non-lucid

Just to get the point this dream wasnt lucid and I only remember one of my dreams last night.

It started out with me and my friend flying in this car through some video game. We finished a level and continued, before remembering that there was a green portal we needed to go through. So we turned around and headed over there. We got out of our flying car and she pushed me into the portal and didnt follow. I looked around, it was the same level we had just done but with a tint of green and it was turning. There were bad people following after me so I ran to this shadowed area and picked a few herbs and plants for food. I waited for a bit before running again to another place like this. Then I picked a few more plants and herbs until the people heard me. I ran and climbed into a car, hot wired it and drove. I had been driving for awhile and taken a lot of damage from the people chasing me. So I jumped out just before the car exploded and sprinted to a smaller car. I pulled the driver out and got in, and drove. Eventually the people sent a semi after me and I found a little bay area behind a restaurant. I pulled in there knowing that the semi would block the way for any other cars chasing me. I jumped out of the car and ran up a few stairs to a door. I pulled on it and panicked because it didnt open. I spotted another door and ran over to it, praying that the people wouldn't find a way into the enclosed area. The door opened and I ran in. I handed the people at the counter a cup and then ran outside into the street. The people were gone so I ran over and stole another car. I drove around for awhile not worrying until I ran over a person and the people started chasing me again. Then I woke up.

It was like a mix of Harvest Moon, Spyro, ToonTown and...Grand Theft Auto. I honestly have no idea how all of this happened.

Not even close to Lucid Dreaming last night. Oh well had some dreams slightly

So I was listening to music (so I would wakeup and try to LD) and once I woke up I wrote down the songs that were in my dream:
You're So Vain - Carly Simon
Shelter From the Storm - Bob Dylan
Mr. Bojangles - Bob Dylan
I Want You - Bob Dylan
There wer other songs between these songs that were played, but these were the only ones that made it to my dream (Seems to have a filter) anyways I have no idea what the dream was, just those songs... so that's too bad

Second I was in a large circle of chairs, lots of family and friends. I called my cousin something, and then my Aunt said I hope Riley didn't hear that, so I asked and he said 'Ninja' and we laughed. Later I was stealing peoples chairs then Shaun said I needed to calm down, and I thought he was confused, because my other cousin was building things that would break... or something... I remember checking the fridge, there were potatoes which were bad... and some chicken or something. That's all I really remember

DJ Log: November 6, 2010 – Morning, 3:15AM (USA Eastern)
Text color legend: · NON-DREAM · NOTES · DREAM · LUCID ·

I am walking through a housing development with my brother and another DC. The development is kind of run down and the houses are old and weathered. There are no trees and only small bushes in some of the yards. The grass has not been cut recently, and is very tall. We walk toward a vacant lot in the corner of the development. This lot has a lot of yard debris and other junk strewn throughout. There are old broken appliances and car parts all over the place. There is a large cement drain pipe sticking slightly out of the ground which has a huge underground cavern inside of it. I trip and fall over some of the junk, nearly tumbling down the steep hillside at the edge of the lot. There is a dead animal carcass under some loose brush that has no odor, but there are flies all over it. There is the sound of a distressed dog in the distance. My brother climbs down into the cavern, looking for the dog. After a moment of searching, a small white dog appears from the nearby bushes. The dog is whining and yelping a bit while staring at me. The dog's hair is stained a slight pink color and it's eyes are unusually large. My DC takes a step toward the dog and it took off running. This was the dream's exit.

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Good morning! This has been a sucky week when it comes to recall. I've been working full time and it's really affecting my sleep. I'm super tired when I come home, and wake up barely rested at all. Anyways that's why I longed for this weekend so badly. I decided to try out Calea last night, and will tonight again. It wasn't as amazing as I thought it would be, but I did have some cool dreams which were pretty clear and stable. I also seemed alot more "awake" in them than I usually am.

Bedtime: 11.45

06.00: Subway
I'm with Monica and we're just about to enter the subway. I check the monitors and I can see that our train is just minutes away from arriving. We go down the escalator and I call my friend Eric. "Hey dude, where are you? Our train is leaving in like two minutes" He tells me he bought some drinks instead of a train ticket and I just laugh at how stupid he is. I hang up and we arrive at the station. I meet my friend G there. We greet and he's unusually serious for some reason.

WBTB 45 minutes
Drank some Calea tea with lots of honey in it. It wasn't even bad tasting for some reason, I might have taken too little in there... Ate some porridge and also a Calea pill filled with the leaves. Then I went back to bed and actually had trouble falling asleep right away, I got really cold and tossed and turned for a while.

9.00: Gangsters in Jugoslavia
I'm holding some kind of plastic bag and I'm walking in a dangerous neighbourhood. I walk through some houses to a courtyard when I spot several people who look like gang members coming from the house. I figure I shouldn't trespass so I walk back quickly across the lawn I just came from. I try to look casual but one guy spots me. He walks up to me and starts talking in rough english with this high pitched, smoker's voice.

"Please, I don't want to die" I tell him, scared shitless. He laughs and puts his arm around my shoulder in a reassuring kinda way. "Don't worry, you will be taken care of" he tells me and smile. We walk up to a big white house and he enters before me. The layout of the building is really weird, and it looks like it's not finished at all. Electrical wires hanging down from the ceiling and the walls are all grey. The guy I was with aren't to be seen, but I decide to continue through the house. The rooms are on different levels with no stairs between them.

I jump down into a room several meters down. And climb up to another one. Suddenly I'm inside a room filled with high-tech stuff. A guy is sitting at a computer and we greet. His english is very good and he doesn't look like a gang member at all. He tells me he's from Jugoslavia and I reckon that's where I am atm. I take a look at what he's doing at the computer. He's talking to some kind of robot face standing next to the computer. "This is my robot, it has a very advanced AI" he tells me. "I gotta go for a while" he walks out the room.

I sit down at the computer and start talking to the robot. It's a male and his voice is amazingly realistic and human-like. I feel very clear in my head and I start asking questions about people and their behaviour. I draw conclusions and think of stuff which actually make sense now that I'm awake. Everytime the robot is about to answer he gives off a loud sigh. I ask him a very long question which he says nothing to. I can see I've accidentaly muted him. A girl walks in the room and we greet. It's the guy's sister and an alarm goes off next to me.

She turns it off and I check the time. 08.45. "Oh, I've been sleeping for 2 hours!" I say. This should have made me lucid but doesn't.

I wake up and I try to DEILD. I remember seeing alot of different images and I'm halfway there. I black out.

10.45: Fragments
*I'm driving a car and feels pretty reaistic. I change lanes all the time and people are going past me. I get kinda worried that I will crash since it's been some time since I last drove. Suddenly I realise I've taken the wrong exit and I have to turn the car around.

*I'm playing this awesome 2D game. The view is from above and I'm up against a really tough boss. He's chasing me around a small dome with pillars in it. He has a companion which is shooting at me and it's really hard but very fun at the same time. The map changes to some kind of miniature soldier war. I shoot down alot of other soldiers and I get a hold of a flamethrower and the effects are very cool. In the end I die with the boss having like 30% hp left.

Wake up: 10.45

Amount of sleep: 10 hours

Food before bed: 2 x Omega-3, 50 mg B6
WBTB: Calea tea, + 1 Calea leaf pill.

That's it! I'm going to try it out later tonight, and increase the dosage. Hopefully I will have amazing dreams mohah! I know I had more dreams, something about a farting cat, but I don't really remember.

Keep on dreaming, HARE BRA!

Me and my Brother were killing zombies FPS style!!!

Game/dream Style: It was like a video game and in the style of a free video game. We did a lot of running and shooting and actually were both killed a few times but when we got hit or bit we just fell to the ground and could no longer control ourselves and could move around in third person while the other person was left to fend for them self. We never even acted like it was real and when were up close to zombies we kept this sort of calm sense like nothing was wrong but occasionally we would freak out and shoot our guns inaccurately and waste our scarce ammunition in a state of panic.

First round:

Not easy to remember but it was mostly walking out in the open and melee weapons like 2x4 boards and baseball bats but not much ammo for our guns. We were overcome by zombies quickly and lost miserably but I do not remember how we died...

Second round:

Okay so I don't remember this round much but it was in a booth like from zombie land but it was similar to the turned over train in the train yard from Uncharted 2 when you are surrounded by Juggernauts. We died quickly and were torn apart.

Third round:

Okay so me and my brother fought zombies in a mansion that had rooms that looked like rooms from a hotel. We both were on a little platform that had ramps on the sides and walls on the back and front in the middle of a hotel lobby (it looked like a mansion on the outside but was a hotel on the inside. We fought back to back and walked out in the open looking for guns occasionally and the guns were all from Halo Reach (which isn't surprising because I played just about all day yesterday). After many zombies were killed and many shots were fired, we were barely making it through wave after wave and then a miracle happened. I found a Rocket Launcher with 4 shots. We used it to blow up the zombies on the staircase and make it upstairs to hold them off. We fought wave after wave in this hotel room at the top of the staircase and had plenty of ammo to last us a long time. There was a bucket of band-aids for ammo. The weird thing was that the ammo wasn't in clips, but band-aids... We just shove the band-aids into the side of the gun and it was reloaded. After a wave was barely won, we knew this could be the last wave. Then, a friend of ours, (who was a zombie) came in and said we were about to have a very rough wave coming and that they were not going to show any mercy when it started, they then showed us a helpful idea that said we could have one person on the room's balcony and one inside to lead the zombies to the balcony door so we could spread the zombies out so we had time to reload. But then my brother didn't reload at the right time and had zombies all over him. I had one zombie to fight and it happened to be our friend who had told us about the balcony. I saw that my brother was done for and that we had no chance of making it in that room. I made a break for it and ran out of the room and the dream went black and I could still hear the zombies and my brother yelling for help as I slowly woke up.

Odd how I don't have zombie nightmares anymore, just zombies and guns in action packed dreams.

fragment
In a restaurant, at dinner, with two friends and their two girlfriends. One of the girls is pregnant and smoking, which surprises me a little.

I can't remember well where the dream began but I remember going to a room. There was a vampire there that was my arch enemy or something like that. He is pale-faced, black- and short-haired and wears a tailcoat and a cape. We start battling. I grab him from the wrists and try to get him down. There is also someone with me, an incorporeal boy. I manage to get him down. I say: "If I were one of you, I would bite your neck". I start to leave but hesitate. "He's faking!" I cry to the boy. The vampire gets up and charges on me. I grab his hands again. I manage to scratch him. He gets even more enraged. I fear that he'll hurt me. I manage to drive him to a corner. The ghost boy goes behind him. I summon two more helpers, another ghost and an incorporeal dog. They attack him, turning him incorporeal. I make the ghosts attack him again. This time he summons ghosts of his own behind mine. His ghosts attack mine, melding themselves into mine. When my ghosts attack him for the second time, he turns back into corporeal. He attacks me again. I grab his arms again, but he drives me to the other end of the room. He forces my grip off, pushes me further from him and takes up golden braces. "He's trying to bind me!" I cry to to the boy."Help!". I try to steal the braces from him while he tries to get them on me. I manage to get a grip on the braces. I pull them from his grip. He backs up. I throw the braces away and attack the vampire. I force him to the other end of the room, where he was when I entered the room. I force him down. I know that he'd simply rise up again and again so I turn, jump and start flying about 30 centimetres from the floor. Theres the door through which I came. I fly straight towards it. Somehow I know I can go through it (even though I wasn't lucid, the dream was extremely near to being a LD). I fear a little bit that I'll just crash hard on the door, but I manage to go through it. It only opens slightly. Theres another door behind it. I go through it with no problems at all. I turn right and fly upstairs, ending to a room that is just above the room where I left the vampire. I fear that the vampire will find me so I wake myself up (at least I think I did).

Church Play

Non Lucid

Dreaming about running around this camp type area surrounding a huge church which had been in my dreams a few years ago. It's made of stones with mortar in between, big stain glass windows, nothing too fancy. Small parking lot surrounding immediate area, and further out, were open fields of short, green grass with sparse trees. Further still was a forest. I don't remember too many details but I was running around, maybe hiding from someone. I was mad, I was breaking things, and being destructive. Then people were attacking me, and I was fighting them off. They were organized. Maybe SWAT. Idk

My Girlfriend woke me up and talked to me for a few minutes, then she left and I went back to sleep.
-----
Part2
Lucid w00t!

I am back at the same church. I am about 4 feet away from the wall. Between me and the wall is a decorative section with bushes and small river stones. I pick up one of these stones and hurl it at the window. The window spiderwebs, and I move on. (Here is where I realize I'm lucid) I feel that I'm in Spartan Armor (I was playing alot of halo 3 the day before) I look up and see parked in one of the spaces is a WWII tank like the one in the picture above. The lower half is painted gunmetal gray, and the turret part is white with a blue lightning bolt on it. The turret adjusts and levels at me, and I realize it's about to blast me. I start running for it, and I'm running in slow motion. All the while I'm thinking 'Man this is so amazing! I'm actually controlling this!' I finally reach the tank, it still hasn't fired. I jump up on to the turret and the momentum of my run slides me across it to the hatch. With one hand I lift the hatch, and with the other I grab the driver by his shirt and lift him up. I then take hand which opened the hatch and with all my strength, I hammer him in the face with a mighty punch. I wake up.

This is my first Lucid since joining DV. Before now I had only had 2 lucids and they were both DILDs. It only lasted 45secs or so, but it was awesome. I'm not sure if this is a DILD, or a WILD. I believe I was lucid from the beginning, I just didn't realize it. Idk, if anyone can shed any light on it, I'd be grateful.

Also, this was the first time I've every been able to punch someone in a dream. I've tried many many times before, but it's always felt like I was punching under water. My arm and fist would move so slowly that it would barely have any momentum when it reached it's target.

Well before I went to sleep, I decided to try WILD. I try when my alarm wakes me at 6:00ish too, but that hasn't been working latley... Anyways, I almost made it, and I am sure I can do it. I was close 2 times, both times I gt weird sensations. First time, I drifted off (I think this always happens, but If I was aware before it happening, something will bring me back) What brought me back this time was my index and middle finger on my left hand (I was cross-armed) lifted up automatically, it felt like I was going to float away... and I would have I think, but I hesitated and stopped it.. boh. Second time what brought me back was falling. It just felt like my whole body was just falling, and I probably ould have ended up in a dream but alas, I accidentally stopped it again...

Anyways to the dreams now.

First was one where there was a a contest (seems everyone entered, everyone had to enter) and I won. I guess whoever won, would be a priest for a day. Now I had to get up at 2AM (to get ready to be a priest I guess) but I got up at 1AM to be early. There was a Giant clock in some town where I went. My brother was excited I was going to be a priest, he also had a hat (Which was apparently his regular hat) it was a white yamaka with a white cross sticking up on the top. He wanted me to wear the hat since I was going to be a priest. There was a parking lot at some point, but thats all I remember

Second dream. This I believe ad no visual, it was all audio. So it was the song California Dreamin' by the Mama's and Papa's. As far as I can tell, the song was exact to how it is in real life, and I was just thinking about it. So it was as if I turned the song on, and closed my eyes while I thought/listened. I also know that it was not being played in real life and affecting my dream, no alarms going off, and no music playing. So that was pretty cool.

Yeah, weird as hell being dreaming, but not asleep, or even paralyzed. In fact, I recognised I had slipped into dreaming, but when I did an RC, I did it in real life, waking me up! @_@ Odd.

Shortly after, I had what many would call an 'Out of body experience' and flew around my living room a bit. Having a rather nice throw back as "A small of two pieces" played as well. Lost consciousness after... Sinking into my carpet.

I was at a big green field, just running in it. It felt so great. So fresh. I felt my muscles working beneath me. I wasn't even getting tired a bit. "This is great, why don't I do this all the time?" I thought (if only running was that easy -.-).

---

I was with my mom somewhere, and we had to get home. We waited for a bus. As we got on the bus we took a transfer. It had blue on it. I think we got on the wrong bus or something; I remember watching closely where the bus was taking us.

---

I was in my house playing my guitar. LI and I think CH and some others were there. They were playing their cellos and violins and whatnot with me. We were supposed to be playing together or something. We were in my living room. We decided to move to the bed room to start playing. LI wanted to touch my guitar or something, but I didn't want her to and I was getting annoyed.

Scamming
Non-Lucid
I am on a beach in a small bay. Its fairly hot, and extremely sunny. Families with children are scattered about and teens are playing frisbee to my left. To my right is the ocean. Across the bay, there is another beach with more families, and at the top of the beach, there is a small building with large windows, though I can't see into them. Beside the building there is a parking lot with really nice cars.
Jump
A DC child approaches me, and I ask him what's in that building on the other side of the bay. He tells me the 'Scammers' are on the other side, and that I should go and check it out. I'm wary of these 'Scammers' but go to check it out anyway. I walk down the beach and into the water. There are several families swimming around, I avoid bumping into the playing children, and climb up onto the sand on the other side of they bay. I approach the building and go inside. There are double doors, exactly like one of the side entrances to my old highschool (Another reason to be cautious about this place ) I pass a front desk, which the attendant is either missing or is not paying attention because I am not stopped. I walk down the main hallway and see a large room full of well dressed college age kids listening to someone give some kind of lecture. I slide in the back of the room and sit down to listen for a bit. There are diagrams of robot vacuum cleaners drawn up on a chalkboard, beside the diagrams are paragraphs of information, stats, and features of the individual models. Some kid asks a question about the sensing unit on the vacuum they're talking about, and it had something to do with crystals. [Things get hazy here] There is something later about a pool cleaner robot that looks like a red dragon on wheels with a clear belly where debris is stored and bristles on it's mouth for cleaning corners. I get up and leave the class and begin walking around the halls. There is something going on about a stolen memory chip. I see the person who stole it running down the hall, and around the corner. Following closely behind is 2-3 security guards yelling for him to stop. Somehow he is killed or knocked unconscious, and I am alone in a supply closet or possibly an elevator with his body. I check his pockets and find the memory chip as well as a Walther P.99. I pocket the pistol, but keep the chip in my hand. I wander around looking for the exit, and find a restricted area. Of course I enter the restricted area. I walk down the now narrow corridors watching for security cameras, still holding the stolen chip in my hand, with the pistol now in the other. I come up to a secretary desk, and standing around it is older versions of the college humor staff (LOL) Pat, Amir, Sarah, and Jake are all talking, and greet me when I approach. I notice that Jake has long white hair, and is sitting in a wheelchair. I hear a woman shouting. They're looking for me and the chip again. A DC (A girl I used to work with, Brittany) runs up to me and tells me that I have to hand over the chip. I raise my pistol and put it to the chip. I've got a hostage now. The data on the chip is apparently worth quite a bit to them, so I figure this is a good way to get out. I start walking backwards towards the exit with the chip still held hostage, all the while Brittany is trying to get me to hand it over, walk away, etc. We get outside and stand in the parking lot. Brittany points to a car and offers to do something with it, (Maybe supe it up so I can escape with my life or something like that) if I just hand the chip over. She points to a car that sort of looks like mine, I figure she thinks it is mine, but I tell her that's not even my car. She thinks I'm trying to trick her, but it's really not my car. (It was pretty crappy) I wake up.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[I apologize in advance for how much of the page this entry takes up. It was my longest lucid dream to date, though, and I wanted to make the best record of it I could.]

I'm at my old high school, outside the entrance to my mom's old classroom. The open-air entrance on one side of the classroom and the semi-enclosed atrium on the other side are reversed from the sides they're on in real life. I'm listening to an old woman [Betty J.? Aunt Edie? I'm not sure] talk about life. I also remember reading some text about how in the old days, we just lived together with love and respect for one another as a matter of course, without any need for external forces like social programs to manipulate or engineer good feelings between people. [Yep. That sounds like my mind, all right.]

I'm playing PackRat. [Again. I am so sick of dreaming about PackRat, and I know perfectly well that the only way to stop dreaming about it is to stop playing it. That'll happen at the end of this year, I hope.] I discover that the reason an old collection cannot be completed is that they created all the cards, with artwork and everything, but never actually made them available to players.

I'm looking through a rack of envelopes of photo prints, organized by the subject of the photos.

I'm reading a novel on a shiny, black electronic reader. The last page of one chapter has a small illustration of a rolling, bouncing boulder on it [this illustration is from a particular PackRat card]. The electronic reader has small, rectangular “previous page” and “next page” buttons in the lower right corner. It also has readouts in the lower left corner of the screen that show remaining battery life and how many inches from your eyes the screen is. It says that a distance of at least 9 inches is recommended. I see my reflection in its surface and am surprised to discover that I'm wearing glasses. [I don't wear them in real life, but I might have to, someday.]

I go to say good night to my dad. He shows me that he's discovered a way to screw this cylindrical part onto his guitar so that it still has its protective plastic cover.

WBTB at 3:58 A.M. I stayed up for 10-15 minutes, taking notes on the dreams I recalled so far. Then I listened to the second half of my binaural beats file and continued doing affirmations, this time including remembering to stabilize my dream as one of them. I then spent about 45 minutes being kept awake by my coughing and sneezing, but eventually, I managed to get back to sleep. I think I even experienced sleep paralysis for the first time ever; I remember a moment when it felt like my body was vibrating or shaking really fast.

When I find myself in House #1, I immediately know I'm dreaming. [Since I was lucid from the very beginning and can remember a little bit of the sleep paralysis, I think I may have just performed a successful WILD, even though I didn't originally intend to.] This time, I succeed in remembering to stop and take in the scene before doing anything else, in order to stabilize the dream. Once again, I gaze around in awe of the fact that my mind can create such a detailed and realistic environment. Everything looks real, even though I know it's not. I walk around the house a bit, and when I get to the sinks in the bathroom and kitchen, I look at the faucets and quietly expect them to turn on, and they do, without my touching them. [I think that's pretty cool.]

I go out into the study, which looks pretty much just as it did in reality, except that the space inside it is entirely filled with spiderwebs. I turn back and go back into the house, with spiderwebs sticking all over me. When I come back in, I accidentally let a spider into the house, too. It has a big, nearly spherical body with stripes in two different shades of gray. I squash it while it's walking along the wall in the master bedroom. Then I discover another, even bigger, red spider/crab thing on the carpet, and squash that one, too, saying something about how sorry I am for making a stain on the carpet. [The carpet I squashed the spider into was light brown and semi-shaggy. House #1 never had carpet like that; that's the kind of carpet we have in House #3. I didn't notice this until after I woke up, at which point I found it highly amusing that the details of the carpet had been off in one of my dreams and I hadn't noticed. ]

My mom is there in the house. [I don't really remember the specifics of this part, but] I lie down on the bed in the master bedroom and get under the covers so that my parents won't see that I'm quivering and shaking in the throes of SP. [I don't even know.]

I decide I want to leave the house and go explore other parts of this dream world, but I feel obliged to take leave of my parents first and tell them where I'm going, but I want to keep it a secret from them that I'm dreaming. I say to myself, “If I told them I was going to school, would they believe me? Given the setting, they might.” As I say this, what I have in mind is that I'm going to pretend to be setting out on foot for my junior high school. [Funny; that was the only school I ever took the school bus to. I did walk from my house to the bus stop, though.]

I walk through the side yard toward the front gate. I find my parents in the corner of the yard, where the wall with said gate in it meets the wall of the neighbors' house, doing some kind of yard work. I say, “I'm going to school. Bye, Mom!”

“Bye, (Emiko)!” says my mom, and it sounds exactly the same as it always does when my real mom says it. [Obviously, an unaltered memory.] “Have a good day!”

“You, too!” I say, or something like it. I walk out through the front gate and down toward the street. The neighborhood seems more spacious and spread-out than it is in reality. Now that no one is looking, I begin flying, taking off from the middle of the street and traveling parallel to it and upward from it at an angle, like an airplane taking off.

As I fly higher into the air, the dream and my dream consciousness start to fade away. Now, having read the DEILD tutorial, I had some idea of what to do. I lay absolutely still in my bed and concentrated intently on the dream I had just been having, willing myself to start dreaming again. It worked. [First successful DEILD, too! I was really on a roll last night!]

I end up in a group of interconnected, upstairs rooms in a building somewhere. I seem to have flown there. The rooms are white, and there are chairs, upholstered stools, and bookshelves in them. From reading a plaque on a wall near a doorway, I learn that these rooms are reading rooms dedicated to a strange alternate take on Christianity, centered around an alternate set of gospels written by different people. [I didn't recognize it as any sect that exists in real life.] One of the rooms has an analog clock on the wall. It doesn't have numbers, just a circle and two hands, all made of the same rough, gray metal. Even though I already know I'm dreaming, I deliberately look at the clock, glance away, and then look at it again to see if the hands have jumped. The first time I try this, they seem to be in pretty much the same position they were in, so I try again. The second time, they've jumped to a totally different position. I am pleased with myself; again, I was expecting that to happen, so it did.

I leave these rooms and start walking down a flight of stairs. The dream starts to fade again, but again, I manage to stay in it through sheer willpower.

The stairs end in a wide hallway. There is a set of double doors to the right, leading into a room. Judging by the decorations and items outside these doors and inside the room, it looks like there's a wedding going on. Am I the bride? I wonder, but when I enter the large, rectangular room and see the retail-style displays of clothing and stuff, I think, Oh, good. Just a fair, then. I see a real-life friend [I forget who] to my right, who says to me, “Cute dress, (Emiko)!”

“Thank you!” I answer, even though I think this is an odd thing to say, because all I'm wearing is a damp, clammy black blanket wrapped around me. It feels like it's made of swimsuit material. I continue further into the room, turning to my left and walking that way. I look down and to the left, between two racks of clothing, and see another real-life friend, Eleanor B. She's wearing a royal-blue bridesmaid dress [the one she was wearing the last time I saw her in real life, which was at the wedding of some mutual friends]. I call her name twice to get her attention. She looks up, sees me, and stands up to talk to me. I come over and talk to her. When I take a closer look at the clothes hanging on the rack we're standing next to, I say something like, “And are these the new Christmas sweatshirts from Target? Cute! I want!” The sweatshirts are white and have patterns on them of snowflakes made up of narrow lines, either in shades of pink or shades of teal. They also have hems and seams in those colors. I take one pink one and one teal one off the rack and carry them with me. They feel soft.

I leave that room and find myself outside. In the distance, I can see big mountains with snow on top of them. I continue exploring and somehow [I don't remember the exact route I took] make it into an old Japanese temple (or residence, or something). It has a very old, very traditional room with tatami mats on the floor. I pry off each of my sneakers in turn, using the toe of the other foot (suddenly, I'm wearing sneakers, I think). [Yes, I actually thought that while in the dream. Now that I think of it, I think I was suddenly wearing regular clothes, too.] Leaving my sneakers (the exact same ones I have in real life, I note) out in the passageways, I enter the room with the tatami mats and walk around in it. I can feel the mats and my socks under my feet. I say aloud to myself, “Wait – we're allowed to walk around in here? Oh – of course we are; that's what I was expecting.” Yet again, something is so because I expected it to be so. [In all my real-life experience visiting historical tourist sites in Japan, we were never allowed to actually enter the rooms with the tatami; we were only allowed to look into them from the outside. I always wanted to walk around inside them, though, so now, in a dream, I got my wish. Cool.]

Outside of this room are some passageways that are all painted a dusty shade of teal, and have wooden signs hanging in them. I walk around in here for a few minutes. One of the signs says “Telephone,” and indeed, there is a pay telephone on the wall in a wooden box. It looks like an old tourist facility.

One of the doorways within these passageways leads into a spacious, modern restaurant that I recognize as the one inside the onsen [hot spring] that I visited while I was living in Japan. There are a few people sitting at tables here and there. I walk through the restaurant, looking for one of my real-life friends [I don't remember which one now]. I don't find her there, so I decide to head for the restaurant's exit and go somewhere else.

The way to the exit is through a long passageway with a wall on the right side and an upholstered bench on the left side where guests can sit and wait for tables, which separates the passageway from the rest of the restaurant. There are two people sitting on the bench. As I approach the door, I think, What shall I do next? Task of the Month – cell phone – oh, yeah! For a split second I think of getting out my cell phone to text somebody, but then I remember the new Task of the Month for November. I turn to one of the two DCs sitting on the bench, the one sitting nearest the door, who happens to be a black, pregnant woman. “Hey, can I tell you what I'm thankful for?” I say to her.

“Okay.” She straightens, sitting forward on the edge of the bench, listening to me.

“I'm thankful for my family, and [something else I can't remember now], and my computer, and for being able to come here!” I say. [Meaning, to the dream world.] Unfortunately, the dream starts to fade again just as I'm finishing my sentence.

FA in which, instead of being me, I'm Cobb. Mal is there when I wake up, the real one. [They're characters from Inception.] We talk about something, probably the dream I just had. [I don't remember now exactly what it was we talked about, but dude. That was a really weird FA.]

FA in which I count my fingers while they're spread out against the legs of my jeans. When I find I have a sixth finger on my left hand, my reaction is, “Oh, damn. Gosh-darn it!” Apparently, I really want to actually be awake. But I'm still feeling sleepy, so I lie down, sprawling over the sides of the white, wooden bench I'm sitting on.

When I woke up for real, I just lay there for several minutes because my body still felt heavy. I recalled my dream and was pretty impressed.

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Side notes:

That was the longest lucid dream I've ever had. I'm also very impressed and pleased with the number of times I succeeded in controlling what happened just by expecting something to happen. I really got the hang of that skill last night. Finally, I'm amazed that I managed to stay lucid for that long, and to force myself to keep dreaming so many times when the dream threatened to end. Wow!

Walking around in some mansion, saw appealing and indulgent person. Later I had to climb through a whole bunch of things before coming upon her again, when she indicated another of her roommates would oblige.

2 nights ago, we were in speed boat fleeing with remains of "bad guy" we had to take care of, after he broke into our house. We wer running from the bad guy yacht in some kind of harbor. I noted shortly before the breaking that the neighbor ha been fixing their screen door (something I need to do after the wind storm) and I felt relieved that it was gettingtKen care of