I had a dream this morning. I was walking through the downtown area of some city with an unseen person. We were going somewhere specific but we were walking at a leisurely pace. Up ahead, the sidewalk curved around a large department store. I was secretly hoping that we'd take a shortcut through the store, instead of going around it, because I was getting cold. I was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and I was barefooted. Up ahead, two men, engaged in a conversation, were walking toward us. They were dressed the same as I was. I wondered if I was the only one who felt cold. End of dream.

I woke up with the song "You Can't Go Home Again," by Bon Jovi, stuck in my head. I'm not very fond of that song.

Work today started boringly slow. My coworkers and I figured that our patients had gotten an early start on the three day weekend. (A large percentage of our patients are unemployed, however.) Then, at 12:45, the clinic filled with patients and we were stressfully busy for the rest of the day.

This evening was the fifth class in our current session. This session is focused on the seven chakras. (This is the second time since I've been going there that we've had a chakra session.) It's convenient that there are seven classes in a session, and seven chakras, I think. We chanted the sound associated with each chakra, chanting for one minute each.

I learned a fascinating thing about chanting this evening: The founders of yoga realized that chanting creates beneficial vibrations within the body. To them, it was the vibrations of the chanting, rather than words, that was the important thing about the chant. This idea was later confirmed by scientists who discovered that all atoms, including those in your body, have a vibration and that sounds vibrating at the same frequency are healthy for you.

I called in sick from work yesterday and spent most of the day sleeping. During the times that I was awake, I solved a puzzle cache that I'd been working on for a few days. I also started reading The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

This evening, Phillip told me that he's not liking Jennifer Government. He said he finds it depressing instead of humorous. As I tried to come up with a defense, I realized that I couldn't come up with one. Then I realized that maybe I didn't really like the book as much as I'd convinced myself to like it. Maybe I enjoyed the ideas presented in the story much more than the story itself. As I thought about it, I saw that all the best ideas came up early in the book, and that the rest of the book was more or less filler.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is, so far, a nice little quiet story. I started reading it based solely on Barbara's recommendation. She didn't tell me anything about the story, except that she thought I'd like it. It's fun reading a book without knowing what to expect (fiction, biography, comedy, tragedy, etc...) - especially when that book is as good as this one.

I went out this evening and hunted for three geocaches. I wanted Phillip to go with me, but he had some ankle pain and opted to stay home. I found all three caches. The first one was the puzzle cache that I'd solved yesterday. We were the third to log a find. The second was a new cache on Beacon Hill. It brought me to a nice greenbelt that I never knew existed before. It also involved a lot more walking than I was expecting, so it was a good thing that Phillip stayed home. The third cache was very close to the second one. It's been on our to-do list for as long as we've been geocaching, but although it's close to home, it hasn't been close to another cache - until now - so we never got over to hunt for it.

If Chuck were alive he would love this blog.

This morning at work started out very well. I helped start an exciting new committee called "Cultural Diversity." Its goal is to make our clinic more comfortable for as many different cultures as possible - and it defines a "culture" beyond the obvious racial and geographic terms.

Then, in the afternoon, things turned ugly. One patient who had been banned from the clinic, except for scheduled appointments, kept showing up. I paged her Social Worker each time, and the patient would get escorted out - only to return later. Another patient showed up with his typical confrontational attitude, and then left on his own. A third patient got loud and obnoxious, and started annoying other patients in the waiting room. The front desk staff paged the third patient's Social Worker. The Triage Nurse called Security. The Social Worker took the patient into a small privacy cubicle. A second Social Worker arrived for assistance. A Security officer showed up, talked to the Triage Nurse, strolled through the waiting room, and decided that things were under control. Just as the Security officer was walking past the cubicle, toward the elevators, the patient turned violent. The Social Workers ducked out fast enough to avoid either one being assaulted. Two more Security officers arrived. The patient was escorted - forcefully - out of the hospital. We at the front desk now have instructions to call Security instantly if that patient ever returns.

It really saddens me how people manage to mess up their lives.

I never did ask Phillip how he discovered the novel Company, by Max Barry. He checked it out of the library, read it, and then recommended, strongly, that I read it. So I did, and I loved it. Phillip called it "a Dilbert novel." I agree with it. Its send-up of corporate logic was almost (almost, I said) too true to be funny. (My favorite part was the meeting on reducing redundancy, which consisted of a Powerpoint slide show, with the presenter reading the slides aloud, accompanied by paper handouts of the slides.) The basic plot is: The main character, known only as Jones (except to his sister), takes a job at a large corporation in Seattle, named Zephyr Holdings. (The author is Australian.) Jones works in the Training Sales department, which sells corporate training packages. Jones soon discovers that the customers for the training packages are other departments within Zephyr Holdings. Training Sales doesn't even try to sell outside of its own company. Jones thinks that's odd, and then it occurs to him that he doesn't know what Zephyr Holdings does. None of his coworkers do, and no one except Jones seems to care about that lack of knowledge. So Jones goes on a quest to find out.

After reading Company, I checked out an earlier Max Barry novel, Jennifer Government. I finished it today, and I liked it so much that I've recommended, strongly, that Phillip read it. This novel is a little more fanciful, but is just as accurate in its satire as Company. The USA has abolished taxes. The government has become privatized. Consumerism has become all-powerful. The USA is spreading its Federated Economic Bloc worldwide, except for The European Union, and parts of Africa and The Middle East. Australia is a newly acquired USA country. Employees take on the last name of the company they work for. Some of the main characters are: Hack Nike, Billy NRA, Violet ExxonMobil, and Jennifer Government. (Which brought up an interesting point for me. In the story, someone finds someone else through directory assistance. But how did the author imagine that would work? How could you locate someone named John Microsoft, especially with people changing jobs every few years?) People who are stupid enough to be unemployed have no last name. Pepsi schools have cooler uniforms than the McDonald's schools. Jennifer Government's daughter goes to a Mattel primary school, which gives toys to students when they get sick. The Police advertise on TV - their theme song is "Every Breath You Take." The Police will investigate a crime for you if you pay them - but you'll usually have better results through a lawsuit.

Jennifer Government had the same flaw as Phillip and I agreed that Company did: It got too serious at the end. I do recommend both novels, though.