Now I should probably know better, but for those of you who know me well, this is probably not surprising at all.

It's actually been a while since I haven't slept at all on a call night. It never occurred to me how much even 1 hour of being able to put your head down makes all the world of difference. So I try to drive home without killing anyone after working for 32½ hours straight and decide to warm up the pizza that I had left over from the night before call.

Bad idea.

As the pizza sits in the oven, I decide to lay down on the couch for a second. You know, just resting my eyes. Checking the lids for light-leaks.

A few minutes quickly turns into sixteen hours, at which time I notice that the place smells a little smoky, and my throat is a little raw, like I've been smoking from a pipe.

How I managed not to immolate myself is a mystery to me. What can I say. God has a strange sense of humor or something.

Anyway, I guess the mild-to-moderate asphyxiation stimulated my brain or something, because I had some really weird dreams.

One: I dreamt that my other dog died, run over by a car.

Two: I made it to an island in the East Pacific that was it's own country, and the populace was made up entirely of ex-patriate Asian Americans. The Filipino guy who hooked me up with my travel visa was trying to extort me, so I got rid of his phony goods and made my way to the U.S. Embassy. My uncle then wanted to fly out to Cebu. Bizarrely, I find out that one of my mentors in medical school had had an affair with the Queen(?) of this country and they had had a child which died.

Three: A neighbor of my parents comes to the door in the advanced stages of labor, and my mom and dad end up delivering her in the foyer. The kid is past dates (something absurd, like 42 to 46 weeks) and me and my brother make sure that he's doing OK. The baby is, however, grunting, and I scan my brain for anything that we might use for deep suction.

Four: The bottom of my parent's hill has majestically gentrified, with an enormous commercial district that reminds me a lot of New York City. The city I find myself in is one of those weird hybrid cities I dream a lot about: some bizarre amalgamation of NYC, Chicago, and L.A. This version has the hills and mountains of L.A., the population density and public transport system of NYC, and the lakeshore of Chicago.

Five: Me and my brother are playing this really fun RPG that has very realistic animation. The world is kind of like Middle Earth, and involves various aspects of many of the computer and game-console RPGs that we've played throughout our lives.