sometimes waking up is disappointing.

I dreamt last night that I met the pope, who happened to be a forty/fifty-something-year-old Asian dude who looked like the guy in Inception... I was there to steal something from him. But he saw that my hands hurt (apparently they did, in my dream), and asked if he could heal them for me. So he pulled on my hands, leaning back with all his weight. My knuckles cracked and then smoke streamed out of my nails. The pope's face turned dark and crazy, and I felt the pain leave through the tips of my fingers.

Many other things happened in that dream, including me fighting off a group of ruggedly handsome ninjas and then kissing the only one who had a bit of a baby face and then getting chased by a giant black bull with a hump on his back and huuuuge horns and then 'tasting' food in the grocery store because we didn't have anything because of the apocalyptic weather that had destroyed everything we had.

It ended in Italy, where I've never been, walking down a tree lined road, enjoying the late afternoon sun.

It all, of course, made complete exhilarating sense until I woke up.

blow

I had my first personal encounter with Dutch police yesterday. I noticed a cop car following me and said aloud to my two passengers "Haha, it's silly but I can't get rid of this American fear of cops! Every time I see one, I immediately slow down 5km/hr and frantically start reviewing my driving over the past 10 min to find anything they might have caught me doing. So silly." And I kept driving.

Then I noticed that on top of the cop car was a sign flashing "Stop, Politie" in red.

Ah! Shnitty.

I pulled over and proceeded to roll down my window. The window, however, has a tendency to get stuck, so by the time the cop walked up to my door he found me giggling and snorting in my efforts to get it to move down to a decent talk-through level while trying to stay serious and look responsible to the approaching officer.

He smiled at me and said a typical Dutch thing which translates roughly to "Tough work".

I giggled (oh why does my giggly silly bit come out at the worst moments?).

"Did I do something wrong?" (smile, snicker).

"Nope. We're just on the look out for drunk drivers tonight; cars with several people in it, driving around at this hour, are likely to have come from a bar."

"Oh man, what a relief! I was freaking out thinking I did something wrong without knowing it! I was trying to figure out what you caught me at!"

The cop just smiled and put the breathalyzer in front of me. "Blow."

I should have taken a deaper breath, you have to breath long into that thing! Finally it beeped and I could stop.

And that was it.

"Have a good night ma'am."

I was almost disappointed.