The Lab Notebook

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

[For the second lucid in a row, I'm actually aware of the dream beginning, and it begins the same way as the last one - a visual scene emerges out of a blank nothingness, and I focus on it until it expands from a few little circles to fill my entire field of vision. This time,] I'm out in front of a big, old, two-story wooden house where some Toastmasters meetings are going to take place. I go inside to attend them, and some of my real-life Toastmasters friends are there, too. There are also visitors there, whom they are trying to recruit to Toastmasters. While I'm standing around and talking with the group, I demonstrate my ability to fly from the ground floor of the house up to the upstairs balcony. I compare it to "lifting myself by the seat of my pants" [shoutout to Dr. Seuss!] because, I notice on this particular occasion, that's roughly what it feels like when I bring my concentration to bear on the task of actuating that ability. It feels like I'm using my mental concentration to lift myself up from the small of my back and propel myself through the air. I say to the assembled DCs: "I used to be very secretive about my flying, but now I'm very open about it. I think everyone should be able to enjoy it." [And I do.]

After the meetings are over, I walk out of the house onto the street, except where one would expect there to be a street, there is instead a big, shallow swimming pool. It is surrounded by tropical plants, and its edges go in a series of curves so that the overall shape of the pool is a big, amoeba-like blob with lots of curving pockets sticking out every which way. I walk around to one side of the pool, sit down on the edge, put my feet in the water, and think: "I wonder if I can change my clothes just by thinking about it?" I close my eyes and concentrate on what I want to happen - namely, I want to be wearing a swimsuit. I can actually feel the swimsuit form around me. When I open my eyes, I'm wearing a tankini with tribal-looking geometric patterns on it in raspberry, burgundy, and many other colors. I exclaim out loud, "Holy $#!*, I did it!" [It was a super cute swimsuit, but certainly not one I would ever choose for myself in real life. Upon reflecting afterwards, I realized that my dream body doesn't have stretch marks - or if it does, they're much less noticeable than they are in real life, since I don't remember noticing them - and it's also less fat than my real one, though not dramatically so.]

I notice that the regular clothes I had just been wearing - jeans, button-down shirt and white sneakers - are now floating on the surface of the pool, around me. I get the rest of the way into the pool. There are two other people enjoying the pool, two guys and another woman. I realize that while my swimsuit top has shoulder straps, it also has a part that's supposed to tie together across my back, just at the bottom of my shoulder blades, and it's untied. I approach the woman (the pool is shallow enough to walk in easily) and say, "Trade you ties?" We tie the ties on each other's swimsuits, as I had just requested. She is some type of POC [most likely South Asian? I couldn't say for sure] and very pretty, and her name is Kim.

After swimming and lounging around for a bit, the two guys, Kim, and I all get out of the pool, down at the far end of the 'street,' away from the house I had just been in. Another dream character is standing there, a petite, definitely East Asian woman [she reminds me of a younger Agent May from the "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." TV series]. She asks me and the two guys to come with her; she is recruiting us for some kind of spy-adventure-type mission. [I have no idea why she ignored Kim completely, but she did.] We follow her, but I turn to say goodbye to Kim, who is now standing on the edge of the pool, as I go.

The two guys and I follow Young Agent May into an area that looks like an ancient temple courtyard, all dusty dirt floors and high, light-yellow-tan-colored walls of rough-hewn stone that stand open to the sky. There are lots of wall segments forming corners, but there is a space off to the left that's more than big enough for a dark-brown, equally-roughly-hewn wooden table with two people sitting behind it. This is the check-in desk for the adventure/mission. Young Agent May goes over to check us in, and I look around the courtyard while the two guys start to explore. As I'm looking around, a brochure printed on unbleached brown paper appears in my hand. The title, printed in a curved swoop across the center in big, yellow letters, reads "Dole Presents: Adventures in Dole Whip." [Or something like that. Interestingly enough, I could read the whole thing perfectly fine. I can't remember all of it, but I'll reproduce the text I do remember.] The brochure goes on to say: "This dreamer is about to earn her title! Next Task: Create a tiny, consensually-dressed, applesauce humanoid." There's even an illustration of this little humanoid figure I'm apparently supposed to create out of applesauce. [Don't ask me what "consensually-dressed" is supposed to mean. Presumably "dressed in an outfit of its own choosing," with an undertone of "modestly dressed."]

I wake up to the sensation of my left arm being asleep. I've fallen asleep on my left side, something I rarely do.

[Cool! New ability! This is the first time I've ever changed my clothing at will. I guess that counts as changing my appearance, although I really meant changing an aspect of my physical body.]

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary written while awake]

I'm in the office building complex north of Disneyland. I'm there to be cast in a show or parade there. [I don't specifically remember becoming lucid, but I do remember being lucid.] I'm floating around up by the ceiling, which is a high ceiling, when the casting director walks into the room below me. When I see her enter, I float down so I can talk to her. "Hi," I say while descending. She says I've been cast in [whatever show or parade it was], and to go and change into my costume for the show. I head out of the building to do so.

Outside the building, I stand on a stretch of grass that ends at the top of a concrete block wall, about twelve feet high, at the bottom of which is a sidewalk. I need to get down onto the sidewalk to get back to my car. I know I can do a controlled fall, so I do. I jump off the top of the wall, control my descent speed, and land easily on the sidewalk.

When I get back to my car, I realize I don't have any underclothes with me, and I can't be in the performance without any. I realize I'll have to go to a Walmart or Target and buy new ones, but I don't even know where there is one around here. I decide to set off and go looking for one.

I'm at a freeway onramp, on my bicycle, still on my way to find the nearest Target or Walmart. [Why am I on my bicycle and not in my car? I dunno.] The onramp runs next to a high, tan-colored wall. On this wall, about a quarter to a third of the way down the ramp, there is a traffic sign that reads "NO BICYCLES ON FREEWAY." I start bicycling down the ramp, but when I get to the sign, I read it, sigh, and say, "All right, fine. This is me, not riding my bicycle on the freeway." I get off my bike, turn around, walk it back up the onramp, and start looking for another route that doesn't involve taking the freeway.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of December 5-6, 2012.]

Non-lucid, Semi-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm at my university, and I have to fill out and turn in a form to get rid of a dorm room that I don't want or need, because I'm living in an apartment. I go into a computer lab to work on it, and the computers have floppy disk drives. When I remember a previous episode in this ongoing plot, I realize that I'm dreaming. [I don't remember that previous episode now, though. I think the lucid part of this dream continued on from this point, but I didn't write down what happened.]

I wake up, walk into the room where I work, and go to my work computer. As I'm walking across the room, I think, Hmm, am I still dreaming? This sure looks and feels real, and gravity feels normal, but I have a sneaking suspicion... When I get to my work computer, I see an instant-message conversation on the screen, and it's between two fictional characters. Yep. Still dreaming, I think. I start trying to type up a dream journal entry on my work computer, but I find it's very difficult to type in a dream. It's really slow going; it feels like my fingers don't know what to do. [Makes sense - that part of my brain that knows learned skills like typing must not be active when I'm asleep.] After just a few sentences, I lose interest in finishing my dream journal entry.

I start floating away from my desk. A friend gives me a push to help me along. I go into another area, where there are a bunch of people having some sort of gathering, possibly a picnic [I don't really remember now]. I decide I want to try making myself bigger. I crouch down on all fours, close my eyes, and concentrate on expanding the size of my body. At first, I don't think it's working because I don't feel any sensation, but when I open my eyes, I discover that it worked: I'm now huge compared to the DCs.

I wake up at somebody's house, having spent the night there after a party. I drive myself home, but get lost along the way. While I'm driving, my alarm clock wakes me up for real.

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

I'm flying through a large, rectangular, exhibit-hall-like space with an entryway connected to one end of it. Every time I make a complete loop through the exhibit hall, out into the entryway, and then back into the exhibit hall again, the scenery and displays in the hall have changed. While I'm flying through the entryway after a couple of iterations of this, I catch on to the fact that I'm dreaming.

I remember that I need to stabilize and ground myself in the dream, so I will myself to go down. I sink straight down, in an upright position, until I'm standing on the floor. I immediately walk over, reach out, and touch one of the walls, then squat down to touch the carpet. The thought of licking the floor to bring in that sense crosses my mind. [I was reading a thread on DV before I went to bed that mentioned engaging all five of your senses in a dream.] I decide not to, but thinking of things you should do in a dream brings to mind the current Task of the Month: spell “November” backwards.

While still squatting down, I start tracing the shapes of the letters on the carpet with my finger. R...e...b...m...e...v...o...n. I get all the way through it, and feel very proud and pleased with myself. I feel just as alert and self-aware as I do in waking life, but I notice that it's slightly more difficult to keep track of the letters and what order they go in than it would be if I were awake. Then, I suddenly find that I have a ballpoint pen in my hand [a plain black Bic pen with a grip, the exact same kind I'd just been using in real life to do my homework for a class]. I take the pen and print “Rebmevon” on the wallpaper on the nearest wall. It's still a little hard to focus on spelling. At first, I write an “e” in place of the last “o,” but then I cross it out and correct it. I write it a second time [I think] because I can, but then I think, Okay, now you're just doing it to be a smartass.

[There was more, but I only have time to write the part that has to do with the Task of the Month right now.]

(This one is from last night, bringing my DJ up to date again.)

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

I'm in House #4, which is enormous and elaborate and has lots of rooms [far, far more than in real life]. I go into one room that I had been using as an office/storage room, turn on the lights, and wonder why the lights in the ceiling fan don't turn on when I flip the switches, like they always have. [Arrrrrgh! *facepalm* It's been a while. I completely forgot that this was a dream sign until just now, when I was writing about it!] Then I notice that the room has been completely redecorated and filled with all kinds of objects and belongings. Someone has moved into these rooms. That someone has left a note on a rectangular sheet of yellow paper, attached to the wall, and has signed it with her first name, Emily.

While walking through the house, I pass a seating area with couches and a coffee table in an open area of the second floor, on a sort of landing next to the walkway that leads to the other bedrooms.

I'm in a dining area, sitting at a table, eating a meal with my roommate, LB. We talk about how I have this is my last night in the house, and I have to return to my original home.

I go downstairs and walk out of the house, which is now a small cruise ship sitting at a dock. Someone says something like, “If you don't come back, the ship will leave without you.” And I'll be marooned, I think. Well, Long Beach sure is a great place to be marooned in.

I wander off, along the city streets, heading toward the ocean. I find the frontage road that runs along the edge of the beach, and follow it to the next cross-street that leads inland. [The intersection I came to looked a lot like this intersection here, a place I know well from real life, but that intersection is actually in Santa Barbara, not Long Beach. In the dream, this area looked like that intersection, except grayer, more urban, and more built up - more like Long Beach, in other words.]

I turn right and head up that street that leads inland from the ocean. I come to an enchanted-forest-themed park area, where there is a gently-curving path through a forest of tall trees, and little statues and figurines, including one that plays a chipper, pre-recorded message when you touch a marked panel in front of it. The companion I'm with does so, and I turn around and walk back the way I came along the path, annoyed by the recording.

While retracing our steps, my companion and I come to a section of the pathway where there's a little toy train that runs along a ledge, about three feet off the ground, on one side of the footpath. The train consists of a toy engine, a toy caboose, and a whole bunch of random, small objects in between them. Any object placed in the line of objects between the engine and the caboose levitates a few inches above the ledge, and is pulled along as part of the train. The idea is that you're supposed to stand on the objects and ride the train along the ledge. I take my totem out of my pocket and place it on one of the flat objects in the train, and look at it for a moment. However, I then put it back in my pocket, because I don't want my companion to see that I have it. [Again, how did I not realize I was dreaming? Apparently, in my mind, that totem object is associated with the idea “This is a secret - no one else must know you have this” much more strongly than it is with the ideas “This is a symbol of your membership in the lucid dreaming community, a reminder to do reality checks, and a way to do them.” Great. :/ ]

Color-coding: Non-lucid, Semi-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]
Bold text indicates a “dream within a dream,” meaning any dream scenes that followed after I dreamed of falling asleep

I wake up in my current bedroom. I can hear the couple who lives downstairs in the master bedroom arguing. The woman says something like, “I have to get up now and get ready for work!” I can't sleep with them arguing, so I decide, “Okay, I guess I'm up for the day now, too.” I get up and start trying to take a shower, but the hot water keeps turning cold because the woman downstairs is taking a shower at the same time. After I'm done, I'm still feeling so sleepy that I decide to go back to bed and try to get some good sleep while I still can. It's still only 4:15 AM, after all. So I get back into bed and go to sleep.

[All of the above paragraph was a completely convincing false awakening that I failed to catch. I've never heard the couple in question argue like that, plus, in the dream, the residents of the master bedroom were the parents of the girl who actually lives there in real life, and I thought nothing of it. :/]

I'm visiting EM and SM's house in Omaha [something I did in real life recently]. It's morning, and we're all getting ready to leave the house for the day. They have a gigantic, elaborate house [way bigger, fancier, and more high-tech than their real house]. While we're in the kitchen, SM says something like, “You haven't had a chance to eat today.” I answer, “I know. That's why I always keep bananas in stock.” I show her that I'm carrying a banana with me, which I intend to eat for breakfast. SM has an eyepatch over her left eye socket, with a cool outer-space vista on it. It's embedded into her skin, and I can see muscles twitching underneath it. It's kind of creepy.

We get outside the front door when I realize that I don't have any shoes on. I say to EM, “Could you unlock the door for me, so I can get back into the house? I'm not wearing shoes, only socks.”

EM takes out a door key and uses it to unlock a lock in a wall, which opens the front door. “The front door” consists of a zig-zagging wall of metal panels that cross a wide, concrete courtyard. The panels that are parallel to the house swing open, toward the house, when the key is turned; they're the doors. I go into the house and run up the stairs to the room where I'm staying, to get my shoes.

When I come back outside, I find SM sitting on something in the middle of the tall, light-green grass on the wide front lawn, waiting for me. She doesn't have her eyepatch anymore; both of her eyes are normal. [This is the case in real life.]

“Wait just a ding-danged minute here...” I say. This discrepancy has caused me to begin to suspect that none of this is real. To test whether I'm dreaming, I turn to face a low rock wall nearby and start walking toward it, willing myself to pass through it intangibly [something I know very well that I can do in dreams]. I find that I can't pass through it; I just bump into it normally. In the moments that follow, I'm very acutely and vividly aware of the world around me, of my own self-consciousness, and of the fact that I'm not sure whether I'm awake or dreaming at this very moment. [I finally started watching the TV series Awake a few nights ago, and this is what the protagonist experiences all the time, a fact which is reiterated at the beginning of episodes 2 and 3. That is so cool, that I got to experience that personally in one of my own dreams! ]

After another moment or two, I do realize that I am dreaming. [I don't remember specifically how or why.] By definition, that means that I am getting some good sleep now, I reflect gratefully. I smile and decide to enjoy myself here while I'm getting that restorative sleep I needed so much.

As usual, all I want to do is explore the dream world, so I start flying up and away from the house. I see SM's car driving away below me, and wave goodbye to her. From up here, I can see the entire city spread out below me, covering the gently rolling hills like a blanket, and it's very beautiful. It's also very windy up there. I think to myself: I've got brains in my head, I've got feet in my shoes, I've got levitation powers in my mind. I can steer myself any direction I choose. [This is a reference to the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You'll Go!, from which one of my contacts in Omaha read a passage to a graduating class while I was there. Hmm. No idea why I thought of them as “levitation powers” instead of “flight powers.”] I try to fly into the wind, which is coming from my left, but can't find the strength to fight against it. I decide to fly with it instead. I think, Why not? When you're going bicycling, you'll probably choose to ride with the wind, if you have a choice.

I end up flying through a neighborhood filled with lots of cute little houses that line narrow, old, little streets that wind around every which way. [Just like in the real Omaha, or, at least, the neighborhood where EM and SM live.] Every front yard has big, tropical-rainforest-looking trees in it that reach across the street, forming the beginnings of a canopy, but not a very thick one. There are exotic, tropical birds in every tree. [Um... not at all like in the real Omaha. ] I fly along, following the streets and admiring the beauty all around me.

[Dreamskip - I don't remember getting from one locale to the other.] I'm still in Omaha, but now I'm in a gigantic, elaborate, multi-story library and bookstore. It has lots of glass walls and ceilings that let in the sunlight, and they're arranged in a square geometric pattern, just like this library. It's filled with lots and lots of shelves of books, and there are plenty of people walking around. I'm still flying to get around, instead of walking. I fly up from one level to another, in search of the section where the most popular books are kept. I want to check one of those books out, but I don't have a library card yet, so I'm limited to buying it. I definitely intend to get a library card when I move there, though. [True in real life, too.]

When I get to that section, I land and start walking. I'm looking for the second book in a series I'm reading. I have to think about it to remember which one it is. It's not the Twilight series; it's the Hunger Games series. [Which I haven't even started reading in real life, but I would like to.] I look through the neat, white, bright shelves and find the book I'm looking for. I pick it up and start walking away with it, reading it. There's a computer kiosk that beeps at me as I walk by. I look on the screen, and it has a written message directed at me, chastising me for cracking the spine on my book. Doing so somehow disrupted the operation of a pacemaker of somebody in the immediate vicinity. [I don't recall seeing that somebody there, though.]

I continue exploring the library, and decide I want to go down one floor, but I don't want to fly because there are lots of people around, and I generally try to avoid using any of my dream powers when there are people around to see me. [Yes, they are just DCs, but I always think like that in my lucid dreams anyway. I don't know why, but I do.] I see a wide, steep, carpet-covered ramp leading down to the level below me, and decide to roll down it.

[Dreamskip. I'm not 100% certain that I was still aware that I was dreaming in this scene, but I may have been.] I'm walking along a city street and see a restaurant that is closed. I'm disappointed to discover this, because it had belonged to my friends. I wander through it, looking at all the debris left in the abandoned building. I walk to a side entrance and go out through the patio, where I see that people have begun seating themselves at the patio tables. I realize that they must have seen me walking around inside the restaurant, assumed it was open, and sat down. I feel bad about it, but I start telling them, “Sorry, it's closed.” They get up and leave.

[Side notes: Heh. I love how my subconscious has turned Omaha into this perfect tropical paradise with an awesome library, a place where everything I saw around me was incredibly cool and gave me nothing but happiness and joy. Omaha really does have a gigantic central library, although it doesn't have that cool architectural design. That part came directly from the library at UC San Diego. I didn't go to school there, but EM did - a fact which I had consciously forgotten about until I told my mom about this dream later in the day. Hmm. Omaha also has a zoo that I didn't actually see, but that everyone tells me is pretty awesome. Okay, subconscious, I get the message: Don't give up on Omaha yet. You may still be able to find happiness there.]

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

I'm visiting Las Vegas. Downtown Las Vegas is made up of multiple levels of shops, restaurants, and casinos, most of them themed to a particular pop-culture franchise, all stacked on top of each other and connected by multiple layers of walkways and stairs, creating a gigantic, multilevel man-made environment. I'm walking through this environment with my mom. I walk away from her briefly to do something on my own [I don't remember what], and I'm worried for a moment that I won't be able to find my way back to where she's sitting. But I come back down the stairs and there she is, sitting on a bench next to a curved railing at the edge of an elevated walkway, waiting for me to come back. When I approach, she gets up, and we continue walking.

Then, my mom and I are joined by my sister and a couple of our girlfriends. [They weren't anyone I know in real life, but in the dream, they were our friends.] While we're walking around, my mom says something to the effect of, “I thought all you girls were supposed to go see a shrink!” We just kind of laugh and say, “Yeah, we were.” [I think] We're still planning on going to see one later.

My family and I are getting ready to leave somewhere on an airplane. I observe how airplanes operate, by catching drafts of air, and think about how fragile and uncertain this process is. Then I think that it's best not to think about this process too much, since I'm going to have to travel on one very shortly. Then, we're flying on the airplane. It flies past some elevated highways that appear familiar to me.

[Different dream, probably in a different cycle.] I'm sitting in a typical high school football stadium, watching the pre-game activities. There is a marching band on the field. One member of the marching band has a large trombone whose bell is filled with clarinets. When he blows into the trombone, the clarinets spray out all over the place.

I find myself hunting through the bleachers for my clarinet reeds, which have been thrown all over the place. I pick them up, looking at the numbers printed on the back of each one, looking for the 2 ½ reed. One of them says “5 ½,” another “3 ½.” Eventually, I find the 2 ½ one.

The football players are on the field, warming up for the game. One of them throws a practice pass to another, but with a basketball, not a football. I look away from the field, and look down at the program on my lap. It's made of sheets of paper folded in half crosswise, and has lots of text on it. I read it for a few moments, and then something [I don't remember what] makes me stop and think, Either [something that I can't remember now], or this is a dream program. I reach up and pinch my nose shut, and feel that wonderful, paradoxical sensation of being able to breathe through it while doing so. Yes, I'm dreaming. I pinch my nose and breathe through it for a few moments more, to verify and to enjoy the sensation. While doing this, I gaze at the program, not reading it, just looking at it and appreciating the experience of knowing that this thing I'm looking at, as real as it looks, is just a dream image being generated by my mind.

When I look up at the field again, I'm surprised to find that the scene has grown mostly dark, as if somebody turned off most of the lights. I know that's because I haven't been paying any attention to the football field for the last couple of minutes, and therefore, it's started to fade away. I'm disappointed, and wish and hope that it will get brighter again, but it doesn't. Then the dream ended.

After I had woken up, I remembered that I could have verbally commanded the dream to become clear and bright again, and mentally kicked myself for forgetting about that trick.

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

[Last night, I had a long, vivid, elaborate lucid dream that felt like it lasted between 10 and 20 minutes. This journal entry only reflects the most significant and memorable moments of that dream, which are all I remember now. There were other stretches of experience connecting the moments below that aren’t written down in detail, because I don’t remember them that well. They mostly consisted of me flying around and observing the scenery.]

I’m at my university, at some sort of outdoor expo, standing in a booth made up of some folding tables and an EZ-UP shade structure. It’s a sunny day. I’m supposed to be there to represent one of the organizations I’m in, and I’m supposed to be wearing that organization’s T-shirt, but I can’t find it. The only T-shirt I can find in our booth is one I got from [a client company that my company has done work for in real life]. The logo on the front of the T-shirt I have is the same shape as the logo of the organization I’m representing (an oval), and the overall T-shirt design is very similar, but the letters in the oval are different, and the T-shirt I actually have says “[the client company's name]” across the back. I change into this T-shirt anyway. I do it while standing behind the open back of some hatchback vehicle, hoping that nobody will see me, because [for some inexplicable reason], I’m not wearing a bra.

When I find myself looking at a very vivid, colorful cityscape from the viewpoint of flying over it, it only takes me a moment to realize that I’m dreaming. I slow myself down, controlling the speed of my flight, just observing the landscape around me.

I’m standing on the ground in that city. I look across the street and see the gates of ‘the Asian Disneyland.’ There are solid-colored, blue and pink, cartoony humanoid figures walking around on the other side of the metal gates. [They look just like the figures in this cartoon (WARNING: Ads on that page are likely NSFW).] I think, Heck yes, then fly over and enter the “Asian Disneyland.”

When I get inside, I am on the second story of what looks like an indoor mall, looking down onto the floor of the first story. When I see what’s down there, I realize, Of course, that’s what would be in the Asian Disneyland: casino table games. The entire first floor is full of them. I have absolutely no interest in this at all [true in real life, too], so I turn right around and go back out the entrance to the mall. [I am very, very sorry for the stereotype evident in the content of this dream.]

Once outside again, I go, “Oh, yeah!” when I recall the current Task of the Month: fly up into the sky and find out where all the snow comes from. I start flying up into the sky. There is a puffy cloud there, and I fly toward it, aiming to get on top of it. As I approach it, it turns from white to dark gray. Lightning flashes across it, and it reaches out to threaten me with a pseudopod made of dark-gray cloud. I think, Uh-oh. This dream is going to turn into a nightmare if I don’t take control of it. Just by thinking about it, I make the pseudopod stop threatening me and retreat back into the cloud, the lightning stop, and the cloud turn white again. The threat nullified, I continue flying toward the cloud. It turns dark gray again only a moment later, but I realize that that’s because I know that precipitation only falls from heavy, dark-gray clouds. [When I first read the Task of the Month for this month, my first reaction was, “I’m probably not going to find anything but clouds up there; I’m a little too rational-minded for that.” This dream experience proves that I was right.]

[Sure enough,] When I get on top of the cloud, there is nothing there – just cloud. I sit down cross-legged on top of the cloud and decide to fly around on it, using it as a mode of transportation, just like Goku does in “Dragonball Z.” While flying on the cloud, I find myself flying down a corridor that turns lots of corners at crazy angles, lined with doors on either side. [I don’t know what it was, but] Something about this situation makes me go, “Of course,” and then start singing: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” etc. I continue singing as I fly through the corridor.

As I fly around some more, I think excitedly and proudly about how I’ll get to have my username in orange on DreamViews tomorrow or the next day. [Although now I don’t think I really deserve it, since I fulfilled the letter of the challenge but not its spirit. I really didn’t find out anything; all I found when I flew into the sky was the source of snow that I already expected to be to be there, namely, a cloud. I am so boring!]

I need to get out of a building very quickly. [It may or may not have been the mall-like building mentioned earlier. I think it was a different one, though.] The building has a glass wall right next to the entrance. I decide to go out through the glass wall. I run toward it. A second before I reach it, I focus my mind on activating my intangibility, an ability I have used in several dreams before. It works perfectly; I run right through the glass wall without breaking it, just like a ghost.

I’m in a circular meeting room with several levels of steps leading down to a central circle of floor. There are no chairs. There are a lot of people standing around in the room. I know that they’re all just DCs. They have gathered here to conduct a sort of tribunal to determine whether or not I am a goddess. Some of them have found out about the superhuman abilities I exhibit when I’m in the dream world, and have concluded that I am one, but others disagree. I think, I’m not a goddess. I’m just a human who knows how to lucid dream. I don’t say anything during the meeting, though. [I don’t know why not.]

--------------------------
Side notes:
Wow. I really feel like I took a step forward in my dream control skills last night.

Color-coding key:
Awake, Non-lucid, Possibly lucid? (not sure), Lucid, Lucid 'dream within a dream,' [Commentary made while awake]

[This morning, my alarm went off at 7:30. I had planned to get up and write, but I still felt so sleepy that I decided to sleep in. I believe I had all these dreams during the extra hour I slept in. Again, I don't remember the transitions that connected them, if there were any, which is why this entry may seem fragmented.]

I'm out somewhere with my parents and T&P [some real-life friends of ours]. We're in a gravel parking lot, getting into our cars to go somewhere. I'm driving my own car by myself. I follow the other car, which has my parents and T&P in it, out of the parking lot and along a narrow, gravel-covered alley. There are two big rocks in the middle of it. I watch the other car drive over them and worry that my car isn't high enough off the ground to clear them, but it does, with no problem.

I have a small patch of thick, dark-brown hairs growing out of a mole on the right side of my chin. I want to pull all the hairs out with tweezers, but I look for the tweezers and can't find them. Later, I look in the mirror again and have a short, but thick beard, with only a couple of long hairs straying outside of the beard zone. I still can't find the tweezers, so I try to pull them out with my fingers, but can't; they're too solidly rooted. I continue playing with those hairs with my fingers as I go about the rest of my day. [Funny how at no point during this sequence did I think to question the situation; I'm a girl! I do, however, find and pull on stray hairs like that often in real life.]

I'm explaining to someone, over the phone [I think], that J&L have passed away. The conversation continues, and I say something about how hard it must be for the other person to find this out. [J&L are the original owners of the house I'm now renting. I've had this conversation over the phone at least twice in real life. Even though I never actually met them, it's still hard to tell people that news.]

I'm in a body of water, and there's this little cartoon guy swimming in the water. He has a mask and a snorkel on. There is a song playing: “let's go swimming under the sea!”, it says, or something like that. I'm following the little cartoon guy as he swims through the water. I have my own snorkel, but no mask. I don't really need it, though, because when I duck my head below the surface, I can see underwater just as clearly as if I were wearing a mask, and the water doesn't sting my eyes at all. Then, the little cartoon guy starts diving deeper under the water. I think to myself, It annoys me when cartoon characters do that when they only have a snorkel. [Somewhere toward the beginning of this dream, I became aware that I was dreaming, but I don't remember precisely when, nor what triggered it.] I want to continue following him under the water, and I think to myself, I can breathe underwater in dreams. My known dream ability to breathe water activates at this thought. I abandon the snorkel and continue following the little cartoon guy. We're in what looks like an ocean. The water is deep blue, and there are sea creatures of some kind swimming in it.

I'm in an unfamiliar bedroom, going to sleep. I even feel sleepy. While I'm getting into bed and falling asleep, I think about the fact that I'm going to be in a a dream as soon as I fall asleep, and that I'm going to be lucid and take conscious, intentional action while I'm there. [I remember having a specific mission in mind, but I don't remember what it was.] After a few seconds, I roll sideways out of bed and know that I'm in the dream world. [I think some kind of dream followed, but I don't remember it now. After that dream ends,] I'm back in the same bedroom again, and I go through the same sequence of falling asleep and knowing that I'm about to enter a lucid dream. This time, I sit up in bed to enter the dream, and then climb out of bed and step away from it, towards the door of the room. I cast a sidelong glance over at the bed and get a glimpse of myself, lying asleep. I quickly look away. I think, I know this is a dream room, and that that isn't actually my real body, but still, it's creepy. [I'm pretty sure I was aware that I was dreaming throughout this entire sequence, even the parts where I was falling asleep.] The reason I know that the whole experience is just a dream is that the bedroom I'm in isn't mine. The walls are painted a dark, cool color, the bedclothes match the walls, and the room is longer and narrower than my real one.

From that unfamiliar bedroom, I walk out into a plaza surrounded by buildings. It is a sunny day. There are signs in the plaza directing people to an area where a birthday party is being held for a child. I walk into that area and find a table with a bunch of party food set out on it. From that table, I take a cupcake and start eating it, without bothering to take the paper off first. I want to take advantage of the opportunity to do that. I know that this is my dream body, so I don't have to worry about the paper doing me any harm, and in addition, I don't have to worry about what the DCs around me will think if they see me eating the cupcake paper. The cupcake itself feels and tastes exactly like cupcakes do in real life. I walk around while eating it, observing all the people walking around and the kids running around and playing in the courtyard.

As I continue to explore the dream environment, I come upon another sign reminding everyone that it's time to go and complete the paperwork to register their cars. I follow the directional arrows on the sign, and end up entering a building that contains an office with a reception desk front and center as you walk in the front door of the building. I go up to the reception desk, tell the woman there my name, and ask for my car registration form. It turns out that the form is filed under my old address from when I was living in Florida. She gives it to me to update. The sheet of paper she gives me is the top sheet of a piece of carbon paper. It's a sheet I already filled out back when I was living in Florida; it has all my information from those days on it, in my handwriting, in blue ballpoint pen. I start working on bringing the information on it up to date.

The top section of the form contains several multiple-choice questions with checkboxes below them. These questions are all about your religious beliefs, and they're really only on the form as a formality. They ask about whether or not you believe in the Bartel Water Bug, and the boxes indicating non-belief are already checked. I read over this section and then start updating the form with my current address, but then it occurs to me to think: Why am I wasting dream time filling out a form? I look up from the paper to see what the woman behind the desk is doing. She has turned away to do something else. I set down my pen, turn around, and walk quickly out of the building while she's not looking.

Back in the courtyard, I discover that the item I've decided [in real life] to use as a totem, which in my case is a thimble, behaves in a very interesting way when thrown or tossed in a dream. Namely, it acts like a magnet. Whenever it comes anywhere near another person [yes, even if the other person is just a DC], it flies away from them as if it were being repelled by their presence. Then it flies back toward me, straight into my hand, as if it were magnetically attracted to me. I encounter a family that I know in real life, walking along the edge of the courtyard. I say something like, “You're gonna get this thing thrown at you,” to the 7-or-8-year-old daughter in the family, and then I throw my thimble at her. When it gets within about a foot of her, it flies away from her and back toward me, and I catch it. [That's the last I remember.]

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Side notes:

When I woke up for real and reflected on the part of my dream where I kept dreaming about waking up and falling asleep within the dream, I thought, "Cool! My mind came up with a kind of hybrid dream experience, incorporating characteristics of the lucid dreaming experience that I learned from Inception (the knowledge that I was about to fall asleep and immediately find myself in a lucid dream, the experience of entering that dream from within another dream), as well as characteristics that I learned from DreamViews and from EWOLD (the perception of rolling out of my dream body and the knowledge that that room was itself a dream)." To those people who looked down on the newcomers who jumped on the lucid-dreaming bandwagon after Inception came out: I was one of those bandwagon-jumpers, even though I tried not to be too obnoxious and annoying about it, and I believe that we newcomers are perfectly capable of learning and growing into the world of lucid dreaming as it is actually experienced outside of the movies.

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

I'm on my laptop, playing one of the mini-games within Petpet Park, when the game interrupts me with a pop-up notification saying that I've set a score record and asking me to fill in the name I want to display next to the record. I type in my player character's name. As soon as I finish typing it, it changes to a completely different, longer name. I think, Computers don't usually change what you've typed after you've typed it. I must be dreaming! I reach up and pinch my nose and, just as I had expected, feel that otherworldly sensation of being able to breathe through it. I feel a strong surge of excitement and happiness.

Suddenly, I find myself lying in my bed in my current bedroom. Still knowing perfectly well that I'm dreaming, I climb out of bed and walk out of the room and down the stairs. I hop down the last few steps, enjoying the way it takes me a couple of seconds to float down and land as gently as a feather on the floor, unlike in reality. In the living room, where the stairs end and where the ceiling is high, I float into the open space like a balloon for a few moments. I'm having a great time.

Then I decide to go out the front door. I start trying to go through it intangibly, thinking, I know I can do this. I've done it before. I can see the door and its interior, which are dark brown, and then the front yard as I begin to go through the door. I don't get all the way through it, though. I end up walking out onto the front path, then realizing that I've made a hole in the door with my face, and my face is still stuck through it; I've brought it with me. “This is stupid,” I say. I peel it off and toss it aside; it feels like it's made of thin plastic.

Now that I'm outside, I start floating again. I see two dogs in somebody’s yard and start flying higher, making sure I'm out of their reach in case they try to jump up and attack me. [Darn irrational fears. I have that one in real life, too. I know I could have confronted it and perhaps reduced its hold through this dream, but it didn't occur to me to do so at the time.] However, the dogs do no such thing. I continue flying, and think, It's good that I'm in my own neighborhood, and it looks just like it does in reality. [Except that it didn't, not quite. The street turned to the right in the dream at a place where it dead-ends in reality.] Down on the street, I see two cartoony-looking kids named Sam and Sarah talking to each other. At some point during their conversation, I woke up.

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

[Last night, I had probably the longest and certainly the most highly lucid dream I've ever had. I'm writing this at the end of the day. I tried to recall this dream as best I could upon waking, and I made some handwritten notes, but by now, although I remember the highlights of the dream, I've forgotten what order they went in and how I moved from one to the other. This is my best attempt to reconstruct the whole, long sequence, but some of these are most likely not in the correct order. I do remember that I consciously chose to move from one activity to another in the dream, though.]

I’m in a large room with a really cool indoor playground in it. I observe that they’ve added more decorations and more play elements to the playroom since the last time I was there: there is now a long chain with brightly-colored wooden blocks in various shapes (cylinders, hexagons, and others) threaded onto it hanging across the ceiling, and there are more things to climb and play on. I climb up one of the climbing walls, along with another girl. We press against each other as we climb it.

Later, elsewhere in the same room, I’m looking at my reflection in a mirror. I notice that my neck looks strange, and tilt my head back to see. I see that my neck appears to have been replaced with a shiny, silver metal bar that appears to be a piston. This causes me to realize that I’m dreaming. I pinch my nose to confirm and find that I can still breathe. The familiar sensation pleases me, and I'm very happy to be in a lucid dream. I have a slightly higher degree of lucidity than I've ever had before.

I go outside the building. There is a grassy lawn outside it. I have a discussion of systems for play and discovery with MA [a real-life friend and colleague] and another dream character.

I then decide to explore a bit. I walk away from the large building and head toward another complex of buildings that appears to be an elementary-school campus. As I start walking, I say to myself, “Again, why am I walking when I can fly?” So I start flying over there. I find a party in progress on the far side of the elementary-school campus, where there are some picnic tables. People are hanging out and drinking beer. I obtain a pint glass for myself, but leave it sitting around on or near one of the walls as I wander away.

I see the entrance to a mall, and enter it.

I fly up into the air to get an overview of the area. From up here, I can see that the town I'm in is on the ocean and has a beach. I think, That makes sense. Oceans and beaches are part of my schema for what a broad overview of an area of land should look like, because of where I grew up.

I'm walking along a rolling dirt path. While walking, I eat yogurt out of a plastic cup with a metal spoon. It's raspberry-flavored and smooth and creamy, and it tastes exactly like real yogurt. Then, I find a handful of coins that someone has dropped on the side of the path, along with a bronze medallion. The medallion has some text inscribed on it that says the name of the country I'm in and what the medallion was awarded for. [I don't remember what it said now, although I could definitely read it in the dream, and the country name wasn't the name of any real country.] The coins are all common U.S. coins, but there's also a fifth coin, a brass-colored one that's shaped like a little house [a square shape with a pointy roof]. I pick all these items up.

I wake up in a car with MA, JL, and one other friend. One of them is driving, and I'm in the back seat. I remember that I had just been dreaming, and pinch my nose. Yep. Still dreaming.

While exploring the grassy, park-like area outside the building I started in, I spot a silver, metal, quarter-spherical shape rising up out of the ground. I say, “Ooh!” because I see an opportunity here. The structure is roughly the same shape as the baseball backstop I once fantasized about flying to the top of [see my DJ entry dated April 28, 2011], even though it's solid silver rather than chain-link, and it's maybe two-thirds to half the size of the real one. I take off and fly to the top of it, stopping myself by grabbing hold of the top edge of the hollow quarter-sphere with my hands and then swinging myself up onto it, so that I'm sitting at the top with my lower legs dangling over the edge. I'm facing a crowd of DCs standing on the ground, one of whom is a burly man who flashes me a thumbs-up sign. I proudly declare, “I'm the coolest kid in school!” The DCs seem to approve, but then they start flooding into the hollow space inside the quarter-sphere, filling the space and causing the structure to tip over backward. I climb off as it slowly tilts over, unhurt.

Having accomplished both the old goal of flying to the top of the backstop [well, sorta] and my other goal of trying dream food, I say aloud, “Okay, chores over. Time to have fun.” I fly up and let the wind carry me away.

The dream fades, and I find myself lying down. I try to move my arm, but judging by the feel of it, I realize, No, that's my real arm! I don't want to do that! [Whether or not this was actually true, I couldn't say for sure, but it sure felt like it was at the time.] After a brief moment of feeling stuck in that position and trying to figure out how to get back to exploring the dream world, I roll over and fall out of my bed. I think, Wow, that actually works! I quickly determine that I'm back to the lucid-dreaming state, and remind myself that all that's around me only exists inside my mind, as I read in EWOLD.

I'm looking at a different, grassy lawn. There is a little red demon thingy growing out of the grass. He has red roots that run all over the surface of the lawn. I have a magic sword, so I hold it out, wondering if it'll help and what I can do with it. The demon takes the sword and kills himself by using the sword to sever all his roots. When he and his roots have all disappeared, a small chair rises up out of the plus-sign-shaped hole in the ground where he had just been. It is a reward for my defeat of the demon. I take the chair and carry it with me as I fly back over to the party, which is still in progress.

When I get there, I use the chair to help me grab onto some structure to arrest my motion and land. Flying is easy, but stopping is hard, I think. I can't find the glass of beer I left there earlier, but I decide it's no big loss. I take my chair and sit down at the corner of one of the portable tables that are set up in the party area. I'm facing the outside wall of the elementary-school complex. Up against the wall I'm facing is another table with a clear pitcher of beer on it.

There is another handful of coins on the table near me – again, standard U.S. coins, all of them shiny and brand-new, plus the odd house-shaped coins I saw before. I decide to swallow some of them, because I know I can't do any harm to my real body by doing so. I see another girl at my table doing the same. It feels good. I can feel them going down my throat, but the sensation seems to be weaker than would be realistic, which isn't surprising, since I haven't actually done this in reality [and certainly never will]. After swallowing a few coins, I decide I want more beer to go with them, so I get up and get myself another cup. The beer is cold and rich and flavorful; it tastes exactly how I like my beer to taste.

I've run out of coins, but I still want more. I cup my hand, place it on the table palm side down, look away, and think about what I want to have happen. I feel little pops under my hand, like bursts of compressed air, as more coins pop into existence. Then I feel the coins themselves against my hand as the pile grows. I remove my hand and continue swallowing coins. I'm very pleased that I've suddenly become so good at summoning objects.

My dad is sitting right next to me, at the end of the table, so his chair is perpendicular to mine. He sees me swallowing coins and absolutely freaks out. He recoils from me in disgust, asking me, “What are you doing?” I simply respond, in an “it's not a big deal” tone, “It won't hurt my dream body.”

Then I woke up for real and waited while the last of the SP faded away, concentrating on remembering all that I'd dreamed about. I was very pleased to have accomplished so much and to have been lucid for so long. [In fact, I got to check two goals off the big list in my profile today: trying dream food and summoning an object. ]

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

I’m in a building that is something like a conference center. There is a conference/camp event going on here for students in the $Program program. [Name has been hidden to prevent members of the program from finding this journal.] Most of the people attending the conference are teenagers and young adults. I go from the hallway through a door into one of the conference rooms, where there is a check-in and registration table set up. It’s covered with the papers that belong to that schema: lists of registered attendees, conference schedules and other materials for the conference, and calendars of upcoming events. I check in, then take a look at the calendar and see that there’s an overnight event coming up that includes attending a local high school’s football game. I want to go, but I think it conflicts with something else that I have going on.

At this conference, each $Program group that is attending has a different nickname or theme; my group is the “villains” group. The check-in table for each group is in a different room. After I've checked in, I walk back out into the hallway and encounter a girl, my age or a little younger, looking for her check-in room. Her name tag reads “Eliza.” I encourage her to join one of the “good” groups [by which I mean, any group that isn't villains-themed], because she's new to $Program. I expect that I'll be the only one from my $Program group who participates in the larger group activities offered by the conference, because everyone else in my group is an older adult and most of the other conference attendees are teenagers or young adults. Besides, LN teaches high school for a living; she probably doesn't want to spend her off-hours with teenagers, too.

I start climbing the stairs to the second floor of the building to get to the conference meeting rooms. There are two flights of stairs that cross in an X in midair, joining together at the point where they cross to form a platform. A third, smaller flight of stairs extends down from this platform to the floor I want to get to. There are others climbing the stairs along with me.

[I don’t remember the transition, but] I’m outside the building I was just in. I’m on a beautiful college campus. It has trees, grass, and winding, paved paths between the buildings. The ground is not level, but contoured, rolling up and down. In this scene, I realize that I’m dreaming. [I don’t remember why or how; I just did.] I jump/float down one of the inclines, grabbing a handful of grass at the bottom of the incline as I land on another path, which [I think] has a low wall that stands between the path and the incline I've just jumped/floated over. I'm touching it to keep the dream stable by engaging my senses. It feels like real grass and is very soft and supple. I walk down the path I've just landed on, heading toward a small tree, covering ground much more quickly than I would in reality. [Here, I experienced that phenomenon I've read about here on DV where, in order to get somewhere in a dream, you focus on your intention to arrive there and suddenly, there you are, having skipped over the boring part where you traveled there.] When I reach the small tree, I touch it, wrapping my hand around its narrow trunk. It feels rough, like a real tree. I'm just happily enjoying being in a dream.

A little further along the path, just beyond the small tree, is a large, square, paved area, in front of the entrance to a building. A woman is standing in this area, alone. She’s older and has wispy brown hair, which she wears up in a loose bun. She has lines and wrinkles on her face, and has a patch of shiny, lavender-pink eyeshadow all over the center of her face. She’s wearing a long dress the same color as the eyeshadow.

I suddenly recall the current Task of the Month [which I had just looked up, just before going to bed]. I approach the woman. In the distance, behind me, I can hear all the teenagers and young adults who are attending the conference/camp singing together:

“Day-oh, day-oh. Da-a-ay-oh, da-a-ay-oh. Daylight come and me wanna go home.”

I sing along with the young people as they begin the next repetition of this segment of music: “Day-oh.” As I sing, I look right at the older woman, expecting her to sing along, too.

“Day-oh,” she mumbles softly, looking down shyly at the ground to my left.

“Da-a-ay-oh,” I sing to her, still looking at her and expecting her to sing along.

“Da-a-ay-oh,” she mumbles, still looking down. I figure that she simply lacks confidence in her singing voice and encourage her by saying enthusiastically to her, “Come on, you can do it!”

“Daylight come and me wanna go home,” she sings, now looking up and demonstrating self-confidence. She proves to have a beautiful singing voice.

Pleased, I continue singing along with the young people, who have been singing the song all this time. The older woman continues singing along as well. “Come, Mr. Tally-Man, tally me banana. Daylight come and me wanna go home.”

Somewhere in the midst of those two lines, the dream faded and I woke up, probably because I was so excited about having completed the Task of the Month for the first time since February.

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Side notes:
I just looked up what the current Tasks of the Month were last night. I think this knowledge helped motivate me to want to have a lucid dream. I'm thrilled that I completed the basic task the same night! The euphoria from my achievement lasted for several hours into my waking day.
I'm also excited to have used a new dream control ability for the first time. I'd read that you could control what happened in your dreams, including controlling the actions of DCs, by expecting particular things to happen, but this was the first time I'd ever actually done it.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 24-25, 2011.]

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

I'm driving my mom's red Honda Fit out past Katella Avenue to spend a weekend away. The rest of my family is already at my destination for the weekend.

I arrive at basic training camp for the Navy National Guard, into which I have just been drafted. I enter the barracks along with several of my real-life friends from college. The bunks are stacked three high and are concealed behind cupboard doors. In between the bunks are shelves with metal label-holders intended to hold labels showing the names of the occupants of the bunks. These shelves are meant to be used to hold boxes of the occupants' stuff. I start settling in. Evidently, I've packed wisely for this experience, because the boxes I brought don't take up all the space that was allotted to me. I change into my new uniform. One of the items I brought was a small pair of scissors with blue handles [that I have in real life]. I realize that it was stupid of me to bring them, because they would get me in trouble if I were caught with them. So, I just fold up the labels with my name on them and slide them into the label-holders.

Later, we're all sitting in a restaurant-style booth, choosing nicknames from a printed list. Mine is “Spider.” The nicknames for the officers are printed in a substitution cypher. I have absolutely no clue what tasks and training activities I'll be doing here, or what position I'll be assigned to. I hope I'll be able to handle it, especially swimming. [I think this may be the first time one of my dreams has accurately reflected the fact that I don't know how to swim very well in real life. I've had tons of dreams where I could swim expertly.]

Basic training is beginning. Everyone is outside, standing at attention in a block, wearing their uniforms. I ask one of my friends to let me out of the booth so that I can run to the bathroom before going outside and joining the block. There is a girl with short, blond hair directly ahead of me in the line for the bathrooms. I think to myself that I ought to be thinking of it as 'the head' rather than 'the bathroom,' because I'm in the Navy, not the Marines. [Which is stupid, because as far as I know, the Marines say that, too.] Then I woke up, because I actually did need to go to the bathroom. [This dream was much longer, more elaborate, more vivid, and more detailed than these notes reflect. What I get for putting off typing this up for so long.]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 23-24, 2011.]

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

I'm in [what I believe to be] the real-life hotel lobby where the hotel scenes from Inception were filmed. I'm appreciating how special it is to be here, in one of the filming locations for my favorite movie. [But totally failing to make the associative leap to the fact that I'm actually in a dream, myself. ] I even see Leonardo DiCaprio walk past. [*LOL* I fail at recognizing dreams...] I know that this building is located on the campus of a local private university. I look through a window and see a sign above the entrance to another building. The sign reads “(Some last name) Library.”

I proceed through the interior of the building I'm in to the entrance of somebody’s dorm. The dorm is themed to resemble ancient Barcelona, Spain. In the dining area, I meet up with a group of my friends from real life, including SS and SH [who I know from completely different social groups and who don't even know each other in real life, by the way]. They're all sitting at a table, eating, and I sit down and join them. It's a Mimi's Cafe table. Several of my friends order my favorite chicken and pasta dish, the one I always order when I'm at Mimi's. Sean has to leave the meal early because he has other plans, so I get to eat his chicken. (I've just sat down, so I haven't had a chance to order my own meal.) Our conversation over dinner is being filmed for TV, and we all know it. We all get separate checks at the end of the meal.

I wake up in my current room to light coming from under my sleep mask. I'm still sleepy, and I don't want to get up, but I get up in order to check the time. I check my watch, my cell phone, and my desk phone [from work], which is on my dresser. They all show the same time: it's 10:39 AM, which means I'm late for my pre-church-service choir practice. I think, It can't be that late already!, but I reason that if all three timepieces agree, then it must actually be that late. When I checked my cell phone, I saw the numbers in the hour field counting up from 2 to 10 at a rate of about 1 number per half-second, but now I rationalize this observation: It must only update the display to the current time when you pick it up and look at it.

I go out of my house, still wearing the clothes I was wearing on Friday. [I had this dream on a Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and I was wearing the outfit I actually had been wearing on the Friday immediately before in real life.] I'm going outside to take out the trash. “Outside” turns out to be a narrow parking lot that surrounds a shopping center. A mother calls to her daughter, Johana. I think, That's a pretty name.

I find a trash can at the outer edge , and empty my trash can into it. I catch a cold container of french fries as they fall from my trash can, and eat them, because I'm still running late for choir practice and don't have time for breakfast. I walk back home through one of the stores in the shopping center, past racks of CD and DVD cases.

...And then I woke up for real, and was pretty embarrassed. I realized that, indeed, it couldn't be that late in the morning already. If it had actually been time to get up, I would have heard the alarm on my cell phone go off, and I hadn't heard it yet.

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Side notes:

This was my first false awakening in my new room, at my new house. It was totally convincing, especially given the fact that I really am usually a few minutes late for a lot of things. The way I totally failed to catch it, even though my phone from my desk at work was in my room at home and the numbers on my cell phone were changing, just goes to show how strong our tendency to rationalize things is. However, on a more positive note, I had this highly convincing false awakening in my new room only two weeks after I had moved into it. I think this bodes well for my mental and emotional state. It may well mean that my unconscious mind has accepted the new room as the place where I'm supposed to be when I wake up, which is great.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of June 10-11, 2011.]

I'm in the car with my mom. We're driving along dirt roads, checking our location against photos we have of landmarks along the way. We're on our way to JJ's party. [This dream was in anticipation of what I was going to do that evening – exactly the same thing, only without the photos or my mom.]

I'm in the parking lot outside the old Pomona First Federal branch in Ontario. It's a sunny day. I'm picking up many coins (quarters, dimes, and pennies) from the parking lot. I think, It's a bank, so it makes sense that there would be coins in the parking lot. Some real-life friends of mine [I think they may have been T and G, but I'm not sure] walk past me. There are many other people there.

I enter the building. The entryway is a high-ceilinged, airy room with tall windows and a grand, sweeping staircase. There is a freestanding sign at the bottom of the stairs saying that the Joy Laow [I think] room, the meeting room at the top of the stairs, is available for rent for meetings.

I go further into the building. The main part of the building is a large, long, rectangular, carpeted room with a high ceiling. It is a Marie Callender's restaurant. There is another part of the restaurant floor with a lower ceiling. This area has a small stage, where a loud rock band is playing. My family is sitting around a table near the stage, next to the sound-mixing board, which is sitting on another table. I join them at their table. P. orders another Pepsi from our server, and I order a glass of water. Shortly after I arrive at the table, the band takes a break. I'm relieved that I won't have their music blasting my ears out throughout dinner.

I wander off from the table and through the large, carpeted room. There's a lot of empty space in it for a restaurant seating area; there are only a few rectangular tables, arranged in a line. I enter a train-station-like lobby area off to one side of the room, where I see an ad [?] for the Scott Pilgrim video game, in mirror image. I know RD wants to play it. I see a group of people there discussing video games, and I join in.