today started off strange. i woke up from bad dream. i was crying a little. it was about my dad. being a dream, it was different from reality but i didn't realize that the facts weren't straight. in the dream, i was on vacation or something with twiddle thumbs, my mom and her boyfriend. we were staying at some hotel and there's an amusement park next door. i was on a really high, fast ride and so was twiddle thumbs. right there, i should have known it was a dream and woken up because twiddle thumbs would never get on such a ride.

the hotel had a curfew around 7:30pm and after then, they make it really hard to get in. it's more like there's a strike around the entrance and they try to block out the protesters, but if you say you're a guest, you get in. so there's an al pacino type guy who is i think the manager and he's blocking the people and i manage to get past him, but i tell him how horrible our experience has been and i will never recommend this hotel to anyone. going further into the crowd, closer to the entrance, there is another hotel worker blocking people and he's got a big beard, looks a bit russian. i tell him i'm a hotel guest and he lets me past. i tell him that they need to make their guests aware of the hotel's policies and give the guests a card or some sort of pass so they know who the guests are. he said that they've tried that already. i don't waste my time and go in the hotel.

i walk up the stairs and twiddle thumbs is behind me. i decide to go up to one floor that looks like a bar. in the dream, this is the hotel where my parents stayed for their honeymoon and where my dad died. the bar is really seedy. there's a bunch of old drunk whores. one of them is sitting in a booth right next to the stairs that i'm walking up. she asks me something rude which i refuse, then she says something about how i'm going to die like my dad. i get so mad, i pick her up and am about to throw her down but then i feel some sort of pity for her. this is the woman that my dad was with when he died, but this is the woman that called the ambulance. so i set her down and she's passed out from whatever she's on. that was my dream. very bizarre.

wake up, go with twiddle thumbs to her parents' house so we can help to clean up and rearrange stuff so they can have a yard sale so they can eventually fix up their house and sell it. we did not do any of the plans we had. we got there and her dad was loading a cabinet into the minivan to take to twiddle thumbs's aunt's house. it's our old cabinet and she bought it. twiddle thumbs and i rode along to help carry it out. but, there really was no room for me. i sat on the floor in the tiniest part of the minivan. it was really pretty funny. too awkward a position for a longer drive, but manageable.

when we got back from delivering the cabinet, i thought we would get to work. turns out no one can really help do this today (we need their input as to what we can throw away and what's to be sold). twiddle thumbs's younger sister does mariachi stuff. what i didn't know is that she teaches little kids. those kids were performing today...at a church! so yes, i went to catholic mass...in spanish! i was not even remotely dressed for it. i was wearing black jeans and my shirt from the modern art museum in mexico city that's nothing but skulls. i guess it's ok because it's mexican and el dia de los muertos is coming up soon. but still, i felt really out of place. luckily, no one dresses up for church anymore. whole families in casual clothes, jeans and a t-shirt.

while in mass, i figured it's probably the most common catholic experience i was going through. almost all of latin america is spanish-speaking and almost all of them are catholic. i bet latin america makes up the majority of catholics in the world, hence mass in spanish is probably the most common kind of catholic mass. now i've been to christian church in english, japanese, and spanish. i've been to some buddhist temples but never during a ceremony. i guess that's next.

during the mass, i was listening to what the priest was saying but of course i didn't understand what he was saying. i could understand some words and i made up in my head what he was talking about. afterwards, i asked twiddle thumbs what he was saying and she told me to tell her what i thought he was saying. i thought he was saying that we mexicans are mestizos. we are part aztec and part spanish. but we are more spanish. don't be a savage. be a good catholic. become a missionary. no one is a missionary anymore. spread the word of catholicism. something like that. twiddle thumbs told me that that's pretty much what he said. i guess it was easy to figure out that speech based on my previous experiences with church attendance and living among missionaries.

before and after the mass, i was playing with twiddle thumbs's sister's guitar. that is the most guitar playing i've done in the last 5-10 years. i just don't touch my guitar anymore. my nails were too long and my fingertips were just too soft. it was painful for the first 5 minutes but then it got easier. it was just really tough to form certain chords and do fast chord changes. i tried the guitarron too but that thing is impossible for virgin fingers. i need to break in on the guitar first. i also tried the vihuela later that night and that also was tough. very stiff strings.

after all this was over, twiddle thumbs and i were starving because it was getting close to dinner and we never had lunch. we knew of a fast food vegetarian place in the area but had never been there. we looked it up online and went there. it was bad vegan junk food. it's one of those foster's, dairy queen, tastee freeze type of places. the old dessert stands that are all around southern california. i don't know how to describe it. most of these have been bought out and are either mexican or chinese food. you get the idea. well this one is still a tastee freeze, but the chinese owner servers a lot of vegetarian burgers. they have an item called 'vegan burger' and i had that. we asked the guy what desserts are vegan and he said their frozen yogurt is. i checked out the ingredients and it is definitely NOT vegan!!! i didn't really want dessert but with the other customers keep coming up to buy dessert only, you kinda want to participate too. we drove to trader joe's and got some tofutti treats. i'm definitely not doing vegan junk food again.