Last night during my dreams, I ran across a couple women I used to work with, one from each of my retail jobs. I was passing them in the streets of a city that I think was supposed to be New York (although I also have a vague memory of California somehow being relevant), and as we passed each other I recognized them and said "hey, I know you!" (I know it'll bug me later if I don't record who they were and then forget, so one was Holly P, whom I worked with at Bradlees Department Store, and the other I actually have forgotten her name but it was the redhead who wasn't Becky, whom I worked with at Market Basket. Also for the record, in the dream there were a couple other people with them, including one who was also supposed to be a past co-worker but I never identified.) So we stopped to catch up, I talked a bit about how I'm now living in Seattle, and one of them asked the interesting question, "Have you spent more years yet working in offices rather than working in retail?" I believe I gave an answer and the dream continued a bit before fading out, but I woke up still trying to figure out the answer to the question.

Ignoring the 4-5 years I had a paper route, I started working in retail during the summer of 1987 when I got a job with Bradlees Department Store. I worked there as a cashier/supervisor through 1990, and then quit so I could attend the sophomore semester in Rome with my college, Thomas More. So that's 3.5 years. After I got back, I got a job at Market Basket in June 1991 and worked in the deli through October 1995. That's about 4.5 years, so that's 8 years in retail. Starting in June 1995, I worked for the U.S. Postal Service as a temporary employee doing data entry, working both that job and the supermarket deli until more hours became available for the data entry job. That job wasn't retail work as such, but it wasn't a professional "office" job either (and because the data entry center was always planned to be a temporary facility, it wasn't going to lead to permanent jobs either), so I'm counting it with the retail work. I worked there until June 1998, so that's 3 years, but because of the overlap with the supermarket job it adds only 2.5 years to the non-professional total, now 10.5 years. I knew I was getting nowhere with my job search so I finally quit the postal service and started working through temp agencies. Although the temp assignments were office work, I still wasn't employed full-time on my own as a professional, so I'll count that into the non-professional total too. I worked as a temp for about 8 months before being hired full-time by one of the clients. I'll just round it off and say that's a grand total of 11 years working retail/non-professional jobs.

So, my professional career began in March 1999, working for a construction and engineering management/legal consulting group essentially as a para-consultant. I stayed with them through February 2002, then moved to Seattle and began working in the software industry as a technical writer and editor. My first job ran from March 2002 to February 2003, and my second from February 2003 until March 2007. That's 8 years actually working in offices as a professional. Now that I'm freelance, I no longer work in offices, but it's still professional work, so at the end of this month I will have finished the ninth year of my professional career.

The answer, then, to the dream question is "no, not yet." I've still got another couple years to match. But overall I'm happy with the direction of my professional career, and I'm fairly confident in March 2010 I'll be looking forward to my next 11 years as a working professional.

Friday night I had a dream that a dozen or so people came into my place (which looked nothing like my real condo), claiming to be there for a party. They were all young, in their mid-20s, and at least one of the women claimed to know me, but I didn't recognize any of them. I was insisting they had to leave, they weren't supposed to be there, and then I was interrupted by a phone call. In the dream, it was around 2 AM (in reality, I didn't actually get to bed until around 3 AM), but the phone call was someone from the health insurance company, calling about my application - or perhaps it was the IRS about Go Play NW's application for tax-exempt status, I can't remember now. Somehow, because I was on the phone, I started talking about my iPhone, I think with someone else at my place but maybe with the person on the other end of the call. But the phone kept changing - I was on my iPhone, then suddenly it was much bigger than it should be, then suddenly it wasn't my iPhone after all, it was some other weird combination handset. That dream drifted off into nothingness.

Saturday night I had a dream that started out in some kind of classroom setting, though unusually for such dreams it wasn't anything specific like back at Thomas More College. I had to check my iPhone for some reason - and it was specifically my iPhone - and someone else in the class was interested in the iPhone and asked me to show it to them for a bit. Then there was a very beautiful woman whose left knee was bothering her, and she wanted me to massage the back of it. This let me sit with an arm around her for a while, all cozy, but then she had to leave to do something. And then I realized my iPhone was gone! Missing! It wasn't in my pocket any more and I didn't know where it was. I was sure no one could've taken it out of my pocket without my noticing, but I couldn't remember whether I'd left it out somewhere, and I thought someone - maybe the person who'd asked about it earlier - had taken it. I was pretty frantic - I'd spent all that money on the phone, and it had all my contacts in it that someone could misuse. I think I sort of woke up and realized that it was just a dream, but I know that realization was worked into part of a later dream, when I checked and found my iPhone was in my pocket after all, although in some kind of protective sleeve that I don't actually have.

I'm updating from my parents' home in New Hampshire. My last remaining grandparent, my dad's mother - Me'mere, as we French-Canadians called her - passed away on Friday. She'd been gradually getting worse for a while, so while the particular occasion was a surprise, it was not unexpected, so to speak. In fact I had decided a couple weeks ago that I would have to go home for Christmas this year, expense be damned, because I figured if I wasn't going to be here sooner for her funeral, then Christmas would be the last time I'd see her alive. Instead it's turned out that last Christmas was the last time. Early afternoon on Friday when my phone rang and I saw that it was my parents calling, I knew immediately what the call was about.

Last weekend I'd had a dream that I was back at home in my old bed and I could hear my mom downstairs saying something to my dad - I think maybe it was something about me still being upstairs sleeping. (Arguably this wasn't a dream so much as a sleep-time rememberance.) It was a little disorienting to come awake and realize I wasn't in that bedroom. I actually had that dream twice that night, too. Then, Friday morning I had a dream that I was playing in orchestra, and one of my younger cousins was there too, but he was messing around some, and Me'mere got up from the audience and stepped forward to scold him a bit, in her good-natured way. Then when I awoke I thought, wait that's all wrong, that cousin belongs to the other side of the family! Anyhow, the night before as I got ready for bed, I had actually been thinking about Me'mere and the chances that I'd have to come here for her funeral before Christmas, so I'm sure both dreams are just coincidental, but still it was a bit weird.

So, I flew out here on Saturday, attended the wake and small family gathering yesterday, and the funeral today. It was very good to see my extended family again - some of these people I haven't seen since my grandfather's funeral seven years ago, or even longer, and in all honesty some of them I'm not likely to see until the next funeral happens. More than one person said how nice it was that I'd come all the way out for the funeral. I really couldn't have passed on it, but still I'm glad that they appreciated it.

There are two short stories about Me'mere that I'll share, one from before I was born and one that I remember. Me'mere never drove, but my grandfather (Pe'pere) tried teaching her once. Their driveway was on the side of the house, and Pe'pere told her to back the car out of the driveway. Apparently she started it moving and attempted to turn it onto the street, but she cut the wheel so sharply while stepping a bit much on the gas that the car lunged around the corner of the house and hit the front steps. As I've heard it, Pe'pere was laughing too hard to stop her, though I'm not sure how true that is. In any case, only yesterday was I told that apparently she did end up getting her license, but she never actually drove again after that.

The story I remember is from one time that she was babysitting us. After dinner, there wasn't quite enough vanilla ice cream to go around, and there also were only a few Oreo cookies left. But Me'mere said that was okay; she put a cookie in each bowl, added a little ice cream to each, and mixed it up. Nowadays you can buy cookies and cream at the supermarket or ice cream stands, but in the late 70s no one was doing that commercially; it was the first time I'd ever heard of such a thing, and it'd be a few more years before I'd see the first Steve's Ice Cream parlor in Boston, which claimed to be the home of "smoosh-ins" as they called it. Friday night, when I was at the grocery store, I knew that I needed more ice cream, and as I stopped to think about what to get I realized there was of course only the obvious choice, and brought some cookies and cream home.

Tomorrow I'll be flying back to Seattle. This coming Saturday is my "condoversary" as I've been gleefully calling it, and I'm having a party to celebrate. I'm glad that I didn't have to cancel that event, but if this had all happened a week later, I'd have cancelled the party and come home for the funeral, and I still wouldn't regret it.

Back in November I was contacted by the Secret Service about the burglary, because two of the ten people (accused of being) involved in the ring were going to trial rather than pleading guilty. At the time the trial was scheduled to begin December 5. However, the trial was delayed, and then one of the remaining people pled guilty after all, but the last one held out and trial was rescheduled to begin in March. Last week I got the call that trial would begin Monday, and today I appeared in court as scheduled, as a victim witness.

When they called last week, they told me to be at the courthouse at 8:30. I forgot to call them yesterday like I was supposed to, to confirm that I was still scheduled to appear; if I had, I might not have had to get up extra early. My instructions were simply to go to the courtroom floor, and when I got there no one was around. The subpoena I'd been given back in November specified a judge's name, so I sat outside that courtroom for a few hours reading my book, while people came and went. When the courtroom I'd been waiting by emptied and no one had yet spoken to me, I called the attorney's office to see if I could find out what was going on. They explained that the other judge on that floor was now hearing the case, and I should just go to the witness room for that court, so I did and found another couple witnesses. I learned from the other witnesses that they'd been told to come in for 1 pm, but then this morning were called back and asked to arrive for 10 am; probably if I'd remembered to call yesterday, I would've been told to come in later. Oh well.

Shortly after finding the correct witness room, the trial broke for lunch; after it reconvened, they started taking us witnesses quickly. My appearance was brief; as I'd been told, it was simply a matter of confirming the stolen checks hadn't been written by me, and that I neither knew the people they were written to nor had agreed to give them money. With that, I was done, and my involvement over, so far as I know. Eventually I'll get a letter telling me the result.

Even though I knew what to expect, I was still a little nervous to my surprise, but I was amused at myself for being so. I may have been more stressed about the trial than I realized. Monday morning I had a nightmare in which I was driving toward my parents' house (up Plymouth Ave, for those of you who know the 'hood) at night and the house was dark because no one was home. Suddenly there was a menacing figure staring out my old bedroom windows down at me, which was terrifying and I screamed myself awake. The silly part of that dream was that the figure appeared as some kind of black and white pattern, and I awoke with the impression it had been an evil panda.

This morning I had another nightmare. This time I was inside my old bedroom when suddenly there was a figure sneaking past the windows outside. I should point out the bedroom is on the second floor, but somehow the figure was sneaking just outside, I guess on some kind of nonexistent ledge. This time although I was startled and and alarmed, I was mainly angry rather than terrified, because I knew it was a thief trying to sneak in. Somehow I managed to grab him, or step outside to confront him, which is when I discovered the thief was dressed in black and white much like a mime. I think even in the dream I knew it was the same figure I'd seen on Monday, although clearly human not panda. I woke myself up yelling "hey! heyyyyy! heyyyy!" angrily at him.

Hopefully with my involvement in the trial over, I will no longer be haunted by the buglary or by nightmare panda/mime thieves.