It's Sunday, Again

This afternoon Mark and I got a daylight savings time 3:30 drink. I saw a little pig--it looked like a little dog until 20 feet away, and then it was clearly a little pig. I said hello--it came over to me and oinked into my hand and rubbed against me briefly while I scratched it's grey/pink bristly coat. I didn't have enough time to ask the guy with the pig questions, like "what kind of a pig is it?" and "will it get any bigger?" and "what does the pig like to do?" I did learn the pig's name. Dear readers, the pig's name is Hamlet.

I've been having very lucid dreams recently.

A few nights ago, I dreamed that Mark and I were at the Embarcadero in San Francisco to meet Nicholas Manning (someone I only know, to the extent that I know him at all, through blogland). The Embarcadero was more like a souk--a lot like Fez, actually. While we were wandering around, I saw someone that looked French. This was my dream logic, because I can't actually describe what Nicholas looked like in my dream. He only vaguely looked like his blog picture, but when I saw him in the dream, I knew that he looked French and I walked up to him, touched him on the shoulder in a very formal way, and said "you are Nicholas Manning." He had a friend with him who had glasses but other than that was completely inconsequential to the dream.

After this greeting, the four of us walked outside to the deck of the market, but instead of San Francisco bay was a beach that looked more like the Carlsbad State beach. The light, sand, and water were a kind of rich golden color--a dreamy sort of late-afternoon pre-sunset color. Nicholas said, with great drama, "Ah, it is the Nile! Let us bathe!" In my dream, I had a moment of Wait, this isn't the Nile. Oh, maybe it is. Why not? I was reluctant to swim but then eventually did.

After that, we went back into the market/souk, and Nicholas began talking about rabbits and cats. He said something like "there is no animal better matched to the cat than the bunny. They are equals in every way, especially strength and ferocity." In response to this observation, I pulled out a series of wallet-sized, color holographic images of all the animals I've ever known--pets, friends pets, animals I've seen and remembered, etc. I put these pictures out on a card table in a way that suggested I was telling someone's fortune. We all examined the pictures.

I noticed that there was a bird sitting at the end of the table. The bird was Lester and also a tiger-colored tomcat I used to know named Benjamin. I noticed that the bird/cat had some pin feathers, so I reached out to scratch his head, and this is how the dream ended.

I'm not sure why Nicholas showed up in a dream--I rarely dream about poets, especially ones I don't know. I think it might have something to do with a post he wrote a few days ago about being 210 days away from finishing his PhD, about starting the process of becoming a French citizen, and ended with a description of his dream living/work space. Something I've been thinking about a lot recently.

I had some realization about something today, but I forgot it

Mom arrives on Thursday--I'm planning a weekend of walks, food, and the zoo.

But my beautiful crocodile.
My crocodile out of heart,
Where does your pride go?

The virgin birth of five Komodo dragons....

How could I have missed this news?

Somehow, Flora, a Komodo dragon at Chester Zoo in northern England became pregnant. She's never even been "exposed" to a male komodo dragon.

"While it wasn't unusual for female dragons to lay eggs without mating, scientists understood they were witnessing something important when they realized Flora's eggs had been fertilized.

"DNA paternity tests confirmed the lack of male input, although the brood are not exact clones of their mother."

Thanks to Susan Smith Nash for pointing it out.