three unrelated slices of life

weirdo dream from a few nights ago: i got hired as a veterinarian and was given my first case just after arriving at the office for an interview. someone led me into a large room with a huge table in the middle of it, where an opossum lay anesthetized in one corner. the woman in charge who'd taken me to this room told me it needed some organ removed, and i realized i had no idea what i was doing – even after all of my nonexistent vet training! she left, closing the door behind her, and i pressed the nitrous button a couple of times to make sure the critter stayed zonked. then i made an incision (which didn't bleed), poked around a little, and removed some large organ before it occurred to me that i wasn't sure how to sew the thing back up. i gassed it some more because it started to stir, and as i sat there (for a long time, it seemed) thinking about what to do next, the animal had turned into a boy who woke up, prodded the wound curiously, and pulled out a bloody thread. 'you need to go back to sleep, i'm not done yet,' i said, and gassed him again. not sure how that turned out, but i was glad to wake up without having done surgery on anyone.

yesterday's 'only in berkeley' moment: outside berkeley bowl, on one of the concrete planters usually held down by political petitioners, crouched a ruffled young man with a pea-green, old-fashioned typewriter balanced on his knees. he sat hunt-pecking away spastically and had a sign out that read simply, 'poems about anything.' as i walked out of the store, he glanced up and called out, 'want a pome? pome bout anything?'

dos equis and i went for pizza and beers on clement street on sunday night and decided to go see a movie. so we went down to the balboa to see 'the queen,' where the projectionist ran a little audience-appreciation raffle before the film. the first winner won a poster from the movie (two-foot-tall face of helen mirren on your wall! not creepy at all!), and dos equis won a pair of tickets for the edward scissorhands play at the orpheum theatre. he said he knew before the numbers were announced that he was going to win the tickets... oddly, so did i. [cue danny elfman soundtrack] yee hee...hot date in the tenderloin tomorrow night!