Bizarre Foods

I was with Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods and we were in a boat in China helping our hosts pull up thousand-year-old eggs that had been made not by being buried in lye, but instead had been preserved underwater in a river.

My mom passed by somehow and asked what it was, and was surprised when Andrew Zimmern told her pi-dan (Chinese for preserved egg) because she had never seen them made this way underwater. I told him he should be proud to be eating something my mom had never even heard of.

Tickle monster at the Chinese market

I was wandering through a Chinese market in a narrow winding alleyway with my mom. As the alleyway got smaller and more empty, I started getting nervous, but my mom insisted on going on until the alley dead-ended. So we turned back at that point -- I was pushing a shopping cart, and she was walking behind me, but she was kind of slow.

We got back and needed to take an elevator, so I got in the elevator and pushed the button to hold the doors open. I saw a shadow coming around a corner and thought it was her, but when the person rounded the corner, I saw that it was a huge guy - like 7 feet tall - with a bright red crazy long-haired clown wig. I started screaming "Mommy! Mommy!" but I didn't know where she was. He got in the elevator with me and I was screaming in horror as he reached out to tickle me in my armpit since my arm was still extended holding the button. Then I woke up.

Beetles in the rice!

I was back at my parents' place, hanging out in my room with my childhood next door neighbor. I noticed that my mom had hung up on the walls of my room a variety of photo frames in different sizes. These were the large frames that had mats for multiple photos, and my mom had left in the sample photos of random people that had come with the frames when you buy them.

I went downstairs for breakfast, and many members of my extended family were there. I went to get some rice out of the rice cooker and we were out, so I went down to the basement to get more rice to make another batch. In my parents' basement is a storage closet in which they have kept all our toys - only when I walked in, the toys were gone, and instead there were stacks and stacks of Kleenex boxes. I had a container and was scooping rice out of our big rice tin, and then I noticed that I must have scooped from the wrong tin because there were a bunch of almonds in my container. I started scooping the almonds out of my container, when I noticed a bunch of huge beetles inside my container. They freaked me out a little, but there was one that was just a skeleton, so I started with that one. I picked it up with my fingers and then it started to move! I dropped it and really freaked out and woke up saying "AAAAH!"

The Russian Mob - eh, it wasn't that bad

I was on the patio of the building where I work, and some Russian mob guys were threatening my parents. So I told them to leave my mom alone, and torture me instead. They wanted answers to questions I had no clue about. Mostly, all they did was twist my wrists and arms. It hurt but it wasn't that bad - I was expecting that they'd cut me or burn me, but they didn't. It seemed like they knew I didn't have any answers, and they were just going through the motions. They did however shave my head before they left, and it made me cry (though in my head, I thought, 2 years and it will all grow back.)

When I went inside the cops were there and wanted to take a statement. I also showed them my bag, saying "I think you can probably get some DNA evidence off of this" -- it looked like a shaggy dog had rolled all over it, it was totally covered in hair! They also wanted to do a rape test, though I assured them that I had not been raped. "Honestly, it wasn't that bad," I kept telling them.

Geek Olympics & Being a Homebody

I was in an enormous lecture hall, sitting in the front row of a very high balcony - it was so high, and the rows were so steep and narrow, I was a little afraid of falling. It was the college math/science Olympiad, only they were parading the competitors on stage and introducing them to cheering crowds as if it were a sporting competition, though in reality, people were cheering but also laughing a little at the massive geekiness. One of the announcers introduced everyone in Chinese, even the non-Chinese competitors, he would read their bio out in Chinese.

Later in the evening, I dreamed I was living at home in Newark, Delaware, with my mom and dad. I wasn't married, and my parents kept getting on my case to go out more. They told me I needed to go out to the bars and meet people, and I just complained that I didn't want to. Instead I got on my computer to check my e-mail. Almost all of it was spam. Instead of being able to delete it message by message, I had to highlight the entire body of each message and cut it that way. A lot of the messages were for vacations and travel and were long and full of text and pictures.