Experiments in Woolgathering

Seems that I’m in a movie-theme lately (had a LotR dream the night before last).

This dream is set in Middle Earth, at the time of the War of the Rings. The dream is very fluid. Sizes and other details change frequently.

I was talking to friend Ester from Iceland this morning and she told me that she and the other women were walking off the job at 2:08.

My first two thoughts were that it was just at her workplace and why 2:08?? The first was wrong, it’s nationwide Women’s Day Off, and the reason for the second is that the average wage difference between men and women is so large that at 2:08 they will have worked enough to earn the same amount as a man. Do the math, yes, women only make 64.15% of what men do.

I was floored by this. That’s bordering on crimminal in a westernized nation. Hell, they should walk about a lot more often if you ask me.

I very curious to know how many men show up to protest alongside them. Have to remember to ask.

Update

Some pictures from the march can be seen here (the article is in Icelandic, sorry).

Iceland, Discrimination, Feminism, sexism

This was a very disjointed dream. Lots of scene jumps – for me at least. Overall it was very bright and colorful, though not very emotionally charged. I have a sense that it’s set in Chicago, IL (where I was born) along Lake Michigan. I found it interesting that this seemed to be set in my birthtown – a place we left when I was about 2 and a half years old.

Last night we got a call from R’s mother. One of her cousins, Bryce, was in a bad car accident yesterday morning. Apparently an oncoming car swerved to avoid something and ran head on into him. He’s alive, but not breathing on his own and in a medically induced coma while the swelling in his brain goes down. There were two people in the other car, one of whom is dead and the other apparently not expected to make it. Bryce was alone in his car.

And weird, which I suppose goes without saying. Anyhow…

Okay, actually I can. Since it’s such a bogus holiday. The vikings where here 500 years before Christopher “I misplaced the East Indies by Ten Thousand Miles” Columbus, why the hell aren’t we celebrating ::Lief Ericson:: Day?

It is sad that I forgot today was a holiday, though at least I figured it out before heading into the office!

... I finally dragged my ass back to the dojo. It was very nice to be on the mat again.

There were 4 new faces, not counting a nidan who was in there from out of town. Steve Sensei taught and we mostly worked on lower rank kyu techniques, with a couple of other techniques thrown in to keep us honest or something.

3 of the new people were really new, like only a few classes new, the 4th had clearly been around for a couple months, I think I was just going so infrequently I never happened to be there at the same time he was, or I just forgot him.

Anyhow, I’m not too sore, except for my right butt cheek, which probably just means I took a break fall a bit wrong – hardly surprising.

Now, to just keep going regularly…

I haven’t been rememebering my dreams much lately, so since my schedule is a little less crazy now I decided to work on this a bit. I couldn’t find my old dream journal (which is too bad, but I didn’t dig through everything in my office yet either) so I found a journal which only had one page used in it and requisitioned that. I also tried to remember to repeat the “I will remember my dreams” mantra before going to sleep.