The Lab Notebook

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm on a strange version of the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. Instead of one continuous waterway that meanders across solid ground like a real river, it consists of a series of interconnected, rectangular pools that are separated from each other by waterfalls. They're all still surrounded by jungle foliage, though, and they all have some kind of animatronic animal in or around them. One of them has an animatronic person swimming in the middle. It's nighttime.

I'm navigating these waterways all alone, in a single-person canoe. As I paddle my canoe along, I think, I hate going through this ride by myself. There's no one to do the spiel for me. I try to do it myself, but I'm not as good at it as the regular skippers are. I go over at least one waterfall in my canoe. There's no impact when my canoe hits the water; it just calmly transitions from one pool to the next.

I reach a particularly tall waterfall, with a bunch of gray rocks between the pool I'm in and the one below it. I'm tired of putting in the effort it takes to paddle, so I give up trying to canoe my way through the ride and just climb down the rocks. When I reach the lower pool, I decide to go swimming in it.

When I get into the pool, I start treading water. I move very quickly across the large, rectangular pool by this means, keeping my head completely out of the water the entire time, and feeling very proud of the fact that I've mastered the skill of treading water. [Which I haven't done in real life, by the way; I can sort of do it, but I'm not any good at it at all.] Being in the water feels really, really nice.

[Recall is a little hazy here. I think I remember the following two things:] Two or more people pour more water into the pool I'm in, making it colder. I get into and out of the water at least once. [I definitely remember everything from here on out:] I'm now in a smaller, but still rectangular pool, right next to the bigger one I initially got into. The shorter ends of the two rectangles are right next to each other. I look around in this smaller pool for a way to climb out. At first, I'm disappointed because I don't see one, but then I see it. There are some metal steps leading out of the pool, attached to the interior wall near the far corner. There are two girls I don't know in the water near the steps. I also see the B. brothers crouched down near the other short end of the pool, looking at me. [They're acquaintances from real life; I've mentioned them in my dream journal before in this entry. They're the two brothers who sang with the Parrish girls.] I'm naked, so when I see them, I imagine a bikini, and it appears on my body. [Despite this, at no point did I ever become lucid.] Then I climb out of the pool.

[Different dream.] I'm at home [or possibly in a hotel room; it didn't look like any of our houses], lounging around on a bed, doing something on my laptop. My parents want to go out somewhere, but I'm not ready. My dad jokes, "This battery-powered computer is called a 'wait-for-me device!'" I laugh a little, then stop what I'm doing, get up, and go to finish getting dressed so that we can go. Then my alarm went off and I got up.

[These dreams, all of which were non-lucid, are actually from the night before last. The ones from last night are private.]

I'm at a supermarket. I attempt to get money out of an ATM, but my card doesn't work. While I'm there, I run into Jenny A. [She's a real-life friend of mine.]

I'm with a group of people my own age, and we're all studying for either the A+ or CCNA exams. We're discussing whether or not you should broadcast SSIDs. [That question has come up as I've been studying for the A+ in real life. The sample questions say you shouldn't broadcast them, but they're apparently operating under the assumption that the wireless network is only there for the benefit of company employees. If it's there for the benefit of customers, then of course you should broadcast the SSID, so your customers will know which network is yours.]

I'm outside a tall office building with P. We need to get into a conference room, where lunch is being served. The way we're going to get there is by riding up to the outside window of the conference room on a porch swing being lifted by a helicopter. P. goes up first. She tilts the swing so it's not at a right angle to the chains [by flipping it over? I guess so, but I didn't see her do it] and stands on top of it, holding on to the chain to her left. [I think] I tell her that that's dangerous, but she ignores me and rides up. She has no problem stepping off the swing and into the conference room.

I don't get to enter the conference room by riding up on the swing. I have to get there by climbing up this net of ropes that has appeared on the side of the building. My mom is there cheering me on. On my way up, I can smell the coffee in the conference room. When I get to where I can see into the room, some of the monsters from Sesame Street are there. Also, Mr. Saito is one of the people at the lunch meeting. [Why is he the only one from the Dream Team who's actually shown up in any of my dreams so far? I think it's because of my long-abiding love for Japan and everything about it.]