Batch

07-18-2014 -- Am in a sort of high school or college setting, there is an attractive teacher around, one of the students is rather weird, and strange things happen around him. Things fall apart, stuff doesn't work, windows collapse shut (or open) when they shouldn't. I have a pole that is a cross between the old poles to open the real windows at grade school, and the poles with the two prongs used to hang up the banners that block off the stained glass windows at church for productions. I am trying to close the windows, but the strange things that keep happening include something weakening part of the pole, and the teacher thinks things won't work. But I kind of manually fix the loose ends into the places they need to be, and they strengthen up again.

Slowly things are changing, and the class setting somehow leads to staying with Buffy (BtVS) and her friends in her two story home in Snohomish, WA, on the hill on 62nd Place, along with the creepy guy who things always go weird around him. He is allowed to be here because somehow Buffy's car had driven into the garage-like pond a couple of years ago, and she couldn't get out because she was drowning. He drove in with another car and half pushed, half pulled her car out, saving her life. He wants to be here because he is creepy, and has an improper interest in all the female Scoobies. All of us males dislike him, but what can we say ... he saved Buffy's life.

But then there is a scene, and some screaming and noise, and it turns out this creepy dude got drunk and drove his truck into the same pond along the side/under the house, and this time it was Buffy who took another vehicle and half pushed/half pulled him out, saving his life and balancing the books. And I point out that things still stay very weird around this guy, because somehow there is some weird sort of time dilation in effect, and even though both events took place two or three years apart, within the pool, itself, they both took place at the same exact time. It is really weird, and the creep may actually be responsible for Buffy needing rescuing in the first place.

The creepy guy is embarrassed about needing to be saved, and leaves, hopefully never to be seen again, and we all head inside to find our rooms and go to sleep, meanwhile, Buffy's mother, Joyce, is standing there in a skimpy robe wanting to know what has happened, and we're all explaining it to her, while I can't help but enjoy the view.

06-29-2014 -- As always, the earlier bits are sketchy, and some may be missing entirely. Am at a school of some sort. It's not Hogwarts, though there are probably some Potter characters involved at some point. I'm kind of interested in a girl who currently has sort of dark blond hair, who does not seem to be at all interested in me. Yet there are a lot of people who seem to think we belong together. School is over for the year, and a pair that are highly reminiscent of Tom and Carl are helping me to pack up and load my stuff, and are meddl...er helping me with the situation, saying I'll be waiting for an e-mail or a phone call from the girl, but will stay away until I hear from her, so as not to be a pest. But then the other one is kind of muttering to himself about how she is a very traditional sort of girl, and may feel it is inappropriate for her to make the first move, so ....

The next thing I know, everybody has disappeared, and I find that I am walking around the Buena Park/Anaheim area, more or less along Lincoln Avenue. I ought to be on a bus, but instead seem to be kind of jogging along. I think I have just left a doctor's office, where I was diagnosed with some virulent respiratory infection. They have me wearing a sort of surgical mask to both protect me from spreading germs, and to help keep me from catching anything else while my system is weakened by what it is currently having to fight off. I glance down the block, and see a friend of mine, who is a Screech-like nerd sort, also wearing a surgical mask, and suffering from a different horrible respiratory infection. I suddenly realize it would probably be very bad for the two of us to get anywhere near each other, since we might both get even sicker.

I run into the girl I like again, and she asks me if I am following her. I explain that it is just random chance that I ran into her here, and about my doctor's appointment. I'm afraid she thinks I am stalking her, and that I have probably blown my chances with her, but oddly enough, this is when she actually starts showing interest in me. Soon I am visiting at her house. She has a mother, who looks about 30, and seems to be far too young to have a daughter in the late teens, and an aunt with black hair and a slightly Oriental cast to her, who seems to be about 40, and is fairly attractive. The aunt seems to somewhat disapprove of me.

But it turns out they have a pet dragon, a small breed. It is orange, and about the size of a common house cat. It is old and sick, and kind of dangerous, and it won't let anybody near it, so they aren't able to try and help it, and they are really afraid it is going to die. It turns out I seem to be some sort of dragon whisperer, and I speak soothingly to it, and approach it. I understand it, and it understands me, and I am able to calm it down a bit, so it stops shooting flame, and I can approach it. Talking with it, I not only get it to the point that the family can approach to offer aid, but I also am able to pass on word to them of what the dragon feels, to help narrow down what kind of problems there may be, and they are actually able to manage to heal it, to everybody's joy.

The girl (who was originally blond, and now is probably turning into a brunette) is probably Susan Bones, which would probably make her aunt Amelia Bones, yet oddly enough the two are also part Veela. What I have done in helping their dragon has shown enough power and compassion that it has really had an effect on the aunt, and she is going into almost a sort of sexual frenzy, she suddenly wants me so badly, yet she is determined not to get in Susan's way, so she is holding herself in check. This makes her miserable, however, and Susan notices. She takes pity on her aunt, and decides she is more than willing to share, and the two women take me off for a rather pleasant orgy that is, unfortunately, 'off-screen' so-to-speak. I know it happened, and that I enjoyed it, but the dream skipped right over it, rather than to show it to me.

Susan has a younger brother, about a year younger than her, slightly nerdy, somewhat Oriental like the rest of the family, and he has a friend over. They are being mild (little brother-like) pests, but overall they are good kids. One of Susan's friends is also visiting, a dark haired, slightly Oriental (no, I don't know what is up with that) Hannah Abbott, which is one of the reasons I think the girl is Susan Bones. Anyway, in trying to stop a prank by the boys or something, I accidentally turn off a light where Hannah is just walking in, which leads to her making some sort of comment.

Soon the aunt somehow has something going on with the friend of Susan's brother, and the two of them are starting to get it on. I am sort of hesitant, but find myself approaching them, and nervously trying to make it a sort of threesome. I am standing over them as the aunt has climbed on top of the guy and positioned herself in a sort of 69 position. She asks me if I will go to get her something, but I am standing there looking down on her absolutely gorgeous ass, slightly spread in front of me, and I can't help myself. I step forward, take my large, hard thingy, and start to press it against her asshole. She gives a slight yelp of shock and the tiniest bit of pain, but hunches down further, providing a slightly better angle. I am patient, and move slowly in pressing forward ever deeper into her ass, and soon she is moaning and writhing in passion, as we enjoy a nice, long crappity smack. Susan is complaining slightly, however, about how I never lasted that long with her. I mumble under my breath about how Susan is a lot tighter than her aunt, which makes it harder to last as long in her.

About this time, the mom shows up again, and she doesn't seem to like me or to think much of me. Thankfully the aunt throws in a good word for me, explaining what I did for the dragon, and what I am doing for her and Susan, though she does mention that she is going to have words with me about warning a girl before invading her behind! Soon however, we are all wandering through the house looking for the $2.19 that an uncle or some such has misplaced. Though it is a very small amount of money, it seems to be important that we find it. I find myself searching near Hannah Abbott, who seems to have this strange idea that I may have accidentally (and somewhat inappropriately) slipped the money to her ... not saying that I did anything wrong, but as something that happened almost accidentally. But I am explaining how she is Susan's best friend, which means it is quite important that I try to get along with her. I tell her that I would never dream of even laying a finger on her without her permission. Unfortunately, even as I am saying this, I am repeatedly poking her gently in the arm in a way that is very reminiscent of the way Monk can't keep himself from gently touching things like parking meters as he walks past them. Just a weird (but very pleasant) dream.The

11-01-2013 -- I am Harry Potter, and with Neville Longbottom at my side, I am deep into a large battle with a bunch of Death Eaters. It is quite a long battle, and covers a lot of ground, though I can't really remember a lot of the details. At least part of it seems to take a place in a hotel, probably a muggle hotel. We manage to defeat the Death Eaters, but the wizarding world decides to blame us for letting people in the muggle world see us casting spells, and they snap our wands and banish us from the wizarding world.

Thing is, I quickly find that almost all of the regular people have one special ability, if they can only discover it, and learn how to use it. Whether you want to call it the X-Gene or say it is a Heroes world or how you want to look at it, the humans only need to discover what their unique ability is, and how to use it. Thankfully, I find that, having been trained to use my magic, even with a wand, now that I have had it snapped, I can somehow use my magic to access all these other peoples' individual powers, and know (at least partly) how to use them all.

There is a class on strange abilities at the local community college, and I decide to attend and learn something, but the professor is just talking about powers and abilities as something theoretical, something that is rumored to be possible, but nobody believes in. I decide this just won't do, and decide to take over the class. The professor watches, somewhat bemused, as I start demonstrating a few powers. I slow down time around me, so that I seem to move at super speed. I speed up time, so everything seems to be happening in slow motion. I even try to figure out how to travel in time (which just looks, to the students, like I disappear from one spot, and reappear in another.)

On another day, we are holding class outside in a sort of amphitheater, and there is confetti in the air, when I decide to play around with weather control. I make it start to snow for a short time, then start turning the snow into rain. I keep it very controlled and local, it is only snowing, then raining, over us and about half the pool we are standing next to, which also leads to demonstrating control over the elements, and making the pool part, ala the red sea, which really impresses everybody. Meanwhile, each class, I help another few students discover what their power is, and help them start to learn a little about how to control it.

Soon it is the last day of the semester, in the last five minutes of class, and I realize I have messed up a bit. I haven't given them any of the warnings that I should have. I try to advise them against using their powers too blatantly, unless it is an emergency, pointing out that they might frighten people, or that people might want them to always be using their powers to help out, in which case they might never have any peace. On the other hand, we tell them to encourage more people to take the class, so we can teach ever more people to fin and learn to use their powers.

Finally, Neville and I explain about the magical world, and warn them to beware of nutwads wielding short sticks, and warn them that if wizards catch them using their powers, they could attack them, try to erase their memories, and cause them lots of problems. I concentrate, and use a lot of my power, and conjure rings on all their fingers which quickly fade from view, and tell them if they are ever attacked by wizards to hold the ring and call my name, and I will try to come and save them. Then they start heading out into the larger world. The age of powers has begun! Very fun dream!

09-24-2013 -- I'm walking down Hickory toward Greenleaf, just passing the Goodwin house when somebody comes running, screaming, out of the house and into the street, which causes somebody who was driving down the street to swerve onto the lawn, causing me to have to dive out of the way to avoid being hit.

This causes me to roll out of the way, and into the Goodwins' back yard, where I find the police are looking around, and I start to learn what is going on. A mad gunman has fired on some people, perhaps even killed some people, and they have him trapped here in the Goodwins' house, but he's hiding inside, and they don't know exactly where he is, and he could pop out at any time and shoot somebody, so they are being really cautious.

I slowly make my way around the back yard and then the side yard, feeling like I am being watched the entire time, and like he has a gun trained on me ... very nerve-wracking. I eventually make it to the front yard, then start heading down the street toward Greenleaf again, but now I am going for help, though I don't really know where or what kind of help. A sports car pulls up and offers me a ride wherever I am going, and it is the guy who almost ran me over, and turns out to be a friend of mine.

The guy is sort of a cross of Dave D, Sean S, and Phil L, a nice guy, but a little bit of a trouble-maker, and I am ribbing him about almost running me over, and he explains that the gunman shot at him and he was trying to avoid hitting the woman that ran into the street, and it is not his fault ... and I am never going to let him live this down, am I? And I tell him no, I'm not, but I am starting to climb into the car with him.

That's when his older sister shows up. She is rather pushy and unfriendly (reminds me of Tina, the older sister of another of my childhood friends) and explains that he had no permission to borrow the car, and was already going to be in big trouble with his parents, but now that he's crashed it into the tree in the Goodwins' yard .... He goes off with her in the car, and I am forced back on my feet to try and find help. I am now right by the corner of Hickory and Greenleaf, and may be renting a bike to ride while looking for help.

I am considering a particular model because it is being advertised by a Brian Keith-like curmudgeony sales person who is pushing that model, and I am soon walking it by the house with the hedges. I notice that a dog who has always been loud and unfriendly and kind of scary now seems to want to be friendly, and the neighbors are talking about the killer down the street, and I now find myself going home.

Soon I am at the Hickory house, collecting mail at the front door, and as I walk inside, I find somebody who is an odd cross between my cousin Lyle, Horatio from CSI:Miami and James Spader, and he is proposing theories about the killer while running a long strip of film negatives through his hands. He seems to be developing the film, and drying the various chemicals off the strip.

Mom doesn't buy his theories, and doesn't seem to trust him at all. She says he can't claim to have had knowledge about this months ago when it only happened in the last day or two. (Strangely, I haven't heard him say a word about knowing about this months ago, and it has only happened in the last few minutes, so I have no idea what she is talking about.)

Soon the area is turning into a cross between a school (large school, high school or college, not a small grade school), and they are trying to recruit mom to do some kind of undercover investigation where she would be posing as a returning student, but she doesn't want to do it. I think she is afraid she'll find she likes it too much, and will really go back to school, and she doesn't want to do that.

She finally agrees, and steps into the hospital / college / whatever it is, and starts having to dodge several young men with very Weasley-red hair and bearing, who are running around trying to find food that they can reheat for more and larger meals. Meanwhile, mom is dodging around doing her investigation, and I find the place is turning into more of a cross between the TAMS facility and Hewitt, and I am on the second floor in the offices trying to find an attractive young lady who I may have a thing for, and trying to stay out of trouble.

09-26-2013 -- [Very long, detailed, funny dream, that like usual, I can not remember well enough to really do justice to it. I literally woke chuckling to all the insanity I'd just been through.] I am at a hotel or something, almost certainly at or near Walt Disney World, and I am with Dale. He's on the last full day of his vacation, and is stressing out about going home the next day. He's worried about packing everything and getting the rental car returned and all.

So I am walking him through it all step-by-step, and telling him it will all go smoothly and be easy to get everything done, and he is starting to calm down. Meanwhile, we seem to be eating in a little restaurant or cafeteria that seems more like it is in a school than a hotel (hints of FCM at IWU), and Dale is mentioning how he ended up writing some sort of sarcastic bit for a small humor newsletter, but what was supposed to be one little bit has grown into three, and he's handed them to me to read, and as I am doing so (and nothing ever reads well in dreams) the publication is growing from a Teens Today-size 11x17 folded-into-four-page handout to a Hornet-sized newspaper to a multi-page, multi-section full-size newspaper like the Orange County Register, which I am having trouble folding to carry under my arm.

Meanwhile, Dale has just taken out his trombone and has walked into the back of a classroom and sat down with his instrument as a very no-nonsense teacher and a bunch of students start to walk into the room. It seems Dale is sitting in on a rehearsal. The teacher is very tough and demanding, but all Dale ever receives from him is the occasional brief nod, so he must be a very good musician. [In real life I am almost certain Dale doesn't play anything.]

As the teacher starts and continues to lead the group, I am very surprised to notice all the brass players are segregated behind a 'sound-proof' barrier that can't block the sound entirely, but lessens it, so the teacher isn't having to constantly warn the brass not to blare, and urge the woodwinds and strings to be louder, to be heard, and I am thinking to myself what a brilliant idea it is, and wishing we had it back when I was in band. But Dale is not behind it, so I guess the trombone is a woodwind in this dream.

Anyway, they play for a bit, and then they seem to take a little break, and while the professor is giving his students small bits of individual instruction, I am making a few comments (about the vacation, not the music) to Dale, and though I am afraid the music teacher will snap at me, he doesn't. The teacher is a sort of a mixture between Mr. Eubanks (one of my teachers, though not a band teacher), Pat Moran, and Lisa Simpson's music teacher.

Soon the whole class is moving, and it seems like we move about a corridor over. It is like we are moving from a practice room to a performance hall, and starting to prepare for an actual concert or something. But there are more and more people walking in and getting involved, and lots of 'guest stars,' both from TV and from my past. Tony Shalhoub seems to be puttering around, and Ron Howard seems to be playing an instrument, and wondering how things are going to play out, but they are both very young. (Ron is Happy Days age, and Tony resembles his character in Galaxy Quest.)

There is a young lady who is top of her class, and very proper, but kind of stuck up (a sort of cross between Sharon Newkirk's brilliance and Cordelia Chase's attitude) who is supposed to be one of the star performers, but she has managed to do something to anger the professor, and he just points her to an out-of-the-way corner and orders her to sit down and shut up, which has her pouting and angry.

Meanwhile, there is a very flashy and flamboyant piano player, a kind of a cross between Liberace and Elton John, very forward, demanding, and visual, who is just passing through, but sees a piano, and can't help but sit down and start to play, and the professor tolerates it, but makes it plain he expects him to behave, and amazingly enough, manages enough presence that the flamboyant player meekly agrees.

So they are all starting to tune up and prepare, and Dale is still hanging in the background, out of the way, but ready to play. Since he is not one of the students, he doesn't want to put himself forward at all, but he is still going to sit in and play along. Meanwhile, Shawn Spencer is also here, and is his usual insane self, and is coming up with all sorts of ideas on how to make the concert or opera or whatever it is supposed to be, and somehow the strict, demanding, controlling professor finds almost all of his insane ideas to be interesting, and is largely giving him free reign, and thereby allowing chaos to spread incredibly.

So the people are wandering in and out, music is played, Shawn is rewriting both the show and bits of music on the fly (at one point he walks by the piano player, throws in a hand, and adds a small riff mid-song before walking off) and though I expect both the flamboyant pianist and the controlling director to be furious, they seem much more bemused, almost sort of "Yes, that does work nicely."

The girl is complaining that she isn't being allowed to do anything, and it's just not right! Ron Howard is having fun, but confused as can be about what is happening, and Shawn is getting more and more wild in his ideas, which doesn't bother the controlling professor at all, though it certainly ought to! Things are getting more and more surreal, and the audience is just laughing hysterically and taking it all in. It is chaos ... brilliantly orchestrated chaos!

Finally things end and we all start filing out. I want to tell the professor how much I liked the concert, and also I still want to comment on that brass behind the barrier thing, but there is no way to get near him at the moment, and the press of the crowd more or less forces me into the practice room that we'd visited earlier. It seems that other students, not part of the group performing, but inspired by the concert's madness, have run rampant in here, and trashed the place.

The college staff have been working at cleaning the place up, and are somehow deciding to blame me for all this, but I am not having any part of it. I tell them they want the prestige of having this big name person in charge, and to keep him from walking off in a huff they give him complete and absolute control ... if he goes mad and his students destroy the place, the blame is completely theirs. They can't blame it on a random passing stranger! They don't like hearing this, and are swarming at me, trying to pull me down, but all they manage to do is to pull down all the materials blocking the door, and create an exit for me. I climb out of the room, and back into the main hall, where I find the crowds thinning.

I run into Dale, who I haven't seen in a while, and he is now late for his plane, but he feels the concert was well-worth it, and he isn't worried about it anymore. I start helping him grab all his luggage, and am sort of shrinking it to a small size, and causing it to all float around us (ala Harry Potter) while Kevin is complaining about everything, and saying he doesn't know what is going on.

We hurry toward the car, but as the crowds continue to thin, I practically run right in to the professor, and decide I have to speak to him for a moment. But now he is tired, and winding down, and has been talking to people for quite a while, and may be starting to second guess himself a little, and he seems really iffy about talking to me.

I tell him something like "That was crazy, and insane, and hilarious, and absolutely brilliant, but I have to tell you two things. The first is a quote from one of the Superman movies: 'You can't ...' I mean, 'You don't ...' 'If you think you can ....' Never mind. It's not important." Now he is starting to smirk, and seems to be getting to be in a better mood.

"The second thing is this. I used to be a music student ... never again!" I insist, worried that he'll think I want to ask him for lessons or something. Then I start to mention the constant warnings to the brass not to blare, and everybody else to be louder, but after the first couple of words, he is repeating back what I am saying, just a split second after me, then saying it with me, then saying is just an instant before me, like that odd monster out of the Doctor Who episode Midnight. Before I can get too frightened and freak too much, he breaks it off to make a comment about how the strange thing is, they don't have that segregated bit here in the performance hall, only in the practice room.

About this point, I woke up chuckling to myself about the madness of the dream.

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.

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.

01-16-2013 -- [Two dreams, one night, at least slightly connected, so I am going to list them both in one post.] For some reason I am in Melody's room in the Hickory house, and trying to go to sleep, but really having some problems with insomnia. My body just doesn't want to sleep, though it is the middle of the night, and I am afraid mom is going to come in and give me problems.

There is some very strange evil-Harry fan fiction that seems to be hanging on the walls, and near the ceiling, there is all kinds of stuff lining the walls like my room at the Moran house. Mom walks by and asks how I am doing, and I try and indicate I am all right. There are huge yearbooks from Melody's time in school that are about the size of the bound volumes of the Hornet, so the yearbooks are full-sheet newspaper size, which seems quite large for yearbooks.

Suddenly I find myself in Knott's Berry Farm, walking from the wild west section into the Roaring Twenties section over by the Knott's Berry Tales area, and walking back along toward the Good Time Theatre. The area is completely deserted, and there is nobody around, but that doesn't seem to stop them from doing a scheduled show.

I am outside, and though it is in the Roaring 20s section, the buildings seem to be very Wild West area, with balconies and such. I hear a voice call "Hello!" in a very familiar way, and a can-can girl opens a door, steps out onto a balcony, and hangs a leg over the railing. "Hello!" and there is another one doing the same thing. "Hello!" and again. This is seeming very familiar. Especially since as I look, the can-can girls look like Lana, Arlene, and Jill. Band members start to play, and I recognize Vince and Chris. The main performers come out and it is Jay Meyer and Betty Taylor.

It is suddenly looking like when Disneyland closed the Golden Horseshoe Revue, the entire cast just picked up and moved over to Knott's Berry Farm. They even seem to be singing Hello Everybody, though they fall silent or whisper every time they have to say the name Golden Horseshoe, and I am thinking it is probably because Disney owns the copyright to the name of the place ... but I am getting to listen to the show I love, performed by the people I love, even if it is at Knott's, and I am suddenly very, very happy.

I have a soda, which kind of gets knocked over, and I am running to grab the cup before it manages to roll on stage, and I manage to succeed, so I'm doubly happy.

Suddenly I find myself waking up again, back in Melody's bedroom. The lights are off, and I can barely move. Feels kind of like what I would guess sleep paralysis might feel like. It is dark, the lights are off, and my eyes are closed, but I can see almost a sort of after-image like the light was just turned off the second before I started to wake up. I'm struggling to my feet, and find myself standing between two beds. There is stuff dangling from the ceiling, like Christmas tree ornaments or something.

The shirt that the Harry Potter fan fiction was written on is now a weirdly folded envelope that I am starting to write down the Horseshoe dream on, and time is starting to go all over the place. I went to bed at two, and it is now five, or maybe three, or one (yes, before I even went to bed) and it is all very strange. And then I really wake up.

---

01-16-2013 -- Starts with hints of the last dream, sleeping in Melody's room, then starts to turn in to a sort of a roommates in the house dream (even though it is still taking place in the Hickory House), and then shifts even further to a dream where we are still in the Hickory House, but we are the Simpsons, who live here, but film the Simpsons TV show on the set for Evergreen Terrace.

So I'm in the Hickory living room, kind of watching the last episode, and Russi Taylor (voice of Minnie Mouse) was a recent guest star, but has never gotten to see the episode she helped us film, and since it is just about to come on the TV, we call her to come out from Melody's room, and come watch it.

Oddly, it seems to episode she helped us with, Frick was building large old fashioned computers (the kinds with the huge tape drives) and somehow putting them on human legs so they could run around. Russi's character was a female computer with really sexy legs, but they stuck out at an odd angle, which made her a freak, and nobody wanted anything to do with her, even though both her legs and voice were really, really sexy. Very strange!

Meanwhile, things shift, and I suddenly find I am with a roommate in the dining hall at Indiana Wesleyan University, attending an FCM convention. The roommate is not actually anybody I know, though it kind of looks like Meeks from Dead Poets Society. They are telling us that we have been invited to attend a couple of normal college classes while staying here, as part of the convention (which makes no sense, but hey ... dreams.)

The physical campus looks very much like Brookhurst Junior High, though a slightly larger version. We're standing near room 66, and the class we get to sit in on is in room 33B or something like that. We're walking down corridors, and it seems the room we are looking for is past the office area and further south (we'd actually be in the middle of Brookhurst, the street, except in the dreams there are more classrooms).

We find the right area, and I walk into what I am hoping might be the right room, to find myself facing what looks like a younger version of Ducky (from NCIS ... but looking more like his Man From UNCLE days). The room is along the lines of a huge lecture hall, and the professor looks quite nice, but he turns out to be a rude, insulting nightmare. I walk into the next classroom over, hoping I might have the wrong room, but the next room over seems to be a business class, and every single student is dressed in the exact same business suit, and we sure wouldn't fit in, in that room.

So I come back to the room with Young Ducky, and he is insulting one student on his appearance, telling me to use soap next time, and insisting that a third needs to mess up his dorm room a lot more, just insulting everybody in the room, being miserable, and not teaching us anything. Finally, I just stalk out of the room, deciding I am not going to bother with this 'benefit', trying to make my way back to the cafeteria, and thinking this convention is really going to the dogs.