Batch

01-22-2013 -- I find myself standing in the side yard at the Hickory house, between the garage and the neighbor's garage at the Conrad place. Somehow there is a very sort of haunted house kind of feel, with monsters running around the side yard and the Conrads' house, and I am trying to save people. There are hideous creature-style monsters, and a Michael Myers-style serial killer both to contend with, while I run back and forth, trying to keep myself well and help others. It is very long, and involved, with lots of chasing and the like, but the details don't come through, so it seems like a much shorter bit when written down. Maybe slight hints of a tie-in to the spooky park scenario in roller coaster tycoon which I was playing a day or two ago.

So soon I walk into the Hickory house through the side garage door, and I am feeling kind of hungry, so I am thinking about preparing some food, but instead I just walk into my second bedroom, thinking about relaxing. Hard to do, though, as the room is an absolute mess. The desk is covered with dozens and dozens of pieces of silverware that have been sitting around for weeks, encrusted in dust and old, dried food. I start gathering maybe fifteen pieces at a time, and carrying them to the kitchen sink to soak.

Oddly, though my second bedroom has a door opening right on to the kitchen, in this dream it is never used, and every time I exit the bedroom and walk to the kitchen, it is through the other door, walking through the living room and dining room each and every time. When I reach the kitchen and try to add the silverware to the sink, it is so full that it causes the water to start to overflow, so I quickly remove the drain plug so some of the water can drain out.

Somehow at the same time I am gathering more of the silverware to take to the sink, there are also silver push pins holding letters on to a sewing project sitting on the love seat, and I seem to be removing the pins, and some of them are falling on the carpet, where I am afraid I will step on them and hurt my feet. But I continue to remove the silverware from my room in large handfuls.

Meanwhile, there is a young couple sitting in the living room making some sort of comments about there not being enough silverware in the house, and as I am placing ever more of it to soak in the sink, and going back for more, I am hinting they might want to try and wash some of it. I wander back to my room. The desk is finally silverware-free, but I find I am still finding more and more silverware on the floor in old, empty frozen food containers lying around the floor, and I keep gathering it up.

But soon I find myself out driving somewhere in Europe. It might be England, but it might not be. There is a sort of speed bump that has been laid in the road, but instead of stretching horizontally across the road, it is running vertically, maybe a foot from the curb, and it seems to be causing all kinds of drivers problems, as they keep getting too close and running up on it. It isn't causing me all that much trouble, though. I just stay a little further to the left in the lane, and I'm fine.

There are some police here that seem to be writing tickets for some people, and just helping others out, and I ask why they seem to be having so much trouble with this. The cop explains the speed bump is very new, and people just aren't used to it, yet. He tells me that I really ought to speak to the people at Prudential Insurance about it, and point me at a building. They tell me the company is located on the 8th floor, but the building only looks like it is four floors tall.

I walk inside, and find the building has four floors above ground, and maybe 16 or so underground, and so the floor labeled as 8 is actually something like 12 floors underground or something. I'm trying to work out the math in my head, but we forget to press any of the buttons, and end up on what is probably the wrong floor, perhaps either seven or nine. My friend (who is turning into Kevin B.) thinks we have the right floor, and I am almost sure we don't, but I walk off to check.

Nope. Different company, entirely. We have to go one more floor. Kevin was supposed to hold the elevator, but he stepped off it, so actually we now need to wait for it again, so we can get the final floor we need. Soon it comes, and we step back on and push the button.

So the elevator opens again, and I find myself walking into a sort of lounge or bar, and I find that the Claim Jumpers Band from Preston's is about to play. Trapper John is trading some quips with people, and as is often the case, he seems to be kind of negative about it. Somehow he ends up quipping with Kevin B. who is with me, and he ends up annoying Kevin, who bends down and opens up a case, and pulls out his trombone. He is annoyed enough that he is going to play along with the band, hoping to annoy John.

Meanwhile, the Preston's band just finished playing one of the introductory bits that the Good Time Band at Rosie's actually used to play, and a slightly hippie-looking guy is walking away from John, who announces "we have a request to play a song that goes kind of like bum, bum bum, bum bum, bum bum. Hey, we know a song that kind of starts bum, bum bum, bum bum, bum bum!" And they launch into Old Time Rock and Roll. Kevin hears the first few notes, recognizes the song, and promptly fits an odd sort of attachment onto his trombone that lets it power a set of bag pipes, and starts to play along. Very strange.

There's somebody passing around some advertising flyers, and they are annoying me, so I just crumple mine up to toss it away, but it makes a huge amount of noise, drawing attention to me. Meanwhile, Kevin has stopped playing, and is just sort of wandering around, kind of distracted. But when I ask him, he says he is fine. Meanwhile, I find myself remembering a Victor story that I got a good five or six chapters into (in another dream, I think), and wondering why I haven't found the time and energy to finish writing it yet. About this time, I wake up.

01-23-2013 -- I'm on some sort of church camping trip with Mike Sullins and the gang. I'm not sure, but I think I was an adult for the whole dream, kind of helping to oversee the trip, and it has been an OK trip, but not fabulous. We're loading up the bus to head back to the church, and I find myself trying to half claim one of the front seats. I am given the front bench on the passenger side, which is fine. Some little kid who may be the pastor's son is given the spot just under the bar that I used to love as a kid, but it doesn't bother me as I couldn't fit there as an adult, anyway.

Mike is driving, and the trip home from the usual camp (from dreams, didn't go camping with this church in real life) seems very short, only taking around 45 minutes, when it always seemed the trip used to take 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Soon we're pulling into the church parking lot, and starting to unload the bus, while waiting for parents to come and pick their kids up. I'm probably waiting for everybody else to be picked up, before I get a ride home on the bus.

Mike is going on and all about how good the Boy Scouts are, and how great the trip was, and stuff like that. He seems to be dressed in a scout master uniform, and the pastor's son is in a scout uniform. But something is said that seems to tick the kid off, and he suddenly stalks out of the room, down the driveway, and out to curb on Page Avenue.

He starts angrily calling for his dad, the pastor, who is standing about 20 feet away, but doesn't seem to hear him. This amazes me since I am much further away, and inside the building, but I can hear him just fine. After three loud calls, his father hears him, and walks over and picks him up. He talks to him and comforts him a bit, then puts him back in the room where I am waiting around.

The boy is maybe four or five, and he starts playing with a little girl who is maybe six or seven. Soon they're wrestling a bit, and there seem to be hints of Indian Wrestling in their play, but other forms of wrestling, as well. Somehow it overflows, and I am something of an innocent bystander, as I soon find myself lying on the ground, half-restrained, with them undoing my pants for some reason.

Right at that moment, the assistant pastor busts in, and starts ranting and raving, and wants to know what the Sam Hill is going on! I think he feels something wrong, sexually, is going on, as they are undoing my pants, and I try to defend myself by saying maybe I should have put a stop to things sooner, but I wouldn't have let it go any further if they had tried to pull down my pants, but he seems to blame the kids and feels they are being very evil, and I am only being foolish.

"What if they'd used super glue on you?" He demands. "It could have taken us hours to free you. Or even days if we couldn't get the proper solvent!" He keeps ranting on and on about how bad the kids were, and how could I have allowed this, and it is the story oh Jonah and the Whale all over again! I don't see it as the same thing at all. I don't see how that story ties in, and I don't see any of it as all that bad, but he just won't listen at all.

Finally I have had enough, and like the kid before me, I stalk out of the the room, step over a tiny fence (maybe a foot or a foot and a half tall, more decorative than anything else), and to the curb on Page Avenue, just like the pastor's son, before me. The assistant pastor is calling after me, trying to stop me from going, and not getting why I was so upset with him, but I won't listen, and I keep on my way. I walk down Page to Stanton, then walk under the freeway overpass, before making my way down Calendula and into the flower tract.

I don't know what the big deal is ... I don't agree with the guy, but its not like I don't still plan to attend church next week, or anything. But strange things are happening. People start trying to push me or grab me. The area is turning into a cross between a sort of an old age home and an apartment complex, though the entire neighborhood I am walking through is nothing but single family homes. But somehow I find myself in the apartment complexes behind the church, instead of in the neighborhood I was walking through. [The apartment complexes that aren't there in real life, but have been in lots of dreams.]

In past dreams these apartment complexes have had fun things and nightmare-style things happen in them. In this dream, they are bad things. I find myself arguing religion and politics with people, while going through unpleasant chase bits that seem to go on forever (though I think they really are pretty short.) At one point I am being grabbed an restrained by nurses because they don't agree with my principles, but soon they are turning into attractive-but-old-fashioned school teachers who have a sort of Stepford Wives sort of vibe to them.

I burst out of one apartment complex into a sort of hilly area, where I find myself trying to cross the hills while avoiding dangerous flaming horses. Since they are in groups of four, they just might be the four horses of the apocalypse. Strange and spooky. At first I try to hide from them, but then I find four of them right next to me in a wide open space, so all I can do is ignore them and hope they ignore me, or if they don't, hope I'm powerful enough to survive them.

The entire time, both political and spiritual arguments continue to go on in my head. I manage to get out of the hills and into another of the apartment complexes, but I'm still being chased by the old-fashioned brunettes, who are trying to wrestle me to the ground and restrain me. I don't understand why I find myself saying it, since it still seems to me that he was the nut, and the one in the wrong, but I suddenly speak out loud and say "Fine! I'll apologize to the assistant pastor."

A gap appears in the brick-wall corridor I am in, and I stumble into the lot of the construction supply company directly behind the church, free from all the people chasing me. "On Sunday, after church," I mutter to myself. 50 pound bags of cement start dropping on me. "OK, OK, right now." The cement stops dropping on me, and I claim over the brick wall into the church parking lot.

I approach one of the elders of the church and ask where the assistant pastor is, and he says he left about 15 minutes ago. He looks at me and says something like "You don't look like a process server, but I'm still not going to tell you where he lives or give you his phone number." I end up back in the same room, waiting (perhaps for a day or two) until the assistant pastor shows up again. "Really, God?!?" I kind of announce to the sky.

"Hey Dude! Don't disrespect the Lord!" I find a slightly angry hippie kind of shushing me. "Yeah? Let me tell you a story!" And I proceed to relate the entire dream to him, while he looks more and more flabbergasted as I go on. There are several others here, who also look more and more shocked. As I finish my tale, I look at them, all staring at me in amazement, and ask "Don't tell me the same thing happened to all of you?"

"Oh no, man," the hippie says. "Nothing like that happened to me. Not in the specifics. But in the overall, yeah, man. We're all here to apologize to the assistant pastor because we wouldn't listen to him, man! It's weird!"

01-15-2013 -- [My first day of using 5-HTP, and though my dreams seemed kind of vivid, they also seemed kind of short. And for some reason, I could not be bothered writing them down in great detail. I had two dreams, and this is the sum total of what I wrote down: Ziva, NCIS, and wrestlers at the BPM. Tom Drick, Betty White, and clowns at new church by Winn Dixie. Let's see how well I can expand this, a couple of days later.]

I was at the Buena Park Mall, on the east side near La Palma, half in and half out of the mall. I know I was watching some wrestling, and there were some good matches with some tough wrestlers, and yet they seem to be older matches from back in the 90s, even though I am watching them live.

Somehow, one of the wrestlers is Ziva, from NCIS, and I think she is working undercover, as am I. I think we are talking to some of the wrestlers like Brutus Beefcake and Rick Rude, and trying to figure out who are the faces and who are the heels at this point in time. Oddly enough, Ziva is pregnant at the time. Odd stuff.

---

01-15-2013 -- I find myself at a new Church located across the street from Winn Dixie on Orange Blossom Trail. Tom Drick is leading worship, and it isn't in place of Pine Castle UMC or Tarpon Springs UMC, but in addition to both the others. It seems he is turning into a work-a-holic, and is now leading worship at all three churches, simu;taneously.

So we're in this church, and Tom is leading songs, and Betty White seems to be speaking, and is somehow talking about working as a clown back in her early days, while Tom is running out the door, heading for one of his other services at one of the other churches. Familiar people (but nobody I can specifically identify) are running around, discussing things, and I'm just kind of relaxing.

Eventually things calm down and the service seems to be ending, and I find myself out in the parking lot. Betty White may be on a Segway, and seems to be getting ready to leave, and I think her for joining us, and what she had to say, and am trying to ask about her time as a clown, and she indicates that she was never a clown, though she may have played one on TV, and it is all very strange.

---

01-14-2013 -- [Since these are short dream fragments, I'm lumping them all together in this post.] Can't remember anything earlier, but I find myself at a dry cleaners, where I need to get some clothes cleaned or fixed, or even get some new clothes. A lot of the clothes seem to be western garb, and some of it is kind of wild looking. Also maybe hints of a security uniform, though not much.

The guy who is supposed to be cleaning the stuff is also giving me advice on what might be good clothes to wear, and is telling me I should get some more fabric, and he will make some more clothes that might go well with what I am already planning to wear.

Somehow I find myself with my dad in his truck, and he is driving me to a fabric store. We're in Buena Park on Crescent, and we're just north of the nursery, and he is driving on the wrong side of the street, because he just plans to dash past the nursery and pull into the driveway at the crossing guards' house, which is where the fabric store is supposed to be, and it is a pretty short distance.

Unfortunately, there is a cop right at La Reina, so we've got sirens after us as we turn in at the house. It turns out to be a bank, and we've gone inside, and dad is pretending to be drunk and falling asleep (how this would get him in less trouble I don't know), but somehow it allows him to knock out the cop.

So we're back on the road, just going a block further, to where we find ourselves in another bank. Dad is now really drunk, and Melody is here, taking care of him. More cops come in, and they are now grabbing me and dragging me out to his truck, even though I am a little kid, far too young to drive, as dad is passed out on the table.

They lead me to the and are badgering me about how I am too young to drive and how dare I drive, and being very rude, while I haven't driven at all, and am starting to get very angry with them, and am about to start yelling at them, before just flying away in disgust.

01-16-2013 -- [Two dreams, one night, at least slightly connected, so I am going to list them both in one post.] For some reason I am in Melody's room in the Hickory house, and trying to go to sleep, but really having some problems with insomnia. My body just doesn't want to sleep, though it is the middle of the night, and I am afraid mom is going to come in and give me problems.

There is some very strange evil-Harry fan fiction that seems to be hanging on the walls, and near the ceiling, there is all kinds of stuff lining the walls like my room at the Moran house. Mom walks by and asks how I am doing, and I try and indicate I am all right. There are huge yearbooks from Melody's time in school that are about the size of the bound volumes of the Hornet, so the yearbooks are full-sheet newspaper size, which seems quite large for yearbooks.

Suddenly I find myself in Knott's Berry Farm, walking from the wild west section into the Roaring Twenties section over by the Knott's Berry Tales area, and walking back along toward the Good Time Theatre. The area is completely deserted, and there is nobody around, but that doesn't seem to stop them from doing a scheduled show.

I am outside, and though it is in the Roaring 20s section, the buildings seem to be very Wild West area, with balconies and such. I hear a voice call "Hello!" in a very familiar way, and a can-can girl opens a door, steps out onto a balcony, and hangs a leg over the railing. "Hello!" and there is another one doing the same thing. "Hello!" and again. This is seeming very familiar. Especially since as I look, the can-can girls look like Lana, Arlene, and Jill. Band members start to play, and I recognize Vince and Chris. The main performers come out and it is Jay Meyer and Betty Taylor.

It is suddenly looking like when Disneyland closed the Golden Horseshoe Revue, the entire cast just picked up and moved over to Knott's Berry Farm. They even seem to be singing Hello Everybody, though they fall silent or whisper every time they have to say the name Golden Horseshoe, and I am thinking it is probably because Disney owns the copyright to the name of the place ... but I am getting to listen to the show I love, performed by the people I love, even if it is at Knott's, and I am suddenly very, very happy.

I have a soda, which kind of gets knocked over, and I am running to grab the cup before it manages to roll on stage, and I manage to succeed, so I'm doubly happy.

Suddenly I find myself waking up again, back in Melody's bedroom. The lights are off, and I can barely move. Feels kind of like what I would guess sleep paralysis might feel like. It is dark, the lights are off, and my eyes are closed, but I can see almost a sort of after-image like the light was just turned off the second before I started to wake up. I'm struggling to my feet, and find myself standing between two beds. There is stuff dangling from the ceiling, like Christmas tree ornaments or something.

The shirt that the Harry Potter fan fiction was written on is now a weirdly folded envelope that I am starting to write down the Horseshoe dream on, and time is starting to go all over the place. I went to bed at two, and it is now five, or maybe three, or one (yes, before I even went to bed) and it is all very strange. And then I really wake up.

---

01-16-2013 -- Starts with hints of the last dream, sleeping in Melody's room, then starts to turn in to a sort of a roommates in the house dream (even though it is still taking place in the Hickory House), and then shifts even further to a dream where we are still in the Hickory House, but we are the Simpsons, who live here, but film the Simpsons TV show on the set for Evergreen Terrace.

So I'm in the Hickory living room, kind of watching the last episode, and Russi Taylor (voice of Minnie Mouse) was a recent guest star, but has never gotten to see the episode she helped us film, and since it is just about to come on the TV, we call her to come out from Melody's room, and come watch it.

Oddly, it seems to episode she helped us with, Frick was building large old fashioned computers (the kinds with the huge tape drives) and somehow putting them on human legs so they could run around. Russi's character was a female computer with really sexy legs, but they stuck out at an odd angle, which made her a freak, and nobody wanted anything to do with her, even though both her legs and voice were really, really sexy. Very strange!

Meanwhile, things shift, and I suddenly find I am with a roommate in the dining hall at Indiana Wesleyan University, attending an FCM convention. The roommate is not actually anybody I know, though it kind of looks like Meeks from Dead Poets Society. They are telling us that we have been invited to attend a couple of normal college classes while staying here, as part of the convention (which makes no sense, but hey ... dreams.)

The physical campus looks very much like Brookhurst Junior High, though a slightly larger version. We're standing near room 66, and the class we get to sit in on is in room 33B or something like that. We're walking down corridors, and it seems the room we are looking for is past the office area and further south (we'd actually be in the middle of Brookhurst, the street, except in the dreams there are more classrooms).

We find the right area, and I walk into what I am hoping might be the right room, to find myself facing what looks like a younger version of Ducky (from NCIS ... but looking more like his Man From UNCLE days). The room is along the lines of a huge lecture hall, and the professor looks quite nice, but he turns out to be a rude, insulting nightmare. I walk into the next classroom over, hoping I might have the wrong room, but the next room over seems to be a business class, and every single student is dressed in the exact same business suit, and we sure wouldn't fit in, in that room.

So I come back to the room with Young Ducky, and he is insulting one student on his appearance, telling me to use soap next time, and insisting that a third needs to mess up his dorm room a lot more, just insulting everybody in the room, being miserable, and not teaching us anything. Finally, I just stalk out of the room, deciding I am not going to bother with this 'benefit', trying to make my way back to the cafeteria, and thinking this convention is really going to the dogs.

01-17-2013 -- [This dream happened very early in the night when I should not have been having dreams with the 5-HTP I have been taking. I went to bed around 11:30, and woke around 2:00, earlier than I would expect. On the other hand, it was weird and disjointed, which I would expect from such an early dream.]

Big, long chase-style dream, with tons of scene changes, and very hard to remember details. Starts with an odd combination of a kids' play area and perhaps a ship (much like the ship I got pulled under in the David Tennant Bat'leth dream), where I seem to be kind of climbing into a kids play area. But soon things shift, and I find myself half-flying, half skiing through a snowy mountain area that seems familiar.

It is very much something we are doing in real life, but there is still a kind of a hint of Runescape, and it seems like some sort of route (like doing herbs at the five herb patches). Dale is doing this with me, but it has been a long time since he has done it, so he doesn't remember where things are, and I am half trying to help him, and half trying to beat him and gain more experience.

Anyway, we're sliding down the slopes of this snowy mountain, and eventually slide off on what almost seems to be a sort of freeway exit. It feels like halfway a small town exit off I-95 in the Tampa area (San Antonio or perhaps Bushnell), partway something off I-4 near Disney, and partly something in the Rancho Palos Verdes area in California. Anyway, we're on the off ramp waiting to make a left turn, and Dale just makes it in a gap in the traffic while I have to wait a bit for more traffic to go by.

It seems like I head west a few hundred yards, and then make a u-turn and head a bit further East, which begs the question why we didn't make a right turn instead of a left turn off the freeway off ramp. Weird. Anyway, Dale is ahead of me, and I soon find myself driving into a sort of combination apartment complex and retirement home, where it seems I have to deliver some newspapers.

It has a very Register feeling to it, because the paper comes in two sections, and I have to put them together. I know I have to deliver 8 or 9 papers to this complex, but I can't remember which units are my customers. Luckily there are only about 15 apartments, and I have a few extra papers, so I might be able to just deliver papers to all of them, and avoid any problems. At some point it also turns from the Register, to an issue of Grit.

Somehow somebody is ranting about how dogs aren't allowed, though they just might barely allow a small puppy, but somebody else has brought both a puppy and a dog, and that's just not allowed. Meanwhile, all the people are coming out to meet me instead of allowing me to drop the papers off at their porches, and taking papers directly from me, while a sprinkler is soaking all of us and the papers. It is very confusing and surreal.

Anyway, Dale is still ahead of me, and I have to try and catch up with him, and so I have to get out of here, but all the old people want to walk with me and talk with me. Meanwhile, I am trying to fly out to gain some speed, but the area I am leaving seems to be lined with the kind of netting / fencing that they use on a golf driving range to keep you from being able to hit golf balls out of the area, and the stuff is tight and limiting my flying.

I make it out of that area, and move on to the next area, which seems to be a combination of the Animal Kingdom, Knott's Jungle Island, and a Polynesian area I've dreamed about a few times recently. I have to get in here, but I am still being chased by somebody who started chasing me at the gold course as I tried to fly. I am at this second area to make a pick-up of Idexx samples, which is why the flavor of the Animal Kingdom, but the security entrance is actually kind of the covered bridge entrance to Knott's Jungle Island.

I am supposed to stop to see security to get in, but with the idiot chasing me, I just decide to fly over the bridge (and security gate) to escape the guy. Unfortunately, that has security starting to chase me, so I just trade one for the other. I try to explain I'm here to pick up the Idexx samples, but they say somebody else just came and picked them up (Dale, of course). So I ask if he picked up both sets of samples, and they didn't know there were two sets of samples. (The reason they didn't know is that there aren't two sets, but I did find samples to pick up, so whatever Dale grabbed, they weren't the right stuff.)

Anyway, I grab the samples and try to fly right back out the way I came in, but I seem to be being chased by more and more people. There are large vines everywhere in the air, and I am trying to dodge them and fly around them, but there are more and more of them, and I am having more and more trouble. Right when I escape one guy, somebody else always starts chasing me.

At one point, some of the vines I am having to fly around and avoid even seem to be shooting out of my mouth, and at others they are shooting through the pane of glass in the front door of the Hickory House, as things just get odder and odder, in a full-out chase dream that makes less and less actual sense.

01-17-2013 -- [Not sure if this was 1 or 2 dreams. Woke at about 2:30 and wrote down a dream, then had some slight problems getting back to sleep, probably fell back to sleep somewhere between 3:30 and 4:00. Had a dream, and had the sense of waking up and trying to fix it in my mind, but might have been in the dream, itself. I just don't know. Eventually woke up and wrote everything down about 8:15.]

Started out as a sort of dull, halfway repetitive Runescape dream. I was playing the game and teleporting to a sort of version of the Canifis farm patch, where I seem to be growing pumpkins. I teleport there, pick pumpkins, cut trees, perhaps bake pumpkin pies or something, then start the whole process again, about every five minutes, with the next growth tick. Very repetitive, kind of dull.

For a few minutes I find myself in a real life kitchen somewhere, standing outside a refrigerator, waiting for somebody to remove something from the freezer, so I can lay out some slices of cheese on a large piece of aluminum foil and place it back in the freezer. Hints of roommates and things. Then I find myself back at the teleporting to the farm patch, and cutting the logs and all. I seem to be waiting for Dale to join me, watching the mini-map for him, but his orange dot never seems to appear.

There is a slight hint of typical bits of a warehouse dream in here, but nothing that sticks, and it is around this point that I might have woke up, because I seem to remember trying to remember the previous bits in detail, so I may have half woke, then drifted right back into the same dream. I am just not sure.

I keep doing the farm bits, but the tree cutting is getting more and more involved, and I am turning in more and more logs at once (kind of like adding to the bonfire while hunting Skoll), getting to the point of 10 or 12 at once. Where I am turning them in seems to be more and more a sort of lumberyard, and soon I seem to be building one as part of a quest in perhaps Mort'ton, on the other side of the screen, but on the same screen, where I built another one as part of another quest a couple of years ago.

I suddenly find myself remembering building four or five lumberyards around different parts of Runescape, and it seems like it is getting to be a bit much to me. Besides, don't you need electricity to run a sawmill? This game seems to be getting more and more anachronistic to me. Anyway, I am still waiting for Dale's character to show up, and I am feeling very tired, so I decide to lay down on a pile of saw dust, which seems so very, very comfortable.

Things are shifting around me, and the pile of sawdust is turning into an odd sort of combination of a beanbag and some sort of weird ergonomical chair within a showroom of a sort of furniture store, and there is a redhead who is bugging me to get up. It seems the store is about to close, and she is not going to just let me fall asleep there, though she is willing to show me around a little and try to sell me something. [She looks much like the somewhat strange redhead in the funeral home that I saw in NCIS: Los Angeles last night.]

She leads me around the store, which kind of half looks like the Varrock Museum, then back to the corner where I had tried to take a nap. I am starting to gather all my stuff (of which I have more and more by the second), including putting things in my backpack, and trying to unplug my cell phone from the charger and the charger from the wall, without tangling up my wires and cables and things from theirs. My backpack is on my back, my pockets are getting full, and I seem to be having to carry my laptop in my hands, while she is saying something about me maybe accidentally dying, and I am saying "Good!" and reminding myself of the grumpy cat that people keep posting pictures of on Facebook right now.

Somehow the store full of people seem to want to cheer me up or something, so they all start singing some goofy sing-along song that everybody is supposed to join in on, but the singing is not impressive, I have no interest in joining in, and moments later they are still trying to rush me out of the store because they are closing for the evening.

But they are running me out in Frontierland in Disneyland, as it seems that's where the store is now located. I am supposed to be meeting a number of friends here, including Dale and others, but instead the only person who seems to be waiting is Howie, Kluts's husband. I'm talking about the odd store / show combination as we walk out of Frontierland, and then start down Main Street.

Very quickly Howie has turned into a huge, tall black guy (very big, but not fat) as we continue down Main Street. Then we're out in the parking lot, perhaps on a tram, and then even on a freeway. At times we're in a car, or a utility vehicle. At times it seems to be a bus, and at times, it seems to be almost floating on air or something. At one point we are at the top of a very tall, very steep hill, just starting down the other side, and it doesn't seem like we're in anything at all, though it feels much like a roller coaster as we rush down.

When it seems to be a bus, the black guy has lost his voice, but is trying to speak on a mic. He tries again and again, and is not sure if the mic is on or not, because even if it is on, with no voice, he probably couldn't make himself heard, anyway. I'm thinking his voice is even worse than mine.

Anyway, by this point the guy has shrunk a lot, and is now starting to look like Director Vance from NCIS, and he has his wife (who just was buried last night in the episode I watched) and kids with him, as well as myself. The bus is turning into a large SUV, and we are driving along the freeway next to a railroad track. There are train cars sitting on the tracks, with scaffolding on them, as people seem to be cleaning them much like window cleaners. Oddly the people climbing around the scaffolding seem to be a little old woman and her kids, and I quickly recognize them as Bonnie's old housekeeper Mattie and her kids (who I never met).

Somehow we're all impressed with how hard they seem to be working, and what a good job they seem to be doing, and Director Vance decides we have to stop at the trainyard and go in and place compliments for them, so we do so. We've parked at what looks much like a truck dock, though it is dirty, and I am thinking of staying in the car, so the kids don't have to go in, but we all end up getting out of the SUV, and end up being approached again by the same redhead from the funeral home / odd store, who wants to know what she can help us with. Odd.

01-13-2013 -- [Any earlier bits are long gone.] I find myself waiting in a ride line at Disney. It is a very long queue and lots of people in line. Occasionally the line has fallen behind because somebody hasn't moved when the line does, and suddenly we find ourselves moving fairly large distances in the line, and sometimes passing people in the other line unexpectedly.

Eventually get to the front of the line, and it seems to have been the line for a roller coaster. The person seating people seems to be Shawn Spencer (Psych), and he is just about to get off work, and is upset they are forcing him to seat a few more people before they let him get off. But finally he is let off, right after he seats me in the front car, and he climbs into the seat behind me.

The ride almost immediately turns into a log ride, though it is a very simple (and not very great) one, since there is one tall ramp, followed immediately by the big drop and the end of the ride. Since Shawn is right behind me, unhappy, and seems to be trying to prank me or something, I am actually kind of turned around in the log, keeping an eye on him, instead of the ride, itself. When we are just about to drop down the ramp on the other side, I turn around fast, but because of the motion, I look really strange in the on-ride picture (which is projected while we are still on the ride.)

The splash-down is fairly large, and I get nicely soaked, and soon we exit the ride. We seem to exit about where we would from the Matterhorn at Disneyland, and it seems we are at Disneyland, since there is a parade going right by us. We're trying to figure where to go next. The easy path to Main Street and the exit is blocked by the parade. There is a close parade crossing that we could use to head over to the Frontierland area, but it would be a long walk. Or we could head the other way and move on to Tomorrowland. Shawn is even thinking of leading me backstage, but we know that could cause trouble.

About this time, we run into Michael Murphy, whom I haven't seen (in dream or real life) in many, many years. We're just chatting for a few minutes, when he suddenly remembers something, and hauls out a sort of soda bottle, and tells me something like "It works. It still works." He explains that he fills the bottle daily with some red liquid that is not the soda I thought it was. Instead, it is some kind of gunk that he has kept in the freezer that I gave him many years ago.

It is something like the mushroom stuff that Pat had given me, that is supposed to continue growing, and be really, really healthy for you. I gave it to him, and he never believed it would work, but eventually it did, and for years since, he has taken some of it every day in the soda bottle and drank it during the course of the day. I ask him what it does for him, and it turns out he has no idea. But it is something Chinese, and he figures he can ask for information at a Chinese food cart right next to us.

It tastes slightly weird and quite sweet, and looks kind of like a sweet and sour sauce. He asks the Chinese lady at the food cart if she knows what it is, and what kind of health benefits it might have, but she only seems to be annoyed with him, and doesn't want to talk to him. Instead she tries to wander off. We try to follow, but she goes up a ladder and through a hatch, and as we are considering following, the hatch is becoming harder and harder to open, and the ladder is becoming less and less stable.

It has turned into the entrance into some sort of strange business involving buying and selling things. By this point, Geoffrey from Waiting For God is here, and is kind of in charge of the business. There are six people who each have a portion of the business. One has 3 clients, another has 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 for the last one. Each client is represented by a coin or some other small token, and a different type of token for each person.

For some reason, though they are in charge of their clients, they are all being told to give me their tokens, so I will get the money and credit for all their work. They aren't pleased with this, of course. I am neither pleased nor displeased, but I can remember the last time I had to do all the work for all the clients, and got no credit, so this does seem to be balancing things out. Very strange.

Suddenly I find myself driving in a familiar area, perhaps on Harbor in Garden Grove. It is an area I have driven a lot in dreams, but I don't think it really is a place from real life. I think I have just gone over an overpass hill, and am now coming up to a light where I will make a left turn and head north to drive a couple of miles and reach Disneyland again.

01-08-2013 -- [Shorter one without much detail, during a nap. If I had other short ones to put it with, would have done it as part of a fragment post (several short dreams in one entry).]

There is some sort of giant troll type of thing (think along the lines of Cliff in the Troll Invasion distraction) that stands 40 or 50 feet tall, and you fight it as a team, and get lots of bonuses in fighting it. Thing is, it will fight anything, and you get some of the points from anything it fights while it is also fighting you, so when we run into a flash mob of goblins, we're trying to lead them up the troll's hillside, so they can distract it and earn us a lot of bonus xp. Very nice.

Bonuses seem to apply to anything going on around this guy, so we're also doing things like skilling in his shadow and hunting penguins or strange rocks, all of it earning extra bonus xp because of him. Creatures of a couple dozen species seem to be attacking him all at the same time, and the xp is just running up at a remarkable rate. Very fun.

Soon, though, things shift drastically, and I find myself standing outside the Anaheim YMCA, telling me to go swimming. It is something like 11 at night, and I expect they are closed, but she is telling me to go inside, anyway. As I am approaching the door, she tosses me something that almost seems to be a cross between a cell phone and a tablet. I grab for it, but miss. It hits the ground, and it doesn't break, thankfully, but it does scatter, so I have to go grabbing for the cell phone, sim card, memory card, and battery and put them all back together.

I go in, and find oddly enough they are open, and end up talking to the lifeguards before swimming. One of them seems to be a teacher I knew from grade school (but not Mr. Adams, who I really had as a teacher, and really did see swimming at the Y one time), and another was a really attractive brunette who I seemed to be leaning against for some reason. Not that I'm going to complain. My body seems to be kind of falling asleep ... right before I wake up.

01-09-2013 -- [This one is titled kind of odd because the dream was all over the place, and it would be halfway difficult to come up with a good title for it, but for the sixth or seventh day in a row, somebody has been showing up in my dreams who really has no reason to be there. And since a friend has jokingly theorized that this woman can put herself in other people's dreams, and since she has recently commented on how often others have mentioned dreaming of her, I can't help but start considering her a sort of stalker, placing herself in my dreams.]

Doing a mystery shop at a convenience store over by Universal Studios. Since they don't have a fountain drink area, and since the hot dogs look really mangled, I am being forced to buy coffee, which means this must be a Circle K shop. I am wandering around the store checking on all the things I need to check on, and am amazed by the guy that seems to be buying one of the hot dogs that looks like it has been setting on the rollers for days or even weeks.

The cashier is asking me if I need any help, while I am approaching the coffee counter. I get there right before a pregnant woman, and grab a coffee cup, but it seems to be the last one of any size. It also feels very flimsy, and I am worried it might not be a usable cup, anyway. Since I don't want to hover around the counter, I start to move toward the back of the (very large) store, and stay out of the way for a possible few more cups to be put out.

I find myself far in the back, near a restroom, and decide I'll take the chance to check it for the mystery shop, but right before I walk in, somebody who works there walks in. I figure I'll wait, but am rudely told the restroom is not and will not be available. I seem to remember the same thing happening the last time I was here, and start to argue with them a bit, wondering why these people won't let anybody use the restroom.

I end up walking and talking with a young punk-like black guy and slowly start to learn that this is a huge building, and it has more than one business in it. Toward the back, there is a construction firm, and their bathroom is for their workers. They aren't going to let anybody else use it. This actually makes sense, and knowing what is going on makes me a lot more accepting of it, though I do think they ought to put up some signs or something, so people know they are no longer in the same store.

I thank the guy for his information, telling him I really appreciate his letting me know all this, and he gets very belligerent, asking me if I am mocking him in a way that is very reminiscent of Karl's Otis at the Adventurers Club. He thinks I am making fun of him, but I'm not. He soon leaves, and I find that as we have walked and talked, we exited the building to the East, and are now in a small gift shop a door or two down from the convenience store I was mystery shopping.

The gift shop sells food (perhaps pizza, considering later bits) and a bunch of motivational and educational-style posters. They seem to be about 1/3 grammar, 1/3 humor, 1/3 motivational, and kind of blend into each other so it would be quite easy to buy the wrong one if you weren't careful.

I try to walk the few yards west that ought to take me to the convenience store, but somehow it doesn't seem to be there, and I walk something like a quarter or a half mile until the street dead-ends in front of a freeway. The last little bit I reach, there are a bunch of little kids (mostly girls) that seem to be doing some very weird and spasmodic (but somewhat cute, since they are little kids) dancing to what seems to be Christian parodies.

As I am standing there, I hear a loud chuckle, and a very familiar voice saying something like "It took me forever to learn to ..." whatever it was, doesn't stick in my mind, but I look up at the freeway, to see a car at the side of the road with Anne clearly visible in it. About that time, the car starts to drive away, but not before Anne looks down and sees me standing there. "Great," I think, "She is going to be convinced I am stalking her, now."

I glance down a narrow sort of alleyway, and see a pizza parlor. It seems to be an Al's Pizza (a very small Kissimmee chain with two or three units, though one or two may have closed down), but when I look again, it seems to have changed into a small sort of tent. The whole area is now looking more like a flea market or something, and as I am feeling hungry, I approach it to see about maybe getting a couple of slices. But somebody else pushes in front of me at the last second, and instead of wasting time glaring at him, I walk a little further down, looking at the other booths, before I come back to try and get some pizza.

I am thinking of buying three or four slices, but it seems like they may have just sold the pushy guy their last slices. Anyway, as I am trying to juggle all the stuff I am carrying (I had nothing to carry a moment ago!) I find I already have two pizza boxes and four slices on plates stacked on top of that. I obviously don't need to buy any more pizza. I find myself thinking I might want to reschedule my mystery shop, since I've somehow passed the place, except I have to go back there to get my car, anyway.

Except as I get back to where the street dead-ends by the freeway, my car is sitting right there. And I somehow have two tiny kittens, one black, and one white, climbing on me. They are mine, and I take care of them, but they weren't with me just a moment ago. Since I have these pizza slices just sitting on plates, and these cats all over me, I soon have cat hair on the slices and pizza sauce on the cats. What a mess. I am trying to get all of them in the car.

Almost instantly things change from me trying to get them in the car to driving down the road. Problem is, since they weren't with me originally, I have nothing to carry the cats in, and they are getting into everything. One of them seems to be almost rolling in the pizza slices, and I am paying so much attention to trying to get them out of the mess that I am not watching where I am driving.

When I look up again, I am in a narrow, brick-lined alleyway, very narrow, just a few yards from a short brick wall blocking access to a sort of drainage ditch / Los Angeles riverbed. I am so close to the wall, I don't even bother trying to brake. I crash right through the brick wall, and find my car teetering on the edge of a large 'ramp' of stone steps leading down to the river bed. At this point, I am still thinking if I back up carefully, I might be able to get out of this, drive off, and pretend like nothing ever happened.

But I can't get any traction, and as I continue teetering, I see some rednecks down at the base of this sort of 'stairway' with fishing poles in the 'river', laughing and gesturing for me to come on down. Suddenly the car tilts forward a little more, and I'm bouncing down the stair ramp, the rednecks diving out of the way as I plow through their fishing poles. At least it shut them up. I crash through another wall, and find myself teetering over another ramp, this one steeper, and leading right into the water.

I have no roof anymore, and seem to have very long arms, so I am grabbing stuff from the car, and trying to toss it out to somewhere safe. There are back packs and boxes of stuff, pizza, and the kittens. I try to put the kittens on the ground, but my aim is bad and I seem to toss them into a very shallow fountain. One of them is fine, but the other is right under the tiny waterfall, and though it is very little pressure, the kitten is so small it is drowning, so I need to reach in and fish it out.

About this time, there is a siren, and an ambulance-like vehicle pulls up. It seems help has arrived. There is an older lady with white hair who kind of reminds me of Sarge, a bus driver I once knew, and a younger lady who kinds of looks like Jane from the Britcom Waiting on God, who is wearing what seems to be a cross between a hazmat suit, and one of those protective bubble-type units in a hospital ward. Inside the see-through suit, I can catch glimpses of her partly clad and scarred body, and it kind of seems like her belly has been opened up and stretched, so that she has a sort of external womb, complete with several babies still attached by umbilical cords, sticking out of the backside of her suit. Yuck!

01-09-2013 -- [Three fragments in the same night, but separate dreams, all involving Harry Potter, and at least two, maybe all three involving Runescape. Disjointed, short, but kind of neat. (And one long, detailed dream between the last two that will be entered separately and doesn't involve the same settings.]

---

01-09-2013 -- I'm Harry Potter, and I'm running around hiding from and being chased by a bunch of Death Eaters, as we fire spells back and forth at each other. Soon I have run into some sort of tower, where I go up to the penthouse, which seems to be where I live. There is a kind of a hint of the wizard tower from the recently re-done Runescape quest, which is why I say this dream might possibly have a Runescape connection, but that's the extent of it for this one.

Anyway, I am safe in the penthouse, but Malfoy is still down on the ground, trying to find a way in, and he is starting to annoy me. So I exit the tower and head back outside, where I grab Malfoy in my magic, and start bouncing him around, hitting the ground, then flying a few feet in the air, and hitting the ground again, directing it all with my finger. It's kind of like the ferret scene with Moody in Goblet of Fire, but he's still a boy. Still liked the name for the dream, though.

Eventually I am getting bored, so I swing him about 40 feet in the air, and threaten to just drop him and let him suffer the fall if he doesn't leave me alone and go away. There is something about Tonks, and maybe a hint of romance (or maybe just teasing, not detailed enough to be sure). I go back upstairs to find the penthouse is now swarming with bees, which may not be real bees, but perhaps a large group of bee animagi. The buzzing is bothering me slightly, and I worry of stings since this isn't an uncommon dream situation, but I decide to not worry about it, and trust the wards to take care of them, which is enough faith for them to do so.

---

01-09-2013 -- This feels like a continuation of the previous dream, but it is certainly more Runescape centered. Very much a puzzle quest type of thing, and I find myself in a kitchen somewhere baking little tiny plastic beads on some sort of backing (sort of like making those plastic frame sun catchers) in the oven to create runes for this puzzle I am working on. It seems to involve placing runes around a circle, and trying to figure out which runes I'll need to make, and where I will need to place them, whether at 4, 8 and 12 around the circle, or perhaps 3, 6, 9 and 12 or even more.

I'm making a few of these things, including a couple with catsup on them, at the same time I am preparing lunch, so I have to remember and be careful to eat the right things. The runes wouldn't probably taste that good. The penthouse tower of the last dream seems to be gone for the moment, and instead I find myself in the ruins of the old Wizard Tower from the recently redone quests, except it is not underground, but a ruin open to the air. (The new tower has not been built on top of it yet, I guess.)

It is surrounded by ghosts? Spirits? Some sort of non-corporeal monsters of large size (20 to 40 feet tall versions of some of the more normal-size Runescape monsters) which stay on the outskirts of the tower grounds, but slowly wander circles about the place. I probably ought to leave them alone, but instead I seem to be sort of taunting them, and soon they are chasing me into the center of the tour ruin, where a wildly coruscating power beam still rises in the air (the tower transport system in the new wizard tower), and I suddenly realize if they get in that beam, it might possibly start to bring them back into a corporeal state where they could be dangerous. This might have been a bad idea!

I'm trying to lead them back out of the ruins, but not having much luck, until suddenly a sort of non-corporeal, but very powerful, image of Lily suddenly forms in the area, and forces them to flee. Hints of family magic, perhaps related to the fan-fiction story A Marauder's Plan. Anyway, Lily manages to clear them from the area, so I can get back to my quest work.

---

01-09-2013 -- I'm in my first bedroom in the Hickory house, though I'm very tiny, and the bedroom is very large. The entirety of the Runescape world is laid out in front of me on the floor, and I am living Runescape in my bedroom. Hints of the above dreams are still around, as well as hints of the Ozan quests in the Desert.

The desert areas seem to be right near the tiny hall section leading to the door ('hall' caused by the closet next to the door) and the floor is covered in sand. There seems to be a cross between the hourglass stations from the Ozan quest and a version of the entrance to the rune alters that seems slightly based on the last dream, above, where I was baking the runes. Approaching the area, there is nothing to really see, until you get close enough. As you walk into the area, a variety of colored runes on the ground start to glow, and a stone circle sort of rises out of the ground. The runes almost look like holographic projections ... very neat.

I can see a sort of tunnel (with a half-escalator kind of feel to it) stretching into the floor of my room, leading into an underground temple, and I head down to see what is there. With the rune alter hints above, you might expect nothing more than an actual alter to approach, but there are all kinds of small 'critters' running around, slightly digital looking. They remind me of video game characters from Wreck-It Ralph. Some of them may need to be destroyed, some of them may need to be made allies, and I really don't have the least clue as to which are which. I soon find myself being approached by Amelia Bones, who wants to know what on Earth I am doing here, and it begins to feel like this underground temple might be in the Department of Mysteries,

01-10-2013 -- Heading for a course that seems to be a cross between a junior high class and a college class. Junior high in that the campus layout most resembles Brookhurst Junior High, and college because the class only meets for perhaps an hour and a half, two days a week. It is near the beginning of the semester, so I haven't been to the class much yet, and I can't remember exactly where it is, but I know the general area, and when I come across the teacher playing an odd sort of baseball with some of the students next to a classroom with the door open, I think I've found the right place.

I walk into the classroom, and want to take my usual seat in the last seat of the first row by the door, but something is blocking that seat, and I have to walk around the entire first row to get to it. Whatever was blocking the way is now gone, and a punk who has been giving me problems in every class we've had together is also approaching it. I'm sure he is going to take me seat, but he takes the seat in front of me, and sneers at me.

The teacher calls me up to the front of the room, and wants to talk to me about homework. It seems I haven't been turning enough of it in, and he wonders if I am committed enough to the class, and suggests I ought to be working on it now. Problem is, though I have my loaded backpack, I am missing the books for this class. He sends me back to my seat with a frown.

The class seems to be a cross between a literature class and a film class, because we're supposed to be commenting on the poems of Lewis Carroll, and exactly where Disney fit them in to the Alice in Wonderland animated feature. As I approach my seat, I am humming one of the songs from the movie, very very lightly under my breath. The bully immediately starts humming a different song, quite loudly, to drown me out. I call him the a-word, and ask him if he plans to do that any time I hum under my breath, and he says he does. I call him a jerk, and say he'll be heard a lot more than I will.

I bend to grab my drink (one of those big, refillable thermal mugs that help to keep the drinks cold, like you'd find at 7-Eleven) and take a sip, and the teacher starts yelling at me about my rudeness and such. I guess drinks aren't allowed in his class room, but I didn't know that. He comes running to the back of the room, and starts to tear apart my entire mug, which was already leaking slightly, anyway. What should be a simple two-piece design (three if you include the straw) turns out to have dozens and dozens of parts, and the teacher insists on tearing the entire thing apart, insulting me the whole while.

This goes on for something like 30 minutes, and I know I am never going to be able to fit all those pieces back together. I say he could have just taken it away, told me to collect it after class, and to never bring it back again, and he says "As if!" while the punk from earlier just laughs. I give him a very hard Gibbs-slap for his laughter. Some of the other students try to walk out of class, and complain that he is wasting over half the class on this, and the teacher tells them all it is my fault, and they start to bully me, steal lots of my stuff, and even steal my pants off me.

Somehow I eventually find myself outside of the classroom, walking back to the door to get in, while students in the hall are pointing and laughing at my nudity. When I finally get into the classroom, there is somebody else standing there with the teacher, and he announces himself as the head of the department, tells me the teacher can do whatever he wants, and it is all my fault, and for me to just shut up and get over it. Then he stalks on out of the classroom.

I make a loud comment about how I now have a recording of both the teacher and the department head bullying a student, as I gather up most of my stuff (my pants are still missing) but it doesn't seem to worry the teacher any. As I exit the classroom and head back to my car, I am thinking it is still early enough in the semester that I can drop that class without any harm except the loss of the money I paid for it (must have been a CA community college course, because it was only $5 a unit), because I sure don't plan to remain in that course.

[The teacher looked like that Simmons guy I interviewed for the Hornet, the math teacher who was a member of that CSICOP group.]

01-10-2013 -- [First dream of the night worth remembering. May have been earlier bits, but if so, not a single hint of them in my memory.] I am taking the NCIS team on a sort of a team building exercise which is supposed to end in a giant orgy. We're driving around in a van much like my roommate Randy's vehicle, on our way to a phony hostage situation, yet I am the only one who seems to realize it is phony. The others just don't get it.

We drive down a long, tree-lined road in an out of the way area, then turn in to a small sub-division, me calling out directions to Gibbs (who is driving) while he talks on his radio with 'the agency' we're working with for this team building exercise. Soon we come to a roadblock of police cars about one house past the house where a couple of shooters are holed up, shooting at the cops outside.

A couple of team members take the back, and a couple of us take the front. I look carefully, and can see one shooter firing out the front door, but it takes a while to spot the other, shooting between the blinds of an upstairs window. I don't have a gun, so I'm waiting for a time when things slow down enough (both gunmen having to reload at the same time) that I can rush the house, and at first I am ignored, then the upstairs gunman notices me, and starts to take aim.

I spot him, and move into cover in a large bush, and he is leaning further and further out the window, trying to get me in his site. He seems to be kind of leaning out against a fairly frail tree limb, and suddenly *CRACK* he goes flying through the air in perhaps a 15 foot arc, crashing to the ground and dropping his weapon. I call out that he's lost his weapon and go running for it, but he is still closer to it. He picks the thing up and starts to aim at me, and I'm calling out that he has it again, thinking I'm dead, when *BANG*, Gibbs shoots him from behind me.

He's already taken care of the gunman in the doorway, and we're all now heading inside to scout out the building. Ziva has been injured, and is resting in a chair, Tony and McGee are taking the downstairs, and Gibbs and I are scouting the upstairs. But it isn't at all like it is supposed to be. These are supposed to be really posh rooms, very high class, with lots of beds, hot tubs, and lots of people having sex for us to join in with. Instead, the place is empty, and looks like a poorly maintained Days Inn, or perhaps worse. There is black mold everywhere, almost all the beds are water beds, and they are leaking so if you try and lay in them, you'll be soaked. Half the upstairs is in the middle of renovations, with sawdust and wooden beams everywhere. An absolute mess.

I decide to make the most of a bad situation, and head back downstairs. Ziva has fallen asleep in the recliner she was sitting in, and I pick her up in my arms and explain I'll take her upstairs to the one good room, so she can rest peacefully, all the while admiring her legs in the slightly short skirt she is wearing. I carry her upstairs and place her in the one bed that doesn't seem to be leaking, then start to undress.

As I do, Ziva comes to, and asks me what's going on. I remind her of the training exercise and tell her she took a bump, and that I brought her up here to relax and maybe have some fun. By this time, I am very close, and lean in to kiss her, and she doesn't seem to have any objections. She does, however, ask what the ground rules are, and how far we want to take this. I tell her that is her decision, but I smile as she says "All the way."

So we're kissing passionately and undressing each other. I've just managed to remove her top, and am studying her breasts, while telling her how lovely she is, when Tony busts through the door, muttering some of the things we've been saying back and forth in a high falsetto, and we're ready to kill him for spying on us. Turns out the rooms are wired for sound and video, and they have been sitting around in the lobby watching us, but now Gibbs is calling us down for a different kind of action. But we're still going to kill Tony!

When we get downstairs, we find a sort of dining room with several small, square tables. The whole team is there, including, oddly, McKenzie from NCIS: Los Angeles. She is reading a poem, something very Dr Seuss-like, except it is complete gibberish, and makes no sense. The grammar is also very poor, and Ziva is going nuts trying to correct it with her ever-improving knowledge of English grammar and idioms, but she can't get anywhere, since as I said, it is complete nonsense.

I glance at her, and see a large wood spider dangling from her ear almost like an earring, and ask her what she thinks of spiders. She admits she isn't fond of them, but doesn't have a particular problem with them as I try to brush it out of her hair. It is a fairly large spider, it's body maybe an inch and a half by a half inch, with long legs, and at first I am thinking it is a non-venomous variety, but moment by moment it is shifting, looking more like a venomous version, and then even morphing into a scorpion, crawling on her hand, but thankfully not biting her.

Somehow things just shift, and I am now on the new case, which seems to involve something about comic books. At first I am looking at sheets of paper with the pages printed on them, but unbound. Then it turns to more and more sheets, some in three ring binders, some in matchbook covers, oddly enough. I am running down the street chasing some that seem to be blowing in the wind, and have to stop and study a number of squares of toilet paper to be sure they aren't printed on those.

Soon I find I am facing some odd sort of version of Ultron (in this dream, a silvery robot) as I am turning into Captain America. I have a white, clay-like substance in my hands, and I am kneading it and rolling it into a kind of miniature shield, then it very quickly enlarges and hardens into an almost indestructible form, ready for use. I find myself facing off against numerous bad guys in three trucks, right in front of Marie's house, down near Greenleaf.

There is a truck running right for me, and I use magic or psi powers (not sure which) to create a kind of force field so it can't reach me, right about the time it blows up. There is another truck behind it, filled with gunmen who are trying to shoot me, and that truck blows up as well, the gunmen being caught in the blast and burning alive, before turning into some sort of undead zombie types, as another truck behind blows up. Though I can't see him, there is a hint of Ultron doing a Green Goblin sort of thing with pumpkin bombs.

The whole thing seems to be on some sort of time loop, as I find myself arriving, raising the force shield, and watching the guys turning into zombies two or three times before I wake up.

01-05-2013 -- [Great dream with some nice details and connections to other dreams. Very long, but the last 'scene' is the longest and most detailed, solely because it is the one I remember best.]

This one seems to start at a Disney World-ish kind of place where I am looking for work. I am trying to get in at various jobs, but they aren't what I really want to be doing. It seems I can't try to get the job I really want, because that would have me working with Anne, and though I am over the entire thing, she isn't, and is still freaking out about it. At the same time, Agent Fornell can't get the job he wants, either, because he and Gibbs' ex-wife, Diane. Turns out she and Anne work together, and she may have been the cast member arguing with me on my cell phone in the big 'trying to be lucid and not getting there' dream at Disneyland Paris, last night.

There were bits taking place at the Buena Park Mall, trailing suspects with Gibbs and Fornell, dodging around the various mall customers. I also seem to remember tiny bits that might tie in with long-time hiking dreams, and the area from the 33 cave, but I can't remember the details.

At one point, I almost seem to be getting close to Diane (God have mercy!) while Fornell may be hitting it off with Anne. Soon, Gibbs is about to split off from us and climb into a helicopter to go undercover somewhere, and we're all kind of worried about it, He is really going to be in danger on this one. Fornell and I end up on the Haunted Mansion, where he is reacting to all the ghosts and things popping up at us, and is close to shooting audio animatronic figures. I know them all, and can ignore them, which means I can spot the real criminals who are coming for us in the ride. I manage to escape, but I think here is where they manage to kill Fornell.

Soon I have just left my elementary school, and I am a little kid being chased by bullies, instead of crooks. I am considering ducking into one of the houses that have the signs up that they are a safe-haven for bullies, but I fear that they have been infiltrated and compromised by the crooks we're trying to bring down, so I don't dare trust them. I just keep running down Crescent, heading for Hickory.

Soon I find myself in a large mansion that I've been in before in at least a couple of dreams, though I don't know if any of them were ever written down or entered on the computer. (One of them, a Runescape dream that turned live, and shifted to this location.) Perhaps not in the other dreams, but I think in this dream it is Chartwell ... at least, I think it is a house that Winston Churchill owned.

This is where Gibbs was working undercover, before he got killed. [Sorry!] I am now here undercover, trying to find what evidence he left here for us, and am dressed up as a butler. I am speaking with Diane, who is also undercover, but only as a tourist. We're in a large library that I think begins on the third floor, and has a domed ceiling going up above the fifth floor, very posh and fancy.

We're trying to figure out where Gibbs would have left any evidence or clues for us, and I find myself remembering a small, nondescript study from one of those previous dreams, hidden in the back on the ground floor where Churchill spent a lot of time, and thinking how Gibbs would have probably enjoyed using it. I'm trying to think of a method to get us in there without anyone seeing us, when one of the bad guys approaches Diane. Unfortunately, he has recognized her.

He plans to separate her from the crowd and dispose of her, and he thinks I am just the hired help, so he tries to send me away. Instead, I grab him and start to fight with him. The next bit is unclear, but I think he shoots me, and as I collapse to the ground, dead, the butler turns into Gibbs, while I am now Diane, and I break free and start running, looking for that little study.

Time passes, and soon I am myself, have visited the study, and have got the stuff Gibbs left for us, enough to put the crooks away. Now I just have to make it out alive, while knowing that my partners have been killed. Bit of a downer dream, while still very cool.

I burst out a small side door, and run for a gate, but there are crooks right behind me, and they'll set a dog on me, as well. I'm running down a steep hill to a tall gate which is probably locked, with crooks and dog behind me. The hill is so steep, and ends so close to the gate, I figure if I take a running jump, I can jump from the hill onto the top of the gate, bypassing it being locked. Unfortunately, the dog catches up to me.

I manage to grab its jaws, and am holding them shut kind of like you do with an alligator. I wrestle with it for a few seconds, then throw it to the ground by the gate, and jump. I do manage to land on the top of the gate, and quickly scramble down the other side, where I fall on my butt. I now only have two problems ... first the fence is a chain link fence with a very large mesh. A human couldn't squeeze through it, but the dog almost certainly can, and is in fact squeezing through it now. And secondly, more crooks are running through the fields (including one who looks just like Ducky, oddly enough), approaching me, so I am on the run again!

[I love NCIS, though I haven't watched all that much of it. I also haven't watched almost any of it in at least two or three years, which is why I am surprised that it seems to be the TV show that makes it into my dreams the most often. I would expect it to be Trek or Doctor Who or B5, but I think I've dreamed more of NCIS than any of them. Oddly, though, I watched a couple of episodes online last night, including one with Diane in it (don't think I have ever seen her before) and I am amazed at how quickly my dream weaved her into a story, since it usually takes my dreams about two weeks to catch up with things from real life.]

01-06-2013 -- [What fragments I had earlier in the night didn't seem worth remembering, but I know there was something about mom being around, and dad being dead, stuff at the Church of the Nazarene, and something about Anne and I being friendly with each other. I don't get why she is in my dreams so much, recently. I haven't seen her in years, haven't thought about her except in my dreams, and have no desire to have anything to do with her anymore. But the last few nights she keeps popping into my dreams.]

I find myself at college, sitting for finals on two classes that I have never once attended through the year. This is my last chance to do something which might be able to salvage my grades. I think one class is a civics class, and the other may be a math class.

Anyway, for the Civics final, I have to write a paper on what I would consider the perfect form of government, if money were no issue. I know what my beliefs are on government, and I think this ought to be easy, but every time I am about to write something, I think of more things to consider.

I am planning on writing something in favor of a Rand-ist, Objectivism pro-business government and system, which is what I believe in, both in my dreams, and in real life, but I also keep coming back to the issue of big corporations with CEOs who make billions while they try to pay their workers minimum wage (or less), and while the system allows this, it still isn't right.

[This could lead to a big argument on how no government system could ever work, because people quite simply suck! Communism is a good system in theory but can't work in practice because of human nature. Some are going to take charge and abuse the system while making others do all the work. Capitalism is the best system, but still the exact same thing happens. Our current liberal system with all the welfare and things fails for the same reasons, and in the same way as communism. All systems fail, and for the same reasons. Humans suck! So ends the soap box.]

By this time, three fourths of the testing period is over, and I still haven't written anything, and the teacher is trying to talk me into just giving up, taking an F for the class, and leaving. But I am still convinced I can write something good enough to salvage my grade. Meanwhile, time keeps passing, and I think I am now in the middle of the testing period for the second class, still trying to write the paper for the first class.

In some odd was that makes no sense, I soon find myself picking up and throwing down either a bust, or a broken bit of statue, again and again. I am kind of doing weight lifting with it, and must have been doing so for a while, because I have really built up my strength and stamina, and have some pretty serious muscles.

Then I find myself in what seems to be a bar, but I am with the choir, and they are doing a concert. I haven't been around for rehearsals, and am not a part of it, but as they start singing, I find it is all Gaither songs, and I can't help but sing along. We're now several songs in, and one has just finished, and somebody is on a bar stool next to me. I think it is Laura S., and she leans to me and very nastily tells me to either quit singing, or get out! Even though I've been singing great because I know all the Gaither songs perfectly. [Don't think I have ever exchanged a cross word with her, no idea where this dream bit came from.]

Without a word, I bend to pick up my backpack, and start to leave. She calls after me that Carl has things to do, so can't give me a ride home, and something about being ready on time on Sunday if I want a ride to church? She didn't think so! And I really don't have a clue why she is upset with me, but I must not have a car, currently, from all she is saying.

I walk out of the church, and it turns out to be the church in Buena Park, and I start to walk home. It's only a couple of miles, not all that far. I pass through Servant's Heart, where they are talking about one of the people now constantly visiting or living at Rosemary's (the tall guy with curly black hair) and they are saying something about how they gave him some money and he went out and got sloshed on it ... never again money for him.

By this point, I have walked through the flower neighborhood down to Dale, and have reached La Palma, and am preparing to jaywalk across to Food King, but the traffic is really heavy. Right about when I am going to bolt across, a car pulls up. It has nothing to do with me, but since I know the person, I stop and say hi. It is Tracey M (also from choir) who is either picking up or dropping off somebody.

Soon I make it across the street, and soon make it home to the Hickory house, where I head into the house and move to my first bedroom, where I plan to go to sleep. I am remembering just a tiny bit about whatever the earlier bit here at the Hickory house was about, and how at least dad wasn't alive in the dream, so it is catching up with reality. Meanwhile, there is a cat in my room, and I am trying to pet it, but it seems to be a stray, so it is skittish, probably has fleas, and it isn't one I know.

[When my dad died, I kept having weird dreams that he came back to help me with my mom's death. Once mom died too, then either parent might show up in my dreams, dead, alive, as a ghost, as having faked their own death, or back in time, before they died, so none of the above applied. Oddly, by the end of this dream I was a little kid, so they would have both been alive, yet I was glad my dreams were catching up enough to remember dad was dead.]

01-04-2013 -- [Fragmented, bits of stuff all over the place. Last dream of the night, after other short fragmented ones, and one long, detailed one.] Watching a new episode of Doctor Who which features yet another return of Amy Pond. Moment by moment it seems to be less and less a show, and more and more, real life.

There are hints of some kind of sex, but no memories, so I have no idea of who with. Eventually I find I am sleeping on mom and dad's bed in the Hickory house. My friend Cheyanne K comes bustling into the room, telling me to wake up, and asking if I plan to sleep all day, then she walks out. I do wake up, and start to get out of bed, but she walks in again to urge me to hurry, and I have to suddenly start covering up my nudity.

I turn on the water, and start showering in bed! Water, sweat, and bits of gunk are rinsing off my body, and soon I am trying to direct little bits of gunk in the bed to rinse into a place where my mom's weight has torn the mattress, and the springs are sticking out. Seems to serve as a sort of drain for the shower in the bed.

Soon I am dressed and wandering about the house. There is something about a documentary on a Mormon who had ten wives, and I'm thinking to myself that even if I am not a Mormon, and don't believe in their religion, the documentary is really biased and unfair.

Soon I find I am sitting in my bed, in my bedroom, writing books. I have just finished the second book in a series which focus around the character of Harry Potter, wizard, but are mysteries. I've decided to title it And Then There Were Two and none of my friends like the name. They tell me it has already been used, and is a bad name anyway, and I really ought to worry about writing the books, and let the publisher bother with the titles! I try and explain it is a parody (probably on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None), but nobody wants to listen.

And then things switch to where I am living it instead of writing it, running around chasing suspects, being chased by crooks, and having a good time, but most of the details not vivid enough to remember. Soon a bunch of us are standing around talking, when some girl lifts her shirt, and we all start to feel her up, except she doesn't have all that good of breasts, and we're all kind of 'meh' about it. Fragmentary and weird.