Batch

07-28-2017 -- Starts slowly. Driving around Orlando, trying to figure out how to get certain places. Taking what is probably to 408 to it's end over by UCF, but calling it one of the odd-numbered toll roads like the 417 or 429. Eventually somewhere more over near downtown, wandering around with Dale, and perhaps KPSB or Nick W. Maybe. Anyway, there is somebody that is somewhat punk-ish, but I still think or still hope is OK, and Dale ends up painting their picture, and does a remarkably decent job at it, so they don't destroy it or tear it up, but let him continue. Meanwhile, a cat gets its head stuck under a rock, and four or five other cats and kittens help to move the rock enough to free it and save it. Cool.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of girls, seemingly somewhat homeless or something, possibly with several kinds of various ages that they are trying to care for, and I am helping them put some groceries in a fridge, while a couple of older ladies come by who seem to be trying to help them out a bit. They seem to be trying to provide significant help, because they have bought 5 or 6 prepaid trac-phones for the girls to use, which seems like a fairly good investment for a couple of girls who they've just run into on the streets. Problem is, the girls seem to be involved with the punk and his friends, who are also punks, and who no longer have anything to do with people I know.

The punks are seeming to get more threatening, and because I dare even talk to the girls, are starting to push me around slightly and act like they may be starting to steal some of my stuff. Anyway, things move on a bit, and I have hiked through the downtown area for a distance, until I run into several of the girls and kids again, near the hospital, where they seem to be trying to get some help, trying to sign up for benefits or something, while seeking minor medical aid. A bunch of us are sitting in the area, and being called on one at a time to speak forth our relationship, and I end up calling out something like concerned bystander, and am trying to help out by explaining the ladies who helped them out with the prepaid phones in the hopes that it will help them get benefits. But the guy in charge is explaining how the biggest need is for a stable address where they can get mail which is not owned by the council. (Yes, my dream is starting to sound British here.)

Eventually I leave the hospital, and head back to the area where I started in, and am starting to gather up my things, but a couple of the punks are coming back and becoming a problem again. I try to get rid of them, both by sending them off to the hospital, and by warning them that the girls are my friends, and they will be mad at them if they pick on me, but they continue lightly shoving me, and making grabs for some of my stuff. By this point, I've packed all my stuff up, and am wearing two large backpacks (one of them a European-style hiking pack) and pulling two large suitcases, and am simply trying to get away. I've got my Corolla parked around the corner, but they have at least one motorcycle, so I don't want to lead them to it, but want to lose them, first, then get in the car and drive away.

There are a couple of uniformed cops standing around, and I am considering going to them for help, but I decide against it for now, and move a block over and head down the road a bit. At one point I put a little distance between myself and the guy following me, but then a lady gets knocked to the ground by the crowd and he helps her back up, and says something about being an Uber driver. I ask him about it a few minutes later, and he admits he is not, and says he just said that because I was an Uber driver. Odd stuff.

We wander through a flea market-like area where I am glancing at some used books, but it is getting late and the place is shutting down and locking up, so we have to reverse directions and get out of there, which leads back to walking back the way we came, near where all this started. The one punk is still keeping an eye on me for all the other punks, and I am getting desperate enough to consider approaching the cops to ask for help. If they can distract and hold off the punks for a few minutes, I might be able to get my car and drive away. The problem is, though the cops have not stopped us from walking back into the area (strangely), they are in the middle of blocking everything off, and are holding machine guns in their hands at the ready.

I realize that something is going down, and glancing up, see another machine gun sticking out a window, but notice it is a cop holding it. Things are obviously getting very tense, and suddenly something seems to break, and more and more shots start ringing out. Cops are firing up into the buildings towering around us (this is starting to look far less Orlando, and far more NYC) and people are firing down from the buildings into the cops. I see a couple of cops shot, and collapsing to the ground, bleeding heavily. There is a seemingly homeless woman who is calling out, demanding to give her back her gun, as she could use it better than the person who currently has is, and it seems she may be under cover, but she's shot down. By this time, several of us innocent bystanders are cowering on the grounds. I am actually underneath my backpacks and suitcases, which probably makes me a fair bit safer.

More people are being shot, and several of us are just huddling here, but several others are grabbing us, and pulling us under and inside some of the buildings, hoping to get us out of range of the shooters. Some of the people have been shot, and are bleeding as they are being pulled along, but the ones pulling are hoping they are only minorly injured. Others, like myself, are unharmed, but either in shock or playing dead, and just being pulled along. Big sections on buildings are swinging up or down on large hydraulic systems, opening or closing access to large areas, and we are worried because we don't know what is happening.

One lady (older than the teen girls looking for help, but seemingly younger than the middle aged ladies who were helping) who seems to be in her late 30s or early 40s sees me being dragged along there, and seems to be worried about me, and she is kind of cute, so I am considering getting up and speaking to her, but that's about when I woke up.

01-06-2014 -- Playing a game that seems to be a cross between Runescape and Realmz. Somehow I have just rolled up a new character, and am doing some farming (planting herbs or plants) and fighting in a graveyard that feels like it is in Morytania. I am mostly fighting off small and weak skeletons one or two at a time, and they are not strong enough to be a real danger to me, but I stumble into a fight which has five or six of the skeletons and a thing that looks like one of the grim reaper figures from Gauntlet. My characters are so small and weak at this point that one touch kills us, and we respawn at a little space not too far away. I find myself hoping we go up a level soon so I can choose one of the 'affects all enemies' spells for my magic users to help with battles like the one I just lost.

Anyway, I do a little more farming and dodging ghosts, and also start to gear up in some of the random armor drops I earned, just to give my character(s) a little more chance to resist, before returning to the graveyard and starting to fight. The individual skeletons are still no danger to me, and this time when I trigger the larger fight, the battle between me and the boss figure is a little less damaging, and throughout a long and dangerous fight I manage to hold my own. Though my hit points get down to almost nothing, I finally manage to kill him off, then start picking up tons of armor and trying to look through it.

Soon after, I somehow find myself moving along a modern street (probably in Fullerton ... at least that is what it looks like) riding a bike, and seeming to be trying to give Kevin B a ride. But I am getting a weird sense that something is going to be going wrong, and using the excuse that I am tired and need a break, I have stopped in this parking lot and am taking a breather. I don't know exactly what is going to go wrong, or even how I know, but I just have a sense that I need to waste some time. Kevin is urging me on, and I finally express what it is I am feeling, and he doesn't like it, but he allows me to waste a couple of minutes. We are in the parking lot of a place that has an outdoor pool (and probably an indoor pool too) that is probably a YMCA.

Eventually we continue on, and soon Kevin and I find ourselves at a sort of homeless shelter place, though very quickly Kevin fades out of the dream. Looking around, we find the homeless people who have come here for help are being mistreated, treated almost like slaves, given no food unless they follow evil and offensive orders, and almost none if they do. The rich guys who run the place are taking almost all the money that has been donated and using it for themselves, while spending a couple of pennies on the dollar to take care of the people they are abusing. I am getting madder and madder as I watch this, and decide to do something. I grab the guy who seems to be in charge and throw him out of the trailer, then start handing out three times the food they've been being given to the people waiting for help, hoping to improve things.

But it doesn't seem to help enough, and I quickly discover the guy I thought was in charge was only an underling. Turns out the real leader is still there, and seems to be pulling a gun and planning to kill me. Seems if I want to take care of this I need to do more than just toss one guy out of a trailer. I decide if I am going to do this, I am going to do it right, and I wave my hand and create a long, dark cloak around me, a scythe appears in my hand, and I turn half-transparent as I stalk the guy and back him into a corner. He pulls his gun on me, but I laugh and tell him that isn't going to do him any good. He fires twice, and the bullets disappear into me, but I don't even feel them. I grab the gun in his hand and wrestle with him until he is pointing the gun in his own face and force him to pull the trigger, but there is only a small click. I guess he used all the bullets.

So I try to break his arms and legs by giving them sharp jerks in directions they weren't made to go. But I guess he is double-jointed or something, because it does no good! Finally, I decide on less pleasant methods. On the table is a stack of razor blades, all wrapped in little cardboard sleeves, and I grab one, throw away the sleeve, pull the guy's head back by the hair, and draw the blade across his throat. He drops, limp, and I assume he is dead. I turn to help some of the others in the area with more food, then turn back to where I had just been, and find the guy sitting there, cuddling a slightly cute homeless looking girl. He didn't die, he fainted from fright. It seems I didn't use enough force, and though I drew a slight bit of blood from his throat, it was nowhere near enough to cut a major artery or pierce his throat and cause him to die.

The girl in his lap was originally one of the homeless he was supposed to be helping, but she decided to give herself to him completely, betraying all the others that needed help, to get more of it herself. She is sitting in his lap muttering about the horrible things she will help him do to all their victims which now seem to have turned against him. I stalk up to her angrily, but she can't see me. Only he can, unless I specifically will somebody else to see me. So I make myself visible, and warn her that her 'boyfriend' is now marked for death, and unless she wants to join him, she better get away now. Far away! She screams and runs off. I pick up the razor blade, planning for another, deeper sweep, to finish the job, but a bunch of black people come running into the room, searching for me. They know I am here, and are going to try and find me even though they can't see me. I don't know if they are trying to find me for a good purpose or a bad one, so I drop to the floor as they feel their way around the room, then just get up after they walk past me, and again start to walk toward to bad guy.

11-02-2013 -- Out visiting a friend or a relative somewhere, and sitting in a room petting a cat which may or may not be one of my cats from somewhere in the past. The mother in the place decides to make me something to eat, and is cooking a couple of 'hamburgers' made of sausage for me. Since she is cooking, anyway, she decides to make a few more, both regular burgers and sausage burgers. Soon I am preparing a couple of buns, and am thinking about preparing a couple more, and asking if I can take a couple more burgers with me when I leave.

Soon I am standing in front of the Hickory house with Dave D., and we get news somehow that there is somebody bad wandering through the neighborhood. I decide to walk Dave home (two doors down) to let Don and Rachel know about the problem. Thing is, as we're just entering the door, we hear someone behind us and turn to see someone walking up behind us that looks like one of the 'Gentlemen' from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We slam the door, and he eventually goes away.

Don comes around and sees I am shaking and starts to comment that I probably have my gun locked away in a filing cabinet, and never even touch it. [I have dreamed that I own one or more guns several times over the last couple of years. In this particular dream, Don probably helped my mom pick it out for me.] I explain to him that it is actually in my desk drawer, and I take it out every couple of months and take a shot at the tree across the street, just to make sure it still works. For some odd reason, I then start lecturing him on every detail I think I know about carry laws and how I am and am not allowed to carry it [almost certainly based on a discussion in a Harry Potter Yahoo group I read recently]. When I run down, he suggests some sort of clip which would prevent a crook from grabbing the gun and using it, and I am trying to figure out how it would work, until I figure out that it is an odd cross between a rubber band and a paper clip that would somehow fit on a file folder and make it more difficult to open.

I fiddle with the thing for a bit, then decide it is time to go home. I rush down two doors and get inside, then go hunting for my gun. I hope it is here, because I have been moving around so much, a lot of my stuff is in storage. [Since the Hickory house and mom being alive predates my moving around a lot, this doesn't make a lot of sense.] I don't find my gun in the desk where I expect it, but then I decide to check in the filing cabinet, and lo and behold, there it is, right where Don suggested it would be. I also manage to find two bullets and load them. Unfortunately the rest of my ammunition is in storage, along with my other guns. The one I do have is a decent sized hand gun, but I know I also have a smaller hand gun and a rifle somewhere.

Meanwhile, I hear my sister yelling at my mom. It turns out I have an older half brother (even older than Ron) that I had never heard of, and the fellow was violent. He has a habit of attacking family members, and Melody has heard that he has some kind of marriage contract on me. (Say what?!?) She's mad at mom, because mom has invited him to come by for a visit. I hear the door bell ring, and glance out the window, and he is here. He looks like Mark Henry (huge black professional wrestler), and just in case, I have him in my gun-sight. Mom and Melody are at the door, and he either kills them, or somehow knocks them out, and knocks the door down and storms in. He has a machine gun in his hands, and is hunting me.

I dodge around the two doors in my second bedroom, trying to stay out of sight until I can manage to get a good shot at him, but he's firing that machine gun all over the place. Eventually I pop out at just the right moment, and manage to get him with two shots right in the chest, but he manages to catch me with 20 or 30 shots all over my body. He falls to the ground, while I stagger toward the back of the house. I hear him get to his feet and stomp out the front door, and I call out to ask him why he has done this. He doesn't seem to have an answer for me. I lock the door, to try and keep him out, and then stagger to the telephone in mom's room to try and call Don for help. Problem is, I can't manage to remember his phone number. [Oddly enough, I think the places I got shot in the dream match up with the couple dozen mosquito bites I got on Halloween at my balloon gig.]

10-14-2013 -- I am at what starts out as the Hickory house, but soon turns into a cross between the Hickory house and the place on Chipola. I'm heading out to drive somewhere for work, either a mystery shop or perhaps a security shift, but my car isn't in the driveway, and I am not really sure why. I'm worried it has been stolen again, but it turns out someone or something pushed it aside. It is sitting in the neighbor's yard, somewhat damaged, with a wheel missing. Seems there is no way I can head off to work now. I'm a bit depressed, and am kind of whining "Why me?", tired of all the problems with my car. Somebody (perhaps mom) tells me to quit whining, and says Don Dunn is working on the car for me. Huh? I saw it just sitting there in the neighbor's yard ... how does Don Dunn have it? Perhaps he has a different junk car of mine.

Anyway, I can't go to work, so I decide to go inside and get some sleep. I head in, and the house turns to a cross between the Hickory house and the Chipola house. I stroll into what would be mom's room at Hickory, but is mine at Chipola, and go to sleep. It's the middle of the night when I hear a noise and wake up. There are a bunch of bad guys coming for me, and the first time through I find that I am quite scared. I am walking through the hallways in the house in the dark, hiding from them, and trying to keep away from them. But oddly, it is almost like I fall back asleep and wake up again. There are still bad guys in the house, but this time I am angry, rather than scared, and I am stalking them.

All the lights are off, and they are stumbling around in the dark, but I know the house a lot better, and am able to be stealthy. I manage to take them out one by one. Accidentally break one guy's neck, but they are attacking me at home and I don't feel very bad about it. Soon we are dodging around the two doors in Keith's room, and I have managed to grab most of them and throw them out the front door, but I'm pretty sure they'll be back. Soon I start walking through the whole house, turning out the lights they turned on, so if they do come back I'll have an easier time finding them, by looking for the lights they turn on again.

Then I find out the light is on in Melody's room, though they never got that far, and I start to get a little worried. I open the door and find Melody sleeping in her bed. I didn't realize she was home, and she didn't hear anything, just slept right through it, though she is starting to wake, now. Meanwhile, all the thugs are coming back, and are trying to lure me outside. We're in the living room, and I am about to give them a good thrashing, when the leader pulls a gun on me!

Melody takes him out from behind with an amazing roundhouse kick that he never saw coming, and says nobody is allowed to pick on her little brother! The bad guys all go running out of the house (I guess two of us are just too much to bother with.) Soon Melody and I are standing in the living room while she works at cleaning out the fish tank. I say I thought that was 20 years ago, when I still had my fish, and that after the last one died, nobody would be bothering with the tank anymore. She explains that she took it over, and for years has been keeping strange lime green alien fish in it.

09-19-2013 -- Starts out as some sort of Harry Potter dream, though we're going through training that is a little more intense than you usually see at Hogwarts. I can't say if I am Harry Potter or not, but whoever I am, I am very powerful, and oddly, I find I seem to be able to do things nobody else can do.

Somewhere in our training (which seems to involve fighting our way through various rooms, destroying everything in our paths) we end up being attacked by real bad guys, and I manage to kill several of them, which leads to my being suspended or something. The higher ups don't like that I did this, and because of this, they are trying to block the rest of my training and lock me out of what is turning into some sort of military organization.

I end up consulting with Tom Drick, who explains that I have made some very powerful enemies, and I am probably doomed as far as the regular chain of command works ... but ... I already have most of the skills, I mostly need the knowledge that goes with them. There are certain tests that, if passed, and backed up with enough knowledge and power, can bypass the regular education channels. If I can pass these tests, and show the required skill and power (which I already have, so I should be able to do so again) then I will have earned a place in the 'army' that they cannot deny me.

I decide that could be a good way to go, and I soon find myself on what seems like a college campus (not Fullerton College, but it has a lot of that feel to it.) I am walking up the staircase leading to a library, where I need to go in and request the books and things to study what I need to study, and I am also supposed to meet some sort of retired general that Tom arranged a sort of introduction to.

Problem is, there are a lot of older students hanging out around the door to this library, and I am not sure who is waiting in line, and who is just hanging, but since they don't seem to be forming any sort of obvious organized line, I try to walk right past them and through the door into the library. A couple of the punks seem to object to this, and they start messing with me, demanding to know who I think I am, and why I think I can use their library when I am obviously too young.

I try to explain my situation slightly without going into too much detail, but they catch on completely, and tell me there is no way in hell they are ever going to serve under me. They are so intense about it that it becomes obvious we will never be able to work together, and they will obviously oppose me at every opportunity, regardless of the consequences. I am left with no other option but to kill them. I take out my gun, they draw their weapons, and we begin to fire on one another.

One of them, I manage to draw a bead on, and shoot and kill very easily. The other is farther away, and I just seem to miss, almost every time. But I am dangerous enough that he kind of stalks off to find somewhere out of the way to hide and plot for a little while, to regroup. But he is wearing a very rich blue (think Carl's PT Cruiser) shirt that nobody else has, so I ought to be able to spot him fairly easily. I continue into the library to get my study materials.

But it is now more like a bank counter, or perhaps a court counter at a courthouse (with just a hint of the ice cream counter at Thrifty's thrown in.) I walk up to an older gentleman who I recognize as the one Tom arranged a meeting with, and start to explain things, but the word of the the guy I just killed and the other one I was shooting at has spread, and everybody wants to know what is going on. So I explain exactly what happened, and why I did what I did, and the old guy agrees that I probably did the right thing ... but I have made even more enemies, and the guy says I probably need to take the tests and things to push me even higher in their society. He starts to lay out workbook after workbook on the counter, until I have maybe something like a ten inch stack of books and forms and papers and so on.

I walk back out of the library/office, and find myself in a small cafe next to a pizza parlor that seems like one of the pizza places that I always dream of in the New York dreams, and while I try to find a spot to sit in the cafe, I can overhear the guy who got away a few minutes before in the pizza parlor. He is going on and on about what he plans to do to me, and meanwhile they are giving away blue shirts that look just like his, which is going to make it more and more difficult for me to recognize him. It's kind of like they are going to be firing the shirts off into the crowd with t-shirt guns or something.

So I leave my books and stuff, and go hunting him immediately. As I start taking shots when I have a clear one lined up, he starts running again (and firing back) and we have soon made our way to a cross between the wide open space of a large hotel with a huge inner courtyard (think the Renaissance Sea World or the Embassy Suites you once worked in) and a shopping mall. I am looking across the way to another floor, and taking shots at this guy, though the shop he is hiding in is turning into more of a hotel room.

But there is something odd. I hit the first guy so easily, and my shooting was so on. This guy, it is like everything is clear and sharp until my gun is trained on him, then it just kind of fuzzes up, and it is like I can't get a lock ... almost like he has got some sort of magical anti-targeting system on. He is dodging around his hotel room with the door open, and putting things in the way to make my shot more difficult, and I ought to still easily line up a shot, and make it, but it just doesn't work.

Eventually, he has run off from the area entirely, so I guess I am at least too scary to stay around, but I know I will have more trouble with him later. Meanwhile, I have to get back to my books and my meal at the cafe, but it is now several hours later, and near closing. When I get back, I find no sign of my waitress, and have to hunt a bit to find my stuff. I have to leave payment and a tip, but I have no idea what would be a good amount, considering the weapons fire, and how many hours my stuff has been here and in the way. I want to tip well, yet I can't afford to go overboard, and I don't even know what my bill was for.

I pull out a $20 bill and hand it to the waitress, and am waiting to see what her response will be, and she seems at least reasonably pleased, so I am happy, though I find myself thinking back to where I was originally, during this time period, and find myself thinking it is the late 80's, and recalling eating a decent meal at Athenian Burgers for about $5 bucks, and $20 on $5 would be a 300% tip. That feels a little short, but pretty decent, for the circumstances.

Then I come across the actual receipt, and find my bill was only $2, so I feel even better about how much I paid, though I am still running around on the street mumbling to myself about what I paid for meals 'back in' 1987. The older people in the vehicle (a van or bus) that I am traveling in are looking at me and starting to comment on my wording, and saying I must be part of some government time travel program. But they are all past government workers, so they aren't horrified or disbelieving or anything, just kind of interested.

09-18-2013 -- Running around in England, half with a local girl, half with my friend BC, who has decided she wants to be a sort of slayer, running patrols and trying to protect the people in the area, except that she has no super strength, no powers, and really not much to defend herself with.

So it is kind of late in the evening, and we're running around some dark, cramped, and dirty streets, some bad sections of town, and we've heard some sort of prophecy about some dangerous rocks or something, and we're running up and down these streets, looking for any trouble. But as we make our way up one street, checking the shops on both sides of the street as we move along, we reach the end, and start back down the same street.

We get maybe two or three shops down before I realize that we checked both sides of the street on the way up ... it is wasteful for us to be checking the same street on the way down again, so I lead us through an alley to the next street over, and we start looking through it.

There is a small sort of statuary here, and it feels like it might tie in with the rocks a little bit, but we find no sign of any bad guys. But as we keep making our way through, we start to notice some of the Adventurers Club performers around, and they are doing some sort of craft thing. I think Graham is leading it, but Philip and Joe are also here, and though Graham is kind of friendly, the other two seem a little more stuck up, like they really don't think we can do much with these crafts. Unfortunately, they may be right.

It seems to involve taking logs (that are very quickly turning into very small twigs) and twisting and bending them into interesting shapes. We have no supplies because we didn't know we were going to be here, but I grab a small log out of a trash dumpster, and start peeling off spare branches and the like. Problem is, as things are shrinking, they are also becoming more and more brittle, and soon instead of a nicely bent up little creation, I simply have a handful of inch long twigs. I toss them aside, and get back to hunting trouble-makers.

We run down another street, where BC kind of warns off a couple of her girlfriends, and finds some guy who is hitting on her and wanting to date her. Since it is late at night and a bad area, and all the rest, even if this guy isn't too bad, I can't help but feel that her parents are not going to be too happy about this, and as they kind of start to materialize next to me as I think about them, I'm right. They aren't happy.

But it turns out the guy is bad, and one of the problems we expected. He pulls a knife on BC, and she knocks it out of his hand with a kick. So instead he grabs a gun, and starts to try and aim it at her, and I start running for the scene. He's rather incompetent, and his first couple of shots miss, but he is getting closer and closer, making dodging more and more difficult. Meanwhile, the gun is getting bigger and bigger. What started out as a pistol or revolver first grows into more of a rifle or shotgun, then some sort of very large mounted gun, perhaps about 12 feet long, with about a 90 mm diameter gun barrel that the thug is only aiming ... his partner on the other end has to 'pull the trigger' so to speak.

BC is trying to throw herself in front of this thing, to protect others, not realizing she is the one who needs protection, and I am trying desperately to get there first. I know she has no powers, but I just have this feeling that if I focus on it correctly, I can sort of adapt my bad luck to turn it into bad luck for others. I manage to shove BC out of the way, and throw myself in front of the barrel, and there is a loud sort of crack as the guy shoots. The huge shell explodes through the barrel and reaches me at the end, and ... nothing happens for a few seconds.

The crook aiming the gun sort of looks at me like 'Huh?' but his partner realizes that all that energy is going to have to go somewhere, and turns around and starts to bolt! Seems like a good idea to me, and I throw myself at BC, trying to cover her from the explosion as the large gun blows to bits, taking the thug who was aiming it with him.

BC's parents are there almost immediately, laying into their daughter and having it out with her about this foolish idea, while I can't help but think that just because we took out one or two thugs doesn't mean that there is no more trouble around here. I start to look around and find indications of more problems, but as I try to get BC's attention, she doesn't seem to be interested, anymore.

So I wander over to a small shop where I hear voices raised, and find four elderly American tourists laying into a Middle Eastern looking fellow, about the evil thing that he was just doing. Somehow they don't seem to realize that he could do evil things to them. Meanwhile, he is crouching over a large barrel of water, and as he works with it, the swarthy coloring seems to be washing off of him, and he turns out to be a pasty white Englishman who has been disguising himself as a Middle Eastern guy to hide his identity. And since they know this, they are in trouble.

He is reaching for the first of them, seemingly about to strange him, when I jump in and grab him. His three partners are also approaching. I start to wrestle with the guy, and the four old tourists keep telling him off, and I stare at them in amazement before telling them to shut up and run, before one or more of them get hurt. They finally seem to realize they are in danger, and start to scatter. Three of their fellows follow, as I wrestle with the fourth, but it takes me a couple of minutes for me to put him down, and I only succeed when I break off one of his hands and leave him in a crumpled heap on the ground.

I start down the alley that the tourists ran down, followed by the other three crooks, but I am a couple minutes behind, and am afraid I will lose them, so I leap into the air and try to fly, hoping I will move really fast and be able to catch up. Unfortunately, while I can kind of float, I have no speed, and it might be even a tad slower than running. I can't see any of them (the crooks or tourists), until I finally run into a sort of Arab laundry or something (or at least something pretending to be), and find one of the bad guys, who becomes no problem as I quickly break off his thumb. Then I wake up. Fun dream.

06-16-2013 -- [Most dreams have been skimpy and unmemorable recently, so I haven't been bothering with them as much. We'll see how entering them in goes, now.] I find myself at the Hickory house, where, oddly, Rosemary is trying to pressure me to move out. It's late at night, and I am in my second bedroom, trying to play some sort of computer game or something. Hints of adventure games and roller coaster tycoon, but no details. Rosemary is turning into mom, but still kind of half pressuring me to move.

Mom wants me out, but she also wants me safe, and starts lecturing me about why I am not carrying around my gun at all times. She is actually putting up a sort of chain link/barbed wire fence separating the living room from the rest of the house, so that if people break in through the sliding glass door, they can't move on to the rest of the house as easily. She's getting rather paranoid.

Meanwhile, I am looking for the gun I can seem to remember from another dream halfway recently ... one where I had something along the lines of a revolver that I seemed to be shooting at fireworks or something. (I think this was an honest dream I had somewhere in the last year or two, but have no idea if it ever got written down.) To keep it safe, I had it separated into several pieces, and I am now gathering those pieces and trying to put it back together, but the first two or three times, I get it wrong and end up with things like the sight under the barrel, rather than on top. I do manage to eventually get it put together correctly, though, and soon have the shot gun put back together, as well. I gather up my ammo and start loading both guns. Both use the same ammo, something that I think was on Carolyn's advice.

The tough guy sitting together putting other guns together and planning strategies for possible fights is either Dave D. Or Nick W., I'm not sure which. I walk out into the front yard, preparing to test fire the guns to be sure they work well and I can still remember how to shoot, but I find myself wondering what to shoot at to try and avoid getting in any trouble. I figure out a safe shot shooting a tree across the street or something, but I may have done something wrong because the bullets are moving really slowly out of the gun, and bounce off the tree, coming back at me. I catch the bullets and figure the guns may still need some more work.

I end up trying to stay in a room kind of connected to the garage for a bit, as a way to get out of mom's hair, yet still be at the house I grew up in, but it is dirty, and has bugs or critters in it, and there is a really beat up kitten with badly matted fur and lots of scabs that I decide I don't want to be around, as well as a really strange girl who seems kind of prone to violence, so I give up and head back inside.

I'm about to talk to mom, when the place starts shaking really badly, and I quickly realize there is an earthquake happening. It is a major one, and seems to go on for at least five minutes, and it is really bad. The house is breaking up around me, and starting to sink into the ground, as massive cracks start splitting the floor. I decide to head to the front door, and as things continue, into the front yard, trying to get out in the street, and away from collapsing trees, as the entire house seems to be collapsing out of sight. I look a couple of doors down, where Don D. is also out in the street. And even though we're standing here on Hickory, we're both kind of shocked at the earthquake. We would expect it in California, but here in Florida, it was unexpected. [The Hickory house and the neighbor were both in California, no matter what this dream thinks.]

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06-16-2013 -- Earlier bits that are entirely sketchy ... driving somewhere with Carl, getting the mail at the Hickory house, and then watching the washing machine in the garage (oddly a front-loader, which we never had at that location) as it starts to flood, since the door is open, yet strangely doesn't. Then I step out of the garage ....

And find myself in a European hotel somewhere that bears a striking resemblance to Sargent Preston's. Somehow, Janet is about to perform as Klondike Kate in this knock-off of the original club, and though none of the other performers are working here, the replacements have been trained up well enough that the whole thing has the proper feel.

The manager of the place is wandering around selling desserts that are actually pretty decent clones of what they had at the original Preston's, but not exact. (Preston's never actually sold the kinds of cakes I was dreaming of.) Dale tries exactly one bite, but won't eat any more because they are made with alcohol. As the show is just about to begin, I am thinking of video taping it, but decide not to.

A few seconds later, when the show has started and Janet is singing "Hey Big Spender," it sounds exactly like her singing it in real life, and the band is doing a perfect job with it, as well. I am singing along in perfect time under my breath, and dancing back and forth slightly to get the best views as I suddenly am video taping, regardless of what I decided a few seconds ago. And through all this, Janet has not noticed me there, yet, and I'm waiting for her to spot me.

12-26-2012 -- [This one is interesting to me mostly because of just how much it is all over the place. It goes anywhere and everywhere ... heck of a lot of different scenes for one little dream. Unfortunately as so often, the first part is mostly gone.]

Starts out with a combination of military stuff and Harry Potter bits. I am Harry Potter, fighting off Voldemort with the help of the military. There are bits of military police, chases, guns, and faking my death, while trying to gather weapons to aid with the fighting. Lots of chasing, and some long, neat scenes that are almost entirely gone, unfortunately. And all taking part in what is turning into Boisseranc Park.

Soon I find we are exiting the park on the center road [in real life, there is only one road into the park, on the 'west' side of the property, but the road we're on is one that doesn't exist about midway between the real road and the handball courts.] As we're exiting, we have to pass through a security check point, and I am hoping the guns we have on our persons are hidden well enough to not trigger all the alarms and things. But we go through without problems.

We're in mom's green car [mom never had a green car, nor have I], just about to pass a building and turn out on the road, and mom points it out and mentions that it is Fred and George's new building, and I just lose it. For the last ten days she has pointed this out each time we drive by it [never mind this is the first time I've dreamed this] and I'm tired of it, so I get really insulting and snippy. Really obnoxious, and I feel kind of bad about it even in the dream.

Soon we're in Smith's Food King, doing some shopping, and after how I blew up, I'm afraid to try and add anything to the shopping cart because I think she is still angry at me ... but I can't resist it when I come across a couple of packages of Sanderson Farms chickens wings at .49 cents a pound, and a BOGO deal. Somebody else is commenting on it to me in an insulting way, but I just tell them it is a really good deal, and I am jumping on it!

Soon I am somewhere, probably in Florida, cooking up the wings, and there is no mom here, anymore. I am now an adult, and mom has turned into an attractive young lady who is either a partner or girlfriend. I am deep frying the wings in a fryer, and our boss comes by and is making a lot of comments about not over-cooking the chicken, so I cook it a lot less than I normally would. When I take them out of the fryer, the gal with me carries them over to our bosses car, which seems to be on a stakeout. We soon see them cooking the wings in the car, and griping about their joke backfiring. It seems they told us to cook them less as a joke, not realizing we were going to give the wings to them.

Soon we're walking along a chain-link fence, talking about the national economy, job market, politics, and how it all affects local crime, as I find myself approaching a kind of strip mall with a lot of storefronts in it, and a slight curve to the property. I am walking toward one that seems to be a Doctors office on the side, almost at closing time. There seem to be three other people walking up at the same time, and I am hoping that isn't going to mean I need to wait forever.

Thankfully the wait isn't too long, and I soon find myself buying either some real estate, or a cell phone, I'm not really sure which. They have a long contract which I am going through and reading, and there are several lines where I need to sign, some where I need to initial, and some where I need to enter in a property address or cellular number or something. But I am being given the contract and am supposed to take it home to fill in the last bit, before turning it in.

Soon I find myself at a cross between a restaurant and a nightclub being taught to sing by Mark and Luralee, in a setting that is slightly Karaoke-like, but really more profession. They are singing parts of songs, and expecting me to take over for other parts, and when I reach just the right point, I am belting out the last few lines as well, and as powerfully as Luralee used to do at Preston's. I am amazed, and figure I must have gotten over my voice problem! [Actually, I don't think Luralee sang that one. I think that one was one that Claudia did, later.]

09-18-2012 -- More bits. Bad night of sleep. I'm running around somewhere, kind of hick town type of area, in a small town somewhere that I have had a dream of in the last year or two that involved looking for a pharmacy. I am walking down a small street when somebody running by shoots at me, and misses. Another person drives by, and also shoots at me. By this time I have dived to the ground.

A third guy rides by, this one on a bike, and he shoots at me too, and since I am already on the ground, he hits me. It hurts, but does me no actual damage, and I jump to my feet. A fourth person is trying to shoot me, and I grab the gun from this one and shoot him. Since I don't want to seriously injure him, I graze his shoulder, and leave him with pain, but nothing else. He is complaining, and I am asking him how he likes it. Somehow these hicks just like shooting people for fun.

The guy on the bike comes back and is going to try to shoot me again, but I take his gun away from him, and am threatening him with it. He reminds me of Mad Jack from Grizzly Adams, except he is also extremely cross-eyed. I am amazed he could aim the gun at me well enough to shoot me. He keeps being a jerk, so I try to shoot him with his own gun, but he tells me he already removed the ammo so I couldn't. Instead I break the gun to pieces and drop it on the ground, which annoys him.

I keep walking down the block, and soon come to a night club where I end up picking up a weird sword. It is made of metal, but it bends really easily, and twists into different kind of swords. Somehow I can still kind of fight with it, and there are hints of a past dream involving Spider-Man, but nothing I can remember well enough to post about. Also hints of stage magic and magic using a staff.

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Some kind of dream where I am Harry Potter at Hogwarts. I can't remember anything of the time in Hogwarts, but soon we're on the road in one of my white cars (either the Kia or the Ford Escort) there is me as Harry Potter, Hermione, and oddly, Draco Malfoy who is still a bit of a jerk, but is trying to change and improve.

I have no idea why, but Malfoy is driving, and he is terrifying. He is all over the road, driving as fast as he can, swerving around traffic, running lights, almost hitting pedestrians who are diving out of the way ... he is a horrible driver. No surprise, we get pulled over by a cop. Malfoy is afraid of getting in trouble. I just have my wand at my side, and figure a brief confundus, and we're on our way. Unfortunately, Malfoy pushes Hermione to get out of the car and talk to the cop. As soon as she begins, Malfoy floors it, turns a corner, and then starts to slow down a little, hoping she will catch up with us. That idea is obviously ridiculous.

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Certain there is an interesting missing fragment from the night, but just haven't been able to remember it.

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Very sci-fi dream. I am in a different world that people can travel to from the normal world somehow (space ships or stargates or something), but however I got here was not the normal way, which means unlike everybody else, I can't easily communicate with our world back home.

The Charmed Ones are here, and there has been some kind of message from some sort of spirit (their Grandma?) that indicates that I should be with one of them or perhaps all of them. Pru does some sort of reading that doesn't show that I should be with any of them, but that does hint I should be around and be a friend, and that things might change with time.

I find myself being confronted by Leo the Whitelighter, who seems to be the father of a very hillbilly-ish family that he is fairly abusive to. He offers me a ride down 192 back to my hotel room. When I get there, we are all getting ready to check out and go home. There is a rumor of some sort of haunted house above our floor, and there is one little kid who has been planning to climb through the vents to get the the floor above and check it out. I am interested too, so we get to it.

We find the vent, and there is a fan in it that was have to loosen and take out, but we manage to eventually squeeze our way up to the floor above, and instead of any sort of haunted house, we just find another hotel room or apartment. Nothing interesting in that, so we just drop back down to our own room. But now we're hot and sticky, and have to wash up before leaving. Unfortunately the hotel room bathroom seems more like an airplane bathroom, with a really weird, tiny toilet is is hard to get to and use properly.