side notes

Dream - Driving about (woke up at 3:00am)
I'm in my parents house, I think I somehow made the alarm go off and it's wailing loudly... I punch in the code to turn it off but nothing happens. Argh, I must have put the wrong code in. Everyone is waiting outside. Why is the alarm going off anyways?
I remember there being a Tuatara at some point...
Later on I'm in the car with my mom, she's driving and we turn into a house to pick some people up. The house looks simultaneously like my neighbours and our house combined. We're waiting for my dad and some other person to hurry up, they should already be ready by now. They must have forgotten we were heading out, there's no lights on in the house at all. It's already 9pm.. Geeze :/. We beep the horn loudly and my mum is impatient now, she's driving in circles in the driveway of the property. I look up at the window of my dads room (it's not his room anymore) and see that the light suddenly turns on. Finally, I think to myself that they now know we're here at least. I tell my mum that they've noticed us. We start talking and discuss her going back to university. She wants to study some ecology papers as she's found that she's interested in that field of study. I tell her that I can help her review her essays if she needs me to.

Dream experience: 5 (pretty vivid and the dream felt long. I remembered it pretty clearly and I didn't wake up feeling foggy, which usually leads to me forgetting my dreams).
Dream awareness: 1 (not enough to be aware that I was dreaming, but there was some definite conscious thinking involved)

I think my cat woke me up from this dream... She jumped on top of my face.
After I woke up I decided to get up for a while, so I spent 40 minutes researching random stuff and then reading a comic before heading back to sleep.

I also remember a really strange WILD last night where I seemed to naturally just slip into a dream consciously. But the whole thing felt delirious and uncontrollable, I had visuals at first but they disappeared. The interesting thing was that I was more involved with other sensations like touch and sound (the sound was more like a humming noise).

[Notes]:
- It seems that during the week my quality of dreams and recall drastically decrease, and that on weekends and holidays its the highest. Here's what has happened over the past couple nights:

[Fragment 11/29/15]:
I was looking at an alley, much like the BackAlleys map. Some girl in a daft punk mask turned and ran towards me from the end.

[Fragment 11/30/15]:
Don't bend it.

[Notes]:
- So the first half of this takes place in my normal sleep, and the second after having tried WBTB for the first time.
- I can't be sure of the order of events in the first half, but I can in the second.

[Dream begins]:
I'm on this course out in the woods in the mountains. We're all practicing archery drills. See picture below. You shoot at a target, run to the target, and shoot the next one in a square path. I eventually finish up with a few and I go and hang out at the chillout spot, which was an open flat area that jutted out of the mountain we were on, so we could see all the other mountains. I talked with some people here; possibly AW?
Attachment 8898

Note: Throughout the dream I had been getting closer and friendlier with this AW, initials for a person I know. Now, in the dream it was a slightly different version of her, but it was still her.

I'm waiting for the morning bus, and it seems to be running late. I head up the hill towards where it should come from, and a couple things fly by... I think one of them was a hang glider. Eventually the bus comes over and I go and hop on (the middle line lunch lady is driving).

So I'm talking with AW. It turns out we both have to get out of school for some reason (dentist's appointment?) and be on the interstate (actually 13). Eventually I get out of school and hit the road with someone. It's raining really hard as we go eastbound, and we take a look at the toll booths as we go by. They had windshield wipers on them that were flapping vigorously so the booth people could see what the driver was doing. Eventually we're on our way back and we see each other in the road.

Suddenly, I'm at this abandoned industrial building with the rest of school, and suddenly we're all told to move into the building by Darth Vader and the emperor. A ton of troops surround us and direct us into the building. As I'm going up with WC, I'm holding a blaster and take a look out the window, thinking they were going to shoot me. They didn't. I lose the rifle and keep going up. Eventually I meet with S (and AH?) and we talk for a bit. SH is slapping his mom on the butt and she's slapping him on the abs and vice versa, telling each other how nice their butts and abs are... then SH tells her that it's the nicest part of her and goes back into the building. She goes and talks with us, and says "I'm not perfect?"

[Wake up.]

Note: At this point, I woke up in a natural awakening at ~7:45AM. I figured I'd try doing some WBTB since I figured I might still be able to have a dream. I logged the previous dream, then decided to go back to sleep with lucid dreams and goals in mind. For probably fifteen minutes straight I kept on waking up from discovering I was in HI dreamlets. Hopefully I can figure out how to get past this. Eventually, I had the following dream.

[Dream begins]:
Dad and I were going somewhere. I get in the SUV. Sweetie jumps up on the (other) SUV and I tell her to get off, then dad comes over and tosses her off, but she lands on the Leaf. Dad gets in with me and we start to drive away. She follows us down. I look back, and she's waving to us! She trots down by the creek pines and lays down and keeps doing it. Then I realize that it was a peacock making it look like she was doing that. We drive up the hill and dad says "Yep, she's a good dog". Then I thought about peacock feathers for a little bit (and a bundle of them).

I found myself in a mansion. I walk around for a bit and I find J from MPC chillin' in a closet. His mom is in the living room. I look at him and say, "Hey man, what's up?" He doesn't register me, and just keeps looking off into the distance. His mom scolds him lightly for being so rude to a visitor, and he acknowledged me. He pulls out two DVD's: one is Star Wars and the other is Star Trek. He says "Hey, at the next MPC meet we're gonna watch these." I look at him and his mom questioningly, and say "Yeah.... I don't think so..."

[Wake up.]

[Notes]:
- Yeah, so this dream happened somewhere between 6:30 and 8:12 this morning. I've begun to notice that simply noticing a natural awakening and taking a moment to be conscious really leads to some great dreams afterwards. I guess this is a really great example of the power of WBTB, although it's very minor and there was no lucidity involved.
- After writing this down, I noticed that my recall was quite vague. I still remember WHAT HAPPENED in the dream, just not quite in what order or where.
- I've snipped some stuff out... just remember that when you're reading this, future self!

[Dream begins]:
I might have been on my computer, surfing. There was something about someone who looked an awful lot like Miranda from Mass Effect. I get an urge and go to the bathroom. S hits me up and asks me out to a movie at the mall; currently I'm distracted with other things, but eventually I get to it.

So I'm in the mall, walking around with S, who is holding a bouquet of flowers throughout the whole dream for some reason. We get to this darkly lit, red, low-polygon room maybe 30 feet tall which is at a strange angle to the rest of the mall, and I realized afterwards (and during the dream) that I'd been to this place before. Previously it was at the back of the mall in a dark corner, but it was an arcade in both cases I'm pretty sure. At some point I suddenly teleport to the bathroom where I finish up at this toilet that was actually a sink with a mirror... in the middle of the room. Someone gives me crap about it. Yeah, I don't know.

Meanwhile, S continues to hopelessly/desperately hold the bouquet of flowers and the relationship feels kinda awkward and tense throughout the dream.

[Dream ends...]

[Notes]:
- Although it was a bit spotty, this dream felt very epic. If only I became lucid!!
- My recall has been pretty great lately! I've been recalling a lot of old dreams as well as new, so that's probably helping.
- This dream was packed with that epic, euphoric feeling of adventure and exploration; haven't had that in a long time.

[Dream begins]:
I'm talking to Mr. Benjamin. He's in a buckled top hat for some reason, and his room is very Christmas-ey with decorations all over the place. I don't know why I'm taking to him, but whatever. We get off the subject of academics and he tells me about something I might be interested in, that I should do. He hands me a bag of coal (a kind of payment I guess) and tells me about magic, and about these people in town that I could join up with and help out.

I soon find myself wandering in the suburbs near the city center, and I'm with this group of people. Antonio is among them. He's wearing a scarf. So I'm with these people heading south (I think; you know how dreams are). There are quite a few dilapidated houses, and we decide to stop at one. The walls are practically falling apart, and there's an uneven dirt floor. A dividing wall blocks us from the kitchen to our right. t's full of these members of some other clan. We walk in and the tone changes immediately, like we're about to fight. We invite ourselves into their conversation (we might have been there to steal something) and blend in for a little while. Then things get heated and we're shooting magic at each other (i.e. blue bolts of light). I get out of the house from the kitchen pretty quickly and get to the corner on the opposite side of the street to regroup with my people. The other clan kinda shouts us out and we start walking northbound. Eventually, I find myself in some city center at a hot dog joint eating (I only remember this in first person at this point).

[Dream ends.]

[Notes]:
- Sadly, I couldn't really remember much of this dream once I woke up.

[Dream begins]:
I'm on this highway northeast of my house in a trashy white sedan from the 70's. Every quarter mile or so, there's a woman walking on the shoulder of the road. My dad makes some comment about wanting to get a girl, and when we get to the next one, I look her in the face. She had an interesting face... in my dream I described it as the most basic face, devoid of features. She was Asian. I talk to her for a little bit, and obviously she doesn't talk much but it wasn't really awkward. I go to a party at her place where 12 pack boxes of soda are stacked to the ceiling everywhere. I weave between a wall of Coke and a wall of some other soda. We pose for a picture next to a bunch of "tropical" beer packs.

[Dream ends...]

Day 1 of fixing my awful recall managed to get 3 dream snippets which I forced myself to try and remember (trying to get 3 per night). I slept in this morning to make sure I got another dream in the bag too. I couldn't help but go to sleep late last night (11:30ish) because my dad had been trying to set up his watch gadget thing with me.

Dream 1 - Courtyard
I remember vaguely walking around and talking to some people in the courtyard of a town (like something out of an RPG game) and it was a nice sunny day.

Dream 2 - Plane pilot
I was the pilot of a plane (a big plane) and I literally can't remember anything else

Dream 3 - Pillow fight
Me, a hot girl and another guy were in a house, I think we were in the lounge. I had a pillow and blanket, they had a pillow each and either a blanket or a small mattress. We were rolling around on the ground pillow fighting which was really fun. Me and the other guy both seemed to be flirting with the girl, I remember rolling and landing a good pillow strike at her and then whipping my blanket over her which was cool.

[Notes]:
- I was pretty exhausted the night before; I was surprised to have any dreams at all.
- I stupidly missed a dream sign (thunderstorms), although it was subtle.

[Dream begins]:
So I'm in my basement with my parents. We're preparing for a coming storm. We open up the Wundermap on my mom's iPad and take a look. For some reason my house was in Michigan, but there was a humongous storm coming for us. There was a little issue with the map where the storm appeared spotty and scattered, but we realized it was because it was in the gap between our weather station and the one in the town a couple miles straight west of us. Here's a picture of almost exactly what I saw on the iPad:


I noticed that there was this massive (~3 ft. tall) glass bottle (in the shape of a classic Coke bottle) full of "wine" (my brain told me it was Cognac), which really looked like tomato sauce with huge chunks of peppers and cabbage in it... It had this kind of film on top that acted as a cap, and when I just lightly touched it, it would make an incredibly loud banging noise, like a firecracker! I asked why it was there, and my parents told me that they got it as a wedding present and that they never opened it. I tapped the top a few more times, then opened it and went upstairs.

[The dream fragments...]

[Notes:
- Yeah, I dunno. I have nothing to say but the following:

[Dream begins]:
Driving with Ricky Remedy somewhere.

Hot sauce on the rear windshield going on the roundabout.

Something about loving someone more (fat version of LE; was in college) because their hot sauce was better.

Two girls gave me their hot sauce, and one of them was sriracha so I knew I would love the other one.

The frozen-air can that had a carbon chunk touching a metal plate on the bottom.

Shoot it into a pool of hot sauce and you get serpents.

Laughing at people swimming in the hot sauce and getting beat up by frozen-air-hot-sauce-serpents.

[The dream fragments...]

Dream interpreters... got any idea what this is about?

Recall still spotty, back still hurts. Even Eli couldn't digs up anything this time

[Notes]:
- Although the dream itself was stressful and sad, when I woke up I was immensely relieved after a few moments.
- First cohesive dream I've had in several days. All thanks to a good day and dream binging!

[Plot 1 begins]:
So I'm taking the SAT with a chemistry teacher. It's really informal, and we're talking about the questions when we got confused with them. I'm with a few other friends in the room (which seemed like a strange protrusion from H/A building). So we get to one of those questions and I decide I'll take a bathroom break. I get up and move into the empty hallways and I look over. There are these bunches of fire alarms grouped on the walls weirdly, and I notice that several of them have their plungers pulled (there were these strange toilet-plunger-like buttons that indicated if we were in a fire drill or not). Immediately I wondered if our sound wasn't working in this building.
So I take the chance (better safe than sorry, right?) and go and pull one all the way out and follow my SAT group to the outdoors. We end up in a place that's a strange mix of the school and my house's lower area. There, the teacher tells us that our SAT is cancelled now, and he shows us the scores we would have gotten through this cool UI. I learn that mine was better than my old one, but it wouldn't be counted because it was cancelled.
So we chill out outside and realize that they're going to do a witch hunt to try and find out who pulled the alarm, because there wasn't actually a fire.

[Plot 2 begins]:
I'm somewhere, and I've learned from my doctor that I only have less than 24 hours to live. There was something about driving through the forest... It's two thirty in the morning and I'm in my house. I'm wandering around trying to figure out what I should do. Should I send an email to all my contacts? Call J? Talk with my parents about my legacy? I scrambled around for a while trying to think.

[There's more to it, but it all fragmented...]

Dream 1 - Murloc hunting
I remember hunting murlocs (from WoW) with a dwarf who had a gun. He would shoot them and the whole dream kind of felt like a video game. I remember trying to kill a murloc before it reached me, it was running down these stairs and I was firing at it through these iron bars. It then rounded the corner and leaped at me and killed me (though it was like a video game death and I wasn't really connected to the feeling of dying).

Dream experience: 2 (video game)
Dream awareness: 1 (disconnected)

Dream 2 - Supermarket
I remember standing outside a supermarket which didn't resemble any I think I've seen in RL. There was a pedestrian crossing nearby and lots of cars going past. I was waiting for my friend Olly who had taken my backpack to the bag drop zone where you apparently leave your bags while you shop... Now that I think about it, this place kind of resembles the airport O_O. While waiting I looked around as I had heard the sound of a Morepork Owl hooting somewhere. I saw behind the window of the 4th floor in a nearby building an owl. It was just sitting there and I thought it may be stuck inside. I pointed it out to a couple people. My friend arrives back and I think we cross the crossing but I don't recall what happened after that.
Next thing I know is that I'm heading to the bag drop area and I need to go take a leak. I head to the men's room and I have bare feet, I have to avoid puddles of 'water' ... I was pretty aware at this point as I ended up focusing in on the details of the floor to avoid the watery areas reflecting light. I saw some stairs heading up and figured that there would be less water on the ground.

Dream experience: 4 (vivid, good hearing)
Dream awareness: 3 (average recall, body awareness, some detail)

Dream fragment
I remember reaching into a cookie jar that resembled the one my parents had when I was a little kid. The cookies in it were the same as the ones I had found in the kitchen cupboard yesterday except there were 2 types. 1 was exactly the same as the one in real life, the other was the same type but much larger and flatter. I vaguely remember eating a big cookie and it tasted nice .

Dream 3 - Raining
I was talking to someone else who had started no PMO, I think it was my friend Daniel. He had told me about how it had affected him and all that. I then confessed to him that I, too, had started no PMO. I said that I had been on it for 32 days, and showed him the Brainbuddy app I was using. I felt like his entire reaction to this was kind of off. Like he wasn't reacting the way he should have been. The scene seems to change.
I remember being in my bed in my parents house which exactly resembled the room I'm actually staying in. I was rolling around and fantasizing and trying to resist the urges of NoFap, until I realized that I was in this state. I immediately stopped myself and knew that I would need to bring myself to my senses and get out of my bed. I willed myself to sit up... I opened the curtains to my right and peered outside. The deck was right there (in reality the deck is a few metres to the left and doesn't reach my window), it was raining outside and my dad was sitting at a wooden table eating breakfast. It didn't occur to me that this was particularly weird. I opened a window and got his attention, we said good morning to each other. He said "it must be beautiful in there", referring to how warm and cosy my room was and how cold and wet it was outside. Even my windows had fogged up a bit from the heat and my room just felt warm.

Dream experience: 5 (vivid, interesting, odd behaviours of characters)
Dream awareness: 4 (vivid, good recall, good detail, attention to character behaviours)

Notes: I need to reflect on how I rate dream awareness and I think I may do it to the 5 'layer's of lucidity. Whereas with dream experience I think I'll just go by how much I enjoyed the dream on a personal scale. I managed to get my recall back a little bit, I think tomorrow night I'll be able to get the standard clarity back and from there I'll work on getting lucid again.

I was in the living room with the fam and I was facing the fam except my dad was also on my side of the room. they were all watching the TV so it was kind of weird that I was facing the same way as the TV was. Anyway as I was sitting there rosemary and rachel and someone else were laying down facing away from the tv but kept looking back at it by leaning their heads back and rolling the eyes, I thought about how it would make a good picture if I could set them up for one and then out in the park I saw a little girl in childs pose and I thought she was meditating before she popped up suddenly and had been taking a photograph of the cotton wood, I then saw that some of our cedar trees in the back yard had died and been given the same color and coating as the ones at Wilderness Ridge only they had spikes that made them look like cedars. at this point I was no longer asleep but in the realm between, I thought of how in my backyard I was going to grow cedar tree's like a forest and then have a huge group of cottons woods in the middle of the clearing with aspens in the first rind and then husker oaks in the second ring and then the coolest tree (prolly a weeping williow in the middle with a clear pond and cool rock formations and the encouraged growth of vines and moss.

Dream - Genghis Khan
I remember being on a grass hill with a large mountain outcropping in a steep cliff shooting upwards to my left. To my right there was another obstacle, likely another mountain. There was intense fighting going on with swords and stuff. I was far more powerful than the other warriors which were just grunts. I quickly disposed of a large handful of them, but one of them remained. He was Genghis Khan, a strong warrior who refused to give up and leave. He moves back down a slight slope towards a small wooden building about 20 meters away. Inside are two weapons, one is a kukri and I can't recall what the other one looked like. They were displayed as if they were treasures. He grabs the kukri and we fight I think.. He's still no match for me even though he was considered to have 'powered up'. I then said "Laters Genghis Khan, I'm going forever", but in the funniest voice. It sounded like something from a Disney cartoon which I intentionally put on for some reason, but it really made no sense.

I've had to put on hold the DEILD attempts until I can get my recall back up. Dealing with those alarms with the addition of having to move back to the North Island.. Seems like it has impacted my recall ^_^

Dream 1 - Lord of the Rings
I'm with a group of about 7 warriors on a grass plain with a hill that rises up behind us and a couple other hills in front that are lower down. We had been fighting Uruk Hai and had won so far. I then looked at a member in our group scanning the hill behind us with binoculars. I look up too sensing that he had seen something. I saw a single outline atop the hill with a sword in hand. I instantly knew we were about to be attacked again, as slowly more figures began to line the edge of the hill. There must be a hundred or so Uruk Hai about to attack! I run back a little panicked, they started charging down the slope to engage in combat. I turn to the face the other direction, only to see more Uruk Hai pouring over the hills in that direction. We're surrounded. The dream has a game-like feeling as I approach a horse, I try and mount it but I can't! I open up a skill screen and look at my riding skill, it's level 0! Damn, I need at least level 1 to mount a horse. I think to myself how you have to be selective in choosing your stats in Mount & Blade as investing a small amount in some skills early will help.

Dream fragment - pope
I remember something about a pope in a very grand looking white stone courtyard.

Note: I read Oreo's DJ last night (The Great Sphinx) and was really blown away. Such a cool dream. It affected my next dream a little ^_^

Dream 2 - I screwed up a lucid
I remember the house I was in was wooden with a white ceiling.. I somehow just remembered that I was dreaming and was like 'oh I should RC too'. I pulled the skin on my hand and it stretched out too far, bingo! I then kind of ran around happily thinking about what to do. The dream felt so stable and clear, I knew this dream would just last for ages and I felt like I could prolong it. I shouted 'Stabilize!' and the dream shook a little, losing clarity (oops) and then coming back into focus. I wasn't too bothered as I felt like the dream reaction was a positive one. I then wanted to travel to the desert and see the Sphinx like Oreo had done, so I decided to teleport. Hmm... How to do this? I ran outside, there was a small stream flowing and light green grass, it was night time. I willed myself to be transported to the desert, leaped into the air and fell backwards so that I would land on my back, then as I fell I closed my eyes and willed my body to be teleported. *Thud*. I collide on the ground, but it's warm and gritty. Sand?? I think to myself that it worked I try to open my eyes, but I can't. Oh ****... No, not again . I try and force my eyes open, and end up accidentally open my eyes in real life. My vision is all screwed up though and I see a skeletal-like head sitting next to my bed. Ugh what the hell? I can tell that I'm awake and having hallucinations, I try and reach up for it, but my real arm doesn't move and instead there's a pseudo arm that I feel reach out. I close my eyes again and I don't remember anything past that.

I completely forgot that lucid dream until during my meditation I managed to rebuild it really slowly and in poor detail. I honestly feel like that would have been my longest lucid ever had I not screwed up that teleportation