dream

Had a dream this morning about the Houston art car event. It started out a classic logistics dream. (do other people have logistics dreams? I have them all the time.) In the dream Clovepod and another art car driver, I'll call him AE for ease of typing, were caravaning with us to Houston. Georg and I had rented a small house in Houston for the week of the event. AE had rented the house next door, and in the dream he was our next door neighbor in Durham as well. Clovepod told us she was going to rent a room in a big art car rooming house, where everyone else would also be there for the parade. We told her there was plenty of space for her in the house we had rented, but she said she'd rather have the independence and flexibility that came with having her own space. Which made perfect sense and was fine with us.

AE brought over his art car to show us what he'd done for the parade. And I realized that we had to leave for the parade in a few days, and looked over and realized Undersea Mah Jongg looks like hell (which, in the waking world, it does) and I hadn't done any prep work yet. At this point it became a classic anxiety dream. (But still basically a logistics dream.) The rest of the dream was spent figuring out what could get done and what couldn't get done in the time remaining. For instance the beads that are coming loose: did we have replacements? (Mostly yes.) Could the old beads be cleaned and reused? (No: any solvent that would remove silicone caulk would also damage the beads.)

In the middle of my logistical anxiety the dog woke me up. The funny thing is, we can't even go to Houston this year. We've been going every other year since 2002 but we're going to have to miss this one. Because the primary election is on May 6, the Tuesday before the Houston parade. And I've committed to working at the primary.

I like to leave for the parade on Monday and arrive Wednesday evening, so we have Thursday day to relax, see local friends and do stuff before the first art car event Thursday night. In 2006 I even left on Sunday so I could stop for a day-long mini-vacation in New Orleans. Which was great and I'd like to do that again next time.

If we waited until after the primary and left Wednesday morning, we'd have to skip New Orleans and we still wouldn't get to Houston until Friday evening, having missed the Art Car Ball and the Main Street Drag (school tour). We don't usually go to the Friday night symposium so we'd be missing 2/3 of the events we like to do. We'd only be there for the parade itself. It doesn't seem worth traveling 1200 miles for a one-day event. And that would also mean starting a 1200 mile road trip the day after working 14 hours at the primary. Which sounds insane. Houston art car weekend is incredibly busy and in order to enjoy it I need to be well rested when I arrive, not pushing myself to the limit before I even get there.

I could just skip the primary. But I really want to work the polls on election day this year, and I really don't want election day (a busy, extremely important election day) to be the first time I've ever done it. Besides, people are saying that this year our primary might actually matter: the Democratic nominee might not be decided yet by then. In which case I don't want to miss it for a road trip.

So, we will skip Houston this year and start going on odd years instead. This way I'll have more time to do that desperately needed work on Undersea Mahjongg before art car season starts. I think we're going to Artscape in Baltimore this year, in early July. Plenty of time.