* addendums added "

It's been a rough day in an already rough year.

The first thing this morning, I updated our McAfee virus scan, just as I do every Saturday morning. Everything went as normal, until I rebooted the computer. Then McAfee crashed on every start-up. Suddenly, we had no virus scan. For people who are online a lot, and rely on their computer, a virus scan is not an option. I tried various solutions, but couldn't get it to run. I turned to the McAfee web site, but was told that our version was too old (3 years old) to be supported. So we saw no choice except to buy a new virus scan - an unplanned expense.

We took a cab to Hansel and Lydia's wedding this morning. It was onboard the Royal Argosy. The cab was strictly for convenience, since there's no direct bus from Broadway to the waterfront. (If we'd known Argosy Cruises validated parking, we might have looked into driving.) When the cab driver picked us up, he turned down his radio to a barely audible level. The cab driver was a pleasant fellow, not too talkative, but friendly. We could make out enough of the man's voice coming from the radio to know it sounded Middle-Eastern. Phillip and I generally love Middle-Eastern music.

"You can turn the song back up," Phillip suggested to the driver.

The driver didn't respond. He didn't turn the radio up, either.

"What are you listening to?" I asked.

"The Quran," said the driver.

"Ah!" I said. I was interested in hearing it.

After that, the driver's mood changed. He barely acknowledged us, if at all. When he dropped us off at Pier 56, we both thanked him for the ride. He didn't say anything in response. I told him to have a good day. He didn't respond. I think we offended him. I worried about that for a long time. That's the type of person I am. (Later, I wished I'd said to him, "Well, you don't need to turn it down because of us," instead.)

Hansel and Lydia's wedding ceremony was one of the most un-Inclusive I'd heard in a long time. The pastor even pointed out that "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." (Hansel works with Phillip. I've met him a few times. He's always seemed comfortable with Phillip's relationship with me.) The pastor pointed out that the main purpose of marriage is to procreate, and that it's the wife's duty to obey and serve her husband. He talked a lot about quarrelsome wives. It lowered my already down mood. The cruise around Puget Sound was beautiful, and I enjoyed the company of Phillip's co-workers Bill and Christy, and Bill's daughter Jessica, but I was in a solitary and depressed mood through most of it. We were served a salmon lunch, and then Jessica asked if there was a vegetarian option. There was: a portabello steak. I started to flag down the waitress and ask to have the mushroom instead, but then I decided to go ahead and eat the fish. That's the kind of mood I was in.

After the three-hour cruise, Phillip and I walked up to 4th Avenue to Office Depot. They seemed to be out of the McAfee virus scan, so I bought Norton instead. (I really don't know the difference.)

We caught the bus home, and I spent the next couple of hours installing Norton virus scan. I'm glad it went through with no problems, considering the mood I was in. The new Norton virus scan found 9 potential viruses, even before I updated the virus DAT file. Why hadn't McAfee caught them? Or were they the reason McAfee crashed this morning? Who knows?

* Phillip asked for the following addendums:

1) He was the one who suggested to Jessica that she ask for a vegetarian option, after she didn't touch the clam chowder, and after she commented to him that she hoped the main dish wasn't seafood, too.

2) The salmon was melt-in-your mouth delicious.

More thoughts on flying cars

Last night, I happened upon an interesting show on The History Channel. It was about futuristic technology that's been featured in movies, and is now coming close to reality. I never did catch the name of the show, and I wasn't sure what it had to do with history, but I did enjoy it.

One segment talked about the automated "mag-lev" freeways in the movie Minority Report. It talked about research the University of California is doing on creating a real-life automated freeway. The researchers have a stretch of freeway in San Diego as a test track, and several cars wired up with complicated computers and sensors. On off-peak times they'd send eight or ten cars out on their automated freeway. These cars would zoom along in a line at 60 MPH, just inches from each other's bumpers. The drivers, meanwhile, don't have to drive, since that's done by computer. There were scenes of those drivers sitting in their cars, zipping down the freeway, reading the newspaper, typing on laptop computers, or waving both hands at the camera. The advantage of this technology, I was told, was that by allowing people to drive closer together, freeways could hold more cars, and traffic would flow better. I wasn't impressed. I kept thinking, "A line of people traveling a few feet from each other, reading newspapers. That's a train, only with people sitting farther apart. These people are spending millions of dollars trying to invent something that already exists."

There was another segment on flying cars, like in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or The Jetsons. It, of course, featured the inventor of a flying car that could be in use in four to ten years (claims the inventor). (I'm not sure how old that show was.) But what about the safety of all those people flying over the city, the show wondered. That's where the "air freeway" comes into use. Using computerized controls and satellite tracking, flying cars would be controlled into specific paths and altitudes, possibly without any input from the driver. The drivers could, conceivably, read the newspaper, as the car flies itself over jammed freeways.

I was visiting the web sites of the Seattle Monorail Project and The Monorail Society tonight, and somewhere along the way I ran across a statement to the effect of: Sit back and relax while the monorail whisks you above traffic. Then I remembered last night's show. Flying cars are here! (Or, in Seattle's case, 2007.) What's the difference between an air freeway and a monorail track?

I am constantly reading, but I read slowly. The library really helps me out on both of those issues. I always have a fresh supply of books, and having a deadline on a borrowed book gives me incentive to finish it within a reasonable amount of time (or decide that the book just isn't grabbing me).

I've been reading about the way the new Downtown Library is organized, and I've been hit by the realization that I know very little about how a library works. I'm a whiz at using the library catalog, and then finding a book, but the thing is, I've never understood why books are organized the way they are.

It's odd that with as much use as I've gotten out of libraries, and being a writer, and having two friends who are librarians, that I've never learned how the Dewey Decimal system works. It's always seemed to be enough for me to write the catalog number on a slip of paper and then find the proper shelf. Now the new Downtown Library has taught me the workings of the Dewey Decimal system. Plus, I've learned about the other library system: The Library of Congress, and a little about the differences in the two.

How could I have been so ignorant for so long?

I checked out a collection of Dylan Thomas poems today, and I was faced with another question: Why is poetry classified as non-fiction? I know there's a good reason - I just don't know what it is.

I received a rejection letter - a rejection note, more like it - from Tin House today. I'm not discouraged, though. I think Interview Windows is a good piece. Here comes The Sun.

Anytime I post a dream in this blog, I know that Pet and I will soon be discussing symbolism.

Pet let me go first this time, although she went ahead and said that she saw uncertainty about the present in my dream. She also wondered about the chimpanzees.

This is what I wrote to her:

When I started looking, unemotionally, at the images in the dream, two ideas popped up: a new job, or jail.

The jail idea freaked me out. Am I really thinking about that, and why on earth would I be? The images sort of fit, though: being dropped off on an island (a place that's hard to leave), no one speaking to anyone else, the unseen voices assigning me a task, the communal lunch hall, the uncertainty of it all.

But then I started looking at it emotionally, and the jail idea didn't fit. I woke up feeling that I'd had a pleasant, enjoyable dream. I was dropped off on the island, but it felt like a voluntary thing, like you'd say, "The taxi dropped me off..." I didn't touch on the images of the island in my entry, and I wonder why. It was a beautiful island, with low, rolling grass hills, a few trees, a slight breeze, and a bright blue sky. (I do dream in color.) The work the researchers were doing looked interesting. They looked like they were enjoying their jobs, and I was excited to join in.

No, the more I examine it, the more convinced I become that it was about beginning a new job. The theme of no one looking at me, or speaking to me, was the feeling of being an outsider - the new guy at work. The pot of soup was that feeling of not knowing yet how things run, and being careful not to step on anyone's toes on the first day. (It was an awfully big pot of soup for just one person, and the stack of bowls suggests that it was meant for everyone, doesn't it?)

And the chimpanzees? The padding the voice mentioned seemed to be for my protection against the chimps. Was I being given the most challenging task on the island? I didn't seem scared by that.

I had a pleasant, enjoyable dream this morning. Of course, like most of my remembered dreams, I barely remembered it when I woke up.

I had been dropped off on an island. The island was a research farm, apparently run like a commune. I was being escorted by at least two, unseen, older men. As I walked around the island, I watched people working with various kinds of animals or crops. Everyone I saw was under thirty, and seemed to be very skilled at what they were doing. I saw a wide variety of races and nationalities, but most of the researchers seemed to be Indian women. There was a voice-over, like someone was narrating a letter I'd written to defend the island. "They do research here, but not the bad kind. There's no animal testing, or genetic engineering, or anything like that." (Or words to that effect.) Every once in a while, one of my unseen escorts would comment to the other unseen escorts: "We could have him work in the goat pen." "He might be good with the horses." - then, finally, "We could give him some padding and let him work with the chimpanzees." (That last one was an exact quote from the dream.) There seemed to be some agreement that that would be my assignment. Next, I was in a big room of rough wood walls, like a hand built shack. It seemed to be a dining hall of sorts. All of the young researchers were eating. No one was talking. No one was paying attention to me. Everyone seemed to be eating something different. I didn't know what to do. Did everyone bring their own dinner? A young Indian woman was stirring a large pot of stew (or soup). She dropped a scoop of yogurt (or sour cream) into the stew, and then stepped away from the pot. The yogurt floated for a while, then it sank. I told her that it hadn't seemed to work right. She smiled, but didn't say anything. Then she picked up a bowl and served herself some stew. I looked around the room. No one else was eating the stew. I was confused. Was this a community meal, or had that woman made that large pot of stew only for herself? I stood there, unsure of what to do. Finally, I decided to risk it. I picked up one of the bowls from a tall stack of bowls. The top few were dirty with a fine yellow dust, but I found a clean one a few bowls down. I stood over the pot with a bowl in one hand and the ladle in the other, and looked around the room. No one was noticing me. Then I woke up.

Phillip and I stayed up late last night and watched the DVD of Paycheck. I thought it was a mediocre movie with one fascinating idea: "By seeing the future, you automatically create the future." Still, as I discovered with Saving Private Ryan, sometimes a movie needs more than just a great concept to hold my interest.

I understand that stories that take place in Seattle are often cheaper to film in similar-looking Vancouver, British Columbia. I have to wonder, though, about the reason behind setting a movie in Seattle, and not filming it in Seattle, when the location has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Take out the flyover shot of The Space Needle, and the fake Seattle newspapers, and the movie could have worked just fine without any mention of any city being named.

Having stayed up so late last night, I should have slept in this morning, but I couldn't. It was Phillip's and my turn to do Coffee Hour at church, along with Valerie and Jim, and it was also the day for Writers' Group.

It was a smaller group than normal at Writers' Group. Bernice was out of town, and no one knew where Nancy is. I read The Story of Gladys Night (The Marsupial). It went over well, and Barbara commented favorably on my Dylan Thomas reference.

Don's book is going to be terrfic, when he finally finishes it. I hope it gets published.

There was something different in Writers' Group today. Instead of reading something, Barbara brought out The Observation Deck, and we did a writing exercise. That was fun.

When I got home, I started watching director John Woo's commentary track for Paycheck. It was one of the most tedious commentaries I'd ever tried to listen to. ("I added this martial arts sequence, because Ben Affleck is such a wonderful actor that I thought it would be fun to see such a wonderful actor doing martial arts...") I turned it off after only ten minutes or so. The other commentary track, by screenwriter Dean Georgaris, was much more interesting and informative - but I was glad that he finally got tired of saying, "...and then John Woo came onboard..."