Batch

05-23-2013 -- [All over the place, took place between about 1:30 am and 3:15 am.] I have no idea where I am at when the dream starts, but am in a weird store, kind of a cross between an antique shop and a thrift store, with lots of odds and ends and big and little crap. Something about the place is familiar, and I think I have dreamed about it (or something quite close to it) in the last year or two sometime. Also some ties to the bookcase in the dream from a day or two ago, though no Wodehouse books this time. First I am looking at one of the small wire rack displays some libraries use for their paperback books, and come across a very old and much-worn copy of Vic Crume's Wiz Kid and the Carnival Caper adaption. (I wanted that book so much as a little kid, but didn't buy it the one and only time I ever saw it.)

Soon I am walking further into the store, and am in a sort of sloping hallway on a hill, approaching a single short bookcase (maybe 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide) sitting horizontally across the hall, almost blocking the path through it, and am looking at more books on it. I see most of the books from the bookcase a coupe of days ago, including the large collection of Choose Your Own Adventure titles, but this time there are also two four book gift boxes of CYOA books, one with four titles set in the X-Men universe, the other with four set in the Star Wars universe. I pull a couple of books off the shelf to look at them, and seem to start a landslide, with about half the books on the entire bookcase falling off. I start to try and pick them up and put them back on the bookcase, but now it is falling over, and I can't get it to stay up where it was. I finally turn it sideways, so that now there is more space to walk by it on either side (it was like this | -- | but is now like this | | | ) and it becomes more sturdy, so I am able to start putting the books back on it.

About this time I am attacked by some nutty demented dwarf (Billy Barty type, not long bearded fantasy type) and as he keeps throwing himself at me, I have to fight back. I grab him by his clothes, and am throwing him around the room, swinging him against one wall and then another. Eventually he is latching on to the chandelier above our heads, and as I continue swinging him around, he brings down tons of stuff, including the chandeliers, and brings it all (and himself) crashing to the ground some 20 or 30 feet below. What a mess! I quickly end up exiting the store.

I find myself with my car, which doesn't seem to have a roof or sides, but is just wide open. I have tons of stacks of paper (mostly note paper) on a wide variety of subjects, including some writing, but with the car so open, I am afraid of how much stuff might blow away while I am driving. At this point I think I am in Chicago, and am about to drive back to California. There is an interstate freeway that makes the trip almost directly, and passes through Indiana and Kentucky on the way, so I plan to stop and look for a couple of Old Spaghetti Factory restaurants and some Hostess O's donuts on the way, but I've got a long trip ahead of me, and am really worried about my stuff. So I end up talking with my mom (who is dead) who is in the back yard of the Hickory House (where we lived in CA) which is now somehow in Chicago, and she agrees to put the rest of my stuff in storage, since she already has tons of it, anyway. She leads me to the corner of the back yard / side yard where I once tried growing corn, and helps me bury all the stuff in a pit I've dug here. I don't argue with her, but I am worried of rain and such.

I'm very happy to not have to worry about the stuff in my car blowing away, but now I would like to have some cassette tapes to listen to on the long car trip, and I just buried most of them. Worried about it, and looking for some tapes, I step out of the house and find myself standing on a long, curving driveway in front of a big Chicago hotel, where a lot of my stuff is laying on the ground where it might have fallen out of my car. It is the kind of stuff you might find laying on the floor after you have been cleaning a very, very messy room for a while, and you've gotten up all the big stuff, and all that is left is a few small items you haven't gotten to yet, and small bits of paper and detritus that you still have to clean up or vacuum away. Among this are several cassette cases, and I am hopeful, but they have all been run over, so are broken and damaged. [Happened a few days ago to my gas cap when I left it on my roof.]

This is all in the middle of the parking lot, and there are cars honking at me to get out of the way as I try to find any whole tapes, so soon I dodge out of the way and wander a few rows down in the parking lot. I start walking through a row of parked cars, but it quickly morphs to riding a bike down a path that seems to be for a combination of pedestrians and horses, and I seem to be moving against the flow. Making my way around the walkers is no problem, but the horses, walking three or four abreast and filling the whole path are a lot more difficult to dodge. They don't make room or get out of the way very well, and they seem to be slightly grumpy at the situation, and yet they aren't at all mad at me, they just don't like making room for somebody going the other way. Weird.

I make it through this area and head back up toward the hotel entrance, where I find myself in an odd sort of room where I seem to have instantly fallen asleep, because a few seconds later, mom is shaking me awake and I find myself in just my underwear, scrambling to find my clothes and shoes and get dressed. I'm supposed to follow mom to the cars so we can leave, but I decide to make one last stop at the strange shop. It is on a hill, and I walk in to find it very, very busy. There are customers everywhere, and about four people at registers behind the counter, and it is almost impossible to get anybody's attention. I explain about the bookcase and apologize for it, and for any trouble I caused them, and they tell me I will be welcome back at any time, that they actually really like the new layout from my moving the bookcase, and that the dwarf was to blame for the damage he caused by attacking me, so it's all good. I wander the store a little bit, and at the entrance to the upward sloping hallway where the bookcase was, I come upon a strange sight.

Sylvester McCoy (the 7th Doctor) is standing there wearing a space helmet (reminds me of a couple of the 10th an 11th Doctor stories) and his usual 7th Doctor outfit, being choked by a huge guy that looks kind of like Wreck-It Ralph. I run up to him and start to pry his hands away from Sylvester's neck while saying something like "Please stop choking Mr McCoy!" He just kind of grunts and tries to wave me away, but I manage to pull Sylvester free, and start to walk away. I soon find I have bought two of those small bubble packages you find in kids' gumball machines, and as I open them up, I find one contains two kind of mangled cassettes, and the other contains the box the two cassettes originally came from, and it is some kind of audio production Sylvester did (like Big Finish, but possibly not from that company), and I suddenly realize I may have interrupted a play or a recording session of some sort, and I'm a bit embarrassed.

I'm now standing outside the store, in Chicago (it still fells like I am in Chicago) though it is the home of Mardi Gras, and the hill I am on has the exact layout and buildings of Walt Disney World's Pleasure Island, though none of those buildings are being used for the Island's nightclubs. I can see the Mardi Gras floats making their way up the hill, while people are screaming for beads and things. I am about 2/3 of the way down the hill, and am standing by the store when McCoy walks out, and I start to follow him, hoping to apologize and tell him how much I loved his portrayal of the Doctor, but he almost seems to be avoiding me, and dodging into paths and alleyways. When I catch up to him, he is back with the guy who choked him and an attractive young woman who looks like a show girl, and the guy who looks like Wreck-It Ralph is saying his name is Dan Spivey. I ask him "Dangerous Dan Spivey? Like the guy from 80s Disneyland entertainment?" and a bunch of people walking by who look exactly like various Disney entertainers who are walking by ask me what I am talking about. I say I think I remember a Dangerous Dan Spivey from Disney entertainment back when I hung out there as a teen. [In reality, Dangerous Dan Spivey was a wrestler back in the early days of the WWF, I think.]

Anyway, by this time all the entertainers and Sylvester's group have wandered off, and the cassette tapes that I am trying to stick into the pockets of my large jacket have turned into 12 green apple lollypops. The thin, short-haired black woman at the meeting at First Baptist on Monday who somehow looked familiar is standing near me, and tries to seal some of my lollypops, but I catch her and pull them away from her, and a heavier black woman who seems to be her mother tells her something like "You can't do that, that's wrong ... but you might succeed if you try again." By this time we have reached the building that, at Pleasure Island, would be the Adventurer's Club, but here it isn't, and the black girl tries to steal my stuff several more times. By this time the lollypops are in my pockets, and I am pushing the girl's hands away, while the mother is berating me for daring to touch her daughter.

I eventually grab her hands in my arms and shove her away hard enough that she slams into a wall, as I explain that I am helping to teach her daughter not to try and steal ... at least from me, and the mother acts like I am a horrible person. Then I duck out the lower level back door by the river (lake?), and find myself walking in a kind of darkish alleyway where I come across chorus girls dressed up as Cadillacs. They are wearing costumes that look like full-sized Cadillac cars from the waist, up, while still having the usual nylon-wrapped gorgeous gams beneath, as they dance around in a Vegas-style show, and I wake up. Very odd.

---

Somehow I find myself in a public restroom with Carl, and it is one of the nicest, cleanest, and most private restrooms I have ever seen ... if you remember to close the stall door! D'oh! I push the stall door shut while Carl is doing the embarrassed 'I didn't have to see that' thing, as we discuss different job possibilities, as somebody familiar walks past and comments I ought to get a job doing what he does. I look at him and he looks much like a middle aged Andy Griffith, and I eventually recognize his uniform as that of a fire fighter. I am thinking I am in no shape to be a fire fighter, and he agrees with me, but says I could drive the truck and do record keeping, and stuff like that. I eventually start to recognize him, and place the name Conrad to him, but I can't quite remember where I know him from, then finally it clicks, Jeff's next door neighbor on Hickory. Turns out he moved right after I did, and now also seems to live in Orlando, and somehow we end up talking about internet connections.

In the dream, I have a rather cheap internet connection through GEnie or something like that (with hints of Prodigy thrown in), and am complaining about the signal I get, but he explains that I need to get two modems to double up the signal, and then it works much better. Very strange (and pointless) stuff. Soon I find myself literally running down I-4 with Dale, as we're trying to get to the airport on time to catch a plane back to CA (I think), and Dale is wondering if we are going to make it, as we pass his rental car, which ran out of gas. Dale says it is no big deal, and that the rental car company is coming for it soon, and will add a couple of gallons before they take it back.

We soon find ourselves boarding a bus, which as we try to make our way to seats is turning into a plane, we find ourselves taking two seats next to a guy in the window seat with a bag in his lap that looks like George Takei, but isn't. With Dale and I being big guys, and him with his bag, we ask if he is OK with us sitting there. He indicates he has had a bad day, is tired and sore, but our sitting there will not cause him any problems. Soon the plane is flying, and we are listening to the conversations around us, and a slightly older, attractive lady (about 55 to our 45) almost seems to be flirting with us. I'm shocked when suddenly Dale and this lady seem to be in one of the plane's restrooms making some very improper sounds, as this is nothing like him, and everybody on the plane can hear.

But it all turns out to be a practical joke, she and Dale come out of two different restrooms, and it turns out she was showing him the weird phone system the airline has installed in the lavatories, which connect all the bathrooms, and broadcast everything said across the entire plane. Very weird system. I've reached the point where I need to use the restroom (no intention of using the phone, though), but all of them are in use. And the keep being in use. And when I finally get to use one, the plane suddenly takes off without me. Things have gotten weird, and the lavatories are no longer on the planes, and it seemed to touch down for a couple of minutes to let people use the restrooms, just before the end of our trip (which is now flying into Orlando, instead of out.) I find myself on Landstreet Road, chasing after the plane, waving my hands before a truck almost backs into me. Turns out I was running down the road trying to flag down the airplane while in between two small trucks, and they are mad because my running isn't as fast as they want to drive. I dodge the truck, then start the slow walk down Landstreet and up Orange Blossom Trail to get home.

10-17-2012 -- [AAUUGGHH!! Bought some apple juice but forgot to drink before bed. Woke this morning with an interesting seeming dream, but couldn't remember more than half of it. Finally drank apple juice, then spent four hours trying to get back to sleep only to manage about one more hour, and a rather lousy dream during it! ]

I'm pretty sure this started with a bit where I was at home at the Hickory house with my family, everything decorated for Christmas. Especially remember lots of silver wrapping and/or decorations. But that's all I can remember.

Led somehow to something about the Hornet Newspaper and perhaps the college, but no details available. Soon I found myself traveling with Dale to Disney World or something. I think we were in the park, but there's nothing there. No details. Soon we are outside, and are going to drive somewhere. Dale has this weird rig set up which is something like a pick-up pulling a camper, pulling a boat, and the camper is sort of flipping down to seal Kevin inside for the drive.

I think there is something that kind of resembles Knott's Jungle Island, except it quickly turns to some sort of Polynesian themed resort that happens to be in the middle of Mammoth National Park. Some guy is walking next to the tennis court, planning to get something from his cellar (which is oddly under a palm tree by the court) but when he goes down the ladder to the cellar, he doesn't come up again.

His wife or girl friend is starting to worry, and glances into the cellar, but a recent earthquake or such has cracked the foundation and leads into a new cave entrance. He's gone in and gotten lost, and his wife is freaking out about how he could have gotten lost in what must obviously be a very small cave if it has never been found before.

I am trying to explain to her that they've discovered that almost all the caves in the world are almost certainly connected if you get deep enough into them, and if you could find ways through flooded and collapsed passages, and she doesn't believe me. "How unlikely is that?!?" [In truth I take it too far. There is a very good chance that almost all caves in the part of Kentucky where Mammoth is located, the entire area under the Central Kentucky Karst, could be connected through passageways that people haven't yet found, but very unlikely that they go beyond that karst region.]

I'm trying to explain how Mammoth became the largest mapped cave in the world because of all the connections found between Mammoth, Morrison, Salt Cave, Crystal Cave and so on, but she just doesn't believe me. Thankfully there is an information desk at the hotel, and I am asking them to help me explain. Among other things they have a very thick guidebook that is actually the three Roger Brucker books bound into one larger volume, and I am trying to get the info desk person to read about some of the connections listed in the second book, Beyond Mammoth Cave.

Soon I find myself at an airport with B & C and some others. B & C are heading somewhere, and lots of us have come to see them off. Almost everybody else has already said goodbye and wandered off, but I figure I might as well stay with them to the gate. But B seemed opposed to this idea, so I wander off on my own and start out of the airport, only to find I still need to go through security.

I make it through the security check point to find myself on a deck area that doesn't start out as one, but seems to turn into an aircraft carrier or something. I see what first seems to be low-flying odd planes shooting by, but soon turns into almost a sort of centrifuge test thing to check on pilot stresses, g-forces and the rest. This thing seems to have four capsules on four arms swinging in a circle with only one above the water at any one time.

Soon there are two of them, one on each side of the ship, and as one is loading up soldiers to train and test, the other is letting them out. The ones being loaded up are all young, fit and the picture of health. The ones being released are in bad shape. Old, out of shape, either fat or skin and bones. Parts of one seem to be an actual skeleton, while others are missing limbs. Whatever they are training for, the training seems incredibly rough!

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Bonus, since it is not worth posting on it's own. I am sitting in a bedroom at a table, playing with my computer. I am playing some sort of game that involves collecting small blue gems that kind of look like the shatter pattern of a bullet through glass, or maybe making them. As time goes on, it is certainly making them, except it turns to making them out of a play doh-like or gum-like substance in real life, while sitting in front of the computer.

Whatever this stuff I am making is now in purple as well as blue, and it is something that I am taking to help me remember dreams. But a few of the bits have fallen off the back of the desk onto the floor, and I decide I should collect them. To try and climb under the space under the table, I have to move a box fan, but there still isn't room, so I have to try and shift my bed and a large (but low) bookcase as well. A lot of work. When I get under the table, I find several bits of the 'stuff' that has fallen, including a couple that have been down here for months and are covered in dust. I decide I'm not going to try and swallow those, and throw them away.

As I come back out from under the desk, Rosemary is bugging me to clean my room ... I just did, woman! I need to go to the bathroom, but as I am walking up to it, there is a handyman walking out. He has a sign on the door showing he is working on the toilet, so it is not available. I figure I will use the other restroom, but when I walk to the door of it, is is nothing but a huge hole in the floor. For some reason they seem to have removed the entire bathroom.

Walking back to ask Rosemary about this, I find the dogs have been stuck inside, and in the last two minutes they have virtually covered the floor in dog poop. Yuck! Nothing but problems and fails in this dream!

Last couple of days, some great, detailed dreams. For several days before then, closer to dream bits. So I'm going to post them here, where it will make for a long post, instead of in a bunch of short threads.

10-11-2012 -- Very short bit where I am meeting Dale at Walt Disney World, with his whole family, including his mom, who has died. Problem is, they are only here for 24 hours, which leads me to asking why he would spend so much money to fly the entire family all the way across the country for a single day?!?

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10-06-2012 -- I am at May Company, riding up and down on the elevator in the back corner of the store like I often did as a kid. For most of the dream I am not being chased by managers or security, which is what almost always happened in this kind of dream when I used to have them frequently. At one point I am on the third floor, and somehow the doors open when the elevator is on the second floor, and I almost walk forward and fall.

Somehow at some point I time travel, and I end up in Waldenbooks back in the late 70s, but as an adult, not a kid. I am looking over the kids book section and see an entire couple of shelves of Three Investigators hard covers, and I get so much pleasure in seeing them all sitting there available for purchase. I loved that series so much as a kid! Soon I find myself in one of the larger malls somewhere with B & C. It is near closing time, and there are a lot of very lovely ladies around, and some fun stuff might soon be happening, except that B is furious that I might ever consider letting anything happen while C is anywhere in the area.

There was a lot more to this, but the whole point of dream fragments is that I can't remember the rest.

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10-07-2012 -- There are hints of offering bones on a gilded alter in Runescape, but not much. Soon I find myself in the Hickory house, and there are ladies everywhere. For some reason it seems there are something like 20 ladies staying here, sleeping everywhere. They have really made a mess, and there are clothes everywhere, too. Three or four are staying in Melody's room and I don't think she knows about it, and I am afraid she is going to be furious.

She calls and I answer the phone in her room, and try not to let her know what is happening. Since there are a couple of the ladies talking about the things they can see in her room in the background, it is kind of difficult. Oddly, during the conversation with Melody I find we are discussing something in the Catholic Bible that isn't in the Protestant Bible. It might have been Bel and the Dragon?

Soon I am off the phone, and Mike G. from high school is here, helping me to clear out the ladies and clean things up. I go to take a drink from a soda bottle, and I see there are all kinds of worms and tiny snakes and things in what I have been drinking, and I am horrified. I glance at the bottle again, and it is perfectly fine. Am I loosing my mind? "No," Mike tells me, "you're just feverish and sick." he tries to hose me down to cool off the fever, and in the process, he ends up ruining my clothes.

So I find myself at Pine Castle, and Tom is the music minister, though I don't see him at first. Cheyanne sings a solo, but she is singing really, really low, and doesn't have a mic, so nobody can hear her. She seems to be almost chatting a song, instead of singing it. Kathy and Grace are here, and seem to have been forgiven, and Tom is even commenting on how nicely the hair is growing back on one of them who had cancer. They reveal that one of the brunettes who had been in my house was Cathy Lee Crosby, and I am amazed that I didn't recognize her at all without the blonde hair.

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10-08-2012 -- I am working in what almost seems to be the Courier Express warehouse, and they seem to have moved again, because there are hundreds of pallets of stuff on the floor and almost nothing on the racks, and I have no idea where things are supposed to go. I have two packages that have just arrived of small computer parts, and I know they are going to go out soon. I put the proper labels on them, but I don't even know where they are putting the just arrived stuff, and have to ask for help.

One of the forklift drivers is going a little too fast, and manages to tip his forklift over on it's side, but he keeps flooring it, and is now tearing deep groves in the concrete floor. He is trying to get enough speed to flip the thing back up, but I think they are going to need to use another forklift to leverage it back up. Not good, and quite a mess.

The whole place is turning into a kind of computer-related warehouse store, and some guy is buying a huge foam-padded helmet for some reason. Some little girl is going on and on about this place on the turnpike where there are a whole bunch of signs for exit 57, and I'm discussing it with her while Minerva Mcgonagall looks on. I think I am Harry Potter, and I find myself wandering around the warehouse with a bunch of other students, half of them from my real life high school.

I end up talking with Steve K., Calvin D., Julie Davie, and Neville Longbottom, who is known by the nickname of The-Other-Boy-Who-Lived. Somehow the area we're walking around seems to be the lowest part of the vampire city in the Runescape Darkmeyer quest.

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10-04-2012 -- Visiting with Dale and his mom in a hotel room somewhere around the world, right at the end of our trip, preparing to go out and have some fun. Then suddenly we are at the airport, getting ready to fly home. I have been at this airport before in my dreams, several times, but it keeps changing.

They are getting more invasive this time, and they are opening and searching every piece of luggage. I find for some reason I don't really mind. My laptop is in my main suitcase, which for some reason looks like a dish washer rack with all the prongs to hold dishes in place. I don't know why there are two large gallon bottles of urine in there. Amazingly enough, nobody asks about them. I seem to have very little stuff, and actually fold up my big backpack and stick it inside the suitcase.

Suddenly they change our gate, and heading to the other gate we find we have to go through the security screening again. By this time I am getting hot, sweaty and tired, and I comment on how I can't wait to get through security and reach one of the bathrooms with a shower you can rent the use of, which I can remember from one of the previous dreams at this airport. The screener tells me that they got rid of those about two years ago, and I am very disappointed.