Batch

05-02-16 -- I'm playing some sort of Doctor Who video game, but the longer I play, the more it seems to be turning to real life. (I can still see myself pressing keys to try and move around, but I'm moving me around in a real-life situation.) I believe I am traveling around in a somewhat hospital-like building, when I find we're being attacked by Daleks. I take off running, and the Daleks are following fairly closely behind, and I can't seem to manage to get away from them.

Soon I find myself in a hallway with three elevators, and I dive into one of the elevators, and start pressing buttons, and instead of moving between floors, I am traveling through time. The problem is, the Daleks almost seem to have managed to link to me, somehow, so every time I try and go a few days further into the past, so I can have time to prepare for the Dalek invasion, they have somehow started their invasion a few days early, and are right there waiting for me, as the doors open again.

In addition, the elevators are also working as elevators, and moving to different floors of the building at the same time. The problem is, the middle elevator has no buttons, and if you enter into it, you are stuck going wherever it takes you, with no control over where you are going, and I am popping in and out of the various elevators like I was in a Scooby Doo chase scene. At one point, I dive into an elevator, and find it is the one with no controls, so I dive out again, almost getting caught in the closing doors. I try to dive into the next elevator over, but its doors slam in my face, so I throw myself at the third elevator, and only just manage to throw my arm in as the doors slam on it, then bounce back open again, so I can get in.

This seems to give me a tiny bit of breathing room, but only a tiny bit. I throw myself into an 'office' of the hospital, and explain to the other Time Lords what is going on, and how I am crossing my own timeline, trying to find a way to defeat the Daleks, but that they are somehow time traveling at the same time, and always beat me to it. And as I am explaining, we can hear the laser blasts and screams from other parts of the hospital, as the Daleks are here, but just haven't reached this room, yet. And though I think I am going to be in trouble with them for crossing my owns paths in the time stream, the situation is important enough that they don't seem to care. Unfortunately, the only advice they have for me is something along the lines of 'embrace death.'

The Daleks are getting ever closer, and I head off at a run, bursting into what appears to be a basketball court, and dodging some players who may be real-life friends of mine (one of them possibly Nick), before I run out another door and through more office-like areas. I finally make it to a corner office, where I run in and find myself facing the Grim Reaper, skeleton, black robes, and all. I launch myself at him, wrap my arms around him, and we both smash through the window, and find ourselves falling hundreds of feet.

Somehow this is supposed to allow Death to see multiple realities or time line possibilities or something, so that he can spot an action that I can take that will allow me to beat the Daleks, but instead he is just crying about how all paths now lead to the end of everything, and there is not a single hope left in the entire universe. Very depressing and horrifying. Except ... even though Death cannot see a way through it all, I suddenly know what to do, and how to fix it, even as we are still plunging to our deaths. And then I wake up.

10-02-15 -- This one was all over the place, and there were probably a few scenes back even further than I can remember here, but we have what we have. The first thing I can remember with any clarity, I am staying in a house with roommates, and it is probably Rosemary's. I can remember vague impressions of David, and somehow Shannon has been doing something to get himself in trouble, so he's kind of been locked in a side room or something for a while. Meanwhile, I am wandering the house looking for some kind of food, but can remember nothing of what kind.

Anyway, I soon find myself watching some of the others go off running around the track at Savanna, and Shannon is trying to bug me to do so, as well. I explain I am not a runner, and there is no way I am going to join him. Meanwhile, the first of several girls dressed in a uniform that reminds me of Beauxbatons (but isn't) comes along, and is asking me to do something or support something, though I can't quite remember what. I'm not interested. A second asks, and a third, and it looks like more are on the way, and I suddenly lose it, and am yelling at her. I explain how, when I am badgered, I lose all interest in EVER helping with something, and liken it to the whole LA Fitness debacle. Everybody is looking at me in shock at how I blow up at this cute young lady.

Except Shannon. He decides he is going to fight her. Things are shifting to a live-action video game that seems to be a cross between Runescape and Zelda. He is off fighting her in a PvP battle and is doing unexpectedly well against her and all her friends, and seemingly, more and more people after that. He explains that he is dual weilding, but he is not using Excalibur in his left hand as most people do. It seems every fight begins in a new Zelda-style dungeon, and by using Excalibur, you prevent the use of a sort of magic that can identify cursed items. With his being able to identify cursed items, he is able to instantly use a certain potion when he finds it, which allows the discovery of the map of the dungeon level, which makes beating his opponent and getting lots of great drops a breeze.

So he's bragging about how many others he is beating, and the great loot he is getting. And somehow we're all a team, even though he is the only one that is playing, and we're getting some of the drops, and he is asking each of us to give him one of our good drops, since he is doing all the work. Now this seems very fair to me. The problem is, I haven't gotten any good drops, but just a single mini golf putter, and two balls.

I decide since that's all I have got, I'll give him one of the golf balls. Problem is, I am in an office and am supposed to file some paperwork to do this, but I can't find the proper forms anywhere, and I think I can't find Julie Davey to help me with them. So I'm going to have to go the less proper way, which seems to involve some sort of runes. I know the symbols that identify me and him, and I use an arrow symbol in between (--->) to indicate 'giving.' Problem is, the golf ball is purple, but I really think it ought to be red, so I drop a sort of dye tablet into a small glass container of what seems to be water, and it bubbles and froths for a bit, and I drop the golf ball in.

Problem is, either the water wasn't water, or the dye wasn't dye, because it forms a powerful acid, and it all bubbles away until I am left with a few drops of acid, and no golf ball at all. This angers me, so I throw down the glass container. Unfortunately I now find myself standing in my second bedroom in the Hickory house, and the few drops of acid have turned into about a pint or so, and I've just thrown it all over my floor, where it starts to ruin the various books and garbage and such it comes in contact with. Dirt is bubbling up out of the floor to make a slight mound liek an ant hill, and I find it has somehow brought in a bunch of ants, when I'd previously managed to get rid of them. It's quite a mess.

Somehow with almost no transition I am in an Adventurers Club-type setting, discussing this with Virginia, while Bob is walking with us, and I am worried that she isn't really going to want to talk with me, because of all the Club mess and the friends I'd lost there due to the Gathering debacle and RAH and more, but I am kind of explaining where I stand, and since she is religious and conservative and I am the same, and since she was a teacher, and I support teachers (actually Bob was the teacher in real life) she doesn't actually have a problem with me.

As we're talking, there is somebody else also starting to interact with us, and it seems to be Steve, the lead from the Monster House television show. He's somehow got me sitting at a desk, filling out the paperwork to sign up for a new Disney annual pass, which is quickly warping into the paperwork to join some form of the military. The problem is, he is guessing at a lot of the information, so is doing things like marking me down as a Democrat, and calling me by the wrong name abbreviation, so I am having to go through and try to correct the mistakes, and hoping that doesn't invalidate the forms.

01-06-2014 -- Playing a game that seems to be a cross between Runescape and Realmz. Somehow I have just rolled up a new character, and am doing some farming (planting herbs or plants) and fighting in a graveyard that feels like it is in Morytania. I am mostly fighting off small and weak skeletons one or two at a time, and they are not strong enough to be a real danger to me, but I stumble into a fight which has five or six of the skeletons and a thing that looks like one of the grim reaper figures from Gauntlet. My characters are so small and weak at this point that one touch kills us, and we respawn at a little space not too far away. I find myself hoping we go up a level soon so I can choose one of the 'affects all enemies' spells for my magic users to help with battles like the one I just lost.

Anyway, I do a little more farming and dodging ghosts, and also start to gear up in some of the random armor drops I earned, just to give my character(s) a little more chance to resist, before returning to the graveyard and starting to fight. The individual skeletons are still no danger to me, and this time when I trigger the larger fight, the battle between me and the boss figure is a little less damaging, and throughout a long and dangerous fight I manage to hold my own. Though my hit points get down to almost nothing, I finally manage to kill him off, then start picking up tons of armor and trying to look through it.

Soon after, I somehow find myself moving along a modern street (probably in Fullerton ... at least that is what it looks like) riding a bike, and seeming to be trying to give Kevin B a ride. But I am getting a weird sense that something is going to be going wrong, and using the excuse that I am tired and need a break, I have stopped in this parking lot and am taking a breather. I don't know exactly what is going to go wrong, or even how I know, but I just have a sense that I need to waste some time. Kevin is urging me on, and I finally express what it is I am feeling, and he doesn't like it, but he allows me to waste a couple of minutes. We are in the parking lot of a place that has an outdoor pool (and probably an indoor pool too) that is probably a YMCA.

Eventually we continue on, and soon Kevin and I find ourselves at a sort of homeless shelter place, though very quickly Kevin fades out of the dream. Looking around, we find the homeless people who have come here for help are being mistreated, treated almost like slaves, given no food unless they follow evil and offensive orders, and almost none if they do. The rich guys who run the place are taking almost all the money that has been donated and using it for themselves, while spending a couple of pennies on the dollar to take care of the people they are abusing. I am getting madder and madder as I watch this, and decide to do something. I grab the guy who seems to be in charge and throw him out of the trailer, then start handing out three times the food they've been being given to the people waiting for help, hoping to improve things.

But it doesn't seem to help enough, and I quickly discover the guy I thought was in charge was only an underling. Turns out the real leader is still there, and seems to be pulling a gun and planning to kill me. Seems if I want to take care of this I need to do more than just toss one guy out of a trailer. I decide if I am going to do this, I am going to do it right, and I wave my hand and create a long, dark cloak around me, a scythe appears in my hand, and I turn half-transparent as I stalk the guy and back him into a corner. He pulls his gun on me, but I laugh and tell him that isn't going to do him any good. He fires twice, and the bullets disappear into me, but I don't even feel them. I grab the gun in his hand and wrestle with him until he is pointing the gun in his own face and force him to pull the trigger, but there is only a small click. I guess he used all the bullets.

So I try to break his arms and legs by giving them sharp jerks in directions they weren't made to go. But I guess he is double-jointed or something, because it does no good! Finally, I decide on less pleasant methods. On the table is a stack of razor blades, all wrapped in little cardboard sleeves, and I grab one, throw away the sleeve, pull the guy's head back by the hair, and draw the blade across his throat. He drops, limp, and I assume he is dead. I turn to help some of the others in the area with more food, then turn back to where I had just been, and find the guy sitting there, cuddling a slightly cute homeless looking girl. He didn't die, he fainted from fright. It seems I didn't use enough force, and though I drew a slight bit of blood from his throat, it was nowhere near enough to cut a major artery or pierce his throat and cause him to die.

The girl in his lap was originally one of the homeless he was supposed to be helping, but she decided to give herself to him completely, betraying all the others that needed help, to get more of it herself. She is sitting in his lap muttering about the horrible things she will help him do to all their victims which now seem to have turned against him. I stalk up to her angrily, but she can't see me. Only he can, unless I specifically will somebody else to see me. So I make myself visible, and warn her that her 'boyfriend' is now marked for death, and unless she wants to join him, she better get away now. Far away! She screams and runs off. I pick up the razor blade, planning for another, deeper sweep, to finish the job, but a bunch of black people come running into the room, searching for me. They know I am here, and are going to try and find me even though they can't see me. I don't know if they are trying to find me for a good purpose or a bad one, so I drop to the floor as they feel their way around the room, then just get up after they walk past me, and again start to walk toward to bad guy.

01-26-2014 -- [Choppy, and possibly waking and falling back asleep and returning to the same dream two or three times.] I am at the Chipola house, and find myself getting ever more upset with Scott, who seems to be making more and more messes around the place, and not cleaning them up. I find he has opened one of my Pizzaria Uno frozen pizzas, and sort of broke it in half, and just cooked half of it, while leaving the other half still frozen for me, without ever telling me about it. While I am trying to reason out just what to do about this, I spot a couple of Chinese girls in the kitchen, and am asking them if they are Scott's friends. It turns out instead they are Ron Ds friends, which is kind of unexpected.

Soon I find mysef at church, complaining to Carl about the problems with Scott and the whole negative situation, and he tells me that he is going to let me know what things Scott is saying about me, but he always gets interrupted, and never actually tells me anything. Instead, I soon find myself back at the house, and Joe and Cindy are now here, and seem to be very ticked off at both of us. I am trying to explain what has been going on, but they don't want to hear it. We're both going to be tarred with the same brush.

There was a sort of small pit at one corner of the house, and they have decided to escavate it into a new, large room, so they have started digging out a lot of dirt, and have begun lining it with shelves and cupboards, but they are all slightly tilted, kind of like the doors on the cupboards in the kitchen. They have also installed a sort of huge projection screen on the wall at the back of the room. There are lots of neighbors from the other houses who turn out to be relatives of the family, and Jimmy and Marilyn and their friends are watching something, and I suddenly find myself wondering what Sonic the Hedgehog would look like, projected like that, wondering if the resolution would be decent, or if it would be horribly blocky.

I go running off to my room, where I grab my laptop, the game controller [which I just bought in real life to use on Nintendo and Sega emulators] and the physical cartridge-like emulator system which my dream can't seem to accept is just a tiny program on the laptop itself. I struggle to get all the wires disconnected, and carry the system back to the new room. I am trying to figure out how to hook it up, but somehow no hook up seems necessary. The thing somehow hooks itself up wirelessly by itself, and suddenly loads up the Fusion emulator and Sonic (though in the dream this seems wrong to me because Fusion is the NES emulator, not the Sega one ... in real life, Fusion is indeed the Sega emulator.) The problem is, though the emulator seemed to work fine on the laptop screen in my room, somehow this more powerful system that can load itself seems to be infected by a virus that is loading all kinds of extra programs and menus and such from Fusion, which leaves me just trying to turn it all off again. Weird and surreal.

08-06-2013 -- Find myself working some sort of computer job with a decent company where lower management isn't all that happy with me, but upper management really likes my skills. Somehow I am carrying around a very valuable hard drive which is somehow turning into a stack of several video games, and the fact that I am wandering around with it (them) isn't impressing DiNosso any. Gibbs doesn't seem too impressed, either. Somehow this leads to some rather aggressive driving on the other side of Hickory, before I find myself walking through the Buena Park Mall.

I am trying to find something, but I'm not quite sure what. I am walking toward Sears at about Newberry's, when I turn around and start heading back the other way. I find myself walking with somebody who is a cross between one of the girls from high school (Amy?) and Cordelia Chase (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) who is kind of making fun of my stride. I'm just about to get a little ticked when she says something that kind of half indicates she may be interested in me. What?!?

I soon find myself walking through Longs Drugs, and oddly I come across Triple H being forcibly removed from the store, as he has been banned, and the person throwing him out is the same one who once banned me from the store. I look over at Carl Baumer, and we just kind of shrug at each other. I wander through the store, but I can find no one and nothing that I am interested in, so I walk toward the exit. I still have no idea what I am trying to find, which may explain why I am having no luck in finding it.

Somehow I am soon talking to Dale, who I have somehow gotten a job working with a security company over the telephone. I have arranged a shift for him at an Orlando Paving plant, because he needs to make some extra money. He's really nervous, so I say I will accompany him on his first shift, and help him get the hang of everything. We're in his car and exiting the parking lot, and for some reason he is really stressed, and shoots out into traffic too fast to make the left turn he is trying to make, so he shoots all the way across the street, and up onto the side walk before he manages to turn. Thankfully we're in a parking lot, and have done no harm. Unfortunately, there is also a cop parked in the parking lot, and he is almost certainly going to follow us and give us a ticket.

I direct Dale down the street (well, down the sidewalk, and then back into the street) and am trying to direct him past the hotel we're driving past, because the cop (who is in an unmarked car, but I still recognize him) is going to cut through the back of the hotel, and assumes that is where we are going. If we get past the hotel before the cop starts looking for us outside, we'll lose him. I direct him on past, then have him turn on a small side street that unfortunately turns out to be one street before the one the OPC plant is on.

We find ourselves at the entrance to a short driveway, and just on the other side we can see the entrance to the paving plant, but it is a private, gated driveway, and we would have to take a bus to get over there. So I urge Dale to drive the car onto the bus, but he seems really nervous about it, and somehow the car splits into two cars, and I drive mine onto the bus, and he doesn't. The short driveway is really weird, as the bus is huge and tall, and kind of a bus on monster truck wheels, and the driveway is narrow, and part overpass, part underpass, and we are rolling over the top of some vehicles going the other way, and being rolled over by others. Really strange.

The bus drops me off at the entrance to the OPC plant, and I notice Dale doesn't follow me. I am hoping he will make it on his own, but am half expecting to get a phone call from him at any moment explaining how he's gotten lost, and needs me to come find him and lead him back. Meanwhile, I find myself opening the gate to allow workers to come in and out, and there are tons of workers and they seem to be working 24 hours a day, and also having guards here 24 hours a day. I was only going to help Dale get started, I wasn't officially going to be working the shift, so I have no ID, no uniform, and in fact I am wandering around in my underwear. (Or perhaps in my swim trunks.) I don't know anybody here, and soon I am in trouble with the guard I am supposed to be relieving for being late, being out of uniform, and I still have no idea if Dale is ever going to show up.

07-23-2013 -- Find myself playing video games with a grown up Jeff (childhood friend.) His joystick seems kind of sluggish, so he is hooking up a different joystick to play with, but it doesn't seem to work. He is just about to detach it when the screen flashes and I tell it him try it again. It seems it took the system a few seconds to recognize the new joystick. So we're playing this video game that involves shooting at robots and space ships and such in a sort of a maze-like building, and it is a game that I have never played before, so Jeff is kind of teaching it to me. As I approach the space ship and start firing on it, drawing it's attention to me, he explains that you have to hit the spaceship on the sides or behind with ten shots to disable it. Now he tells me! My weapon is almost drained from all the shots I am firing worthlessly at it's forward shields, and it is starting to fire back at me, and I am almost instantly destroyed.

We begin to play again, and this time I have a better idea what I am doing, but suddenly the game is gone, and this is now live. We are in a large room, perhaps 100 feet square, perhaps 100 meters, and maybe 30 or 40 feet tall. The space ship is in here with us, along with a lot of robots that are attacking us. This time I manage to get behind the space ship and fire on it, and I eventually manage to disable it, but I've almost drained my weapon, and am going to have to wait a while for it to recharge. Meanwhile I am being attacked by more and more robots, including ones with energy weapons, and one that advances on me, blowing large (perhaps about a foot in diameter) bubbles. If the bubbles hit me, they make me slippery. If they don't, they still land on the floor and pop, making it slippery. So whether he hits me or not, anywhere he has been becomes a dangerously slick surface.

The bubble blower has managed to grab my wrist, and is holding me, so it is easier for the rest of the robots to reach me, but I manage to twist free, and run for it. There seem to be more and more robots pursuing me through the room, and there is no sign of Jeff, so I look around and find a doorway in the west wall, right near where it intersects with the north wall. I run through and find myself in another large room about the size of the last one, but this one, instead of being wide open, is like a maze, with no big alien space ship, but lots of the robots wandering around, chasing me. I keep going through several of these rooms (I can only remember 4 or 5, but it feels like a dozen or so) generally alternating between a single large space and mazes, until I finally come into another room that looks almost identical to the first, including a large space ship in it. But everything is still.

I make my way south in the room and find a door like the one I entered my room through, and open it to find myself looking out at a classroom of late teens or adults (late high school or perhaps college students) and I am embarrassed about interrupting their class, so I hurredly shut the door, but might have just spotted Jeff sitting at the teacher's desk. As I start back through the room, I find the space ship and robots are now beginning to move, and I figure I have triggered them by opening the outer door. I realize Jeff may soon be bringing an entire room full of people after me, and also that, by solving the maze all the way through, I may have also provided that solution for the others. And I don't know if it will be all of us against the machines, or also against each other. I decide the safest thing to do is return to the room where I started, and already defeated the space ship, so I move to the top right corner and the door to the next room, and find myself looking at a straight run through all the rooms, with no maze passages. No idea where they went, but it makes it quick and easy to return to my starting space.

The area is a little calmer now. The space ship is still disabled, and most of the robots that were attacking me are now scattered throughout the entire maze. I fight a few more robots, including bubble blowers, and by now my weapon is recharged. Soon there are some others running around, and though they don't attack me, they do seem to be on a different team, so I figure they are probably Jeff's students. I find them moving a small, disabled vehicle (think the fast sleds that dropped off the rocket launching guys in the X-Men video game) out of the doorway to the next room, seemingly in preparation to seal the door, and I don't want to be trapped in here, so I rush for the exit to try and push my way through before they seal it off.

Meanwhile, I notice most of the others are wearing more and better equipment than I am, and wonder if they have earned it over the course of many skirmishes, or if they scavenged it during this game, and find myself thinking I should have broken into the space ship once I disabled it, and seen if there was any equipment within that I could have used. Oh well ... I'm still learning this. Most of the robots have now been destroyed, though some of the guys are still busy feeling up the chests of some of the female robots, while the ladies look on in disgust. There are some burgers available that seem quite thick, but not all that large around, but they take forever to eat, and are really, really filling.

Scattered throughout the maze are models of scientific principles, including the occasional tongue-in-cheek version. Instead of the five balls hanging from strings they have a full-size model of the cartoon floating around the internet with the five kids sitting on the swingset and the teacher standing to the side pulling one to the side, about to show conservation of motion or whatever the principle is. Somebody notices that I am not one of them, and asks me what I am doing here, and I am explaining my friend Jeff and the game, and they are also wondering if it is their professor.

One of the guys, who seems to have a bit of history, and a really good record (and a bit of an ego as well) is building a burger and is demanding to know where the mayo and the tomatoes are. He may be half-blind, because the mayo is right in front of him, but I think we're already completely out of tomatoes. Too bad, Mr. Attitude Guy!

01-24-2013 -- [Was sick yesterday, and dozed a lot, which means a very bad night of sleeping last night. Seems like I was waking up every 10 to 15 minutes. Because of this, though I had some great dreams or dream fragments, I couldn't take the time to write them down, or I'd have never gotten back to sleep. So, all I could do was memorize a general setting, so we'll have to see just how much of these I can manage to recall.]

Playing some sort of computer game, hints of maybe Runescape or Roller Coaster Tycoon, but its a live version, not playing on the computer. Anyway, I am running around and planting some seeds or placing some flowerbeds or things like that, and I soon find myself running through some odd rooms that kind of make me think of the flash powder factory.

Buried deep in this factory, something is going on, and people's lives are being threatened, and suddenly there is a super hero there to help save the day. I am thinking it might be Aquaman. Darn it. This was the earliest fragment of the night, and also one of the most interesting, but more and more of it is gone.

Anyway, we're now doing things in this area (not that I spend enough time in the flash powder factory to be sure that is where this is, but it is a place with odd rooms, obstacles and traps to make your way through) and there are a soon two or three heroes to help us. But if there are super-powered beings to help us, surely that'll mean there are super-powered beings against us, as well.

Sure enough, as we continue to fight through the area, we start being attacked by other super-powered beings. For our protection, the heroes are loading us into a sort of shuttle craft and launching it, hoping to get us away to safety ... if it can withstand the attack of the bad guys. I think there was some throwaway comment about Doctor McCoy not having a chance to test it because of the timing.

So there are super villains surrounding the shuttle as it takes off, and almost immediately the floor is buckling from multiple hits as I *think* Doctor Octopus is under there pounding on it with all his mechanical arms, and as the floor breaks in, the entire shuttle shakes apart. Suddenly we having flying or powered heroes (Superman, Iron Man, the likes) grabbing us and trying to fly after us, while similar heroes and villains are trying to stop them and catch us, all as shuttle bits rain down on the Earth. It was a rather cool scene.

---

I was down at the corner house at Hickory and Greenleaf, and we were in the process of putting up some Christmas decorations without the owner's approval, when the owner came bursting out with the cops. Somebody had been doing something bad around the place. I was afraid I would be in trouble, but the owner of the house says he isn't worried about the people that add to his Christmas decorations, even if he doesn't understand why they do, and I explain that we just like the two houses on the ends of the block to be really well decorated as they help to represent the neighborhood and draw people in to look at the decorations. Weird.

---

Half watching, half living a James Bond movie, that may have a small bit at a super market (I can remember just a hint) before a chase started. James was chasing the villain through a long tunnel in a mountain, while we're kind of watching the chase on some kind of monitor. We can see they are about to exit the tunnel, and we're right about the timing. But suddenly things shift to a meeting room where M and a couple of her people are meeting with another high government official, and it turns out to be the guy that James was chasing. He's within the government, itself, and they don't yet have the evidence to bring him down.

Soon I find myself standing in what half feels like a class room, and half seems to be a store in a mall. I have just finished watching the James Bond movie, and in a discussion about it, I end up winking at a sort of cute girl. Unfortunately, just about that time I start to recognize some things, and realize that I have been through this before, and some crooks are just about to attack this place.

Sure enough, four or five thugs burst into the room and start shooting. I act like I've been hit and collapse to the ground, while everybody else is running around screaming and getting shot. I start grabbing other people's legs and telling them "Get down, you fools!" and some listen and some don't. Eventually the bad guys quit shooting, and start to check on who they have and what shape they are in, and begin making threats for the information they want.

I've bided my time, and when they aren't expecting it, I strike back, knock some of them out, and me and some of the others make a break for it. As we make it out of the building we were in, but are still crossing the lawn to the parking lot, we see an attractive young woman still pushing her grandmother's wheelchair away from the scene, and we'd hoped they would have already gotten out of here, but I remember from the past time that they don't have anything the bad guys want, so I urge for us to keep on running, and tell them to continue fleeing as I can.

As we reach our cars and start driving off, I'm shown to have known what I was talking about, as the crooks run right past them, to reach their cars and continue chasing us. Soon we're driving through the streets, being pursued. I think eventually we have a confrontation in a mall parking lot, along with the cute lady, her grandmother, and her kids, who have been dragged back into things, but most the details are gone. Still a fun dream, though.

---

I'm not sure which came first, the game or the diner, so I'm just going to put the game first. I am sitting at a small card table somewhere, with a game of Risk before me. I am considering playing a game with myself, but find each color only seems to have 15 or 20 army pieces which aren't going to be enough to play with. So I am looking for the box, hoping it will contain more army pieces.

As I am looking, a couple of other people decide they are going to play, also, and sit down. But if we are going to play, there are things we need to do, including deal out the cards to claim the territories and roll dice to decide who is going to go first. So one guy, who might be Dave D., rolls his die, and I roll mine, and since I only rolled a one, it looks like he'll be going first. So I am in the middle of dealing the cards out into two piles, and two more people decide to join, so Dave grabs another stack of cards, and starts dealing them out for the other two people, and we have to redo the rolling to see who goes first.

Soon I find myself sitting in a diner, right as my food is being brought to me. I think I have a burger and some nice, crispy french fries. There is a guy sitting next to me, clean cut, seems friendly, very unoffensive. Seems like a cross between a Jimmy Stewart character and the 'Happiest Man in Springfield', just a really sweet, easy going guy.

Who doesn't seem to be from around here. He has ordered a meal and is waiting for it, but he doesn't seem to know what it is he is getting. He points at my fries and asks what they are, and I tell him they are french fries. The waitress comes up and asks him if she misunderstood him. Maybe he wants a baked potato instead? No, he says, some of these 'fries' should be just fine.

It's an old-style diner, which may make some sort of sense, because soon the buildings are shaking and bombs are falling from the sky, and it turns out to be in the middle of a battlefield somewhere in World War Two. I'm running out of the diner and looking for places I am needed, and I guess 'Jimmy' does as well.

Soon I see him standing near a soldier crouched with a radio (looks much like one of those little green army men from when I was a kid). It seems he can kind of read minds, even if he doesn't have nearly any clue of what it is he is hearing. So he is just babbling random thoughts and sentences in this guy's ear, of the various thoughts he is picking up, most of which are worthless, until suddenly he starts reading the orders that the enemy troops are being given, as they are being given, which is some very helpful information.

---

Probably at least one or two more fragments from the night, but I simply can't remember them at this time.

09-15-2012 -- I'm at the Hickory house, where mom has me preparing some weird thing to help save a dying magic tree in the forest in the back yard. Seems to involve taking a furnace filter, placing a leaf from the tree when it was healthy on it, then pouring some kind of magical liquid over it. I wait for the liquid to soak in, then head into the backyard.

Making my way through the narrow forest paths, trying to find this dying magical tree, but at one point I bump into something, and drop the filter. The leaf falls off and into the bits of leaves, branches and so on, and I can't find it again. I just have to hope that it was absorbed enough into the filter to work. Eventually I manage to find the dying tree, and I use the filter on it. It comes back to life, and begins to produce a brilliant red fruit that actually gives off light, it is so bright.

Just wandering around, I walk around a bend in the trail, and find another dying magical tree, this one with a white fruit that is very, very dim. I grab a healthy leaf just under the tree and start running back to mom, hoping she has another filter and some more of the magic liquid. Mom does have the stuff needed, and doesn't mind me saving other trees, but she has some other errands she needs me to do first, so it takes some time to get back out to the tree.

The forest paths are beginning to look more and more video gamish, and I'm starting to have the knowledge in my head that there are either five or seven of these magical trees, each with a different color of fruit, and that I need to find as many as I can, but unfortunately by the time I get back to the white fruit tree, somebody has already claimed it. I start wandering down different forest paths trying to find some of the other ones.

As I continue along, things are shifting. Instead of a forest I seem to be wandering through some sort of industrial complex, and instead of trees I seem to be looking for some sort of weird mechanical eye-like light generator. Still have been the first to find one or two of them, and still looking for a couple that haven't been found yet. And when found and activated, each spills out a very bright, very colorful beam of light into the sky. The things are big, and not easily moved around, but every week they are in a different location, so sometimes there are traces of where they have been in past weeks, but they aren't there now.

I start out in a large warehouse-like building, but soon am checking in smaller and smaller buildings, large tool sheds, service bays, just smaller buildings, still looking for these things. I soon find myself in a large building that seems to be a cross between a flea market building and a large garage with multiple service bays. But I can't find any in here.

I move into another building, and think I finally find another one. There is a guy that is supposed to pay me a small amount, but he doesn't want to pay cash, and wants an easy way to get it taken care off. He wants an account number, but instead I pull out my payment card from Courier Express since I am no longer working for them, and tell him to use it, instead. He takes the card and agrees, asks me to give the information to a lady over there on the computer.

She has a laptop on a small table, and I sit down next to her. She is short, slim, has short brown hair, probably a small chest, but she is quite cute, kind of pixie-ish, and wearing a short mini skirt. As I am sitting next to her I am admiring her legs, and suddenly she is nude. I start with a little caressing, pull her on top of me, and move on to more fun. Soon we're both exhausted and laying on a sofa. I am considering resting a couple of minutes and doing everything again, when I wake up.

07-28-2012 -- I am driving down a road, in Omaha, I think. It is late at night and I am hungry. I am hoping to find something to eat, and as I drive along, I find a New York-style pizza parlor. The name is something like Giovanni's or the like. I stop and enter, and find the place does seem to be open, but shelves and cupboards and displays are almost empty. I realize the place has either just opened, or is in the middle of selling everything and shutting down. They only have something like three choices of topping, cheese, pepperoni, or sausage. I really push it and ask for all three on my pizza. The guy is making me a very large pizza (at least 18", maybe even larger) but doesn't seem to know what to charge me. I offer him $15, but keep wondering to myself if I might have offered too much or too little.

As I am waiting outside the apartment-like parlor, there seems to be somebody hunting me. I spot a figure in a nice suit who seems to be following me, but is trying to stay out of sight. He keeps dashing around corners or hiding behind walls. He is trying to shoot me with bullets or poison darts, and soon seems to be trying to build some sort of explosive mine or something, but it falls apart. I gather up as many pieces as I can to try and keep them away from him, then run off.

A couple of miles away I come to a warehouse on the NE corner of an intersection. I glance inside and find it is my warehouse, and there are three small box trucks that I know are filled with explosives or something. There are some incompetent thugs that have been sent to hunt me down that are driving down the street in two larger trucks filled with some kind of ordinance to use against me, but they are stupid, and they really aren't at all sure what they are supposed to be doing.

I convince them that I am not me, but am actually one of their bosses, and I order them to start moving all the stuff in their trucks into my trucks of explosives. Since they are carrying things like detonators, I know this can be a dangerous combination. I wait until they are both out of site in a couple of the trucks, and then go running to the south while they cannot see me. As long as they don't actually see me running off, they won't be worried, and will keep doing as I told them.

I know that when the explosion happens, it is going to be very powerful, and most likely nuclear, so I really want to get at least a mile away, so I can be safe. I keep running south in Omaha, and get a couple miles down to a major street. I knew what the street was in the dream, but cannot remember it now. Dale is now with me, and we are both running. We get to this major street, and find a bus just pulling up. We both board it, and I have .75 for the bus fare, but when I try and put it in a slot, the driver starts screaming at me that it is the wrong place, and he orders me to put the money in a different slot.

He is very rude and obnoxious, and I really find I don't like him. He keeps screaming abuse at me, and I am considering really telling him off, but instead decide to take a seat. As I get a little further back in the bus, he orders me to choose a locker and take the key. Amazingly there is a row of lockers. I tell the driver I don't need a locker, and he just gets more abusive. Rather than fight about it, I pull out a key that turns into a lock in my hands.

Dale and I sit down, nervous, and quietly discuss the upcoming explosion. We keep our voices down because we don't want the other passengers to hear us and report us. Soon the bus has turned into some sort of stadium, and we are in the stands, surrounded by ladders made up of a kind of horizontal window blinds. To get higher up and move to the next level, we have to climb these rickety blinds, but as we get a little way up, they all fall apart and collapse, leaving us to fall on our backsides.

I get to an area with some nice sofa-like benches that seem to be a little higher up, so I hope to have a shorter way to climb, as the blinds-ladders start to reappear. By this time it is feeling very much like some sort of video game, though we're in it, instead of just playing it. I look around and find Dale is gone, so I realize he must have solved the puzzle, and moved on to the next level. I still don't know how to do it, so I pull out my cell phone and call him. There is a lot of interference, and I can barely hear him, but he says something about the lock before the call drops. I start to realize the bus driver may have been an idiot, but there was a reason he ordered us to take the locks.

I wait a few seconds for the blinds to reset again, then start to climb. I go up about twenty rungs, and can just feel the tension as the thing is about to fall apart and drop me. At that point the dream kind of turns into a good news/bad news story. It's good that the driver insisted I take the lock. It's bad that right as I need it, I drop it. It's good that I happen to have a combo lock of my own in my backpack. It's bad that I can't remember the combination. It's good that the combination is printed on the back of the lock. It's bad that the combination is wrong. It's good that the thing opens up, anyway. It's bad that as it opens up, it starts to fall apart. It's good that as it starts to fall apart, it has turned into a lock mechanism like "The Club", the thing they used to sell to kind of lock steering wheels.

The bar that I end up holding is exactly what I need, and I slip it over some sort of stud on both ends of the blinds, right before they start to fall apart. Everything beneath me collapses, but I am able to continue climbing up to the next level. By this point, the dream is feeling like some sort of a competition, as well as a sort of video game. I find myself in a strange, colorful landscape that very much reminds me of the new Runespan in Runescape, but the place is very weird.

People are running around, throwing bowling balls, base balls, basket balls and other objects around, but the rules of physics don't seem to fully apply. Balls swirl down odd gravity wells, or break holes in the walls, and people follow them to try and find paths to the next level. I throw a couple of bowling balls, and they work all right, but when I try and throw the smaller balls, I can't throw worth beans, and always let go of the ball way too late, so it slams into the ground a foot or two in front of me, rather than flying through the air and triggering anything. Somehow I manage to make it at least a half a level further, however.

Now I am grabbing guns and things, and shooting at weird aliens and targets that seem more like a Buzz Lightyear-type of shooting gallery ride at a theme park. I'm doing a lot better with this than with the throwing balls thing. I shoot my way through several targets and barriers, and kind of fly into the next area.

I suddenly find myself in a swim suit in what seems to be a very colorful water park. I am on a large field with circles of colors with numbers in them, looks like some sort of giant Twister game. I see some odd footwear that is kind of a cross between flippers, snow shoes and skis. I try and get one on one of my feet, but don't have a chance to get one on the other. I have to start trying to run through the fields as different numbers are being called.

If I land on one of the circles before another number is called, jets of water help propel me in the right direction. If I hit the wrong circles, the water is pushing me in the wrong directions, and is liable to knock me over. Soon I have shot into the wrong direction one time too many, and find myself in a red sort of structure seconds before water is going to come at me from every direction and fully soak me. I'm horrible at this part of the competition, but I am also really having fun, and I am just starting to laugh about the soaking as I wake up.