Glieuaeiel's DJ

Some Salsa Dancing (5:53)

I'm messing with the wiring in my car so I can do a power cycle on it and fix something. Then I realize I've been doing a lot of extra work. [My dream journal says that around now I "park and check car" and "Mom strikes," but I don't know what this means.] Later, I'm with my sister and we're trying some salsa dancing. We manage some really cool flips and barrel rolls. I feel like I'm inventing an all-new kind of dance.

Basement

I find myself in a crawlspace with periodic rectangular holes in the floor, leading to staircases that descend into darkness. I'm trying to find a lighted staircase so that I can escape from here. Eventually I find one, but there are other problems. I become lucid somehow, and risk looking into the darkness. The dream fades palpably, and in desperation I try to turn it into a sex dream. I suppose it works, after a fashion (no visuals), but I wake up soon afterwards.

Takeover

A villainous man takes the whole building hostage. Most of us are penned up alone in small rooms, separated from each other, but we can see what's going on in the building by looking at the various TV screens on the walls. Against orders, a naked woman in one room talks to the man. Smirking, he pushes a button that blows up the room she was in. I'm scared that there will be gore all over the room when the smoke clears, but fortunately, there is not. Then there are some explosions along the outside walls of the compound, and I know that the outside resistance movement is trying to break in and depose the villain. I wish they wouldn't try--they have no realistic chance of winning. But I leave the room to try and help them somehow.

I meet up with someone on my team and we run into a problem. There are no nearby enemies, so we try to solve it in a few different ways. After the last attempt, I say, "It's no use, we tried this last year." (This enemy takeover is a yearly occurrence, one we are cursed with until we find a way to escape it.) Suddenly, a door opens above us and an enemy comes out. When we get a clear look at his face, we see that it's "The Law" (from Rocket Jump's VGHS). He smiles nastily.

Gunman

I'm browsing a mid-sized room in a supermarket. A gunman comes out of the hallway and starts shooting everyone. In the confusion, I fall over. I'm about to get up and run away when I realize that it's probably smarter to play dead. The gunman is just here to kill people; he's not going to waste bullets on dead bodies.

Later, I go into an office with cubicles. The gunman isn't shooting anyone any more, but he rules tyrannically over everyone in the office. We live in fear that at any time he'll come around the corner, start an apparently pleasant conversation with us, then kill someone for no reason other than a momentary desire to commit homicide. I talk to a woman who gives me some documents that I must carry somewhere. The mission is part of a resistance effort, and it is very risky. I admit to the woman that I'm scared.

On the way, the gunman (now a certain YouTube personality) falls in beside me, greeting me jovially. I am terrified of this man's whims, and he knows it--he exaggerates his unpredictability. I'm not sure how to make him go away; he seems determined to accompany me wherever I'm going. At one point, we engage in a rock-throwing battle (like the one in Braveheart).

No recall.

[The extra sleep during the past few nights wasn't improving my mood, so I decided to go the other direction and stay up late doing random Internet stuff instead. Believe it or not, I think this was actually a good decision. That, or I actually have a physical addiction to my YouTube subscriptions. . . . :-S ]

Secret Santa (5:37)

My RH calls me into her office to receive my assignment for our house's secret santa this year. I also overhear the person before me getting her assignment, which has something to do with a basketball team. Apparently she really hates this team, because she almost starts shouting at the RH in her annoyance at this assignment.

I go back outside, where there's a party going on. My secret santa assignment walks past with a group of her friends, and they drag me over to where people are dancing. I'm still no good at "party dancing," though, so I'm not sure what to do with myself. I just stand there awkwardly amid all the flailing arms. Then I notice some volunteers trying to get through the dance floor carrying trays of drinks. I try to move out of the way for them, but I know that very few other people will.

I notice that I'm not wearing any pants, just briefs and an extra-long T-shirt. Well, if no one's bothered by it, then I guess I won't bother to change. It's kind of fun going around like this.

Someone hands me a cup, telling me there's a really delicious new drink in it. I try it, and it's pretty good. Looking over at the bar, I see the bottle that it came out of. It's marked "5% alc/vol." Now I think back on it, the drink did taste like there was alcohol in it.

Green Soccer Ball

I'm walking along a hallway with a group of people, languidly dribbling a luminescent green soccer ball. The narration tells me that it is a ball of Nutella, and it belongs to one of the guys walking nearby, the leader of the group. We go into a big room with rows of shelves, and the rest of the group starts passing the ball among themselves, trying to keep the ball's owner from getting it back. But this isn't just friendly teasing, it's malicious. Round about this time, I know I'm dreaming, but I try just to focus on what's going on around me, so that I don't leave the dream. Once, the ball rolls up to a shelf near the ball's owner, but he's standing on the other side of the shelf. Using magic powers, he zaps the ball with a bolt of lightning, and it disappears and reappears next to him. Three people start running towards him to get the ball back, but he zaps them all simultaneously, and they fly backwards to the end of the room.

Then he turns to me. To him, I know, I'm with the other people. But somehow he's willing to give me more of a chance, maybe because I respect him. (By the way, I'm a girl right now.) He warns me that he's about to zap me. Then he shoots the bolt of lightning, and I conjure a shield in front of me, in the form of a fuzzy ball of white light. The shield absorbs the lightning. He tries again, and I block it again. I guess he's impressed, and we start a conversation. But the other guys in the room are all watching us. Suddenly grinning, the guy walks up to me and takes both of my hands in his, one in each. I'm confused until I realize that he means to teleport us somewhere more private. The destination is a camp of soldiers on the eastern edge of Skyrim.

Hank Dreams (9:11)

I'm in a museum, learning about Hank Green's approach to lucid dreaming. There are several different tiers to it, and Hank warns people against trying the most vivid version without lots of practice. Personally, I think he's just being jealous about his ability to do that version, but whatever. The tour group enters a small movie theater, where we'll watch a video that has something to do with the dangerous effects of the most vivid version, which Hank calls a "Hank Dream." The video starts with Hank lying in a bed, sleep-talking to Marilyn Monroe. Some of his friends are standing around the bed, of course, including the one videotaping the whole thing. It's all in black and white. After a minute, Hank says, "Marilyn, stop. Stop! I'm already married," and everyone in the movie theater laughs. Then Hank starts sleepwalking as though blind, groping around the room, trying to find someone. The people around the bed back up, and suddenly I realize what is about to happen. "Oh, fuck," I say, jumping out of my seat and trying to get away from the movie screen. Hank stumbles after me, presumably intending to do to me whatever he had been about to do to "Marilyn." Drawing on my tae kwon do, I assume a back stance with my hands in double shooto position, preparing to fend him off. John Green laughs and explains the rest of the story: "Eventually she [Hank] gets so mad that she poops at you and storms off, and you LOSE. Except you hit her enough that after a moment she goes like this:" From a kneeling position, he slowly widens his eyes and straightens his back in an expression of surprise, then falls over backwards, apparently unconscious. It's all very comedic.

Frags:

• '"who are you?" violin player' (7:05)

Breakfast with Nat

Natalie Tran has made a new video. As always, she begins by talking about how long it's been since she made a video. But this time, she's not really apologizing for it, she's just going over some of the funnier comments and video responses she's received about it. She even wrote a song with lyrics composed almost entirely of titles of one page of video responses.

It's early morning. I go downstairs to find something to eat. While I'm doing so, Nat comes into the room and shows me that the food she made is sitting in the microwave. She seems very insistent that I take some, so I do. She's standing rather close to me, so I wonder if she's hoping we'll start kissing. When I sort of start half-flirting with her, though, she doesn't seem to notice. Later her boyfriend comes in, which is disappointing.

At one point I get a close look at her face, and I realize it looks much more European and less Vietnamese than it used to. This is very strange and worrisome.

Downtown Hotel Chaos

My family's been living in a hotel, but now we're moving out. I'm trying to gather my stuff and change my clothes. But there doesn't seem to be a good place to change. So I get on a double decker bus, the upper story of which is just one big room with no one else in it. But I'm worried that someone will come in, or that someone outside will look through the giant windows in the sides of the bus. And the bus ride is much shorter than I expect, so before I know it, a friend of mine is tugging my sleeve, saying that this is our stop. I have to get off again, without having accomplished anything.

I go back into the hotel and wander around for a little while, exploring.

Carnivorous Glider Rodents

My family is driving along the frontage road when we come upon a group of bicyclists. They're practicing a stunt where they bike forwards, then swing the bike perpendicular to its momentum so that it rolls sideways for a while. [IRL this is impossible due to friction, but I didn't realize this at the time.] Obviously they're paying no attention to other bikers since they're basically hoodlums, so when my parents try to pass one of them, he's not in control and he runs into one of them, and he crashes. My family continues on its way. I flip the bird over my shoulder on the off chance that the guy is looking in my direction. Instead, I hear the voice of a different guy I know saying hi. He sounds carefully unoffended, so I think he thinks I was giving /him/ the finger. Darn it.

There are some furry rodent-foxes falling from the sky one at a time. They have skin flaps like glider squirrels, and they just glide in from somewhere and fall on top of people and attack them. They don't seem very dangerous, but they seem annoying, so we have to try to kill them. I have a meat cleaver that I can try to throw like a battleaxe. We enter a ceilingless arena where one of the creatures has just landed on an awning. My dad starts calling out instructions for all awnings to be dropped flat, presumably so the creature has nowhere to perch. This is done, and the creature starts jumping up and down around the arena, bouncing fifty feet high. I'm looking for my shot, and I think I can take it at the bottom of this jump! But then I realize that the creature is coming down right in the middle of a big group of people, and if I miss I might kill someone. I hold my fire, but I watch with apprehension as the creature lands and dozens of people in the group take the opportunity to throw their meat cleavers. Six or seven people keel over due to missed shots; I don't know if they killed the thing or not.

New Digs (8:33)

I'm exploring an outdoor area in a game. There are shiny, giant river rocks buried in the dirt. One of them you can pick up and add to your inventory; the rocks are worth something. It surprises me that there are so many other rocks available--if they make it that easy to make money, inflation will skyrocket. I'm still contemplating the patch of ground when someone else comes by and tries to pick up another rock, a differently colored one. It doesn't work. I laugh and point out that the rock is much bigger than it looks. Together we brush off some of the dirt to see that it's far to big to pick up and add to your inventory. Ah, so that's how the game developers solved it.

Later, I brush off some more dirt, and two beer canisters come rolling out from where they were buried. These canisters are three or four feet long and about as wide around as a typical beer bottle. They must have been left behind by the previous campers. Well, they're ours now, and I'm sure we'll make good use of them.

Still later, I'm looking around the cabin with my new roommates. I remember the beer canisters and I go back to where I found them, in a corner of the room. I find two more canisters, and soon after, I find the original ones, as well. I distribute them to people around the house, then wonder whether it may have been a mistake to break out the alcohol so soon. Another girl is giving me a worried look that says she's wondering the same thing, so I try to reassure her (and myself) that it'll be fine.

I declare to my friends that I believe I've "met the room." You see, I've been feeling stressed and out of sorts, and I think it's probably just from the change of circumstances to this new home. Now that I've had a look around it, I have a much clearer idea of where everything is, and hopefully I'll start feeling more comfortable. But as soon as I say so, I realize that I'm still not clear on a lot of the details. I take another look at the cabinets around the walls, opening them one at a time to see what's inside. Some of them might be wardrobes for my roommates, and I avoid those, because looking in there would be a bit rude. When I get to the kitchen, I'm surprised to find that the cabinet directly above the sink is not actually a cabinet at all. When you open the door, you just see a space between the two neighboring cabinets, and a little triangle where the roof comes together at an angle. Not very well-insulated, to be sure, but it's attractive in a rustic kind of way.

I take a look at our computer network. The operating system is basically just a UNIX shell with a blocky monospace font. Somehow I find myself in the directory of my onetime girlfriend (who's one of my new roommates), and I notice that she has folders named "SAIL," "Manchester," etc. [These are videos made by "Nanalew" on YouTube. Obviously I've never met her, but somehow my mind conflated her with my old girlfriend.] It's cool, somehow, seeing those directory names. It somehow invokes the idea of working hard to make something really cool.

I feel like I should get to work on my homework assignments soon. I know I have them, and it's not an overwhelming amount of work, but I've been chilling out and doing peripheral things for so long that I might be in trouble if I don't get started soon. I'm feeling a bit stressed, which makes me sad, because, of course, my current life goal is not to feel stressed. I go back into the main room and tell my old girlfriend about it. She sympathizes, and she recommends that I take a "two-thousand word nap."

"A what?" I ask. She explains that it's some bad advice that she read somewhere about what to do when you're stressed about homework. I suppose a two-thousand word nap must be between five and ten minutes, and the reason it's bad advice is because when you're up at four a.m. to finish a paper, if you go to sleep at all, you might not wake up again before morning.

While she's looking the other way, I contemplate how lucky it is that she's sort of back in my life again. I wonder if she'll be at all interested in cuddling when we're doing homework together, or what have you. I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that cuddling is better than not cuddling, but maybe she would want to avoid it because it would make it seem like we're dating again.

I go into another room of the house, where there's swing music playing. Nobody's there except one woman, who shows me a new move called the "Haymitch" [or something like that]. I have no idea if I'm doing it right, but it seems to involve standing shoulder-to-shoulder and pointing with your outside hands. I decide that's enough of that and take my leave to go to another part of the room. On a whim, I dance a bit by doing a hopping move for four beats in a row. Afterwards, I feel it went surprisingly smoothly. Maybe I would actually be good at swing dancing.

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

Grappling Hook

I'm playing a James Bond video game on multiplayer. On my end it's two-person splitscreen, but there are four players in the game altogether. The person on the lower screen suddenly stops, and I freeze as well because I was screen-looking. But we're nowhere near each other, so I start moving again, hoping that he didn't notice. He's currently in a skirmish with the other two players.

I enter a warehouse. There's a metal cabinet in the back corner that looks worth investigating. I walk up to it, and eureka! Among other useful items, there are a couple of bazookas. I take them, then screen-look again. Accidentally, I swear! But this time the lower screen corresponds to one of the other two players, and both of them are running up behind me. I try to turn around and get them with the bazooka, but my character is moving really slowly. "What am I, encumbered, or something?!" I say in frustration. I've never heard of encumbrance in James Bond games. But that must be what it is--there was too much big stuff in that cabinet. I get off one rocket, and then the others start firing rockets as well. Damn. I get to the bottom of the metal ramp leading to the cabinet; the other two people are standing there, too. The range is really too close to be using rocket launchers, but I shoot again, anyway. And I die. Grr.

I respawn on a lower level of the map, near a raised highway. I decide to try out my grappling hook. There's a target for it (a small beige circle with a sort of raised knob in the middle) on each of the lampposts near the highway. Using the grapple here is a shortcut from the lower level to the upper level, so I see why it would be useful. I shoot the hook at the target and the wire pulls me up, but that just leaves me hanging a few yards off to the side of the highway, swinging slightly back and forth. I try to pump my legs to get a large enough swing that I can jump onto the highway, but I can't get it large enough to be comfortable with the leap. I let myself back down. I try again, this time standing farther back from the light. I'm not going to give myself any time to swing back and forth and lose momentum--the moment I get high enough, I'm going to release the hook. Since the wire will be pulling me forward, I should have enough sideways momentum to reach the highway. It works!

Now I just need to figure out how to go _down_ using the hook. I go out on the balcony of the third floor of a building. It's dark out. There's a security guard in the parking lot below, locking up for the night. The grapple hook target is right on the railing for the balcony, so I attach the hook. I expect some kind of automatic animation showing me sliding down the line, but nothing happens. Well, I guess it's more realistic this way. Manually, I toss down the line. Some how the line attaches to something at a diagonal slope, so when I send my gear down, it slides out into the night like it's on a zipline. The security guard sees the gear going past and starts beating it up with a baseball bat. Shit, that gear's expensive! Hurriedly, I pull the gear and the zipline back up to the balcony. It only takes a couple of tugs. The guard peers in my direction, then suddenly points at me and starts shouting--and running towards my building. I'm not sure how he plans to get up here, until suddenly he shoots his own grappling hook at a target on the edge of the sloping terra-cotta roof that leads straight to my balcony. Uh oh. My only chance is to run past him while he's busy getting up here. I jump over the railing and onto the roof. It's hard to keep my footing as I run to the roof's edge, and I end up slipping over the side and landing on the ground with a painful thud. Okay, realistically, there's no way for me to escape from this. So I wake up.

Ziplines and Triangles (LUCID)

I'm hiding in the woods from the delegation of thirteen Aes Sedai who have come to take me away. Crouching beneath the bushes I listen to them walk nearer, I hope they will not find my hiding place. Wait, no, there are fifteen, not thirteen. That doesn't make sense; thirteen is the magic number. Oh, right--just five Aes Sedai, with ten wood nymphs to guide them through the trees. I look up from the book for a moment, thinking rather lecherously that at least I'll be able to imagine that the wood nymphs are topless green women, like in Shaiya.

My hiding place has become my bedroom on the ground floor of my family's house. I hear a knock on the door, and I know it's because the wizards have found me. They mean to take me away with them to train my magical powers in a distant school, but I don't want to go. They'll be polite about it, at least at first, so I open the door to find my youngest sister with one of her friends. They hand me a letter, which I'm sure comes from the people waiting outside. I take it, but then I flip off the girls (they don't react) and shut the door.

Later, I decide to go outside and look at the cars in which these people arrived. There's no one in sight as I walk down the driveway, but there are six or seven unfamiliar vehicles parked along the sides and along the road. Some look like they came from the early 20th century, and they're painted rather garishly with the names of the institutions to which they belong. I'm not sure how many of them belong to the wizards, and how many to other groups that happen to be in the same area.

When I return to the top of the driveway, I decide to drive in the Pathfinder. It's parked in such a way that it faces down the driveway, so I just hop in and drive it with my bare feet. I don't even have my driver license with me, which kind of bothers me, but this is rather fun. As I go down the driveway, I realize that it will be hard to turn around, so I brake and try to turn the car so that it goes between two of the big pines along our driveway. I slide sideways for a bit, but eventually I make it through and onto the lawn. I realize that I've never gone off-roading in the Pathfinder before, even though it's an SUV with a very off-road-y kind of name. It's fun, bumping along in the grass, but I have a bit of trouble getting the car back onto the driveway where it started. So I get out and walk the car, instead.

As I'm about to go back into the house, I see my mom in the garage. We talk about bikes for a moment. It looks like she's about to take something to the bottom of the driveway. It looks heavy. I ask if she wants help, but she declines. It must be about five in the morning; I wonder if she got any sleep at all. She works too hard. But without asking her a second time, I just go back into the house.

When I reach my bedroom on the top floor, suddenly I wonder if this was all a dream. I do a nose RC. It works! My bedroom is very dark. I decide to try verbal commands. "LIGHT!" I shout. "MORE LIGHT!" The lighting changes a bit, but it's not really any better. There are probably people sleeping nearby, but since it's a dream, that doesn't matter. "WAKE UP, EVERYBODY! THIS IS A LUCID DREAM!" My vision's gone wonky, like there's another image overlaying my bedroom. It looks like a curvy triangle, and I suspect it's the shape my covers are making in front of my face. Not good. Desperately, I try the light switch. Of course, it does nothing. I decide to abandon the bedroom and try my luck outside. I dash down the hall and into my parents' bedroom. As I run to their balcony, I shout some bullshit statistic, like, "Did you know that 80% of socks are hung on the sixth and seventh clotheslines?" Then I grab one of the socks that's hanging over a thick cable slanting down from the outside of the house, and I slide down the cable like it's a zipline, knocking the other pairs of socks willy-nilly to the ground.

I land in a large city plaza full of trees. Miraculously, the curvy triangle has vanished. It's a beautiful day, and there are a few people walking around. I decide to try speed-running down the sidewalk. I turn to my right, and I manage to get some speed, going perhaps twice as fast as I'd be able to sprint while awake. As I approach a heavyset guy my age going the other direction, I notice that he's looking straight at me. I slow down for a closer look. He's smiling, and he's got one hand held out like he's pointing a pistol at me. Well, that's weird, but maybe that's just how DCs say "hi" to people. I laugh and smile back, jokingly asking what he would have done if it turned out he actually shot me by accident. Then I realize that it wasn't a very funny joke. Oops. I elect just to walk away from that one.

The sidewalk ends at a highway where there are a lot of people standing around. Another guy my age tries to get me to play catch with a remote-control helicopter. Agreeably, I climb up onto a horizontal metal pole and get set to grab it. But at the last minute I chicken out. Those blades look dangerous. A few moments later, I [falsely] wake up.

I keep my eyes tightly shut. I might as well try to chain into another LD. I lie still, trying to picture the scene I just left. Then I wonder whether my theory was correct, the one about the blankets making that curvy triangle, and I decide it's worth it to open my eyes and check. Yep, there's that triangle. But wait, before I draw any conclusions, I should make sure I'm actually awake. I sit up and do a nose RC. Oh.

I decide to try using the makeshift zipline again, so I run through my parents' room and slide down. It's not as spontaneous, though, and everything outside seems to be darker and more indistinct. Moments later, I [falsely] wake up again. I lie underneath the covers with my eyes open, not sure what to do. Suddenly I notice the window. It's raining, and it looks like there's a sinister figure standing just outside, staring at me. I sit up in terror. Turns out it was just a tree and a strange trick of the light. I do an RC to find out that I'm STILL dreaming. I get out of bed and decide to try snapping flames again. Just one snap, and it doesn't work. I start trying to picture candle flames in my head, but suddenly I get very frustrated with the whole situation and I deliberately wake myself up.

[I forgot to check whether my covers in waking life were actually making a curvy triangle. I suspect they were not. Also, during the original LD in my bedroom, I said something clever involving the phrase "What the frack." Soon after, I tried to review the moment in my head so that I'd remember it when I woke up. But apparently it didn't work.]

Alex Day's Penis

Spoiler for Alex Day's Penis:

I've been watching Alex Day's newest video. It's almost over. As a grand finale, he apparently takes off his pants (though you can't see for sure, because only the top half of his body is in the shot). I feel like rolling my eyes. But then suddenly he starts messing with the camera, and there are a few frames in the resulting jumble of camera angles where I think you might actually be able to see his penis. It looks like he has an erection. This is over the top, even for him; I'm astonished that he got permission from YouTube to do something like this. There's one shot where he has an empty can of energy drink with the bottom cut out; he's holding it over the top of his penis, I guess to imply that it's longer than it is. I notice that although his penis is quite long, it's rather spindly as well. Heh. The whole time, of course, he's grinning like a maniac. I feel like I should finish what I started and watch this video to the end, but I don't like it. I keep looking at the play bar to see how much time is left.

Study Abroad

I'm visiting an old high school acquaintance while she's studying abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. Feeling brave, I decide to try talking to her in Spanish. She responds in kind, but she talks so fast that I can't really understand her. I do understand that she asks me how much Spanish I've done while in college. Slowly, I manage to formulate a response, telling her that I've studied a bit on my own but she's clearly better than I am, now.

Shootout

[This isn't really a legitimate dream, because it happened this morning when I was half awake and feeling too comfortable to get out of bed. But I definitely wasn't fully awake, and I think it's interesting, anyway.]

Not wanting to get out of bed, I'm entertaining myself by imagining various soccer plays that involve me scoring a goal. The first one is too slow, because I shot with the side of my foot. Ruefully, I remind myself that in order to get any speed, you have to have your knee over the ball and kick with the laces. Then I have more success. I bet the coach is glad about putting me in as forward. Our offense was hurting, before. I'm still frustrated with some of my fellow forwards. Then, one time at the moment when I take the shot, my actual, waking-life right leg jerks as though it's doing the kicking. Surprised, I wake up fully.

Ceiling Parade (LUCID)

With a cheer, the students start walking. It's time for the "Walk the World" parade, which is what it sounds like, except most of the time you're walking on the ceiling. First, the group starts walking up a side wall in order to get to the ceiling. I'm worried about this, since I'm not sure my dream control is strong enough to defy gravity in this way. I get to the ceiling, but I'm at the very back of the parade, and I keep falling behind as we start to walk through the halls of the building. Even though I'm trying to speed walk, I'm still not fast enough. But then, somehow I change my mental approach to the situation. I'd been concentrating too much on how hard it is to walk on the ceiling, when I should really try to take it for granted and enjoy the experience. So I do, and suddenly I'm easily able to keep pace with everyone else. I even jog for a bit and pass a few of them. I hope this isn't a really formal parade where I'm supposed to keep my place in line; if it is, they'll probably be mad at me.

Soon, we're no longer a single trail of people. There are students running every which way all over the building. I notice there are stairs all over the place, which I realize doesn't make sense. No architect would design a building with stairs on the ceiling. But there's not much I can do about it, since I'd have a hard time imagining what a ceiling does look like from the perspective of someone standing on it. There are limits to imagination. Anyway, I see a grinning student cross an intersection in front of me, and I notice he's walking backwards. That looks like fun! So I get in front of/behind him and do the same thing for a while.

Sometimes I'll take a turn and end up in a hallway with no other students. I wonder if I should be worried about this, but I decide not to be. On one of these occasions, I find myself in a concrete stairwell, and I decide it's time to abandon this parade. I'll challenge myself by trying to find my way back to my dorm room. I feel a bit uncomfortable about not doing any of my declared dream goals, such as setting my fingers on fire by snapping, but I think getting back to my room is more important. So, let's see, where am I? The sign next to the door up there says "6", but that's upside down, so I must be near the ninth floor. And my room's on the fifth floor, so I have to go down four flights--which will actually seem like going up four flights, since I'm upside down. Okay. Let's get going.

I go around twice without incident (though I feel a bit disoriented), but the next landing is unusually dark. This is the perfect place to try that finger flame thing! I stand still and snap my fingers. Nothing happens except the lights flicker a bit at the edge of my vision. I try it a few more times, reminding myself that this is a dream and I can do anything I want to do. Still, nothing happens. I wonder if it would be helpful to have a small flame from another source to use as inspiration. Where could I get a flame like that? I try shaking my hand to joggle a couple flames loose, but it doesn't work. I try striking my right index finger on my left arm like it's a match (I'm proud of thinking of that), but it doesn't work either. By this time, there are a couple other students on the landing with me. My vision's also gone funny, like there's a second image overlayed atop the first. I try not to pay attention to it, because I think it means I'm waking up. I snap my fingers a few more times to show the other students what I've been trying to do. This time, I can feel a sort of heat and crackling in the air, but there's still no visible flame. Still, I'm a bit excited, and I notice my vision's cleared up again. I guess that small success pulled me back into the dream. But I don't have much time. Suddenly I realize it might be a good strategy to visualize success--try to imagine what it would look like to snap and have flame appear at your fingertips. Imagine how it would flicker, what effect the light would have on the surrounding environment. I have a good feeling about this strategy, but before I can test it, I wake up.

[I've no idea when or how I became lucid in that dream. Also, I've never lived on the fifth floor.]

Diet

My mom served me way too much food. I'm on a diet, but I guess she doesn't know that, so it's not her fault. Still, I eat only a bit of one casserole, then I get up and leave without explanation. Later, I realize I should have stored my leftovers in the fridge instead of making more work for Mom, but it's probably too late by now.

Platformer

I'm playing a platform game with four player characters. One of them is Mario. I had hoped that the other three characters would have some A.I. to use while I'm playing the fourth, but apparently not. I have to switch between the characters myself, and bring them all individually through each level. You can really sense the evil of the enemies at the end of the level. I get Mario through, but I die when I try to use the next character, because I don't know its attacks very well. I try various button combinations similar to the ones in Smash Bros. and the character does a lot of different animations, but I have no idea what these attacks actually do. I try the level again, and I die again. The people watching laugh and ask me why I'm playing such a weak character. Later, I notice that I've been reset to the beginning of the level, and all four characters are back at the start. Apparently this game has a very low tolerance for dying.

Later, I'm watching Hank and company play the game on hankgames. It's a "highlights" video with a strange title. As the video plays, I come to understand that the unusual word from the title means "dying and then having your dead body killed again a few times." It's funny because it's like adding insult to injury. It happens a lot in this game.

Frags:

• inside with a few friends, asking if any of them has a lighter I can borrow

Car Argument (LUCID)

From the back seat of the car, I'm having a minor argument with my parents. The situation seems a little ridiculous to me, and when my mom leans over to reveal completely gray hair done in a long braid, I'm pretty certain I'm dreaming. After a nose RC, I'm sure of it. Thank goodness I don't have to deal with this argument any more. But as I try to figure out how to get out of here and start working on my dream goals, I realize that I'm waking up. The interior of the car seems to fade into the view of my bedroom from my bed. For instance, my mom's gray hair becomes a fold in my blanket. Well, that's too bad. [Thinking about this now, there's a good chance that that was actually a false awakening. I'm not sure, though.]

Snarl

[This dream was definitely inspired by the series of videos called "The Walls 2" recently recorded by Yogscast on YouTube, which I watched the day before yesterday. It also happened quite late in the morning (for me)--around 10:30.]

We're playing PVP Minecraft in 2-person teams. There are only two teams left. One member of the enemy team is chasing the other member of my team, while I in turn chase him. We run back to my team's base, then we sandwich him between us and kill him with swords. Excellent! Now, the other guy is hiding underneath the ground here. There are lots of holes in the ground and lots of tunnels, and it's all very confusing, so we're not sure how to get him.

We decide to build an enclosed room with a roof and a tower. So my teammate and I sit down with the Legos and start working. I begin by making the tower, which is a really tall wall built from 1x2x1 blue blocks. I get bored with how slowly it's going, so I try just spreading the blocks like I'm extending a folding telescope. It doesn't work, and my friend laughs at me for trying. Anyway, eventually I finish the tower and start working on the other half of the roof.

Suddenly I hear a violent snarl and I feel as though my head's been seized in the jaws of a big, angry dog. The snarl continues as it starts shaking my head back and forth, up and down, like a very erratic vibration. I spend a panicked second trying to decide what to do--is my friend playing a prank on me?!--before I wake up. It feels like the vibrations continue for a moment before they stop. I sit for a minute in shock before doing an RC and confirming that I'm awake.

[It's crossed my mind that maybe that was a seizure, but I doubt it. More likely I imagined it. Either way, it was a strange experience.]

Infiltration with Hank

Hank Green and I run down the hallway towards the room that is our destination. My hands are clasped together with the index finger and thumb pointing out, pretending I'm holding a gun. We reach a T junction.

"I'll take right, you go left," says Hank. We split up.

I see a woman walking down the hallway towards me. I take cover and fire with my "hand-gun." I look away for a moment, and when I look back, she's not there. Just disappeared. I suppose that's what you'd expect an imaginary gun to do. I continue down the hallway until I reach a sort of open area. I can see over the top of some low walls into some rooms where lots of people are working on computers. They seem really focused. I would feel bad about running in there and disrupting them for the sake of this game I'm playing. I hesitate.

Then I see the people in the room on the left looking over towards the room on the right (my target room) and smiling delightedly. Hank must have reached this side of the room. And they aren't annoyed at all! They must have known about the game, and agreed to it because they thought it would be fun. I look over to see what's happening in the right room. There is colorful, fish-shaped confetti flying in the air. The employees are standing around a spot on the floor, jumping up and down, and clapping. Uh oh. I guess they brought Hank down. I should have been in there to help him.

Anxiously, I walk into the room. I ask a tall, dark-haired man what happened.

Later, I'm walking back out of the building, escorted by the building employees. A guy my own age, someone I know, is ranting about a woman who works in this building. She was somehow responsible for ruining our game, and she's also the head of the elementary math education program, even though she hates kids. One of the employees starts looking calculatingly at the ranting guy, and I realize that she must be the woman he's talking about. Uh oh.

Stealing from Nynaeve

I "accidentally" run into Nynaeve and engage her in conversation. Meanwhile, I cleverly steal from her an important artifact. She'll be mad at me when she finds out, but hopefully I'll be ready for her.

I hide the artifact in my locker. I also have a blanket and a cloak of hers, made with cloth of the same pattern. She's managed to take back the cloak, but in order to hide the blanket, I have to rearrange a lot of things in my locker. For instance, I add an extra blanket to my bed and put something else on my desk. A friend comes up to ask me why I changed the color of my blanket.

Missing a Soul

I'm late to orchestra, but before I can go, I need to save my game. But when I try, it tells me that I have no soul. I need to use a soul gem on myself. I try to do so, but when I resume the game, it loads a new chapter, sort of thing. There's a menu that explains the new scenario and a video in the corner where the bad guy is threatening to do something. I don't have time to listen to all of it, so I just click through the screen. I'll look back over it later. I also skip the first objective of the scenario, so I start in the middle of training something called an ADHD. I don't know what it is or why it's important, but apparently it's a creature used by the enemy that we can train to work for us. I'm able to rearrange the letters in "ADHD" in various ways before training it, and presumably that's important. But since I skipped everything, I have no idea how.

Frags:

• I pick my nose, and out comes almost a complete ring of dried boogers. This happens several times in fairly quick succession.

Airport

A bunch of my buds and I decided to go to the airport together. We've been delayed in various ways, so I'm relieved when one guy finally gets back with our boarding passes so we can head to our respective gates. I start speedwalking along a hallway. There's a stranger about to cut me off going around a corner (I'm squeezed between him and the wall), so I try to dart past him. The only trouble is, someone else tries to do the same on his other side, so we all end up crashing into each other and making a really awkward scene. I hurriedly apologize and start lecturing everyone about what a bad decision we both made there. The other guy apologizes also (as much to me as to the stranger, it seems), and I recognize him as a high school friend. But I'm desperate to vacate the scene, so I dash away again without saying hi. I feel bad about it, since I never got a chance to talk with him over summer break, either.

As I walk through more hallways, I see a girl a bit younger than me trying out a kind of play microphone. From what I hear as I pass by, it changes your voice so you sound like a robotic alien.

I reach a green tile ramp set into the middle of the floor; it's about twenty feet wide. I set down my things beside me and happily slide down it. There are lots of twists and turns, forking paths, and side hallways. I start to feel a bit confused about the layout of the airport. Once, I shoot off the end of a flat section and gravity doesn't work too quickly, so I crash lightly into a vertical wall a few feet farther forward. I'm frustrated that the ramp didn't work properly, but I'm not injured or anything. I continue going down. A girl comes sliding out of a side hallway, and I recognize her as a housemate right before we crash into each other. We both laugh about it. Behind me, I hear some people from the group I arrived with. They're talking about how it's later than they thought it was, and they were supposed to be at their gate quite a while ago. Upon hearing this, I realize that I'm not even sure what gate I'm supposed to be going to.

Well, that kind of takes the fun out of sliding. I get off the slide and fish my crumpled boarding pass out of my pocket. It's the smaller part, the stub that ushers usually take when you go into the theater. I hope I still have the other part. But whatever, gate information should be on this part as well. When I look for the gate, I'm horrified to see that the terminal is specified not with one but with FOUR letters, which seem to follow a complicated pattern of upper and lower case. This airport is far more confusing than I feared. I have no idea where that terminal is, much less how to get there. I'm probably going to miss my flight.

Uncomfortable Music

There's a concert coming up, and I still need to practice the music. I pull it out and start working, but it's the most uncomfortable music I've ever played. I feel like I'm engaged in spiritual battle with some demonic entity, and the music is feeding it, making it stronger. I decide to stop practicing before the music kills me.

But now it's concert time, and I still haven't practiced. This is one of those orchestras where you only get a couple rehearsals and you only get the one concert, so if I don't do a good job on this concert, I may as well not be in the orchestra at all. So while we're all sitting on stage warming up, I try to get in a bit more practice. Realistically, though, it's too little too late.

Climbing Rock

One of the main attractions in this building is its indoor climbing rock. Its surface is rough but its shape is roughly ellipsoid, and its dimensions in meters are about 15 by 20 on the base, and 3 high. It's granite, or anyway some kind of gray stone. The sides are a bit steep, so the attraction is that it's challenging to get on and off of it, but once you're on top you can run around and play games with the other victors.

I finally reach the front of the line, and I reach the top without incident. I don't have anything to do up there, though, so I just walk across to the other corner and try to find my way down. Turns out this side is much steeper than I expected. As I'm clinging to the rock, a building employee walks over and sticks something on my arm. I can't pick it up since I need my arms to hang on, so I use my forehead to try and press the thing more firmly to my arm. I'll look at it later. Anyway, I fiddle and shift around for a few minutes without making much downward progress, but then I notice that some "rungs" have been cut into this side of the rock a few feet to my right: rectangular gouges about two inches deep, spaced like the rungs of a ladder. I use them to get down, but then I start feeling like I cheated, and I start wondering whose idea it was to put rungs on the climbing rock, anyway. I see my old math TA standing nearby, so I ask him if there's a more legit way to climb down the rock in the place I had been trying to do it. He doesn't know, but during the course of the conversation I become convinced that for the sake of my own self-worth, I need to go back onto the climbing rock and try again.

The rungs on the rock go all the way down to a hallway below the floor on which the climbing rock is located. I'm not allowed to go back up the rungs, so I'll have to find some other way to the floor above. There doesn't seem to be an elevator in sight, and I begin to wonder whether this building is designed to make it difficult to get back to that floor.

I wander around for quite some time. In the process, I come across a darkened room with a bunch of merry-go-rounds or bumper cars or something spinning all over the place on the floor. I need to cross the room, but it'll be hard to do that without getting my shins severely bruised. Seriously, who thought this room was a good idea? I do some desperate dives and jumps and hops, and somehow I make it.

At another time, I see something in the wall that looks like an elevator button, and I press it without thinking. A second later, though, I see that the windows in the sliding doors on this wall are showing me an underground tunnel, not an elevator shaft. This button must call a subway train. Horizontal transport rather than vertical. Sure enough, a train soon comes roaring up to the station. Ha ha, very funny, building designer.

Finally I find some hallways populated by people, and I even recognize some of them. They're students from my university. I'm surprised to note that a lot of the girls look quite attractive. Isn't my school one of those where you're supposed to need a special pair of goggles for this kind of thing? Maybe that's not true! That would be cool. Anyway, I go into a room where some acquaintances of mine are having a baking party.

Road Rage

I accidentally drop a rubber duck behind a movie screen playing Finding Nemo. Damn it. I'm going to have to tow it out with my car. I get in and start zooming down the highway, swerving haphazardly between other cars and going just about as fast as my car can manage. Once, I start passing a car just as it starts passing the car in front of it. Meanwhile there's yet another car in the far left lane, so for a few seconds there are four of us cars driving side-by-side in a three-lane highway. I don't care. I'm angry. Eventually I decide it's time to turn around, so I pull one of those parking-brake 180s and shift gears without putting in the clutch. For a while I dodge traffic going in the opposite direction until I find myself on the right side of the highway, halfway between two lanes and tailgating both cars in front of me. One of them suddenly brakes, and I almost crash into it. That was a bit too close for my liking, so I try to give them a bit more space. But there are cars everywhere and I'm still trying to get things under control when I look up and there's a white screen with the word "Nemo" right in front of me and I swerve just enough to crash into the screen broadside, and the car comes to a halt. The rubber duck falls out, rolls behind the movie screen, and this time rolls all the way under the refrigerator as well. Damn it, now I'm never going to get it out!

Party at Alex Day's

Tonight is an orchestra rehearsal. It's the first one, but it might as well be the dress rehearsal, since we only get a couple of rehearsals before the concert. I decide I should wear concert attire, just to get used to it. I'm running late, so I resent the few minutes it takes to turn on my laptop and check my email to find the one where the conductor tells us what concert attire will be. By the time I'm dressed and outside, it's five minutes to seven. I can't remember whether rehearsal is scheduled for six or for seven, but in either case, I'm going to be late. I decide to go anyway, because even half a rehearsal is better than none when you only get two in the first place.

Unfortunately, there's some car trouble. It takes a few minutes to work out, and then Dad and some of his friends give the car (in neutral) a push down the road. I start running down the road after it, trying to reach it before the road curves and the car crashes into the fence. I barely get there in time, diving into the car to cheers from the group still standing around my driveway. I dove too far, ending up in the passenger seat, so I climb back over to the driver side. I stick in the key and twist it, the engine comes on, and I turn the steering wheel. As I drive out of the neighborhood, I try to think of what else I need to do in order to get the car under control. Maybe I should turn on the radio?

Later, I'm walking. I decide to take a shortcut through some buildings. It's a more direct route, but I'm not sure if there actually is a path all the way through. I go up some stairs, down some stairs, and through some arches. The buildings are made out of butterscotch-colored stucco (or plaster or something; I'm not sure what it's called). Suddenly I see an arch that opens onto an apartment full of people, including Alex Day and my sister! Alex invites me in, and we start talking. There's a really fun atmosphere at this party; I'm impressed. I wonder if Alex and my sister are dating. Just for fun, sometimes I answer Alex's or my sister's questions in Spanish. He invites me to stay, but I insist that I must be going: I've got places to be and work to do. My sister explains that Alex feels threatened by my productivity as a musician. Hmmm. Interesting.

I ask Alex if he knows any way though the buildings so I can finish my shortcut. He doesn't, but he tells me I should ask Kim (Nieuwenhuis). "Her apartment's just upstairs," he says. "I spent a couple of days up there a while ago. It's one of the happiest places I've ever been." Well then. I guess I should go up there.

Just then, a group of girls run past in the hallway outside. They're laughing and running upstairs, and I think I recognize Kim among them. "Kim!" I call, hurrying to the doorway. But either it wasn't her, or she didn't hear me. No one turns around.

In any case, I think I remember this place. I think I've been here before. If memory serves, I should be able to go down this hall and around a corner and--yes! I'm outside! It should be easy to get to the concert hall from here. But then I realize that I've left my viola in Alex's apartment, so I have to go back for that. Somehow I start watching a new video of his that's based on a pun on his name: Alex Day vs. Alex Night, or something. There's a bouncing ball that turns into a bounding dog that turns into two smaller balls that Alex throws that turn into one bigger bouncing ball again, and so forth.

Frags:

• Watching an online advertisement for a cosmetic skin product
• Posting on the DV forums. I was glad when I realized I was doing this, because that meant I was actually participating in the forums beyond just my introduction thread.

Fitness with Laci

Just when I think Laci's video is over, a bonus clip starts, showing her trying out a cardio fitness class. For example, one of the exercises is something like the following: Start from a standing position with your legs fairly wide apart. Then crouch into a lunge position facing your right side while bringing your right elbow across your body to touch the ground on the left side of your right foot. Then on the next beat, straighten up again. The tempo is quite fast, so I discover to my surprise that it's actually quite a difficult workout. I also discover upon closer examination of my form that I'm not quite doing the step right. Oops. Meanwhile, Laci is laughing about how exhausting the workout is, and after a few short clips showcasing different steps, the video ends on a joking note as she accidentally drops one of the weights that the class is using to work out.

3-D Go

My parents and I run into two girls about my age and their mothers. They're all new to Go so we decide to try a team game. For one of the girls, this will be her very first game, or thereabouts. One of the mothers, an Asian one, shows us the board she brought. It looks to me like it has more than 19 rows, so I try to count them. The count comes up fine, so I guess my visual estimation skills are just a bit off. Anyway, we start playing the game using colored Legos on one of those green base plates. My team is white, and the adults are playing red. The newbie girl keeps trying to play in the upper left, but it becomes clear after a few moves that Red is setting up a very strong framework in that area.

"Stop that!" I say, the next time she tries to play in that area. I feel a bad about snapping, so I try to recover by turning it into a teaching moment. I explain about frameworks. I'm not sure she entirely gets it, but she doesn't argue, or anything.

Once, she moves one of her previously placed pieces before putting down a new one. At first I assume she's just tacitly taking back her previous move, and I don't say anything, though it makes me uncomfortable. But later I wonder if she just didn't know that in Go you can't move pieces once they've been placed on the board.

At times during the course of the game, I turn back to the board to find that a more or less intricate Lego construction has appeared in the middle of it. For example, once, a rectangular green tower of about twenty (Lego) stories appears. Someone tries to take it by removing the last liberty at its base, but I point out that they should have to remove all the liberties for every story and the top, since really it's all just one big group. But then the second girl, the more experienced one, points out that that's not usually what you need to do for one-story groups. For those, you just need to take the liberties on the sides. I realize she's right.

At other times, cutesie farmhouses or tessellated color patterns appear. These are clearly the work of the newbie, and they're interfering with the game. I don't think she understands the point of Go at all. Eventually I get fed up and declare, "I give up on this game." I sweep my pieces into a bag and stalk upstairs. Maybe they'll try to continue without me, but in any case it's good riddance.

Upstairs, I dump out my pieces and try to sort them by color. It's going to take a while, because there are several biggish structures that use a lot of different colors in alternation.

At one point, I notice that I can make some cool percussion sounds with the Legos, so I do some one-man-band improv using the Legos, my voice, and any other noisemakers I can find. I think it turns out to be pretty neat. It's not exploring any new territory, musically, but it's got a pretty nice groove. The only person watching is my Mom, doing something in the kitchen, but she doesn't say anything.

[I must have woken up after just about every REM cycle last night. Not sure how I pulled that one off.]

Soiree

Some of my cousins arrive for a function my family is hosting. They brought cupcakes--chocolate and one other flavor. They ask which flavor I prefer, because somehow the arrangement of cupcakes in the baking tin will reflect the seating chart for the event. I reply, "Probably chocolate."

I've agreed to contribute to the evening's entertainment by playing a short (two page) piano solo by Gershwin. I know I haven't played piano in ages, but everything on those two pages looked sightreadable when I glanced over it a while ago. However, when Dad discovers my plan, inexplicably he freaks out. I guess he's really concerned that I'll embarrass myself in front of the relatives. It's annoying, though. In fact, Dad's been annoying me a lot lately. For instance, he's recently gotten it into his head that he should learn to play piano himself, and he expects me to sit down with him to prepare piano duets. That does not sound like fun at all.

The previous group finishes performing, and now it's my turn. I figure the crowd is busy socializing, and they won't mind if I take a minute to look at some of the tougher chords. But to my horror, I open the music and discover a third page. What I thought was the end of the music is just a thin double bar! The third page isn't unplayable, but it has a lot of fast arpeggios over several octaves which will be very, very difficult to sightread. I probably should have taken a closer look at this. I start to feel uncomfortable about the amount of time I've delayed, now; the audience is probably getting impatient.

John Green the Sponsor

I've just finished TAing for today for a two-week class for math teachers in primary education. I and the teacher for the class spend a few moments calculating in percentages how close we are to finishing the class. It's towards the end of the second week.

It's dark outside as I walk through the quadrangles on my way home. On the way, I pass someone who looks exactly like John Green! I didn't know he was in Chicago! But I pass him without getting the courage to ask for an autograph. Mere steps later I consider turning around to chase after him, but I don't.

Inside a building, I run into one of my students from a previous summer math program. We talk for a bit, but we both have to be getting somewhere, so he leads the way out of the building. The building's door is rather heavy, and I feel bad that he tries to hold it for me. The pathway outside is narrow. I follow it into a smallish quad that's packed with people. I learn that it's called "Jones Quad," and it's a popular after-hours gathering place for students. I also know that I've been this way before. A girl from my house waves at me from inside a pack of her friends. I wave back--rather saucily, to my own surprise (namely, by lifting my left hand and repeatedly bending and unbending the last two knuckles of each finger simultaneously). Someone else waves at me, but I don't recognize her, and she makes a disappointed grimace. I run into someone else from my house and we remark upon how many housemates seem to be on campus tonight, despite the fact that it's the middle of summer.

It occurs to me that the John Green I saw might just have been a very close look-alike to the famed vlogbrother. I decide that I should go find him again and look more closely. As I wander around, something weird happens with the lights and the music in the building, and I guess that must mean it's about to close down for the night. No one seems in a hurry to leave, though. When I come back a few minutes later, everyone's still there, though they leave soon thereafter.

Back outside, I walk around a street corner and see a pizza place across the street. On a screen above the building, an advertisement plays. It's this same John Green guy. He's basically sponsoring the pizza place. I guess the pizza company must have heard about the Pizza John shirt and decided to capitalize on it. I still can't decide if the guy is actually John Green, though. It seems unlikely that he would do something so commercial.

Locker Checkout

It's the Saturday after finals week, and I'm trying to do my last bit of packing before going home. I've been storing some stuff in a locker on campus, so I head over to the building to pick it up. To my dismay, the building is locked. Apparently Friday was the last day to remove your belongings from this building. I spend a few minutes mentally cursing the idiot who thought that was a good idea, but then I decide I'd better try to do something about the situation. Using cleverness, I'm able to reach the first of my two lockers, which contains a fairly new car battery. I've been switching this one in and out with my car's old battery. Only, it seems like doing the swap would be a fairly complicated operation, and I can't remember ever having done it before. Oh, well. I must have known how at some point, and it's just been so long that it's slipped my mind temporarily. It'll come back, I'm sure. I put the battery in my backpack.

Unfortunately, the second locker is definitely unreachable. I check the building's hours, and unfortunately it won't open again until long after I've left town. By that time, they'll probably have thrown out my stuff. "My stuff" includes my Tae Kwon Do uniform, so I definitely don't want this to happen. Then I suddenly notice a sign on the window proclaiming the location and hours of this department's interim office. It's open today! Until 4:00! I hurry in that direction, checking the time. It's 4:11. Just my luck. Well, maybe there will still be someone around. My mom hurries to follow me.

I enter my target building to find a stark concrete entryway with stairs going both up and down, and hallways going in a few different directions. For a moment I'm disoriented, until I remember that the interim office is in a basement room. I go down the stairs, which twist and turn a few times before depositing me in a hallway only slightly more furnished than the original one. Along the wall to my right, dozens of cardboard boxes have been haphazardly stacked. Incredulous at my good fortune, I run down the row of boxes until I find one that's been labeled with my initials: last initial first, then first. Opening the box, I find my Tae Kwon Do uniform, along with everything else that's supposed to be there. Well, that's a relief. But I should probably talk to someone before taking it, else they'll think I stole it, and I'll be in trouble when I come back next term.

I continue down the hallway into the interim meeting room, which is actually a concert hall. That's kind of funny, but unfortunately I don't see anyone in the room except a female custodian up on stage setting up the ghost light. I turn back and try searching the hall in the other direction. I manage to flag down a dark-haired woman just on her way out the door. She seems to know me from somewhere, and it turns out she's coincidentally the one who's been answering my questions over email about Study Abroad. She tells me she's not the one to talk to about locker checkout. Fortunately, she says that the right woman to talk to is still in her office; it's right back there in the direction I've been going.

Wading

It's the day after finals week, but some of us are still hanging around to hang out. A girl from my high school class invites me to visit the forest with a group of friends.

"What forest?" I ask. You'd think I'd know the forests around here by now, so I'm a bit embarrassed by my question. Oh well.

She replies with the name of the forest, which I don't recognize. I agree to come anyway, and we head out. Soon after, we enter a restaurant on the outskirts of campus. While we eat, some housemates start planning what they're going to do to earn points for a big school competition which started today. For instance, apparently this restaurant (or the hotel it's a part of) is a sponsor for the event, so you get a points multiplier for eating here. I wonder why it was decided to hold the event after the end of Autumn Quarter, when there are so few people around. Vaguely I recall that it has to do with avoiding conflict with a big Study Abroad event happening in the middle of Spring Quarter, but that still doesn't explain why they didn't decide to do it during Winter. Oh well.

We leave the restaurant. Most of the group is heading back to campus from here, but I take a different path, one that leads toward the forest. At some point, I'll have to cut across the grass. But the grass is actually flooded quite deeply with water. The water's clear, but due to refraction it's difficult for me to tell quite how deep it is. Would this be an okay place to wade across? Tentatively, I start lowering my foot into the water. But even by the time the water reaches the top of my knee-high waterproof boots, I still haven't touched bottom. I retract my foot.

My friends are calling to me from across the water, telling me to go around the way they did. Yeah, their way was probably smarter. Meanwhile a boy from the group that decided to stay on campus is trying to tell me not to wade across anywhere, because it's all too deep. But I don't listen to him, and when I try the route my other friends suggested, the water's only about a foot deep.

All three of us are in werewolf form (from Skyrim) with the silver pelt and claws of an Ancient Behemoth (from Heroes III). I splash up to them and I attempt a growl. It is rather feeble, and one of the girls giggles. I introduce myself to her, and she shakes my hand, although she points out that she thinks we've met before. "No doubt we have," I reply.

Jumping Ahead

My dad and I have been taking turns playing a 3-D platform game while one of my high school friends watches. The gameplay of this game is a lot like rock climbing. You have to move each arm or leg individually, trying not to put too much strain on any one of them for more than a split second. We're trying to get to the top of an outcrop that has a sort of half-enclosed tunnel zigzagging up its vertical face. There's this one tricky spot where you have to jump over a gap, but one of the most attractive handholds actually attaches to a section of rock that swings down on a hinge. It can really upset your balance if you're not careful. Also, in order to get enough height, you need this section of rock to stay in its upright position.

I try it for a while without much luck, then hand it over to Dad. My friend points out that we don't actually have to go up this way; there's an easier place to ascend a little bit farther along this switchback. But I'm kind of stubborn, and I'd just like to prove that it can be done this way, even if it's not what the game's designers intended. Unfortunately, it proves to be a bit too much for Dad, and he falls off the edge to his (cartoon-style) death. That means we have to start over from the beginning of the level, which is frustrating, because I really thought I would get past that section on my next try.

But Dad's bored of this level, so he jumps way ahead in the game to the last level he did on his own. That's his style: don't bother with continuity; as long as you finish all the levels eventually, you're golden. Oh, well. The level selection screen is itself a 3-D environment, and the levels are yellow dots lined up in a path laid out along the ground. He realizes that he needs to buy a new "computer," since he lost the old one when he fell. When he does, the dots change to yellow rings, rather than filled circles. Also, two new "assistants" run in from the side of the screen, get a powerup of some kind from his character, then run off again.

He selects the level he wants. A bunch of enemies start running at him from all sides, so he starts beating them up using combos. Somehow he discovers a new combo--something like "knee in the face, punch, power kick"--which sends the unfortunate recipient flying backwards for about fifty meters. He encourages me to try it, but I have trouble until I realize that I'm doing a regular kick. For a power kick you need to hold down R1 at the same time. I feel a bit overwhelmed, but it's kind of fun once you figure it out. The animation's also cool because my character looks like a Star Wars bounty hunter.

Later, we're part of a larger party in the middle of a battle, trying to help the weaker members level up. This involves passing around 5-foot playing cards from character to character, which we all hug to our sides using our arms. The cards also double as protection from enemy characters, so there's some strategy involved in how you distribute your cards. Unfortunately, I'm running low on cards right now, and a thickset, bald thug is advancing on me in a rather intimidating manner.

Frags:

• dictating to my dream diary in Spanish
• other various false-awakening-dream-journal-writing