Batch

01-27-2014 -- [Poor sleeping, constant waking, weird night and weird dreams.] I'm in a place of mom's, but not one that I recognize from real life (or indeed, from specific past dreams, either.) Somehow I am standing in front of a small metal sink, trying to fill a pot of dried red beans and rice with some water, so I can cook it up. The problem is, something is wrong with the taps, and though I have turned the water on, I can't manage to turn it off. There seems to be one small place which is off, and turning it to either side from that tiny position is on, but I can't find the sweet spot, and the sink is just about to overflow. I finally manage to get it off, but now the pot is also overflowing, so I have to drain a lot of the water, and in the process, find that almost all the red beans and rice have also overflowed, so I don't have anything to cook. What a mess.

I think there was a tiny bit of Kevin B somewhere (possibly a comic book convention), but soon things shift to where I am instead wandering around Indiana Wesleyan University with Dale, attending another FCM convention. The thing is, I know they have moved the convention away from the college, but in this dream they have specifically returned to IWU, and it is kind of nice to be back. We are passing some stalls and approaching a hall where we may be having some sort of lecture or business meeting, and things start pretty quickly.

I almost immediately find that I am bored out of my mind, and just can't manage to stay there. I stand up in the middle of the thing and just walk out. Soon I am wandering around through the building, looking for somewhere to relax and maybe read or something, but everywhere I find students with books spread all over the tables doing homework and stuff, and I know we're supposed to stay out of the students' way.

At one point I end up kind of jumping over a couple of chairs that have been knocked over (reminds me of a scene out of an old Bing Crosby musical I just watched) and am amazed I have the agility to do so at my size, and kind of half-realize I am dreaming, and do a slight bit of hovering, but I soon lose track of the fact, and wander back toward the hall where Dale is.

I find a large metal sign that needs to be separated into parts, and start carving it apart with my fingernails in a rather impressive way, and find myself interacting with Bridget B. from choir. For some reason, she needs the sign parts I am disassembling, but her much more impressive fingernails can't manage what mine can. So I start handing her the sign parts as I get them separated, and we walk along, chatting, exchanging one-liners, and I throw out one about the Middle East that just takes things too far, so I have to kind of apologize for that one.

Meanwhile, our discussion has been fun enough that she asks me about texting more comments back and forth. I am trying to remember what information I need to give her, whether e-mail addresses or other things, before I finally realize oh yeah, just the phone number, idiot! As I start looking for the phone number so I can give it to her, I realize I've lost the darn phone. Nuts! By this point we are in a room, and she is starting to remove the fancy dress she was wearing (a nice powdery blue number with black trim) and I realize I have followed her into her bedroom, and I really don't belong here. She doesn't seem to be worried about me, but her husband Brian is looking at me a little strange. I start to apologize profusely, explain I wasn't paying attention, and ... uh ... I gotta go! Problem is, I haven't been paying enough attention to know how to get out of the quarters they are sharing, either, so go the wrong way at first, but then I spot a door with several locks on it, and realize it must be the exit. As I hurry out, I see their son and daughter. I think he is playing a video game, and she is reading a book or something.

There is another teen there (probably a friend) wearing a really strange hat that seems to be a cross between an odd multi-colored fez and a lampshade, and I find myself trying to turn a nob to turn the light on or off, except there isn't one, of course, since it is a hat. I apologize, and make it out the exit, and kind of stumble back to the hall from earlier, just as the meeting is about to get out. I get to listen to them saying the Pledge of Allegiance (at the end instead of the start?) and then they finally start exiting. As I meet up with Dale and we start discussing whether or not I am coming back to California for a bit of a visit once the convention ends, we overhear them debating about whether or not they should open up the organization to Mormons. Odd bits.

10-04-2012 -- And with this dream I catch up the only October dream I haven't already posted. I have no idea how or why, but I have just moved in to a second story bedroom in BM's home in England ... and I think I'm going to move out again almost immediately.

I am trying to take a shower, and there are long, thorny vines twisting all through the shower, making it almost impossible. I step out and grab a pair of hedge clippers, planning to cut them up, when B. comes in screaming that I will do no such thing! I'm expected to just live with the vines, as they were here first.

As we are arguing, some of her kids and grand kids come wandering in, and start taking showers while wearing their clothes for modesty. This doesn't work too well because about half of them end up turning see-thru. I'm enjoying the view, which leads to a couple of husbands being mad at me. Well, if they don't want people watching their wives shower, they ought to wait until the bathroom is free and they can have it to themselves!

It turns out it is Christmas, and they all force me to sit down with them for the entire gift opening process, yet it is a family thing, and nobody has brought any gifts for me, so they should have just left me out of the whole thing, damn it! Finally I decide I've had enough ... I'm moving out! "No you aren't! How dare you! You selfish, insensitive, ungrateful jerk!" We fight over what stuff in the bathroom is mine, and they are trying to steal my soap and stuff. They also take some of my money which is all in pound notes (how I know I am in England.)

They are giving me a pair of purple panties that are so small they must belong to a little kid, but what would I want with those?!? B. almost throws my shoes out the second floor window, and across the fence into the neighbor's yard with all the wild animals (a place I know from other dreams.)

I finally make it out the front door, when I remember that I also have a large stash of quarters still inside the house. I use some sort of mind power to call a couple of the kids, and they gather up two big handfuls of quarters and bring them out to me. I take them, and it is my money, but I feel slightly bad that the kids might get in trouble for giving it to me.

Soon I find myself in Las Vegas for some sort of show at a balloon convention. Don't know much about the convention because I have never been to one before, but the show is like the evening shows they do at the FCM convention. Mark Byrne is preparing to do a major show, and he wants me to assist him. He takes a few minutes to ask me how I am doing and what's going on in my life, then asks if I am familiar with the glass frame-card trick. I'm not sure, it looks kind of like the pen through card trick I did as a little kid, except it is huge, sized for a card of about three feet by four.

As Mark is making sure I am prepared, a barber comes up to us both. He is to make sure we're both ready for the show. He gives Mark a quick trim of hair and beard, takes maybe 30 seconds, then he does the same thing to me. I expect I'm getting the same brief trim that Mark got, then I glance in a mirror and find no, the top of my head is now almost bald, except for this tiny tuft of hair that has been dyed gray, and somehow gives me a kind of Oriental look. What the hell?

Mark again asks me how I'm doing as we're preparing to go on, and this time I let him know I'm not doing all that well, I'm broke and out of work. But hopefully things will all work out.

09-21-2012 -- Am at the FCM convention with Dale, and we have arrived just in time for dinner. We've walked into the dining room, where everybody is sitting around, eating and talking. Except somehow we're not talking aloud, but in a number of different chats that are floating in the air in front of us. it is very difficult telling one chat from the other and keeping everything in the right place. Very much like the Runescape chats at times.

Dale is trying to jump start my computer for me, but he only has the red cable, and no black cable for the ground, and I'm worried he'll hurt himself, or my computer. I find myself chatting with a really, really experienced player who seems to be taking a bath. I brush against the bath curtain before I realize this is very creepy and wrong, and rush away before he figures out who it was. Weird!

I'm back in line in the cafeteria, and now they are in the middle of closing up, and taking away all the desserts. But that's OK, since I only wanted to grab another glass of milk, anyway. I move on to the auditorium, where I learn that we already missed the business meeting. They also tell me they overbooked the convention, and have no more program guides showing what classes will be where. I think they are joking however, as Joe White is sorting through a stack of them. He gives me one and I ask for a second one for Dale.

Joe tells me he will be giving the first class, and Don Caldwell and Gilbert Adams are arguing loudly about which one of them will be giving a private lecture on Sunday (more a Twist and Shout thing than an FCM thing) and are pranking each other with balloon gags. I'm just glancing around at a few of the balloon sculptures from the jam room.

08-02-2012 -- Its late at night, and I am in a room on the third floor of a beat-up, worn house. There may have been lots of interesting things getting me here, and involving people and chases and stuff ... I have the barest hints of such in my mind. Unfortunately, if there are, I can't remember them, though details are pretty good from this point on. I'm kind of tired, and am thinking of sleeping, perhaps after just a tiny bit of 'private time' to aid in sleeping. Unfortunately the door to the room won't lock, or even properly latch. There are some guys out in the halls who seem to be playing football or something, and they keep bumping the door and knocking it open.

I go out and try to talk to them about it, and one of them (who makes me think of Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds) points out there is a note from the landlord on the door saying it is never to be completely shut because it would be a fire hazard. By this time the door has vanished, and it is now a bit of a mattress that has been leaned against the door, instead. I am trying to find a way to position it so it will leave a gap of several inches at the very top, where it will still allow some privacy, rather than at the side. Just can't get it to stay that way.

Suddenly my third floor room is very rickety, and the only access is an unstable staircase which seems to be turning into an even more unstable ladder. As the football players wander a few feet, a blonde who I think is Billie Piper has come over to speak to me for a few minutes, then wants to get back to the ground floor. She is afraid to try the ladder, however, so has put on a climbing harness is is going to kind of scale her way down, except I have to use a rope/bungie sort of contraption to lower her down, as well. She's scared, and things aren't working too well at first, but I release some of the tension, and soon have her at a point where she only has to drop about a foot to the ground on the outside of the house. This has also lowered me to the ground on the inside of the house.

I head out a door where the football players are, and I find myself in a mall. It is still the middle of the night, mall has long been closed, and we are the mall security. [Possibly inspired by a conversation with somebody working mall security on here last night before I went to bed.] There are several people wandering around when they shouldn't be, and we start to try and run them out. I take a minute to walk in a restroom, turn on a light, and relieve myself. For some reason I am about a foot long. I'm thinking that is kind of cool, but as I fasten my pants I am now perhaps four feet long, the end of myself trailing out my trousers on the ground, and with a faucet on the end of it. It is some sort of joke item, and as I come out of the restroom like that, and we're walking back toward the house, the football players are joking about it.

As we walk along, the site has kind of turned to Indiana Wesleyan University, where the FCM convention is going on. This is a magic convention I have attended a few times in the past, and I believe it is going on this week in real life. Anyway, as I am walking along, one of the other guys has picked up my egg vase and is looking at it, and discovers the secret to it and is waving it around. I grab it from him and am trying to get him to stop ... does my act no good at all! Strange little dream.