aubli

so many things i wanted to write about this week have slipped away, just because i didn't have enough time to write it while it was in my mind...

aftermath of the big red ball
i am really happy to be working out again. that said, i'm scared i may have crunched my ribs in some lasting way when i took my swan dive off the big red ball on monday. tuesday my back was extremely sore, and i couldn't figure out why. (apparently my near face-plant didn't make too much of an impression on me... i only figured it out later. i am left with the uneasy conclusion that perhaps i am somewhat a dolt. but then, i am smart - i merely lack the common sense. *sigh.*)

i worked out tuesday evening and later that night there was some weirdness going on with my breathing, though that could have just been me being a hypochondriac and stressing about my ribs to the point of physical weirdness. is hard to know. felt much better wednesday, then worked out thursday evening and cut crunches short because post-treadmill i was experiencing some of the same weirdness, and didn't want to inadvertantly cruch myself to death. i seriously doubt it, but at the time the thought did pop into my mind. i think i'm stressed out to semi-paranoia this week.

at any rate, i hope i'm not broken. i would think if something were seriously wrong i would know it by now... still, i'm eager to figure out where i am in terms of health plans and where i should go to get this checked. i get to find out all about my work benefits sometime next week. i just don't want to end up with chronic back pain in my later life or something stupid, all because i rolled off a big red ball. pisses me off, though, because i used to do this kind of stuff all the time and it didn't seriously occur to me that this time i might not just bounce to the ground and maybe bruise a little, that i could actually hurt myself. grr, stupid older self who has to be scared for the stupid body. and dumbness for not being so - i really hope i didn't screw myself up.

work field trip!
went on a field trip to try out chairs with my coworkers earlier this week - we went to office depot and sat in one chair after another. was actually quite entertaining. we all agreed on a make/model/whateversuch so now we're gonna get posh new chairs sometime soon.

last night's dream: disneyworld shantytown patrolled with flamethrowers
i dreamed last night that i worked at disney world, which would seem pretty cool. except there were no visitors to interact with... working at disneyworld consisted in living in a vast gated shantytown on disney property from which we were not allowed to leave. there wasn't enough to eat and everybody was in tattered clothing. ariel worked there too, and so did some guy from my real-life workplace. we formed a little band with some other folks and set out to escape no matter what.

so throughout the night we all went scattering through the dilapidated, drab and paint-peeling worlds of disney. we didn't really have a plan on how to get away, and disney's enforcers carried flamethrowers (which reflected beautifully on the water in the several scenes that occured on a fun-ride houseboat - never let it be said that my dreams are not cinematic). we quickly got separated and confused. in fact, it seemed like most of disney's employees spent their nights trying to escape, so as i crouched in various dark nooks i could see figures running off in the distance with great gouts of flame spewing after them. some people actually did catch on fire. i had several near-getaways terminated by several horribly close calls, and was beginning to despair of ever getting out of this place.

toward the end, some flamethrower people were close on my tail and i was finally able to evade them by climbing up via the decorative moulding on the whimsical and broken little houseboat in the river. the moulding was too weak and too old to hold me and started to tear away as i tried to reach up to the next sturdy rooftop. but i managed it somehow and leapt down the other side. landed in the river and waded over to a large circular outlet tunnel for the water, slipped past the grating and i was free. i was able to meet up with a few other refugees, but we were still being pursued. we stopped to recover in the basement of some "safe house." all of us were huddling and miserable, and our recapture by disney seemed to be only a matter of time. so i was sitting there with them at the empty table, trying to figure out how in the world this could be a happy ending, when i finally hit upon the answer: we would take a ship to America. i told the others, and everyone relaxed, and even smiled; we were going to America, and once we got there all our problems would be over. even in the dream, part of me was amused/baffled at the way this magic idea - so dated! - could conjure up a sunny ending out of nowhere, but what can i say? dreams are like spielberg movies sometimes, and dream logic can create a happy ending where none could have existed before.

so... my unbreakable contract with a broken-down, flamethrower-toting disney... perhaps i'm a tad bit stressed about work? as soon as i just settle in i think my brain will stop poking into these amazing worst-case scenarios.

2dips.com
incidentally, check out www.2dips.com. is an ice cream ratings website by one of the cool people at my workplace. am waiting for the update about the low-carb atkin's diet ice cream. the stuff didn't melt at all even when they left it out for 7 hours. apparently it tasted awful, too. they're reformulating their rating scheme so that they can adequately reflect its foulness...

my family, it sucks.
talked with xie and parentals on the phone earlier today. time and time again my parents make me wish my life were a video game and i could solve problems by going about and beating things up. i'm looking forward to seeing xie up here, and i'm hoping she can come visit and maybe even stay multiple days from time to time, but i also fully anticipate that sometime tomorrow my mom's going to pull me aside and weepily ask if she can stay with me sometimes as well. which of course she can, but it's a temporary solution to a permanent problem that only my parents have the power to solve. it's the white elephant that the parents refuse to acknowledge and my brother and sisters get to live with, and it isn't fair in the least. especially since most of the time i don't even have to deal with it or think about it at all.

so tomorrow's graduation, and i'm not even so focused on walking across the stage - my main task is to make everything run smoothly and try to help everybody relax and maybe even be happy and such. weeee, dancing with the white elephant. cause i've already tried beating it up like some idiotic videogame boss, and that didn't work in the least.

hooray for stupid and drawn out metaphors. my toes are going to get stepped on plenty tomorrow. by an elephant! yes.

and sure, i can joke about it, but what it is is a big pile of suck.