lucid

I will try out a picture says a 1000 words approach (to see if I can minimize the time it takes to keep up with my online DJ)...the idea being that the picture will bring the whole lucid back to me.card looks weird...

Son coloring nearby...Wait...my son is no longer a toddler!

Lucid Dream:

I found this carriage somewhere that interested me. It couldn't move without a horse, since it was made of only wood. I was able to lucidly make the wheels move and get it to go down this dirt road. The road began to get rough spots in it that were steep enough to make the wheels slip, I had to grab at the road in front in order to force the carriage over the steep spot. Finally there was a steep hill that was too much to go up until a tractor came along. I held onto the back of the tractor as it pulled the carriage up the hill. Right before the top, the tractor got stuck too. I figured it would be alright to just let the tractor go, so I did. Things went bad though, the tractor lurched forward and crashed, messing up a front wheel. The carriage fell backwards, almost vertically it seemed and crashed too. I was able to stay put where I was, and as I looked down on the carriage I thought my sister was inside of it, although I didn't realize it until now. I thought my sister had died in the crash and I was so sad and upset that it woke me up.

It was 1am something but it didn't take long for me to fall back to sleep.

Dream 2

There were these group of people who were having a party, and playing some sort of game. They were standing in the same spot, merging in & out, like they weren't quite in phase with each other. It was like a willpower fight for dominance of the spot they occupied. I stepped into the pile of phasing people to join in this game. It took about a minute, but as I dominated the spot, one by one people would "die" and when I was the only one left I won the game. The people weren't really dead, they were just counted as dead within the game. Since I won the game, my DCs let me continue to party with them. That only lasted a while because I got sidetracked with packing stuff in a car.

Dream 3

I was at this school where I found the food storage room. There was a jar of pickled bologna there so I took a big piece and started eating it. It tasted good and I just ate it as I walked around. For some reason I thought I needed to wash my hands so I went in to the restroom. It was weird to see that it was full, there were 20 guys in there using all the stalls & urinals. They were even sitting in the sinks, all but one sink. I ignored them as I used the only available sink to wash my hands. The paper towels were nice to wrap around the pickled bologna I still had. This was probably the most amount of times I have seen my hands in a dream yet it didn't make me go lucid.

Of course as soon as I go on break something interesting happens.

A little background:
About a year ago, my friend S and I wrote a story. In the story I came up with this character named Raiah. She was basically this bull-headed, immature cyborg girl who would solve all of her problems with a rocket launcher and had two true loves: Food and Music. Originally she was supposed to be just a one-time character but S and I loved her so much that we kept her in the story until she basically became the main character.
At one point, we wanted to start a Youtube LP channel and I was supposed to play games in her character. S played as another character. But we soon discovered that we enjoyed simply playing games in character and didn't give a crap about the YouTube channel.

I recall being in my dorm room with my roommate and S. I am non-lucid but I am thinking to myself that for some reason I want to manifest Raiah in my next lucid dream when I go to sleep. I am working on my computer on this amazing realistic picture of her character, beyond my artistic abilities IWL.
For some reason there are three cans of Nos energy drink on my desk, and I decide to drink all of them. (Now I've never had any of those hardcore energy drinks IWL, because one cup of coffee, and I'm up all night. I'm scared to know what three cans of a potent energy drink would do to me.) I recall drinking them very clearly though. They are tangy and sweet, sort of like the flavor of Gatorade.
I try to recall my motivation for drinking them, but cannot. I notice that they don't seem to have much of an effect on me. I don't seem to be getting the jitters or anything.
I begin to notice how strange the situation is.
...
I can't recall most of what happened. Most of it were just my attempts to manifest Raiah. I was non-lucid of course.
...
I can recall some flashes that were more akin to my waking daydreams rather than sleeping dreams. They involved her character sitting next to S's character playing video games. It looked like a cartoon.
...
I recall the ending though. I was semi lucid, back at the beach resort with Manei. The place looks off though. The building has been duplicated and there are now four of them with a central courtyard in the middle, that kind of looks like the quad from my college, except there are palm trees in it.
It is a dark night.
She was telling me that she didn't want me manifesting this character into my dream world because Raiah would be a distraction from me learning how to lucid dream.
And then she said, possibly the funniest thing I have ever heard her say.
"If I was Sonic the Hedgehog, Raiah would be that stupid talking fox that never does anything..."
"Tails? Isn't he like really smart? He builds planes and stuff?"
You can ignore this dialogue. I put it in because it was funny, but I don't think Manei has half a clue about anything in the gaming world...
I recall looking to the sky and seeing some very odd hovercraft fly across. It had four orange glowing circles on it that I thought were some kind of anti-gravity discs or something.
I began to become fully lucid and realized that, while conscious I had no reason to manifest this character into my dreams. I had probably just subconsciously manifested her by accident. Manei was right. This character would be nothing more than a distraction for me.
There was some other aspect to this that passes through my head, though. Manei and Raiah were supposed to be like opposite characters in my dreams. Maybe there is something I could learn from this...

I wake up. At freaking 2 in the morning. I try to get back to sleep, but I can't.

Black: Non-dream
Blue: Non-lucid
Red: Lucid

Note
WBTB at ~5, ate a banana, was pretty good. Did 7 short SSILD cycles followed by 2 long ones, then for every 5 minutes or so afterwards I did another 2 short SSILD cycles to maintain the awareness.

Lucid Dream - Almost fought Goku...
Me and E are in the same house, we're looking for something, I think I remember where it is. She's in the lounge and I recall it being somewhere near the TV, so I head there and move towards the direction of the TV. She is in the centre of the room and kind of gasps at my sudden appearance in the room, and it felt like she was infatuated with me. Felt a bit weird because IWL we pretty much hate each other. I rustle around in the cabinets beneath the TV and there's a whole bunch of damn cables in the way. "Wait a minute... What am I doing here?" I kind of just realize that this is all a dream, I don't even bother doing a reality check.

"stabilize now...... stabilize now.... STABILIZE NOW!" The last one I yelled out and the world around me brightened a bit and became more clear, the echo of my shout rings around the room a bit. Oddly enough I noticed now that I was in a kitchen on the 1st floor of a 2 story house, opposed to being on the 2nd floor of a different 2 story house. E was gone now too. I feel like later I should try summon her back. To my left is a fridge, I approach it, the feel of my feet touching the ground is so real. I can see all the individual dust particles that have settled or were floating around the world. I head towards a some carpeted stairs and go up, I'm met by a typical baby-proof gate. I see a toddler walk out of his room rubbing his eyes, he looks at me and I realize he is me as a kid. I continue on, the baby-proof gate mysteriously gone now. I look around and see something I couldn't possibly describe accurately... It was Luffy's brother Ace (from the One Piece anime) and he was made of bubblegum, including his clothing and hat. He was there, then he wasn't. Then I saw a poster in a nearby room that had him and Luffy with there foreheads pressed against each other in an eye-glaring brotherly stare down. The thought that I could summon Luffy just blew me away, I'd be able to hang with him! Awesome. I think to myself that he's behind the door in that room with the poster, and then rush around. But nope, there's a pimply brown-haired 20 year old hipster dude just sitting on the edge of the bed texting. Then somehow I'm given this container of pills called "Black Elite Pills", which in the dream meant that they're what Goku uses to power-up to his Super Saiyan Black Elite level... Which doesn't exist, I know, but I thought it did in the dream . I see Goku in the room sitting at the computer playing games and I decide to pop open the container and eat a whole heap of them, "Hey Goku, let's do this." I throw him the container, and we're getting ready now to duke it out. But I'm awake now. Slowly the clarity of the dream must have been fading away, and I hadn't noticed.

Non-lucid Lucid

I sat on the floor, in a creepy, old house. It was cold, and I was freezing. I heard horrible sounds from outside.
I looked out the window and saw a scarecrow with white eyes. I freaked out at that moment, and tried to hide, but of course I couldnt. The scarecrow found me every time and it was laughing.
" You can't hide " it repeated while I was desperately trying to run away or hide, but for some reason, my hands popped up in front of me, and I knew I was dreaming. The scarecrow stood still and I imagined a bomb or something on it. I yelled out that the scarecrow had to disappear, and.. BOOM.. everything just exploded and I entered a new dream scene. But now, It wasn't a nightmare anymore. I was in the middle of a big beautiful field with yellow trees and like thousands of rainbows everywhere. Yes, that was amazing. The last thing I remember, is that I saw a friendly dinosaur..

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #253: Miranda Gloves

Wife and I are sitting next to each other on the patio of a restaurant, chilling out and enjoying the nice weather. I think that we’re near Disney World. Another couple enters the patio area and Wife asks them how they liked Disney World, but they look irritable and don’t respond. Wife gets annoyed at first, but then says something like, “Never mind, they’re having a problem right now.”

Wife gets up and walks through a nearby door, signalling that I should follow her. Now we’re in a carpeted area that looks sort of like our master bathroom. She locks eyes with me while explaining what this woman is going through. I feel this big swell of lovey-dovey and amorous feelings and think to “look for the dream”, becoming lucid as I do this. Wife continues talking, explaining that the woman is frustrated by her life and is eager to disappear into virtual reality. I get a vision of the woman wearing a pair of haptic gloves that Wife calls “Miranda Gloves”. There’s something terribly sad about her life, but she feels real hope at the idea of her escape into VR.



As the story concludes, I’m incredibly drawn to be physical with Wife. I say some silly line that I can’t remember (but I remember even then thinking it was really cheesy, ) and Wife looks unimpressed. I shut up for a bit, though, and now she’s interested too and we start making out. Things proceed quickly and we go to the floor for sexytime.

I'm leaving out most of the details because this got quite graphic, but one part in particular was very striking.

Spoiler for Explicit:

During orgasm, Wife grabs up handfuls of carpet and the carpet bunches into her hands like she's grabbing up bed sheets. It's just one of those dream details, but it's probably the sexiest thing I've ever seen in a lucid dream.

As we continue this, a woman dressed like a food vendor at a baseball game wanders by. The box of items she’s wearing contains haptic gloves instead of food! She notices what Wife and I are doing and looks interested, beginning to take off her box of gloves so she can join us. Wife waves her away, though, and she wanders off.



A window to the left catches my eye and Wife and I somehow flow from what we’re doing to standing beside it, dressed again. We’re looking over a city skyline set against a reddish sky. Wife is surrounded by a faint red halo, too, and she looks stunning. I place my arms around her waist and lean in to be as close to her as I can.

The building nearest to us towers above the rest. As I look at it, the other buildings fade into the red sky. This building has a large sign on top of it that reads: “Miranda Gloves”. After a moment of looking at this, I wake up.

Seems like cops and mercenaries have been recurring elements in my dreams, lately...

10/26/2014
"Maritime Mercenary Mayhem"

Spoiler for Short Version!:

Summary:
Long, hazy lucid dream having to do with cops-turned-mercenaries, hidden treasure, a massive battle on a waterside cliff, and then becoming lucid just before tearing a tank apart with my bare hands. Good times.

This was a crazy, long dream. I really don't remember all of the details, but will do my best. I was with my family, and we were having a small party. Sometime during the night, the neighbors ended up calling the police, and there was a huge ordeal about it. The cops turned out to be mercenaries (again), and we found out that the reason they were messing with us had less to do with our noise than it had to do with some hidden treasure, that they were after, thinking that we had something to do with its disappearance.

There was a lot of action, in this dream, and we were in constant skirmishes withe these mercs. I remember being out on the water, and the mercenaries had some sort of cliff-side fortress, on a peninsula, which we were trying to storm, conceivably to get a hold of whatever treasure it was that they were looking for. My allies and I died many, many times and I just kept re-spawning back in the same place, destined to repeat the scenario. (Likely a throwback to Edge of Tomorrow, but the fortress reminded me much of Alcatraz in The Rock.) It became less about us trying to get away from the mercs than it was about trying to beat them at their own game.

It was around this time that I realized I was dreaming. We were heading back to the fortress, on a small, military-style motorboat. My best friend T was now with us, even though I don't think he had been there the whole time. Now lucid, I was revved up and ready to face this mercenaries again, and I was expressing my excitement to T, talking about my lucidity and trying to get him to join in, once the fighting started again. I took a look at my hands and grounded myself into the dream, hoping to make it last as long as possible. Off to one side, an enormous mech suit or robot towered about waste-deep in this ocean. It looked to be Godzilla-sized and had a shiny, metallic-gray body with blades that stuck out to all sides. T commented on it, and I told him about how it just had been standing there, throughout the entire battle, immobile, and was nothing that we needed to worry about.

When we arrived to the small, waterside fortress, which had two tall towers rising above the jagged rocks on one side of the shore, it was all-out war, once again. At first, I stuck to using firearms, as I had done earlier in the dream. We pushed into the towers, making our way up through the levels, periodically ducking in and out of cover while mowing through enemy after enemy. Just as we had completely taken the upper-hand, I found out that one of the girls in my group, to whom I had been really close, was abducted from the fray, in a tank, and taken away from the tower, further into the mainland. From the top level of the tower, I could see the tank speeding away through the dirt, maybe 100 yards from the base.

I planted my feet, bent my knees and then launched myself into the air, flying straight through the roof of the tower (not sure if I broke through or phased through) and into a high arc over the rocky terrain before dropping me, feet first, directly onto the body of the tank. Through the front window slot, I could see the mercenaries scrambling to attempt to attack. Both the machine gun and cannon began whirring around in my direction, taking aim on me from point blank range. (This is surreal, now that I look back on it, because even though I was standing on the front of the tank, the cannon was, somehow, short enough to still be aimed at me.) I laughed at them and told them that 'this was my dream' and I was in control, standing my ground and egging the weapons to begin blasting away at me. When the firing began, I pushed my hands out in front of me, feeling the bullets bouncing harmlessly off of my palms, along with a couple of explosive shells which did no more than their smaller counterparts. I just kept all of my focus on pushing away, and it created a sufficient enough barrier that not a single shot was able to penetrate. When the shooting ceased, I reached one arm down below the barrel of the cannon, planting the other one on the deck. I then shoved the cannon upward, trying to bend it up and away from me. Instead, the barrel didn't bend, but rather the entire top portion of the tank ripped open like the lid of a wet cardboard box, exposing the two or three terrified mercenaries (and female hostage) within.

My memory gets really muddled, around here, and I don't remember much detail. I know the fighting went on, but my recall skipped ahead until sometime after the ordeal was over. T and his girl were pulling up in a car as if they were picking me up. I, still being lucid, walked toward the approaching car and phased through the front of it, turning around to sit in one of the back seats. We all got to talking, and they were being pretty 'hush-hush' about something that they had 'brought back' from our ordeal with the mercenaries. No sooner did they say this than a few ghosts of our earlier allies (who hadn't re-spawned back to life) poked their translucent heads through the back seat (having been stowed away in the trunk). They said they were smuggled off the battlefield and that there was some plan to bring them back to life. Though I was happy to see them, part of me figured that the mercenaries would find out about this, and would soon be chasing us down again.

That's all I can remember.

As I Transit , I became unable to move ,hearing a very loud sound , and feeling that the pressure changes.
Like a compression. So here I am , able to do nothing . In app. 10 seconds later this ends.
I'm in . I stand up , I'm in a bit different room , the lamps are a bit different, there are some unfamilliar thing..
There used to be an electronic clock on top of the TV which show the time in red colour . Now on the left side of the TV , there is another clock like that , difference is , this one was glowing in light blue instead of red.
It showed 15:00 minutes, I guessed that its all the time I have in this dream , but then I blinked for testing.
It changed, with the original clock. It was quite funny and fascinating , I played with it for a minute and then leaved the house.
I decided to walk to the neighbour , and kill them with a lightning ,for the fun.
But I was unable to cast the lightnings. Nevermind then
I continued walking and then I met with an old woman, with blonde hair and weird greenish-bluish eyes.
She looked a bit surreal , and now she wanted to hug me for no reason , and said something but I did not paid attention. So I threw her with an aikido technique , and then she charged to me and I threw her again, and again and again, In the end it looked like if we practice aikido , I'm the tori and shes the uke. lOl
Then remembered that I need a dream guide, I asked her in english if she is, . She said something again but I did not understand. I asked her if she can teach me something, She started to talk , but hell if I remember what she said.
In this second ,when shes talking, the dream fades away, I tried to relax and stabilize , but failed .

Another sludgy dream last night. The clarity is picking up a little, but not much. I'm sort of on a dry spell. I was driving with S to my college and I pulled over and made S get out because we were running low on gas.
I then drove about half a mile to a gas station, and pulled up. I was ready to pump the gas and realized that I had to go pee. I was also thinking that I should go back and get S where I left him, by the side of the road.
I went into the gas station and in the bathroom, for some reason, there was no toilet, just a large PVC pipe sticking out of the floor. The gas station was doing maintenance or something, and I figured It was where the toilet was supposed to attach, and that I could just do my business in it.
So I'm doing my thing and I realize that this situation is actually rather absurd, so I start reality checking. For some reason it takes two nose pinches and a host mental questions for me to properly become lucid. When I became lucid, I realized that if I was having dreams about peeing, that I might have to get up and go to the bathroom, otherwise I could wet the bed. So, I simply woke myself up.

Well I didn't have to go to the bathroom in WL. Kind of wasted a lucid there.

I was thinking about something on the drive to college. When I started lucid dreaming, three and a half years ago, my goal was nightly lucidity. I would sometimes say to myself that I wanted to 'become' a natural lucid dreamer. To be honest that is still my goal, and I getting closer. I have about one lucid dream a week now, and no shortage of close calls and partially lucid moments in-between. I'm really not that far off from my goal, but there is still work to be done.
Late October was a good time for me, and now I seem to be in a bit of a slump. Probably due to stress in WL. I was thinking about holding off on lucid dreaming a little bit this next week or so, letting the dry spell blow over and focusing more on issues in waking life. Because for me to be truly happy, both my waking life and my dream life have to exist harmoniously. So I might be a little less active in this next week or two. By no means will I stop posting, but I might only log on once a day to lay out a quick nonlucid DJ entry.
Back on the topic of my nightly lucidity goal. I was thinking about how all too often I forget that I shouldn't just be focused on the end result, but perhaps the journey along the way, too. This hasn't always been an easy mindset to have for lucid dreaming. To me, I always thought of 'completing one level before moving onto the next'. By that I mean, attaining nightly recall before I started practicing lucid techniques. Then, attaining nightly lucidity before practicing stabilization techniques. Then, I with a consistent means to lucid dream, I could learn stabilization and dream control with no shortage of windows to practice. But that isn't the way it's happened for me, or anybody else. I've been developing all of those skills little by little. So I'm going to try and change my mindset; lucid dreaming is an adventure to be had, in all of its stages.

1. I was inside of a tall tower on a gloomy world that I had never been to before in my dreams. The sky was a dark indigo and partly cloudy. I walked up to the top of this tower and went to the top balcony level where the tower opened up to the sky. Once I got up here I met two girls, one blonde, one brunette. The blonde was wearing a costume that somewhat resembled the one that Tinkerbell wears. It was a really short green dress that only reached to a little ways past her thighs. I sat down to the left of this blonde girl, she looked to be in her early 20's or even younger.
As I sat down I heard the two girls start too talk about past lucid dreamers. I became curious and joined in on the conversation. I asked what they did with past lucid dreamers that had been here before, and the blonde bluntly told me, "Oh they all just wanted to have sex with us, so we did." Immediately I became some sort of lucid, but I'm not sure if it was a fake lucid or authentic one. "If you did it with them, why not do it with me?" I asked. "Ok, why not" the blonde replied. She then scooted near me closer, but she moved towards me kind of slowly as though to create a type of sexy approach.
Finally she got right next to me, "You can get on top of me now, I don't mind" I said(lol sounds so weird, I know). With my help she then got on my lap. Holy crap, when she sat on my lap her dress didn't even reach past her thighs, its like it shortened. I ran my hands across her legs and thighs, it was time. I pulled it out and started banging the blonde. But that's not the important part, I discovered something else, something that would alter my lucid dreaming forever. After I finished having sex with the blonde girl I remember flying off somewhere.
After flying for some time I encountered another DC. I'm not sure whether it was a male or female, but whoever it was, they were extremely intelligent. I remember asking them, "How can I stay in Lucid Dreams as long as I want?". They replied to me, "Simply know that you never have to leave this place, that you control when you wake up." After this a chain of events occurred, but I don't remember them. I thought with that reasoning though, that I don't have to wake up until I want to, and it worked for the entire dream. The only thing that made me wake up after some time was the fact that I knew I had school and I didn't know if I would be able to hear my alarm, so I woke myself up. Other than that, I literally had no problem whatsoever staying in the dream .

In the end, I have no idea whether or not this was a real lucid dream, if felt pretty real, but at the same time, the way I achieved lucidity seemed a bit off. Plus, my recall of the beginning of the dream where I first gained lucidity was a bit fuzzy.

11-03-2014: It's been a while since I last posted here. Yes, I have had some strange dreams over the past three years, but either they went too fast or I haven't had the time or bad days have caught up to me...repeatedly.

However, the one last night was pretty memorable. I was able to also match the description of the dream character as well. She had brown hair and brown eyes, a petit build, wearing a beige bubble jacket, dark blue jeans with black high top Chucks (Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars, for those who don't get the popular term) with either aqua green or sky blue shoelaces.

She also looked around 14 or 15-17 years of age, and politely asked me and another character on a bus as she walked by, "Is anybody sitting here?" I didn't get to see what happened next, as I woke up around 6:30~40-ish. I believe she appeared in one other dream I had a couple of months ago, stemming from a strange YouTube video I saw detailing the uploader's views on reactions if YouTube user davemadson was terminated, and one of which had a screaming little girl that likely came from an episode of R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour that aired on Discovery Family (formerly The Hub). (On a sad note, he DID have to close down his channel on April 7, 2014 because of his busy personal life AND Microsoft discontinuing support for Windows XP that day--and I didn't even subscribe to him.)

However, it was likely the girl from last night's dream but with the same clothes clinging to me, holding on to my left arm like she's scared of somebody. And yes, she still had the same (either) medium or dark brown hair and brown eyes. Again, I didn't know what happened next like the dream last night, as I woke up early.

One of my life goals is to write a YA story, or young-adult novel. And as I'm writing this entry, I'm considering making her the main character. As I listen to a lot of music, I am also considering what kind of playlist she might have (personally, I would like it to be '90s mixed with today) as well. I am also in my 19th year writing (got my first computer/word processor in 1994, didn't start writing until 1995). In regards to the dream character, I haven't given her a name yet. I am also considering creating teenage boy characters where James Lafferty and Miko Hughes are inspirations/ideas (this is starting to become a trademark habit of mine) as well that serve as an interest to her. However, I'm not sure whether to base the story in California or North Carolina yet.

I have found out in recent years that writing a story that takes place in North Carolina is a lot harder than writing one that takes place in California. This has been going on since late-2003 when I took a creative writing class in my senior year of high school. And I also learned that writing a young-adult novel is a tall order and I've got my work cut out for me. So that means I'd better get going and not let life distractions get in the way of achieving said goal. Until next time...WM86

Date: 30 Oct

I woke up before my scheduled wbtb and had heavy insomnia. Used it as an unavoidable wbtb and concentrated on ld thoughts in the midst of all other unnecessary for this time of the night thoughts. I was super tired and my recall is rather bad.

As I am in bed, waiting for sleep, I get a few strong flash dream scenes that look promisingly engaging but those interrupt. I am very tired at this point to follow any transitions and just want to sleep.

A brief fragment where I emerge on a balcony fully entering the scene. There is an inviting flat roof nearby and I want to cross over, but it's far away. I lean forward and move in its direction and the distance shortens which enables me to do it. Memory about this happening a lot in nlds (yes). I also notice that I automatically continue walking on all fours, something which I recall also happens during nlds.

Memory gap.

A nld in some place that feels like ours. An uninvited guest makes an appearance and I wonder about that. Could it be a dream? It'd better be. I abandon the whole situation and spend some mostly unmemorable time walking around the place, just going from room to room, opening doors, etc. This helps me acquire a bit of clarity of mind and to hold the dream at the same time.

Bf is also here and after a while of room wandering, I stop and face his DC. I have a brief moment of conscious thought about doing anything with him. We start kissing but then I recall I really wanted to do the pumpkin task. The bathroom is right ahead and I go there picturing a pumpkin, which I see just below a chair or a crate of some sort. Initially it is a normal pumpkin, but then it turns into one made of paper. I rip open the top and peek to see what's inside - a number of halloween chocolate treats in different colors. I feel satisfied with the task, make a mental note and walk back to the other room. (Without trying any). Then I come back to make sure I got the details right, the treats are still there.

I think the dream must have ended soon after that, it seems I went into much deeper sleep that messed up my recall.

I'm at work and apparently I drove my car, which I now need to park somewhere and I'd rather like not to have to pay for parking, so I drive off south looking for somewhere I can park on the road. The road very rapidly starts feeling like an out of town road. I even consider parking in the entrance of a wheat field, but decide that I've driven too far from the office to walk back without being late for work, so I turn bank.

As I head back toward the office, I get lost and the roads don't look familiar, so I check on the satnav feature of my phone and realise where I went wrong. I'm on a road called the T3. I retrace my path again and end up coming through a whole bunch of narrow pedestrianised areas that eventually become inside. At some point, my car has become a motorbike.

At one point, my path seems to go over a very narrow footbridge - too narrow for me to go across without all the pedestrians getting out of my way. I consider going through the water underneath as it's very shallow, but am put off by a combination of the idea of driving a motorbike over what will probably be a very slippery surface, and the fact that the shallow water is teaming with tiny sharks!

I turn around and am briefly sidelined by some confusion about whether I'm supposed to be pedaling or not and when I pay attention to navigation again, I'm indoors in something like the mailbox in Birmingham (a mostly indoor collection of shops, restaurants, flats, hotels...) So I get off the bike and push it through. As I head down some stairs there's a scuffle going on between two blokes and one of them kicks out at me so I take his shoe off and throw it over the banister.

We argue a bit and I get bored of that and start looking for the way out. I end up in a cinema where the film is about to start but the adverts are still playing. I try to keep out of people's line of sight as I look for the exit.

I see that a section of wall looks like a screen but I realise somehow is actually a holographic protection covering an exit from the cinema. I step into it and as I do I realise it's just the entrance into the toilets but this is too cool not to investigate!

As I step through the screen, my view is replaced by a cartoon like facsimile of both myself and the scenery. I go down some stairs watching my cumbersome cartoonish feet on the steps and feeling how the view and the feeling are just fractionally out of synch because the cartoon view is drawn with slightly wobbly lines and not quite right angle corners. At the bottom of the stairs, I see a mirror in which I can see my cartoon self reflected. Apparently the system has decided to draw me like a rakishly thin Walter White, complete with the fedora like hat and sunglasses. I notice that I'm actually wearing a beanie hat and cardboard 3D glasses and am impressed that the system has identified what I'm wearing and created a cartoon replica that reflects that but not slavishly.

I notice in the mirror that there a chap behind me to the left who I think is part of the behind the scenes functioning of the illusion but somehow my 3D glasses let me see him vaguely. We chat a little bit about how cool the illusion is and he asks if I've looked at my hands yet, saying they usually have six fingers but they're still working on the rendering of that part. I look at my left hand and it looks like two images of a hand superimposed, both hands have long fingers, one with then curved to the left, one with then curved to the right. The overall impression is of far more fingers than I'm used to!

I switch to looking at my right hand. At first it looks fairly normal, though I notice I seem to have coloured felt tip pen markings. As I look a little harder, I realise that several of my fingers terminate with a further bifurcation into sub-fingers. I note that the sub fingers are made by duplicating my hand in miniature on the fingertips, though how complete the mini hand is varies from a couple of stubby blob like digits to a complete hand from the wrist up. I wiggle my fingers and delight in setting my teeny little subdigits doing their thing.

I decide to wash my hands and note that the pen markings come off very easily - perhaps they were illusory? The chap also washes his hands and while he goes off to the other side of the room to dry them I'm smugly satisfied that my magic glasses allow me to see there's a hand drier directly under the sink.

I head back up the stairs watching my goofy feet again, then turn a different way out of the cinema, ducking down to avoid blocking anyone's view again.

At this point, I have a micro awakening and managed to almost pull off a DEILD but wasn't quite lucid when I reentered the dream.

I'm in what looks like a dingy but dry basement or hidden storage area of an office building so I resume my mission to get to work on time having somehow sorted out the issue of parking. I realise that it's a long way up to the 25th floor where my office is but there's no lift in sight. I start on my way up a helix (*not* a spiral!) of platforms around the walls of the space. After about one storey of climbing, I come across some people working at desks spread out on the bare concrete floor. They give me disapproving looks as I climb over their desks and filling cabinets to get to to the next part of the building. As I climb off the top of a shelf full of boxes, I enter something much more like a house with large white gloss painted doors. Lots of corridors and small rooms give a general labyrinthine feel to the layout.

I come into a room that feels like a living area in somebody's home. There's a chap sitting at a table and a couple of figures I don't really look at but I take to be his children sitting around on the floor and sofas.

At this point, I GET LUCID! Though I have an of feeling that I more realised that I was already lucid (weird, huh?). I say to the guy at the table that if this is a dream then I should try to do my tasks, right? He looks a little confused but plays along. I remember that one of the TOTMs is to put shoes on and tie the laces. I ask the chap if I can borrow some shoes to do the task and he reaches around to get a shoebox from behind the table. Inside are an assortment of odd shoes from which I manage to pick out a pair of red baseball pumps. I fish out a black gym dap from inside the left shoe and put it on. I notice that the laces aren't looped into the eyes of the shoe properly and I don't fancy my chances of sorting that out in dreamland without cheating, but they are in place enough that I can try to tie a bow. I tie a bow in the left shoe laces with surprising ease and as I finish it off I realise that the laces are now correctly threaded through the eyes. Handy. I repeat the process (complete with removing another shoe from inside the one I'm trying to put on) and while I'm doing it, ask of the guy has any fortune cookies. He looks surprised again as if it's a huge coincidence that I want fortune cookies when he happens to have a bowl of them on the table! I explain that this is my deam so if I want fortune cookies, I get fortune cookies. He seems to be mostly satisfied with that but still looks a little unsure.

I shove a cookie in my mouth, it tastes and feels like a stale prawn cracker. I try to pull the paper slip out of the cookie while I bite it and after a few false starts manage to get a bit of paper but it doesn't have anything intelligible written on it. I take another cookie and more carefully bite it open to get to the fortune. This time the fortune is a tea stain coloured mah jiang tile with a Chinese symbol I don't recognise on it. Frustrated at my second attempt being thwarted by a lack of language skills, I decide that I *do* know Chinese and have another look at the symbol. I realise that it means "Fortune" and figure that's good enough! :-)

Next up, I want to try the toilet portal. I go through a couple of doors and find a large white porcelain appliance of a style in fitting with the late Victorian feel of the house. I pull the chain and jump into the bowl. Unfortunately, all that achieves is soggy feet. I try going in head first in a dive but chicken out because the porcelain feels intimidatingly solid!

I give up on the toilet bowl (I should have thought to shrink myself but hey) and scan around for something else to do. I remember that Sensei's competition back in July had a task to transform a DC and decide to give that a go. I go back to the room with the table guy and children and look at a skinny girl who looks about twelve. I tell her to raise her arms sideways and grow some more arms. That seems to work quite well, she now has six arms, though the four extra ones coming out of her armpits are a little small and underformed. Inspired by the slightly odd appearance of the new arms, I decide to see if I can make one of them form into something more impressive.

I will the fingers of one of the new arms to grow downward, which they obligingly do. The thumb of the hand also extends and becomes a head while the descending fingers become a body and legs. Eventually there are two girls looking like conjoined twins who share an arm. Shame I didn't manage that during the competition, eh?

...Later I drive to a combination of the back of a high school and the house of the brother and sister in law of M and J from 90 minutes north. While driving I got to a precarious point behind the football stadium where the road seemed to drop off to the left and the road was muddy. At some point I get to their house and they are allowing me to pick from a stack of golf balls that slowly disappeared...perhaps as I dug through them they sunk to the bottom of the container. One of them had like a snowman or a ghost figurine popped up out of the golf ball...useless as a golf ball. Another golf ball had a hole in it maybe where a ghost was pulled out of it. Later while looking for my car I run into the wife and we seem to have an attraction towards each other and I tell her she's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She is crying and consoling in me and she helps me look for my car so I can get going so that the husband doesn't catch us getting close and we see her daughter and I wonder if the daughter I will be suspicious of us. The daughter is sitting inside of a barn-like structure. I either awake or I have a false awakening where I think about how the fact that I was looking for my car should have come to mind as a dream sign. I am at some point back in this area that's outside the back of a High School and in a shed or barn I see a sign that says Santa Claus can be found 750 feet up from here.

I realize that I'm dreaming and start flying up there knowing that I am the one to decide how far up is correct...that there is no need to worry about a specific distance. The dream gets a little fuzzy but I find the door and knock on it. I guess it is Santa Claus that opens the door...everything is still fuzzy. He says something like you can have anything you want and knowing that I'm in a dream the only things that I can keep with me after the dream is over are good lucid dreaming memories so I ask him to take me to my favorite place, but to surprise me. Just before that I thought about asking for my favorite grassy sea beach but I instead opted for a surprise. We seem to be transporting somewhere and for some reason I decide to help it along by doing my eye clench thing whenever I am in between dreaming and awake and trying to go into a dream. I should have just briefly closed my eyes - if anything at all. Anyway I woke myself up and found myself back in bed. I think that I confirmed it with an RC and was definitely convinced that I was awake back in my bed. Kind of early for Christmas, but a little gift either way. 225 Good string of lucids in recent nights.

In this dream (DILD to OBE), my wife and I were walking through this old store that looked like something out of the 1800’s. At the back of the store was our bedroom. My plan, in this dream, was to go bed and try and to do a Wake Induced Lucid dream. Yes, I was dreaming about wanting to lucid dream. I opened the bedroom door and saw two beds. As I walked into my room, my wife suddenly turned into a child who hopped into one of the beds. I thought that’s a little odd. Next, I went to my bed to crawl in, and there was a baby girl in there, maybe 1 or 2 years old. This is also strange. I picked up the baby in the blanket and tried to look closely at who this was, but it was too dark in the room. I realized this was all too weird and I must be dreaming. I was lucid.

Suddenly, I’m back in my bed, lying face down. This made no sense to me either, because I went to bed lying on left side, I don’t change positions while I sleep, without waking up. I then felt a light vibration in my body, which started in my chest area, then spread out to my limbs. It lasted a few seconds and stopped. Then it came back full strength. I was vibrating violently in bed, and my ears were buzzing. I then remembered what I had read in the Forums about OBE’s, and I opened my dream eyes. Yes, I can see! I was lying on my stomach with my head turned to the right. I could see my right hand, raised up by my shoulder. My hand was vibrating violently! There was bright light shining everywhere. My blanket was hovering above me by a couple of inches, except it wasn’t my blanket. It was white, and had white tassel edging, whereas my blanket is blue/purple without tassels. The blanket was also vibrating violently, and the tassels were shaking so fast I could hardly make them out. There was wind blowing everywhere. I then remembered about trying to move my dream body, without moving my physical body. I couldn’t move, except I managed to move my right hand slightly. I then tried to roll out of my body, but woke up. I found myself lying on left side, with my blue/purple blanket, and everything was normal (besides my heart pounding from all the excitement).