DanLog the ramblings of Daniel Pettit

Starts off in a high school building second floor looking down a carpeted hallway. Can’t remember the jist of what was going on there but I do remember a few small piles of peoples belongings in the hallway. Two had puppies and one had a kitten, I remember wondering/waiting to see how the puppies would react when they spotted the kitten. Dream jumps to me outside walking along the sidewalk on the side of a highway overpass, I’m wearing a button down dress shirt and nothing else, I’m covered as long as I walk carefully and the wind doesn’t pick up. I’m going to meet with or see if a certain person is in the building at the other side of the overpass. Its about a 1/4 mile away. I don’t remember who or why, but there was a vague feeling that it was someone from my highschool. As I’m walking and trying to keep my package covered I’m thinking to myself why am I out here with no pants – that this is stupid, but it is a struggle to not continue on. Finally my better judgement overcomes this urge to complete my “mission” I turn around and head back.

Now I’m heading back to a hotel. My room is very close to the parking area on the ground floor, but the access door I remeber using before is locked, in fact all the doors are locked because it is the weekend. I have to enter through the main lobby which I do. Once inside I try to find the most direct and least populated route to my room. However it seems that my only way to the room, without having to ask someone to unlock a door for me is to go through the dining room hop up on the table and slide across in between people eating. There was plenty of room to do this maneuver and I managed without drawing more that a curious glance my way. Once over the table I slipped through the curtain covering the back wall, which led to a service hallway. That hallway led to an off limits meeting room, wood paneling red patterned carpet, oversized leather furniture heavy wood tables, Fox hunting oil paintings. I crossed the room and got to the main hotel corridor, the room was only roped off so my exit was easy. I could hear someone in the distance yelling to me that that room is closed, I ignored this as I was long on my way to my room before they could even Identify me.

Finally made it back to my room, my (real) wife was there, the room had similar decor to the meeting room. There was no door to the room, in fact the entire entry side had no wall, just opened up to a small hallway leading to the main one. That small hall only went to our room so it was more private than you would think. The back of the room looked out onto a patio that was enclosed by a heavy lattice. Beyond the patio where landscaped grounds between hotel buildings and concrete walkways. WOKE UP

Now I’ve dug a hole in search of my main sewer line. We had a blockage on the main line a few years ago and the plumber had to pull the toilet in the downstairs bathroom to cable the line. He ran it all the way to the city line. We could hear the snake under the patio and had a good idea where it was, just a matter of how deep. The plumber suggested installing a clean out in the patio so in the future we wouldn’t have to remove the toilet. I thought that wasn’t a bad idea, but wasn’t in any hurry. Well I dug and dug and clink. Oh I hit something I then carefully uncovered not my sewer line but my main water line. Well I guess installing that cleanout isn’t going to be possible with the water line in the way, or maybe it is under the concrete that is left oh well it was worth a try.

I was walking down a sidewalk in a medium sized city, seemed normal enough buildings and houses seemed normal for the USA however they did have the flavor of an older city of the midwest or east coast. Then I started to notice small differences concerning the people I saw on the streets, they weren’t wearing trendy clothing but this could simply be that I didn’t think I was in California, the biggie was no technology. No one had a cell phone or a walkman or ghetto-blaster. There simply was no sign of electronic gadgets. (Now that I’m thinking about it I can’t remember the automobiles, there must have been some but I simply didn’t take notice.) Anyway upon my realization that something was very “off” I proceeded to find a newsstand. I needed to see the date. I was very confident that somehow I had traveled into the past around 1949. I spotted a newstand or corner market as I was walking over there It accured to me that money might be an issue. I had quarters (regular Washington not the state ones) on me however I was thinking to myself – gee when did these quarters come into circulation, will they give me away? Well the money wasn’t an issue as I spotted a couple newspaper copies on top of trashcan. There was a traditional Sunday edition and some Tabloid style paper – they both had the same date which really threw me for a loop. The date had way too many numbers. The year had 5 digits. I wasn’t in the fairly recent past – I was 10,000 years into the future! I was very excited about taking this paper and reading in particular the classified ads. I then woke up before reading further.

Received the automatic cat feeder today and set it up to test over the next 24 hours to check the amount of food dispensed is correct. I was going to bed and heard it running so I went downstairs to check on it and it had gone nuts, it had dispensed about 2 pounds of food. I turned it off and picked up all the stray food. Luckily I had it all sealed up inside a bag (so the cat couldn’t get to it) which helped contain the mess. I hoped that I had set one of the feeding times for too long. That was the problem, only calling it too long would be a monumental understatement. I had set the 11:30am feeding to start at 11:30pm. The feedings are for one minute well 11:30pm to 11:31am is a hell of alota cat food. I’m glad I heard it running as it was about to bust out of the constraints of the bag. The timer is set correctly now so Trouble might get to play with it late tommorrow night.

Waiting waiting in this second story hallway, a straight staircase from the street. don’t remember much about beginning. remember serveral friends (unknown in reality) with me, and looking into an apartment or bedroom through an open door in the hallway curtains were drawn and the room was orderly and cast in a reddish light from the curtains. I’m then in someother room looking down on the parking lot in the rear of the building, there was some commotion and a car alarm or two going off and some people running. At this point I needed to join chase of what and for what I don’t know.

The chase led to a library building which seem to be of a small college. The room was like a commercial office space. I was searching on top of bookcases where I spotted some dusty cassette tapes, a copy of Catcher in the Rye, and closest to me a paperback 1 1/2″ thick raised red foil letters “The Third Reich” (The color and texture of the book was extraordinarly vibrant). Searching the building then going into janitor closet but picked up a metal rod with a non-sharpened hook on both ends. Could hear them climbing out the top of the closet onto roof? Proceed to run outside and give foot chase. Finally corner one and hit one with metal rod. Now instead of a person it is now some kind of metal can which I have punctured with the end of the rod, the can then seems to be some sort of cloth bag with cosmetic items particularly lipsticks. wokeup

Trouble was prescribed some antacids for her stomach problems. We have to split one in half and for some reason that half pill just won’t go down. Tonight we gave Trouble her pills before feeding her she got one down spit out one. She had enough and was really squirming. I didn’t have good position on her and she was digging her hind claws into my legs, so I figured that was enough effort for the night. She ran under the kitchen table. Lauren then filled her food dish and she came a running with what appeared as a strip of plastic wrap hanging off her face, but really was a strand of drool, not your ordinary drool but super drool that bungie cords are make of, the kind a St Bernard would sport. This rope just wouldn’t drop off. Trouble gets to her bowl and leans over and the spit rope dips into the bowl, for some reason Trouble then jerked her head up and the drool cable picked up a kernal of food and flinged it onto the floor, I guess you had to see it but it was quite funny.

Having restless sleep tonight. In my dream: I’m not what I seem to be the world isn’t as it seems, Lauren seems to sense that I might know what i really am. For some reason I’m not supposed to know but she is.

Well tonight was date night, we went to the El Torito in Orange @ The Block. As I was driving through the parking lot there was a lowered Cadillac perpendicular to me heading away from the parking spaces into the center of the lot in front of an island divider. All the spaces were empty in this area and the guy in the Cadillac seemed like he was going to the other side as he was too far away from the spaces on my right, so I proceded forward and was going to park up ahead on the right. Suddenly I see that the Caddy is backing up in order to back into a parking space on the right, at that point he was a couple feet from me with his drivers side about even with my drivers door. I gunned it and swerved to the right and avoided a collision. At that point I was in no position to park on the right so I proceed around the island and parked.

My wife was taken by surprise by my swerving and due to her migraine problem needed to take some pills, so we were sitting in the truck a while. During this time the Caddy’s driver came over and was waiting for me behind the truck. I hop out and walk to the back of the truck and this guy is in my face screaming what a f-ing idiot I was. He continued to repeat such educated slurs my way as my wife reached this area too. He then added that my driving was endangering her, the people in the parking lot and his precious car. I’d prefer not to have a steaming mad idiot screaming at me but I’m no Chuck Norris, so I didn’t offer an apology or blame him, I didn’t just ignore him or walk away as I wanted him right where I could see him. I simply let him have his say and let him be entitled to his opinion of which I couldn’t care less about. He soon tired of my unusual demeaner and when on his way. I think my letting him vent with out offering any provocation or escalating the matter kept him from trying to take my head off, I’m sure the abundant witnesses didn’t hurt either.

From his perspective I think he didn’t see me at all until he heard or saw me skweeling around behind him. He probably thought I was racing through the parking lot and had to swerve around him into the parking spaced to avoid a collision. In reality he propably didn’t see me before he started backing up, trouble was he was backing up from way too far away for a reasonable person to think his was parking where he actually was.

Anyway the evening heeled itself fairly quickly except for that nagging suspicion I’d be comming back to a keyed (or worse) truck. But the truck was fine and he was no where to be seen. I think he may have left shortly after our encounter because he didn’t want his precious car to suffer any atrocities at my hand.

Watching One Hour Photo last night reminded me of a time at one of my favorite stores FEDCO. FEDCO was a membership department store here in California it was kind of like a WalMart Hypermart but not as big. They had Furniture to fruit, anyway one day I went to pick up my photos and they weren’t ready ontime. Their policy was the photos are free if they are late. So I go the next day and they have them then I have to get them to give them to me at no charge. The clerk checked her log book and yes the log shows them as late, but for some reason she also needs to see the photos. So she opens the envelope and sees that the pictures are B&W, “Well” she says, “The one day guarantee is for 35mm color prints only”. I then proceeded to inform the women that they are actually color prints of black and white photos. She then proceeds to repeat her previous reply. (Background: I wanted to make copies of some old family photos, the cheapest and most efficient way was for me to take a photograph of the photos. ) So I tried to get the nuance of the situation across to her again, but she was stuck in B&W land. I said, what if I took a picture of a zebra on a snow bank with color film it would be black and white, but not really. Luckily there were some real old photos farther into the pack that were “Brown & White” this anomaly and my detailed explanation of the processing process finally convinced her. Or I was making her brain hurt and she wanted to make me go away.

The sad part of the story is that FEDCO is no more. It has been gone for a few years now. I get a little twing when I run across a FEDCO price tag on something in the cupboard.