night of 7/9/2011

g--, a-- and i are traveling across the country. we're at some travel stop / downtown / amusement park. there's a hockey game and we watch a while, it's washington, ovechkin keeps scoring in impossible ways. (i have an ovechkin jersey on.) first he's outside the rink and gets a puck that jumps loose, puts it in the net which has a gap beside it. i say "i didn't know you could go outside the rink." then from a faceoff behind the goal he bounces the puck apparently off a piece of loose cloth, something impossible, we're all amazed, but on looking more closely there's a little gap near the crossbar none of us had noticed, so he'd just taken the obvious advantage.

then it's me and j-- who have been traveling. we're telling some folks about when we'd driven across the country before. "of all the forty states we saw--" (i realize i'm exaggerating, j-- is there, she'd know) "--well, thirty--i think oregon was the most beautiful. just gorgeous. vast arrays of waterfalls spilling from a distant line of cliffs--" (my arm sweeping grandly across this imagined view.)

among the many buffet tables and travelers there is an ongoing improv comedy show with an over-the-top kung fu theme. civilians are invited to join, or are tolerated. i am playing along and doing quite well. soon i am performing great flying kicks and smashing the prop furniture with abandon. (we're eating, too; a huge table is stocked with sushi and i do a soaring leap over a ledge to get down to it.) by the denouement i am the star, confronting the evil matron who is the family's betrayer. i prepare a great, roaring, palm to her forehead and after it lands, she is on the ground miming the pulsing gush of blood from her shattered skull, repeating a ridiculous spurting raspberry sound, and i start cracking up. it's too much. my body is convulsing from trying to hold the giggles down. i wake up still feeling bad for breaking character.