Mmm. Refreshing!

I just ran across this article about how you can be barred from entering the Olympics if you are toting the wrong type of refreshment. Pepsi is verbotten.

I have just googled and pulled up an image of the Chinese Track team, in competing in the relay for the 2008 Olympics. See below for the future of the Olympics:

Dream - Effects of Typhoid vaccine

I was at my childhood house, and Bill Tedford (a friend who I talked to yesterday about taking our old TV) was staying with me. I went inside, parking my new gold Mercedes Benz behind my current BMW in the driveway. As I parked, I realized, that my two left tires were flat, and they looked like ripped open baseballs; the tires were split open and the wire and "tire-stuffing" was coming out. A little later, inside I realized that someone was driving off with my MB. I called 911 on the home land-line phone but Bill was on the line. I asked him to hang up immediately, thinking if I could get the police soon, a cop could get to her before she left Four Hills, (where I grew up when I was a kid) but Bill wouldn't leave the line. He didn't understand that I needed to call the police, so he didn't understand that I needed him to get off the phone. So, I got into my BMW and called 911 from my cell phone and sped after the car so I could track them. The 911 gave me some recording and I had to wait for them. I put my phone on speaker mode and put it in my cup holder so I could drive fast, weaving in and out of traffic. Like in the movies, gravel was spitting out of my rear tires, and I drove on the shoulder of the road. I tried tracking them down, but made a wrong turn and had to back track.

I thought about where the person might have gone and tracked the car to the theater district. (There is no such thing in Albuquerque) I found the car in a parking structure, and proceeded to track down this black woman (wearing a bright lemon yellow dress, and completely shaved head) in a dressing room waiting to on to stage. Trying to explain the theft, she told me that she had a friend, who knew me that told her that I wasn't using the car so she thought she would take it for a while. by this time, there was a short, pale middle aged cop with me (looked vaguely like a pasty, doughy Kevin Spacey). I brought him into the room and showed him the keys on the table and he started to arrest her. She protested and tried to squirm away. . "See! I fixed both tires." and I had to admit that she had.

She continued to pull away and he hit her. She said that she wasn't going to take that and she hit him back He forced her down onto the ground and repeatedly punched her kidney with a very solid fist - the thud of the impact echoed in the room like a drum. She lay there and he stood up, with a look on his satisfied expression on his face that read "Finally!" He turned and started to walk towards me straightening his shirt. Behind him she got up off the ground and grabbed a big pillow and started towards the cop. I yelled "Look out!" and he turned.

I grabbed both sets of keys and headed for the door -- I just wanted to get out of the room. I was in the hall when I heard a gunshot and then a squishing sound. Calmly, the cop walked out of the room and put on a navy blazer and said in a tone of voice that conveyed a calm, matter-of-fact smugness "Self-Defense" but I knew that he had killed her to avoid having to deal with her more. She was fighting back and he just killed her to avoid having to deal with it anymore. I didn't want to challenge him because I knew he might do the same to me to cover up. I knew this was a bad place to be. I wanted the dream to end, so I forced myself to wake up.

Somehow this is linked to another dream I had last night. There was an upset middle aged woman planning an event, and being very uptight because her last caterer that was one of the 911 terrorists that took all of her Slim-fast diet drink (cases of it) to go get ready for a cruise. Instead he just took it and bombed the world trade center. She was upset because she had trusted someone and tried to help them get ready to look good, but he had betrayed her, and taken all of her Slim-Fast drink.

Work

It has been a weird work week for me. I have been traveling more than I normally do -- two trips in one week, once to Detroit and once to Raleigh. Projects have been converging, beginning and otherwise keeping me on my toes. Which is actually, the way I like it -- I have long since known that idleness is my prelude to depression.

(I have always wondered about that. There are lots of possible explanations, but I figure it is just the outcome of having demanding parents and being part of an educational track that used the word "special" far too often. You see, being active leads to things getting done, and that, is the source of my ego. Work product is the fulfillment of my purpose in life. Even though I have read my Weber, it doesn't mean that I can change it.)

Anyway, this week has been the realization that cheeriness is a very powerful. Shockingly so. I performed my meeting version of a double-blind study: one meeting I actively tried to put a zing in my voice. Actually use exclamation points. Use the same exclimation points in my e-mail to set up the meeting. And in weird, freakish way, it worked. The client loved it.

Not two days earlier, almost the exact same meeting was a dud when I was low key and taciturn. Same arguments, same structure, same screens.

Which is a little sad - I am not an effervescent person by nature, so to muster that up for clients all the time is not going to be easy. But good lord, if it greases the wheels this way always, then I will be beaming like Mary-Friggin-Sunshine. Kathy Lee, lookout.

*thinks about that a little more*

Eh.

Me thinks I will look like Nicholson in the first Batman movie - freakish and creepy.

I am just not perky.