dream fragment

All I remember from my dream was a ship on a body of water

I was in a kitchen, but a really small and narrow one... or at least just a part of the kitchen. There were pizza boxes with a circular dough sitting on top of foil in each box. They were sitting in a metal drawer to my right. A bowl of pig fat and a bottle of tomato paste appeared. They were the ingredients for tomato sauce. I opened a box and spread cheese on it, and placed it in the oven. I grabbed a second box and begin to put cheese on it. I then remembered that I forgot to put tomato sauce on the first one! I checked the oven and the pizza looked alright... I then squeezed the tomato paste in to the bowl of pig fat. The tomato paste was pink and clumpy. I mixed it but it was too thick. I squeezed in more tomato paste but it was still the same.

Fliers
I'm in my office. I notice a stack of fliers on my desk and start to look through them. They're all for women's products, and many of them have pictures of women dressed in rather revealing clothes. I put them down, preferring to avoid such things. My wife walks into the room and asks if I saw the fliers, saying that my 3rd daughter wanted me to have them. I say I looked at a couple then put them down, and she says that they had to go through the postal service, so they can't be TOO bad.

Outside my window a group of men is working on the lawn. I think something about how they won't move on until their boss, a woman I know, tells them to.


Light demo
I'm using some sort of interactive demo produced by a team as a project. The viewpoint moves along on rails, and if you click in the right places, you get to see more stuff. A message at the beginning says to click on the light. Every so often, there's an opening to the side, a room or a hallway, and each one has a part of the wall or floor that's extra bright; but when I click on them the program looks like it's going to go down them, but then keeps going straight. I restart and try again and the same thing happens. On the third try I figure out the correct hot spot to click; it's rather non-intuitive. The camera viewpoint goes into one of the lit hallways.

Now I'm physically present in that hallway. In front of me are some steps going down, and there are a handful of people already sitting on them. In front of us and to the left is a stage with closed curtains and some kind of project in front of the curtains. My third daughter goes up and looks at it, then comes back. My step-father is there and asks us what we'd like to sing.


House politics
I'm in a bedroom talking with someone about home defense. He says he'd love to have a good BB gun in his bedroom; I reply that a shotgun is much better for home defense. There's a half-made bed on the floor in one corner of the room.
Outside in the hallway I see ??? trying to set up a prank for when ??? comes along; he's hiding under a trap door on the stairs landing. He drops something and opens the trap door to find it. Now there's something about the household inheriting from two ancient houses (i.e. ancestories), and that the prank has given the patriarch the idea to combine the houses, something that's not normally done. He's reticent to do it, since the house name that'll be going away is more his heritage, but he's willing to do it since it makes so much more sense than keeping both houses around. Now I see a bunch of (physical) houses in a row, five or so small ones and one large one, and I see the five small houses get smashed into the large one, leaving a lot of cleared ground behind.


Train troubles
I'm riding on a train, talking with people in one of the cars. I have some concerns about something. At some point, the train stops. We get off, look around, and get back on. Now I'm in the locomotive, somehow in charge of the train. I really don't want this and I'm trying to think how to get rid of the responsibility. I'm also concerned about whether we have enough fuel to keep going. Now we're stopped again, and I'm standing on the ground by the locomotive. Another train comes by, a big one, and sideswipes my train. As if in slow motion, the train starts to tip, then falls off the tracks towards us. We're able to get out of the way, and no one is hurt. With the train on its side, I can see a compartment in the top of the locomotive. It seems to be the coal hopper, but it's just got a handful of what look like large dusty Hershy's Kisses. I make a comment about just wanting to put one in my mouth, to which the engineer just smiles. I say it's a good thing that we didn't go on since there's not even enough coal in here for another day of travel, but the engineer disagrees, saying this is really good stuff and a little goes a long way.

Along with the coal, the compartment also has a bunch of kids' books. I poke through them to see what's there, and a number of Mandy books stand out. Somehow I know the train's owner's daughter is grown up now and has no need of these books, so I think that my own daughter may enjoy them.


Car troubles
I'm on the hill near my house stuck in a long line of traffic. I come close to running into the car in front of me, and I hope that no one runs into me. Now I'm on foot standing in front of my car. I move off to the side just in time, and a car behind mine pushes it forward, smashing it into the car in front. Now I'm walking through the intersection at the top of the hill. I see a police car and a regular car off to the side, with the police officer lecturing the driver about weapons.


Fragment
We're in a vehicle along with at least one child, being driven by a chauffeur. We pull up outside a house, and he announces that we've arrived.

I'm in a grocery store, looking around for the bacon. I see blister packs hanging on metal pegs in a non-refrigerated area, containing bacon that is cut into trapezoid shapes of various sizes. I want bacon that is cut into circles but I cannot find any.

These are dreams from the past couple days. Because getting on the internet is a pain right now, I wrote what I could recall in here.

Too Many Cats
I come home and I see that there are six cats in the living room. I see that there are even more cats all through the house. I run into my mom who says that she has decided to become a cat hoarder.

Publisher

In WL, I recently wrote an autobiography cataloging everything that happened to me up until the end of high school. It contained many personal things that I never wanted other people to see.
My parents had just sent this off to a publisher and collected a large check, about $1500 on the counter. There was also a bill showing that they had spent the money on expensive wines.
Okay, I don't care less about what they spent the money on, but the autobiography I wrote contained a lot of personal information, and it should not have been published. I get very angry and trash my own home.

Cosmic Forest Fire

Now onto the good stuff. I am flying through space, getting some guided tour of the galaxy from what I have been noticing more and more, the "presence" in my dreams. It flies me past a large blue star that is surrounded by this disc of gas and dust. The star looks beautiful and very realistic.
We fly past that to another white star. And (enter dream logic) the star is shaped like a skull rather than just a ball. This was a really interesting and strange sight. There is also a large disc of white clouds around it. The presence flies me toward the clouds and deposits me on them.
As it turns out, I am in a very strange, interesting world. The skull-shaped star is the source of heat and light and the entire ring of gas and dust is the world. Most of it is white, and the white gas turns out to be snow when you actually get closer to it.
I was cold, so I tried to make a fire with some spare wood laying around. There were actually small clusters of pine trees all around. I got a fire started, god help me how. But the fire quickly spread and started burning down all of the trees.
The presence took me out of that location and left me at my house. My parents were there and they were scolding me for starting a cosmic forest fire. After a minute, I started to realize how absolutely ridiculous the situation was. I didn't make it to full-fledged lucidity before I woke up.

Car Chase
Me and two friends are chasing a large truck through a city. We are driving a black corvette. I try to open the door and jump from the corvette onto the truck, but the truck turns away down a side street at the last minute.
I get lucid at somepoint after that, but the dream falls into chaos. I am in some large red cave looking through a satchel full of weapons. I then walk around on stilts in an attempt to fly. I feel like there was much more to this than I can recall right now.

Well this is a very short dream. I remember I was a a baby and my mother picked me up at took me to the bathroom. She sat at the edge of the tub and turned on the water. She smiled and tested the water. You could see the steam coming of the water indicating it was scorching hot but she touched it like it was nothing. My mother then placed me in the tub and I started screaming. She continued to watch me still smiling but the weirdest thing was that I screamed and cried but nothing came out (no sound). In the dream I was 2 years old and instead of seeing through my eyes I was watching my mother and me from a distance (like watching a movie about yourself). I wonder what this means~

After few non-lucid fragments (one interesting one involving a woman and a mythical being something like a bird and something like a qilin, and his 'missing part', which is in the form of another person this woman knows; otherwise dull), my memory picks up in a scene where I'm already semi-lucid (I'm controlling my surroundings and aware that this control is due to it being a dream, but otherwise have fairly low awareness and mostly go along with the dream storyline). I'm walking through a park with another man, while watching someone I think of as a killer, and I mentally push him toward his next target. However, at the moment I expect him to take out a knife, instead he puts his arm around his target's shoulders and hands him a cigarette.

The killer, the target, and the man I'm walking with are all smoking. I take the cigarette from the man I'm walking with, intending to smoke it myself, but I find the dream won't allow it: first I'm holding nothing, it's back in that man's hand; then when I focus I find I can put it to my mouth and feel the physical pressure of it, but it doesn't resemble smoking. I've had similar problems before, when I deliberately focus on improving the realism of some complex physical sensation, and instead only wind up feeling the sense of pressure accurately, nothing else. I then focus on breath instead of on the cigarette itself, and something interesting happens. I have the impression I can control my surroundings far more easily by working in rhythm with my breathing.

My memory's vague for the next two scenes, while I was focusing on breath - I saw this as a great development. (Dream logic inspired by meditation, maybe. There's no reason I should be breathing in a dream at all. I wonder whether I was actually in the same rhythm as my sleeping body's breath or not.) First I saw something like a shadow play, where the figures moved in rhythm with my breathing, under my control. Then I was walking through halls and passing people who appear to be from America of about 200 years ago, all of whom I find vaguely unpleasant; I still had the impression that I was successfully controlling something through breath in this scene.

I wound up in a room where several people are sitting around a round table, and they call me and someone with me to join them. I start to sit down and an old woman stops me, points me to a different chair. To my left is a man holding what I think at first is a young boy. When I get another look at it, it has the face of an old man, and one of his eyes is that of a cat. This is all very unpleasant. I recognize him as my own cat, S., and I believe he's somehow sick. (S. died a long time ago, but I didn't remember this at the time.) We put him on the table, now in the form of a human-sized cat, and I chant a healing spell over him, mentioning a goddess, exerting dream control. Objects rise off the table and hover in the air, and the other people around the table join in, though by just chanting 'heal!' over and over again. I woke up while listening to them chant.

Imager rescue
I'm watching a group of Imagers descend into a strange place, some sort of alternate dimension. It's a "utopia," as clearly evidenced by the people all wearing the same identical flowing clothes and everything being spotlessly clean. The Imagers are here because they received a report that some of their members had been captured. Sure enough, in the main square they find a slaver selling four of their friends. The lead Imager pulls aside one of the junior members and instructs him to prepare a handful of poisoned coins (large silvery things), something that will take effect later in the day after they're long gone. He then starts to talk to the slaver to set the release conditions for the four. I start to talk to the captured Imagers to find out what happened. A young woman in the group tells me they were in the square and realized the best position had been taken, but no one was in it. Going over to investigate, someone had thrown bags over their heads, stopping them from fighting back, and here they are.


Curving fire
I'm standing outside with my wife and with Emily and her family on the grass near the end of "our" driveway. We're all admiring the neighbor's boat and jet ski. Emily's husband say that a jet ski is something they'd love to buy but they haven't been able to yet.

Now I'm setting up some kind of long rack with gas burners built into it. Now I'm carrying something that looks like a big scoop. It's the same width as the rack, two or maybe three feet. As I approach one end of the rack, the flames suddenly curve towards and into the scoop, even from the far end of the rack. It's quite a sight, and Emily is very impressed.


Side scroller
I'm playing a side scroller. I have to throw bombs to open new passages, but I have to be careful not to get caught in the explosions. Now My character is in a large room with some blocks in the middle and at the bottom. The next thing I need to do is to break through the blocks at the bottom and get into a water area. There's an enemy in the room with me, and I need to deal with him before I can continue. He's small and good at hiding, only coming out to strike when I'm not paying attention, so this is taking a while.

There's something about legal torrents of old games ranging from five hundred to two thousand megabytes. Many of the "old games" are actually new efforts designed to look like old games. I think about how pixel art is popular with indie devs, and how much I can't stand it.

Now I'm at the far left end of the room. There are more blocks here, and they seem to be switching every few seconds. Some of them show a powerup icon for a few seconds, then fade as other blocks start to show powerup icons. I try to break the powerups open, but I have to get moving at a good clip to do so, and that means being off screen to get enough speed, and that means I can't see which blocks currently hove powerups. As I move off screen I realize there's a hidden key showing me the blocks and powerups, and I'm able to use it to aim my character to get the powerups. After I've gotten a bunch, a gate comes down blocking my access, and a giant spiky rod starts to come down from the ceiling. I don't move quickly enough and take some damage before I'm able to get to the main part of the room, but then I'm able to use my new powerups, especially some kind of melee weapon that looks like a long rod, to make short work of it.


Bathing man
I'm in a yellowish room watching a very large man get painted all over with oriental style patterns and figures, designed to scare off evil spirits. He then proceeds to lie in a "bath" with water just a few inches deep. I guess the designs were to scare off water spirits? But if he's bathing, shouldn't the paint wash off? Or if it doesn't, then how will he get it off later, and what's the point of bathing now?

Later, I'm talking with him and find out his name is Sm, pronounced Sem. I think that name is familiar and realize it's from one of the Final Fantasies - thirteen, I think. I ask him if he's familiar with those games, and he says he isn't. I consider explaining about them to him, but I decide that's more trouble than it's worth.


Messed up lights
I'm in my bedroom trying to turn on the lights, but something very strange is going on. We have a dual slider fan/light switch near the door, and I'm sure I'm using the light slider, but as I slide it up and down other lights in the room are turning on and off, leaving the fan's light off the whole time. I look more closely and am even more surprised to see that there are two sliders on the same track. I start moving them slowly up and down, trying to figure out the pattern. The first notch turns on my wife's bedstand light; the second notch turns on a light in the middle of the wall and turns her lamp to dim. Other positions do other things. Now someone else is in the room. He's familiar to me (though I don't know who he was). He says he saw something about this in the manual when he got one recently, and he'd be happy to let me borrow it. I thank him but say it probably wouldn't do much good, since each room is wired differently; but he politely disagrees, saying this is exactly what the manual talked about. I tell him I'd love to see it.


Fragments
Something about "medieval court posturing"

I look between two nice buildings to see a house behind them. It's rather run down, but there's a light on upstairs and it looks much more homely than the austere newer buildings.

I'm in a dimly lit hallway.

Barely remember anything of it now.

I am in some sort of spaceship just flying around. I'm in some vertical giant tube with what seems to be the bad guys of the movie. There's a girl below me trying to open a gate. I increase my body weight to 1000T and let my body fall, killing her. Okay, normal weight now. Now I'm just playing with other skills, changing the gravity, speed, etc. A friend of mine is in the other side playing hide-and-seek and I go through a conduit to scare her.

I'm in school. There's no teacher so we are talking and making noise. I notice something strange and gain lucidity.

Okay, let's examine the landscape. There're some awesome paintings on the wall, it would be awesome to go there. I told myself a couple of times before doing anything that I am dreaming, stabilize the dream to make sure that I don't lose it and then prepare myself mentally to go into the painting of somewhere I just can't remember now. It was beautiful though. I start to run and get ready to cross the painting and appear in that place. I just hit the wall and nothing else happens. Let's try again, I tell myself trying not to have any doubt. Fail again.

A friend of mine appears from who-knows-where and tell me that she knows better how to do that, as 'she has experience doing that'. What the hell, I think, let's see what does she do. She chooses a painting but it had a big snake and some other weird creatures which I prefer not to meet. I show her the painting and she takes a sit. She extends her arms and put them on the painting. The part of the painting where her hands are standing starts to vibrate and 'flow', like it is liquid. Her arms cross the painting and appear on the other side, within it. Holy fuck, I think, that's awesome.

At this point I think I lose lucidity and entered into another dream.

I was with my entire class again, but we were in some strange place, dark and unconfortable. I was doing something, like some sort of painting with little brown balls and sticks. They smelled of cinnamon. A friend of mine was laughing at me I don't remember why. The teacher started yelling at us for going out or something. I wake up.

Date: 3/24/2014 (Sun)
Total sleep: 7 hrs
Daytime Techniques: Mantra, Visualization, Text Search RC
Lucid Techniques: Mantra, Visualization
Recall Techniques: Mantra
Fell Asleep: 10:30 pm
Dream 1 Title: Roxanne
Dream 1: I am standing in a kitchen I don’t recognize. My wife is there. We are preparing a large dinner for a family gathering. We are discussing how many grams of carbohydrates are in the sweet potatoes we are preparing. She tells me that I have to ask Roxanne to leave. (Roxanne is a girl I briefly dated in college.) I walk out of the kitchen and into a large dining room. There is a long table with a white table cloth, and many place settings. The chairs are ornately carved. Roxanne is standing at the far end of the table. I walk to her. She looks just like she did back in college. As I approach she is smiling at me. I feel anxious because I know I have to ask her to leave. I smile back. I grab hold of the backs of one of the chairs. I am worried she will be angry with me. I then tell her that she can’t stay because this party is only for relatives. She smiles and nods. I wake up.
Dream 2 Title: Moving out of my dorm
Dream 2: I am in what I know is my dorm room. It is a relatively small room. In one corner is a folding table and chair. On the table is my computer (similar to the one I had in the early 90’s). Against one of the walls is a single bed with a maroon comforter. Sitting on the bed is a girl, about 7 years old. She has black hair. I know I am looking after this girl (In RL I don’t know this girl). I am moving out of the dorm today. I wrap some cloths in the comforter and leave. **Jump** I am sitting on my motorcycle (I’ve never owned a motorcycle in RL). I have attached my comforter, filled with cloths, to the back of my bike with bungee cords. The little girl is sitting on the comforter. It is raining outside as we drive out of the driveway and onto the street. We drive down a steep hill in front of Holy Cross College. When we reach the bottom of the hill I turn left, and then turn left again at a tall cement building. We start to head up another steep hill, but the comforter falls off the back of the bike. I stop. I tell the girl to leave the bundle where it is (sitting on the wet street) and we will come back for it later. I push the bike up the street and the girl walks with me. We turn right into a parking lot. I find a bike rack and suddenly my motor cycle is a child’s bike, made entirely from plastic. I put it in the bike rack and was not concerned that I didn’t have a lock because I didn’t think anyone would be interested in stealing a plastic bike. I know this is an apartment building and I am going to be renting a place here. I start walking toward the building. A man approaches me. He is wearing a white and blue checkered shirt. He stops in front of me. I don’t like him. He makes me feel uneasy. He looks to the little girl and then back to me with a strange smile. Then he says “You must be looking for the child loving center.” In my mind I know this is a place where adults take children to molest them. I am furious with this man. I realize that he is a child molester. I grab him by the front of his shirt and push him up against a nearby cement wall. I look him in the eyes and say, “I’m calling the police!” He continues to smile. Suddenly I know that he has gotten away with this in the past and the police won’t help. Just then I know what exactly to do. I have a flash in my head of a man, a tall, very large man with a shaved head and a tribal neck tattoo. I know this man is a convicted murderer who hates child molesters. I look back to the man in the checkered shirt and say, “I’m going to call Manny McMurderer.” The man’s smile fades, and his eyes grow wide. I know he is finally scared. The dream fades and I wake up.
Dream 3 Title: Just a feeling
Dream 3: (can only remember emotion) I remember being in a situation where I was very happy.
Awake: 5:30 am
Vividness: (scale of 1-15, 10 is waking life vividness) D1 = 6; D2 = 8; D3 = ?
Awareness: (1-10; or lucid) D1 = 4; D2 = 5; D3 = ?
Length: (how long it felt like! Because that matters) D1 = 2 min; D2 = 10 min; D3 = ?
Emotions: Guilt, Anger, Happiness
Dream Signs: Person from my past, being in places I don’t know in RL, People I don’t know in real life, a people I don’t know in RL who I know in my dream, Being approached by a child molester, riding a motorcycle (in the rain), No text where there should have been text (street signs, dorm room, kitchen)
Notes: For Dream 3: My alarm didn’t go off this morning, so I awoke to my wife’s alarm. That meant I was late for work. I bolted out of bed which completely erased the last dream of the night.
Text Search Experiment: I am trying to ingrain a habit of searching for text everywhere I go. I search with my eyes for text that I can see. I make a game of it, by trying to read every bit of text (numbers & words) I can see from my current position. I do this because I realize that text rarely appears in my dreams. (When I see text, I will read it, look away, and then reread it as a RC.) So, the lack of text of any kind is a dream sign that occurs in 98+% of my dreams. My assumption is, if I search for text out of habit in my dream then either: 1. My dream will create some text, and when I read it, look away & will it to change, and look back, I will know I am dreaming, or 2. I will be unable to locate any text which will trigger me to do a different RC. So far I have been doing this “Text Search Technique” for about a week. I recalled 2 solid dreams last night and noticed no text in either of them. Both dreams took place in areas where text should have been present. I did not specifically look for text out of habit.

I parked my park in the parking lot. Walked up a flight of stair. See that I'm at a part of a hotel. Went up a flight of narrow wooden stair. I went up one more flight of stair, and it's a white stone set this time.

I was in a house in Macau. We looked out the window to see my old landlords from SM. Someone told me to hide but I really needed to use the bathroom. I thought I'll have enough time to use the toilet since they're like 24 stories down. I got in and I heard their voices. Someone told me to come back out and hide. I opened the door with my pants down to my knees. They sounded too close so I shut the door. I really hoped that they didn't see the door closing. I heard them walking by asking for me. There's a vent at the bottom of the door. I held a piece of toilet paper to the vent even though I know they can't see through it anyway.

I dreamed of something Starbucks related.

color legend: non-dream dream lucid

Lucid Fragment #2 Water-Bending

I don't remember much of this dream because I forgot to write it down in my DJ when I woke up.

I remember being in a classroom. I’m in the front corner of the room behind a desk. The room turns into chaos. Everyone suddenly starts fighting each other. I join the fight by water-bending into a girl’s face. I turn it into ice so she can’t see. My next victim is a guy. I water-bend water towards him and it surrounds his body. I freeze it and he falls over unable to move, begging someone to help him. Everyone looks at me and I smirk and walk out of the room.

The next thing I remember is flying around a bit. I’m still not very good at it but it was a good second try.

color legend: non-dream dream lucid

Lucid Fragment #1 Struggling

I suddenly become aware that I am dreaming. I RC with my nose pinch and am able to suck in a big breath. This feels amazing and I marvel at the feeling. I remember my goal of flying but become conscious of my real body. I spend the rest of the dream trying to lose the feeling of my body IWL but I wake up.

Research driving
I'm walking across a grassy field towards a building (either work or college, I'm not sure). I see an odd-looking car with two guys in the back seat. Somehow, I can see that one of them is Mike R whom I've worked with a number of times but never met. I walk up to the car and introduce myself. Somehow I end up inside talking with them. Eventually a driver comes and starts to take us somewhere. I'm somewhat anxious since I'm not supposed to be there and this is some sort of research expedition. I debate about whether to ask the driver to stop, and the further we go the more anxious I get since asking him to stop after all this time would be silly. Eventually I decide just to stay and see what happens.

Now we're driving by a huge monstrosity of a building. The front is incredibly wide and tall and seems to be one huge screen with hundreds of different video windows all playing at once. This is the new USPS building where they're trying to be modern and relevant. It's one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. I say that they're the "Facebook of ???." Now we're driving through another area. Somehow we transition to something my mind flags as "Jurassic Park," except it's a mad doctor who enjoys making body-part-shaped food that may or may not be actual body parts. I'm disgusted by it.

Now I'm driving through town on my own. I'm having some sort of difficulty - the roads are slick, and I keep having to go up and down steps in the car. I turn to go down some steps, and even though I'm going very slowly (walking pace), I manage to knock over a girl. I jump out of the car and help her to her feet, asking if she's OK. She says she's fine and continues on her way.


Unfinished ceiling
I'm at "our house" working on the hole in the kids' bedroom, trying to fish out the stuff my daughter dropped into the wall. I manage to get a vantage point that reveals that the stuff may have dropped into the room below. Now I'm in the dining room, looking up. I'm amazed to see that the ceiling is incomplete, that I can see the floor joists of the room above, and I find that I can look up in the gap between the walls separating rooms, including the wall with the hole. Looking around I find the missing tights as well as a whole table cloth. I wonder how she was able to stuff that down the small hole. I continue looking at the ceiling, wondering why it's like this. The ceiling is already low, particularly with a fan, and I don't think there's any way to finish the ceiling and have it be high enough to easily walk under it.


Vacation craziness
We're arriving at a vacation house along with at least one other family. As we're unloading the car, my wife notices that my right wrist has a silver ring going all the way around it flush with my skin. She asks about it, and I offhandedly tell her that the doctor decided my arm needed to be replaced, so I have an artificial arm and hand now. She's appalled, wanting to know the details of why such a drastic thing was needed. I'm really not sure; I just accepted the doctor's word. She asks details about how to care for it, and I confess it's something I haven't really thought about. She finds a paper labelled something like "READ THIS FIRST: How to care for your new arm" and starts looking over it. We realize it needs to be charged periodically, and I have no idea where the charger is. I hope it's a standard plug, and I assume I can just go by Radio Shack and get a universal adapter that will serve until we can find the original adapter.

Now we're all at the beach. There's some kind of kids' area nearby, so I go to check it out. Now I'm swimming in the kids' area. It seems to be a more sheltered cove, though the waves are still occasionally big. In fact, there are a few that pass over my head (my bouyancy is wrong, since I should be floating with them, not passing under them). I'm surprised that my eyes aren't stinging and assume that I'm closing my eyes just right to seal out the salt water. I'm also surprised that I have to deal with a few waves coming in the wrong direction (i.e. from the direction of the beach); I assume the big ones are hitting the shore and bouncing back, traveling back out to sea as smaller waves. I realize that, once again, I forgot to buy goggles and intend to make a note to do so.

Now I'm talking with somebody in charge of the kids' cove. He asks if I'd like a bucket ride. When he sees my quizzical look, he points to where people in large floating buckets are lining up behind some kind of water vehicle, forming a long "train" to get pulled around. The buckets look too small for a full sized adult, so I decline. He starts talking about the challenges of running such a thing safely, especially when it's raining. I see a list of things they're working on, including the problem of rain adding to the weight in the buckets. It seems they track the weight so they know if a kid falls out or a bucket becomes detached, and when the buckets fill with water it messes up the "fallen kid" detector.

Now we're walking along near the beach. I look up and see a drone flying past. I point it out, and my wife is amazed that I hadn't noticed more of them flying around. Now we're walking along a high pathway overlooking the city; it's quite a sight. Behind us, we see a large floating robot coming towards us, and we all take off at a run knowing this can't be good. It catches up to us and we recognize it from earlier. It ends up disobeying its orders, grabbing us, and helping us escape. Eventually it puts us down, then flies off and jams itself somewhere to block anything else that's chasing us. I'd liked it earlier, and I like it even more now, so I'm sad to see it sacrifice itself for us.


Fragments
I'm on top of the car as we're driving somewhere. It's a Sunday evening, but it's also the start to some festival. Suddenly all the normal lights go off and strands of Christmas lights come on. I get as low down to the car as possible; I don't want one of the strands to catch me and pull me off the roof.

I'm walking around the basement spraying something everywhere. Tiny puddles are all over the place, and I wonder how they got there. I'm thankful that I won't have to track mud into the house from the basement much longer, and a middle-aged man agrees, saying he's sure the police chief will also be very relieved, since he often has to visit the person whose office is down here.