I have a bookmark for the page on flickr that shows recent photos tagged with "guinea pig". I know I've got four guinea pigs now, but I LOVE looking at pictures of other people's. They're such a perfectly adorable little animal. The look on their face is always deadpan, disapproving, or suspicious. They have floppy little rose-petal ears. Their fur comes in all types, from curly to smooth to my favorite: super cowlicky! Someday I totally want to have a super cowlicky guinea pig.

Unfortunately when you just do a plain old flickr search for guinea pig you WILL run across pictures of guinea pigs being cooked and eaten. People travel to exotic countries, see racks of roasted cuy (I think that's the name, I'm not going to google extensively), think it's so crazy they've got to post a picture. The first few I saw really bothered me, then I just started skipping over them, scrolling a little faster when I got to one. I can deal with the fact that some people eat my pets, I'm not going to be some aloof westerner. I even have a well-traveled friend who's eaten it. He says it's a little greasy, but overall pretty good.

Then last night I had this horrible dream that we were at some woman's house, and she was eating grilled-up guinea pigs. I told myself I was okay with it like normal. I had my guinea pigs there with me in another corner, we were watching TV, she had this little campstove on the coffee table and was offering people food. Then I look over and she's got Pinky on the campstove. I freaked. Grabbed him off the grill, looked at his feet, held him close to my chest sobbing "I'm so sorry Pinky, I'm so sorry pinky, please be okay..." He was alright. I woke up feeling alarmed, realizing that I should no longer search my flickr tag. It's getting to me.

It's funny that I dreamed about Pinky because in real life, he's a total shithead. He's not quite a year old so he's by far the smallest pig we have but he's scrappy and will take your ass on. He bites. He chases the other pigs around. He will stare you down. He doesn't mind being petted which is funny, he's the one pig who I can go up to and just pet his head and he lays down and closes his eyes and chills. And occasionally I can even pick him right up. But if I hold him too long he becomes very uncool with it and will go for an artery. If you chase him around too long trying to pick him up when he's in no mood, he will turn and stare you right in the eyes and chatter threateningly. It's funny because I read that in a herd of males, someone will establish dominance. I always thought it'd be Jabba because he's huge and fat and has experience torturing Billy Dee in their former home. But Jabba's really afraid of us humans, and when he tried chasing the herd around Pinky wouldn't put up with that shit. Pinky will not get chased out of a house, or away from food. In fact his favorite place to be is usually on top of a house, observing all his subjects. If there's anyone who doesn't need my protection, it's Pinky. But the idea of losing him was horrible.

Incidentally I still get freaked out all the time at the thought of a dead piggy. I know they have short lifespans and since they're made for the bottom of the food chain, they hide symptoms of disease or weakness to avoid getting picked off. So I always worry we've got a dead one. I'll see one laying calmly in the corner, eyes closed, still... and I poke it to make sure it's just sleeping. Then I feel bad for waking them up but what can I do? They're so small.

I had a dream about the airplane last night. I was left seat, a flight instructor was next to me, my sister was in the back, we were taxiing. The flight instructor was some young guy who might kinda remind me of my actual flight instructor but it wasn't him. Anyway I got lost, I was going in between buildings, like some industrial park and clipped the side of a stack of pallets with the wing and snapped a control cable (mechanically unfeasible but let's move on). It was getting dark and scary. The instructor said he could replace the cable right there, and my sister and I should head back, so we left him, and I felt really bad about it and later headed back to find him and the plane, but couldn't get back to where we were.

What irks me about the dream is that I only got to taxi. I mean come on, people without planes fly in their dreams. My husband has actually said that he can fly in every single dream he has, it takes some effort that he can't totally describe, some concentration or clenching or something, but he can fly. I think I've had one flying dream ever. And this wasn't it! It was a standard bad dream about me fscking up and looking stupid.

dream dictionary says that if you dream about your sister, it symbolizes something you care about and want to protect. Abandoning someone in a dream means you're feeling overwhelmed. An accident means you're afraid of accidents. duh. then there's "airplane", which means all these optimistic things, which I'm disregarding because my relationship with "airplane" is obviously totally weird right now.

I had a dream last night that I complained to my boss about hating my group. so he had me moved to a different one. I was back on the previous airplane I'd had, before I moved... but this time things were different. We were in some sort of garden community, in a house with lots of round tables like preschool. There were 20 or 30 engineers, mostly new college grads. The group lead was someone I'd already worked for. He was picking out movies for us to watch, and everyone was just talking and sitting around the tables. He said there wasn't much work for us to do. I was worried about the new hires never learning anything, and didn't understand why we weren't doing work. Then I learned that the company was considering making a big airplane, and we were all just in reserves for that, they were hiring engineers all over town and just having them sit in these houses in case they ever needed us. I freaked out and tried to find my old boss, get back to my old group, tell someone about how crazy this was, but I was just wandering around the subdivision.

can't sleep. I had a dream that the earth had been attacked or there was a war or something, and our atmosphere was drifting off, and i was running with marc over all these people and plane crashes and bridges as everyone slowly lost air to breathe. I've been watching Battlestar Galactica and I think it's messing with me. Oh, and a while back we went to the theater and saw 28 Weeks Later and it totally messed with me, too. AWESOME movie though! A lot more violent than the first one, but a lot deeper too, with good quality digs against government. Marc almost got his ass beat because he can't shut up in movie theaters, and we were with friends of ours who also have the same problem, so the man sitting next to mean leaned over and glares at him and marc's just like, "WHAT?" then later he apologized.

if you google "apologized" it comes up with a pat robertson article. not enough, dude.

I use google as a spell-checker all the time.

I also use wikipedia all the time... but only to get me started on learning what something is. Last semester, some kid did a presentation in class on a topic, and used+cited a wikipedia article to define some base terms. WE'RE GRADUATE STUDENTS. There are so many disconnects in education.

dreammoods says this about my dream:
end of the world - I'm stressed. meh. I've been more stressed.
running with other people - festive and prosperous times. yes!
airplane crashes - I've set unrealistic goals for myself.