Glieuaeiel's DJ

Swimming Pool (7:15) (LUCID)

The play I'm watching turns out to be rather experimental. First they pretend like the play was over, then they keep going. Then they even turn on the house lights and go offstage, but somehow I know that the play's not actually over yet. I wonder how they're going to catch everyone's attention again to continue the show.

Later, walking down a hallway, I realize that I'm dreaming. Time to go on an adventure! I'm carrying a backpack, which would be an annoyance to deal with, so I get in an elevator to take it back to my room first. But then I realize that that's stupid. I'll make it disappear instead. Setting it against the wall of the elevator, I focus on it. How to make it disappear? I imagine being able to see the corner of the elevator through the backpack--just a wireframe. Then fill it in with some colors . . . the dream doesn't feel stable . . . it was a bit dangerous to try to control things this directly . . . but just a bit more . . .

Suddenly, the backpack disappears! Immediately, the dream feels twice as vivid, twice as stable. Success! Now I go straight to the floor of interest, instead of going back to my room first. After getting out of the elevator, I start taking off my clothes. Then I pause to do a reality check: I wouldn't want to be doing this in real life. Although, now I think on it, why would I want to do it in a dream, either? It's kind of taking a lot of time to remove every blasted item of clothing. Well, whatever. As I continue, I think about what I want to do with this dream. I remember one of my dream goals: "swim beneath the ocean."

Later, I look through a window. Gravity and architecture aren't quite behaving properly; the exterior of the building slants diagonally away from the window, ending many stories below in a pool at ground level. I dive out the window and splash into the pool. Darkness and confusion reign for a few moments as a bodiless voice narrates something about symbolic significance of water, representing protection from the danger of the outside world. Moments later, I break the surface and see undulating hills of water all around, like small ocean swells. The narrator then says, "You know what else represents protection?" and suddenly a girl floats into view and up to my side. She's not wearing anything.

Obviously, the expectation is that I'll take this chance to have sex. "Squirt me," she says with an encouraging smile. I give her a wry look and reply, "No." I'm not interested in doing that right now, although I do "squirt" off to the side just to acknowledge the temptation, or something. We pick a direction and start swimming that way. On a whim, I decide to go in for some manual stimulation and reach between her legs. She doesn't react, though. "That doesn't do anything for you?" I ask after a few moments. She shakes her head and replies, "Like I said, I'm trying to quit." Soon, I wake up.

Personal Tutoring (8:20) (LUCID)

Alone, I'm exploring a castle. After a while, I realize that walking is taking too long, so I take out my bike and start riding around instead. But even that gets boring, and I start wondering what else I could be doing. Just like that, I remember my dream goal about swimming in the ocean, and I realize that I'm dreaming.

Moments later, I find myself again underneath the water in a swimming pool. Dumbledore is tutoring me in dream control. Rather than trying to force myself to the surface, he says, I should trust the dream to buoy me. This strikes me as real wisdom. I hold myself in cannonball position and focus on the sensation of being lifted and turned by the water. Soon, I wake up.

Christian String Quartet (9:00)

I'm sitting in a public area when suddenly I hear an acoustic guitar behind me. Cool, live music! When the string quartet starts playing a song, I'm not sure exactly what it's about at first, but I suspect (slightly uncomfortably) that it's Christian rock.

Previous hours:
Feb 25, 0:27-8:40
Feb 26, 2:38-9:03

Family Musical

I'm sitting with my family in a shopping center, looking around at nothing in particular, when I hear a strange sort of music from the group behind me. Turning around, I see that my family is using coins and glass cups to make ringing noises with a definite rhythm and melody. Delighted, I pull a coin from my pocket and join in. It takes me a few tries to figure out how to hit it to get a clear bell tone, but once I figure it out, it's really fun!

At another point I decide to try out my tap dancing skills. Although I'm wearing tennis shoes and I've never practiced this before, it goes pretty well. Except then one of my relatives notices my efforts, smirks lightheartedly, and shows me how it's done. Her shoes are much better than mine for the purpose, and I recognize that I've been put in my place.

Another cousin, a boy of about eleven years, goes over to the nearby piano to play something. But by now, the passersby in the mall have noticed our little show, and they all flock around the piano, expecting great entertainment. To give him a little breathing room, some of us come over to the piano and shoo the other people a bit farther back. His dad sits down with him and they start playing a piece together. Mostly it's just the little boy, but the dad sometimes has to play chords in the high register because the boy's arms aren't long enough to reach that far. In the middle of the performance, a stranger who knows the piece comes up and starts pointing out mistakes in the boy's version, interrupting the father. How annoying.

Grandparents' House

I'm hanging out in my grandparents' house when Mom tells me to go fetch Grandma. I do, and when I come back I find out that Mom is going soon, leaving me to stay here for the night. Just me in the house with my grandparents? I'm uncomfortable with this prospect.

Dramatic Entrance

I'm at a ballroom dance behind a glass wall from the main dance floor. I decide to mischievously break the glass, but I'm not sure exactly the best way to do it. I try it multiple ways, rewinding the scene every time to play it over again.

Frags:

• I'm singing an improvised melody, trying to incorporate some fast scales as a unifying motive. One of the scales works really well, ending up on the right note at just the right time. But the next one is rather less smooth, and I stop my improvisation with a rueful grin and an apology to my listeners.
• A man suddenly stops talking to do a strange pose: some kind of contorted lunge. While posing, he's a naked woman.

Frags:

• Java coding
• chamber music

Frags:

• "Stonehenge giant"
• "high computing power"
• "abyss"
• "Rite of Spring"

[I haven't been updating on schedule because it's finals week. Predictably, after so much time, I have no recollection of any of these dreams.]

Mom's Army

My mom is an evil wizard. We would be able to deal with that, but apparently she is somehow using her powers to give similar powers to other people as well. I discover this when I overhear some men talking about how they're on their way to a ceremony gain those powers and join her army. They say that she's planning to convert one percent of the world's population, then stop, allowing them to rule over the rest of humanity. This is bad news for me and the rest of my family.

Cruelty to Animals

A woman from the housing system has taken my family's dog for a walk while we're on a camping trip. While most everyone else is distracted, I see the woman use the shock collar to zap the dog for absolutely no reason. This makes me very angry, and I immediately report the event to my dad.

Frags:

• bugs being scary
• "fly -- over [illegible] northern realms"
• orchestra audition

Camera Project (7:06)

My sister needs to borrow my camera ASAP for a class project which I assume is due this morning. I give it to her somehow and head to my own class, Discrete Math. On the way I get a text from Mom saying that my sister has gotten really depressed about this project, since now she can't get the pictures off of the camera. I feel stupid for not realizing that she would need the CD to install the camera's driver onto her computer. I'm not even sure where that CD is, nowadays. I might have packed it in one of those boxes I've been meaning to send home. It'll take a while to find it for her. But that's actually okay, I suddenly realize, because I don't have class this morning--it's Monday, and Discrete Math is on Tuesdays. Today I don't have class until the afternoon. Only, maybe the project was already due, in which case I can do nothing to help. On the off chance it will do some good, I head back towards my dorm.

By means of a cutscene [or something], I see that Dad's given my sister a call, to say in no uncertain terms that he is totally unsympathetic to her plight. I also see that my sister is standing in a grassy lawn, crying, waiting for her boyfriend to come with roses and make her feel better. I think that's a bit of an immature thing to use a boyfriend for.

Old Folk's Home

I'm about to walk away from the building when I decide, regretfully, that I might as well go back there to practice viola. I don't like that building. That one weird professor lives in it, and it's basically an old folk's home. I turn around and walk back, noticing that there are a lot of string quartets and small bands rehearsing on the sidewalk, all in a row. Huh.

Inside, I wander around the building for a while. There is a shallow spiral staircase to the second floor. I feel old myself as I climb them, since my recent sickness has left me lethargic enough that I have to put both feet on each step. This frustrates me, so I decide to challenge myself and try the other staircase: a much steeper one going up the middle of the spiral staircase, with golden steps that are individually suspended on ropes from the ceiling. It turns out to be very hard, since there's nothing to stop the steps from swinging back and forth like so many swings. I have to grab a rope to prevent myself from falling off. One of the women working at desks on the second floor notices my plight and demonstrates proper use of the staircase. She has no trouble walking all the way down. But there's not really a trick to it; you just have to be very coordinated. I can't believe anyone thought that this staircase was a good idea. It seems dangerous. In describing this staircase, later, I call it a "Margo Walk."

Back on the first floor, I meet a nice old woman and her friend. As a test, the woman has us alternate numbers, counting to ten in German. It gets off to a slow start, because I was confused by her accent and I expected she was going to ask for Korean. Then I ask her how to say "forty" in German, because I only know twenty and thirty. [IRL: I didn't even know "thirty"; I was confusing it with "thirteen."] She seems confused, thinking that I should have asked how to say "forty-four," I guess because it's more fun to say. It's an interesting approach to linguistics, I suppose. She has to think a long time about "forty." Has she been speaking English for so long that she forgot her native language?

Then it's time for lunch, and as a group we set off for the dining room. I wonder if the'll want me to sit next to them. I decide not to risk being unwelcome, and I sit at the end of the table instead. Then I notice that somehow my place doesn't have a plate with food, while almost everyone else's does. I decide I'll just be patient, but in the meantime I'm worried that some of the people here will start fussing over me, thinking that my not having a plate is a dreadful tragedy, or something. I look around the table at the old faces around me, trying to reconcile myself to the idea of old age. I guess for the most part they're good-looking, in their own ways.

[I think I came back to this lunchroom on various other occasions. I began to feel a bit like a freeloader for eating lunch here almost every day, but on the other hand I would feel rude abandoning everyone just before the meal. And the food was pretty good.]

Are We Watching Porn?

Spoiler for sexual content:

I'm in the basement with a group of kids my age. There are about a dozen TVs down here, all showing similar videos. At first, the content is pretty innocuous. But there's this one video with two women. Somehow their clothes start disappearing, and somehow what they're doing is stimulating to one of the women. After a minute she gasps and says, "That was SO GOOD!" At this point, I'm a little confused and uncomfortable (and aroused); I thought these videos were about something else. Everyone else seems confused too; another guy asks, "Are we watching porn?" In response, a few people laugh. By now, everyone in all of the videos is naked.

Lucid?

[I remember that I was lucid at some point in the night. I was looking at a natural landscape and appreciating the detail. Then I tried to look upwards, and the lights dimmed and I lost all visuals.]

Stamitz Viola Concerto (9:23)

I'm talking to someone in the entrance hall of an old-ish building. I hear a viola behind me, and suddenly I recognize the music as the theme from the first movement of the Stamitz viola concerto. Sweet! I look around at the player, who turns out to be a forty-odd, balding man. I notice that he's playing the accompaniment parts as well, using double stops. For that reason, he's playing well under tempo. Also, sometimes he has to break a long solo note into repeated shorter notes, since the accompaniment underneath is changing. Wow, this guy's good. I feel very inept in comparison.

Ritual of the Children

I'm sitting in a common room when a girl comes in from outside. She starts talking to some friends of hers, telling them about a meeting she just attended with a famous person, who actually just sent out a tweet about the meeting that involved a play on words on the girl's name. She's pretty happy about this.

Later, I come back into the common room. The girl's already there. I sit next to her and try to start up a conversation. We talk about her name. Turns out her name is Sadie Hawkins, which is also the name of a type of school dance. I'm surprised I didn't make this connection the first time I heard it. I suppose that must be because I heard it in the context of a play on words. I try to explain this to her, but my explanation is something along the lines of, "Oh, I guess that makes sense, because . . . you know, it was . . . right?" Immediately afterward, I feel embarrassed for being so terribly awful at communication. I think I was afraid to explain it directly, because that would mean admitting that I eavesdropped on her conversation.

Then a bunch of ten-year-old kids come into the room and start doing a ritual. Then it's time for lunch, but we have time to shower first, if we want. I do want to, so I try to head down the hallway to the bathroom. But the entrance is like two feet too short for my head. I suppose this hallway must be reserved for the ten-year-olds. They have their own hallway? This is weird. Whatever. I go down the hallway to the left, which takes me to the bathroom.

It's dark in here, and crowded. I open the first door that I come to, but it's a toilet stall, not a shower. I keep looking for a shower, but instead I come upon a row of turnstiles in the right wall. The kids are lined up behind them, entering one at a time. If this is their entrance, then I probably went past the showers. And I'd better find one soon, because it will be even more crowded here before long.

Tropical Island

[I am awake at the beginning of this dream.]

I know that it is almost time to wake up, but I decide to see if I can fall asleep into a dream landscape of my choosing. [Sort of like a WILD, I guess, but I didn't use that terminology at the time.] I decide that I will attempt to enter the dream quickly by visualizing myself falling from a great height. I picture a field of rolling plains, and in the distance there is a tall group of rocks with almost vertical sides. I am at the top of those rocks, I decide. The view starts to zoom in on the rocks. I still feel like I'm just picturing this in my head, not dreaming it, which frustrates me. Eventually I zoom in on myself, and then I fall backwards off of the cliff. [I can't remember the details of the event.]

I've landed on a beach, in the surf, though it takes a few moments for me to get my bearings. Somehow this is not what I wanted to happen, but a voice tells me that I should be feeling very comfortable right now (seeing as how this is a tropical island), so I should try to enjoy myself. I wade into the water, but almost immediately I notice something floating in the water near me that looks like dog poop. Eww. I try to wade away from it, but a trick of the current seems to make it follow me. Once, I think I've gotten away from it, only to look again a moment later and find that it's back. Then I notice that there's a current under the surface that's making a lot of stuff collide with my legs on its way past me. Seaweed, perhaps. In any case, it's gross. This is not fun.

Wing Women (6:30)

A group of girls is talking to me in a side room. At the end of the conversation, they form a semicircle around one girl in the middle and ask me a question: something about adding up all of their ages and dividing by five. I realize that what they're really doing is trying to tell me that the girl in the middle is really cute and I should really consider dating her, because it would make her happy. Reflexively, I smile in response to the friendly gesture, and I actually think my smile turns out to be a nice one. Then the other girls go back to the main room, leaving me with the cute girl.

Despite being pretty sure of what I was just told, I'm still nervous about asking her on a date. We exchange a few awkward half-glances and half-sentences, then she asks me if I want to go to the parking lot. It will be quieter out there, so that's probably a good idea. We go back to the main room and find some friends trying to arrange rides home. One of them, a first-year from my college, has a small four-seater. Someone goes off to find her so we can ask her for a ride. Meanwhile, I realize that it's raining out here. I stack my belongings into a pile to protect them from the water. Another guy from my college, in the year above me, shows up. He's a pretty big guy, so he might not fit into the car with the rest of us, but I figure I should ask if he can come anyway. While we're waiting for the car's owner to arrive, I mention something about the rain, and the guy points out that I have a sports jacket in my pile of stuff, so I should just wear it, 'cuz that's what it's for. I suppose I can understand his frustration, because formal jackets are used nowadays only for fashion, not for utility.

The car's owner shows up, and I ask her if the guy can fit in the car with everyone. "He really can't," she responds. "I mean, look." The other passengers are loading in their musical instruments, including a cello and a double bass. They're taking up a lot of room already. I slide in my viola case underneath the others, then look around at all the passengers we're trying to squeeze in. I think we might all be able to fit.

Morning Dash (6:30)

I've invited a guy over to my house to work on a homework project. When we sit down at a table to work, I start asking him to help me fix some parts of my personal appearance, like my eyebrows and my hair. He gets angry and leaves.

Mom asks me to help her pack lunches for my sisters. I consider it for a moment, but then I decide that I have too much work to do this morning to help her with that. I tell her as much.

Later, I'm mostly packed to leave to catch the bus. Then my middle sister comes into the kitchen and starts talking about something interesting. A few minutes later, I look at the time and let out a yelp. I ask Mom if she thinks I can still make it to the bus on time, and she says she thinks so. I run out the back door and down the hill. When I look over my shoulder, I see the bus on a road behind me. It'll be going around the hill, so I have a bit of time before it reaches the stop, but I have to run as fast as I can. On the way, I get a little confused about where the bus stop is. I'm running along an unkempt path through the grass, with only two parallel lines of dirt to indicate that vehicles come through here. Then my sisters come running in from a side path. "That's the path Mom always uses," I call out to them, laughing. Then we find the bus stop. The bus is waiting for us.

Improv Singing

I'm in a music class. As a warm up exercise to break the ice at the first class, the instructor has us walk around an outdoor path one at a time, improvising a song. Topics of the song can be stuff about ourselves, expectations for the class, or other similar things, and we should try to make the words rhyme. The path is about a quarter mile long, but it only takes about a minute to stroll around it. I'm one of the first people to go. I'm pretty proud of how my song turned out. The tune was interesting and I managed a few good rhymes, although I'm not sure I got any particular point across with the words--the organization suffered somewhat from the rhyming.

Extra Concerts

Somebody's been adding extra concerts to the program. It's almost concert night already, and we haven't known about the concerts long enough to prepare adequately. The conductor advises us, in lieu of getting the notes right, that we focus just on the rhythms. She sends me and another musician out into the hallway to find a room to do some last-minute practicing. The hallway's crowded, so the other girl pulls me into a practice room. It's small, and there are no windows, so I find myself wondering if she plans to make out with me--though I realize maybe that's wishful thinking.

Even though I'm not a singer, I've been given a part to sing. But there's no music on the page; it's just the words. How am I supposed to learn the song if I haven't been told what the notes are? I try to look around for someone who looks like she knows what she's doing.

Now I'm acting in a demonstration of some kind. I have to improvise my choreography on the spot. It's kind of fun, though, because I have one of those wide brooms. I've always wanted to dance around with a broom. I'm in a department store, and I do some flips over clothing racks. Then it occurs to me that I could pretend to be Harry Potter and fly around on the broom, so I accelerate down an aisle and come crashing into the floor. I think it works pretty well as a stunt. Afterward, Mom tells me that she counted at least nine cool moves in my choreography, which is gratifying. Also, she says she saw one of our neighbors in the audience; maybe I should find him to chat.

New Student (6:56)

Natalie Tran is in my math class. It's a little bit surreal, because she's trying to pretend like nobody knows who she is. And maybe nobody does except me. During a class presentation, she tells us about a video she made that's relevant to the topic, and we should watch it sometime if we want to. Maybe she is after more subscribers after all.

Frags:

• heard "The Open Prairie" theme from Copland's "Billy the Kid" suite; told someone near me how good I think it is
• watching a documentary on character development in TV shows; one particular show they point out as a good example
• choosing a rehearsal order for our string quartet
• my two youngest sisters are being noisy while I try to fall asleep in the next room

It's Your Destiny (6:58)

A red-haired anime girl repeatedly walks up to my character and hands him a note. Half the time, she folds it into a paper airplane and blows it at him like she's blowing a kiss. The other half is a similar animation that also involves her blowing something at him. It's obvious that only these two animations were made, and they alternate randomly for variety. In both, after she delivers the note, she uses a pink rod about the size of a penis, which turns into an umbrella, and she floats away.

Some girls I know who have played the game before tell me that no matter how you play it, your character ends up with that girl. It has something to do with your destiny. I'm resistant to this idea, but there's clearly a different girl following me around in the game to enforce my destiny. The next time I see her approach, I get ready to do battle. I'm not exactly excited at the concept. I have a premonition that this battle will involve throwing fireballs, though, so at the least it will give me inspiration for lucid dream control, when I ever have one again. [D'oh!]

Indeed, one or two golf-ball sized fireballs are thrown. We also try setting traps on various pieces of furniture, but I'm not sure exactly how to set them off. Anyway, this girl is herself not an expert at this kind of fighting, so I'm not completely flattened. Some people my age are standing in a nearby driveway (it's dusk), which complicates things, because I think we're supposed to keep our abilities a secret. As I'm looking around, I notice an uncanny coincidence: of the three groups of people standing nearby, all are holding or manipulating a car tailgate/rear bumper, and our spells start affecting all three bumpers at once. It's such a strange coincidence that I start to wonder whether maybe destiny has something to do with it.

There's a man walking around the bar, singing enthusiastically along with the background music (which is Copeland's Hoedown). Our battle ends at the same time as the music.

Gingerly (6:58)

My family is walking into a building through a room with a lot of dog poop in it. Fortunately, there's a clear path around the side. Unfortunately, my mom trips and falls into the dirty part, then rolls through the dirty part before coming to a stop. That last part was totally unnecessary. She could have stopped herself somehow. My sisters are making loud, disgusted noises.

On the way out, I consider going around the other way, but it turns out that there are a ton of cobwebs between the car and the wall of the garage. Not worth it. So I go ahead of the group back around the original way so that I can open the door. We're talking about how this was just a routine checkup for our dog, but last year's checkup was routine and it led to discovering an illness which she hasn't recovered from to this day. So we're hoping for good news, but we're worried. We're also trying to coordinate times and places, because there's something I need to go to on my own, and someone else will have to pick me up.

Burnt Sugar Cookies (6:58)

Last night, someone made SO MANY sugar cookies. Dad shows me the box. They're all a little burnt, so they're brown rather than beige. They're going to be used as rewards. Dad also shows me the container which is supposedly full of grease from all the cleaning that had to be done afterward.

We try talking to my middle sister about something stupid she's doing. Mom's been trying to convince her to stop, but she isn't listening. I decide to pipe up and try to calm things down. I admit to her that I don't know as many of the details of the situation as Mom does, but I still agree with Mom's assessment that she should stop. I try to give some reasons, but I'm not sure that she listens.

Later, we're sitting around the dinner table. Dad tells everyone about how I've solved some of my professor's "Challenge Problems." I hadn't been planning on bringing it up, because that would be bragging. But now everyone's looking at me expectantly, so I say yes, I solved two of them. "Both of which I've already seen from other sources," I add. My eldest sister says encouragingly that there's no problem with that; it's all about "unifying the notation." I nod. I'd never thought of it that way before.

Springtime Traditions (6:58)

Spoiler for Springtime Traditions:

There's a video choreographed to "Rite of Spring." Right now, we're at the frenzied section towards the end of "Mock Abduction." Perhaps unsurprisingly, the accompanying video shows three couples lying parallel to each other, having sex. The video cuts are all over the place. I have a feeling I know what's coming. Indeed, on each of the last chords before "Spring Rounds," everyone convulses together. A helpful white label appears on screen, too, saying, "orgasm." I wake up messily.

Frags:

• Someone asks me my year in school, so I hold up three fingers. "Fourth?" they ask. I suppose the little short wall between us might have gotten in the way, so I raise my hand higher and say, "Ah, no, third," and they say, "Ah, of course." I wonder if my pinky wasn't folded over far enough the first time.
• There's a free bottle of alcohol lying around, so I grab it. Reading the label, I see that it's apparently bourbon. Excellent; I haven't tried that kind yet. [IRL I have this thing where I kind of want to try all the different kinds of alcohol, and then maybe never drink again after that. Who knows.] I put the bottle in my backpack. I still feel weird doing things like that; I feel like it should be illegal for me to possess alcohol. But it's not, anymore.
• I witness an awesome piece of scenery, and I try to impress it on my memory. It might have involved clouds.

You get what you pay for (7:08)

A couple of my cousins are in town, and Mom is driving all of us plus my youngest sister to a class. My sister and I aren't in the class, so we're just coming along for the ride before Mom drives us somewhere else. But when the class starts, to my surprise, Mom starts lecturing. It's a class about conducting an orchestra. Quietly, I remark to my sister that it seems like we'll have to stay for the whole class. She looks outraged.

I decide to open my brand-new conducting baton. For some reason, it's hard to see from the outside what the baton will look like. When I tear open the plastic-and-cardboard packaging, I discover that it's some sort of assembly with a handle and four identical attachments that look like big hexagonal construction nuts. The handle emits a broad-angle red laser, which you can focus to a narrower beam by adding one or more of the nuts (which are apparently lenses).

After testing this out, I'm angry. I just read somewhere that conducting batons work by blocking the light from objects behind the baton, so you can see it. But this baton just emits light of its own, and there's no way it's effective. I'm mad about what I got, as I'll tell anyone who will listen. Honestly, instead of all that fancy laser stuff, it would have been even cheaper to make a typical white plastic dowel, or whatever. Why couldn't they have done that? Mom stops her lecture to come down and see what's bothering me. I realize that I only paid six or seven dollars for this baton, which is really cheap, so I shouldn't expect good quality. You get what you pay for, I suppose.

Recreational Vandalism (7:08)

While riding the subway with a friend, I happen to have a couple of baby carrots. I wonder if they're strong enough that if I stuck them into the window, it would open and close a few times and break off entirely (sort of like jamming a gear with a wrench). Even before I say so out loud, my friend suggests we have fun and vandalize the train. Well, okay. So I do the thing with the carrots, and my friend does something similar about six feet away, and it turns out to be really effective. Half the side of the train on our side breaks off, exposing us and the rest of the passengers to the wind. The train pulls up to the next station, and I try to act nonchalant as I get off, despite the fact that the car around me is completely destroyed.

Of course, there is an investigation. My sister is very angry with us for having done what we did, so she helps the investigation assemble evidence against us. Once, I come across a big pile of evidence on the floor, and I wonder what would happen if I just took some of it. I'd probably get in trouble for obstructing justice, though, so I leave it. When the day of our interrogation comes, my friend and I try to be extremely friendly so the investigator will be on our side.

Frags:

• Two of my cousins have come to visit. I have a sort of friendly crush on one of them.

Someone Else's Dream (6:29)

There's something strange and kind of scary going on. One at a time, a couple of my friends and I have been drawn into this dream scenario. The rule is that the last person to arrive is in control of the dream, even if they don't know that they're dreaming or don't have good dream control. It's scary, because that person could unknowingly force you to do very dangerous things. I'm discussing the situation with my friends when suddenly a new person enters the dream, a stranger to all of us. It looks like a small four-footed creature with wings. We're worried, but then someone points out that the new entity seems very attuned to their mental state--they've already realized they're dreaming, and they're trying to escape. Indeed, the creature is energetically bouncing up and down. After a few moments, it disappears, leaving the previous dreamer in control of the scenario.

Spider Cleaning (8:06)

I'm in the basement of my house when a brusque girl comes walking up to me. She's been sent to clean out the spiders. I hadn't realized there were any spiders, and I say so. In response, she points at the ceiling of the bathroom. There's a sort of shelf made of cobwebs, with a couple big spiders on top and another clinging to the bottom. Oh. Wow, that's actually kind of scary. Then the girl starts swatting at the web with a broom, and the spiders fall to the ground and start crawling everywhere. Naturally, this makes me jump around a lot, and I'm impressed by how the girl seems totally unfazed.

Conference (8:06)

My partner and I are sitting down to have a civil conversation with the villains we've been tracking down. We accomplished this civility by trading parts of the skin from our face. So one guy has darkly tanned skin above his upper lip, and paler skin on his jaw and chin. The other guy has mostly dark skin, except that his lips and a patch of skin around them are lighter. (There are no scar lines at all, so it's not grotesque; it's just weird seeing such stark contrast in skin tone.)

Out With a Bang (8:06)

It's been a long story, and it's drawing to a close with the sole performer remaining on stage dancing to an upbeat musical number. With the final note of the music, she strikes a pose, and at that same instant, my alarm goes off and wakes me up.

[These dreams were not very fun. I felt kind of sad this morning.]

Pop Music vs. Classical Music

Listening to a pop song, I realize that the intro is taken from a piece of classical music. But they really messed up the phrase when they took it out of context and changed it like that. I'm frustrated. I try to find a family member, so I can explain to them what the problem is.

Malicious Shower

Trying to avoid notice becomes somewhat more difficult when my sister shows up in the restaurant. Mentally, I change my disguise to a short-haired Korean woman with a strong accent. I walk to my sister's table to ask her a question, and after we exchange a few sentences, I realize that she thinks I'm one of her new students just arrived for orientation. My disguise looks just like one of the students she just met.

The manager of the restaurant comes over to say that I can have as many samples as I desire before deciding what to eat. After he's gone, I decide to try some of what my sister's table ordered. The trouble is, it's still in a tin baking pan, and whenever we try to cut a bit off of it for me to eat, the pan just spins in circles. There's not enough friction. But eventually we hold it still long enough for me to cut halfway through and rip the piece the rest of the way off. It tastes good. I wind up for a high five with my sister; it's funny because we're both wearing oven mitts on our right hands. But afterwards, I worry if that might have blown my cover.

I wander around the restaurant and arrive at the conveyor belt that customers use to return used dishes. It's similar to the oversized baggage claim in that there are a limited number of slots. You have find an empty slot and try to slide your dishes into it as it rotates past you. A slightly awkward kid from my school is in line in front of me; I doubt he has the chops for this. Plus, the employee overseeing the conveyor belt points out that there's only one slot open. The kid tries to slide his tray at the slot, but he hesitated too much, and it hits the rubber divider. The overseer takes the tray and puts it in the next available slot, and then it's my turn. Fortunately, it looks like there are a lot more open slots, now. But it turns out that I miss, as well.

I have to go to the bathroom. I haven't seen one in this restaurant, so I walk through the big hallway connecting the restaurant to the other business in this building. The main room of the other business is very tall, and small circular tables dot the floor, spaced pretty far apart. It's a nice room, very open. There's a big window in one wall, and the others are painted in light colors. It's the second time I've visited this room; I was here once before my sister came into the restaurant. And yes, there is a bathroom!

I go inside, but when I go into the stall to pee, I'm doused from above with a lot of water. I try to get out of the shower of water, but then another one starts above my new location. It's like there are fire-extinguishing sprinklers all over the ceiling, with laser detection so that they start pouring whenever anyone stands under them. I mean, I wouldn't mind the shower, but I don't think I have any way to dry myself off. Oh, wait--there's a brown towel hanging from a hook just inside the stall. Good thing I thought to bring that. I go back into the stall and try to pee, but it's difficult. I have to hold up the toilet seat with one hand while standing pretty far back from the bowl and aiming my urine carefully.

When I wake up, no, I don't actually have to go to the bathroom.

Unsanitary

[Content warning: this one features poop.]

Spoiler for Unsanitary:

I have to go to the bathroom, so I start peeing in the front hall, naked. There's a place for me to do that, there, but there's no place to poop, so it's bad news when poop starts coming out, as well. I couldn't stop it because I had to finish peeing, first. Fortunately, it's pretty dry. Although I don't really want to, I don't have much choice, so I put my off hand under my butt and try to hold the poop there. I decide to go into the bathroom, since I suspect my sister is in the family room, and she probably doesn't want to see this. When I open the bathroom door, I'm taken aback by the mess. There's a house centipede on the floor, and also a trail of what looks like wet grass leading out of the bathtub. I wonder if it's marijuana--maybe my other sister was doing something in here. It would be just like her not to clean up after herself. But I'm just going to have to deal with the mess, because I'm in sort of an emergency situation.

Slushie Shop

Dad and I are on the way to an event I want to attend. It's an hours-long drive from my house. We're passing a slushie shop, and Dad asks me if I want anything. I don't, really, so I reply, "Only if you're really hungry." He stops anyway, so he probably only asked me because he wanted to visit the place himself.

Another day, we're going to the same event, and we stop at the same shop. This time, they're understaffed, so they tell us it will take half an hour for the slushie to be ready. It takes a moment for that to sink in. There's no way we have half an hour; we didn't build that much extra time into our schedule. My soccer game starts pretty soon. But we stay anyway. While we wait, we sit at a table with two employees of the shop. One of them gets to talking with my dad about the four districts of Denver. One of the districts is mentioned by name, and the male employee starts talking about a building in that district which is associated with the gay rights movement. He's in favor of it, and he's frustrated with people who are making trouble for the building. After he leaves, the female employee apologizes for him, saying that he doesn't understand that gays are degenerate people [or something to that effect]. I don't respond, since I don't want the situation to escalate, but I reflect upon the apparent fact that everyone against the gay agenda is just a homophobe.

Another day, we're going to the same event, but this time my mom is driving me. We stop at the same shop. My mom tries to pour the slushie from the machine herself, but it doesn't go too well. Worth a laugh, though.

Procrastination

As I'm driving in the right lane along city streets, something important falls out of the passenger side of the car. I really don't want to go back for it. It seems like that would be a huge hassle. On the other hand, I need that something when I get to my destination, so if I don't stop now, I'll just have to stop later, and that would be even more of a hassle. Reluctantly, I look for a place to pull off on the shoulder. I'm not going to turn the car around; I'll just park and walk back. The brakes don't work very quickly, so I miss the first spot I was aiming for, and I have to use the next one. It's right next to a residential driveway. I hope the owner doesn't mind.

Chocolate Graham Crackers

I'm lying in bed in the morning. There's a lot of cereal in the bed with me; my personal stash. But I'm leaving for college in four days, and I'm not sure I can finish all of the cereal in time. I decide to have cereal for breakfast. It's a mixture of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and chocolate graham crackers. Carefully, I dip each piece of cereal in milk using my right hand, then put the dipped piece into my left hand to hold. I'm still in bed, so eventually I'm going to have to carry all of this to the kitchen table.

Incentive

Students are given one piece of candy for each point they got on the last assignment. I got 20/20, which is nice. The students handing out the candy give me two packets of colorful chocolate spheres lined up in a line, then a few extra pieces of some different kind of candy. I'm confused, because I thought there were ten spheres in each packet, so I shouldn't have gotten any extra. But it turns out there are only about eight, so it works out.