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A familiar nightmare; Dr. C and milk money; Another county line; EDIT: Damn, that's kinda hott

2005-02-15 - 4:56 p.m.

I had the same kind of dream again a few nights ago. I tried to not remember it.

It was a mountainous setting of some kind, where a series of buildings were surrounded by fencing. A two-lane highway seemed to snake up and alongside it.

Thankfully most of the details escape me. I'd somehow arrived at this site in order to do something. It may have been a meeting. I drove there in a car or I had access to a car. The world was slowly ending. I could feel it.

The buildings were two story town-house affairs, but made of gray brick or mortar. Whatever the original purpose was had ended. The next thing I can remember is driving away in the car, the world a hazy red boil as some vague evil spread all across its surface. Either as a flashback or some dream-jump, I was inside a townhouse structure with my mother, I think. There were two cats.

And all outside, around and over the house were thousands of zombie creatures: human in appearance but marble white, red-eyed horrors that made no noise. Somehow we were trying to live a normal life within the house, even though the invasion was imminent. Somehow I escaped...or perhaps it was a premonition of what would happen if I stayed in that compound.

I do remember leaving in a car slightly after many, many cars were leaving the compound.

This is not the first time I'm dreamt about the world going dead and its people mad in cannibalistic reveries.

It may sound fairly calm, but a deep terror clutched at me when I woke up. I went back to sleep a few times to continue whatever the journey was. It was journeying..going somewhere, but nowhere...

All I know is that I'm glad to not remember most of that nightmare.

* * *

I got some of the best news today, by contrast. I'd decided to take on the position of being a Project Assistant/reader for Dr. C's primate behavior course (which I'm auditing). At the time he said it might take around 60 hours over the whole semester, but I thought even that was something I could handle.

But the deal was much, much sweeter than that.

The students had the first exam in that class and I got to proctor it, along with Sara. Basically you stand around, walk up and down the aisles, and look for people with questions or who might be cheating. During this luxuriating hour of chillness, I whispered with Chris a few times. He gave me a copy of the job description and pay for being a reader.

I was happy: 12 bucks an hour with a maximum of 60 hours that could be put in. Best of all, he said that I had "his blessing" to put down that I'd spent 20 hours over each exam, regardless of how long I'd actually worked. This is like him giving me free money, basically. Y'see, my duties are pretty simple:

*Photocopy ~350 exams for a given test

*Collect exams, along with Sara, and present them to the educational testing people, who run and grade the scantrons.

*Maintain an Excel sheet database with all of the grades.

*Add on (read: paste in) new Excel sheet data as each test comes in.

*Calculate final grades for the course.

Photocopying takes 2 hours. Proctoring an exam takes 1 hour (which I'd spend in that class anyway), and another hour playing with Excel data. I get paid 20 hours for working 4-5, get to do that 3 times, and net a nice chunk of change.

The third exam and final preparation work is even after both of my actual courses, so those won't even conflict with my schedule.

I love this university.

* * *

There are some situations that I need to smooth over or deal with, though. These are cases where I shouldn't mention anything, but I feel compelled to just to put the voices that keep speaking in a box on a shelf, with a hundred others like it.

I already know the answers to the questions to some degree. It's a more or less inevitable consequence. I wish I could just leave it be, but somehow it became important to me. Not even sure how it happened.

But there's a county limit line out near the desert, with iguanas sporting over-ripe bellies and the humid heat only the southwest is inhumane enough to beat down. Somewhere along the line I was walking toward it, enjoying the journey, feeling just fine about matters at large.

But then you've gotta cross that county line and see the desert, waiting for a handout from time until you've crossed-over into more green pastures.

The cross-country hiking continues.

EDIT: I hate it when I can't get some shit off my mind. Bah. Something kinda interesting, for me, at least. I'm apparently pretty close to being in the top 100 of the Arts and Literature category at my stats. tracking place. Considering the kind of traffic some of these sites get, I'm surprised I've made it this far. I stopped trying to be consistently creative and grammar-friendly a long time ago. UncleBob or Perceptions I ain't; never wanted to be.

But even if I'm an acquired taste, somehow this 4 1/2 year old little bastard of a journal still chugs on. I have no idea who actually reads this thing, but to those who do: I'm glad you keep coming back. Genuinely.

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