Final Poetry Exam

I'm in school taking courses in Poetry and Mechanical Design. I've sorely neglected my Poetry course because all my time has been taken up making autonomous syringes for the design course. I'm at the end of the semester and there is a take home final exam for the Poetry course. I heard that all the answers are all contained within a house that is located in the country. I take a bus to there with some other classmates, and it is a very long ride. We arrive as the sun is setting, and the late day sun casts a warm glow on this huge log cabin house, with glass sliders along the front. I walk inside the house and it is full of little rooms containing many interesting things. Many rooms have at least one wall full of books and I immediately try to find the book that I need to answer the first exam question. There are way too many books to look through and there is no card catalog or anything. I just want the quick answer so I can get back to my mechanical design project. I walk through the house some more and realize that one room has a machine shop where I could have worked on my syringes as well as study for my poetry course at the same time. I realize that I have a syringe in my pocket so I can do both now. I immediately put the syringe on a machine and went to work, forgetting about my poetry exam.

Observations: I work on autonomous syringes at work, but only the software, not the mechanical design, although I am a mechanical engineer. The mechanical design course that I took at MIT (the famous 2.70 competition) was extremely stressful for me. I hate having dreams about being in school, especially being unprepared for final exams, even though I haven't been to school full time for 19 years. This house reminds me of a cross between the Hands-On Art Museum in Shirley, MA and Dean Kamen's house which I've only seen in these pictures. Hopefully, I'm not sorely neglecting anything in my life!

A new car

I dreamt that I had a new car, which I thought was a Panoz, or at least that was what I told everyone. It was yellow, a one-seater, open air car, like a Formula 1 car, and I don't think it even had a convertible top. The closest thing that it resembles in real life is a Plymouth Prowler.

It had a trunk just big enough to put my work and gym bags, and when you sat inside the cockpit, it was really tight, but comfortable. The steering wheel was rectangular and it felt like it had rubber mounts to absorb the shock. Something like this, but without all the controls.

It had 12 cylinders and I remember driving out of my parking lot at work with everyone oohing and ahhing. It had a stick shift (no paddle shifters for me) and the pedals where cool perforated metal. I felt really cool driving it.

Interpretation: I need to take Doug's new Corvette to work again (hint hint).

Traveling with co-workers

Here are some dream fragments from last night:

I'm traveling for work in some New Hampshire city walking down a street that looks like it could be in Portsmouth. I'm a little anxious because I'm lugging some golf clubs and we are going to play golf, and I know that I can't play. I'm walking behind my boss and a co-worker, C, and it starts to rain. We quickly duck into a shop and it has lots of rooms. C and I end way in the back in a room that is covered only by plastic sheets like in a greenhouse but it is totally dry and the rain is coming down hard. C gets really excited because it is a chocolate shop and he proceeds to pick up lots of packages to give to his girls when he gets back. He shows me a bag that he says are the very best chocolates, it looks like it has individually wrapped chocolates that are the size of plums.

Now we are golfing, but instead of using golf balls, we are using these short sticks to push little chihuahuas towards these small hoops which they collect by putting their heads through. One golf hole has one hoop and another has a bunch of hoops in a row. Whew, I think, I can do this kind of golf no problem.

Observations: It was definitely raining last night. I don't play golf in real life. Am I anxious because I wrote an email yesterday about the motion control system to C and my boss and was worried that I've lost all my mechanical engineering jargon? The chihuahua hoop thing is definitely a reference to this Flickr photo.

National Guard

I dreamt that Phil and I took a National Guard test and we did so well they wanted to sign us up for security jobs. We just laughed and walked away but this guy followed us out to our car. He put these masks up to the car window to scare us but we just started up the car. As I was driving away, the guy put his face into the driver's window and started screaming, but I just ignored him. He eventually either fell off or jumped off.

I'm sure this has to do with my nephew signing up for the National Guard.

Welcome to geek sleep

This will be a group blog to post our dreams, so as not to scare the readers of our regular blogs. Please contact Angela if you'd like to join.