Afterwards, Diana comes up to me and says that Michael wants to talk to me, but she really means Ryan. When I go over to say hello to him, he’s bald.

Then a group of us go out to eat at a diner. It’s an old-fashioned diner restaurant that serves burgers and shakes. The menu is printed on a sign on the wall, and they don’t have printed menus. I try to place my order with the waitress, but while I’m doing so they start changing the signs, like it’s a McDonald’s changing from breakfast to lunch. I tell her what I want from what I remember. My dining companions place their orders and make a point of saying they want to order items from the Dollar Menu. I ask them to clarify what’s on the Dollar Menu, because I didn’t see that.

I’m talking to Kristina about how I first became an IA. I feel a sense of urgency, like I need her to understand how and when I started working, but I’m also embarrassed, as if I think it’s unseemly to call too much attention to myself.

We have stacks of books that we have to take back to the library. I ask Susie, Jake, and Randy for help. They are annoyed at the inconvenience. They make fun of Kristina’s enthusiasm for what she’s doing.

Then I’m in a grocery store, it’s like a Dean and Deluca, with prepared foods and kitchen supplies for sale, but very large. I head to the back of the store because I want to buy an apron. I pick out a red apron that has racist iconongraphy, like cartoon representations of black people, but they’re so tiny as to be invisible to the naked eye. I also pick out a blue apron. The rack that holds the aprons is long, like the entire width of the store, and there must be hundreds of aprons to choose from.

When I try to remove them from the rack and take them to the register, an alarm sounds. The rack has an electionic sensor with a screen, and it shows me that I’ve done something wrong and security is on the way. I wait around for the security officers to come, but I’m bored and not worried because I know I didn’t do anything wrong.

My mother comes to meet up with me and we browse around while we wait. Finally the security guards arrive and they confirm that I can take the aprons to the register.

Outside, Anne has prepared a picnic with food she says that her father made. It’s all really delicious: roasted chicken, greens, chocolate cake. We’re all sticking together because we’re afraid. She points at the trees and says she can see a creature that’s alive and moving towards us, like a ghost. The rest of us all turn to look at the trees, but no one can see it and we say we don’t believe her. Still, everyone is on edge.

We take a group picture, and Sputnik puts her head up so she can be in the photo too. I walk over and sit next to her.

Next I’m supposed to file an affidavit about a car being stolen. It seems like Sherri has asked me to help with this or it’s her car that is missing. As I am going through the files I come across a statement from Neil implicating me in the car theft. I look around to try and staple the documents together but none of the staplers are working and I have to use a paperclip.

There’s a store they’ve set up at the exit to the house where you can buy their cast-off items. I rummage through some goods along with a few other women, but we all agree the prices are too high. I am embarrassed that they want us to buy their used stuff.

I go to lunch with their family in a big library. I’m asked to go and pull a book by Tom Wolfe off the shelf. But I can’t find the book, I can only find photocopied sections of his books. I bring back a stack of these photocopies to the table, but I’m horribly embarrassed. The father condemns me for not bringing the book back.

Most people are in the party area with the dance floor, which is dark like a club. I go to the left and enter the cafeteria, which is pretty much exactly like a high school cafeteria with long low tables with benches. People are waiting in line to order pizza.

I run into Susie and we decide to get something to eat. She orders a pizza and then I order another one. It seems like we’re going to have too much food. I see the pizza that someone else ordered and it’s exactly like school-cafeteria pizza, all orange and greasy.

I remember that Susie has another kid and I check to see if she is pregnant or not. She isn’t so I ask if she had another baby and she said she had a girl and her name is Antoinette. I feel bad that I didn’t even know she had another baby.

Toby is really helpful to me so I want to send him a token gift. I decide to send one of the Chinese Christmas ornaments I bought last winter. I pull the top off of the globe and wonder if I could stick a joint in there for him as well. But I decide not to and just send the package via interoffice mail.

To mail the gift I go and sit at my “real” desk; I don’t usually sit there because I’m always in meetings. While I’m there I decide to clean up some papers and generally organize things. I find a document about designing Macs that I think is terrible. I try to complain about it to HR but the bureaucrats there don’t understand what I’m talking about.

Michael Eisner (who has some connection to Apple via Disney) takes me to Disneyland to ride on the rides. But they aren’t really Disney theme park rides, they’re more like old-fashioned county fair rides.

I call Anne L and ask her for help with recruiting. We start discussing the recent rise in the stock price, and she makes it sound like she really made a lot of money. While I am on the phone with her, I can also omnisciently see her stock trades. She made about $2800, which is a nice dividend but it’s not like she’s rich.

I put on lipstick so I look nice before one of my meetings. I’m too fat and I can’t squeeze by someone in the hallway and I’m embarrassed.

We have lunch in Steve Jobs’ office. I’m very nervous about meeting him, but no one else is. Lunch is set up on a table in his office, and I am unsure about where to sit. I change places and accidentally drink someone else’s water.

There is a class at the U of M that somehow deals with this client or covers a related subject, and so it is decided that I should take the class. The class is very large and takes place in a big lecture hall. The instructor is a middle-aged woman with dark hair and glasses.

I turn in my final paper and receive a grade of "D." I’m very upset by this, and embarrassed that my work colleagues will see that I got a bad grade. I speak to the instructor and try to explain that the work I was doing for my client was different from what she expected from the final paper. What I want is for her to let me submit one of my presentation decks as additional work and maybe that will raise my grade.

Afterwards, a party for the whole class has been planned. We walk outside to go check it out. As we walk I bump into a college girl who’s walking in a pack, and we have words about the incident. I ask her "if it would be possible to walk through here without getting rudely bumped into." She accuses me of being a stupid college kid. When I respond that I’m not in college, I’m 35, she and her friends jeer at me.

I get to the restaurant where the party is taking place. When I arrive, only a blonde-haired guy and Susie are there with me. The restaurant has set a long table for us to sit at. Susie and the guy sit down next to each other, and I want to sit in the middle between them, but instead I take my place at Susie’s left.

Another student from class arrives, an older Asian man. He’s drunk and yelling at the entrance. I go over to try and get him to leave. He grabs me and kisses me, and as we stand there he tries to force himself on me. I struggle to cry out for help but I cannot make my voice work.

Sherri says she is moving her family from Seattle to San Francisco. We are browsing through shops and moving between spaces. We sit in a large group in a circle with a bunch of other people, in a space that might be a cafe but it seems more like a children’s store. My chair ricochets out of place and I slam into someone else, almost like bumper cars. I apologize profusely as I’m sure it hurt to be hit like that.

Ellen S. has a very young child and then gives birth to twins less than a year later. She must have gotten pregnant again immediately after giving birth to the first. I wonder how she and her husband are going to care for three children who are all infants.

I run out of money and I need to go to the ATM. When I go I have to take out a loan. I am left with the understanding that this is all the money that will be available to me, there isn’t any more. While I’m anxious about that, I’m also strangely relieved.

He has a high-tech light-up mailbox.

Susie and Jake come to visit me. Jake rides a snowmobile. I try to get them to help me.

I tell them that this family has changed the "Art Department" to the "Department of Pictures." This seems to me to be a deeply condemning accusation and Susie should recognize how terrible they are.

I beg them for help. Susie gets me a key. But I still cannot escape. We try to crawl through some branches that are shaped in a tunnel.

Susie gives me a big wad of gum. Then she takes a go-cart and leaves.

I talk to my mother. She’s my mother in the family but she is not my real mother. She is smoking a cigarette and looking skeptical.

She sets me free.

Conformist.

Liz is donating some used sweaters, and I try some of them on.

I go to see Steve Jobs speak at a restaurant and bar. Everyone is excited to hear him and solicitous when he arrives. But the man speaking obviously isn’t Steve Jobs, he looks like a blow-dried marketing executive and he isn’t wearing a black turtleneck and blue jeans.

I’m looking at racks of clothing and I try on a denim skirt. The skirt is in a large size and it’s all ripped and frayed around the bottom, and it has some decorations on the front. It’s really not my style. But I tell the woman I’m with that I plan to buy it and she says it’s cute.

The family reunion is taking place in a conference center and I walk down a number of hallways to find it. My uncle Fred says he saw my mother downtown recently and she had a booger on her shirt. Fred and Eleanor seem to believe that it came from my father, as he was prodigious in this department.

I go to the hotel (on the bicycle) and sit down to write a letter. I want to write a letter to Hopkins High School asking for some help with an environmental issue in Russia. I hope that they will read the letter and remember me. I choose a piece of hotel stationery and start to write, but I don’t get very far before realizing that I should type the letter instead of handwriting it. I go to take another sheet of stationery and I realize that all the pages are different. Some are at least 50 years old, and some are brightly colored, like origami papers. I choose the most professional looking paper and feed it into an ancient manual typewriter.

I’m visiting my childhood skating rink. I walk down to the end of Prescott Drive and realize how close it is. The layout of the rink has expanded and the hockey rink is gone. There isn’t any water in the pond and the skating rink area seems to extend all the way up toward the school. I see animals roaming around and some are threatening — there’s a squirrel and a wolf that I’m afraid of. The wolf comes after me.

Someone has bought the land that the skating rink is on and is building a house there. The new house will appear in Cool Hunting. I go back to the office and I read something in CH about the design of the house.

I have a smoothie maker. I mix up a chocolate shake and it overflows the machine and gets all over the counter.

Jai has a baby, he is pregnant and the baby is due in December, around Christmas. He makes Helen the godmother. I’m jealous. I think neither of them knows how to raise a baby.

I’m bored and decide to watch a movie. In the movie a young man gets trapped in his lover’s room by her husband. The husband is going to kill him. There’s a chase scene with music that I can hear quite vividly. The husband gets a horse, but there is a trick door and the lover is saved.

I’m in a department store looking for a gift for my grandmother. I get a call from Caitlin but she says she’s not available. I don’t mention the fact that I’m not available either. I am buying an engraved necklace for myself and I run into Caitlin, but I call her Megan by mistake. She is annoyed that I did not call. I tell her I’m going out of town. I decide to pick up the necklace later.

I meet a woman named Eleanor who has short black hair worn in a bob. We become friends. Later, I am watching TV with my mother and we see a crime program that says that Eleanor is dangerous. I am suspicious of the program and I think she’s been framed for the crime.

She and I are living in the same building. She brings her cat over. There seem to be a number of cats around and possibly a dog or two. Her cat starts having kittens. The cat doesn’t give birth to the kittens so much as extrude them, like putty from a tube. Once the kittens are born they immediately start running around on the floor. I notice that the kittens that were born first have a lot of orange and black color, but the later kittens are white with only a little bit of orange and black. I tell Eleanor about the kittens and we try to corral all the cats.

We go on vacation to a resort with Helen. The resort doesn’t have rooms for us and they are trying to get us to stay in tents. Helen says she has been to this resort before and refuses to accept the tent option as a solution. We ask them if they have even one room available for us.

After we sort out the room situation, we walk along another long curved hallway to visit the ladies room. There is a row of stalls along the back wall, and the room is crowded with women. There is a terrible stench coming from one of the toilets and everyone flees. Outside in the corridor we find a security guard and complain about the condition of the restroom. He doesn’t do anything about it, instead he threatens to have us thrown off the property or arrested for bringing it up.

While I am looking for the dogs I set my laptop down on a hot grill. The bottom gets singed and there is a brown burned spot on it. The computer still works but the screen is all messed up, the colors are weird and it doesn’t refresh properly. I wonder if I can bring it back and say that the battery is bad.

I am relieved to find the dogs and I gather them and my laptop up. I am supposed to go with my family, Helen, and Alison to see a woman give a talk on psychology. I get everyone into a big minivan. We are supposed to stop and pick up Alison but we don’t. When Helen asks me where she is, I say I forgot because I was too caught up with the whole lost dog/burned laptop crisis.

We get to the facility where the speech is taking place. The woman is giving it twice. It’s not a very good talk, she’s not a good presenter and she’s not very good with her computer. I then go and visit with a man and my mother and John. My laptop seems to be working again.

I call and make a reservation at a hotel. The hotel is about $350 a night. I call back later and cancel the reservation. I call a second time and make another reservation. I tell them Sherri is going to be staying in the room with me.

When I don’t show up the hotel sends me a bill for $700+ for the two rooms. I try to get out of paying the bills by talking with people at the desk. I am trying to demand that I not be charged, but inside I’m nervous that maybe I really do have to pay them, that I am obligated to pay the bills. One of the desk clerks says that Sherri was in the hotel and that they know she wasn’t going to stay with me, and they accuse me of lying.

My job is to paint a refrigerator door to look like a roll of Bounty paper towels. I’m drawing the Bounty logo and coloring it in with markers. I’ve got a big area of red colored in and I’m working on the green, but the green paint isn’t adhering as well and I have to go over the area repeatedly.

We put on the play several times. I have a monologue and I sing a song.

Afterwards we all have dinner in the theater. I try to sit next to Susie but she keeps moving around with her baby.

They’re having a party and I keep going to check up on the guests. Everyone has a dish in their hands and we’re running out of dishes.

I’m talking to one of their neighbors about the personality of different typefaces. I say that the character of an era or an age comes out in the way they use typography. Type isn’t just superficial styling.

Scott appears twice in the same issue of the New York Times magazine, once in a shorter note about Squidfartz and once in a longer article. I want to tell him about the articles, but when I go back later I can only find one of them.

I’m dating a very tall bald man. We’re having dinner and he tells me that he has a young child. His wife abandoned him and the baby, and now he’s caring for it alone. His wife had a drug problem and he said she did a lot of coke and ecstasy. I feel uncomfortable about dating someone with a child to care for. Specifically, I wonder how he can be out with me in the evening, and who is caring for the child.

I’m working for Facebook. Paige N. is the director of marketing and she asks if I will attend a conference in her place. I’m flattered because I feel like I’m in an environment that respects what I do.

I attend her wedding. I’m in the bridal party and we’re all picking out our dresses on the day of the wedding. The dress I pick out is black and white and doesn’t really match the other dresses. I feel weird that I will stand out from the other attendants, but it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone else.

We’re at a restaurant for the reception but they aren’t prepared for us. No one comes over to help us or to seat us. I finally ask to speak to the manager, and then try to escalate things to the general manager. I’m frustrated that the restaurant can’t seem to get organized. I ask them if they want us to leave and go elsewhere, reminding them that a party of hundreds of guests would be worth a lot of money to them.

I’m listening to sermons from Orthodox Jewish preachers. Anne and Sherri are sitting with me and I can tell that they’re judging me.

Later, I am rolling up a joint, but it’s enormous, like the size of a paper towel tube. And I’m spreading the inside of the paper with butter.

The place where the plane takes
off from is in the same building as a  charm school run by an
imperious French woman. To get inside the building she makes us both stand up very
straight.

I’m really annoyed and try to avoid doing it because I
want to get into the building quickly and get on the plane. The headmistress is angry with me.

Later,  I get a terrible rash on my legs. I think that the headmistress is responsible for giving me the
rash.

I can’t find my ticket and I’m
rummaging through both my suitcase and Chris’s suitcase for it.

During the actual performance, Helen goes on before me. She does a cheerleading-type dance. She looks thin.

I make a joke that I didn’t know I’d have to go on after a routine like that. But then my part goes fine.

We decide to adopt a child. Andrea comes to help us. She gets us a girl baby and tells us the child’s name is "Lucas Samaha." I laugh and say that I can’t have a daughter that’s named after my high school boyfriend, because all my friends will think it’s weird and make fun of me.

I’m in a convenience store. Luke is there.

We’re buying food. All the food is salami and baguettes. There are all different variations on this theme, but all the food is basically sausages and loaves of bread.

I want to buy some and make a sandwich. But I am embarrassed to be seen buying this food because salami is not healthy.

A pedophile-type guy is after young boys and girls, and it’s scary.

They have these birds in an aviary. The birds are cartoon-like, giant stuffed toucans.

I need to leave and catch my flight.

I can see a map of where I need to go. I think I’m in LA but really it’s a map of Europe.

I’m late for my flight, even though it’s three hours away. It’s 5pm and the flight doesnt leave until 8pm.

I’m trying to leave but my bags are broken. The birds have pecked at the straps and now the straps don’t hold together.

It’s 6pm and I’m worried that I’ve missed my flight.

Susie is married and having a baby.

I’m looking at Andrea’s stereo. Andrea and Susan are going to separate. Susan is pregnant again but they aren’t happy. I say that’s too bad, but I am secretly relieved because it validates my feelings that people aren’t very happy when they have kids.

In my dream I think "Hey this is just like when I’m dreaming and I’m navigating through spaces."

Joe C. wants to have a drink at 8pm. I want to tell him it’s too late. But I’ve lost my Treo and I can’t text him back.

Tanya goes on a crash diet and I tell her it’s not healthy. But she looks good and I’m jealous.

Jonathan introduces me to Mehera. She looks very familiar and I tell her so.

Someone (a monster?) is supposed to be painting and gets blue paint all over the wall. It colors all the books blue.

Liz D. is there and I comment that I haven’t seen her since Thanksgiving. My mother is also there and we decide to have lunch in their café. The store sells clothing too and a salesgirl helps me pick out some pieces for me and some for my mother. There is a green top that is made from beautiful fabric. All the pieces are kind of hippie granola. Later, I look at the green top and the fabric isn’t nearly as nice and I want to return it.

I am walking with a man and my aunt Brenda. He says he likes her. She has a hairbrush that expands open, it’s really high-tech, almost robotic. Brenda talks about losing weight and it appears that she has lost some.

We go into another store that has stuff on sale. It’s one of those stores in Uptown on Lake Street that never did well and were always going out of business. All the stuff in this store is junky and badly displayed. There seems to be a lot of stuff being sold that you wouldn’t really want.

I’m in a setting that’s like a campus. There’s a spot by a lake, or on a hill, where I’m sitting with two friends, one might be a boyfriend. Someone dies, and there’s a commotion. Ron comforts me and I feel grateful yet guilty that I’ve treated him poorly.

I’m in LA. I need to get around and so I have to drive. Susie is there to help me. Driving is like a video game. I’m sweating and there are lots of obstacles in the road (like a camel and a whole caravan.) Even though I can’t drive very well, I get where I need to go. Part of the problem might be that I’m not sure whether to drive on the right or the left side of the road. There’s also a problem where my hearing aid doesn’t fit properly.

I’m in a parking lot for a mall. I’m trying to find Yun Woo. When I find him he talks about his father being rich, having an empire. We go to play video games. The game is a driving game, but it’s a low-res black and white graphics game, done in an old Macintosh style. The game is shaped like a parking meter. I practice using the game controls.

There’s a kind of geek chic Chinese guy who has a crush on me. He gives me an MS-Word document that is actually an application. It doesn’t work very well, when I click on things they move around and break the page. I’m annoyed at him for giving it to me.

He’s driving me around, we’re going to see a movie. I’m carrying a baby girl under my coat. The guy is a little weirded out by that. When I get out of the car I forget for a second that I have the baby. I’m afraid I’ll drop her but I don’t.

I’m with Paula and Steve. They are going to see the movie too. We talk about the Chinese guy.

Paula says my jeans are too short and I’m horrified. Turns out they’re not, they’re just folded up. I start hemming a skirt with tape. It’s white and red and flounced, and I’m trying to make the hem even. We have to leave.

A bunch of people come into the store and I realize it’s a party. I get a note in the mail and it’s a card from Liz that she made by sewing puffy fabric on the card. I see all my friends there, everyone I know — Jai, Ross, Susie & Jake. Susie and Jake want to stay outside and play hockey. Chad avoids me.

Walking through the party, some people comment on my sweater and ask who made it. It’s by Balenciaga but I don’t know how to pronounce it, so I show them the label. The label falls off and I give the label to one of the people who asked.

I say I sometimes dress as a tranny, which is an inside joke in reference to a comment that someone made earlier. At the time it seemed hilarious.

Across the room, someone points out the guy who owns the store. I want to meet him.