And it goes on and on and onTwo nights ago, I stayed up to watched the total lunar eclipse between 12:30 AM and 3:30 AM. It was the first thing of astronomical significance I've ever stayed up to observe. I stepped outside my house about five or so times during this three-hour period to gaze up at the full moon (a couple times with binoculars) and watch the earth's shadow slowly engulf it. It was cool seeing the moon turn reddish brown once the earth's shadow completely covered it. Googling, I learned that the moon appears red because the earth's atmosphere bends sunlight, causing the red light to shine on the moon. Without an atmosphere, the moon would have appeared "pitch black." (Source: Astronomy magazine) Anyhows, after staying up really late to watch the lunar eclipse, I've woken up past noon the past two days (yesterday and today). Today, I actually woke up around noon, and then I went back to sleep and had a dream. My dad, my mom, my brother, and I entered the lobby of a high rise and saw a dead gynecologist roll out of the elevator on a stretcher. Not sure how I knew it was a gynecologist (not even sure what a gynecologist is), but in my dream, I knew it was. The receptionist told us to hold on as he went to investigate. He stepped into the elevator, and my dad, my brother, and I followed, telling him we would go with him. The elevator had two vertical columns of floor number buttons. Somehow, we knew we had to go to floor 30. The receptionist (accidentally?) pressed floor 29, which was at the bottom of the left vertical column, and then I pressed floor 30, which was at the top of the right vertical column. We reached floor 30, and the elevator opened into an apartment suite, similar to how the elevator in Inception opens into the hotel room when it reaches the basement floor. A black man holding a knife was sitting in a chair at the dining table. There was another man lying on his side on the ground behind the table, also clutching a knife. We told the men we could help them. Just put down your knives. They did. They got in the elevator and we rode down to the lobby floor. They were unemployed and poorly educated, but we told them there were agencies that could help them out. They didn't need to resort to violence. They agreed. The lobby of the hotel turned into the lobby of an airport. We went up to a check-in counter and got our tickets for a flight from "New York to Detroit. No, I mean Chicago." It was to Chicago, but I said Detroit a couple times at first by accident. The flight departed at 8:00 AM. It was 8:04 AM by my watch, which is two minutes fast, so the flight had already left two minutes ago. Nonetheless, I still started running toward terminal 69, hoping there was a delay and the flight hadn't left yet. I followed the signs for terminal 69, running up escalators and through a series of sky tunnels that reminded me of a complicated highway intersection of on and off ramps and connections. After running for a while, I still wasn't able to locate the entrance to terminal 69 and gave up. What do you do if you miss your flight? Is your ticket still valid for the next flight that still has room or have you just lost several hundred dollars? While pondering these questions, my family starts looking for a restaurant to eat in. Looking around, I suddenly see that there are tens of restaurants all around us, in this multi-floor airport that now looks like the Mall of America, with six or seven floors, each along the edges of a rectangle, with the interior area being the vast empty space that spans from the ground floor to the glass roof above. We're looking for this particular Indian restaurant, but we walk around a bit and we still can't find it. After cycling back to the same place, I finally ask an older gentleman if he knows where this restaurant is. He does. He starts giving a complicated set of directions, going through this sky tunnel and that one and up this elevator and down that one, to get to the restaurant. Before he's done explaining, I wake up. |