Batch

11-10-2013 -- Driving in an area that is a cross between Downtown Orlando and I-5 in California. It is one of the dreams in the busy freeways / construction zones category that I often have. I was heading north for a few minutes, approaching Downtown Orlando, then turned around and found myself heading South, just to find I was on I-5, approaching the Anaheim Plaza exit. There is a train track running parallel to the freeway, and I am somehow pointing out places where the tracks would switch, and theorizing on how the switchings would affect freeway traffic. (Since they are parallel, but unconnected, in real life it would have no effect, but this is a dream, after all.)

I wave to a cop on the freeway shoulder who is a friend, and am listening to Z88.3 on the radio. Soon I continue on the road, and I-5 has turned back into I-4, and then (as I am still heading south and I-4 runs more east/west) find myself on the Turnpike, instead. I am heading far south, though I am not sure if I am doing mystery shopping or delivery work. Soon I find myself down at an automotive shop next to a gas station around Fort Lauderdale or so. I am puttering around this seemingly abandoned shop, and come across a bag of some kind of chemical that is used in repairing cars, and since it just seems to be sitting there, I stick it in my backpack.

I wander around a little bit, and find myself on a slight hill, looking at a short (about four feet tall) fence separating me from a gas station with another auto shop as a part of it. It is a station where I have often been in dreams before, and I have also had work done there before on my scooter. I try to climb over the short fence, though my knee is giving me troubles, and I also get a little too close to a kid in a red baseball cap, which seems to make the adults in the area (his parents?) a little nervous. But I ignore them and move on. As I approach the gas station, I find out that they are working on my scooter once again, and are warning me that they probably won't have it ready until tomorrow. I have no money, and no other transportation, and I'm thinking to myself that I guess I will be spending the night sleeping in their parking lot. The guy then tells me "And you can't stay here!" Darn! But on the other hand, my car (yes, it is now a car) is ready.

I guess I am half driving it to the payment counter, and half making a delivery, because I pull up to a spot that is not a parking space (like the diagonal white lines that aren't a parking space, but mark off extra space next to a handicapped spot) because I am only going to be here for a moment, either making the payment, or making a delivery, but the guy goes nuts, and tells me I am not going to park there, even for a moment, and he doesn't like my attitude, and they probably won't use our services any more because of this! He's really mad, and it is ridiculous overkill. For some reason, Graham Murphy is standing there, and is agreeing with him, and I'm figuring I guess Graham isn't really a friend.

I say I will move the car, and am walking toward it, but the guy won't allow me to. He is now searching through my backpack, and finds the bag of chemicals, and claims it is his, and is now after me for stealing, as well. Graham, meanwhile, has taken my car keys, and is moving my car, himself. I call out to him and tell him that he doesn't have my permission to do so, and he just took my keys, so it could be considered grand theft auto. Not going to have him charged, of course, I'm just saying .... Finally, I have had enough, so I push past the guy and make my way to my vehicle, which now seems to be a cross between an ice cream truck and a Mears handicap van. Graham is sitting in it, I guess I am driving him back to Orlando. The kid in the baseball cap is also here, and is asking me for a ride to where he is going, which is a bit north, probably around the West Palm Beach area. Graham explains he isn't really against me, he was agreeing with the jerk because he didn't want an argument, and was just trying to get us out of there quicker. How do I get into these things?

So I am heading north on the Turnpike, until I suddenly find myself driving in a mall parking lot, wondering how the heck I got here, and why I am here ... I should still be on the Turnpike until West Palm Beach. I drive to the edge of the parking lot and turn on to the street. I am approaching the light, and right on the other side of the light is the entrance to the Turnpike. Problem is, the light turns red. I put on the brakes, but they are kind of soft, and I come much closer to the car stopped right in front of me than I would like ... on the other hand, I do manage to stop on time, so it's all good. Problem is, the car that is in the next lane over. It is also trying to stop, and going too fast, and in trying to stop, it clips the car in front of me, and sends it into a spin, and while it is spinning, it hits me. Graham gives out a curse, angry about more delays. So we have a three car fender bender, that was in no way my fault.

I get out of the van, and am getting out my digital camera to snap some pictures of what happened, but Graham immediately begins to drive the van through the intersection and out of traffic. What was the entrance to the Turnpike is now a small, out-of-the-way cul de sac. Now understand, I planned to move us out of the way, but wanted to get a few pictures, first, to help make it clearer what had happened. So now the three damaged cars are all sitting in this little cul de sac, and I am taking pictures while waiting for the cops to show up. Another guy tells me not to bother, because he is taking video footage of the whole thing, but I still plan on taking my own pictures. One of the cars contained a lady and a kid, and they are leaning against their car (I think the one that got clipped) and there is an elderly couple who were in the car that started the whole thing.

I glance back at the intersection, and find that there has been another accident, and this one is really bad. There are some severely mangled vehicles, and I can see them stuffing bodies in body bags as cops direct traffic, and fire trucks and ambulances drive off. I tell the people around me that it may be a while before the cops can get to us, but remind them at least none of us got hurt. Meanwhile, the side of my van shows an advertisement for coffee machines and supplies, and there is a lady standing there that wants me to come in to her place of work an install a coffee machine right now. I'm wondering about a company that does both courier work and coffee services in the same truck, and trying to explain I am not a part of the coffee side of the business.

09-28-2013 -- Long one, but many of the details are too visual to describe. Starts with me from a great height, preparing to dive into a pool, but the pool keeps shifting and changing. As I get closer and closer, the pool is turning more into a sort of neighborhood being built, and I am looking down at a few streets and houses.

As I get ever closer, I am being sent here to work security, and am wearing an Argenbright heavy jacket, but underneath it I have been told to wear street clothes, and warned this may not be a typical security job. Somehow I am looking at a sort of blue print or map, then looking at the site, itself, and I can see (highlighted with white light) the small sections so far that have been built, or are being built.

I am kind of able to highlight new sections on the map to select them, point them at the right place (kind of like a jigsaw puzzle, the place where they fit in), and have them start to be built there. There are two other people here ... a fairly nice lady who seems to be in charge, and a less friendly one who is also finding new sections on the map to have built. I think she feels we're in competition, which is why she isn't too friendly.

Anyway, at this point we're on the ground, in the dirt, surrounded by bricks and building supplies, earth movers, and big rigs. The woman in charge is pointing us to building various buildings, and doing color selections and the like, and it turns out that, unlike what it first looked like, all these places are not almost the same, but range from packed-tight one room suites to four and five bedroom full houses. She says I should make sure to do a good job on one of the one room suites, because she is going to give it to me while I work here, so I will always be on site.

This just keeps making the other lady more angry, and she tries to work ever better and faster to show me up, somehow printing up the lettering to go on the maps, but they are huge, so we have these 20 to 30 inch tall letters, but they aren't printed on anything, they are just kind of floating there in the air, waiting to be placed on the map. This isn't too bad for the black letters, meant to go on a white background, but there are also reverse letters meant to go on a black background that aren't white, but just letter-shaped holes floating in midair. Very strange.

At this point the construction site is changing, and instead of being a residential street, it is turning into what looks much more like a giant warehouse or manufacturing site, tall walls, a ceiling perhaps 25 or 30 feet overhead, warehouse racks. I have just helped run a phone line from where the lady in charge is to where we are working, and I am now being ordered by another woman (unfriendly) to run another phone line from the main office to the locker room.

So I take the large spool of phone wire that I am handed, and head out looking for the locker room. The problem is, the locker room has not been built yet. There are no signs for it. I just have to wander around looking for areas that look like they might eventually become the locker room, and ask anybody in the area if that might be what they are building.

While looking around for the right place, I stumble into Rosemary, one of my past landlords. She is looking for help on something, and I don't have what she is looking for, but then Shannon (who was another roommate, but one who didn't work, never paid any rent, and just helped out around the place a little) steps up and provides her with whatever it is. She starts making comments about how he is the only one doing anything around the place, and I am absolutely worthless. I blow up at her because just because I can't help with whatever specifically she was looking for, doesn't mean I am not doing important work.

Meanwhile, I finally find where the locker room is supposed to be, and it is in a completely different area than where I dragged the phone line, so I go back to where I left it, and start wrapping it up around my hand and elbow, then start moving it over to the proper place. The problem is, I was handed a 150' phone line, and the distance from the office to the locker room is more like 200' if the phone line is run along the walls. The mean woman is back, and wanting to know why I haven't finished yet, and I explain about the distance, and needing more phone line. She seems upset with me, and tells me to just drop it, and go looking for "something" street or something like that, and to find and plant some pineapple trees or something like that.

So I go looking for this particular street she mentioned, except that it isn't a street, but a department in the store, which is what the whole place is turning into ... a huge department store, probably the biggest in the world. and still with 30 or 40 foot ceilings. Much of it is still just ground being moved around, but then other areas we can see internal walls going up, and in yet other areas there are furnishings or racks of clothes or the like, so there are all stages of construction in different parts of the building.

Meanwhile, the unfriendly woman is more and more quickly turning into Dolores Umbridge, which explains why she is so unpleasant. She is always walking around holding a baseball bat and slapping it in her palm, like she is just looking for a reason to hit people with it, and as she sends me off looking for these pineapple trees, she is telling me not to forget to take a bat of my own along, and indeed there are several packages of numerous redwood bats wrapped in plastic wrap.

So I start looking for the 'street' where I am supposed to handle these pineapple trees, and am having no luck because again, nothing is labeled, and somehow I end up walking around on what might be the roof, about 40 feet in the air, walking along the roof beams and things. Mike Sullins is one of the construction workers below, and he is calling to me, so I step off the beam and plunge toward the ground, yet somehow I slow down just as I am about to hit, and touch down gently. I have no idea how I can do this, but others are doing the same thing.

Mike points me in the right direction, and soon I find myself in one of the more complete areas, where they are setting up furniture displays, and I find two 'packs' of large, prickly seeds (which seem like slightly thinner full-size pineapples, themselves) to grow the pineapple trees wrapped in manilla envelopes. I know that these seeds are supposed to be loaded into a shotgun and shot into the ground, but the nice woman is here, and explains how she is not going to trust many of these crazies with a shot gun, so she never ordered it. Instead I am going to have to take a planter, pull most of the contents partly out, then kind of wriggle the huge seed through the tiny top of the vase-like planter, and somehow hook it in the proper place inside. I am mumbling about how it's all insane, but am not seriously bothered by it.

So now I have the seeds themselves, and I have to continue looking around the various departments to try and find the right one, and find the two planters that do not yet have the first buds of pineapple trees starting to grow out of them, while all the while Umbridge is running around complaining about everybody.