Batch

01-28-2014 -- [As usual, first part is not as detailed as it should be.] First thing I can remember, I am out somewhere, discussing potential mystery shops down in the Palm Beach or Lauderdale area. I am talking to a male scheduler, but the type of shop has a strong feel of the recent Circle K shops, stuff where the pay has gone down or they have limited the number of shops or something like that. Something has gone on that has caused me to quit, and say I won't be working for that company any more, and this has ticked off the male scheduler a bit. But then it turns out one of the shops is right next to where we are having our discussion, and the closeness balances out whatever has me ticked off, so I try to un-quit, and say I won't mind doing that particular shop.

The guy says that particular shop is only doing a shop-by-mail shop, that month, but it turns out all I have to do is mail something to them, and remark on any response I get, and that is even simpler than the usual shop, and pays the same, so I am quite happy with it, and am trying to get to necessary envelope together. Problem is, as I am trying to get things together, I actually start to drop stuff, and as I do, Joe S. and his little sister show up, and start pranking me. I am carrying a bunch of sheet music for choir, and as I am picking up other stuff, Joe's sister has grabbed my sheet music and dropped it into a file, while Joe has grabbed some of my other stuff, and started moving it. I have already had the hassles I have been mentioning with the mystery shopping company, and I just don't have the patience for their games, so I make as if to stomp off.

Joe's sister gives up on teasing me, and starts pulling back out sheet music and handing it to me, but now I find myself with two or three copies of various songs, rather than just the one I need, and as I try to separate out the extras, I just start dropping more and more, and scrambling for it. Meanwhile, I also have four toothpicks I have to keep track of, and keep safe (possibly in connection to the by-mail shop) and they are scattering on the floor as well. As I keep trying to pick things up, the scene shifts a bit, and I am standing next to my car at a toll booth, right before where you pay the toll, the door open, still trying to pick up sheet music and toothpicks.

The problem is, there is another car approaching the toll booth coming the other way (doesn't make sense, but there it is), and he may plow right into me. So I pick the entire car up, and set it just off the road on the other side of the toll booth, and then hurry out of the way, myself, so I don't get run over by the car, then finally manage to finish picking up all my toothpicks and music. Problem is now that I don't want to get in trouble for not paying the required tolls, so I again pick up my car (which has an e-pass in it) and kind of swing it over the toll booth on a sort of swinging platform (like the ones in Sonic the Hedgehog that sometimes swing you over spikes or fire pits) so that it registers. Problem is, I don't stop quickly enough, so it swings over a second time, and registers again. I just hope that the toll organization will be smart enough to realize they should only charge me one of them ... meanwhile the car keeps swinging back and forth, so now I have to hope they will disregard two of the three tolls, and I get the car out of there as quickly as I can.

Then things shift again, and I find myself in Manhattan (or a cityscape that looks fairly like it) surrounded by skyscrapers. I find myself watching a movie being filmed by real superheroes. The Incredible Hulk and the Green Goblin are in the middle of a big fight, and Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man comes swinging into the middle of it, and I can hear the Hulk muttering and complaining about how it is a mistake to let Spider-Man get involved in all this, because he is so wild, and improvises so much. And sure enough, Spidey swings into the middle of things, coming around on a web at high velocity, and nails the Hulk with an incredible drop kick that sends him flying about a half a mile, outside the city, where he lands on his back, sliding through a field on the edge of a lake. He's the Hulk, so he's not really injured, but he now has a slightly painful case of something like road rash on his back, which he is muttering about as he climbs back to his feet and starts to leap back toward the fight scene.

But the scene is now changing again, and Tobey has been turning into Harry Potter (or perhaps Daniel Radcliffe) who is standing on what almost seems to be a float, along with Hermione/Emma Watson, who is feeling rather down. For some reason, I am standing there trying to tell her how very beautiful her character is, being as sincere about it as possible, to give her morale a boost. But they have to get back to filming. (Like the superheroes before, they are making a movie, but they actually have the powers of their characters, so it isn't technical movie magic being used to make the scenes.)

I am in a sort of an alleyway, out of the way of things, and some sort of late-teen black princess (dressed in a fairly fancy purple gown) is approaching the alleyway I am standing in to get out of the way herself, until her scene is ready to begin, and she sort of glares at me, so I back up further to give her more room to sit down. Harry Potter goes flying by on a broom mounted to the front of a magic carpet where all the camera equipment is mounted, filming over his shoulder as he flies, and he passes the mouth of the alley, then flies a sort of arc before heading past the alleyway again, heading the other direction. By this time the black princess has moved on to do whatever her part is, but there is a little black girl (probably ten or eleven) riding up on a bike, looking forward to watching her sister film her scene.

And somehow the little girl and I in our alleyway, get sort of sucked on to the flying carpet in Potter's wake, so now we're flying through the air behind him while the film company films these fabulously expensive scenes. They must be adding the sound separately, because the whole time Daniel is muttering and complaining about how there is a fabulous peanut-shaped blimp flying high up in the sky, but they didn't know it was going to be there, so they couldn't plan to include it in the filming, which bothers him, because he thinks it is neat. The problem is, all the sheet music that I had been trying to carry has now turned into large, flat (unassembled) cardboard boxes, and the wind rushing by as we fly along has pulled them out of my hands, and they have been sucked in front of the cameras and have ruined the scene. Daniel goes ballistic, and starts screaming at me for ruining the scene, and mentions now they will have to refilm it tomorrow, but I am not available tomorrow, and you know what? He's glad I'm not available tomorrow, because after ruining the scene, I don't deserve to be in it, so hah! I don't remember what I actually have to do tomorrow anyway, but I say I can reschedule if they want me to, and be there, but he tells me that I am not wanted. Rather depressing.

[Just interesting information ... though I have not read it in some fifteen or twenty years, there was a very early Spider-Man comic book that had Spider-Man and the Green Goblin filming a movie in a desert somewhere (Spider-Man thinking the Green Goblin was only an actor, and not realizing it was the real Goblin) when the Hulk stumbled into the middle of things for a huge fight.]

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!