I had the strangest bus experience this afternoon. I was waiting for my bus, the 545, when another bus drove up. This bus had no number; it was simply marked "To Terminal". The driver asked everyone at the stop if we wanted a ride - "Nonstop to downtown, might save you a few minutes," he cheerfully told us all.

Well, downtown is where I wanted to be, so I and three other folk hopped on. Sure enough, we skipped all stops along 520. Yay! The driver whistled all the way; he was having a jolly afternoon.

None of us knew quite where he was going to drop us off until we got there. He drove us into the Convention Center transit station, down into the lower bus lanes where no pedestrians are supposed to venture. He then hopped off the bus to escort us all out of the no access area, still cheerfully whistling all the while. Some driver from another bus, amused to see riders out in a no-rider area and perhaps thinking we looked rather touristy, announced at us over his intercom, "Welcome to Seattle!"

I was happy to find that the final destination was actually closer to home than my normal afternoon stop. Two others on the bus were less enchanted, however; the Convention Center stop was apparently not where they wished to end up.

I'm still not sure what bus I was on.

The shizzle is flying. Someone at Company_B found out about Company_A's poor practice of sharing one Company_A network account among multiple active employees while they are all waiting to get their own accounts, and people on high are not happy about it. Still waiting to see where all the fallout lands.

1. Who is 'm'?
2. What's wrong with shizzle?

I dreampt about my birds again last night. I was in my childhoood bedroom. It was dark outside, and the room was dimly lit, so I didn't notice that the window was partially open. We had the birds out playing with us, but something startled them and they bolted for the window. All flew out before I could do anything about it, but as I reached frantically after them I managed to grab Cricket and pull her back in. I can still remember the feel of her chest in my hand, her quickly beating heart, her ruffled feathers.

I called for the rest of my birds, but none came back. When it got light the next day I searched the neighborhood for them, high and low, but I was never able to recover any of the others.

Everything is so backwards in my dreams. In actuality, Cricket is the one who is gone. The others still remain.

I don't know what the dream means. Maybe I'm trying to come to grips with the fact that I'll lose all of them at some point in time, and trying to come to terms with that impending loss now. But then why was Cricket alive in the dream? Why does she keep coming back?

More days than not, lately, I get to my bus stop just after my bus has left. I then have to wait a full quarter of an hour for the next bus. I guess I need to work on that whole timing thing.

On our morning walk today, Louie and I saw what looked to be a flock of pigeons eating a pile of puke. Ick. I guess you eat what you can find when you're a wild(?) animal living in the city, but still...

Netflix is awesome, by the way. I ordered my moveis in the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday, they shipped the movies during the day that same day, and the movies were in my mailbox by Wednesday afternoon. Kick ass.

Taking the bus is dangerous. I mean, I have to walk to the bus stop, a whole half mile or something. And then I roll my ankle, fall, skin my knee, and catch the attention of everyone within a full block radius. That never happened when I was driving.

"Are you okay?" yells some guy from down the hill over on the other side of the street.

"Yeah," I call back, standing to dust myself off and survey the damage. The fall wore a weak spot in the knee of my pants that will probably turn into a full-blown hole within one or two washings -- and these were nice pants, too. Bummer. My knee is a little bloodied up. My ankle hurts from rolling it. And more than anything, my pride is bruised.

Then, to make matters worse, the fall slowed me down just enough so that I missed my bus by 30 seconds. It drove past me as I was briskly walking the last block to the stop, so I had to sit and wait another 15 minutes for the next one.

I want to see The Annihilation of Fish. I was browsing Seattle CitySearch in my quest last night to remember all the recent movies I've been wanting to see so that I could put them on my netflix list, and I came across this one. I had never heard of it, but the reviews on the site raved about it. Since then, I've found any number of positive, rave reviews while searching the web. But, despite listing it under their current movies, CitySearch doesn't list any showtimes for the movie, anywhere.

Amazon knows about the movie, but doesn't have it in stock.

It's not even on Ebay.

Nobody has it in stock.

It has frigging James Earl Jones in it! Talk about big names... why can't I find it anywhere?

I found the official website. It looks like it played at all sorts of film festivals when it first came out, back in 1999 and in 2000, and then I don't know what happened to it. People saw it -- all sorts of folks talk about it on the web -- but it's not available ANYWHERE. I even tried Kazaa, and nothing there.

Bah.

Stupid limited releases.

Stupid CitySearch, what a tease.

I set up an account with netflix last night. w00t! I think I'm going to start both a book journal and a movie journal, to keep up with everything I'm reading and watching these days.

I dreamed last night that Amber moved out here, and that my brother's tour of duty ended and he came back as well. Amber, Mary, Leroy and I were all together. In the dream, I remembered having dreamed not long before that everything would happen that way. It seemed right and good and even destined.

In real life, though, my brother's tour just got extended. Up until 3 days ago, they thought they were coming home. Now they find that they are "needed someplace else" and their release date has been moved out to March. Leroy is allowed to take two weeks leave time, but because he would have to pay his own travel expenses and because he doesn't want to leave only to have to go back, he is not going to leave.

Sometimes waking up really sucks.

Mary and my father got in on Saturday. It's the first time my father has been out here since I moved to Washington.

Last night, we went dancing. Mary and I danced, and my father, my aunt, and my cousin Andy all actually came and watched for a little bit. On the one hand, it was nice that one of my parents got to see what has become a large and important part of my life. On the other hand, he didn't seem very interested or excited about it, which made me a little sad. Oh well; I guess you can't ever win all battles.

I went to a series of dance workshops this weekend. Some of the courses were better than others. There were a 20's Charleston and a Balboa course that I really liked. We learned some nifty solo-stuff in the 20's Charleston course, and it made me decide that I'd like to work some on my solo dancing. It'll give me something to do when the music moves me, but there's nobody that wants to dance with me or nobody I want to dance with.

Now I'm at work. Tired. I rode the bus again. I wanted to take a nap, but decided that wouldn't be smart; would suck to miss my stop. Now I'm sipping on a coffee I just grabbed from the kitchen, trying to gather my wits about me so that I can start getting things done.

*yawn*