Books: About a Boy. Still working through this. The writing is excellent, but the story has begun to fade in interest level for me. So I've also started Fluke: I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings, by Christopher Moore. Not as over-the-top as Lamb, but the first 20 pages have been entertaining, including a whale that has "Bite Me" written across its tail.

Dreams: I was on a bus trip with people from work and realized while I was on the bus that I had not packed any underwear or toiletries. My bag was filled with odds and ends (hard candies, some make-up), but did not seem to have any clothing in it. I was not concerned about the lack of clothes, but was obsessed with not having clean underwear. Our first stop was at a gigantic mall, and I was relieved that I should be able to find what I needed at the mall. Dream relief is always so short-lived, isn't it? This mall was a maze of dead-end hallways, arcades and large open spaces, but there was not a single store selling clothing anywhere. I wandered around and around, even asking a stranger if there was an anchor store that sold clothing. He replied that he wasn't from around here and didn't think there were any anchor stores (although they had been clearly visible from outside the mall). A friend of his, dressed in clown-like spangly red and orange, made some nonsensical comment and I beat a hasty retreat. I was so distraught that I ignored a couple of people I worked with who were acting like a Greek chorus, commenting on my inability to find a suitable store.

I was standing in a parking lot peeling a cucumber the size of a watermelon. The goal was to have the peels drop into an artistic arrangement, but mine would only form unappealing clumps. Someone was standing off to the side commenting on how another woman I work with was able to do such a good job with the peeling. She must have had the special Ronco peeler-slicer-dicer.