My favorite thing I discovered in the Asian supermarket in The Great Wall shopping mall today was a can of evaporated milk / leche evaporada with a bilingual label in English and Spanish. It was packaged by a company in San Francisco with a Chinese-sounding name, under license from a company in Holland. I wish I would have bought it, just for the mystery value of it.

The Susan Henry library closed on November 3, 2001. The Capitol Hill Branch library opened on the same site on May 31, 2003. The day the Capitol Hill Branch library opened, I went to the Seattle Public Library website and placed on hold the three DVDs in the Trois Couleurs trilogy. Yesterday, I got an email informing me that the first DVD (by coincidence, the first in the trilogy), Trois Couleurs: Bleu had come in. (I think it's such an amazing activity to use the internet to reserve library books. It's even more amazing to reserve a library book that isn't a book.)

I watched Bleu last night, and instantly loved it. I have until August 22 to watch all the extras and commentaries, to learn what I didn't pick up on the first viewing. I didn't know what the story was about, until I watched it. I knew only that it was considered a great movie. (I had the same sort of experience when I read The Sun Also Rises.) That's a thrilling experience, to jump into a story without any knowledge of what's about to happen. (I wish I could have experienced that with Psycho!)

Our Prius was four months old when the Capitol Hill Branch library opened. Today, it's six months old, plus a couple of days. I took it in for the first of its free Toyota servicing. (2,289 miles)

My too-short Beginning Spanish class has been over for a day an a half, and I'm anxious for the next Experimental College schedule to come out, so I can start looking for a next-level Spanish class. Actually, I'd love to take a real college class. One of the cool benefits we University employees get is the ability to attend unversity courses for free, on an available-space basis. The problem I run into, though, is that the University doesn't have many evening classes.

On the last day of Beginning Spanish, we played a game of lotería, and we had an open-book quiz. I was pleased with how easily I got through the quiz, even though I did have to look up every answer. (If it were an actual university course, I probably would have studied more, and I would have more words memorized.) I knew the concept of each answer, even if I wasn't sure of the exact word.

I got caught by the trick question: Translate "Are you from here?" I got the answer right: ¿Está Usted de aquí? But that's not the only answer. My answer means, "Do you live here?" I could also have answered "¿Es Usted de aquí?" (Were you born here?) Or I could have answered "¿Estás de aquí?" (As you'd ask a child.) Or I could have answered "¿Están ustedes de aquí?" (Are you all from here?) Or I could have answered "¿Son ustedes de aquí?" (Were you all born here?) Or I could have answered "¿Eres de aquí?" (Hey kid, were you born here?)

Sometimes, English is unprecise.

Spanish is such a wonderful language.

Song-stuck-in-my-head of the morning is "Caribbean Wind" by Bob Dylan. The strange thing, besides the usual question of why that particular song, is that most of the lyrics sites I've found on the internet, including the official Bob Dylan site, have different lyrics than the ones that exist on the CD, Biograph. (I wonder if Mr. Dylan changed the lyrics on his site to trap other, not approved, web sites.)

Just two of several differences:

On the CD: "She told me about the jungle where her brothers were slain / By the man who invented iron and disappeared so mysteriously"
On bobdylan.com: "She told me about the jungle where her brothers were slain / By a man who danced on the roof of the embassy"

On the CD: "Did you ever have a dream that you couldn't explain? / Did you ever meet your accusers face to face in the rain? / She had lone brown eyes that I won't forget as long as she's gone"
On bobdylan.com : "Would I have married her? I don't know, I suppose / She had bells in her braids and they hung to her toes / But I kept hearing my name and I had to be movin' on"

(Lyrics copyright 1985 Special Rider Music)

I stuck by my pledge to stick to being veggie for the past 7 days. No cheating. It was easy. I have considered myself lacto-ovo vegetarian for about 12 years. I am still tempted by meat, though.

Here's another aspect of human nature I have yet to understand:

Patients walk from the elevator, down a short hallway, past the restrooms, to check in at our clinic. (There is no way to get to the check-in desk at our clinic without passing the restrooms.) Then they check in, and we invite the patient to have a seat in our waiting room. Here's the part I don't get: The patient will then tell us that they're going to restroom, and they'll be right back. It happens all day long, every single day.

Why not stop into the restroom before you get to the clinic?

I once guessed that patients were afraid of missing their appointment if they made any detours before checking in. But even patients who arrive two hours early for their appointment will backtrack to the restroom.

No deseo estar aquí hoy.

Tonight is the last night of Spanish class, and 6 o'clock cannot get here soon enough. This day is draggin'.

The 43 bus I rode home this afternoon broke down three times! According to what the driver told us, the bus overheated. It first happened right after we crossed 19th. BAM! The bus suddenly lost power, as if it had hit a dead spot in the wires where no dead spot should be. The driver pumped the power pedal, and nothing happened. Then the bus regained power, but lurched forward in rapid little sputters. So the driver told us we'd have to sit for four minutes. She pulled the poles, and we sat there, blocking our half of Thomas Street. Several passengers got out and started walking. Four minutes passed, the driver put the poles back on the wires, and we sped past all those former passengers who were walking down the sidewalk. We made it as far as the Safeway stop on John and 15th when the bus started sputtering again. So we sat there, waiting for the bus to cool down. An 8 stopped behind us, and several passengers got off to change busses. I would have done the same thing, except that I was working on the story I may or may not read at the next writers' group, and I figured I didn't have time to gather things up before the 8 pulled on around us. Several passengers got out and started walking down the sidewalk. Our bus regained its power, and we took off. It was downhill from there, so we coasted easily past the former passengers who were walking down the sidewalk. One guy on the sidewalk got mad and started yelling for the bus to stop. The bus, however, was between stops and we zoomed on without stopping. John Street leveled off right before Broadway, and we would go no further. I walked home from there. I got home 15 minutes later than I normally would.

(Please, please, please, never let my life get so out of control that a 15 minute delay could have any threat of ruining it.)

I found an old copy of New Times magazine on my way to work this morning, and learned about the concept of greenwashing.

I am not convinced that squirrels do not travel in packs. What else would explain why some mornings I see squirrels everywhere on campus, and then on other mornings they are nowhere to be seen? They must all be in the same place.

It's rare that I remember a dream in such detail. It's rare that I remember a dream at all.

I was with a small group of friends on a tour of an unfamiliar city. We were sitting at a table in a classy restaurant. Cream pie had just been served. Someone in my group, who looked a lot like my brother, explained that he didn't want to eat his pie, so that he would have room for desert at the next place we visit. I seemed to be the only other person who understood that logic. The rest of my party continued to be confused. ("How can you be too full for desert here, but not too full for desert later?") While they were trying to figure it out, the guy who looked like my brother was eating his pie.

Next, we were driving through a deserted city, which looked sort of like Portland, Oregon, at dawn. We were trying to follow directions. ("It says to turn left at a sign that says, 'EAT'" "There's the sign!" "Where? I still don't see it.")

Next, we were shipwrecked on a deserted island. It was a remote island with a little bit of beach, but mostly it was covered with large, jagged, (volcanic?) black rocks. The was a line of jagged rocks jutting out into the ocean. No one in our group seemed terribly concerned about us being there. We calmly discussed where we might be, and what we should do to get rescued. I looked to my right and saw a person water skiing behing a speed boat. The water skier was waving. Beyond the water skier was another water skier, waving behind a speed boat. I stepped up on top of a rock and saw that beyond the line of jagged rocks was huge, well-populated beach that looked like a resort. As we climbed over the rocks to the larger beach, one person in our party - a short woman with a Russian accent - was telling us how much we were going to like this place. Everybody is so friendly, and not stuck up at all, she cheerfully informed us. (Apparently, the story of being shipwrecked had been dropped.)

Then the alarm woke me up.

I have tried:

1) Reinstalling Netscape 7
2) ScanDisk
3) Disk Defragmenter
4) Virus scan
5) and, finally, uninstalling Netscape 7, rebooting, and reinstalling it

and still Netscape Mail crashes on startup. This confirms what I've suspected from the beginning of the troubles. It is a fault of Microsoft Windows, possibly with its registry. I don't know how to fix that. So I'll continue to use Netscape 4.7 Messenger in conjunction with the Netscape 7 browser, which works just fine.