Batch

08-31-2017 -- Let this sit for too long, and the ones for the last couple days, as well, so they will probably all come out as fragments, rather than detailed enough to get full entries for themselves. For today's dreams, I know there were bits with Cindy L., and something about delivery driving or mystery shopping. I know there was something with Joe L. and cell phones (probably being broken or dropped or something) and Ubering. And then the finishing bit ended up being in an Eisenhower Park-like setting with hints of Mammoth Cave. I was walking near a river above ground, and there were hints of some sort of miracle-like healing tunnel rumored to be in the area. It had been mentioned earlier, during a camp-out (perhaps with Joe as the scout master), and I was wondering where it was, and looking for it.

The 'cave' areas were looking quite man-made, and there was supposed to be one 'pipe-like' tunnel leading to the special healing area, but instead it looked like some large sort of sewer with dozens of pipes coming in. When I started asking around, some of the regulars made me aware that there were several levels of the cave, and the healing tunnel was on the lowest level. Unfortunately, it has been raining recently, and I can see at least one large stream of water pouring down a ramp to lower levels, and am being warned that there is at least a 50-50 chance that the lowest level is currently completely flooded, and that if it isn't, it soon could be. Interesting dream, that I wish I could remember in more detail.

---

08-30-2017 -- Or perhaps one day earlier. Who can say. Odd dream where I am riding a bus with mom, and talking to the bus driver. For a couple of minutes I take a seat in the row right behind the driver, next to a black woman, just to chat. But when we finish our brief conversation, I excuse myself, apologize to the black woman for encroaching on her space, and move further back in the bus. Soon after that, I find myself standing near a building as a low-flying airplane flies right into it at fairly low speed. The building cuts an airplane-like shape into the wall, much like a cartoon.

The building turns into the Pentagon, and soon the airplane is backing out of the building again, unharmed. We're discussing these new planes that are still light enough to fly, but strong enough that they can pass through buildings without bringing harm to themselves. Meanwhile, I am right behind the airplane, filming it coming out of the building with my video camera, while having to throw myself to the side to avoid being run over by its tires as it backs out of the building.

Find myself sitting on what starts as the bus, but soon turns into the airplane, itself. We are in the process of being recruited to work for the US government in various capacities, and I decide I want to fly the big 747s that can fly through buildings. Olga Vukavitch is the one asking us what areas we would like to be working in, and I am trying to bring up the footage I just shot under the airplane to show her what I would like to be doing, but my laptop computer is not cooperating.

Soon things turn slightly odd, as a bunch of enemy soldiers are storming into the plane, trying to take over and catch prisoners, and their leader seems to be Kim Jung Il. I'm kind of sitting back out of the way with my laptop. I have no weapons, and I don't have any idea of what to do. Somebody else is somewhat insulting of me, for not being more involved to try and stop things, but I excuse myself by saying I haven't been given any orders, yet. Sad.

---

08-29-2017 -- Or around there. I'm somewhere, watching Bonnie going on some sort of slingshot-like ride that has her being hoisted up in chains to the top of a parachute jump-like tower (like at Knott's) where she is hoisted up by her arms, but also kind of runs along the tower like a slightly off version of rappelling. When she gets to the top, she seems to be kind of making some kind of meal (or perhaps potion) with ingredients that just kind of appear in the area, which could be quite valuable. She is assisted in this by a woman who works at the top of the tower, who most reminds me of 'The Architech' from the Player-Owned Ports content of Runescape.

Meanwhile, I am helping her bundle up her creation in a large storage container, in preparation of getting it back to the ground. Oddly, though I am at first at the top of the tower with her, I soon find myself running around at ground level again. I seem to spend a lot of time trying to use a small elevator which doubles as a waiting room at the odd cross between a doctor's office and Hewitt Associates. It seems that what everybody thinks is an elevator may only be made to look like one. Or not. It is very confusing. At least at one point, I end up a couple of stories further up in the building, where upper management hangs out in rich quarters, with spas, and a large swimming pool, lording it over the peons. There is also at least a little bit involving them trying to get me to come back to another position in the company, but by this time, I have had, and eventually gotten fired from so many positions so many times, that I really have no further interest in working for Hewitt, and I am amazed they keep trying to bring me back. Would have remembered more of this, the first day. Too bad I waited three or four days to write it down.

07-29-2017 -- Well, this one is strange and abrupt. First thing I can remember, I am walking to Lucky or Thrifty for a bottle of soda, it is late at night, and there is this little kid who is asking me all kinds of questions. All I can remember of the conversation is being very snarky with all my answers. All I remember of the setting is being roughly at Tamarack and Dale, walking along. There is a creepy vibe, nothing with me and the kid, but just an odd feeling that something is wrong, just underlying everything.

The kid just suddenly reaches the point where he wants to go home, but I still want to get my soda, so he says something that hints at maybe stealing one or something, and I make a snarky comment about hoping he doesn't do so, because that would make him a bad person, instead of the good, but insufferably annoying person that I think he is. Anyway, I buy a two liter of A&W and stick it in my pocket, and we leave the store. We are soon walking on Tamarack headed for Hickory, and as we pass a very large black girl (late teens to early 20s) she makes some sort of rude and slightly threatening comment to me, and I can't figure out why. Can't see anything I've done or said to her to deserve it. Kind of glance at some slightly punk teen blacks in the area who don't seem to have any problem with me, and they just shrug, with no idea.

The kid sort of vanishes, so we probably passed his house and he wandered off. I am now walking down Hickory, and the ground is very wet, with puddles I am trying to avoid, and a couple of the black punks are doing the same, and we almost kind of get in each others' way in trying to avoid the puddles, but again, it causes no actual problems. Though I almost think there may be issues when I am forced to jump over someone's 10-speed, and I don't jump far enough and land on the middle of it. Thankfully, I am very light on my feet, so no harm done.

I wander along, now alone, and soon reach Greenleaf and cross over to my own block, and run into friends or associates at the corner house. This gets really weird, really quick. Me and a guy here are good friends, and somehow as a sort of a prank, he has got me dressing up in a powder blue sweater that belongs to one of the girls, and we are making comments to try and make her look at me closely enough to notice. The other girl (both of them are fairly cute at this moment, but that will change quickly) makes a comment about how she fills it out far better than I do, while the other is holding up various bits of lingerie and commenting on how I ought to try wearing the rest of her clothes, and I'm completely out of my depth.

The comment about filling it out better is becoming absurdly true, as the two girl are morphing into very freakishly odd people. The one whose sweater I am in has now got a set so large they are hanging down past her belly button, but that is almost normal, compared to the other. She is now over seven feet tall, dangerously thin, and wearing a sort of iso-skeleton-like set of crutches to even allow her to stand, while wearing a slightly see-through top, with her pair hanging down to her ankles, looking almost offensively freaky. We're all walking down the street, talking, and our discussion is turning more and more to spies and secret agents and handlers, and things are changing again.

I am still physically there, but I am turning into someone else, who is kind of whining about who I am being forced to handle, because it turns out the agent (or more properly the 'asset' 'I' am supposed to be keeping under some kind of control is Bellatrix Lestrange, and she's a stone-cold killer and bat-shit crazy), and the whole 'game' is getting out of hand. I turn off to walk into my back yard (though I am not me) when a poorly maintained lime green car turns into the driveway, and I start to run through the side yard toward the alley, because I know it is my handler, and I figure I am either in trouble for not controlling Bellatrix well enough, or for something evil that she's done, and I fear they are either going to kill me, or force me to do something horrible, so I am on the run.

Expecting to be shot at any moment, I dodge sideways through the supposed fence between my yard and the neighbors' yard, then into the alley and down a few yards. As the scene starts, I am Harold Finch from Person of Interest, but within a few seconds, he's the handler that I am running from.

There has just been a lightning strike, moments before I reached one place in the alley, and I climb the fence into a backyard that just had its satellite dish fried, where I run into a slightly older version of Claudia Christian, who is my sister or my girlfriend (not sure which), who is also forced to handle a crazed psychopath, and we're muttering about getting out of the 'game' while grabbing our things and trying to run out onto Dale and away, when we come face to face with another agent who looks kind of like a near-death Carrie Fisher with a gun ready to shoot us if we don't stop. Very strange and disjointed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

01-22-2013 -- I'm somewhere watching television with some young friends. Or perhaps playing video games. It keeps changing back and forth. Or even playing some kind of live board game type of game. One of the video games turned live game involves a small blue ball, half physical, half made of energy, that appears, then grows until it is three or four inches in diameter.

You have to take the ball and roll it at a target perhaps a meter away. You have to roll it, because the target is very small, too, and if you try and toss it, it is almost impossible to hit. Roll it, and if you roll it soft enough to control the aim, you probably won't register a hit. Roll it harder, and you lose control to be sure it will hit the target. Very challenging. The kids I have been playing with decide to leave, and as they do, their grandmother starts to give them instructions.

It turns out to be Bonnie M., and since she and I are no longer on good terms, I decide I probably ought to leave, especially since she is wearing a rather see-through mesh bathrobe with only a pair of panties underneath. I start to pack up the game, and a playing piece that seems to be almost a cross between a blue poker chip and a pog accidentally flips into my mouth and I start to gag on it slightly. I manage to spit it out, wipe it off, and pack it away in the box.

Oddly enough, Bonnie seems to want me to stay around and watch TV with her, like old times. Meanwhile, she has turned into a grade school teacher, and we are sitting in her classroom, which includes her TV, chair, and a class bookshelf. I am scanning the books, and am very pleased to see, along with other titles, Gordon Korman books and Three Investigators titles. There is also a cat that I am petting.

We start to watch TV, and she is watching a sort of teen soap opera kind of show that involves a smooth blond kid kind of like Paul-Mark Gosselaar, but without the pranking. He is with a bunch of other students that are trying to get him to sample a pranking sort of item that they claim will turn him into an Incredible Hulk-style monster for a few minutes, but he refuses to try it.

He is kind of a foreign exchange student, is imperfect in the language, and is really driving them crazy because for some reason he would make an incredible football player, but he has absolutely no interest in playing, and they just can't talk him into it. Meanwhile, he has got a sort-of girlfriend who is a cheerleader, but doesn't mind that he refuses to play football. She is played by Hayden Panettiere, of course.

There is a coach played by Jane Lynch, but she is a strange one, and is lecturing the cheerleader on not wearing a skimpy enough costume, and having the nerve to wear panties, which means the coach can't perve on her when she is making out with her boyfriend. Very odd. All this seems to be taking part at the Buena Park Mall, and time is passing very quickly.

I am trying to remember as much about the show as I can, because it seems to be turning into real life, and the government now seems to be after us. It is an odd sort of conspiracy, because as long as we don't realize anything is going on, they leave us alone, but as soon as we start to notice there is anything to notice, they are after us. I try to hide by acting normal, and try to go back to Bonnie's classroom.

I want to take the time to write all of this in my dream journal, but I need a little privacy to do so. I open the door to the classroom to walk in, but it is now filled with students and adults, and a young Flo from the Progressive commercials is just finishing reading a paper on how her ultimate goal in life is to advertise insurance. I suppose she'll be successful at accomplishing it.

The person in charge has been staring at me, standing in the back of the classroom, and refuses to go on or call up any more students to read their papers until I am gone, so I walk out of the classroom and shut the door behind me. Meanwhile in the quad, the coach is trying to remove the cheerleaders panties while all the students are arguing with Mark-Paul to play football, and I can't seem to write properly. I am trying to write my usually tiny print notes across the top of the page, but I can't seem to help jumping all over the page in my writing. All the time, I seem to be getting advice on job hunting.