get a load of last night's dream! a hefty mash-up of every possible weird thing my subconscious could cook up:
anyway, i arrived in this burmese village with nothing on me: no camera, not even local currency. it was a crowded market place, just a long strip of land with rice paddies on either side, and people with set up stalls selling stuff. i lock my bicycle by a fence and went wandering. the place is a lot crowded than i remembered, not the sparse landscape of old. without my camera i feel like the trip is wasted and i don't want to see too much without having it. people don't seem to notice me too much even though i'm not wearing the indigenous clothes. maybe without my camera i don't look too touristy.
up in the sky i see a large white bird flying overhead, what i first thought was a gull but appears to be a stork. then later i see another large bird, pink this time, and i knew right away it was a flamingo.
there are also horrible droning sounds in the air, as aircraft pilots do their fight training over a crowded civilian area. the planes look futuristic, or at least not american. russian MIGs? at one point one of them fly within yards overhead. the crowd collectively gasp, but everyone is smiling, not realizing how close we all came to dying.
another sound is the incessant noise of metal clinking, and there is a large metal structure (like 20+ stories tall), either a mobile statue (a hammer striking an anvil?) or a oil drilling rig.
i go back to retrieve my bicycle but i can't find it. i'm being to think it might've been stolen. wandering around, i see a foreign face and i remember that's the man i'm supposed to talk to, but i have to find my bike first.
soon it grows dark. i get a sense of deja vu, as once again i'm stranded in a strange village without money and i have no place to stay. i decide to walk the strip one more time in search of my bicycle. when the place gets dark it gets seedy. a large burmese man walk up against me and mumbles something in burmese. i don't speak his language but i can tell he's trying to offer me something illegal, probably prostitutes. i wave my hand in refusal and quickly walk away.
i see well-lit signs, including a large mcdonalds M and a fried chicken place. this place has gotten really commercialized since my last visit (which is impossible, because i've never been here before). i also see a sign for a guesthouse.
i reach all the way to the outskirt of town, where i see an old soldier, not burmese but i can't tell his nationality. he's dressed like a bomb diffuser and his face is dirty from being on the ground all day. he looks tired and kind of shuffles about in the hallway. we smile to each other as we pass by. when i get to the end of town, i see it's barricaded, and a car drives by shooting as soldiers fire back. it's a war zone. i turned back the other way. i see the bomb expert i just passed, except something has happened. now he's nothing more than a pair of feet and a hat, but he's still walking. he slowly goes underneath a tank, mumbling something to himself. he doesn't know he's died yet.Â
my roommate was back at home this morning but i didn't bother getting up until after he left for work. it was actually warm for a change (relatively) with temperature in the 50's courtesy of a southern front that also brought in some overcasting cloud cover. i left the house via bicycle to pick up my prescription from rite aid.
it wasn't supposed to rain so i took the motorcycle to belmont. i continued with my vacuuming, this time underneath the dining room bureau and under the sofa, where there was enough dog hair to practically form a fur carpet.
we had peking raviolis for dinner. sometime after dinner, hailey began barking loudly after suddenly waking up from sleeping on the sofa. i looked outside the window and saw a car slowly driving along the street then parking. 
i figured it was a neighbor but i didn't see anyone getting out. that's when i looked on the doorstep and realized we'd accidently left outside a big box of empty aluminum cans as well as an air compressor. whoever was in the car must've either tried to take the cans or the compressor but got spooked when he heard the barking. my father went out and brought everything inside before the car decided to leave. not sure how hailey knew there was somebody on our doorstep, either she heard something or smelled something. for a dog who can sometimes be easily frightened, she's actually a pretty good guard animal.
while waiting for my water to boil so i could make some tea, i tried to remove the axle nut from the front bike wheel one more time. basically throughout this whole past weekend i've been engaging in a test of strength whenever i had some free time. every once in a while i'd dribble some triflow lubricant into the assembly in the hopes of freeing it from the rusty grip. not sure what it was tonight, maybe a combination of triflow working its lube magic or maybe an inspirational fit of unusual hand strength, but i managed to move the nut on the axle by a fraction. that gave me the confidence that it could be done, and after a few seconds more of straining and swearing and figuring out the right direction to turn, i slowly managed to work the nut off the axle. that was enough excitement for one evening. i'll remove the wheel properly tomorrow morning, as well as the fender so i could try fitting it on my trek bike.
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my roommate came home around 8:30. he fixed myself a simple sandwich for dinner then spent the rest of the evening pulling photos off of his memory card. while watching an edited version of fight club, i taught him some useful censor-derived euphemisms like the classic "forget you," which he told me he'll incorporate into his everyday speech from now on. later he was mesmerized by alton brown's infinitely complicated american pie recipe.