I can't remember what exactly I'm doing, but I get a call on my cell phone. It's a state trooper. He tells me that my parents were believed to have been watching Mount something-or-other when it blew up. They were on a trip to San Francisco. The reception is bad, and I can't tell if he's saying they're missing, dead, or ok. I don't know if Mount something-or-other is a volcano or a forest fire, so I ask him. He laughs at me and can't believe that I don't know. Apparently he believes that EVERYONE should know about this volcano/forest fire. I pretend that I did know and was just kidding. I hang up and still don't know the fate of my parents.

Interpretation: Obviously I'm very concerned about my parents' safety. My father has a smoldering all-encompassing anger, and while he's never harmed my mother that I know of, the fear of it is always there. His anger, or perhaps the whole situation (his anger, her passive-aggressiveness) is represented by Mount whatever in my dream. The phone call from a state police trooper is my worst nightmare...one I've had for all of my life, as this dynamic has existed between them for as long as I can remember. My father has held the threat of suicide over our head since I was a small child. I remember sleeping on the floor during one of his drunken rages, just in case he decided to shoot into the house. I'm not sure what the state trooper laughing at me because I don't recognize whether Mount whatever is a volcano or a forest fire means.

This is the first dream in weeks that I have had a clear enough recollection of to log it. I was walking along a dock with the girl I took to the prom. She was wearing the same dress, a deep blue velvet outfit. I had a suit on, not the prom suit, just a non-descript dress suit.

The anachronistic nature of our clothing was clearly evident. The timeframe I think it took place in was sometime during the 19th century, and I think it was in New York.

All of a sudden, the dock became horribly crowded and I lost sight of my companion. I pushed through wave after wave of pedestrian; all one of them were absolutely identical. They were all male, around 60 years old. Each of them wore black pants, black shoes and a horizontally striped blue and white t-shirt.

The girl was taller than all of the men, as was I, but I still could not find her. I eventually wondered into a restaurant, and the entire scene changed from old world America to that same eatery from 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' where Zhang Ziyi kicks the shit out of a horde of combatants and proclaims herself the 'Invincible Sword Goddess'.

It was empty but for 2 girls I know from college. I danced with both of them, sometimes seemingly simultaneously.

I caught sight of my prom date, only to be distracted by one of the identical pedestrians. He kept pulling me back, until I turned around and slugged him across his homogenous face. By the time this little fracas was past, I had lost the girl again.

Then, inexplicably, I woke up.

Comments and twisted pseudo-erotic interpretations are more than welcome; nay, in fact, they are encouraged.

Sounds like everyone had fucked-up dreams last night. Me too. I dreamed I was a screamy, weak-at-the-knees Brad Pitt fan who stalked him into a parking lot and irritated him by pawing his sweater. But them he gave me a kiss and the dream fast-forwarded to a few weeks later where we were a happy couple and Milla Jovovich was pissed off at me for stealing her boy. She's not with him in reality, just my weird celebrity dream. So suddenly I'M Milla, and filling the house with bugs to freak him out. I smear dead bugs all over the walls and stuff. Crazy.

When I fell asleep at a quarter past five this morning, I was exhausted from working a double shift as a waitress at the new Red Lobster in Times Square. As I woke mid-afternoon, I contemplated gravitating towards coffee downstairs but passed out again before I could move. This dream crept into my brain as a result of the herb I smoked many times over after work to medicate.

And so, the dream begins, and ends even more abruptly:

The Service Manager, Nick, and the General Manager, Jeff, of this particular restaurant began to explain why Red Lobster's business was relocated to a gigantic storehouse a few blocks away to the heart of New York City. The three hundred hosts and hostesses, servers, bussers, food runners, and entire Heart of the House, including pantry and expo food preppers and production staff, were patiently seated around these two men in an incredibly uncomfortably small space, though the area seemed less crowded due to the nearly non-existent ceiling which was almost entirely out of view.

Before the two delved into the core of their motivational discussion, detailing how the crew was supposed to suddenly pull off a day's business as usual, when it took the kitchen almost two months to run smoothly at our original location, I decided this was the most appropriate time to quit because the stress of ridiculous adventures today certainly couldn't be worth monetary payment.

So I left; a few bystanders questioned me on my way out the main entrance, but before I reached the door, I convinced myself to keep my position, which, in reality, took a month from the hiring and application process to a two-week training period to the opening of the restaurant on July 22, 2003. I swallowed my pride to "Share the Love" and returned to the managers' location for a second chance. They weren't aware why or that I had left in the first place and seemed pretty devilishly eager to watch the staff and I run around like chickens without heads. Suddenly it was time to deal with whatever situations presented themselves while serving guests, even afer the missed explanation.

A man at a table next to the bar, which consisted of what looked like nothing more than a couple of stools found at a Crate & Barrel placed near a piece of fiberglass a few inches thick, four feet wide and thirty feet long, supported by two filing cabinets at either end, ordered a drink with me; the only problem was, there were no more bar glasses of any kind behind the bar or in the bartender's possession. After promising I'd bring him back some sort of glasses, my excursion to the back of the storehouse began and lasted for what seemed an eternity. No other servers seemed to require glasses or would even help me search for them. At the end of a chain of desperate attempts, I discovered some paper cups which resembled the miniature cone cups the Front of the House servers use to chug caffeine into our faces as quick as possible before being re-sat at tables. A cone cup doesn't stand unless you are dreaming, so I was satisfied with my selection in order to end my search and return to the bar.

After taking some crap from the bartender, I told him to "hurry up and make the damn drink-" a Remy and ginger ale- while I held the cup for him in my hand. I received forty bucks cash without hesitation and was requested to keep the change when I handed off the drink to its orderer. I did as I was asked and soothed myself with the gratefulness that this day was business as usual.