Batch

10-04-2015 -- This one starts oddly, especially since I can't remember most of the beginning. Somehow Pat Q., Paul O., and I are all together, and sitting down for pizza somewhere, like I'm pretty sure we've done in the past in real life. Thing is, we're also going on and on talking about our phone numbers, including a slightly odd number that I can't remember awake, but seemed to be an important phone number from a past dream that I no longer remember.

One of the many things we're discussing is how Lucius Malfoy has kidnapped Dobby, and we're hoping that he's going to be all right. The good thing is, he soon pops up to tell us that he managed to escape, and has decided to tak his revenge on Malfoy by grabbing an important book of documents; some kind of record keeping for Lucius' evil plans or illegal financial dealings. He's brought it back to Pat so she can use it to cause him trouble.

So somehow we use a 'spell' in the form of a technomancy piece of equipment to copy one page of this material, then I wear at it and mangle it until I manage to make it nice and soft and very old looking [like that paper ball Jimmy had been mangling in a class until it became almost cloth-like from the fibers breaking down], and then use it for something else, and leave it somewhere that Malfoy will find it, discover a few of his secrets on it, and start to worry about what else might turn up somewhere unexpected.

Soon the paper has turned into a huge map, which we have hung on a wall, and somehow as a part of this incredible plot (which becomes less sensible all the time) we're soon shooting at it with guns, putting a number of holes in it. Soon we're working at printing gold paper money. (The paper the bills are printed on are actually made of gold.) We're printing it on a fairly normal printer, feeding in letter-size sheets of thin gold, and printing the bill lettering and such on it, but I bump the printer, and the paper shifts mid-feed, messing up the bills. I try to fix it by kind of pulling the lettering off, and trying to smooth it out, then reaffix it to the gold, but of course it doesn't work.

Soon I am grabbing huge wads of unprinted gold bills that have already been trimmed down to bill size, and stuffing them into a brown paper bag, trying to hide the evidence of my damaging them, until we can perhaps resmelt them or something. About that time, a huge guy who is an odd cross between Hagrid and a huge black hillbilly walks in, thinks I have his lunch, and grabs the paper bag and opens it. When he sees what is inside, he's kind of shocked, and I have to swear him to secrecy about the whole thing.

01-26-2014 -- Cool sort of crossover between Runescape and Roller Coaster Tycoon three. I am playing a live action version of Runescape, and I seem to be doing a new quest or diversion that seems to involve another gnome who looks very similar to the sculptor who does the God Statues, but this one is a slightly beatnik looking painter. He is in a building that seems to be built upon the roof of his mobile home camper, and it is sort of odd because I have to fly up to the top of the camper to manage to get in the building, since it doesn't reach to the ground. (Sort of floating building.)

So I enter into the building, and am looking forward to doing some painting with this gnome for some nice, valuable crafting experience. The thing is, the gnome is very unfriendly, doesn't feel like he needs any help, and is pretty much screaming for me to leave him alone. He more or less tries to chase me from the building and tries to run me off, but I get angry, and as he chases me down the hall I grab a bucket of paint and just kind of toss it at a door and he suddenly stops and is amazed at what I have done, and becomes much more friendly.

At that point things start to change, and I find I have to paint a large, slate gray roller coaster that I kind of ride in slow motion as I choose what colors to paint various sections of the track. First I throw a large bucket of a light purple paint, which coats the whole thing, sort of a background color that will show through anywhere I don't paint another color. Then I ride along the twisting and turning track, slowly painting alternate sections of the track red and blue.

There were also other weird bits about having some minor problems breathing, and filling up some strange small glands with a glowing white light that somehow seemed very reminiscent of the 'meteorites' from the Doctor Who episode Spearhead from Space that contained the Nestene Consciousness, and I eventually found myself eating some Oreo birthday cake cream cookies. Yum!

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01-27-2014 -- [First dream of the night while 5-HTP is blocking off REM sleep, very choppy and very little detail, but probably the neatest dream of the night if I could remember it. Sigh.] 007 dream, but I am working with the spy, I am not the spy, myself. Hints of time travel, and some neat chase dream stuff, but most of it I just can't remember. Somehow we are trying to save somebody, possibly Bond's wife, or possibly a Doctor Who companion, but if we manage to save her, it is likely it will mean the death of Prince Charles' Camilla, which means we may have government problems if we do this.

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01-28-2014 -- I find myself doing some foreign travel with an odd composite group that is part Rosemary's family and part Joe and Cindy's family. We are in either China or Japan (not enough to see to tell what is going on), though all the signs are in English, and as we wander around finding food to eat, and interesting things to look at, I am discussing the entire trip with Lexie and Jimmy. Cheryl is not too friendly, but we're traveling the world, so she can't be too upset, either. We're just about to start heading west a bit, and I am planning further site seeing and explorations, especially in Germany and England, and things are sounding nice.

But as I continue to walk west, I find myself approaching Cinderella Castle, wandering along the parade route, and come to realize I wasn't in China, but probably It's a Small World. Everybody else has disappeared, and I find I am wandering around the Magic Kingdom. (Not sure Disneyland or Disney World, though the castle did look more like Cinderella than Sleeping Beauty.) I wander over to Main Street, hoping to listen to one of the Refreshment Corner pianists, but it turns out the entirety of Main Street is being refurbished, and is closed down, so I start to wander over toward Frontierland or Adventureland, instead, just kind of poking around, and wondering if I will run into any performers I know from the Club doing Streetmosphere.

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02-27-2014 -- [Short one with not much detail.] Find myself at the Hickory house, and though there was probably more going on, all I can really remember was that I was taking out some trash, carrying it back to the alley. I knew that there was recyclables to take out, and was planning to remind my roommate to get some, but then I realized one of the bags I had just taken out sounded like it was filled with aluminum cans, and was quite light, so I may have already taken it out for him, even though it wasn't in the proper recycling container.

I knew I had a couple of pizza boxes that I wanted to take out of my bedroom, so I went in to get that, but as I shifted through stuff, I kept finding more and more pizza boxes, including two that were actually still full. I sat those aside to eat. Meanwhile, I kept building up a larger and larger stack of pizza boxes, soon maybe 12 to 15, and I was surprised and horrified because I honestly only thought I had three. Then there was a knock on the door, and it was my landlord Rosemary, who just glared at me when she saw the pizza boxes and I tried to apologize. I explained to her that I really thought I had been keeping up with taking them out better.

[Funny thing is, I really did have to take out the garbage as soon as I woke from this one, and I do have a roommate that I have to remind to take out his recycling. I also did have to take a couple of pizza boxes out, but I swear it was only two, not the 23 or so that Rosemary once caught me taking out, when I had kind of gotten lazy about removing them.]

01-04-2014 -- [Small scene is all I can remember of the night.] First bit I can remember, I am sitting at what seems like a cross between a sort of campfire and one of the pits you deposit memories in for divination in Runescape. But instead of memories, I seem to be ladling runes out of a sort of pitcher and into the pit. I spill one on the edge of the pit and it kind of looks like the runes look in the game if you drop one. The first part of the dream seems to appear in sort of game graphics, though it is turning more real all the time.

It is sort of like half a Runescape quest, and half real life. There is a young teen whose parents have been killed by Shadow Elves, and he is stuck in the woods and needs to manage to stay hidden and survive, or they will kill him, too. Half the time I am the teen, the other half I am trying to set things up to save him. I know I have to build a fire, but I have only some full branches and a few pizza crusts. But I find myself fearing the branches won't catch quickly enough, so I decide to use the pizza crusts as kindling. I am weaving the pizza crusts in and out among the branches, hoping they will burn long enough to catch the actual wood on fire and get a good fire going.

But as I am laying out the wood and crust things are changing. I go from being the one doing it to watching the little kid do it, and it is changing from him using the crusts as kindling, to him trying to use the fire to cook a pizza so he can eat. One Shadow Elf who seems to have turned his back on the evil of the Shadow Elves is deciding to help the kid, and he comes into the camp and adds an entire slice of pizza to the fire, but as it has more weight than just the lone crusts, it causes the pizza to stretch and separate, and a portion of it kind of falls off the rest and slides into the fire.

There are bugs crawling out of the ground, coming up to try and bite people or maybe steal some pizza. One of them somehow turns into a small dog that is jumping all over the kid, while another gets fought off and squished. Meanwhile I grab a glove and concentrate on it until it turns into a sort of a whip which I use to attack a couple more of the bugs. Very strange stuff.

12-29-2013 -- [This one was very detailed, but not all that exciting. Oh well, I still find it kind of interesting.] I am staying in a big house which I have dreamed of before, which is owned by BAM, and has a strange terrace-like area with bathrooms and a pool on multiple levels. I am being urged to hurry and get ready to go somewhere by a dark-haired teen who is probably 15 or 16, but reminds me of Auggie from Covert Affairs. It seems I have agreed to drive him somewhere and he is in a hurry to get there. He is going to be a little upset with me, because I decide I need to have a shower, first.

I start climbing down toward the pool, then back up toward the bathroom, but when I get there, I find that BAM is using the shower, and is just climbing out, and since we are no longer on good terms, I want to get out of there before she sees me and accuses me of spying on her or something. As I try to hurry back the way I came, I bump something, and she hears it, and starts to come after me, so I am hurrying, yet trying to stay out of sight. I manage to make it, and as I get back to my room I decide I will have to forgo the shower, and just start getting dressed.

Unfortunately, I am interrupted by another person who comes in. She is a teen girl, and I think she is the boy's sister. She is kind of pudgy, and most reminds me of the daughter from the animated series Wait 'til Your Father Gets Home. She is practically screaming at me, accusing me of eating her Totino's pizzas. I know I haven't eaten any Totino's but my own, so I come to the kitchen to check the freezer. I discover that actually all the frozen pizzas have been eaten, and whoever ate them then took the empty pizza boxes and stuck them back into the freezer to hide the fact that they'd been eaten for a time. I am very annoyed, and explain that I think Scott ate them all, and I am very angry at him for both stealing the food, and for hiding the fact in such a way. [In actuality, Scott is a brand new roommate who just moved in where I am currently living. While I do not yet feel comfortable around him, I do not believe he is stealing any food.]

Soon I am dressed, and am walking past the large dinner table, where a bunch of visiting relatives are sitting and chatting. It is an odd cross of BAMs relatives and those of Joe L's family, and as I pass, I give a nod to the kid wanting a ride to follow me. We walk outside, and approach a small red sedan. I have a lot on my mind, and am thinking about a work shift, and without really thinking about it, climb in, start the engine, and drive off, leaving the kid standing there. I realize it a few seconds later, as I find myself driving along a busy tourist strip that seems to probably be Highway 192. I realize what I have done, and make a u-turn to go back for him, just to stop almost immediately because he has been running behind me, and almost managed to keep up. I stop the car and let him get in, then start apologizing profusely.

Then there is a time jump, and we are back home, having already finished whatever errand I was taking him on, and perhaps even having finished the work shift I was thinking about. The kid is now spending time with his family, though there may be a small bit about a missing cell phone that gets me thinking about the situation with Scott forgetting his cellular phone at work. I find myself sitting across the street from the house, trying to build a strange model of a roller coaster out of those old orange Hot Wheels tracks. It is supposed to be a short shuttle coaster sort of ride, except it is a small, complete oval, including a loop, though I am having problems making it all fit together right with the coaster station. A woman walks across the street from the house to see me, and she looks like Cindy L, but has the current negative attitude toward me of BAM. Somehow one or both of us is somehow shrink-wrapping a book or something, and I try to give her a serious compliment that just fails to come out well, but we still manage to end on slightly better terms.

08-29-2013 -- [Short dream with not too much to it, that turned out to be quite detailed and long.] Something about cats, other animals, and possibly digging holes in the back yard at the Hickory house. Something else about BC being around. Then I find myself in a classroom setting. It feels very like a high school class, though the teacher is Julie Davey. No idea what the subject is. I've just finished a test of some sort, and it seemed somewhat quick and simple. I seem to be spending the time afterward brainstorming some fiction writing or something, perhaps a Victor story, when Julie comes by for my test, surprised I am done so quickly.

I explain I think I did quite well, and she agrees, knowing how I always seem to test pretty well, and I start rummaging through my things until I come across the newspaper clipping we were supposed to be reviewing after the test. Glancing at the picture, wondering what it is about, I see almost a full-size model of a rocket, made out of huge balloons, and am thinking how I've made a similar ship out of a 160 and a bee body many times.

Julie looks at the clock, and it is just a couple of minutes before 5:30, so she tells us to start gathering our things, and get back to a more usual seating arrangement than the random groupings we'd been in. I end up sitting next to a cute blonde, waiting for the last couple of minutes to end, and we somehow seem to be talking about how about half the class had left at 1:30. Perhaps it was an optional class or something.

Class is soon over, and I find myself approaching Dale's house. I almost seem to be floating over the Nabisco plant to reach his driveway. (Considering later in the dream I am lucid and do some flying, perhaps I was flying here, as well.) I am driving a car, but as I approach their driveway, I remember something about them repaving it, and I walk up carrying my motorcycle, trying to get it on the strip of grass next to the paved driveway, where all their cars are parked, right now. (In real life, that strip of grass is at most a foot and a half wide.)

I find myself passing three animals that seem to look a lot like wolves, and I am a little worried, but not much. Then they shift and sit up, then start to hop off, and I realize they aren't wolves, but kangaroos, and wonder what the heck they are doing in Buena Park? Somehow I seem to be soaked, so I am taking off my pants and shirt and dropping them on the cycle, and wrapping myself in a big gray towel. About that time, Kevin wanders out of the house, says a couple of sentences of what seems to be gibberish, and then climbs in a car and drives off, which worries me. (He's not allowed to drive.)

I open the door to the house and walk in, only thinking about what I might walk into to barging into somebody else's house without knocking after I get inside, so I kind of bashfully knock on the wall. Fred and Betty are in the living room, and they don't seem to have minded my walking right in. I spot odd movement on the floor, and find myself looking at an odd white and pink puppy that seems to be a cross between a bijon and a poodle, though the coloring looks like some of the white and pink snakes I saw pictures of on the internet a few months ago. Soon I see two more wiggling out from under the blank. I ask Betty "You got new dogs?", kind of surprised. She tells me they don't know if they will keep them.

I have brought a cheap pizza with me, and open the refrigerator to put it in there, and see they have maybe 3/4 of a huge 26 inch party pizza from Ciro's sitting in there, pepperoni and sausage. Wish I'd known ... I wouldn't have bothered with the lousy one I got. I'm thinking I have to see if I can snag a couple of slices. Meanwhile, I am trying to find Dale, so I walk a few feet down the corridor to his room, but when I glance inside, he has a couple of girls in there, with him. [Not doing anything wrong ... this isn't that kind of dream.] I'm thinking about razzing him about it, until I realize I am still walking around wrapped in a towel, and decide I had better get some clothes on. It seems today is a big ball game of some sort, and they have a lot of people over to see it.

I walk outside, wanting to get my clothes, but somehow the area has changed a little, and I have to climb a fence (like we were going to visit Bertha) to get back to where my motorcycle is parked, I finally find it, and grab my blue shirt and start putting it on, just to discover I am putting it on over the top of another one. Somehow a shirt and pants just appeared on my body, and I realize I am dreaming. I try to hop the fence back to Dale's, but somehow I seem to be being pulled in the opposite direction. So I leap up and try to fly, and manage the flying, but am getting sucked at high speed toward what was the Nabisco plant. I go crashing through a wall, and find myself standing in a room surrounded by people.

It seems I have somehow been kind of summoned, as I am now surrounded by lots of people, and they have called me to be a candidate, as they try to figure who they want as their candidate for president. There are a bunch of other candidates as well, and they are talking to people, making speeches, and all of them are holding on to their wives. Every one. I look around and see an attractive blonde (she kind of looks like Reese Witherspoon) watching everything, and I grab her and pull her to me, just kind of joking around. She turns to tell me off, and our eyes meet, and wow! It's like we suddenly know everything about each other. Her head kind of tilts to the side as she studies me, and a small grin starts to form on her face before I lean in and give her a gentle kiss, then wrap my arm around her shoulder. We're now a couple, and very happy to have found each other.

But she is working here, and has things to do, so I have to let her go for a time. The others and I are writing speeches and songs or something, and I am singing a little ditty I've been working on. It's not fabulous, but it's not too bad, either. But one of the others makes a really nasty comment about it. I turn to him, ready to rip into his song, but I don't really want to run that kind of a campaign, so I have to settle for simply telling him his needs some work, too. Besides, I don't really have all that much interest in singing some kind of political song. Instead, I decide I want to sing to my new love, and am trying to remember the words to a song I wrote about 18 years ago called Love with Me. In waking life I can remember it fine, but in the dream, it was a struggle. Meanwhile, I have no voice, so I am not going to be able to sing well, but I hope the words (and the fact that I wrote it) will still have meaning to her.

Dale is here, as well, and we are wandering around the convention, and for some reason I am carrying a fire hose with me, though it isn't spraying. We're just approaching a stadium, and preparing to look for seats, and I am wondering just how much length this hose has, as I've dragged it a pretty far distance by this time. My new girlfriend shows up, and I drape my arm around her shoulder, lean my head against her, and just relax in the wonderful feeling of having her there next to me.

01-09-2013 -- [This one is titled kind of odd because the dream was all over the place, and it would be halfway difficult to come up with a good title for it, but for the sixth or seventh day in a row, somebody has been showing up in my dreams who really has no reason to be there. And since a friend has jokingly theorized that this woman can put herself in other people's dreams, and since she has recently commented on how often others have mentioned dreaming of her, I can't help but start considering her a sort of stalker, placing herself in my dreams.]

Doing a mystery shop at a convenience store over by Universal Studios. Since they don't have a fountain drink area, and since the hot dogs look really mangled, I am being forced to buy coffee, which means this must be a Circle K shop. I am wandering around the store checking on all the things I need to check on, and am amazed by the guy that seems to be buying one of the hot dogs that looks like it has been setting on the rollers for days or even weeks.

The cashier is asking me if I need any help, while I am approaching the coffee counter. I get there right before a pregnant woman, and grab a coffee cup, but it seems to be the last one of any size. It also feels very flimsy, and I am worried it might not be a usable cup, anyway. Since I don't want to hover around the counter, I start to move toward the back of the (very large) store, and stay out of the way for a possible few more cups to be put out.

I find myself far in the back, near a restroom, and decide I'll take the chance to check it for the mystery shop, but right before I walk in, somebody who works there walks in. I figure I'll wait, but am rudely told the restroom is not and will not be available. I seem to remember the same thing happening the last time I was here, and start to argue with them a bit, wondering why these people won't let anybody use the restroom.

I end up walking and talking with a young punk-like black guy and slowly start to learn that this is a huge building, and it has more than one business in it. Toward the back, there is a construction firm, and their bathroom is for their workers. They aren't going to let anybody else use it. This actually makes sense, and knowing what is going on makes me a lot more accepting of it, though I do think they ought to put up some signs or something, so people know they are no longer in the same store.

I thank the guy for his information, telling him I really appreciate his letting me know all this, and he gets very belligerent, asking me if I am mocking him in a way that is very reminiscent of Karl's Otis at the Adventurers Club. He thinks I am making fun of him, but I'm not. He soon leaves, and I find that as we have walked and talked, we exited the building to the East, and are now in a small gift shop a door or two down from the convenience store I was mystery shopping.

The gift shop sells food (perhaps pizza, considering later bits) and a bunch of motivational and educational-style posters. They seem to be about 1/3 grammar, 1/3 humor, 1/3 motivational, and kind of blend into each other so it would be quite easy to buy the wrong one if you weren't careful.

I try to walk the few yards west that ought to take me to the convenience store, but somehow it doesn't seem to be there, and I walk something like a quarter or a half mile until the street dead-ends in front of a freeway. The last little bit I reach, there are a bunch of little kids (mostly girls) that seem to be doing some very weird and spasmodic (but somewhat cute, since they are little kids) dancing to what seems to be Christian parodies.

As I am standing there, I hear a loud chuckle, and a very familiar voice saying something like "It took me forever to learn to ..." whatever it was, doesn't stick in my mind, but I look up at the freeway, to see a car at the side of the road with Anne clearly visible in it. About that time, the car starts to drive away, but not before Anne looks down and sees me standing there. "Great," I think, "She is going to be convinced I am stalking her, now."

I glance down a narrow sort of alleyway, and see a pizza parlor. It seems to be an Al's Pizza (a very small Kissimmee chain with two or three units, though one or two may have closed down), but when I look again, it seems to have changed into a small sort of tent. The whole area is now looking more like a flea market or something, and as I am feeling hungry, I approach it to see about maybe getting a couple of slices. But somebody else pushes in front of me at the last second, and instead of wasting time glaring at him, I walk a little further down, looking at the other booths, before I come back to try and get some pizza.

I am thinking of buying three or four slices, but it seems like they may have just sold the pushy guy their last slices. Anyway, as I am trying to juggle all the stuff I am carrying (I had nothing to carry a moment ago!) I find I already have two pizza boxes and four slices on plates stacked on top of that. I obviously don't need to buy any more pizza. I find myself thinking I might want to reschedule my mystery shop, since I've somehow passed the place, except I have to go back there to get my car, anyway.

Except as I get back to where the street dead-ends by the freeway, my car is sitting right there. And I somehow have two tiny kittens, one black, and one white, climbing on me. They are mine, and I take care of them, but they weren't with me just a moment ago. Since I have these pizza slices just sitting on plates, and these cats all over me, I soon have cat hair on the slices and pizza sauce on the cats. What a mess. I am trying to get all of them in the car.

Almost instantly things change from me trying to get them in the car to driving down the road. Problem is, since they weren't with me originally, I have nothing to carry the cats in, and they are getting into everything. One of them seems to be almost rolling in the pizza slices, and I am paying so much attention to trying to get them out of the mess that I am not watching where I am driving.

When I look up again, I am in a narrow, brick-lined alleyway, very narrow, just a few yards from a short brick wall blocking access to a sort of drainage ditch / Los Angeles riverbed. I am so close to the wall, I don't even bother trying to brake. I crash right through the brick wall, and find my car teetering on the edge of a large 'ramp' of stone steps leading down to the river bed. At this point, I am still thinking if I back up carefully, I might be able to get out of this, drive off, and pretend like nothing ever happened.

But I can't get any traction, and as I continue teetering, I see some rednecks down at the base of this sort of 'stairway' with fishing poles in the 'river', laughing and gesturing for me to come on down. Suddenly the car tilts forward a little more, and I'm bouncing down the stair ramp, the rednecks diving out of the way as I plow through their fishing poles. At least it shut them up. I crash through another wall, and find myself teetering over another ramp, this one steeper, and leading right into the water.

I have no roof anymore, and seem to have very long arms, so I am grabbing stuff from the car, and trying to toss it out to somewhere safe. There are back packs and boxes of stuff, pizza, and the kittens. I try to put the kittens on the ground, but my aim is bad and I seem to toss them into a very shallow fountain. One of them is fine, but the other is right under the tiny waterfall, and though it is very little pressure, the kitten is so small it is drowning, so I need to reach in and fish it out.

About this time, there is a siren, and an ambulance-like vehicle pulls up. It seems help has arrived. There is an older lady with white hair who kind of reminds me of Sarge, a bus driver I once knew, and a younger lady who kinds of looks like Jane from the Britcom Waiting on God, who is wearing what seems to be a cross between a hazmat suit, and one of those protective bubble-type units in a hospital ward. Inside the see-through suit, I can catch glimpses of her partly clad and scarred body, and it kind of seems like her belly has been opened up and stretched, so that she has a sort of external womb, complete with several babies still attached by umbilical cords, sticking out of the backside of her suit. Yuck!

01-02-2013 -- This one seems to start almost as a gas station mystery shop. I am at the pumps at a gas station, getting ready to maybe pump some gas, and also looking around at outside displays, thinking to maybe get some oil. I suddenly realize I brought oil with me, and it is already mine, even as I am pulling it off the display, and am hoping I don't get in trouble for using my own oil, because it sure doesn't look right, the way it is going down.

Soon I stumble into a sort of meeting of an organization that seems to be kind of a get-rich-quick thing. You know ... the various real estate gurus who advertise buying property with no money down and making a fortune. There is a sort of feeling of some kind of scam going on, and though no characters appear, there is a strong feeling of something connected to Psych. The guy leading things seems to be Alexandre O., a pastor I knew from my days at Hosanna Printing.

My cell phone rings, and I am asked to turn it off, as they want no recording of the meeting. My phone quickly turns into a small hand-held cassette recorder, and though I try to turn it off, the wheels keep turning and the tape keeps moving, so I think it is still recording. They don't think it is a problem, though, since that is what everybody else's recorders are doing. (Just how many people are recording this thing when they aren't supposed to?)

It is a longish meeting, and there is a lot going on. It goes on for quite a while, but not in any detail I can put down here, except in a few small scenes. At one point they give a small, meek, slightly Oriental girl (think Amy from Futurama) a lot of money, several thousands of dollars that they collected from the rest of us at the meeting, and she is insisting that it is too much. The guy in charge interrupts her, and demands she tell us her name, and this shy girl who has barely spoken to us, and has identified herself as Amy in a whisper speaks out loud and clear, and gives her full name in a forceful manner. His point? Money has a large effect on a person's self confidence.

They bring a pizza in, and ask me to try the first piece, and I could swear it was the pizza that was made in my last dream (see Harry Potter, Voldemort, and the Pizza). It looks like the pizza from Aldi's, as it did, and is also fairly mangled. At one place, the crust has bubbled up, but instead of just a bubble in the crust, it bulges up and almost looks like a small planet on a column rising up from the crust, and I am really not sure about eating it.

Soon the meeting has been thinning out, and I have been asked to do something to show some sort of talent or skill that I will use to make something of myself. I grab a rather basic and simple guitar and start to try and play it (rather badly, as I have no idea how to play the guitar) and one of the other people takes it away from me. They somehow kind of unfold it into a much larger string instrument like a bull fiddle or something, and start to play amazingly on it.

I am embarrassed, but I start to sing along as they play. I have a lovely voice, and sing really well, but very softly because of my throat. [I have had no voice for about five years.] Soon we have moved away from the hotel we were in for this meeting, and Alexandre has turned into what almost looks like Peter David, and I find myself actually kind of whining about how I'm not actually good enough at anything, as we are trying to cross a really busy street to get back to the hotel.

The street crossing was fairly realistic, except for trying to dodge into too small of gaps in the traffic, when we can see much larger gaps a few seconds away, and would have just waited for them in real life. As we finish running across the street, Peter David has turned into Dale, and he has accidentally run behind a fence which separates the street from the sidewalk, so he has to back-track to get around the fence. I expect to beat him to the hotel because of this, but he still gets there first.

We head inside, and I note in passing that it is a nice hotel, but when I push the button for the elevator, and the doors slide open, they don't open onto an actual elevator, but onto a hallway containing the elevators. Weird. I glance at our room number, which is something like 5641 or some such, and hit the button for floor five, but that's not where we want to go. The rooms are not numbered by floor, but sequentially, and we have to read a sort of chart to figure out which floor our room is on.

01-02-2012 -- [No dreams that I could remember yesterday. Two from this morning that seem kind of neat.] For half of this dream I am watching things happen. For the other half, I am Harry Potter. Dream starts at the Hickory house, but very quickly is somewhere else. Harry Potter is a really, really little kid (probably three or four, but about the size of a baby) and is hiding in a small house from Voldemort, who is still hunting him.

I can't figure out where he is at first, then I see a slight movement, and he is kind of half-crawling out of his hiding place, which was in the lamp-shade of a small sort of stand lamp by the window. He really is small in this dream. There is another little kid hiding in the same house, in a cupboard or something, though I am not sure if it is Ron, Neville, or maybe even Draco; who knows in a dream.

The person who is watching them is a small, somewhat fragile-looking blonde who seems to be Maria G. from choir a few years ago. (Kind of fragile looking, but voice like an angel.) At one point she is helping Harry down from his hiding space, and talking with him, and I am worried that somebody is going to see a silhouette of him climbing down from there through the window, and will learn where his hiding space is.

I get the sense of something about a mechanic's shop, and cars, and maybe being given one, but can't remember any details. The Weasley twins are running around, and Voldemort catches them and is starting to interrogate them. I am horrified when the twins seem to be giving up information on Harry, including a spell that can get around his protection, but I eventually realize they are giving him a phony spell that will prank him, instead. Very brave, but it will get them killed if he ever catches them again.

By this time, I have turned into Harry Potter. I am in disguise, and sneak out of the house and across the street to a little hole-in-the-wall type of pizza parlor that I seem to remember from another dream here (first dream I ever posted here), where I tried to get a pizza before a nuke and running through a video game world.

The place only has three varieties of pizza, pepperoni, sausage, and combo (pepperoni and sausage), and they don't seem to make large pizzas, only a personal pizza and a medium that is about the size of those Aldi's pizzas I've been enjoying lately. The Sicilian style (not Sicilian type, Sicilian flavor: Italian sausage, salami, prosciutto ham), and even though the pizza is only supposed to be pepperoni and sausage, it looks like the Aldi's pizza, as well.

The place seems to be a cross between a hole-in-the-wall and even a trailer or food truck, and I have come in a back door to a sort of kitchen to place my order with a plump Italian woman, and am kind of watching as they make my pizza. They aren't doing a very good job, and in trying to stretch and place the pizza crust, it kind of gets badly folded and mangled. I am thinking of saying something, but really don't want to draw attention to myself, so I wander home to wait while they cook the pizza.

Soon I have to go back out to pick up it, but I am starting to get really worried. If I get caught, everything is over. For everybody. Yes, I have a disguise, but I don't know how good it is. But I convince myself to go out, and Maria, who is out front gossiping with somebody, doesn't recognize me. She's busy talking about hearing a bang, but not knowing where it came from. Besides, the pizza place is right across the street. So I push aside my nerves, and walk on over.

I kind of creep over to the pizza parlor, but it is very, very dark. I sneak inside, and it is still dark, and there is dust everywhere. Soon I find everybody inside is dead. Between the time I ordered the pizza and came to pick it up, Voldemort had blown the place up. Maria heard the explosion, but didn't recognize what it was. Very frightening. The bad guys are still creeping around the place, so now I have to dodge them and stay out of sight as I sneak back home.