Glieuaeiel's DJ

Snap (LUCID)

[Finally! Woop woop! Only, I'm pretty uncertain on the chronology for some parts. You'll see.]

While at a traveling carnival, I run into my sister with a group of her friends. They're discussing what they should go do next, since recently a bunch of extra people joined their group and now there are maybe too many people for them to travel together. As a joke, I walk up and join, pretending I don't know that I'm exacerbating the problem. Suddenly, I notice that there's a younger girl in the group who keeps shouting for everyone to shut up. She must think that if everyone quiets down, then the discussion will go more smoothly. From the perspective of the wisdom of years, I realize that she's not going about this the right way. I walk up to her and encourage her to quiet down and be more mature. She stares at me as if suddenly realizing how annoying her behavior was, and then she sincerely thanks me for my intervention. To the group, I point out that we can just split into two groups and meet up again later.

Later, I ride a roller coaster. All you do to get on board is to grab a horizontal bar that's connected to the track above you. It's a very scary ride, because the only things preventing you from falling to great injury or death are your grip strength and your arm strength. As the coaster starts moving, I start to fear for my life. I try to secure my grip by looping an elbow over the bar, but it's difficult to adjust your grip safely while the ride is in motion. The coaster rounds a corner and heads down a downward slope, gathering speed. I see that at the bottom, the track turns sharply to the left. "Oh no," I moan, praying that I can withstand the G forces. Somehow I do, and shortly afterward, the ground rises beneath me and the coaster slows so that I can get off.

Of course, doing so is almost as hard as getting off of a ski lift, so in the process, I drop my notebook and pencil. I try to go back to grab them, but I almost get hit by the next car. I'm forced to dive to the side and seize another car going up the hill. Then I realize that I've switched tracks, and I'm about to go all the way around the ride again. First, I'm confused as to why they would design the ride to make this possible. Second, I'm worried that they'll be mad at me for going around the ride again without paying a second time. Third, I realize that the much more pressing concern is that now the ride has a second chance to kill me.

At some point later, I'm discussing lucid dreaming with someone, and I decide to do a reality check by plugging my nose and breathing in. To my delight, it works! Next thing I know, I'm standing in my childhood bedroom. [Maybe I had a false awakening?] I do the same RC again, and it works again. But I'm not totally convinced, so I do it one more time, making sure that I've totally plugged my nose and there's no way that air should be able to get through. It still works.

Awesome! Time to get to work. I remember that I have dream goals, but, nevertheless, the first thing that occurs to me is that I should look for a naked woman. I'm alone in my room, but maybe I can conjure one into my closet (which is currently closed). I decide that the first thing to do is to turn on the lights in there. I'll be able to see if I've succeeded by looking at the gap beneath the door. There's a faint light coming from it right now, so I snap my fingers to try and turn it on all the way. It flickers a bit, then goes out completely. Lol. Maybe I should try to work on some dream control, first.

I'm glad that this dream seems to be easy to maintain. I figure that's probably because it takes place in a very familiar location; namely, my own house.

At some point, I decide to dive through a big glass window on the second story. As I'm banging it with my arm, testing its strength, it occurs to me that this would be very dangerous in the case that I actually am awake. I do another RC, just to be safe.

At another point, I open my closet door to discover that my parents have been storing a lot of creepy presents in there. I mean, all I can see are boxes and bags, but it still creeps me out.

At another point, I decide that I might as well actually do one of my dream goals: "feel my heartbeat." I press two fingers of my right hand against the artery in the side of my neck. Surprisingly, my pulse is very strong and rather rapid. It even seems to be accelerating slightly. I guess that fits, since I feel like I'm high on adrenaline.

At another point, I'm in the downstairs hallway when my mom calls everyone to dinner. Obviously, I'd rather keep working on dream control than go sit down with them. I know my dad's probably going to try to find me and insist that I come. But I also hope that since I'm dreaming, I can just sort of will him not to pay attention to me. I see him come out of a door at the end of the hallway and start walking towards me--and I'm very relieved when he walks by without even looking in my direction.

At another point, I'm practicing dream control in living room. The idea is this: every time I snap, I want it to be followed a moment later by a sharp crack and a small flare of light located wherever it is that I've directed my attention. It's like using those little firecrackers that you're supposed to throw against the ground. Anyway, the first time I try, I fail. I'm disappointed and worried that I'll never be able to do it. But I remind myself that all of this is imaginary: it's happening in my own mind, so I should have complete control over it. I try again. It works! I repeat it a few times, and then I notice that sometimes the little flash of light can affect its nearby surroundings, a little bit. I try to do this on purpose by directing my attention at a button which is hanging loose from the side of a cushion. When I snap, the flash of light breaks the thread, and the button rolls across the floor. Neat!

While I'm practicing, I notice that our dog is behaving strangely. She jumps up on a couch, then climbs some other furniture in order to jump onto a light that hangs by a chain from the ceiling. She climbs up the chain and touches her nose to the ceiling. A dog's paws should never have been able to achieve that, but I figure that since this is a dream, she may as well be able to do anything she wants to do.

Later, I consider stopping to review what I've done so far, to solidify it in my memory for easier dream recall. But, nah. Much more fun to keep trying to do new stuff.

I decide that the next thing to try would be snapping my fingers and having a little flame appear above them. I go into the family room, where I find a convenient bunch of lit candles. I sit in the couch. My hand has become wrapped in protective oily cloth, and I light a couple of fingers by sticking them into a candle flame. I contemplate this for a bit, then blow them out. Except I don't quite succeed, and the fire flares up again. I blow harder, and this time it goes out completely. I feel silly for working that hard to accomplish something so simple. For instance, there is a friendly dog in the room who would gladly put out the fire for me if I were to stick my hand in its mouth. I guess the saliva just put me off.

A few moments later, I realize that I haven't thought about anything for a few moments, and everything's gone black. I try to shout "Clarity!" but there's nothing to clarify. I open my eyes upon my new bedroom, then do an RC to make sure I'm awake. When I check the time, I'm surprised to find I've only been asleep for a couple of hours.

Evil Statue

The ceremony to release a powerful evil spirit on the world is scheduled to begin in a few hours. It'll take place at a museum. Unfortunately, the statue of the evil spirit has long been missing from the building, so we have no idea what exactly we'll be facing. Now, usually I would procrastinate, which is to say I would start setting up to face the spirit only a couple of minutes before its scheduled release. But this time, I call together the team and try to get us started with a few hours to spare. We hide out in the parking lot under an overturned rowboat. Every so often, an evil black dog comes along to snap at us through the gaps in the side, and we have to stab it to death. Those jaws look very dangerous, and I'm not really confident in my abilities. Especially when half the team is out scouting and I have to face the dogs with only about one other person.

Scare Game

Evil creatures are loose on the world. I'm headed to the basement, but I'm worried they might be waiting for me down there. There are rules about when and where they can attack you, but I don't remember them exactly. Mom happens to be in the living room with me, so I ask her. She says yes, they're allowed to attack at this time. I also check a rules handbook, and it says there are actually no limitations on when you can be attacked. Huh. It must have been that they don't like sunlight, so you're usually safe during the day. Anyway, I decide to go to the basement. I'll just be very careful.

When I'm about two steps into the room down there, a hand comes flying around a corner to try and grab me. I intercept it with my own arm and wrestle with it for a bit until my dad gives up and comes around the corner, laughing. He'd been trying to scare me, because in this game you get points for that.

Roommates

I'm back at school, hanging out with my new roommates. First, we eat in the dining hall. I run into some awkwardness where I want to grab some food from a station, but there are other people trying to get around me, so I have to stand off to the side and wait.

Later, we go back to the room. There will be five of us living here, so we all try getting into the bed to see if we will fit. We won't all fit if we lie side by side, so I try putting my pillow on one end of the bed, while the four others decide to put theirs on the other. Hmmm. It's a bit awkward with our feet getting tangled in the middle, and also I think it's weird that I'm the only one on this side. I try to explain it jokingly, saying that I'm lonely over here. Someone suggests that my roommates from previous years switch sides, and I find myself hoping that my old roommate will refuse: I'm already worried that he thinks I'm attracted to him.

Later, I wander out into the halls for a while, then try to find my way back. I don't remember the room number, so I try a door at random. There are girls in this room, but also one of my roommates, so I'm not sure whether it's my room or not. I'm embarrassed to ask, too. Eventually my roommate comes to my rescue, telling me it's the next door over. As I go over to that door, I look around at the peeling paint and splintering wood in the building, and I realize that our house kind of got the raw end of the deal when we were moved over to this building.

Videobomb

Spoiler for Videobomb:

A woman tearfully tells us of a movement to capture videos of creatures with various numbers of legs. Probably she cares about it so much because it has to do with being friends with animals, or something. She tells us that there are still NO submissions about animals with seven legs, nor any for animals with eight legs. And there are barely any for six legs, either. She shows us the single submission they have for a six-legged animal. Bemused, my dad and I watch it.

A girl walks into a room with a couch. For a moment it looks like there are two other girls making out nearby, but the video quality isn't very good. "I wonder what that was about," I say. My dad grunts noncommittally. The girl is now setting up a camera aimed at a jar containing an unusual insect. It has a large, angular, black shell, about the size of a walnut. The plan is to remove the jar and try to get a good picture of the insect before it runs away. But when she takes of the jar, the insect scurries more rapidly than anticipated, and the picture she snaps isn't very clear. Her sister comes in to help her chase down the insect to get another picture. The video ends.

Then Dad and I click on a related video, where the girl explains some of the background to what she was doing. But it turns out she just says, "This is what my friend decided to wear to the video shoot," and then pans over to look at a couple of girls making out on the floor. One of them's only wearing the bottom half of her underwear. After a moment, the other girl comes all the way into the shot, and I realize she's not wearing anything at all. Perhaps it's sexy; I don't know, because I'm mortified to be seeing this at the same time as my Dad. I can't quite figure out what he thinks of it.

Gym Activities

[Warning: This dream makes no sense. Lol. I think I was half awake for most of it.]

A muscular announcer has just adopted a new stage name. He's discussing it with another announcer. They're throwing back and forth ideas for other, more awesome stage names that he could have chosen. One suggests "VenusMercury." The man admits he likes that one a lot, but he couldn't choose it because of trouble in some Chinese provinces named "Venus" and "Mercury." A map appears, showing that these provinces are at the western extreme of China. Then the video cuts to a field correspondent, hiking through the mountains in that area. She talks to the camera as she descends into a very, very deep crevasse in the earth. It's so deep that I suspect the video must be fake. Anyway, they reach the bottom, where there are two very long "flat escalators" (People Movers?) running parallel to each other in opposite directions. So you can ride them around in circles. They start doing an activity where the correspondent puts tape on the floor and the other person has to pick it up. Soon other people are playing the game, including myself. There are so many lines everywhere that it's ridiculous to imagine we'll get rid of them all. And you can't just erase them, because they're all outlined in black and you're supposed to leave the outline in place.

After a time, I try picking up another line, but the gym teacher cuffs me on the shoulder. Apparently class is over, and the basketball team needs those lines on the floor for their practice. I stop. I just watch as the team comes in and starts practicing. I contemplate practicing archery. It would be cool to be able to shoot an arrow while doing a cartwheel. There are a bunch of little kids in the room, and sometimes they get in the way of the basketball players.

I try to leave, but through the door there's just another gym. I'm not sure whether to try another door in the current gym or try another door in this new gym. I'm lost. I ask someone where the principal is, since chances are he'll be in his office, and if I walk in the opposite direction of the principal's office then I'll probably make it outside. The person points at a wall, and a green light appears. I know that the light is floating over the head of the principal. So I walk to a door on the opposite side of the gym. Now, I don't like the basketball players, so before I go, I make a bunch of bugs appear on the wall. Ten spiders, fifteen flies (to feed the spiders), and twenty bitemes. Hah! That should keep them busy. It'll probably also make the principal mad at me, but I'll be gone long before he gets here.

The door leads to the back yard of the school. There's a playground nearby, but no one's around. It's a dark, overcast day, and it's drizzling. I walk along the side of the building towards the front.

Counter-Bullying

I'm sitting at a desk in a high-school classroom. The teacher is an athletic-looking male, and it's a math class. But I'm not paying attention to that, because I feel something hurting me from behind. Some dumb kid thinks it would be fun to bully me, eh? I half turn in my seat, then casually and carefully bite the finger that's hurting me. I only catch a tiny bit of skin in the bite, but I think it's enough.

"Thank you, for not doing that again," I say. No reply.

A few minutes later, I feel a prick of pain in one of my shoulders that won't go away. Apparently I didn't scare them off last time. I have no idea how they're causing this particular sensation of pain, but I try to get rid of it by rubbing my shoulder against the seat behind me. It stops. After a second, I decide it's time for a confrontation. I turn all the way around and grab the kid behind me by the front of his clothes. He looks to be about fourteen or fifteen, with his hair cut long, a bit like Justin Bieber. He had been laughing quietly to himself, but he's not any more.

"What's your name, kid?" I ask. He just keeps looking around, shifting his eyes and not making eye contact. He doesn't look particularly scared. I'm trying to give him an angry, threatening look, and I'm surprised at how successful I seem to be. It's not a look I've had much experience with.

I look around to see if he had an accomplice. The guy sitting to the kid's right seems to be laughing to himself as well, so I ask him, "How about you, huh? What's your name?" He too stops laughing, but he doesn't answer, either. I notice that both kids have the same basic haircut, and also the same hair color: light blond dyed a faint purple. Anyway, since neither of them are responding, I suppose I should start thinking about how to deliver the rest of my speech.

I get up to walk a few feet away, conscious that other people in the room are probably about to start noticing the confrontation. When I turn around, I'm surprised to find things have escalated: an ally of mine's found a friend of his, and they've ganged up on one of the boys who was bullying me. One of them is pinning the boy's arms behind his back, and the other is winding up to punch him. I suppose they figure they'll get him to talk by torturing him. But that's no good, so I run back and shove them apart with my hands. Now the teacher's definitely coming, so I only have a few moments to finish dealing with the situation my way. I start lecturing the kid from the seat behind me, even as the teacher runs up and tells us in an exasperated, angry voice to get back to our seats. It's clear he just wants to end the disruption; he doesn't really care what caused it. I think I should finish my lecture, first.

I [falsely] wake up. I spend a few moments trying to remember the details of the dream, then I open my dream diary. I'm surprised not to see a date on the page: I usually write tomorrow's date right before I go to bed at night. But then I look at some of the text already on the page and remember that I've already written down some dreams from earlier tonight. So I put down a new bullet point and write down some details from this most recent dream, including "slight purplish hair." My handwriting is unusually small. I hope I'll be able to read it later.

Now, I'm not sure what time it is, and I'm not sure whether I have school today. It's the day after I flew back to Chicago for school. [IRL, I'm still on summer vacation.] I'm mostly moved into my room, except I'm pretty sure some of my stuff is still in storage elsewhere in the city. I'd planned to get that before classes started, so I really hope it's not Monday. But then, I'd planned to fly back on a Friday, so maybe I have the whole weekend left? I'm not sure, so I look for my cell phone to check the date.

The room is large and rectangular, the headboard of my queen-sized bed midway up the longer side. My first cell phone tells me nothing. My second cell phone, a red one, confuses me. [IRL, I don't have a second cell phone.] I can't find the date or time anywhere. Then I see the word "recording" on the screen, and I realize I must have left it recording video all through the night. I wonder what size the file is by now.

Legitimate Theft

A high school friend of mine is running around the house, but he's not supposed to be here. I chase him outside and confront him on the driveway. He's holding a roll of Smarties, and he's already opened it to start eating. Those were my family's Smarties. I'm just so confused as to why he'd do something like that. I try to communicate to him that if he asks nicely, we'd be happy to give him the Smarties--but that it's really not okay to steal them. He agrees. I tell him that he can keep the Smarties this time, but he can never, ever take anything from my family's house again. He agrees again, but then he confidently asks if he can just tell me something.

Uh oh . . . maybe he knows something that I don't. Indeed, he continues on to inform me that he already sent an email to my mom, to explain that he would be coming by today to steal some Smarties. He sent this yesterday, so she had plenty of warning. Hmmm. His use of the word "steal" in that email is strange, but if he got permission from Mom, I guess he didn't do anything wrong. Looks like I've just made a fool out of myself by lecturing him so much. I try to save what little face I can, keeping my confident tone of voice while I back away and admit that this was "my bad," and that everything he did was perfectly legitimate.

Chess and Orchestra

Five or six of us are outside, playing a chess game together. One of my friends from high school moves a knight into the middle of the board. As I look around to see what that move did, I realize that he's successfully blocking almost everyone else's pieces. That was a really good move. It's basically a foregone conclusion that he's going to win.

After the game, I walk back to my room. On the way, I notice a lot of people I know are wearing orchestra jackets and walking in the opposite direction. Shoot, I forgot about the orchestra concert tonight! I dash back to my room and try to dress for the concert as quickly as possible. I have trouble finding my dress pants. My roommate is there working, and he asks me what I'm doing. I tell him that the back-to-school concert is tonight, since it's the end of the first week back. He says no, the concert's at the end of the second week. After a moment, I decide he's right. What a relief.

Garden Path

The Dragon walks along a garden path. There's a wall covered in ivy, and a foot-wide dirt track leading up to it. His wife is dead: apparently she committed suicide by slitting her own throat. But she positioned her body in such a way that he wouldn't realize she was dead until he was close enough to the wound that when he did see it, it would be traumatic. She was evil, you see.

Housemates

I and a bunch of my housemates from school are living together in a big house. Right now, we're playing a game. But I want to take a shower, so I go upstairs and get in. But the stall is really, really cramped: it's just a little triangle in the corner of a room, and the ceiling is low. I have trouble finding enough space to bring my arm from below my waist to above it.

Later, one of my housemates' friends is in the house talking with me. He mentions sigmoid curves, so I show him my laptop's wallpaper, which I think is a cool example of the artistic use of those curves. "Oh yeah?" he replies. He shows me a graphic he's been working on with 3D rendering software. There's a sigmoid curve floating in the middle of a big rectangular room. There are spotlights all over the walls, directing beams of light at the curve. Clearly this project is an exercise in realistic lighting, because the reflections on the curve look really good.

Math Aerobics

On the third floor, there's a math aerobics class. On each count, you switch between an aerobic move and a math-related move. There's also a class being taught by Professor S, and I'm not sure which class I should be attending. Then I get stuck on the other side of the door. In order to get back to class, I'll have to walk all the way down to the ground floor and find another way back up. I don't remember how I got to the third floor in the first place, so this could be difficult. I just walk around for a while, letting my thoughts wander. Eventually I realize that I'm sitting in a chair, sipping a drink. That must mean I've arrived, since otherwise I'd still be looking. I stand up and look for the classroom door.

Infiltration with Hank

Hank Green and I run down the hallway towards the room that is our destination. My hands are clasped together with the index finger and thumb pointing out, pretending I'm holding a gun. We reach a T junction.

"I'll take right, you go left," says Hank. We split up.

I see a woman walking down the hallway towards me. I take cover and fire with my "hand-gun." I look away for a moment, and when I look back, she's not there. Just disappeared. I suppose that's what you'd expect an imaginary gun to do. I continue down the hallway until I reach a sort of open area. I can see over the top of some low walls into some rooms where lots of people are working on computers. They seem really focused. I would feel bad about running in there and disrupting them for the sake of this game I'm playing. I hesitate.

Then I see the people in the room on the left looking over towards the room on the right (my target room) and smiling delightedly. Hank must have reached this side of the room. And they aren't annoyed at all! They must have known about the game, and agreed to it because they thought it would be fun. I look over to see what's happening in the right room. There is colorful, fish-shaped confetti flying in the air. The employees are standing around a spot on the floor, jumping up and down, and clapping. Uh oh. I guess they brought Hank down. I should have been in there to help him.

Anxiously, I walk into the room. I ask a tall, dark-haired man what happened.

Later, I'm walking back out of the building, escorted by the building employees. A guy my own age, someone I know, is ranting about a woman who works in this building. She was somehow responsible for ruining our game, and she's also the head of the elementary math education program, even though she hates kids. One of the employees starts looking calculatingly at the ranting guy, and I realize that she must be the woman he's talking about. Uh oh.

Stealing from Nynaeve

I "accidentally" run into Nynaeve and engage her in conversation. Meanwhile, I cleverly steal from her an important artifact. She'll be mad at me when she finds out, but hopefully I'll be ready for her.

I hide the artifact in my locker. I also have a blanket and a cloak of hers, made with cloth of the same pattern. She's managed to take back the cloak, but in order to hide the blanket, I have to rearrange a lot of things in my locker. For instance, I add an extra blanket to my bed and put something else on my desk. A friend comes up to ask me why I changed the color of my blanket.

Missing a Soul

I'm late to orchestra, but before I can go, I need to save my game. But when I try, it tells me that I have no soul. I need to use a soul gem on myself. I try to do so, but when I resume the game, it loads a new chapter, sort of thing. There's a menu that explains the new scenario and a video in the corner where the bad guy is threatening to do something. I don't have time to listen to all of it, so I just click through the screen. I'll look back over it later. I also skip the first objective of the scenario, so I start in the middle of training something called an ADHD. I don't know what it is or why it's important, but apparently it's a creature used by the enemy that we can train to work for us. I'm able to rearrange the letters in "ADHD" in various ways before training it, and presumably that's important. But since I skipped everything, I have no idea how.

Frags:

• I pick my nose, and out comes almost a complete ring of dried boogers. This happens several times in fairly quick succession.

Bottomless

Towards the end of the women's choir concert, a soloist walks on. I don't recognize her as one of the members of the choir. Her first few notes have pretty bad tone, which I realize must be because she hasn't done any singing yet in the concert (so she isn't warmed up). As the song goes on, she doesn't get much better--although she does have a nice stage personality, so the song's still enjoyable. But eventually she stops and goes into the bathroom. It's kind of dark, so I'm not sure about this next part, but . . . when she comes out of the bathroom, it looks like she's not wearing any pants or underwear.

Dreamer's Tales

I'm reading from a random dream journal on DV. The writer uses a large, boldface font. The basic story is that he's incapacitated the leader of the bad guys, but he's still looking around for the rest of them. Then he realizes that in the time he's been looking, the leader may have woken up again. For all he knows, the leader could be standing right behind him, right now. The DJ entry stops there. I'm delighted to realize that I understand why: the sense of being followed is sometimes scary enough to cause the "Abort! Abort! Nightmare!" response. Overall, I'm impressed with this dream and with the way it was told.

Revelry

My dad is laughing about something he just heard from one of his friends. Apparently, that friend just received a call that his son was arrested in Philadelphia. As far as anyone knows so far, he got drunk with some friends, and they decided to fly over there to watch our state football team play an away game? Either way, it's hilarious.

Gaps

I'm writing in my dream diary when I realize that I'm running out of space: there are some more notes in the diary, below where I'm writing right now. I must accidentally have written on that page one time when there wasn't enough light to see what I was doing. I have plenty more stuff to write, though, so I need more room. I look back at the previous page and notice five or six blank lines on the bottom. I have no idea why I skipped those, but good thing I did! Now I have enough space to finish my entry.

Accio Glasses

I'm home between classes, working on something. When I look at the clock, I realize that it's way past time for me to be heading back to school. Class has already started. Even worse: I just remembered I have a worksheet due today. I meant to work on it during this break, but it completely slipped my mind. Hurriedly, I gather up my things from the room and start towards the door. I notice that everything looks a little fuzzy, and I realize I've forgotten to put on my glasses. I run back to the room in which I left them. They're all the way on the other side of the room, and my sister's sitting in an easy chair, reading a book. I suspect she's irritated about all the noise I'm making, so I try to make a joke.

"Accio glasses!" I say, pointing my hand across the room. That way, she'll realize I'm in a hurry (since I wish I could just summon my glasses, rather than walking to them). Hopefully she'll also think I'm in a good mood ('cause it's a joke), and it'll put her in a better mood (since it's a Harry Potter reference). Anyway, my glasses case rises from its resting place and floats across the room to hover in front of me. It opens, and my glasses float out and unfold themselves. Bemused, I reach for them. But apparently they were expecting me to reach for a different part, because they helpfully dart a foot to one side, causing me to miss. On the second try, I grab them.

Cast Iron

I'm being chased by a wild animal, a bear or something. Right in front of me is an alley guarded by a cast iron gate. If I can climb over the gate, I'll be safe. But the bear is right behind me, so I have to climb quickly. Once I start climbing, my arms and legs suddenly feel like they weigh fifty pounds apiece. They get tangled in the gaps in the cast iron, and I know I won't make it up in time.

I decide to try again. This time, I'm being chased by a gorilla with tentacles on its chin, like Davy Jones from PotC. But it's also farther back and I'm already halfway up the gate. I manage to get over in time. I watch as it runs up to the gate and starts climbing after me. Uh oh. I run to a door at the end of the alley, just a plain rectangle of wood, painted white. It opens inward, but the space behind is almost entirely filled by the door itself. I try to hold the door at just the right angle to squeeze around the edge, so that I can shut the door behind me.

Presentation Day

I walk into my English class, and the teacher says "Let's talk about [insert author here]." I'd completely forgotten about that reading. I remember him assigning it almost on the first day of class, but I thought he would remind us at least once before the day it was due! Apparently he expects us to keep track of everything we should be doing. Which is fine, except that I've failed that expectation. I'm supposed to have read an entire play, but I have no idea what it's even about.

A small group of students goes to the front of the room to do their presentation. Sometime during the course of class, I accidentally scratch a girl's ankle.

I wake up [falsely]. Taking a long, sharp metal stick, I go into the front hall and begin scratching the wooden floor, writing down my notes for the dream I just had. My sister walks by just as I finish writing the name of the girl I accidentally scratched. I notice she's looking at the name, and I'm worried she'll recognize it, or perhaps mistakenly associate the name with someone else she knows, who just happens to have the same name.

Pop Quiz

We have a pop quiz today. One sheet, front and back, short answer questions. There were a few short activities at the beginning of class, but apart from that we have the entire period to do the quiz. Which is a good thing, because I'm having a hard time with it. After what seems like a very long while, I check the time and I see that I still have an hour left to finish. That's better than I thought I had, but it will still be close. Some time later, the teacher (a woman) announces that there are still forty-five minutes remaining. A lot of kids behind me laugh at this. I know it's because they're already done, so they have forty-five minutes to do nothing. Well, good for them, but I know I'll need all forty-five. I keep trying, but I don't finish in time.

After a break, I return to the classroom. One of my high school math teachers is teaching, but he's in a very odd mood. Irritable. Impatient. Sometimes he laughs sarcastically for no apparent reason. He's probably unhappy with the way we scored on the quiz. I try to walk up to him and explain, but he's hardly paying attention to me. Eventually he bursts out, "I'm fed up with"--here he does a violent hand gesture--"mediocrity!" I'm not sure what to say to this, so I settle for saying in an angry undertone that people make mistakes sometimes, and he will just have to deal with it. I go back to my seat. Class starts.

Once, I answer one of the questions he addresses to the class. I get it right. To my surprise, he walks over and puts a jelly bean on my desk. I wonder if he's trying to apologize to me, or if he does that for everyone who answers a question.

Random Video

I've found a YouTube channel that does parodies of and/or tributes to various TV shows. I'm not sure which show inspired the video I'm currently watching. I wonder if it might be Legend of Korra, but of course I have no idea what that show is like. A man and a woman are talking. I think they are (or maybe were) a couple. The man is planning something, but the woman is one step ahead of him: she strips him naked, then tells him that she plans to kill him. Not because they're enemies, but because it is, regrettably, the only solution to a dilemma they've been facing.

The show jumps back in time to explain how the woman engineered this situation. The pair are having another conversation. She promises to show him something if he'll follow her. She also cuts off his clothing with expert use of a whip. He says something about the One Power, but then she reveals that she can channel it as well. The man travels to the location from earlier in the show. As he looks around, the woman appears about fifty yards away. Her arm is raised above her head, seizing something invisible, and it's clear that she got here using the One Power.

The man's chest features some smallish breasts, and somehow this seems appropriate to me. The woman is wearing a white, unbuttoned vest without a bra, and she doesn't trouble herself much about making sure that the vest stays in place. Her breasts are about the same size as the man's.

Frags:

• A vertical antenna capped by a sphere the size of a ping-pong ball sticks up from the middle of a large metal dish. The ball bursts in a sort of molten, fiery explosion. This means we've finally defeated the enemy.

Worms

The world's being invaded by evil worms. They move orthogonally through 3D space, and they're composed of luminescent, transparent red air. (These worms are the same thing as those white threads of light that Rand al'Thor sees in the sky in Book 2 of WoT, in the place where he first meets Selene, so it's a good thing they didn't notice him then.)

There are only a few homes that haven't yet been invaded, each defended by one lonely human who knows the cause is lost. The worms obey a strict turn-based warfare and the territory of each side is well-defined (so it's like a game). But the worms just keep coming, so even with the best strategy, all of the defenders will eventually be overwhelmed. In the house we're watching from right now, a worm has just tried to enter through the window.

Alternate Universe

I'm living in an alternate WoT universe where Rand hasn't yet met Mat or Perrin. Everybody also has different names, and I have trouble keeping all the names straight. For instance, Perrin's name is something like "Satch."

There are two buildings in the woods, fairly far apart from each other. One of them is sort of our base of operations. While investigating the other one, I learn that it's about to be attacked by a dragon. I hurry back to the first building to warn the others, but when they run off to defend it, I hang back. I know I'm probably supposed to help, but I think they can manage on their own.

Some time later, I walk over to see what happened. My team lost, but most of them are still alive, sort of hanging around the building with the people they were fighting. Mat and Perrin aren't there, though; they must have fled underground when they realized the battle was lost. A woman walks up to me and tells me to find one of them (Mat, maybe), because she's his girlfriend. So I head into the basement, where there's a long, dark hallway. It's kind of scary, but there's enough light to avoid crashing into things, so I decide that for fun I'll go down the hallway without turning on the light. I run most of the way.

At last I see light in the hallway, spilling in from a doorway on the side. I go inside, intending to tell Mat and Perrin how much fun it is to go down that hallway in the dark. My words die on my lips, because I seem to have interrupted something. Both Mat and Perrin are fully clothed, but they seem to be trying to have sex on the couch, doggy style. After a moment, I tell Mat of the woman's request. With a rueful grin, he gets off of the couch and follows me out the door.

Once in the hallway, he becomes one of my high school friends. We walk back down the hallway, trying to remember which of the side doors will lead to a staircase that will take us where we want to go. Eventually we try one at random, probably not far enough down the hallway. We end up outside, on a city block. The sidewalks are crowded with people, so I have trouble keeping up with him. Then my Mom appears and starts asking me about something. Whatever it is, it makes me feel really stressed about all the things I'm supposed to be doing right now, and I almost start shouting at Mom about one of them. Then I recognize this stressful feeling: it usually happens when I'm dreaming. Half of me believes that I can escape from these imaginary obligations by waking up, and the other half still thinks that I can't wake up yet because I have work to do! Then my alarm goes off.

Stealth

I'm walking around an indoor courtyard. Children live in rooms nearby. Some of these children are part of a prophecy which is soon to come true, though they don't know it yet. There are some dead children in the courtyard, including one that has apparently been hanged. Clearly evil forces are at work here, so I'm going to have to do my part stealthily. I sneak out of a side door, trying to avoid being seen by the children.

In another room, there are some open-topped vertical pipes sticking out of the floor, about four inches in diameter. They are all full of water, though not all to the same height. I'm trying to scoop water out of the pipes with a higher water level and put it into the pipes with less water. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But it's important that I keep trying, because it will have some kind of important effect on the building around me.

Frags:

• reading a poem in a novel

[I'm trying WBTB, which means using an alarm clock again, and so far it seems to be messing with my dream recall. . . .]

Frags:

• a teacher who talks more about teaching than actually teaches
• car runs out of gas and I realize I brought a violin instead of my viola
• getting married

Water Damage

It's time for my lesson to start! The instructor and the one other student are already swimming out from the shore. I hurry after them, but then I realize that I'm still carrying the 600-page novel I've been reading. Water damage! I panic and get out of the water, extremely grateful that the covers of the book are laminated. Only the first quarter inch of pages seems to be wet. I don't know how many pages that is, but I sit down and start peeling them apart one at a time, blowing on each of them, for all the good that will do. This is a library book, and I have to save it, and my lesson can wait. By looking at page numbers, I notice that sometimes the pages are stuck together so closely that I flip three of them at a time without realizing it. That just goes to show how dangerous water damage is.

Despair

For the last week or so of class, the instructor is alternating days between individual work and group rehearsal. There's one piece that we'll all play together as an orchestra, but all the other ones we must each prepare on our own. Today's for individual work. I feel like I've been pretty productive so far, but I'm still worried that I only have half an hour of class time left. My project doesn't feel close to finished.

I get an unexpected call on my cell phone, so I walk over near the doors to the auditorium while I answer. It's a young boy, I'd guess about thirteen or fourteen years old, and I can't quite figure out what he wants. He says something about a ScanTron, and he seems to be asking my permission for something. He's not very coherent, and whenever I ask him a question, there're about five seconds of silence on the line before he answers. Other people in the auditorium are staring at me like I'm being rude, so I leave to go pace around the hallway instead.

Eventually this boy says, "Your answers were very helpful," and with a shock I realize what he must be talking about. Not long ago I took a short quiz for this class, and I turned in my ScanTron by dropping it into a slotted box in the room. This kid must have taken out my ScanTron and copied my answers when he went in to take the test, and then his parents found out about it, and now they're making him call me. I hadn't realized that the test I took--questions from the 11th grade ACT--used the same set of questions as the actual ACT for eleventh graders this year. This is not a good situation. But I don't see that there's anything I can really do about it at this point, so I don't react strongly one way or another.

Another voice comes on the line. It's an older man, probably the boy's father. "You've been surprisingly nice to my son," he says.

"Nice?" I ask.

"Yes. We were worried you might press charges for theft."

Theft? Wait, did this kid actually steal my ScanTron without putting it back in the box? That would be bad news; that test is a significant portion of my grade for this class. I ask the boy if he put my test back. He doesn't seem to understand the question. I sometimes hear an indistinct voice in the background, as if his dad is coaching him about what to say. I try asking him other questions, but he has trouble with all of them. Eventually I back up and ask if he's even in eleventh grade. That, at least, he answers in the affirmative, though he doesn't enunciate very clearly. He eventually says something that reassures me that my test is still safely turned in. That was all I wanted to know, and I'm fed up with this horrendously ineffective conversation. But I don't like this kid, so before I hang up, I give him an angry, rapid-fire lecture about everything he's done wrong. I tell him to answer more quickly when people ask questions over the phone, and I tell him never, EVER to take anything out of boxes with slots on top. I also threaten to come after him if there are any problems with my grade on that test. I hang up without waiting for him to answer (though I wonder if maybe I spoke too quickly for the slow-minded fellow to understand anything), and I go back into the auditorium.

Another student is just finishing giving his presentation (a slide show about something from physics), and people are packing up to leave. Crap. The instructor must have asked for volunteers, since presentations weren't supposed to start for another day or two. That this guy was already prepared makes me feel even worse about my own project.

A friend of the presenter's drops some review worksheets on the seats at the back of the room, near the exit. I grab one on my way to get my things, even though my chances of being able to do the worksheet without having heard the presentation are very low.

When I try to put the worksheet into my backpack, I knock a hose loose from a glass jar, and the hose starts filling my backpack with water. I'd stuck the hose in the jar earlier because I couldn't figure out how to turn off the water. And now it's ruining everything in my bag, taking my progress on the project from "very little" to "absolutely nothing."

It's too much. Maybe I should try to turn off the water or control the damage but it's too much. I give up. I seize one of my juggling balls, hurl it across the room, collapse tumultuously into a chair, and start sobbing. Some of the nearby students are looking at me; others are trying to ignore me. I see people throwing my juggling ball around the room. At my feet, the water coming from the hose thins to a trickle, then stops, and I know the instructor has shut off the water supply. Moments later, he comes to look at me from the next row forward, frowning.

"I've seen a lot of reactions like this in the past few days," he says.

It didn't work, I realize. Despite my complete breakdown, he's refusing to show me any extra sympathy. What an unfeeling world this is.

My dad comes to drive me home. Suddenly I realize that, in my distraction, I've forgotten to put on my seat belt, and my dad is careening straight towards some cars stopped at a light. With my free hand, I seize the strap and pull it across my body, hoping that holding it in place will be useful even if I haven't managed to fasten the buckle. Dad swerves out of the way, narrowly avoiding an accident, and explains that he was trying to do a live performance arrangement of "Jingle Bells" using sounds that a car makes. Shaken and annoyed, I tell him irritably that that was a really bad idea. He seems to think it's my fault, though, since I was humming the tune earlier.

Back in my room, I decide to do something really simple to convince myself that I'm not a complete failure at life: I put on my glasses. But the glasses don't work. I can't make the world come into focus. I can't even do that. I try reviewing some German instead. I stare at the word "ssssssssut" for a time, but it doesn't make any sense even though I know it should. At this point, basically the only emotion I'm feeling is despair.

Psychic Energy

I'm sitting in the living room, explaining to two of my mom's friends that I feel really frustrated about something. One of them asks me where in my body the frustration is located--where do I feel it most strongly? At first it seems like an absurd question, but then I realize that a lot of the unpleasant feeling seems to be centered right behind my forehead. I tell them as much (using a scientific term like "prefrontal lobe" or "cerebral cortex"), and they take a closer look at my forehead. "Yeah," one of the women says. "There are a lot of wrinkles there." Wrinkles, as in, the lines your face makes when you frown. She means that maybe if I stopped my unconscious frowning, I would start to feel better. I consider this to be pretty deep advice.

Frags:

• Using the Internet and frustrated because the sound suddenly cuts out. But it comes back.
• Starting from an Egyptian skeleton, a human body is assembled, one organ system at a time.
• our pet dog

Sentient Jaguar

Suddenly I spot a mouse running along the side of the room. This mouse has been hiding in our house for a while now, so I'm really excited that we'll finally get a chance to catch it. I send Mom to get a plastic cup or something that we can use to scoop up the rodent. While she's gone, I try to grab the mouse with my bare hands, and I'm surprised to find that I succeed. I guess mice aren't really as fast as I've always thought they were. But then suddenly I realize that it will be able to bite me, so I rewind and try to catch the mouse again, this time in a slightly safer way that keeps its teeth away from my hand. Then Mom comes back with a square Tupperware container, I drop the mouse inside, and we snap on the lid. Excitedly, I run upstairs, showing the mouse to all of my family members on the way, mostly just to see their scared/grossed-out reactions when they realize what it is. Then I go out onto the back porch. In one motion, I take off the lid and flick sharply the container, so the mouse goes flying out into the yard. I watch the grass sway as it runs through the lawn, and suddenly another larger animal comes out of the night to start chasing the mouse! It's a squirrel!

Wait, aren't squirrels herbivores?

Oh, oops, trick of the light, it's actually a jaguar. They're native to North America, you know. I realize this jaguar could be dangerous to me as well, so I hurry back inside the house. Then I realize our pet dog is still leashed outside, so I slide open the door and start calling her back. She seems interested by the jaguar, but with my sister's help, we manage to get her back inside. A few moments later, I notice that the dog is back outside, and I wonder what happened until my sister says she didn't realize we weren't supposed to let the dog back out again.

Later, I'm hiding in a side room, watching through a window as something walks around in the kitchen. It's walking on two legs, and it's wearing a hat. I think it might be the jaguar. Admittedly, its behavior is rather human-like (at one point, it starts dancing around the kitchen, moving its hips and waving its arms), but this only makes me more nervous. A sentient predator is just that much more dangerous. I decide to go outside and hide somewhere.

Once outside, I decide the roof would be a good place to hide. But once I get up there, I see another shape moving around in the driveway on the other side of the house. It starts coming onto the roof as well. Maybe it's just a person, but I'm not about to wait around and see. I jump back down and go back inside.

Soon after, my parents introduce me to the man in the kitchen. Turns out it was just a neighbor. And the person outside is his son. Oops. I hope they don't think I was rude.

Clock Bomb

There's a bomb that looks like a clock. The second hand ticks from number to number, and the numbers go dark once the hand reaches them. Each tick is accompanied by a kind of high-pitched squeak. Halfway through the countdown, I wake up to realize that the squeak is coming from an insect or a bird (or something) outside my window.

Frags:

• looking up terms in the glossary of the fantasy book series I'm currently reading (namely, The Wheel of Time)

Airport

A bunch of my buds and I decided to go to the airport together. We've been delayed in various ways, so I'm relieved when one guy finally gets back with our boarding passes so we can head to our respective gates. I start speedwalking along a hallway. There's a stranger about to cut me off going around a corner (I'm squeezed between him and the wall), so I try to dart past him. The only trouble is, someone else tries to do the same on his other side, so we all end up crashing into each other and making a really awkward scene. I hurriedly apologize and start lecturing everyone about what a bad decision we both made there. The other guy apologizes also (as much to me as to the stranger, it seems), and I recognize him as a high school friend. But I'm desperate to vacate the scene, so I dash away again without saying hi. I feel bad about it, since I never got a chance to talk with him over summer break, either.

As I walk through more hallways, I see a girl a bit younger than me trying out a kind of play microphone. From what I hear as I pass by, it changes your voice so you sound like a robotic alien.

I reach a green tile ramp set into the middle of the floor; it's about twenty feet wide. I set down my things beside me and happily slide down it. There are lots of twists and turns, forking paths, and side hallways. I start to feel a bit confused about the layout of the airport. Once, I shoot off the end of a flat section and gravity doesn't work too quickly, so I crash lightly into a vertical wall a few feet farther forward. I'm frustrated that the ramp didn't work properly, but I'm not injured or anything. I continue going down. A girl comes sliding out of a side hallway, and I recognize her as a housemate right before we crash into each other. We both laugh about it. Behind me, I hear some people from the group I arrived with. They're talking about how it's later than they thought it was, and they were supposed to be at their gate quite a while ago. Upon hearing this, I realize that I'm not even sure what gate I'm supposed to be going to.

Well, that kind of takes the fun out of sliding. I get off the slide and fish my crumpled boarding pass out of my pocket. It's the smaller part, the stub that ushers usually take when you go into the theater. I hope I still have the other part. But whatever, gate information should be on this part as well. When I look for the gate, I'm horrified to see that the terminal is specified not with one but with FOUR letters, which seem to follow a complicated pattern of upper and lower case. This airport is far more confusing than I feared. I have no idea where that terminal is, much less how to get there. I'm probably going to miss my flight.

Uncomfortable Music

There's a concert coming up, and I still need to practice the music. I pull it out and start working, but it's the most uncomfortable music I've ever played. I feel like I'm engaged in spiritual battle with some demonic entity, and the music is feeding it, making it stronger. I decide to stop practicing before the music kills me.

But now it's concert time, and I still haven't practiced. This is one of those orchestras where you only get a couple rehearsals and you only get the one concert, so if I don't do a good job on this concert, I may as well not be in the orchestra at all. So while we're all sitting on stage warming up, I try to get in a bit more practice. Realistically, though, it's too little too late.

Climbing Rock

One of the main attractions in this building is its indoor climbing rock. Its surface is rough but its shape is roughly ellipsoid, and its dimensions in meters are about 15 by 20 on the base, and 3 high. It's granite, or anyway some kind of gray stone. The sides are a bit steep, so the attraction is that it's challenging to get on and off of it, but once you're on top you can run around and play games with the other victors.

I finally reach the front of the line, and I reach the top without incident. I don't have anything to do up there, though, so I just walk across to the other corner and try to find my way down. Turns out this side is much steeper than I expected. As I'm clinging to the rock, a building employee walks over and sticks something on my arm. I can't pick it up since I need my arms to hang on, so I use my forehead to try and press the thing more firmly to my arm. I'll look at it later. Anyway, I fiddle and shift around for a few minutes without making much downward progress, but then I notice that some "rungs" have been cut into this side of the rock a few feet to my right: rectangular gouges about two inches deep, spaced like the rungs of a ladder. I use them to get down, but then I start feeling like I cheated, and I start wondering whose idea it was to put rungs on the climbing rock, anyway. I see my old math TA standing nearby, so I ask him if there's a more legit way to climb down the rock in the place I had been trying to do it. He doesn't know, but during the course of the conversation I become convinced that for the sake of my own self-worth, I need to go back onto the climbing rock and try again.

The rungs on the rock go all the way down to a hallway below the floor on which the climbing rock is located. I'm not allowed to go back up the rungs, so I'll have to find some other way to the floor above. There doesn't seem to be an elevator in sight, and I begin to wonder whether this building is designed to make it difficult to get back to that floor.

I wander around for quite some time. In the process, I come across a darkened room with a bunch of merry-go-rounds or bumper cars or something spinning all over the place on the floor. I need to cross the room, but it'll be hard to do that without getting my shins severely bruised. Seriously, who thought this room was a good idea? I do some desperate dives and jumps and hops, and somehow I make it.

At another time, I see something in the wall that looks like an elevator button, and I press it without thinking. A second later, though, I see that the windows in the sliding doors on this wall are showing me an underground tunnel, not an elevator shaft. This button must call a subway train. Horizontal transport rather than vertical. Sure enough, a train soon comes roaring up to the station. Ha ha, very funny, building designer.

Finally I find some hallways populated by people, and I even recognize some of them. They're students from my university. I'm surprised to note that a lot of the girls look quite attractive. Isn't my school one of those where you're supposed to need a special pair of goggles for this kind of thing? Maybe that's not true! That would be cool. Anyway, I go into a room where some acquaintances of mine are having a baking party.

Road Rage

I accidentally drop a rubber duck behind a movie screen playing Finding Nemo. Damn it. I'm going to have to tow it out with my car. I get in and start zooming down the highway, swerving haphazardly between other cars and going just about as fast as my car can manage. Once, I start passing a car just as it starts passing the car in front of it. Meanwhile there's yet another car in the far left lane, so for a few seconds there are four of us cars driving side-by-side in a three-lane highway. I don't care. I'm angry. Eventually I decide it's time to turn around, so I pull one of those parking-brake 180s and shift gears without putting in the clutch. For a while I dodge traffic going in the opposite direction until I find myself on the right side of the highway, halfway between two lanes and tailgating both cars in front of me. One of them suddenly brakes, and I almost crash into it. That was a bit too close for my liking, so I try to give them a bit more space. But there are cars everywhere and I'm still trying to get things under control when I look up and there's a white screen with the word "Nemo" right in front of me and I swerve just enough to crash into the screen broadside, and the car comes to a halt. The rubber duck falls out, rolls behind the movie screen, and this time rolls all the way under the refrigerator as well. Damn it, now I'm never going to get it out!

Party at Alex Day's

Tonight is an orchestra rehearsal. It's the first one, but it might as well be the dress rehearsal, since we only get a couple of rehearsals before the concert. I decide I should wear concert attire, just to get used to it. I'm running late, so I resent the few minutes it takes to turn on my laptop and check my email to find the one where the conductor tells us what concert attire will be. By the time I'm dressed and outside, it's five minutes to seven. I can't remember whether rehearsal is scheduled for six or for seven, but in either case, I'm going to be late. I decide to go anyway, because even half a rehearsal is better than none when you only get two in the first place.

Unfortunately, there's some car trouble. It takes a few minutes to work out, and then Dad and some of his friends give the car (in neutral) a push down the road. I start running down the road after it, trying to reach it before the road curves and the car crashes into the fence. I barely get there in time, diving into the car to cheers from the group still standing around my driveway. I dove too far, ending up in the passenger seat, so I climb back over to the driver side. I stick in the key and twist it, the engine comes on, and I turn the steering wheel. As I drive out of the neighborhood, I try to think of what else I need to do in order to get the car under control. Maybe I should turn on the radio?

Later, I'm walking. I decide to take a shortcut through some buildings. It's a more direct route, but I'm not sure if there actually is a path all the way through. I go up some stairs, down some stairs, and through some arches. The buildings are made out of butterscotch-colored stucco (or plaster or something; I'm not sure what it's called). Suddenly I see an arch that opens onto an apartment full of people, including Alex Day and my sister! Alex invites me in, and we start talking. There's a really fun atmosphere at this party; I'm impressed. I wonder if Alex and my sister are dating. Just for fun, sometimes I answer Alex's or my sister's questions in Spanish. He invites me to stay, but I insist that I must be going: I've got places to be and work to do. My sister explains that Alex feels threatened by my productivity as a musician. Hmmm. Interesting.

I ask Alex if he knows any way though the buildings so I can finish my shortcut. He doesn't, but he tells me I should ask Kim (Nieuwenhuis). "Her apartment's just upstairs," he says. "I spent a couple of days up there a while ago. It's one of the happiest places I've ever been." Well then. I guess I should go up there.

Just then, a group of girls run past in the hallway outside. They're laughing and running upstairs, and I think I recognize Kim among them. "Kim!" I call, hurrying to the doorway. But either it wasn't her, or she didn't hear me. No one turns around.

In any case, I think I remember this place. I think I've been here before. If memory serves, I should be able to go down this hall and around a corner and--yes! I'm outside! It should be easy to get to the concert hall from here. But then I realize that I've left my viola in Alex's apartment, so I have to go back for that. Somehow I start watching a new video of his that's based on a pun on his name: Alex Day vs. Alex Night, or something. There's a bouncing ball that turns into a bounding dog that turns into two smaller balls that Alex throws that turn into one bigger bouncing ball again, and so forth.

Frags:

• Watching an online advertisement for a cosmetic skin product
• Posting on the DV forums. I was glad when I realized I was doing this, because that meant I was actually participating in the forums beyond just my introduction thread.