so, it started out, that we were preparing for burning man. we had some sort of camper van and I borrowed Karine's vacuum cleaner attachments becuase they were really needed. we went to the desert and it was scrub desert (not playa). the camp was small but permament,, sort of like you'd expect trailer folks to be living in.

I came back and forgot the vacuum cleaner attachments. Karine was displeased and I had to go back to get them.

it was the middle of the night and I went to work because I forgot something or maybe it was tied to picking up the vacuum cleaner attachments. there were a lot of people there! apparently there was a change of ownership. we were going to set up in the desert. people were moving around and the place was getting reorganized. some, not many, people were leaving (involuntarily). my office was staying the same (but in my dream it was oriented east instead of north).

I was in my pjamies and a bathrobe and realized that it would be daylight and I was not going to have an opportunity to go home and change. good thing I keep a change of clothes in my office! I shut the door and started to change. I realized I had no underwears. ah well. I started to pull on these dressy olive-green slacks and someone came to the door. I made them wait while I put them on. I think it was Natasha at the door. and someone else.

after this we went to eat in the cafe. the cafe was sort of attached to the store we ran (which was a foofie grocery store like Mrs Gooch's in LA, or Mollie Stone's up in SF). the colours in the cafe were very woody/orangey like Tempura House on 2nd St in SOMA. there were 6 of us sitting in a booth and I was on the edge. I oculd sit but it was uncomfortable. the booth has a low overhead thing, like it was covered and the covering was maybe 5' 6" clearance. so even though the cafe was brightly lit, the booth wasn't really. we talked about the changes to out work becuase of the new ownership.

Ron Skelton was there and I guess he was the general manager of the store. he said he was sorry but the budget constraints meant that the company was no longer going to supply beer, or pay (as much?) for employee recreation. there was other stuff they would not pay for but it's faded. Natasha and him were both sad becuase it impacted their surfing. I found this frustrating becuase I thought the morale of the employees would drop to an unacceptable level.

we left the cafe and started to work. as I type this, I have no idea now what I was doing in the dream, whatver generic grocery store thing, stocking I guess. in the context of the dream, I totally knew what I was doing although it'd been many years since I worked in a foofie grocery store, and I was a cashier then. I needed to go in the back for something. I went in the back looking for Ron. couldn't find him.

time passed... we were outside at the company's great surf um, water thing. arena, I guess. the store and the water thing all of it are in the desert. the desert is still scrub, and we all live right around this area. outside of where we live it's a little wild. the animals talk and there are elves. anyhow lots of folk (people, animals, and elves) gather to watch the surf thing. it's not as elaborate as in previous years because of the budget constraints and new ownership.

the contest began. it was Natasha and either a lion or Ron. I know I shouldn't confuse Ron like that but anyhow. in my dream "surfing" has nothing to do with the ocean or the web. they start out at the top of this big ramp, they are standing on the top of these long, 20' or 30', cylinders of bound bamboo stalks. the cylinders are perpendicular to the direction of movement and parallel to the ground and they stand in the middle, but slighly off center. the ramp is wide enough to hold both of these end-to-end with only a couple feet of the cylinders hanging off the edge, and about as tall as a skiing jump ramp. the ramp does not dominate the water arena. the water is very dark very blue. Natasha is on the left.

they start down the ramp. the sport is dangerous and there are two helicopters hovering over the long edges of the arena ready to latch on to the cylinders in case there is some rescue thing that needs to happen. the cylinders move slowly down the ramp and across the water, which piles up in a slow wave to support them. the water keeps piling up until they reach the end of the arena and the wave reflects off the edge and they come back to the ramp. it does sort of look like a cross between ocean surfing and log rolling.

ths sight of all this is really spectacular. so is the sound, a great whooshing roaring noise. the contestants make it look easy to manipulate these big bamboo things and the water just using their feet & legs.

Natasha is displeased for some reason. one of her knees is bothering her, the skin is pulled too tight. I guess she had all the hair follicles removed many years before, and this last year had reconstructive surgery on her knee. she wishes she'd had the hair follicles put back at the same time. the skin doesn't feel right because of it and her movement is restricted, not enough to prevent her from surfing but enough to bother her when she does.

the lion (who is not Ron after all) wins. he is of course all noble about it but has a sort of 'of course I would win' attitude. come to think of it Natasha had that attitude too. he is friends with Natasha, they've been doing this for years, and their relationship with each other is entirely unaffected by this. it's the relationship with the public that I mean with the "noble" and stuff.

traditionally, every year, after the surfing contest, there is a race with these soop'd up cars that go down the ramp. usually it's the elves that race as the humans and the animals, while wanting to watch, don't have anyone interested in dealing with the cars. this year, one of the contestant teams found out that the budget contraints prevented the distribution of ice cream, which was also traditional. they backed out.

the way they designed their car to ride across the arena, required that it start out frozen solid, both to facilitate floating on the water, and to allow the equipment to survive the high stress/high-temperatures placed on it to zoom around the water. the elves needed the ice cream to achieve this and so they backed out. it's not like they could have brought their own in the warm desert.

I guess that's it. people dispersed disappointed and the helicopters went away. I gave Ron an "I told you so" about the budget too, because these contests were important for goodwill and morale.