Drive

About 8-9 hrs drive from Denver to Provo, but a couple more when including stops for bathroom and dinner.
In a way, kindof wanted the drive to just keep going. Like when on those 12hr flights. In a different world, may not be much to do, but can sortof forget about the rest of the world.

National Geographic

Was flipping through a national geographic at my parents place, and came across a large photo, was a sunset from a kindof rocky beach area with loads of people sitting and standing around. Fairly dark people, as it was in somewhere like malaysia or indonesia. I thought to myself, wouldn't it be funny if there was a single really bright white guy in the middle of all of them. And then I saw there was! And when I looked closer, I realized that white spot was me in the photo! And I could clearly remember where it was and having been there, though I didn't remember any national geographic photographer having been there. I was so excited, I showed my parents first, being right there. I wanted to tell some friends, so I was going to write an email or call someone, so I woke up to head to the other room and.... oh. woke up. it was just a dream. It had been super vivid though!

Uppy and downy days

Thursday night I heard air coming up through the toilet. I have heard that before, but seemed like more this time. Then as I was about to go out the door, I discovered water leaking from the bottom of the spare-toilet (1/2 bathroom in another room). So I mopped that up. Then in the main bathroom, I noticed water had come up the drain into the bathtub. Didn't really know what to do. I called someone on the condo board, they thought it was just my unit, not a condo problem. Suggested I could try some drain-cleaning liquid, or if I wanted i could get a plumber. Plumbers cost so much. I called one, found out it would cost $150 to come tonight, or $40 tomorrow morning. (I was particularly pissed off since it directly said there was no addiitonal charge for 'emergency service', I guess that's true it's not an additional charge, they just grossly inflate the regular charge.) That's before they do anything at all. Then they decide how much it costs to do the work. So I said tomorrow. I found the water slowly disappearing from the bathtub. But later, I noticed that whenever I heard water running in another unit/pipes, more water came up into the bathtub. And some into the toilet. Anyway seemed to be getting worse, and keep having to mop up some water, so I called the condo board person but no answer, so I finally decided it was clearly not a problem with my unit, i was just seeing the symptoms of a larger problem, and that it was an emergency, since when everyone had a shower in the morning it would definitely flood my place. Called the condo management emergency line, they contacted the plumber who this condo has a contract with already, that person called me, came over eventually after getting equipment. I had been going to the nearby supermarket to use the washroom since I can't use mine. First the plumber used an industrial vaccuum to get rid of all the water from the bathtub and toilet. Then he removed the toilet, and used a "snake" or "auger"... a claw on the end of a cable, when using the machine the claw rotates and the cable goes out, so that is put in the drain and it goes down the drain and breaks up any blockage. Did that for a while, and the rest of the water drained. Then ran hot water for quite a while, and it drained well. I felt so relieved. Surprisingly, didn't get any complaint from neighbouring units about all the 1AM noise we were causing. Anyway, it was tiring and stressful.
But then friday went quite well. Free lunch at work, and even got a free monitor from a coworker who was giving his (personal, not company) one away. Had a general good feeling. Then when I was going to drive somewhere in the evening, discovered a big crack in the windshield. Crap. Don't know how that appeared. Put a bit of a spoiler on the day.
But then saturday went excellent. Went for a hike with a few friends, it was sunny and not windy so it was warm enough, we were treading through pure unspoiled snow (which was sometimes deep enough to swallow your whole leg). It was a really nice day. Except that when we finished, I started feeling headachey and nauseus and exhausted and found my head pretty sunburned since I hadn't even thought about sunscreen this time of year.
Things stabilized a bit after that.