Batch

10-02-15 -- This one was all over the place, and there were probably a few scenes back even further than I can remember here, but we have what we have. The first thing I can remember with any clarity, I am staying in a house with roommates, and it is probably Rosemary's. I can remember vague impressions of David, and somehow Shannon has been doing something to get himself in trouble, so he's kind of been locked in a side room or something for a while. Meanwhile, I am wandering the house looking for some kind of food, but can remember nothing of what kind.

Anyway, I soon find myself watching some of the others go off running around the track at Savanna, and Shannon is trying to bug me to do so, as well. I explain I am not a runner, and there is no way I am going to join him. Meanwhile, the first of several girls dressed in a uniform that reminds me of Beauxbatons (but isn't) comes along, and is asking me to do something or support something, though I can't quite remember what. I'm not interested. A second asks, and a third, and it looks like more are on the way, and I suddenly lose it, and am yelling at her. I explain how, when I am badgered, I lose all interest in EVER helping with something, and liken it to the whole LA Fitness debacle. Everybody is looking at me in shock at how I blow up at this cute young lady.

Except Shannon. He decides he is going to fight her. Things are shifting to a live-action video game that seems to be a cross between Runescape and Zelda. He is off fighting her in a PvP battle and is doing unexpectedly well against her and all her friends, and seemingly, more and more people after that. He explains that he is dual weilding, but he is not using Excalibur in his left hand as most people do. It seems every fight begins in a new Zelda-style dungeon, and by using Excalibur, you prevent the use of a sort of magic that can identify cursed items. With his being able to identify cursed items, he is able to instantly use a certain potion when he finds it, which allows the discovery of the map of the dungeon level, which makes beating his opponent and getting lots of great drops a breeze.

So he's bragging about how many others he is beating, and the great loot he is getting. And somehow we're all a team, even though he is the only one that is playing, and we're getting some of the drops, and he is asking each of us to give him one of our good drops, since he is doing all the work. Now this seems very fair to me. The problem is, I haven't gotten any good drops, but just a single mini golf putter, and two balls.

I decide since that's all I have got, I'll give him one of the golf balls. Problem is, I am in an office and am supposed to file some paperwork to do this, but I can't find the proper forms anywhere, and I think I can't find Julie Davey to help me with them. So I'm going to have to go the less proper way, which seems to involve some sort of runes. I know the symbols that identify me and him, and I use an arrow symbol in between (--->) to indicate 'giving.' Problem is, the golf ball is purple, but I really think it ought to be red, so I drop a sort of dye tablet into a small glass container of what seems to be water, and it bubbles and froths for a bit, and I drop the golf ball in.

Problem is, either the water wasn't water, or the dye wasn't dye, because it forms a powerful acid, and it all bubbles away until I am left with a few drops of acid, and no golf ball at all. This angers me, so I throw down the glass container. Unfortunately I now find myself standing in my second bedroom in the Hickory house, and the few drops of acid have turned into about a pint or so, and I've just thrown it all over my floor, where it starts to ruin the various books and garbage and such it comes in contact with. Dirt is bubbling up out of the floor to make a slight mound liek an ant hill, and I find it has somehow brought in a bunch of ants, when I'd previously managed to get rid of them. It's quite a mess.

Somehow with almost no transition I am in an Adventurers Club-type setting, discussing this with Virginia, while Bob is walking with us, and I am worried that she isn't really going to want to talk with me, because of all the Club mess and the friends I'd lost there due to the Gathering debacle and RAH and more, but I am kind of explaining where I stand, and since she is religious and conservative and I am the same, and since she was a teacher, and I support teachers (actually Bob was the teacher in real life) she doesn't actually have a problem with me.

As we're talking, there is somebody else also starting to interact with us, and it seems to be Steve, the lead from the Monster House television show. He's somehow got me sitting at a desk, filling out the paperwork to sign up for a new Disney annual pass, which is quickly warping into the paperwork to join some form of the military. The problem is, he is guessing at a lot of the information, so is doing things like marking me down as a Democrat, and calling me by the wrong name abbreviation, so I am having to go through and try to correct the mistakes, and hoping that doesn't invalidate the forms.

12-30-2013 -- On a college campus somewhere, probably Fullerton College, trying to finally finish registering for my CDL class, but every time I think I am close to finished, I find there is ever more that I have to do. So I am in the admissions office, filling out paperwork and trying to find out just how many more things I have to do, and they won't or can't tell me anything except the next one or two forms. It is maddening. I am running all around the building, being sent here and there for more forms, and finally get a little tired of it, and escape to a small office where I sit down to chat for a few minutes with Charles Purcell, one of the counselors from my high school. We're having a decent conversation, until we're interrupted by a couple of little who know him and are hugging and kissing him.

I excuse myself, and continue to wander around the school, where I find myself looking down some of the tops of some of the ladies in the office, enjoying the available view. In a small dining room, I come across several clowns and balloon artists I know from the Orlando area, and they are quietly discussing the latest news about the death of Don Caldwell, and I'm telling myself it can't be, as I try to find some paper in a nearby office, to write it down so I can do some internet research later and find out if it is true or not. I am hoping it is all a mistake, because I like Don. I am jotting down his age, which in the dream was something like 52 or 57, and a custodian walking by mistakes it for the number of a player on a sports team, and tries to strike up a conversation about it, which obviously doesn't work too well.

The dream is sort of lengthy with me continuing to wander around the office trying to get things sets up, though almost none of the details stick in my mind, and eventually I have left the building, and am heading on home to the Hickory house. I find myself on Crescent, just passing the nursery, pulling a wagon which for some reason I am calling a bus, as I draw it over the cracked and tilted sidewalk. For some reason, I start making odd wrong turns. I am directing myself with a compass, but I turn it so that north is whatever direction I say it is, rather than to actual north, as I find myself in odd areas from past dreams. I find myself in an area I remember driving another bus, which also involved goblins from the Harry Potter books, and the NCIS crew, though neither make an appearance in this dream. It is just the same area.

I soon find myself dodging around rail road crossings, and come to realize that I am somewhere in Tampa, when I find myself approaching a strange theme-park-like restaurant that seems to be a cross between Wolfgang Puck's and the Wilderness Lodge. It is either closed for the night, or perhaps has not yet opened, but if that is the case, the opening is drawing near. I head inside, anyway, though as I make it in, I find I am being chased by the guard collies that are watching the place. It is very strange being chased by about a dozen just slightly vicious, but highly gorgeous Lassie clones, but I am trying to get out of the way. I end up half swinging from the chandeliers, half swinging from vines in the trees which make up the roof of the restaurant, while workers who have spotted me come chasing after me. They are so determined to catch me that they are grabbing for anything near me, and seem to be pulling the entire place down around us. As far as I am concerned, this is not my fault!

As their net is closing in around me, I throw myself to the ground, and then slam through the kitchen doors, dodging this way and that until I make it outside and almost fly up and over a chain-link fence to safety. Problem is, while I have gotten away from the restaurant staff, I still find myself being chased by random smelly drunk people. Somehow I cause myself to throw up over this, which instantly causes them to throw up as well, distracting them so I can get away again. I am dodging around more railroad tracks, and soon find myself on a sort of roundabout, except this time I really am a train for a few minutes.

Soon I find myself on another sort of college campus (not the same one), where I seem to be trying to copy a forbidden record (possibly of Tom Lehrer songs) or perhaps trying to duplicate a very rare record so there is a back-up if anything happens to it, while getting ready to play it on the college radio station. They are trying to stop me, and recover the album, preventing any back-up copies from existing, though I manage to find a good place to hide it, nearly in plain sight. Meanwhile, I am still being chased, and dodging about here and there, while also kind of drifting in and out of sleep. Odd and entertaining.

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.

10-16-2012 -- Entire first part of this was lost. Second part begins with me driving down a road, heading to some kind of balloon gig I'm doing. As I am getting near the place I want to turn in, I see an attractive lady wearing one of the can can girl costumes from the Golden Horseshoe Revue. I roll down the window of the Jimmy and call out something about how much I still miss that show. The lady turns around, and I think it is Ginny, one of the can can girls I used to watch in the show.

I see another can can girl also walking up, which makes it very likely they have a performance going on. Unfortunately since I am performing balloons, I'll probably have to miss it! Darn! I park my vehicle and get out, and find for some reason I am holding and petting a baby kitten. I have no idea why, but I know I am supposed to be holding it.

The event we're all entertaining for seems to be some kind of marathon, and they are getting ready to start. There's a really smarmy, stuck up jerk who is trying to order me around and tell me where to go, saying something about how nobody except himself has any rights to anything or any kind of decent treatment. He makes it clear that I better not write anything negative about him, or I'm out of there. I wasn't expecting to write anything for the Hornet about this, anyway, but I'm sure starting to consider it, now!

I glance around, and see some helium balloons and such up on a slight slope overlooking the street where the marathon is starting, and hike up there, figuring that is probably where they want me. The rude guy is here, and now seems to be one of the balloon people. He has a huge balloon bouquet that seems to be made of very long, thin balloons and huge 3 foot weather balloons or the like. It is trying to drift off in the breeze, and I stop it, which just leads to the guy telling me to stay away from his balloons. Sheesh ... try to help somebody.

I'm talking with the other balloon artists, and starting to consider what I might work on, when I spot the fire department running around, emptying out and replacing the various porta-potties set up for the event. Don't know why they are the ones doing this, but OK. My Jimmy is parked where it might be in the way, so I go to move it, but this only causes the second window to fall into the door like the first one did in real life a couple of days ago.

I find myself standing in a hotel lobby on the hillside, looking at some fancily dressed woman who is acting really stuck up and snobbish while talking about the whole event, and there are secret service agents spying on her and everybody else. I start to spy on them, and they seem to respect me because I respect them enough to keep an eye on them. Strange.