number from some other kid on the team.  I was confident that even holding back, I could run with Johnny for most of the race and probably finish the meet in the top 5.  I don't remember any race details.

We were in line at the Priory cafeteria for food.  I was starving, but the cooks were handing out very paltry portions of food.  When I got to the front of the line, I got four little scraps of ground meat in a thin tomato sauce.   It barely took up a part of one of those plastic plates that are sectioned off for you to put different types of food in.  They wouldn't give me any more, and told me to go to the back of the line.  Fortunately, I was distracted from my hungry state because Green Day was playing a concert in the school cafeteria.  They were playing "Scattered" off of the Nimrod album.  After the song but still during the concert, I talked to Billie Joe about how I like that song, but one of their new ones sounds exactly like it.


Saturday, February 9, 2013

A brash and cocky physics student

I was back at the high school I went to, but at my current age.  For some reason, I had to re-take the Physics final from my Dad's class.  (He taught me for Freshman Physics, and still teaches the course at the school.)  I went in to the final without studying and was very confident.  When I got it, somehow I recognized all the questions as the exact same final that I took back in 1997.  I breezed through it, extremely confident of every answer.  I don't know why it was important, but it's like the whole point of doing this was to get a better grade than I had gotten on the test when I took it for the class.  I turned in the test and left.  A few days later I was bugging my Dad, asking if he had graded the final exams yet.  He hadn't, but said he would be soon.  I hadn't let him know how great I felt about the test.  I couldn't hold it in any longer so I just told him that I totally aced it, that I'm positive I got every question correct, I'd be shocked if I had even missed one.  I told him that my memory was just so good, that giving me the same exam twice was a mistake on his part.  He asked me if I was "sure" that I had beaten my old score.  I assured him that I had.  I didn't know what my old score was, but was thinking probably somewhere in the A-/B+ range.  He pulled out my old exam, and the score on that one was 110%.  I don't know how that score was even possible, because he's not one to give extra credit on tests, let alone final exams.  The test I just took had no extra credit opportunities, so I was surely going to fall short.  I didn't stick around to see what I got on the final that I just took.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Just feed the dog.

I was house-sitting for some good friends of our families back home in Portola Valley.  Everything had gone well for the few weeks that I was living at their large, nice house.  But the whole time I was there, I was really busy.   Sometimes I'd forget to feed their dog.  I always thought that the last time I fed it was pretty recently, and that I'd just catch up feed it right before they got home from vacation.  When they got home the dog was barely alive.  It was a super skinny waif of an animal that they had to feed with a baby bottle to bring back to health.  They were really disappointed in me, and I couldn't believe that I had let it get to that point.  Then we were golfing in the sun in their back yard.  It was on top of a canyon, and we were just smashing golf balls down into the canyon, having a longest drive contest.  Some professional basketball or football player was there too, but I can't remember who it was.  We were trying to hit as close to some campers as possible without hitting them.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Running in a lightning storm

I was watching a high school basketball game at the high school I went to.  I was in the bleachers with my Dad, and my brother Johnny was playing in the game.  All the players looked really similar to me, so my dad would tell me who scored.  It was like my eyesight wasn't that good, so I was relying on his glasses.  Johnny hit a 3 pointer from the corner, and had some decent inside drives.  It was against the Priory's rival, sacred heart.  He wore #15, which is the # i wore in high school basketball.  Later Johnny was in Seattle and we were running.  The street had rolling hills, and it was cold, but i remember thinking that spring was around the corner.  We were running in a quiet, residential area with fairly large homes and not any traffic.  All of a sudden I realized that i had already hit my mileage for the day, and didn't need to keep running.  So I stopped.  Luckily, my car was parked right there, so I hopped in.  Johnny still had to finish his run.  As I was driving, huge flashes of lightning filled the sky.  I looked in my rearview mirror and could see Johnny's safety blinker steadily blinking in the distance, as i drove away.  The lightning seemed right on us so I was expecting thunder any second.  It took longer than expected.  At the next lightning flash, I looked in my rearview, and Johnny lit up completely, like he had been struck by it, kind of how it looks like in Mario Cart when you get the lightning and unleash it on the rest of the racers.  I pulled over and waited for him to run up to where I was parked.  Who came first though, were a bunch of serious racers.  I was in the middle of a relay.  The runners were really good, and about my age, but as they all pulled over, they were all complaining about various ailments - hips, back, hamstrings.

Later I was at my Grandmother Kiki's house.  It was like her house, but different in that it was 3 stories.  I was on the top story and dropped my phone.  It fell all the way through some slats down into the basement, where i could see it but couldn't fish it out.  To get it, someone had to sift through a bunch of garbage.  Billie Joe from Green Day was there, and he was really short, like 5'5".  We hung out in the basement, which looked more like a public park covered picnic area.