srah blah blah

Can you dig it? Yes I can.

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:14:38 -0500

"I have it all planned out! So just want to warn you guys... when I come to Philadelphia for Fourth of July weekend, I will be wearing nothing but red, white and blue the whole time."

Normal reactions to this statement would include:

"I rescind the invitation to Philadelphia."
"You can come with us, but you have to walk ten feet behind us at all times."
"Does everyone want to bring their own paper bag to wear over their head, or should I bring one for each of us?"

Fortunately, my friends' reaction was:

"Awesome. I will go to Old Navy and stock up on red t-shirts."

And that is why I keep them.

When we get there, I shall test their patience further by referring to the city as "foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia", singing the theme from "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" anytime anyone mentions the west side of that city, and pointing out anything and everything I see that is related to the song "Saturday in the Park" by Chicago, since the Fourth of July falls on a Saturday this year, and we will undoubtedly spend some time in a park.

So the question is, why do they keep me?

Indeed.

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:08:36 -0500

Round about map point #11 or #8 (somewhere just north of Touchdown Jesus) is the I-70/I-75 interchange, where construction was already underway when I moved here in 2005. I have never seen any work being done on it, and construction is still underway four years later. There are some signs that whatever they're doing may be inexplicably nearing completion, though. So I'm pretty sure the construction is being done by Oompa Loompas. No one goes in... no one comes out... and yet the construction/confection is (slowly) produced.

Dream

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:25:58 -0500

A few nights ago I had a dream where my friends and I all robbed a bank, and I was the only one who got caught, because the rest of them wore masks or kept their heads down, but the security camera at the bank was positioned just right so that it picked up my face through the getaway car's sunroof. We were all in high school and we just went to class as usual. The school paper had identified me as the person on the security camera, but the cops hadn't come for me yet. I knew that at any moment, they could show up. I just kept going to class as usual.

Robin had graffitied all over the school, "Sarah, could you pick up my homework for me?" but I couldn't figure out which homework she wanted me to pick up. I knew it was important because the graffiti was everywhere, but I didn't know which class she was talking about. Someone said it was probably math, and I said, "Am I even IN a math class?" They said, "If you don't KNOW if you're in a math class, you're probably not doing very well in it." So I went to class. Turned out it WAS math class, and I had gotten a 45% on the last test. The teacher sat down and wanted to talk to me about the different sections of the test. Turned out I lost all those points because there were three parts to the test. You weren't allowed to use negative numbers in the first part, because it was some kind of equation that didn't allow negative numbers. So I got a point off every time I used a negative number, and since this equation was 1/3 of the test, it was a really LONG equation to solve, and I used negative numbers all over it. Then I never even got to the third part because I was working on the other two parts for so long. The teacher seemed to be satisfied by my explanation and told me to pay better attention in the future.

Then the math teacher took us to this marketplace and set us all loose to choose a culture on which we would have to write a report about their relationship to animals. I asked her if I could do New Zealand or Ireland and she didn't like Ireland until I explained that their pagan history included animal-related folklore, and she seemed to accept that. Also in my dream, the Maori had some kind of turtle-based creation myth.

That's Titles. Famous Titles.

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:47:25 -0500

Once I got it into my head that I was actually going to study for Jeopardy! (inspired mainly by reading Prisoner of Trebekistan and learning about the ridiculous amount of preparation and drilling that Jeopardy! champion Bob Harris has done over his Jeopardy! career) I went out and invested in many study materials, most of which I got from the references section at the end of Prisoner.

Books I've read in the last few months that I consider to be preparation for Jeopardy!:

Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! (must-read)
Secrets of the Jeopardy Champions (must-read)
Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac: 8,888 Questions in 365 Days (working on this one little by little)

On the "to read/skim/watch/research" pile:

If you're not going to buy these books from Amazon via the links above, I recommend Better World Books. I bought most of these books used through them, and the most I paid was $5.98. I got nine books for less than $40!

I shall take Balloons for $800, if you please.

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:26:30 -0500

So it's about time I sat down and wrote about my experience trying out for Jeopardy!, since almost a month has passed and I keep telling bits of the story over and over again. Some parts have already been told on Twitter (these are copied below), but the whole thing needed fleshing out. So finally it's here! Lucky you.

Oh, so THAT's why I wasn't nervous about presenting about #NAFSA09... I was saving it all up for Monday's Jeopardy! audition. Eek eek eek! - 2:58 PM May 30th

I went out to the NAFSA conference May 25-29. I flew back on Friday and didn't get in until about 1am. I had presented on Thursday afternoon, and was not very nervous at all about presenting. On Saturday, I discovered that this was because I'd been saving all my nerves for Jeopardy!.

I should be packing up and leaving for Chicago, but instead, I'm stressing out about Jeopardy! and sitting on the couch. Productive! - 3:03 PM May 30th

I slept in Saturday morning, then it took me until fairly late in the afternoon to finally get in the car and leave for Chicago, because I was so nervous about forgetting to pack something. I don't know what I would forget to pack, since the main thing I had to remember was my invitation, which I had received as an email and could easily reprint¹.

In Chicago. Primary reason: torture @runningrockstar's cats. Secondary: audition for Jeopardy!. - 9:12 PM May 31st

Fortunately, Roommate² (who I was staying with) was very good at distracting me from my Jeopardy! stress, as were her poor cats. We went to the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, a German festival and a karaoke night. This kept me pretty busy and my mind pretty occupied until Monday morning.

FREAKING OUT and trying not to puke. #jeopardy! - 2:36 PM Jun 1st

I'm a naturally nervous person, but usually my nerves fall in an elevated-but-manageable range. As I headed to the Westin, I got more and more nervous the closer I got, to the point where I thought I might have to pull my car over and throw up boneless buffalo fingers³ all over Michigan Avenue. Fortunately I didn't get to that point, but as I parked my car in some $15/hour parking garage (or whatever it was) and walked up the street to the Westin, I did think my legs might give out.

When I got to the Westin I stood around in the lobby for a while, looking for signage and finally gave in and asked someone at the desk. She sent me to the elevator. When I got off the elevator, there were lots of business-casual-dressed people sitting around. I sat down, then started to get nervous again so I headed off to the bathroom. In the bathroom, I had a little talk with myself, tried to steady my breathing, brushed my hair, ate some mints, put on some more lipstick and was a little cooler and more relaxed when I was done.

I should mention at some point - and this is as good a point as any - that I had put a lot of thought into what I was going to wear to the audition. The most informative blog post I'd read about Jeopardy! auditions talked about wearing television-ready clothes, so I had to find something that I felt comfortable in, looked pretty good in, but which didn't involve too much white or bold patterns. So I wore a short-sleeved pinkish-red sweater, a black skirt and the shoes I like to think of as my Power Shoes. Unfortunately the Power Shoes are noticed only by women and the Jeopardy! people who were working with us were all male, so they were moot. They make me feel good, though, so hopefully that confidence came through. In the end, I think that for the audition stage, I could have gotten away with being well-dressed but not necessarily excluding patterns or white. Since I auditioned, I have been paying more attention to the outfits that the contestants wear when they're on stage, and white and patterns aren't as noticeable as I'd have expected there, either. I also wore my glasses, which I deliberated over for a long time, then made Roommate help me deliberate over at lunch. Finally I decided that having an obvious accessory like that might make me more memorable, and I think my glasses make me look slightly older. If I make it to the show, I would probably wear contacts, just to avoid any problems with glare.

Eventually the Jeopardy! producers and auditioneers (I don't remember everyone's title so I am going to call them by the made-up word "auditioneers" from now on) came back from lunch and we got our Fancy Jeopardy! Pens⁴, filled out our contestant information sheets, and had Polaroid mugshots taken, presumably so that the auditioneers could remember us by face as well as by vital statistics once the auditions were over.

We went into the room, where there were glasses and pitchers of water, although not enough for me who - unbeknownst to me at the time - was coming down with The Death Plague. The auditioneers introduced themselves, told us how things were going to work, and then we went around the room and introduced ourselves. We told each other our names and where we were from, and I think all the rest of the introductions were left for our "interviews" later. There were water bottles for the two people who came the longest for the audition (Florida and Texas, if I remember correctly).

The next part was the written test. There were 50 questions, which were projected onto the screen one by one. We didn't have to answer in the form of a question and spelling was not taken into account. There were two or three that I couldn't answer at all, and a few more that I guessed at. I made a little note to myself of the clue for one of them, which was about a singer who had a name that was "not Mich Igan or I Daho" (or something like that) and came back to it whenever I had a little extra time between questions. Finally, by singing "Fifty Nifty United States" in my head, I realized it was Flo Rida. There were a few others like that, that I could get after a little thought, but probably wouldn't have come up with fast enough if I were on the show.

The impression I got was that the written test was basically to ascertain that a) you are the same person who took the online test and b) the online test wasn't a fluke. I don't think our results on that test directly affect whether or not we'll be on the show.

The next section was the mock game. The auditioneers called us up in groups of three, then projected a computerized Jeopardy! game onto the screen. We rang in with the buzzers and the auditioneers let us know if we should ring in faster or if we were ringing in too early or if we should speak up when we answered the questions. I felt pretty confident about my buzzing, but it was hard to tell because the person who rang in first was not always the person they called on - they wanted to give everyone a chance. We answered ten or fifteen questions, and if none of the current three players knew the answer, the auditioneers would throw it out to the rest of the group. When you were standing up there playing and didn't know the answer and a chorus of "FRANZ KAFKA"s (or whatever) came up at you, it felt like everyone in the room knew the answer except you, but when you were in the audience it was clear that everyone had different strengths and knew some and didn't know others.

After we played our mock game, the auditioneers had us lay down our buzzers and then interviewed us, much like Alex does on the show. Besides the "golden ticket" invitation, we were also asked to come prepared with five stories or facts - the kind of thing that Alex talks about when he's introducing you on the show. First we introduced ourselves (many people talked about what they do for a living, I blathered on about being a study abroad advisor and having lived in France or something) and then the head auditioneer would ask us a question meant to lead into one of our stories. I had written all of my stories as "teasers" anyway. The one he picked for me was the one I wrote as "I went on a crime spree in England at age two." It was interesting listening to the other contestants' stories - one was a writer of erotica, another was a high school teacher who was really into Batman, another owned a gelateria in Louisville and one was a recently-unemployed unemployment lawyer. Those are probably the ones I'm most likely to recognize if they show up on the show.

I felt relieved once I'd had my turn up there. I didn't embarrass myself too much - there were categories about British history and classical music which I did pretty well in. One thing I noticed was that during the written test and the mock game, questions came up that I had just studied recently. It was good to have them fresh in my mind! I had decided, when I first got the invitation, that there was no way to study for Jeopardy!, but then changed my mind about a week and a half before the audition and started cramming⁵.

Didn't puke! I actually felt pretty confident. I won't know the result unless I get The Call. - 6:08 PM Jun 1st

So, it went well. I had thought that at some point in the audition process, we would be divided up into Contestant Pool Members and Try Again Next Years. It turned out that anyone who came to the audition would be in the contestant pool, which means that the pool is bigger than I expected, and therefore there's less chance that I'll make it on the show in the next 18 months (which is the contestant pool period). If I don't get the call within 18 months, I can take the online test again in January 2011. I don't think I'd mind too much if I don't get the call, because that will give me another opportunity to go through the process, get more confidence and buzzer practice, study and prepare.

One thing I would change: I wish I had thought to ask if I could take pictures. There was nothing anywhere in documentation or signage that said that you couldn't, and I think it would have been fun to have that. If I get to audition again, I will try to remember to ask about it. I'd also like to plan my visit differently if I get another opportunity - some of the other auditioners were talking about going to a quiz night at a bar in Chicago that evening, but I had to head back to Ohio to go to work the next day. I'd like to have an opportunity to get to know more of my fellow Jeopardy! hopefuls.

So, I think I've covered pretty much everything about the whole day, except my GPS trying to drown me in the Chicago River on the way out of town. Any questions? Please phrase them in the form of an answer.

¹ I kept thinking of this as my "golden ticket." I did think about printing this out on yellow paper and then I decided it would be too dorky and I would die of dorkiness.

² For those of you who have started reading this blog since 2002 (there must be some of you out there), Roommate is my roommate from our sophomore and senior years of college. She is called Roommate in the blog because that is how I think of her and address her and sometimes I forget that she has an actual first name. It is Sarah, hence confusion, hence "Roommate."

³ Not recommended as a pre-audition food. If I'd realized how nervous I was going to get, I would have had... I don't know, soup.

⁴ I don't know what I've done with my Fancy Jeopardy! Pen. I still have the one I got when I tried out for College Jeopardy! ten years ago, but I seem to have put the new one somewhere. I'll find it eventually.

⁵ A post about study materials to follow.

She's not only merely dead/ She's really most sincerely dead

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:18:00 -0500

I have some kind of cold/virus/death plague, which has been with me since I came back from Chicago, if not longer. Right now, I am in the phlegmy-fatigued stage¹. I am feeling so tired/lazy right now that I don't have the energy to fill up my hot water bottle and am instead hoping for a stray cat to find its way into my apartment and go to sleep on my chest.

I don't even know if a hot water bottle-slash-cat is good for anything I have, but at this point I'm about to start resorting to mustard poultices and eyes of newt.

Tales of Jeopardy! will follow if I survive.

¹ The symptoms change enough from day to day to require me to keep having to buy additional medications to cover them. If I were some kind of conspiracy theorist, I would theorize that the over-the-counter-medicine companies were deliberately manipulating my symptoms.

It's funny because it's bigger than a normal hat

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:12:20 -0500

Congratulations! You have been selected for a follow-up appointment at an upcoming Jeopardy! contestant search for the Chicago area, exclusively for those who successfully passed the online test. This is the next step in becoming a Jeopardy! contestant. We have reserved the following appointment for you...

I took the Jeopardy! online test on January 27th, and after looking at the answer key someone had posted on the Ken Jennings messageboards, decided that I had failed by one or two questions. Ah well, I thought, There's always next year.

It would seem that I had passed after all, because I received the aforequoted email from Jeopardy! on Monday, inviting me to audition for the show. Great! I thought, going through my calendar in my head. My schedule should be fairly free for the next few months, except when I'm at a conference in Los Angeles, May 25-30.

When I read on, I discovered that the proposed audition was Thursday, May 28 at 3pm (CDT) in Chicago. I will not only be at the conference in Los Angeles on May 28, but I will be presenting that day, from 2-3:15pm (PDT).

I tried to justify skipping out on the presentation to go audition for Jeopardy!, but it didn't really work. I was all ready to resign myself to having to wait and try again when I noticed that at the end of the email, it said:

Should you have a major conflict with the time and date provided, you may respond to this email to explain the nature of the situation.

I was sure my conflict would not be "major" enough for the important bigwigs at Jeopardy!, but I figured it was worth a shot and I would kick myself if I didn't even try. I responded to the email and explained my situation. The following afternoon, I got another email:

We are holding auditions in Chicago May 27th - June 2nd. Would another date work better for you?

YIPPEE!

It's now all confirmed: I will be auditioning June 1 instead.

Now off to pick out a TV-ready outfit¹ and come up with some better-than-average² "one-liner" interview stories! Any suggestions or advice are welcome!

¹ It has been pointed out to me that the "bottom" of a Jeopardy! outfit isn't all that important, since you're hidden behind the lectern. I think it would, however, be fairly important to wear something on the bottom for the audition at the very least.

² Not difficult.

Hey, have you noticed that I haven't blogged recently?

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:24:08 -0500

The reasons for my lack of blogging are asmanyasIcomeupwithrightnowfold:

I have been trying to get myself to write a long post with lots of annoying formatting, all about basketball. I have not been succeeding in getting myself to write that, and I haven't been able to write anything else while I had that idea clogging up the pipes.
I have ANOTHER post in my head that I have to get out on ~~paper~~ blog and which is still fermenting in my mind-grapes, clogging more stuff up.
I upgraded Movable Type recently and it did some weird thing where it's hiding all comments on old posts, which makes me sad because the comments are my favorite part of most of my blog posts.
I think the only way to fix this comment problem is to update my templates, which is probably going to be an annoying process and will result in my blog looking different.
I am resistant to change.
Plinky (this blog-prompting thing) is not compatible with Movable Type, which makes me hesitant to do all this Movable Type upgrading when I could just move to WordPress.
Moving to WordPress would be another huge headache with the potential for loss of information, blog posts or comments, which is an even bigger risk/annoyance than changing my templates.
I am resistant to change.
There's so much more time in the day for blogging when you have no friends. Stupid friends, making me change priorities!
I found out that Richard Ayoade is married and life is no longer worth living.
I've been Twittering and don't seem to have much to say that's more than 140 characters long.

I shall endeavour to do better in the future, since I know that all of the readers I have left are waiting with baited breath for my next post.

The best-laid plans of mice and men and girls who look like mice gang aft agley

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:12:25 -0500

I had intended to complete this blog post before March Madness began. And then I intended to complete it before March Madness ended. Neither has happened, so this year I'm bringing you my March Madness predictions (or rather March Madness hopes and dreams, because I know that my bracket is never realistic) after you all know the results¹. Exciting, right?

Read on for more, MacDuff.

¹ If you are basketball fans, which, judging by the fact that you are reading my blog, I am assuming you're not.

Dream

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:51:22 -0500

I dreamt last night that my dad and I were driving along Platt Road when I saw a giant tapir by the side of the road. I made my dad turn around and go around the block somehow so that we could see it again and I could take a picture, but apparently the tapir was a sort of were-tapir or shape-shifter, so sometimes it was a tapir and sometimes it was human and sometimes it was somewhere in between. When we got back around, we got out of the car to take a picture and it turned part-human and started savagely attacking people, biting and tearing at them and killing people left and right. My dad and I walked quickly away - not running, because we didn't want to attract its attention. As we were walking all the way around Colonial Square to avoid running into the tapir again, somehow we decided that it only attacked people that it comsidered "bad" but we didn't know if it would consider us trying to take a picture of it "bad." So when we got back to Platt, we were trying to avoid it but we were concerned that one of the people in the crowd of people along Platt Road might be the tapir, completely transformed into a human. For some reason we decided that the tapir wouldn't go into crowds of children, so we had to go from group of children to group of children in order to avoid it. I remember being completely terrified.

In the next part of the dream, I was at Albion and I had to get a new mailbox key and forward mail to the old owner of the mailbox. This was not as terrifying.

My name is Srah and I'm here to recruit you!

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 20:35:07 -0500

Oscar time snuck up on me and there are still three more I'd like to see before the night itself. We'll see if I actually accomplish that, with everything else I have to do. In the meantime, you can still enter my Oscars poll. Some people have reported errors in submitting their picks, so if your name is not on the list below, please re-enter!

Trisha
Alfie
Katelin
Jess (fushmush)
Aunt Pam
Sylvie
Jason
Marylene
Bob B.
Erin P.
Mike H.
allthewine

The rest of you have until Saturday night to enter!

Tadpoles is a winner!

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:07:09 -0500

There was an Internet quiz going around several months (years?) ago that was supposed to tell you who was Your TV Boyfriend. I took the quiz and it told me My TV Boyfriend was Jim Halpert. I was less than enthused, especially because this was sometime in season 3, where Jim was kind of a jerk or season 4, where he was just boring. So it got me thinking about who would be My TV Boyfriend if I - rather than an Internet quiz - were doing the picking. I had, after all, just eliminated The Ultimate TV Boyfriend, so who would be better?

So I bring you the ULTIMATE VALENTINE CHALLENGE where fictional TV characters compete to be my Valentine. It is a truly exciting life I lead.

Round I

First up, in the Monday night quadrant of the bracket, we have the How I Met Your Mother showdown. Marshall wins over Barney for being better boyfriend material. He is... not Barney, basically. In the other part of the Monday night quadrant, I will pick Wilson over Kutner, because we have at least seen him in a relationship. I am pretty sure Kutner is in a relationship with an Xbox or something.

Now for the Northeast (Wednesday night) quadrant, we have the Lost showdown with Desmond vs Ben. As much as I love Ben, I think we all saw the episode with the ham. So Desmond it is. And Demetri Martin gets a bye because there's no one else on his show. He's not strictly fictional, but I'm a bit limited in my options on Wednesday night.

On Thursday night we have 30 Rock's Kenneth vs Toofer. Let's see... one has a mouth on his back and freezes up when talking to ladies. The other... well, we don't know much about him relationship-wise, but he is a Harvard man. Toofer advances to the next round. On The Office, we have the stalwart ~~Ann Veal~~ Jim Halpert vs Andy Bernard, who uses cats and a capella music to woo the ladies. This is a pretty tough one actually, and I'm going to go with... the Nard-dog for the surprise win. What an upset!

Friday night, we have Baltar vs Helo. I love Baltar for much the same reason I love Ben on Lost - he's got his own motivations that come into conflict with all the other characters and create drama. However, drama is not necessarily a good quality in a Valentine, so Helo it is. And on Psych, in another come-from-behind win by a sidekick rather than a main character, it's Gus! Because as charming as Shawn is, can you imagine actually dating him?

Round II

Now to determine the Ultimate Monday Night Champion. Will it be Marshall or Wilson? The answer is Marshall, who is adorably schmoopy and loves brunch and commitment, whereas Wilson is all damaged and morose after his relationship with Amber, and never seems to stick with one woman for very long even if she survives.

Wednesday night, our champion is Desmond. Demetri Martin may be a time-travelling gigolo, but Desmond's love for Penny is even more attractive than Demetri in that green plastic hat.

And it's Cornell vs Harvard in the big Thursday night showdown. Basically I see this as a battle between sense and sensibility, and I'm going to have to go with Toofer, because when Andy's emotions are positive, they result in stolen ice swans and when they're negative, the walls had better look out.

Friday, it's Gus. Helo who?

Semi-Finals

Now the different nights of television start to face off!

My justification is the same for both sides of the bracket: I don't want to break up two of my favorite couples on TV, just so that I can take the male half as my valentine. So Toofer and Gus continue.

Finals

Gus wins! Gus wins! Gus is my valentine!

Proof that I am a teenaged girl

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:30:49 -0500

Here is a Wordle of commonly-used words in this blog:

I'm BLOGGIN' here!

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:40:25 -0500

Turns out I made way more progress on the AFI list in January than I'd thought.

88/100

The French Connection (#70)
I think this mostly made the AFI Top 100 list because the car chase was influential on later movie car chases. There wasn't much to the movie, other than chasing. I didn't get to know or care about any of the characters, because it was just chase chase chase. I did like the subway scene, though, with Doyle and Charnier trying to chase/lose each other without letting on that they were aware of each other.
Jaws (#48)
SO SCARY. Good thing I hated going in water already.

I wish the shark had been a little more discriminating in his feeding choices, and had passed judgment on who needed to die, rather than just eating whoever was available. Then he would have eaten the mayor as punishment for wearing those ugly ugly jackets.

Great cinematography, great writing (a good balance of comedy/drama/terror) and not at all what I was expecting. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it and how much it engaged and terrified me.
Midnight Cowboy (#36)
Fascinating characters, but the flashbacks were hard to follow and there were other parts (the "Warholesque" party?) that were confusing. I'd recommend it to others, but I don't feel a need to see it again.
Doctor Zhivago (#39)
First of all, this didn't have NEARLY as many zombies as I expected it to. In three and a half hours, it seems like you could have worked in more zombies. Second, it made Russia look terrible and bleak and made me never want to go there. Third, was I supposed to find this movie romantic? Because I liked Tonya #1 and I thought her husband was an asshole for cheating on her, especially since they never really developed the relationship between Yuri and Lara, and it was sort of a "they love each other because we just told you they love each other" sort of thing. Somewhere in three and a half hours, we could have seen something of them falling in love!

Dreams

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:19:00 -0500

I kept dreaming and waking up last night, so - although there are portions of these dreams that are unrelated - I've divided them into three parts.

Parte the First

I was riding a bus with Adrian Monk¹. I was also a TV detective or mystery-solver of some sort with my own show, maybe sort of like the one on Medium. I looked like Laura Roslin from Battlestar Galactica though. Somehow - whether through a Groundhog Day thing or because we both had psychic powers - Monk and I both knew that he was about to get shot by a bullet ricocheting from somewhere outside the bus, and we tried to stop it even though - like Daniel Faraday on Lost - we knew that there was no way to change the inevitable. I saw the bullet flying through the air in slow motion and saw it hit Monk, at which point I threw myself on him sobbing and told him that I loved him and I had always loved him. The woman in the seat behind him took his wedding ring off, because she felt if I was confessing my love for him as he died, it would be best for the both of us if he weren't wearing it. That made me sob harder and say, "I love you! I love Trudy!" The bus pulled up to my stop, and I was going to get off, and then rethought it and said, "I love you so much! Who cares if I'm late to work? I'll stay with you until the end." Then as the bus was about to pull away, I realized that we were stopped right outside the hospital, and that he might not have to die after all. So I took him to the hospital.

In the next part of the dream, it was twenty years later and we were having dinner at home, but each one of our kids had to sit at their own table - Monk seemed to have lost most of his OCD habits, but the kids had inherited some of them or made up their own, including having to sit at their own tables.

Then we were in the same room, but it was in a restaurant now. I walked into another room where one tomboy daughter of ours was having a fight with her boyfriend (I thought she was a son until she turned around and looked at me) at her own table. One of the waiters said that the restaurant was infested with these creatures that looked like beautiful women in Cats costumes/makeup, although he had captured one and felt he had to show me that it was actually a male.

I walked away and then dropped the contents of my wallet all over some stairs. Some girls helped me pick it up, but one nearby diner stole my credit card and said that she wouldn't give it back to me until she'd confirmed that it was valid.

Parte the Seconde

I dreamt that I had to go to church, so I went to Sunday school instead and was doing some kind of craft project, then we went to a potluck afterwards. I went to drop off my grandma's friend, Rachel Lynde, who blamed me when her all-white pantsuit got dirty from brushing against my car. I ended up back at my grandma's house and somewhere in all of this, my parents went missing. The police and everyone I knew was looking for them, but when we hadn't found them after a certain amount of time, I decided that meant we would never find them. Then I saw them waving through my grandma's back door, but they were all wibbly so I knew that they were ghosts, although everyone else there could see them too.

Parte the Thirde

I was in Grenoble with my sister and we stopped to get a sandwich at this stand because I knew that they put mustard on their cheese sandwiches. I could tell the sandwich lady was annoyed that everyone was ordering in English so I ordered our food in French, but I didn't know how to tell her that my sister wanted "extra onions" so I just said, "more onions" and was very frustrated that I couldn't translate the request exactly. Then I told the lady that this was the only place I kept coming back to, because she was the only one who wasn't mean and didn't make me cry when I tried to order in French. She thought I meant Grenoble, as opposed to her sandwich stand, and recommended that I go on a steamboat river cruise while I was there.

¹ Why was Monk riding a bus? This is out of character.