Memorable Dreams
09-26-2013 -- [Very long, detailed, funny dream, that like usual, I can not remember well enough to really do justice to it. I literally woke chuckling to all the insanity I'd just been through.] I am at a hotel or something, almost certainly at or near Walt Disney World, and I am with Dale. He's on the last full day of his vacation, and is stressing out about going home the next day. He's worried about packing everything and getting the rental car returned and all. So I am walking him through it all step-by-step, and telling him it will all go smoothly and be easy to get everything done, and he is starting to calm down. Meanwhile, we seem to be eating in a little restaurant or cafeteria that seems more like it is in a school than a hotel (hints of FCM at IWU), and Dale is mentioning how he ended up writing some sort of sarcastic bit for a small humor newsletter, but what was supposed to be one little bit has grown into three, and he's handed them to me to read, and as I am doing so (and nothing ever reads well in dreams) the publication is growing from a Teens Today-size 11x17 folded-into-four-page handout to a Hornet-sized newspaper to a multi-page, multi-section full-size newspaper like the Orange County Register, which I am having trouble folding to carry under my arm. Meanwhile, Dale has just taken out his trombone and has walked into the back of a classroom and sat down with his instrument as a very no-nonsense teacher and a bunch of students start to walk into the room. It seems Dale is sitting in on a rehearsal. The teacher is very tough and demanding, but all Dale ever receives from him is the occasional brief nod, so he must be a very good musician. [In real life I am almost certain Dale doesn't play anything.] As the teacher starts and continues to lead the group, I am very surprised to notice all the brass players are segregated behind a 'sound-proof' barrier that can't block the sound entirely, but lessens it, so the teacher isn't having to constantly warn the brass not to blare, and urge the woodwinds and strings to be louder, to be heard, and I am thinking to myself what a brilliant idea it is, and wishing we had it back when I was in band. But Dale is not behind it, so I guess the trombone is a woodwind in this dream. Anyway, they play for a bit, and then they seem to take a little break, and while the professor is giving his students small bits of individual instruction, I am making a few comments (about the vacation, not the music) to Dale, and though I am afraid the music teacher will snap at me, he doesn't. The teacher is a sort of a mixture between Mr. Eubanks (one of my teachers, though not a band teacher), Pat Moran, and Lisa Simpson's music teacher. Soon the whole class is moving, and it seems like we move about a corridor over. It is like we are moving from a practice room to a performance hall, and starting to prepare for an actual concert or something. But there are more and more people walking in and getting involved, and lots of 'guest stars,' both from TV and from my past. Tony Shalhoub seems to be puttering around, and Ron Howard seems to be playing an instrument, and wondering how things are going to play out, but they are both very young. (Ron is Happy Days age, and Tony resembles his character in Galaxy Quest.) There is a young lady who is top of her class, and very proper, but kind of stuck up (a sort of cross between Sharon Newkirk's brilliance and Cordelia Chase's attitude) who is supposed to be one of the star performers, but she has managed to do something to anger the professor, and he just points her to an out-of-the-way corner and orders her to sit down and shut up, which has her pouting and angry. Meanwhile, there is a very flashy and flamboyant piano player, a kind of a cross between Liberace and Elton John, very forward, demanding, and visual, who is just passing through, but sees a piano, and can't help but sit down and start to play, and the professor tolerates it, but makes it plain he expects him to behave, and amazingly enough, manages enough presence that the flamboyant player meekly agrees. So they are all starting to tune up and prepare, and Dale is still hanging in the background, out of the way, but ready to play. Since he is not one of the students, he doesn't want to put himself forward at all, but he is still going to sit in and play along. Meanwhile, Shawn Spencer is also here, and is his usual insane self, and is coming up with all sorts of ideas on how to make the concert or opera or whatever it is supposed to be, and somehow the strict, demanding, controlling professor finds almost all of his insane ideas to be interesting, and is largely giving him free reign, and thereby allowing chaos to spread incredibly. So the people are wandering in and out, music is played, Shawn is rewriting both the show and bits of music on the fly (at one point he walks by the piano player, throws in a hand, and adds a small riff mid-song before walking off) and though I expect both the flamboyant pianist and the controlling director to be furious, they seem much more bemused, almost sort of "Yes, that does work nicely." The girl is complaining that she isn't being allowed to do anything, and it's just not right! Ron Howard is having fun, but confused as can be about what is happening, and Shawn is getting more and more wild in his ideas, which doesn't bother the controlling professor at all, though it certainly ought to! Things are getting more and more surreal, and the audience is just laughing hysterically and taking it all in. It is chaos ... brilliantly orchestrated chaos! Finally things end and we all start filing out. I want to tell the professor how much I liked the concert, and also I still want to comment on that brass behind the barrier thing, but there is no way to get near him at the moment, and the press of the crowd more or less forces me into the practice room that we'd visited earlier. It seems that other students, not part of the group performing, but inspired by the concert's madness, have run rampant in here, and trashed the place. The college staff have been working at cleaning the place up, and are somehow deciding to blame me for all this, but I am not having any part of it. I tell them they want the prestige of having this big name person in charge, and to keep him from walking off in a huff they give him complete and absolute control ... if he goes mad and his students destroy the place, the blame is completely theirs. They can't blame it on a random passing stranger! They don't like hearing this, and are swarming at me, trying to pull me down, but all they manage to do is to pull down all the materials blocking the door, and create an exit for me. I climb out of the room, and back into the main hall, where I find the crowds thinning. I run into Dale, who I haven't seen in a while, and he is now late for his plane, but he feels the concert was well-worth it, and he isn't worried about it anymore. I start helping him grab all his luggage, and am sort of shrinking it to a small size, and causing it to all float around us (ala Harry Potter) while Kevin is complaining about everything, and saying he doesn't know what is going on. We hurry toward the car, but as the crowds continue to thin, I practically run right in to the professor, and decide I have to speak to him for a moment. But now he is tired, and winding down, and has been talking to people for quite a while, and may be starting to second guess himself a little, and he seems really iffy about talking to me. I tell him something like "That was crazy, and insane, and hilarious, and absolutely brilliant, but I have to tell you two things. The first is a quote from one of the Superman movies: 'You can't ...' I mean, 'You don't ...' 'If you think you can ....' Never mind. It's not important." Now he is starting to smirk, and seems to be getting to be in a better mood. "The second thing is this. I used to be a music student ... never again!" I insist, worried that he'll think I want to ask him for lessons or something. Then I start to mention the constant warnings to the brass not to blare, and everybody else to be louder, but after the first couple of words, he is repeating back what I am saying, just a split second after me, then saying it with me, then saying is just an instant before me, like that odd monster out of the Doctor Who episode Midnight. Before I can get too frightened and freak too much, he breaks it off to make a comment about how the strange thing is, they don't have that segregated bit here in the performance hall, only in the practice room. About this point, I woke up chuckling to myself about the madness of the dream.
08-29-2013 -- [Short dream with not too much to it, that turned out to be quite detailed and long.] Something about cats, other animals, and possibly digging holes in the back yard at the Hickory house. Something else about BC being around. Then I find myself in a classroom setting. It feels very like a high school class, though the teacher is Julie Davey. No idea what the subject is. I've just finished a test of some sort, and it seemed somewhat quick and simple. I seem to be spending the time afterward brainstorming some fiction writing or something, perhaps a Victor story, when Julie comes by for my test, surprised I am done so quickly. I explain I think I did quite well, and she agrees, knowing how I always seem to test pretty well, and I start rummaging through my things until I come across the newspaper clipping we were supposed to be reviewing after the test. Glancing at the picture, wondering what it is about, I see almost a full-size model of a rocket, made out of huge balloons, and am thinking how I've made a similar ship out of a 160 and a bee body many times. Julie looks at the clock, and it is just a couple of minutes before 5:30, so she tells us to start gathering our things, and get back to a more usual seating arrangement than the random groupings we'd been in. I end up sitting next to a cute blonde, waiting for the last couple of minutes to end, and we somehow seem to be talking about how about half the class had left at 1:30. Perhaps it was an optional class or something. Class is soon over, and I find myself approaching Dale's house. I almost seem to be floating over the Nabisco plant to reach his driveway. (Considering later in the dream I am lucid and do some flying, perhaps I was flying here, as well.) I am driving a car, but as I approach their driveway, I remember something about them repaving it, and I walk up carrying my motorcycle, trying to get it on the strip of grass next to the paved driveway, where all their cars are parked, right now. (In real life, that strip of grass is at most a foot and a half wide.) I find myself passing three animals that seem to look a lot like wolves, and I am a little worried, but not much. Then they shift and sit up, then start to hop off, and I realize they aren't wolves, but kangaroos, and wonder what the heck they are doing in Buena Park? Somehow I seem to be soaked, so I am taking off my pants and shirt and dropping them on the cycle, and wrapping myself in a big gray towel. About that time, Kevin wanders out of the house, says a couple of sentences of what seems to be gibberish, and then climbs in a car and drives off, which worries me. (He's not allowed to drive.) I open the door to the house and walk in, only thinking about what I might walk into to barging into somebody else's house without knocking after I get inside, so I kind of bashfully knock on the wall. Fred and Betty are in the living room, and they don't seem to have minded my walking right in. I spot odd movement on the floor, and find myself looking at an odd white and pink puppy that seems to be a cross between a bijon and a poodle, though the coloring looks like some of the white and pink snakes I saw pictures of on the internet a few months ago. Soon I see two more wiggling out from under the blank. I ask Betty "You got new dogs?", kind of surprised. She tells me they don't know if they will keep them. I have brought a cheap pizza with me, and open the refrigerator to put it in there, and see they have maybe 3/4 of a huge 26 inch party pizza from Ciro's sitting in there, pepperoni and sausage. Wish I'd known ... I wouldn't have bothered with the lousy one I got. I'm thinking I have to see if I can snag a couple of slices. Meanwhile, I am trying to find Dale, so I walk a few feet down the corridor to his room, but when I glance inside, he has a couple of girls in there, with him. [Not doing anything wrong ... this isn't that kind of dream.] I'm thinking about razzing him about it, until I realize I am still walking around wrapped in a towel, and decide I had better get some clothes on. It seems today is a big ball game of some sort, and they have a lot of people over to see it. I walk outside, wanting to get my clothes, but somehow the area has changed a little, and I have to climb a fence (like we were going to visit Bertha) to get back to where my motorcycle is parked, I finally find it, and grab my blue shirt and start putting it on, just to discover I am putting it on over the top of another one. Somehow a shirt and pants just appeared on my body, and I realize I am dreaming. I try to hop the fence back to Dale's, but somehow I seem to be being pulled in the opposite direction. So I leap up and try to fly, and manage the flying, but am getting sucked at high speed toward what was the Nabisco plant. I go crashing through a wall, and find myself standing in a room surrounded by people. It seems I have somehow been kind of summoned, as I am now surrounded by lots of people, and they have called me to be a candidate, as they try to figure who they want as their candidate for president. There are a bunch of other candidates as well, and they are talking to people, making speeches, and all of them are holding on to their wives. Every one. I look around and see an attractive blonde (she kind of looks like Reese Witherspoon) watching everything, and I grab her and pull her to me, just kind of joking around. She turns to tell me off, and our eyes meet, and wow! It's like we suddenly know everything about each other. Her head kind of tilts to the side as she studies me, and a small grin starts to form on her face before I lean in and give her a gentle kiss, then wrap my arm around her shoulder. We're now a couple, and very happy to have found each other. But she is working here, and has things to do, so I have to let her go for a time. The others and I are writing speeches and songs or something, and I am singing a little ditty I've been working on. It's not fabulous, but it's not too bad, either. But one of the others makes a really nasty comment about it. I turn to him, ready to rip into his song, but I don't really want to run that kind of a campaign, so I have to settle for simply telling him his needs some work, too. Besides, I don't really have all that much interest in singing some kind of political song. Instead, I decide I want to sing to my new love, and am trying to remember the words to a song I wrote about 18 years ago called Love with Me. In waking life I can remember it fine, but in the dream, it was a struggle. Meanwhile, I have no voice, so I am not going to be able to sing well, but I hope the words (and the fact that I wrote it) will still have meaning to her. Dale is here, as well, and we are wandering around the convention, and for some reason I am carrying a fire hose with me, though it isn't spraying. We're just approaching a stadium, and preparing to look for seats, and I am wondering just how much length this hose has, as I've dragged it a pretty far distance by this time. My new girlfriend shows up, and I drape my arm around her shoulder, lean my head against her, and just relax in the wonderful feeling of having her there next to me.
07-21-2013 -- I am walking by an apartment complex on either Hickory or Dale, where there is no apartment complex. I am more or less minding my own business, when I run into this guy who starts yelling at me. He tells me I am worthless and horrible, and he knew my mother, and my actions caused her to die in sorrow, and I ought to just go off and die, myself ... he goes on and on and on with really horrible accusations. I think back to the life my mother lived, and how old she was when she died, and how our relationship was (fine), and I can't see any reason for his accusations, and I tell him so, but he just keeps screaming at me, while I sit at this picnic table and begin to doubt myself and feel worse and worse. He finally stalks off, leaving me depressed, until a nice fellow I recognize from around the place comes up to me, asks me what is wrong, and tries to console me for a bit. Soon I am feeling a little better, and I start to look around. I spot something that seems a little interesting: there is an empty tape box sitting next to an unlabeled tape, and the tape box says it is the first of three parts in a continuation of the Chronicles of Narnia, the first of which is about the silver throne at Cair Paravel. I instantly slide the unlabeled tape into a machine that instantly makes me a copy of it. Soon I find myself in a family-type setting with a father and his little girl, and there is a VCR there, so I stick the tape in, wanting to watch it. There is a flash of light, and I suddenly realize. I have no idea what is on this tape. Sure, it could have been the the tape of the new Chronicles. It could also be a porno tape, just about to blare out a sex scene in front of this little girl! I violently stab at the eject button, and we see just a couple of seconds of a pair of silver boots sitting right in front of a ruby throne, before the tape ejects. I guess it was the right tape. The father glances at me, as if to ask what's up, and I explain about the whole thing, and not being sure about what was on the tape, and even about feeling guilty for copying it. I apologize, and he looks at me like I am crazy, and decides to ignore me. He may be ignoring me, but a Narnian dwarf suddenly appears in front of me and tells me it is no real problem. If I can't finish the tape before leaving the library, they'll gladly make a transcript for me. He takes the tape and disappears with a pop, and I suddenly know the next time I make it back to the room where I copied the tape, I'll have a printed copy of it that I can take legally. I start to walk away feeling much better about myself. I soon find myself in a small village of small houses with thatched roofs, and a young woman asks me what I am so happy about. I start to explain about more stories in Narnia, and the dwarf and the video tape, but she is walking away from me to the right. I turn to the left and see the same woman, and her daughter, and she asks me "What are you talking about?" "The Narnia story I was just telling you about." She says I wasn't telling her about any story, and I turn to look to the right and see a bent and shuffling old woman just about to turn the corner. She seems very sinister, somehow. I call out to her to wait a second, but she just continues around the corner. I chase after her, and I see her just entering a crowd, so I continue forward, but when I get there, she is nowhere in sight. It is like she just disappeared into thin air. I find myself in the middle of maybe a dozen or so clowns, in rather duller makeup than normal, and ask if it is a convention or something. I am waiting for an answer, until I hear a noise that causes me to turn around back the way I came. There are three little girls standing there, being approached by a bent old hag looking more and more like the hag the queen turned into in Snow White to give her the apple. I realize whatever this thing is, it can change shapes to look like anybody it wants to. I run forward to grapple with 'her' and protect the little girls, and I suddenly find I am wrestling with a grim reaper figure in black robes (which I facetiously refer to as Skeletor) and losing the battle. Finally I start speaking to it in the name of Jesus, and it starts to steam a little bit, and flinch back from me in pain, and as I continue, it breaks away and tries to run off. I give chase again, but it runs forward into another crowd of people. I run forward, and find myself being grabbed. I tense, ready to fight, but it is three Golden Horseshoe can-can girls who have pulled me into a tickle war. Three ladies working together, not one, not the thing, whatever it is. Soon I am walking along, studying everyone I see very carefully, looking for the old hag, or any single person. Suddenly I find it is very dark, almost pitch black, and I am walking near the door to my apartment complex with no idea how I got there. It is kind of foggy, and there is a forboding figure looming in the fog just by my door. Just as I realize I have fallen asleep at some point, and am now dreaming, the figure jumps out and attacks me. Now I am able to see it's true form, a red devil in a black death robe, and I am very, very scared that this thing can invade me dreams. But there is no hesitation this time. "I come against you in the name of Jesus! I come against you in the name of Jesus!" It is flinching at the name. "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" Suddenly there is a powerful figure, an angel, standing next to me, battling the creature. Unexpectedly, it is female. I thought angels were male .... She speaks in one of it's ears "I come against you in the name of Jesus." I follow and do the same. She does the same to the other ear, and again I follow, and do the same. It writhes at our words. Just as I realize we ought to do one ear each at the same time, I wake up, panting from the battle.
07-23-2013 -- I loved this dream! I am wandering around somewhere, no idea where, commenting to somebody about some obscure detail in the old Golden Horseshoe Revue at Disneyland, and somebody hears me, decides I am just perfect for something, grabs me, and begins pulling me off somewhere. Soon I find myself in Frontierland, being pushed backstage somewhere that has a sort of wardrobe. They are told to dress me in the traveling salesman costume, and they have no idea what that is. They can't get me in the right costume, because they don't even know what it is, but they put me in something western, which will have to do. Next thing I know, I am standing outside the Golden Horseshoe with Dick Hardwick, and he tells me that I have to make the difficult decision which side I am going to enter the show, He tells me he always entered on the left, and as I am thinking back, I think to myself 'no you didn't. You always came in on the right.' [While awake I realize he could have meant stage left] oddly, though we were outside the entrance when he shoved me, I suddenly find myself stumbling from backstage onto the stage, down the steps, and out into the audience. I walk toward the back, then turn around and start heading up to the stage again. I remember I am supposed to fire off a shot or two to get some attention, and I glance down at the carpet bag that was just thrust in my hands, and pull out a six shooter and fire off one shot. Every eye in the place is on me, and I have an incredible case of stage fright. Fulton is there on the stage, and he asks me who I am, and I screw everything up (wrong time) and say Pecos Bill! Fulton just runs with it, and starts in on a verse, and the band follows right along. Then he indicates it is my turn for a verse, and I blanch. Me? Sing? I can't sing anymore. I have no voice! But I open my mouth and start singing one of the verses, and my voice is smooth and strong. In fact, it is probably the best I have ever sounded. We sing a couple more verses, while Terri Robinson is muttering gloom and doom about this not being the proper order, and Fulton calming her and telling her he'll tell her when to sing her part, and she'll be fine. (Behavior that more properly belonged to Betty than Terri from what I've read.) Soon Fulton sings one of his songs, then glances at me. I have no idea of anything to sing, so he gestures at Terri, and she sings her number. Then he glances at me again, and I know I have to sing something. I glance at the piano player and say something facetious, and he starts to play Beautiful Dreamer, but I don't know the words to sing it. I tell him I don't know what songs he knows, so maybe I should just follow him, and he says "Well, that would go like this:" and starts playing Follow Me Boys (a song from an old Disney picture with Fred MacMurray in the lead role). I launch into the chorus, belting it out perfectly. The audience applauds, the curtain goes down, the show is over, and everybody is congratulating me. Everybody but me has changed out of costume, and the piano player is amazed I knew Follow Me Boys, and asks how I knew it. I tell him, appropriately enough, I saw it at scout camp (Cadets, but same difference.) [The film has MacMurray starting a scout troop to keep some of the local kids out of trouble.] I run into various employees back stage, who are wondering what is with the costume, including several entertainers I know, and I am rather proud to tell them that I am the newest Traveling Salesman sub for the Golden Horseshoe Revue. I know I run into Graham and a couple of others from the Adventurers Club, and Jim, the Walt Disney World Refreshment Corner pianist ... and is that Kirk Wall doing Billy Hill over there? I make it over to Terri before she leaves, and manage to apologize, and she forgives me, and says I'll do better next time. Next time? That's when it hits ... I just performed in the Golden Horseshoe Revue! Which means the Golden Horseshoe Revue is back! Which means, when I am not performing in it, I can watch it! ... I remember something I read, recently, and acknowledge even if it is only for a limited time. And the words register a second time. Next time ... I have to learn the proper routines and timing! I ask for help, and I think it is Dana Daniels who starts out by teaching me how do do the Niagara Falls bit. He then moves on to showing me a card trick that involves turning a three of spades into a two of spades, and a couple of other card tricks. I realize I am going to have to practice all this, and wonder if I can take all the stuff home for one night, to get some practice in. I guess I am going to have to go back to the Revue and ask the stage manager about that. As I am walking back to the Horseshoe, I find myself wondering if I will run into my old supervisor who always objects to my being back stage ... if he does this time, there is nothing he can do about it! I am now a Disney performer! I get back to the Horseshoe, and the stage manager and all his stage hands are just getting ready to leave, but when he sees me there, and I mention needing to learn so I can do the next show correctly, rather than flying by the seat of my pants, he tells the others to leave without him, he's got some work to do. The next thing I know, he has me in his arms, teaching me some of the minor dance steps I need to do in the show. Meanwhile ... I HAVE A ROLE IN THE GHR!!!
07-24-2013 -- There are hints of the new graphics from Runescape 3, or an improvement of the graphics in Roller Coaster Tycoon to allow a stronger black and prevent light leaking into dark rides, but not enough details to say there was more than a hint of them. What I do know is that this started as mostly some kind of game, with just a hint of real life, and quickly shifted to being entirely real life. I am exploring a building somewhere, and find a secret passage or something, leading down into a deeper level of dungeon or catacomb, or whatever it might be, and am commenting on the great textures and looks of the very dark, rocky walls. The paths leading deeper down look much like mine tunnels, without the bracings, though there is also a hint of a dark, rough metal, in the walls of a spaceship. It is a maze of passages, great stuff, and there are some others here who have found the same secret entrance that I have (or perhaps others) and are wandering around, and there is a hint of the forbidden ... that this is an area we aren't allowed in, but have found our way into, anyway. I keep wandering around, occasionally finding small, almost hidden branching passages that take me even deeper into this maze of passageways, while others comment on how I might get myself in trouble, but it seems like they are jealous that they can't find the hidden passages as easily. Oddly, for what seem to be dark, deep cave-like passages, there are things like restrooms and dressing rooms carved out in the depths, and I am half considering sharing a restroom with an attractive lady I see entering one. Instead, I put it out of my mind. Soon the cave passages are more and more coming to resemble passageways on a very dark (in coloring) space ship, and I eventually find myself in a sort of locker room / wardrobe where there are hundreds of Starfleet uniforms in various colors and styles, representing the different levels of star ship officers, and all kinds of other jobs not directly relating to Starfleet, but still seen in the various Trek shows. I look around, and want a uniform, but I know there is almost no chance they have anything in my size. (I'm a huge guy.) So I walk off, disappointed, though moments later, a red uniform shirt like Picard or Riker wore just appears on me. As I continue to wander around, I run into more and more people, some in regular clothes, others who have also found the locker room, and have assumed uniforms. I feel slightly out of place, wondering if I have the right to claim a captain's uniform, but generally just act like I belong. Some of the people I run into are just wandering around, enjoying themselves, while others are role-playing. Some want to fight with people, dressed as the occasional hairy Trek monster, or more powerful intelligent races. One attacks me, and expects to defeat me and take my uniform, but I am wearing gloves covered in hair, like from the abominable snowman or bigfoot or something, and it gives me the power to defeat him, even though he is wearing gloves that can conduct an electrical current into his enemies. Soon I run into Adrian Monk (it is Monk, not Tony), who is wearing one of the yellow captain's uniforms from the original Trek, and complaining about little nit-picking details about every other person he runs into. This one has the wrong number of pips on his uniform. That one is wearing the wrong pants. A Vulcan wouldn't speak like that. A Klingon wouldn't be caught dead in that color. The type of tiny things that would drive Monk crazy, or that a fan obsessed to a ridiculous extent would write letters to complain about. He starts to complain about something about my uniform, so I strip the shirt off, just to find that underneath it I have on the original Trek yellow, and Monk just has more to complain about. So I just start to walk away from him. But oddly, I could swear I know him from somewhere. Somewhere Disney, not from Monk. About this time, I am slowly starting to make my way back out of the wealth of catacombs, and I run into a young woman with short blonde hair in a yellow shirt, almost a dead ringer for Tasha Yar. At first she thinks I am somebody she knows, and she starts to flirt with me. Then she realizes I am not who she thought, but still continues to flirt so I pick her up in my arms and start carrying her bridal-style, to the annoyance of her companion, who, for the moment, is also dressed in yellow, but who I recognize as Joy from the Adventurers Club, and she doesn't seem to like me, which surprises me, because I always seemed to get along with Joy. Now she is wearing the French Maid outfit, and the girl I am holding in my arms is another French Maid, though one of the ones near the end that I didn't know. Still cute, though. I comment on the outfit, commenting I don't recall anything like that ever being a Starfleet regulation uniform, and Joy makes a derogatory comment, something along the lines that she hates role players. (Seems sort of hypocritical to me.) I make another Trek reference, and she pulls her companion from my arms and drags her off in a huff. As I finally make it out of the complex, I find myself exiting into Tomorrowland. It seems this is a new ride / walk-through that isn't actually supposed to be open yet, but I seem to have wandered into a soft opening or something. I head out, planning to do some wandering through the park, but I haven't been to Disneyland in several years (except for backstage at the Golden Horseshoe in a dream a couple of days ago), and I am really shocked when I reach Main Street. They seem to be doing one of the months-long themes like they have done in the past (ie Circus Fantasy, State Fair) but this one is a sort of cross between mafia, prohibition, and the roaring twenties, but very dark and oppressive. There are still lights on Main Street, but there is something oppressive and evil about them, it looks more like the red light district in Amsterdam than the wholesome looks of Main Street USA. There is still streetmosphere, but instead of characters and barbershop quartets, it is more like gangsters, gang members, and the worse kind of flappers hanging on their arms, guns plainly visible. It is just the wrong atmosphere entirely. I try to wander over by Coke Corner to see who is playing the piano, and it is a dark haired female playing some dark jazz. Not sure, but it might have been Carol Stein. I find Main Street to be tremendously depressing now, so I try to continue on to Adventureland, and at the entrance, I run into three people from the Adventurer's Club, doing some kind of skit out in the streets, and I realize they must have a banquet in the Club or something. I think the three are Tim, Karl, and Philip, dressed in the old costumes for Fletcher, probably Otis, and Emil, and I suddenly recognize that 'Monk' earlier had been Philip dressed up and role-playing as Tony Shalhoub's character in Galaxy Quest. They are doing something that seems to involve putting together several 10 foot long sections of pipe and using them as a straw or something. As I try to move into Adventureland, I find the entrance is blocked off for refurbishing, so I have to detour through Frontierland. As I am doing so, I run into one of the Hathaways I don't know, and am amazed to find we are wearing the same bright green pants. Odd ... I could have sworn I was wearing black pants when I was in the Star Trek uniforms. I continue into Frontierland, just to find that almost the entirety of Frontierland, Adventureland and New Orleans Square are closed down for refurbishing, including the entire building that houses the Golden Horseshoe Revue, which leaves me wondering about my new job there. [See dream from last night.] The Rivers of America are quiet, with both the Mark Twain and the Columbia sitting there, unused, in a sort of dry dock, and as I continue on, the first thing I find is actually open is the Haunted Mansion, just beyond the French Quarter of New Orleans Square. I try to cut through the French Market restaurant, to see if I can get back to the Club (which I guess has been moved here and located right between the Treehouse and Pirates), but it is blocked off there, too. I am getting annoyed and tired, and end up taking a rest on a hand railing (very gently, don't want to cause it any harm), but one of the cast members starts to glare at me. Somehow this ends up in his pointing out a security camera to me, and me pointing out another one to him, and our getting into a competition to see who can find more of the somewhat hidden cameras quicker. He is soon amazed at how many of them I can point out to him, and I explain I can half-sense them, and half spot a bit of reflection off of the lenses. I mention that I couldn't spot any of them in the new Trek walkthrough, though, and theorize that might be because of how dark it was. (Never mind the cameras are easier to see in the dark, with those purple lights they have.) Somebody who was just walking past us says "Is that open now? I thought it was still a ways away." I mention the soft opening, and that the first day or two you can get a free Starfleet uniform, and he goes running off toward tomorrowland, while I wake up.
07-17-2013 [Long, detailed, and fun. Sometimes I love my dreams.] I seem to be doing some sort of mystery shop at Circle K, and it seems to involve buying a slurpee which is poured into a cone-shaped cup. The problem is, the slurpee almost immediately freezes solid, making it impossible to drink, while at the same time it somehow slips out of the bottom of the cup, leaving the customer to only get a sip or two before it is gone. I go to get a refill, but they jump all over me, telling me that isn't allowed, which annoys me, as I want more of the green apple slurpee. Instead they throw me out, and I am thinking they're going to get a very bad report this time. I stalk back to my car, past some guys on a football field, and as I reach it, I find that I have been working security with Pedus again, and for some reason was using one of the furry bomber jackets as a sort of a car bra, but large parts of it have been ripped off. I find one of the nearest football players with a couple of pieces of it, and he grins kind of sheepishly and gives those pieces back to me, but one of the other players has more pieces, and he refuses to give them back. I notice he is wearing a Boone High School jersey, and figure I'll try to report him to the school to see if they can do anything about it, but then I glance at some of the other jerseys, and at least four teams are represented here. I ask who's playing, and one of the ruder players explains that the season is over, nobody is playing, they are just celebrating the end of the season ... and I'd better get out of there if I know what's good for me. I back off and start moving toward my car, but then all the cheerleaders start pulling off their uniforms, and underneath they all have body paint in team colors that do nothing to really hide their jutting nipples and neatly trimmed pussies. I enjoy a nice look as I slowly climb into my car and start to drive away. I seem to be driving somewhere further south on a mystery shopping trip, down around West Palm Beach or maybe Lauderdale. I'm trying to figure the best route to get home, or maybe to my next shop, just driving along making turns, but things start to slowly change. The busy highway is turning more and more to a wooded path. The car is turning more to a horse, and then to me walking along the path, as things start to greatly resemble a generic fantasy novel. Soon I find myself facing a Confucius-like Oriental wise man who is telling me to guide my thoughts, and to go backward to go forward, so I turn around and head back down the path I'd been on, looking for others involved in my quest that I might be able to help. I come across a guy who is working to fill a very tiny chest with 'valuable silver' (actually just quarters and fifty-cent pieces) and I am really not impressed with the treasure. The tiny chest is maybe 4" x 8" X 1" and I was expecting it to be more like 6" deep, and filled with gold, rather than fake silver. With such a small chest and such limited content I am thinking the 'treasure' is rather worthless, but they assure me it is still enough for the bad guys to kill us over, and send me on my way. Soon, while walking through the woods, I come across a sexy young Oriental fighter who is on my team, and turns out to be the daughter of the wise man, though she isn't sure she believes he is all that wise. As I am talking to both of them, my very nice, very sturdy hiking boots kind of dissolve off of my feet, and I find myself standing next to a very beat up pair of leather sandals that most closely resemble a pair of flip flops. They seem to expect me to be upset about this, but I try to tell myself there might be a reason for this, and just slide on my new (to me) sandals. My acceptance seems to impress them. There is some sort of very handsome but powerful beast that suddenly turns violent, but thankfully it mostly seems to ignore me, and attack the bad guys. Soon I am 'told' to concentrate strongly on a number, something like 4,600 or 46,000, in my mind, and it turns out we are passing someone or something that can read minds, but if I only seem to be thinking about the 'inventory' we are carrying in our merchant disguise, they won't have reason to press any deeper in my mind. I am carrying only a very small box, and am acting sort of weak and unimpressive, but they tell me to act strong, but like dumb muscle. So I approach somebody struggling with a larger box and swap with him, then a yet larger crate, and a few moments later, I take over the lifting and pulling of a fairly large cart loaded down with huge logs, really showing my strength as I pull it up the hill to the city we're infiltrating. It has a sort of Pirates of the Caribbean vibe to it, with lots of wild folks running around the place, carousing. Though it is not Pirates, there is a slight hint of 'jumping' the cart/boat into a slightly different 'flume' that takes me closer to where I want to go, but that sense soon vanishes. I drop off my huge load, and am paid a $5 bill, and trying to play my part, I try to act proud and excited to have 'so much' money, ready to defend myself against others who might want to steal my pittance, while laughing inside about the whole farce and just carrying on. Now we are carrying much smaller, more valuable cargo to show to the big wigs. I think I am carrying a small but valuable snack cake, something like caviar or truffles, but a decadent dessert. The person next to me has something like compressed apples or something, really good stuff, but the big wigs are ignoring us and acting like we and our products are nothing, and nobody is buying anything. This is really annoying the guy next to me, and he suddenly throws one of his compressed apples into the water, where it causes a huge blast and shows just how good an explosive it is. He's thinking that'll teach them not to ignore us, but I just think it'll make them mad. I'm right, and soon we're all being chased again!
07-16-2013 -- I am at the Hickory house, but it is present day. I was inside, but was being kind of hassled by mom, so I headed outside to take a nap in my car. Except for some reason I end up laying on the ground outside my car where I can look under it and see the rest of the yard. My sister is leaving along with an attractive friend of hers, and I find myself watching the attractive legs while they leave. A little boy (don't know who he is) comes over and tells me that my mom said for me to get inside. Rather than have any fights about it, I get up and head to my first bedroom, and try to go to sleep, but the door lock doesn't work, and the kid follows me into the room, and keeps bugging me about stuff. Soon he is in my closet, going through my junk, and really starting to bug me. His mom comes in, and she is a very attractive blonde, though I can't quite place her. (I realize later that it is River Song, but I don't recognize her because her hair is a lot less frizzy than usual.) She seems to be berating the kid about going through my stuff, but it turns out to be much more about berating me. She has the kid pulling out two keyboards from my closet (one I really once had, a small one that was about two octaves short of a full keyboard, and the other full-size) and she somehow starts to push them out a door in the second floor of my room, which until this moment never had a second floor. She claims it was always there, and I just never noticed it before ... suggests that if I don't believe her, I should just ask my roommate Randy (Marcos house). I am trying to get my keyboards back, so I kind of chase them out of the room and the house, and over to a mall-like area. River continues to berate me, complaining that I don't care about anybody, not even my relatives, and claims that, a few weeks ago when I met David Tennant and Matt Smith I jostled a relative aside as I was getting a picture with them. (In my defense, I would like to point out it was a relative that I didn't even know I had, and I only jostled them accidentally.) I tell her I don't know what she is talking about, and she proceeds to tell me she is going to send me back in time to 1969 so I can change some things. I say I think she means 1976 (because in this dream '69 and '76 are easy to confuse for some reason), because I have often imagined going back in time to when I was 7 years old and living my life over again to do things better, and try to fix a few big mistakes in the world, if I could, at the same time. So somehow River sends me back in time, merging me with my younger self two or three times, and it is very hectic and rather crazy. This part of the dream comes across largely as a chase dream, sometimes being chased by people and creatures, sometimes being the one doing the chasing. Parts of it involve government agent Diane Fornell (NCIS) getting caught in a sting operation, and the crooks removing her arms and legs when they catch her, in a sort of flashback to a dream last night where Neville Longbottom was talking about the same thing. Now missing her legs, Diane turns out to be the relative that I bumped and didn't recognize. Turns out she was a big fan of mine, and my not recognizing her sent her over the edge into depression. Somehow the crooks have caught me and done something to me that forces me into a regeneration, and in the process I grab Diane and hug her, and share my regenerative energy with her, somehow causing her missing limbs to regrow, as I also hug and kiss Abby Scuitto, who it seems I am becoming an item with. [And in two or three dreams in just a few days. Weird.] Meanwhile, I regenerate into the 12th Doctor, but somehow in the three times that I relived my life, I changed parts of history. David Tennant turned out not to be available right at the start of the 9th Doctor's regeneration, so Catherine Tate ended up being the 10th Doctor, and David ended up being her companion for a season, and eventually becoming a somewhat twisted version of the Doctor Donna. So I am now the 12th Doctor, and I find myself in the middle of the bad sting operation that cost Diane her limbs, but I continue going through and changing the timeline again and again, making a small change here, a small change there, so that when the head crook tells his 20 or so goons to remove her limbs, every single one of them has been replaced with government agents, all of whom turn their guns on the head crook, avoiding Diane ever having her limbs removed in the first place. Decent beginning to my new regeneration, and something screwy enough that what's his name might have actually written it!
07-16-2013 -- Somehow I am with dad in his truck, driving up and down an air field in between the planes landing. The landing strip is kind of narrow, wide enough to hold the plane body, but the wings extend out over the grass on either side, and it is on that grass strip that we are driving, hence the need to do it in between planes. There are a couple planes that are missing the runway and crashing and burning, and oddly, a plane with the Adobe logo on the tail which is flying around trying to spy on people who might be pirating Adobe products. Soon I find myself at home with mom. There is a paper kite that was designed and printed out in Illustrator lying on the ground, and we are somehow printing out these odd little plastic ID labels directly from the printer. Very strange stuff. I have a friend (or perhaps a frenemy) who seems to be developing a new power and can cause their fingers to produce flames. I do the same. As I start to wonder if they can do some of the other things that I can do with my strange dream powers, they hesitantly start to rise in the air and start to fly. I do the same, but a lot more skillfully, because I have been doing it longer. I wonder if they realize this is a dream, like I do, but before I get the chance to ask them, things start to heat up. More and more people around us are suddenly starting to develop these hero powers, and as we do, we are being approached by government agencies who are threatening us with imprisonment and experimentation if we do not join their particular agencies, and they are getting more and more threatening about it. Things are getting really tense, and the situation is bad enough that Martha Jones calls for the Doctor, even though he only just left her, and thankfully he hears her and returns to help calm the situation down. Somehow I end up flying above the TARDIS, which has no ceiling, looking down on a wild maze of rooms where I can see all eleven Doctors and dozens of companions running about. It seems that all times are concurrent within the TARDIS. Interesting. Meanwhile, I spot a personally autographed copy of No Coins, Please which was dedicated to the Doctor because at one point he saved Gordon's life, and I just find that to be amazingly cool!
07-19-2013 -- [I don't usually have nightmares, but I sure did, last night. And it was in multi-part. I would wake up, then drift back to sleep and be back in the same dream, with the same root causes, but each time things escalated.] Somehow I went back to work at Hewitt. There were some people there who liked me and wanted to give me another chance, even though I don't have a voice, and so couldn't speak on the phone. Instead they had me doing desk work, processing paperwork or something like that. Even so, some of the bigwigs don't like me. In the dream I carried around a big backpack filled with books to read (including a large hardcover book with something like six sci-fi/fantasy novels in a series printed small in the big omnibus edition, several bags of balloons, my dream notebook, possibly my notebook computer. Fairly big pile of stuff.) The employer was Hewitt, and most of the people worked on phones in a call center environment, but the building is one I have often dreamed I worked security in, based on the TAMS building in Tustin, with staircases leading upstairs in two separate parts of the building leading to two separate upstairs areas that don't connect. And the huge warehouse area in the middle is far more JC Penney than what the TAMS building had. Earlier parts are somewhat generic and sketchy, but one part is in an outdoor section, where people are working in cubicals outside, which makes no sense whatsoever. But for some reason I am allowed to set up a small tent to work in when there is room. Unfortunately, the place I usually set up this tent is now overflowing with tables and booths in a kind of job fair, and I am having to look around to try and figure out somewhere to set up my tent, just to come to accept that today there is nowhere I can set it up. This doesn't stop one guy from coming up to me and asking what the heck the tent is about, anyway, and who do I think I am, and why am I allowed this special treatment? I have to go and sit at my usual cubical, working with the friendly, young, Hispanic guy that I really shared a cubical with at Hewitt, even if after six or seven years I can no longer remember his name. But with the job fair going on, they aren't bringing any of the usual paperwork around, so I don't really have anything to do, and am pretty much wasting the day sitting around and talking. Eventually one of the managers who doesn't like me comes over and gives me an assignment to take something to the other side of the building and deliver it there, and I have no problem in doing so, though I am not too happy with her attitude. When I come back, I find the delivery was a ruse to get me out of the area so she could gather up my backpack/box, my computer, and anything and everything else of mine that might be in the cubical. This angers me. Not to going through my stuff, that is covered by company policy, and I can see the point of it, but the going behind my stuff behind my back, without even letting me know they are doing it. I realise that some of the bigwigs who don't like me have decided it is time to get rid of me, and are looking for a reason to fire me, but I don't care. To me, this behavior is beyond the pale, and I am ready to quit on the spot because of it, regardless of whether this is giving them just what they want. I ask around to find out just where she works, and I am told she is in the Obamacare department, and am given vague directions to it. Great ... Obamacare ... so this is probably something political. This just gets worse and worse. As I am searching the building, looking for her desk or office, it seems more like Sears in the Buena Park Mall, in the layout and where the elevators are located. It takes a fair amount of looking, but I eventually find her. She's got all my stuff there and is going through it, and I start grabbing parts of it from her hands and my bag/box, and sorting through the stuff that is mine, and the stuff that belongs to the company, but that I have use of, seperating them out. At the same time I am lecturing her about the sneaky way she went about all this, telling her that if she had just told me they were going to search my stuff and had me present for it, I would not have had any complaints, but this is bullcrap. Meanwhile, I am pulling bag after bag of balloons out of my bag, and dumping them on her desk. Though it makes no sense, for some reason they have been providing me with balloons, and I am giving them back. Then it turns into bags and bags of potato chips, snack cakes and chocolate that belong to the company, and that I never put there. I have to assume she was putting them in there to frame me, giving her a reason to fire me. I don't give her the chance, as I dump all the stuff on her desk, telling her I quit! She says I can't quit, because she is in the process of firing me, and I tell her too late, I already did. I find an extra check in my bag, and figure if it is my final check, I'll keep it, but it turns out to be somebody else's check, so I toss it on her desk, also. Now that everything in my bag/back pack is really mine, I gather it all up, and am ready to leave the building, but she orders me to use the warehouse exit, rather than any of the other ways out of the building, and I don't know why. But as I am walking through the warehouse, some of the workers are calling out to me, distracting me, and driving fork lifts and things close to me, and in the process I set down my bag and dodge some stuff, and when I go back to where my bag was, it is gone. I now realize she wanted me to exit through the warehouse so she could have somebody in the warehouse steal my stuff. I don't get why, but I am not happy about it. [It was about this point that I woke up and fell back asleep for the first time.] I storm back into the office and start trying to find her, but now she is hiding from me, and has made her cubical look almost identical to everybody elses. So I am looking and looking, but having no luck in finding it. I keep asking around for where her cubical is, and a few people try to point me in the right direction, but most are unhelpful, realising that I am on the outs with management, now. Eventually, when I reach the point that I am right next to it, a big worker who looks a lot like Sam on NCIS LA is very insulting, and points me at the cubical I am standing next to, and I am finally able to confront her again. She denies everything, tries to claim I probably just mislaid my backpack, or maybe didn't even have one to begin with. She says she planned nothing, she doesn't believe me, and that I am just trying to stir up troubles. But a couple of the more honest employees back me up, at least in part. One points out that 'Sam', who is carrying a fantasy anthology, hates reading, and they know they have seen me with that book in my possession for any number of weeks. But she refuses to listen to anything, claiming that, at worst, I misplaced my bag in the warehouse, and am making wild accusations against good people to stir up trouble. So I am back in the warehouse, looking around for my bag (it is kind of like a huge yellow duffle bag of the style (but not color) that soldiers or seamen use), but now much more of the warehouse staff is against me, and more and more I find myself involved in slightly dangerous near misses with warehouse equipment which is where it shouldn't be. Stuff that isn't really all that dangerous, but kind of threatening, like they are trying to warn me off. But I keep looking around, and one of the guys finally gets angry enough to get more serious. It seems like there are two 'levels' to this warehouse, and he is somehow driving a forklift on the second level. These aren't floors, that would make sense, but not be dangerous. Instead it is like a second level about fifteen feet above the first that is formed from catwalks and the like. Stuff that is there, but isn't super sturdy. Anyway, there are some racks of pipes, the kind and size that they sometimes install along the street, segments perhaps 12 feet long and about a foot in diameter, and lots of these pipes are stacked up together, and one of them drives a forklift out on to this rack of pipes so that they break out of the rack and start to rain down around me. Worse, the forklift no longer has a sturdy base, so it is plunging down on top of me, as well. While this is not a nightmare yet, it is getting more and more serious, and I end up laying flat on the ground while the forklift comes to a stop about six inches above me. Getting close enough to truly be dangerous! [Somewhere around here is when I woke up for the second time, then fell back to sleep.] I am soon stalking through the building, looking for the supervisor who started all this again, and she is still hiding, so it takes a lot of time and effort. By this point I am determined I am getting paid for the (at this point turning into two days) time that I am spending looking for my stuff which they have stolen from me. I finally find her and start to berate her about the latest attacks, and she tries to categorically deny everything, saying there is no way such a thing almost happened, just to have one of the employees not under her thumb come up and say "Oh no, so-and-so did dump his forklift down a load of pipes. We were wondering why he had been so stupid," so again, I had witnesses backing me up. Suddenly she stops for a moment, and seems to remember something. She tells me that the black high school around the corner was off yesterday and is off today, and maybe some of them have seen something, and can help me to find my stuff. She is very insistant that I go ask them about it, and is telling me what to say to them, giving me a quote in a foreign language, though I am not sure if it is in French or Spanish. Anyway, she keeps repeating it over and over again until I actually write it down. About that time, my friend Carl, who neither of us saw standing there, steps out and verbally tears her a new one. He may have even physically attacked her slightly, ranting about what kind of a horrible person was she? I say something like "Let me guess ... what she was telling me to say was a horrible insult that would get me killed if I said it to the students at the school? Did you really think I was dumb enough that I would ask what you told me to, without first getting a trusted translation?" I explain that I now have actual evidence that she is trying to kill me, waving the paper [in real life, my handwriting, no help, but in the dream it seemed it would work as evidence], and now she is going to be in so much more trouble. I angrily stalk off into the warehouse to continue looking for my bag. Problem is, now she knows she made a mistake, and the kid gloves are off. There are at least three or four of the warehouse workers now trying to kill me, and I am being chased by workers using all kinds of equipment. When I try to duck into the racks of stuff and climb a little to get out of range, the kinds of cranes that work on ships or airplanes, the elevated ones that move around on two parallel tracks, are being used to chase me around and try to crush my head if I don't stay low enough to be in range of the forklifts. For a good ten or fifteen minutes, I am running around, fleeing for my life as there are constant near misses, screaming for help, but because of the no voice thing, nobody can hear me. Finally I have made it near the edge of the warehouse, back by where the office area starts again, and pursuit dies off as I run into Carl, who has seen the last little bit of it, and is horrified that they are trying to kill me. That's when I woke for the final time, almost hyperventilating from all the running I'd been doing in the dream.
06-22-2013 -- [OK, talk about involved dreams in a short bit of time ... was drifting off into a nap at about 3:30 today, but was kept from it by a friend texting me at 3:33. I glanced at the text, but ignored making a reply because I didn't want to distract myself from drifting off to sleep. Something (possibly a knock on the door, but I'm not sure) woke me up at about 3:55, and I had this whole dream in my head. So it was all dreamed in under 20 minutes, possibly significantly under.] I'm walking through a sort of cross between some sort of mental hospital and a live version of Runescape with my friend Dale, and I think we're on some sort of a quest that I can remember dreaming about before, probably two or three years ago. People are running around and yelling and screaming, making noise and being odd [as little kids keep doing outside my motel room in real life as I am trying to nap] as we're making our way through the maze-like corridors, grumbling about having no guidance and no maps. Eventually I find myself in a wooded area out behind the building, where I can see the entrance to a familiar-looking graveyard with five graves in it. I know I have to go inside and help the grave digger get the right bodies in the right graves, but I find I can't walk normally. Somehow, even though this is live and not a computer game, I have to push the right keys to walk shorter or longer distances and in different directions. But with no keyboard and no memory of what keys, I'm completely lost. In addition, the graves are only 2 or 3 spaces apart, but the distances I can move are 5 or 8 spaces or something like that, so it is a big puzzle to figure out how to make the right spaces in the right directions to get in front of each individual grave so I can figure out who is supposed to be in each one. [The controls are kind of like for a game a skull ball.] To make things worse, there are also little bits of sparkles around, and bits of glowing, circling dust, and I come to realize that we not only have to solve this puzzle in the 'real' Runescape world, but we also have to find a portal where we can switch into the spirit world, where the puzzle will be even more difficult, and solve it there, too. [A throwback to the Spirit of Summer/Corporeal Beast quests.] All with no maps, no guides, and just the vaguest of memories of trying to do this before and failing. I finally give up, and just try to sit down on the short stone fence surrounding the graveyard and rest for a few minutes, but as I am, a cheerleader comes running past, screaming her head off, and as I start to recognize her as Claire Bennet, Sylar comes running behind her, still trying to cut her head open to gain her powers, and I have to try and help her to get away safely. Soon I find myself running through what halfway seems to be the kitchen at the Hickory house, except that there is a sort of a group therapy session going on here. As we rush in, Sylar is halfway behaving himself, pretending to be an ok person, and some crazy old lady is asking me if I am going to tell her any more stories about the psychotic watch-maker, and I am shushing her, trying to keep her from cluing Sylar in on the fact that we know who he is. I'm trying to get him trapped in here with the oddly powerful and helpful patient who I suspect isn't really a patient, but about that time, somebody makes an announcement that 'Monica' was thrown out a few hours ago for 'telling lies' (ie the truth they don't want to have known), so it seems we aren't going to have any assistance from an angel on this one. Soon find we're chasing around the corridors again, and my friend Chris has joined us, but I don't seem to want him to follow me, so I run into a corridor that I think leads back to the door where we entered the building, but it is now very dark, and he turns out to be afraid of the dark, so doesn't follow me. But somehow it seems to lead to somebody kind of leading me to bed and telling me to go to sleep (with hints of some kind of mind control in there, forcing me to forget about all that has been going on, and making me want to sleep) except that the door to my room is open, and all the lights have been left on in the room and the hall, so I get up again and start to wander around to try and turn off the lights, which somehow starts to awaken me once again to what I had been made to forget. [And on top of dreaming all of that in 10-15 minutes, when I woke up, I was no longer tired. A 10-15 minute nap that was that filled with a crazy dream was enough to wipe away my sleepiness.]
06-07-2013 -- [Dreams within dreams, connections to other dreams, lucid, false awakenings, all kinds of stuff in this one.] Stopping by Rosemary's to check for mail or something, but she says I look sick, orders me to bed (in a different room than the one that used to be mine), and tells me to see a doctor in the morning. I accept the bed, but I figure I'm not going to go see a doctor, because I might have a slight fever, but I feel more or less fine. The room I am in is messy enough to be mine, and there is a crushed orange juice carton on the floor that has been squished, and I am amazed that it doesn't stink, since old orange juice smells horrible. I must have gotten into bed and fallen asleep, because I suddenly find myself dreaming. I know I am dreaming, and even recognize the dream, one I had a few months ago, here. Oddly, though, I keep claiming that it was somebody else's dream, and as I am wandering through this dream that I can remember from before, I keep talking about how detailed it is, and how large the area it covers is, and how amazed I am that this other person could have such a detailed dream, and wishing I could dream so well! [Lol]. Anyway, I find myself in an area that is kind of shaped like a backward E, with the long bar connecting the lines running down the right side, instead of the left. I am in a hallway that forms the bottom branch of the E, on the west side, heading to the east, and the hall seems impossibly long, like a mile or so, and I am talking to myself out loud about what a cool dream this is, and how great the original dreamer must be, and it is the same area from the linked dream above where I was chasing the imps. But in this dream there are no imps, just the hallway. Looking to the south I am looking out many windows into the outside world. Looking to the north, I am looking through big panes of glass to a very large swimming pool. As I walk along, the hallway is getting shorter and shorter, and now the entire hallway is probably only about a quarter of a mile long, and I am about halfway down it. Though it is still the outside on one side and a pool on the other, there is the hint and feel of hospital quarters or laboratories, again, just like noted in the linked dream, that ties this into even more past dreams, if only lightly. As I am looking around, I find there is a slightly seedy guy walking next to me, and I am shocked to look down and find he has got his dick in his hand, and is unobtrusively trying to rub the thing against me. Ick! I kind of hurry away from him, heading to the east and the north/south branch of the reverse E, except the actual area is starting to feel more like the corner with the bakery in the Van Thief dream linked here. The Dick guy is still following me, and I try to escape by making my way into a store that is located right about where the middle branch of the reverse E would be, except as I move further into the store, it actually turns into the middle E branch. To the north are a row of stores, and to the south are windows looking on the other side of the big pool that I could see from the other path. So my mind seems to be keeping the layout pretty steady. Dick Guy is still right on me, but now the hand holding his willie is covered in white, sticky gunk, and he is really creeping me out, so I start an odd combination of praying against him and using a sort of mind power/spell to try and force him to forget ever even seeing me, and I start running off to the east again, wanting to get away before there is any chance the guy might see me again or remember me. As I am approaching the north/south branch again, there is a small ladder to climb to get out of the area (about like the ladder out of a pool) but rather than waste time, I just fly up the four or five feet to the main path, to escape the icky creep! At this point the dream is switching again, to be like the Disneyland Paris dream I had here, in the area I met Dave D./Chris V. in that dream. (All three of these dreams took place in about a two week period, roughly 6 months ago.) It is seeming more and more like a shopping mall, though with hints of theme park areas about it. A little north and west of me is what seems to be a 3 or 4 floor version of the America Sings show building from Disneyland, except each floor is recessed a little further, and it isn't circular. Instead it kind of undulates kind of like a stretched out, really tall S. The funny thing is, it still seems to be rotating, even though it isn't circular. Instead it is almost like all the walls are kind of like the luggage conveyors at the airport, circling around the stationery, oddly-shaped building. Weird. As I walk further north, I seem to be making my way through crowds waiting for a parade, and soon find myself catching up to the parade, itself. There are hundreds of characters, and most of them seem to be dwarves. Seven of them are dressed in colorful costumes, and seem to be the named dwarves we are all familiar with [Dopey, Doc, etc.], the rest seem to be just generic dwarves of the same people, but to set them apart, their clothes and faces and all are just plain white. It looks rather weird. They are singing some sort of silly song, and I find myself singing along while floating a couple of feet over a tall planter. Several of the dwarves are climbing on the planter, and some ignore me, seeing I am causing no trouble, while others seem to be bothered by my floating there. I am now approaching the top of the backwards E, though it is now beginning to more resemble a T, with paths leading east and west. It is here in the Disneyland Paris dream that I headed East from what was a shopping mall sort of area into what actually became DLP. As I am wandering around, I glance over and spot a very short person with graying curly hair, and suddenly recognize Sharon K. I glance around and standing next to her is Joe H. [Actually I suppose she is Sharon H., these days, but I still remember her as Sharon K.] I make my way to talk to them, but they are vaguely unfriendly, and they indicate they are going to the TTC (Ticket and Transportation Center) to take a Monorail over to the Magic Kingdom, and this has turned into Walt Disney World. They have no wish for my company. I'm a little miffed, and decide, fine! I'll just fly into the air, fly over to the TTC, and beat them there! Remember, through this whole thing, I know I am dreaming. (I just think it is somebody else's dream, oddly enough.) I fly easily, and follow the monorail tracks right into the TTC, just moving to the side a bit to avoid some guy who has borrowed Wonder Woman's invisible plane, and is landing in the same area. I am trying to figure out which trains are going to the Magic Kingdom directly, which are stopping at the hotels, and which are actually heading to EPCOT, but it is complicated. I have just figured it out and am about to land by the train going direct to the Magic Kingdom when it pulls out, so I decide why bother, and just fly along the track, following it into the park. As I fly along the monorail beam, I am thinking about what I want to do, today. I think about stopping by Casey's Corner to listen to the piano player, or heading into the back portion of Frontierland to ride Big Thunder or the log ride (in a layout more like my dreams of Magic Mountain than the real layout of Disneyworld), but oddly, as soon as I think of these areas, I suddenly find myself hovering above them. I am just about to land and ride some rides when I 'wake up' back into the earlier dream ... or into real life. For a few seconds I seem to find myself in both the 'wrong' bedroom at Rosemary's house, and in the room I am currently in at the roach motel I am staying at in real life. I think I halfway woke, really, then drifted back into the dream that I never fully left. Anyway, I find myself waking in Rosemary's. The room I am staying in does not have a door, but a sheet pulled across the door opening, and kind of velcro'd to the wall. Somebody has disturbed it, and it has pulled open, and I am hoping to block it off before Rosemary sees me and starts badgering me. TOO LATE! She's standing right there, and tells me to hurry off to the doctors. I tell her there is nothing wrong with me, I am feeling fine, and she says "Yeah, right! With your face covered in blood and your nose all purple!" What?!? I turn around to find a mirror (avoiding the overturned dog dish and kibble on the floor), and find myself standing outside somewhere in front of a large wall of reflective glass, staring at myself. My nose is swollen to about twice it's normal size and colored a bright purple, and there is a huge (perhaps 1 cm around) zit on the end of my nose, while my face is, indeed, covered in blood. I am about to reach up and try and pop the zit when a baseball coach who is standing there warns me that I might not want to do that, as I might cause a nasty infection. But I barely touch it and the thing pops easy as pie. I take a wash cloth and wipe off the blood and puss and try to gently clean the stuff out, and everything still seems fine, so I still don't plan on visiting a doctor.
05-31-2013 -- [Earlier bits, good stuff with some chases and some signs of dream powers, but nothing I can remember in detail. Then the parts that I can remember, which I enjoyed quite a bit, and which ties in to many other dreams I have had.] At breakfast, and am refusing some sort of hard, nutty Grapenuts-type cereal because I am trying to learn to make some sort of incredibly decadent breakfast food made of eggs, milk, and obscene amounts of butter. It seems to be some extremely overdone cross between an omelet and french toast. Reading a sort of picture book, and I think it is one of the Alvin Maker books. But it is oddly like the start of Disney's animated Sleeping Beauty in that I turn the page, look at the picture, and it comes to life before me and plays out for me. Story seems to take place in Colonial times, and somehow Alvin has pissed off King George, and is being banished from both England and the Colonies, but I have missed how, and so am turning back a couple of pages to try and find out what happened (sort of time travel by page turning.) It never comes all that clear, but it more or less boils down to Alvin couldn't help but make a rude comment after King George said something extremely stupid, and in a fit of anger, was banished. Things are turning live, and we've been banished and are about to board a ship bound for somewhere in Europe where we can try to make a new start, but all the ship's crew is making threats and giving us insults, mad that we dared to say anything negative to King George, and we're starting to get annoyed. There are three or four of us at this point. I think Alvin, two of his brothers (I am one of these) and little Arthur Stuart. The ship's captain is coming on to my two older brothers, but not me (because in the dream I am my real fat, somewhat ugly self), and though at first he is polite about it, he is getting more rude and pushy all the time. So as we're getting annoyed, the older brother sneaks off the ship and grabs a small wooden rowboat and brings it back aboard. He is sneaking up behind the captain, as he is pressuring Alvin to give in to his advances, and a cross between a young cabin boy and Arthur Stuart is trying to warn the captain, but he is too involved in his wooing, so the older brother just sneaks up behind him, knocks him on the head with the rowboat, and knocks him out. We set him adrift in the same rowboat we hit him with, and steal his ship, starting a sort of pirate motif. I raise the sails, but don't know how to properly tie them off, so have to settle for wrapping the rope around the metal thingy several times, and hope it will be good enough, and we sail off into the sunset. But as we sail, things change. What was a huge ship on a huge ocean is turning into a ever-shrinking ship on a ever-shrinking river, and is soon turning into a cross between Knott's Berry Farm and Eisenhower Park, a sort of river that I have frequently dreamed about. The ship probably started out looking like the Columbia (big sailing ship at Disneyland), but has now shrunk to look much the same (but with Jolly Roger sails) but about twice the size of Mike Fink's Gullywhumper (a much smaller ship at Disney). We're now on a river encircling an island, but the island is largely square. Alvin and Arthur have kind of faded away, Dave D. (I think) is now with me, and we've also got a woman with us. We have two ships, the 'big' one (which isn't so big anymore) and a smaller one that is kind of a cross between a canoe and a rowboat which Dave and the woman have been fishing in. Eventually, the woman goes off fishing by herself, and Dave and I are now on the pirate ship. Things are changing, and we are now on this river in an amusement park, but they've closed down this entire section of the park, and eventually plan to remove it. We've stolen the boat to go sailing and playing around the area we used to play around as kids, once more before they tear it all out. So we're on the 'back' side of the river, to the south, and are sailing through rapids-like waters, through narrow paths, over small waterfalls, and occasionally through some very sharp rocks that I am afraid may tear out the bottom of the boat, but thankfully, that never happens. We come to the east side of the river, and the water levels are getting lower, the river is becoming a narrow stream, and on the island I can see the wooden remains of a large lift hill (or perhaps a drop, who can tell, with the poor condition it is in) of a huge logride they were once trying to build, but which was abandoned long ago. We continue around, counter-clockwise to the north side, and the water is lower, still. The stream is breaking up into several small channels, lower and narrower than they used to be. Soon we're on the west side again, where we originally stole the ship, but what was a virtual ocean is now narrow paths of water that we can barely fit the ship in, at all. Then we're on the south side and back to the east side again, and this time around, I am more interested in the partly-built log ride, and am trying to get a closer look at it, but as it shrinks, the water of the river is getting ever-further away from it. By the point we're back to the north side, we're going through larger and larger sections where there is no water left at all, but the ship keeps moving all right, so I am beginning to wonder if it has wheels on the bottom of it. Soon I think I have taken a slightly wrong turn, because by the time I am on the west side again, I seem to be almost in a sort of cave passage, and there is no water at all. I glance to my right through a gap in the cave wall and find myself looking up about ten feet to the actual river bed. Yeah, I got in a wrong channel, and am now in a narrow cave passage on the edge of the island, itself. I find an opening where I can cross back into the river, and the boat somehow manages the slight slope back up. It seems there were several passages that were lower than the level of the river, itself, that criss-crossed the island. Guests never saw them because the water level was too high, but they allowed park workers access to the stalagtited caverns the log ride would have partly ridden through. At this point for a little while, Dave and I were on different ships, and we came close to crashing in to each other a couple of times as we started to explore these tunnels under the island. I miss the water, and seeing large, black pipes that are part of the emergency sprinkler system, I find myself wishing one of them would break, and start providing us with more water. I guess my wishes are powerful, because suddenly several do, and huge streams of water are now falling from the 'sky' (we're under an island, remember). I try to get closer to the lift hill to look at it, but the repair workers who are suddenly appearing to fix the sprinkler system are too close, so I have to veer away. By this time we're swinging around from the east side to the north side again, and it now once again has the appearance of a huge, placid river (or even ocean), so those broken pipes really filled things up quickly! Problem is, security is now after us, as well, and they are catching up quickly. There are a couple of big, tough guys, but they are being led by a very attractive blond lady. We hear workers telling her they found small wheel tracks that indicated somebody ran into the sprinkler pipes, and they are placing the blame on us. I would swear that we came nowhere near hitting the pipes, but they don't believe us. Somehow I talk the beautiful lady into coming out on the ship's figurehead with me, and it actually is a wooden recreation of Elliot the dragon's (Pete's Dragon) neck and head. I show her it, as the tallest point of the ship, never could have reached the pipe, and am trying to come on to her at the same time. Very pleasant dream. Lots of fun.
05-21-2013 -- [As always, earlier bits MIA.] Playing some kind of computer game, might be Runescape, though very little matches up. There is something that recharges a talent or skill or such (like a prayer alter, or a summoning obelisk) and in some way I can keep track of exactly one person who uses the obelisk, knowing what else they are doing while they are online. The problem is, I'm not interested in following anybody who is currently online. But finally I see somebody it might be fun to keep track of. I think it might be Skilledman, but if it is, he is using a different character name at the moment, with many more Ss. I am just about to follow him (think of it like sending the thoughts of a VIP in Roller Coaster Tycoon to the screen, so you know what he is thinking of your park) when my mom shows up. She got a membership to the game long ago, but she never got very far, but she has finally decided she wants to learn this part of the game, and asks for my help. So I follow her, instead. She wants to get fully involved, but one part of the game involves folding up little model boats (five or six inches long) made out of cardboard that you kind of poke free from the pre-cut spots on the piece of cardboard they gave you when you joined. Since that was several years ago, mom admits she long ago threw out the sheet of cardboard, so we have to go looking around the world, trying to find a couple of sheets that somebody else has thrown out. So mom is out searching one area, and I seem to be searching near a beach, along with a cute girl who is following my orders. I send her onto the beach to look for some of the boat cardboard, and she comes back and says she didn't find any. I am almost sure I saw some there, so go down to the beach, myself. Unfortunately, there is no small cardboard for mom, but I do come across a guy who has made a life-size boat (around the size of a small power boat, but more like a rowboat) made entirely of cardboard. When I ask him about it, he explains he belongs to a group that makes these, and he has sailed it all the way up from Miami. I'm wondering how the thing didn't disintegrate in the water. He invites me to join them the next time they go sailing, but I think it is not likely. Meanwhile, we do manage to find one of the right pieces of cardboard for mom, and we are heading back to the meeting place in the desert. We rejoin a group that seems to be mostly women (I think I am the only guy here), and we have this sort of wagon train of several large barge-like vehicles that float in the air, and we use them to cross the desert. At least one of them is a large barge filled with our water supply. I am new to this group, and I soon discover they are being ordered about by a rather mean alien fellow that looks kind of like Trakis from Babylon 5. He pushes around the girls, gives them orders, tells them what to do, and is probably using them to do illegal stuff. When he starts to choke one of the girls, I attack him, and am soon choking him while holding him up against a wall. We're very evenly matched, and neither of us can beat the other, but I am able to stop him from attacking the ladies. Instead, he gives us our latest orders, supposedly from the government, and sends us into the desert to steal something, and also gives us a new module to replace an old one that is supposed to let the FBI keep track of where we are and what we are doing. He leaves, and I explain to the ladies that I believe him. I think the new module will help the FBI keep an eye on us. Unfortunately, I think he has been using them to steal stuff for him, and is now framing them, so the FBI will come after us, as he goes and finds a new crew to steal for him. I say we have to destroy this new module so we can't be tracked, and we do a little reading, and discover the thing would have to be submerged in water to destroy it. One of the girls goes slightly crazy, and tears a hole in the side of the water barge, and water starts spilling out as she pushes the new module into the interior. I'm thinking there had to be a better way to do that! Meanwhile, we're scrambling to get the caravan moving across the desert, when I quickly find myself facing Trakis again, but things are shifting a little bit. I am the 10th Doctor, and one of the attractive ladies is my companion, and Trakis is being chased by what seems to be another attractive lady. He is a minor villain, but really fairly harmless, but you can't say the same for the alien that is chasing him. I urge them both into the TARDIS while I face this thing, and it is trying to spit some green slime on me. I'm not sure if this green slime will take me over, or just burn me, but either way it is bad news, and therefore I am a little nervous that, while I dodged the mass she spit at me, I did seem to get splattered with a few drops. I'm soon running again, trying to stay away from it. I am not sure, but the thing attacking me at the end might be the monster I faced with the Doctor (as opposed to as the Doctor) in this dream last November.
05-19-2013 -- [Three or four dreams in one. Had a false awakening in this dream where I was recalling it as three separate dreams, before falling back into the dream for yet another part. Entire dream took place between 4:15 and 5:30 in the morning. All earlier dreams while sleeping very badly were rather fragmentary, but may have included Roller Coaster Tycoon.] First part I can remember (and there may have been a little before this) was somehow driving around the Orlando area with Carl while trying to work on a story I had first started writing back in college, which involved wizards and magic, and lots of history and legend about the world where it is taking place. Oddly enough, though it is a fictional story, I seem to be working on it for possible publication in the Hornet Newspaper. There are twin sisters, witches, living in small, circular cabins somewhere on campus. One of them officially opposes the evil wizard, while the other pretends to work with him, but in truth she opposes him, as well. The one who officially opposes him finds that her house has burnt down, and as I am looking at it, I can see the somewhat poor burnt house graphics that I was using in my attempt at creating a Realmz scenario, many years ago. Writing a story has turned into writing a RPG computer game. I am thinking of bringing back Merlin to defeat the evil wizard, then set himself up as a good dictator, and it is now turning from a computer game into a comic book that I am trying to do, which is actually a very bad idea, since I can't draw worth beans! Soon I find myself half running and half biking through long corridors, of stairs and cabinets of china and the like, as dream things shift. This is where the false awakening claims the first dream ended and the second dream began. The scene is slowly shifting, and I find myself running / biking on one of the major roads from Orlando to Kissimmee (OBT or Orange, I think) and it is very late, perhaps 1 or 2 am. As I am moving along, I find myself being chased by two guys on bikes. I soon find they are threatening me, and they are punks who mug people and steal their stuff. As they start talking, I find they are French, and really, really stuck up. They think they are the toughest thugs in the world, and are now traveling the world to mug people in different countries to show just how bad they are ... but I find it halfway funny that they are mugging me with little, tiny pocket knives. Still, I'm no fighter, so I am trying to outrun them, and get to the nearby police station for help. I am somehow riding under and jumping over things on my bike, which really shouldn't work, but I manage to stay ahead of them long enough to reach where I think the police station is, but it isn't there. Instead, I find myself facing a cross between a motorcycle gang and the A-Team. They are toughs, and in a van. They might have been trouble, if it weren't for the circumstances (or they might not), but when I explain about the French thugs chasing me, they decide they'll take care of them, and it turns out the French guys aren't nearly as tough as they think they are, so I turn around and start heading back to Orlando. According to the false awakening, this is where the third dream began. I'm heading back toward Orlando, but I catch a glimps of a couple of bike riders in the distance, and am worried that it might be the French guys. I know they've been beaten up by the American guys, but also figure this could make them very mad at me, so I don't want to run into them. I start to run, but slowly rise in the air. I manage to fly by running fast, and am soon running among the roof tops of 2 or 3 story buildings, and big industrial buildings, and thankfully, even if they try, nobody can manage to follow me, so I soon manage to put some distance between myself and the people following me. As I get better and better at this running through the air stuff, I start to think of myself as a sort of super hero, and am becoming more and more impressed with myself. It is on one of these rooftops that I suddenly find myself "waking up" (though I am still on the rooftop), and I start to write down the three dreams I've had in my dream notebook. And I am very specific in writing them down as the three separate dreams, as I repeat them and try to get all the details down good and firm. Then I kind of slip back into the dream, and find myself still between Orlando and Kissimmee, but back on the ground, and I start running through the air again to try and reach the rooftops. But now it is a lot more difficult, I can't do nearly as well (find myself almost to the height of a one story rooftop, but have to struggle and scramble to climb onto it), and now the people who are chasing after me seem to be able to run through the air as well as I can, so they are right behind me now. Thankfully, they are not the French guys, but a couple of fairly attractive ladies, though I wake before I find out if they are chasing me for pleasant reasons, or unpleasant.
1-16-2011 -- Will try to remember more of start if I can. First part I can remember at the moment is that I am with the 10th Doctor, and we're on a highway in England. Drivers have been getting killed, and we're trying to figure out how and why and what is happening. We've just come across one woman who looks like Margaret Thatcher, and she's dying, not dead yet, but she is in the last few seconds. The Doctor sees a slight white spot on her face, almost like the red dot of a laser sight, and suddenly she is dead. We're almost following a sort of list of the people who are going to die. We've been told ahead of time, but we can't really do anything about it. We just know who, right in their last few seconds. We continue on, splitting up a bit. I suddenly find myself near another woman who is dying, and I am trying to position myself so that I can attempt to block the little white dot, yet I don't want it to get me, either. This time the woman is dying, but it is a very slow process. I'm trying to think of any way to help her or save her, but nothing comes to mind. She is just laying there, having a slightly hard time breathing, barely able to mutter anything, getting closer and closer to death. It takes her about 15 minutes to die, with nothing happening the entire time, except her laboured breathing. Then she finally passes, and I gently close her eyes. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking that this episode has now officially been padded to make it a two-parter, because 15 minutes of watching a person barely breath while nothing happens is very boring television. The Doctor and I continue on, and we've soon moved into a sort of a wilderness area. The Doctor has been talking to some people, and somehow teleports away to another place, saying he'll be back, and asking us to see what we can find here. I find myself looking at some scruffy guys standing around talking, and one of them is using the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. I know I also have my own version of the sonic screwdriver, but I don't know any of these people, and I don't think they trust me much, even though I came with the Doctor. The guy who seems to be in charge of things says to follow him, and starts walking down the path. He seems to think we might be followed or something, so he is doing things like randomly change directions, or double back on his own path, or loop around in odd patterns, but since the area is a wide-open meadow, I don't get why. Anybody watching could see everything he does, anyway. But we all follow the same odd path, and I'm telling myself unlikely as it seems, there might be something I can't see which causes him to act this way. He leads us for a bit, and eventually we come to what seems to be an old, beat up, abandoned computer lab. There are maybe 20 or 30 tables with twice as many computers sat on them. The cases have been torn open, they are being salvaged for parts, and there is no electricity in this place, anyway. The guy starts messing with some of the wires in one of the computers, and is talking about what a great engineer he is, and he manages to make a small bit of land (perhaps about an acre) tear out of the ground and float maybe 50 feet into the air for a couple of seconds before it drops back down. But that's all he can do with it. A second group calls out that they have managed to do the same thing, and proudly cause another small bit of land to rise for a few seconds. But again, they cannot make anything else happen. I ask "What if you both concentrate on the same plot at the same time? Maybe either the concentration of power or the conflict of the two separate forces will change something?" The engineer dude that has been in charge points me at another of the cases, and urges me to tear in and try my idea. "Um ... I'm afraid I'm more of a software guy, myself," I tell him. "I know nothing of wiring and engineering." He's utterly disgusted with me, and writes me off as a total loss. So we've been here for a little while, and he suddenly asks where some girl is, just as she walks into the area. As she enters she has a different name (that I can't remember) than she does later in the dream. Something about the timing of wondering about her right as she shows up worries me, but I ignore it. The guy pulls out a map, and begins to lead us on a path to the east. We're walking along, and somehow I now have the map, and we're following the others, but I'm getting a little bit behind. As I do, the girl glances at the map, and glances around the area, and asks "What's missing?" I look, and can't see anything missing. She asks again "What's missing?" like it is a vitally important question, so I start looking around. To the south, I see vaguely medieval looking buildings. I compare them to the map, and the rough forms match up with the map pretty well. Further east, where the others have continued on, goes off the end of the map, but nothing is missing, it is just off the scope of the area the map covers. Then I look to the north. There is a bit of a fenced in area, where it is hard to see what is inside, but when I look on the map, it doesn't show anything there. That's what's missing. We find a gap in the fence, and push our way through. I find myself looking at a very small and very rickety corkscrew roller coaster. It's like a kids version of a coaster, with a smaller coaster train that only little kids could fit into, and at the highest points, it doesn't get more than 20 or 25 feet in the air. And yet it is a real corkscrew coaster, with three or four inversions visible around the place. And it is very old and half off the tracks, and very broken down. As I try to walk through the area, I see the corkscrew track is interwoven with some kind of flying mouse ride of about the same scale, with individual cars rather than trains on the track. Somehow these things are still running, but very slowly. I am trying to walk through the area, while dodging the vehicles. With the flying mouse, it is easy, but the corkscrew trains are much harder, and the space is so limited. At one point I misjudge things, and get hit by one of the corkscrew trains, but it is running so slowly and weakly, that nothing happens except it causes the train to stop. There doesn't seem to be anything else to discover in this small section, so the girl and I head a little further north, ducking out of this wooden-fenced area, and then finding a way to enter the next fenced area, which is surrounded by the easy to see through chain link fence. As we're looking in, we find ourselves looking at what seems to be a carnival set-up. The kinds of rides you carry on the back of a truck, small booths to sell cotton candy and the like, carnival stuff. The girl is really excited, and goes running inside. I follow just slightly slower, and lose sight of her. Unfortunately, I only get a few yards in, when a gang of toughs start to show themselves. They are quietly ranting and raving about how bad their universe is, how everything is falling apart, and how the world is coming to an end. And they are very firm about the fact that it is all Michael Eisner's fault, with what he did to Disney. And since he's an American, and I'm an American, they are going to take it out on me. They advance on me, and I'm trying to back away, but they've got me surrounded. They are trying to stick me with needles and drug me, and I feel the pricks as they succeed. I'm desperately trying to get away, and manage to stumble back out of the section, but they keep following me, and I am getting more and more dizzy, and am starting to fall to the ground. The girl is back, but the others are ignoring her, and she is just standing over me, leering. I start calling out for her help, just calling her name a few times, but she does nothing but grin at me. I'm just crying out "Pepper ... Pepper ... Pepper ...." as I pass out ... and wake up.