Nazrax

What is it recently with all these game dreams? I haven't watched TV or played a computer game in ages.

I went to bed at 10PM without a sleep mask and was woken up at 1:15AM.


Alien battle
I'm behind a building with some other people getting ready to play some sort of game in which we'll be fighting off an alien invasion. The building has a couple of wings - from our vantage it looks L-shaped, though I don't know how the building would have looked from the air. With one wing behind us, another wing to our left, and a treeline to our right, the field of play was bounded on three sides but stretched off into the distance. The terrain is hard-packed dirt that's not graded - parts of it are flatish, but other parts have mounds big enough to hide behind or depressions deep enough to hide in. I take take some equipment out of my pockets and get ready.

Now we're in the midst of the battle. The creatures are much larger than I anticipated, so everything is much tougher than I'd expected. We're falling back, giving ground to them, and I don't think we'll last much longer. I drop down in a depression near the building to take cover.


I went back to bed around 1:30 and was woken up at 3:10.

Mansion game
I'm standing outside "my church" helping to prepare for potluck. My father-in-law is just bringing the trash cans back from the street along the really, really long driveway. The whole place is wooded, and I can't see the road from where I'm standing. I see Michelle coming out of the church, and I know she's working on getting everything clean. I continue on a path around to the right and see my wife sitting on a bench under a small pavilion. I keep walking and see more of these little pavilions each with a couple of benches. Now I'm back immediately outside the church, still helping to set up, and the weather is turning bad. I need to grab a heated ceramic basket, bring it inside, and fill it with punch.

Now I'm inside a gloomy mansion, playing some kind of real life RPG. I'm currently working with some other people to protect a young girl. In a room nearby, one of my team members has just been surrounded by a bunch of dog-things that appeared out of nowhere. Up until this point, we've been doing such a good job protecting the girl that she doesn't think there's any danger at all and we're just messing with her, so she hares off deciding to look for the truth. Unfortunately, she stumbles into the room with all the dogs. My team member rolls a 5, but it's not enough, and the girl gets captured. Now I'm in another room talking with her, trying to figure out if we could have done something differently or if the girl getting captured is part of the story (after all, this is the very end of chapter 2). I have a flash of inspiration that maybe we misread what the die role meant and ask her to show it to me. I look at it and deflate, realizing that the 5 she rolled didn't mean what I thought, but instead meant that she could kill 5 of the dogs. Since there were far more than that, there was nothing else she could do.

Now I'm watching the game from the outside, and my character is in a different hallway of this gloomy mansion. The wizard (a good guy) is in a room nearby, but he's in some kind of trance and is currently helpless to defend himself (or us). I get a menu with at least half a dozen options, including both killing the wizard and killing myself. I know he'd prevent either if he were out of his trance, so I decide to try one of the crazy options (I can always restore back to this point later). I take the "try to kill yourself" option to see what would happen. My character ends up getting turned into a large (intelligent) dog, then gets transported to the top of a snowy mountain where he eventually starts a dog family and lives out the rest of his life (Bad Ending Number ???).


Fragment: something in a hospital room?


I was woken up a couple more times through the night and didn't recall any more dreams.

Early access game
I'm trying an early access version of a new game. I start out in a room with stairs going down. The environment is mostly painted in shades of dark gray. Proceeding down the stairs I have to battle an enemy (some kind of armored alien soldier), then find myself in a smaller room with a narrow waterway passing through it. Crates are floating along the waterway, so I jump onto one and ride it over to the next area. I pass through a fairly small room where a bunch of the crates all come together and make a nicer sort of raft for me, then move on, now on my crate raft. Now I'm in a really large, circular room. This place is still mostly dark grays, but it has a more industrial feeling with stuff hanging from girders on the ceiling and pipes running here and there. At one end are some HUGE doors - they're very wide and many times as high as they are wide. There's a walkway running around the room, much higher than I can jump. I'd been wondering when this demo would end, and I suspect this room is it, that I'm not meant to get to the walkway or open the door. I decide to see just what I can manage to do, and I decide I really want to get to that walkway. I stack a couple of crates and stand on them, but it's not nearly enough. I start looking through my weapons to see if there's one that could propel (or blast) me up to the wall, and I try a couple that look promising, but I'm still not able to do it.

Games in the basement
I'm in the a fairly large bedroom in the furnished basement of a house. In the middle of one wall is a good sized bed, probably king-sized. A twin bed is in the corner left of the king bed (if you look at them from the other side of the room). On the opposite wall is another twin bed with its long side touching the wall. My family has their stuff scattered among the beds, and a couple of them are still in here getting everything arranged just so.

Now there are a bunch of other kids in here, most of them older pre-adolescents. They've congregated on the king bed and don't look like they're going anywhere any time soon. A boy is reading his book in my spot. I can't bring myself to move them, so I start looking at the other beds, especially the one on the other side of the room. Both twins are heaped with clothes and a few stuffed animals, but I figure I can shove most of it onto the floor. I hope these beds are fairly firm and don't squeak too much - we've had a lot of trouble with beds in vacation houses in the past.

Now I'm watching Elizabeth try some clothes on her son. He's grown a lot since the last time I saw him (probably 8 or 9 in the dream; about 2 IRL), and both the shirt and pants are too short for him by a couple of inches. She tries another shirt on him, but this one is way, way too big. Somehow I end up holding the huge shirt and look for a place to put it, eventually tossing it on the pile of clothes on the twin near the king.

Now Elizabeth's son is sitting on a settee, and he's wheezing noticeably. I'm standing at the open doorway to the next room, looking to the right where my wife is sitting. I tell her that we need to tell Elizabeth that her son isn't doing well so that she can start treating him now, but my wife doesn't want to, remembering what a rough time Elizabeth has already had on this trip (one of the other guests is a doctor, and he's been nagging her the whole time) and she doesn't want to add to Elizabeth's troubles. I'm persistent, saying that we wouldn't be *causing* her trouble, we'd be helping her help her son before he gets worse, but my wife doesn't give in.

Now I'm talking to Tedd, getting ready for our game. We face each other, standing one on each side of the doorway. Between us are two pools of liquid: his is mostly clear with a touch of gray, and mine is bluish. We both squat, holding out our arms to our sides as if we were going to grapple. Our respective pools surge forward and start trying to get past each other. Tedd and I both use our hands and arms to direct our pools, which by this point are starting to break up and slip through each other (without mixing). Eventually, my pool makes it all the way past Tedd's and into his room, and Tedd's follows suit and makes it into mine. I think I won, since I think my pool got into his room first, but I'm really not sure.

Now the two of us are talking on camera. Our game was webcast to our followers, and we're doing a post-game wrap-up. As I'm talking, Tedd sidles up and gives me a "you're forgetting something" look. I remember now, but I can't remember the right words, so I have to ask him for a reminder. "Encore," he reminds e. I ask our audience if they want an encore, though from Tedd's reaction to my words we were just supposed to go ahead and do it without asking for an opinion. Looking to the side at a monitor showing our viewer reactions, I can see encore votes coming in from, especially from the ones in Japan. We get enough votes and so get ready for another match.

Vacation
I'm still on vacation, biking on a bike path under trees with some of my family behind me. Now we've stopped, and I'm trying to cut a cake. It looks like a single long strip taken from a sheet cake, except it's somehow bent into a pretzel shape. About a foot of it is still straight, and I'm working on this bit first. I'm trying to cut it into thirds, so I've already cut off about a third from the right-hand side and am now lining up to cut the left-hand piece in half. I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out exactly where the middle of the piece should be.

Now I'm at a house, trying to run wires to get the TV hooked up to something. Later, I'm talking to a neighbor about stuff. He's going into great technical detail about creating 3.5" HD disks with what we have. I thank him but tell him that I have no idea what anything he just said means.


Military experiments
I'm working with the military on an experiment dealing with time. My partner is something like a Talan Imas. I park in the middle of an entrance to a parking lot, near a large military SUV, get out, and the device gets turned on. The asphalt loses all cohesion, and I sink down into it up to my ankles. Time has stopped for everything else, so My partner and I walk around, observing all the frozen stuff. Now I'm back in my car, heading to that same place again. Someone has to move out of my spot. I get out, the device is turned on, and this time I don't sink; I realize they must have set some different settings. This time I can see things moving, sometimes looking normal, sometimes very odd. I'm narrating my observations to my partner, hoping he's recording all this. A frog moves oddly. Coming to a turn in the road we're walking, I see a jaguar looking at us. I shine my flashlight in its eyes, and it cringes and walks away. Two others approach but leave with the flashlight treatment.

Now there's something about blocking an intersection and setting up a running course around the edge of town. Someone is trying to set up some kind of obstacle on top of a tall train car, but he gets ordered to make it just a normal part of the race. He's quite disappointed.

Now something's happened and I've been turned into a girl. I need to try to serve my partner. The first thing I need to do is make orange juice from concentrate. Heading out to the kitchen areas, I pass another new girl who's struggling with some sort of cooking duty. I find my own spot and fill my blender with lots of ice, some concentrate, and a drop of dish soap. Turning the blender on, I hope he likes it this time; he seems to go back and forth about liking my orange juice, even through I try to make it the same each time. I turn off the blender and taste the foam; I think it tastes pretty good, and thankfully so does he.

Now I'm in a military transport vehicle with lots of men and two other women. I make a comment about being the only attractive woman, to which the other two take offense. I undo that dialog choice, not wanting to go down a branch where they're antagonistic to me.


Finding a bathroom
I'm in a large building, something like a mall, looking for a bathroom. I run into Mrs. B. in the book shop, but before she can point me to the restroom I see a sign for it. In the restroom I'm trying to find a free stall but they're all taken. They're scattered all over this huge restroom, so it's hard enough to find a stall, let alone an empty one.


Watching an infiltration
I'm watching something where the actress who plays Dax is in a cave with a powerful guy. She's infiltrated the top of his organization to destroy the source of his power. As he talks to her, he realizes she's not the loyal employee he thought. She cloaks, and he sprays the room with bullets and manages to hit her. As her cloak is failing and she's weakening, she sees a glowing blue ball up on a shelf and shoots it. The ball falls and shatters, and the man shouts. Now he's normal again. Now he's looking in a phone book's business pages and comes across a page for a lost and found place. They'll find anything from the easy (e.g. missing toothpaste tubes) to difficult (e.g. people).


Camping prep
I'm getting ready to go camping. I'm standing at the end of a really long table, preparing to tackle the huge pile of laundry at my end of the table. Matt and a couple of other guys are with me. Our last-minute stuff (swimming trunks, etc) is in this pile ,and we need to fish it out and pack it.


Playing Descent
I'm trying to play the latest Descent online. I'm having a lot of trouble with the online component: it takes a bunch of retries to get through, and even then it's really flaky. Even the browser-based matchmaker isn't loading. I realize it may be blocked by the terrible personal firewall we have to run, so I temporarily disable it and find that now everything works great. I manage to join a game, but it only has one other guy in it. In this game mode, we have to drop pairs of mines connected by lasers and try to force the opponents into the laser fields. My opponent is really good; he quickly sets up an impenetrable plane of lasers below me. I'm flying around dropping mines very haphazardly, and I don't always get them linked; the D key drops mines while shift-D links them, and I keep pressing D instead of shift-D when trying to link them. I spend most of my time flying from him, dodging like crazy. I actually get him to fly into one of my stray links, which amazes me, since it was really careless on his part. Now we're on a much smaller moon orbiting the main planet. He's talking with my AI about some special field designs, including one that could blow up his own ship. I stop and watch as they produce more and more intricate designs in front of their ships. I should be using this time to set up more laser fields, but I don't feel I'm in any danger any more and just want to watch what they create.

I'm on my bike waiting to turn right from the church's road onto the main road. Lots of cars are coming, and I can't find a gap. Finally, I'm able to turn. Now I'm riding along the side of the main road and cars are whizzing past me very quickly, making me very nervous. Suddenly I realize that I'm supposed to be riding against traffic, not with it, so that I can see oncoming cars! I reach a dirt road off to my right and turn onto it to get off of the main road and away from the danger. The dirt road slopes up and has a telephone pole in the middle. Some other people are here on bikes, doing tricks. I see a couple of my kids here as well.

Now I'm driving to work, somewhere around the half way mark. I realize that I'm still wearing only my undershirt and boxers and conclude that I never got dressed after I finished on the bike. I consider going home to get dressed, but I realize that would make me very late for work. I remember that I keep one of my older shirts that I don't like very much in a cabinet at work, but that doesn't help with the missing pants. Taking a quick glance into the back seat, I see a pair of khakis - perfect! That just leaves my shoes, but since I always wear both black socks and black shoes, it's unlikely anyone will notice that the shoes are missing.

I'm seeing something about men's clothing, about the importance of having and wearing a good dress jacket. I see a fairly light-skinned black man, probably late twenties, getting sized at a tailor's. I think about how expensive that is, and then I see another man, a white man of about the same age, shopping at racks in a department store knowing that he can get small adjustments made to get the jacket to fit once hue buys it, and it'll cost him a lot less than a custom tailored jacket.

Now I'm at work, in a wide hallway, near some entry doors (looks like the entry to many malls). I see both men coming, dressed in their new jackets, and they look good. I'm conscious of my being in just my undershirt, but at least now I have the pants. I need to get to my desk to find the shirt. There's a woman here, but since these two stand out so much she hasn't noticed my own lack of clothing.

Now I'm in my office checking something out on my tablet. I take a moment to make sure the wifi is on the right network after the tablet starts taking way too long to pull something up.

Something else at work, talking to people.

Tunnel trouble
I'm driving at night behind a relatively slow-moving truck. As we enter a tunnel, we're forced into the right lane due to construction in the left lane. A police officer in a light-colored wide-brimmed hat is walking on the left of the lane, next to the construction; I guess he's making sure people don't hit it. Now I'm in the middle of the tunnel. It's pitch-black, and I can't see a thing (oddly, I can't see the headlights or tail lights of any cars around me). I try all the knobs and levers around the steering wheel, but nothing helps. I'm in my wife's van, so I'm not surprised by the momentary lapse, but it still makes me very nervous: I don't want to run into the truck in front of me (I never think about the tunnel walls). I pull on the lever I know is the brights control, but still nothing happens. I see a flash of blue light in my rear-view mirror, but the curves of the tunnel quickly hid it. We finally come out and I can see again, though dimly, from headlights and brake lights of other cars. A few moments later the police car pops out of the tunnel with his lights flashing. I make one more effort to get my own lights on, but nothing works. He comes up right behind me, and I resign myself to being pulled over. I look for a good spot, but we're on a fairly narrow road with no shoulder at all, so I just slow down, put on my blinker, and hope he doesn't get mad with me.


Mom's purse
I'm at home (a childhood home) in the dining room on the top floor. I look out the sliding glass door and see my "wife's purse" on the ground below. I ask her about it, and she says it's not hers, it's my Mom's. She'd put it there so we'd remember to return it when we saw my parents earlier, but then plans changed and they didn't come over. She then asks me how flexible my schedule is today, and whether it would work to have my parents over in the middle of the day for whatever it was she had planned. I remind her of my mid-afternoon doctor's appointment, but she's not worried, saying her thing will be over before then.


Best bubble-wrap ever
I'm in a gigantic room with only a few people and some scattered sofas and large planters. It's pretty bright. In one corner is someone I need to talk to to get something. I walk over and find her standing on a rug with a couple of nice sofas making a privacy barrier towards the rest of the room. I talk to her about whatever it is. Now I'm at home opening a package. The package isn't all that large, but the sheets of bubble-wrap coming out of it are amazing. Each bubble is head-sized, and it's a whole sheet of the stuff. I proclaim that this is the best bubble-wrap ever! Unfortunately, I'm not the one opening it; and whoever is opening it (female) is using a knife to slit the bubbles instead of popping them. I'm quite disappointed.


Another convenience store
I'm with Peter at a gas station convenience store. I'm talking to somebody (on the phone?), trying to give directions. Now we're walking across the parking lot towards our car. The lot is a big one, and hardly any cars are here. Now we're driving on an off-ramp. To my right is a sheer incline that's been reinforced; at the top of it I see the gas station parking lot. The Interstate is down a slope to my left, and we're approaching a road.

Dangers of jet engines
I'm using my tablet to watch a short documentary on the dangers of jet engines. It's about three and a half minutes long. In the video, I see an airliner in a hanger with one jet engine firing. A huge orange plume is coming out the back, and (maybe due to misalignment?) it's coming into contact with the fuselage. The metal of the fuselage is turning orange and melting away, leaving a huge gaping hole. Oddly, it seems to be melting the outside of the circle first and working its way inwards. I briefly wonder what's holding up the material in the middle, but i don't give it much thought. I can see into the plane to the seats.
Now I'm sitting on my bed next to my wife, showing her the same video. Normally I wouldn't say "Here, watch this" - I'd just send her the link - but I'm sufficiently amazed by this that I feel she has to see it now.

Fragment
Something about camping.

Malicious entity
I'm driving along a curvy road. To my left I see a couple of churches, then a large grassy field with a small playground: something to climb in with slides, and a few swings. Now I'm walking along a wooded path into a grassy clearing. To my left, I see another entrance to the clearing. A group of men is standing near that entrance, talking. They're all in dark suits, and I recognize my own pastor as well as another pastor from our denomination. A nearby man whom I don't know offers to watch the kids on the playground so they can play without the rest of the adults having to go over to it.

Now it's third person; I'm looking at an early teens girl. There's some kind of malicious entity that's following her around, always changing whatever clothes she puts on to be much too revealing. She puts on an over-sized denim jacket, but the thing morphs it into a tight vest. The entity itself becomes a picture of a rose on the back of the jacket. She hopes that no one notices it, thinking that as far as these things go, this isn't too bad. The rose continues to change as I watch, becoming larger and redder, then growing a stem which eventually sprouts large sharp thorns. A phrase eventually appears right below the flower, something about her being "hot" or "bad." She starts talking to Pastor M, keeping her back away from the group so they can't see the rose and text; but somehow the entity manages to get to Pastor M and he starts behaving very strangely.

Now I'm hunting the entity through my house. Right now it's hiding in a pile of stuff (clothes, toys, etc). I'm going around the pile, trying to make a band of clear floor to make it harder for the entity to get away from me. Always keeping an eye on the pile, I pick up each loose thing from the floor, look at it closely (to make sure the entity isn't hiding on it), then toss it away. Once I finish the perimeter, I intend to continue moving around the edge, whittling the pile down until I find it or it runs. I hope my perimeter is big enough that I'll be able to catch it before it finds new cover. Unfortunately, my daughter doesn't realize what I'm doing and starts to play nearby, making a mess. I try to explain what I'm doing and why she needs not to do what she's doing, but the thing uses the opportunity to make a run for it. I try to move to get it, but it's too fast and it makes to a nearby bed. I start to strip the sheets off, hoping to catch it in them, but it's too quick, continually eluding me.

I hear a knock on the door and go to answer it. As I'm approaching the door, I look through the window and see it's a delivery man with a hand truck piled with small packages. It takes me a moment to open the door, and when I get it open I find he's not there any more. I step onto the patio and see him walking up the driveway to his truck, and I call out to him that I'm here. I see it's actually two men, one with the hand truck and the other carrying a single package. They come back down the driveway. The man with the single package gives it to me, and the other starts unloading his packages.

Now I'm looking at a girl playing on the patio. She's wearing a nice new dress, and I know it came from one of the packages (in-dream I think it was the top package on the hand truck). Another girl comes up to her, also wearing a nice new dress, and they run off together.

Now I'm on the driveway, back to hunting the entity. Somehow it's made it into the van. I cautiously get into the van and start poking around. Now we're driving; my whole family is in the car, my wife at the wheel. To our left is a row of buildings, one of which is our destination. To our right is a large Interstate interchange that's still under construction. I know the entity is still in the van, but I can't find it.

My wife turns the car and heads towards the nearby on-ramp. I ask what she's doing, and she says that since we can't find the entity that we'll need to go to the gardens that are further away. She's already printed out directions. We'll need to take highway 107 for 107 miles. The speed limit is 107 MPH, so it'll take an hour to get there. I ask her about the speed limit - I think it's strange - but she says it's the speed limit here. I ask her if she's considered the other stuff we'll need (water bottles, lunch, etc), and she sounds mock offended as she says that of course she has. I point out that I hadn't intended to go anywhere yet, so I don't even have my shoes; but she replies that she got my shoes and everything else we'd need. She even got a USB key with an audio book on it for us to listen to. Unfortunately, it turns out we've reached the end of this set of files, and the next set isn't present, so we don't get to listen to it after all.

I turn around in my seat and keep scanning the car for the entity. I move some books in the carseat behind me (I don't realize my daughter isn't in her seat) and find a little brown fuzzy blob. I realize this is it, and that it's making a cocoon and so is vulnerable. I look around for something to smash it with and see only a handful of small paperback books. I grab two in each had for added weight (they all seem to be Narnia books) and try to bring them together on the thing, which is growing larger and larger by the second. I don't manage to crush it between the two small piles, instead just knocking it with one, and it wakes up. I grab it before it can get away. It now looks like a bat, and I manage to get my hand around its neck. It's not a great position, and I don't even know if it can be killed this way, but I'm going to do my best. Its neck is in my right hand and I squeeze as hard as I can. I use my left to grab its body and try to wring the life out of it. I'm so into it that I wake up, my right hand clenched. It takes me a few moments to realize I'm awake; I'm convinced that if I release my grip it'll escape yet again.


At the airport
I'm by my self, walking through an airport pulling luggage behind me. The hallway in front of me is temporarily closed, but there's a detour going up the escalators to my right. Everyone around me is going up the escalators, but after taking a couple of steps toward them I realize I can't because of my luggage. They're fairly short as escalators go, and I try to think if I can manage to get the rolling luggage up, but I decide it would be a very bad idea. I think I saw an elevator nearby, so I go to hunt for it.

Now I'm standing on a small raised circular platform to the right of the escalators. I realize it's the "control room" for them. A woman is here, dressed in uniform, and there are two PBX phones on the desk. I know that the phones are what control the escalators. She's moving back and forth between them, quite busy with her job. I go to position myself by the right-hand phone to take some of the load off of her. I have to reach over the desk, bending at the waist, to reach it, which surprises me - I badly misjudged the distance to the phone. She thanks me.

I'm upstairs now, and I'm a middle-aged woman. I'm in the woman's restroom along with another woman, and we're trying to find a place that we won't be found. The bathroom is long and narrow, like a hallway, with the door right in the middle of one of the long sides. Right across from the door is a large shower stall; another is at the end of the "hallway" to the right. I consider hiding us in the right-hand shower, but somehow it's too open. The middle shower has a heavy floor-to-ceiling curtain and, though it's narrow, it goes back quite a way. We go in, close the curtain, and stand near the back. A few moments later, someone comes into the bathroom and starts looking around, standing right by the curtain, and I realize what a terrible place for concealment this is.


Lane change
I'm driving on the interstate in the left lane when we come across a left-lane accident. I have to get a few lanes to the right to get off. I check my right-hand side mirror to make sure I have enough room to get over, and I see a light-blue car quite a long way back. I change lanes, then check my rear-view mirror, and I'm surprised to see a different car, an old brown SUV, right behind me. I decide I must just have missed it seeing it in the side mirror, but I'm glad there was space for me to come over without getting in a wreck. Now we're home. I'm tired and thinking of taking a nap, but my wife is planning to go out shopping.


Pets
I'm in "our" family room. My wife is on the couch, reading, and our dog and white cat are both here. I'm not sure how the cat got here, but I'm very thankful she and the dog are getting along so well. She starts to climb the bookcase and I put my hand under her, just in case (It's a tall bookshelf without any handholds other than the shelves). She does actually slip and I have to catch her. She tries again. I look away for a moment at something, and when I look back I can't see the cat. After a moment of searching, I see her in a tiny space behind some books, looking very comfortable.


Beach vacation
I'm driving with my family . Now we're at the coast, going to a beach house. Now we're in a house with a bunch of families from the church, talking to Jeff C. It's more of a lodge than a house, with many tables in a large room. Everything is wood. Now, most of the people have left, but Johnny Depp and two of his friends have arrived. I end up talking with him, and he's very, very strange. At one point he lets out a strange yell (war cry?), yelling words I can't understand. By this time it's evening.

Now it's the next day and I'm walking on a path around large sand dunes, talking to someone. He mentions Depp and asks if he did his trademark yell. I confirm that he did and ask what it was, if it was supposed to mean anything, and we talk about it for a few minutes. Now I'm standing on the house's back porch, talking to Depp again, and he's acting much less crazy than the previous night. Now I'm on another part of the porch (it's a long wrap-around thing). The beach shower is on, and I wash my feet. Now I'm inside in the bathroom getting ready to take a real shower.

Now I'm talking with my pastor's wife, and she's telling me about a more secluded beach spot they like to go to, up a mountain on the edge of a small lake. I wonder how the water temperature would be, but it does sound nice. Now I'm on the little beach she was talking about. It's a really small beach, no more than a hundred feet long. In front of me stretches a lake that looks like a crater in the top of a mountain. It's very pretty. I notice a train track across the lake nearby and see that a train is coming towards us. For some reason it stops briefly in the middle of the lake, then continues on. I see that it seems to have left a few cars behind, and I'm concerned that they became unhooked when it stopped; then I realize the front car is actually a locomotive pulling the other two, and it just took longer to start than the locomotive at the front of the first section. Somehow I know they did it that way because a single train would be too heavy, so they had to split it in two.

Now the middle car of the shorter train has tipped over at a 45 degree angle, and people are in the water. Since the train is to my left, and it tipped left, I cant see what's going on. I run across the track to see if anyone needs help. They're fairly close to shore, and no one has any trouble, but they thank me for my concern. The family I end up talking to is a large family with nine children. Later, I notice them in a crowd with a giant stroller. At first I think it's a nine-wide stroller; then I realize it's a four-wide strollers, a normal stroller, and another four-wide stroller all held together with a long belt. My wife and I are impressed.


Fragments
I'm filling out a survey about the most recent dream I had. There's a long list of checkboxes asking what was in the dream. The bolded lines are more generic, and the nonbolded ones are more specific to the kind of dream I had.

Something about getting on the interstate to go home. Another large interchange.

I'm trying to figure out what day it is.

I'm skydiving.

I'm talking with my pastor.

I'm in a hotel room with my wife.

Shooting from cover
I'm playing an FPS, but I'm actually in it. In front of me is a long hallway with a humanoid robot sentry at the end. I need to try to take him down before I continue. Between my spot and his there's no cover at all; where I am there's poor cover, but at least it's something. Taking aim, I start to fire, and I see my shots streaking down the hallway. Moments later, he starts to return fire. I'm easily able to move back and forth to dodge his shots, and I'm glad to see he doesn't seem to be dodging mine. In fact, as I move, he's unable to immediately start firing at my new position; instead, it's almost as if he can only rotate slowly as the line of tracers slowly comes towards me. After a few moments, another robot appears next to the first. Dodging two streams is certainly harder but not impossible, and I continue to fire. Now I start getting hit (though not hurt; my armor absorbs the shots). I'm confused until I realize there's a third stream coming from the enemy area, and that it's coming from some kind of turret above the robots. It's less powerful than they are, but its shots are very fast and much harder to dodge; it's also able to track much faster than the humanoid bots. I'm slowly moving to the right to stay ahead of the sweep of gunfire, but I'm worried since I haven't seen a gap I can make use of to slide back to the left, and I'm almost to a spot where I can't move any more. I realize my dog's old cage is to my right and I dive in. I'm hoping they'll have trouble targeting me in here and maybe reset where they're firing at so I can get a few more good shots in.

I've clearly been playing too much Epoch recently. It's a "cover shooter" that plays out almost exactly like this.


Underground complex
I'm in some kind of underground complex. In most of the rooms, you can't even tell it's underground, though the lack of windows may be a strong hint. One room I walk through has a suspended walkway going up and down and back and forth, looking rather fun. Stairs up to it are on one side of the room; at the other end it goes through into another room. I'd like to follow it, but there are a bunch of kids playing on it and I don't feel like trying to get past them. Somehow I'm able to see part of the next room and decide to go there. Now I'm in another room trying to find the room I saw earlier. I can't get wall lengths to line up right in my head, and I can't find that room. Now I'm back in the walkway room, up on the walkway, looking over a railing. I try to take a good mental snapshot of what I'm seeing. Now I'm back in the other room. After a moment of searching, I find the balcony I was looking down from, and that's enough to orient me so that I can find a hallway leading to the room I wanted.

Now I'm in a medium-sized room, probably about fifteen by fifteen feet. I'm in one corner rifling through a built-in cabinet. I find some haphazard piles of books along with some movies. A late thirties woman is there leading a group of kids through exercises. They're all dressed in fairly tight fitting black shirts and pants. Looking at the kids, I realize they're all special needs. Once the class ends, I get into conversation with her and find out that she's a special needs trainer of some, focusing on ??? (workouts?) instead of more traditional therapy. She tells me she got into it because her own daughter has special needs, and that this method seems to work well. Now she's asking the kids if they want to watch a movie. After a resounding chorus of "Yes!", she goes to the cabinet and pulls out the very videos I was looking at. I'm glad I left them where they were and didn't take anything. She offers them to the kids. Against one wall I see a tall rolling cart holding a TV (CRT) and DVD player.

Now I'm driving into the complex's parking deck with my family. I want to show my wife something. The deck isn't finished yet; it's obviously still under construction, though it's usable. Now we're parked and trying to find the way inside. We see a handful of workers come out of a tunnel. Now we're trying to enter the tunnel, but we find it's not yet ready for use. Backtracking, we find a better-looking tunnel and follow it. We run into the job foreman and start talking to him. He makes excuses but my wife will hear none of them. She marches to the "employees only" (though the wording is different) door. There's a sign instructing visitors to enter a code on a keypad, but she ignores it, instead pushing on the door. At that moment someone inside opens it, so she's able to go right in. The foreman isn't happy but doesn't force her out. The door is remarkably wide.


Exploding experiment
I'm walking with an older man through his house. We enter a room at the end of the house full of strange equipment. He's an inventor, and this is his workshop. He walks to a counter on the side of the room, picks up a small slip of paper, and reads it. It's a report of one of his experiments. He says something about ??? fifteen. Somehow he realizes another test is in progress, and he panics. He rushes to a 1-inch red pipe on the wall and turns the cut-off valve; then to be really sure he gives it a strong yank and breaks it in two. For a moment he looks relieved, then something behind us bursts into flame. We have to get out of here. Now we're racing through the house, burning goopy black stuff following us. Somehow I know it's slightly intelligent and rather malicious. We reach the living room and the man does something to cause a large hole in the floor to appear - some kind of escape tunnel in case something went wrong. All the humans in the room jump in. Other small creatures are around, but they're not real, so they don't need to escape.

Now we're outside the house having come out of the escape tunnel, standing next to a car in a driveway. We watch the whole house go up in a giant fireball.

Now I'm walking down the road with my family. We've decided to go to the nearby public school, find an empty classroom, and read for a while. We see a few school buses on the road and wonder if we're too early or too late, if maybe all the rooms will be in use. As we're walking along I have to keep ducking under (or moving) bush branches. At one point, my wife and I somehow end up walking along holding each other up, more for fun that because we need to.


Voicemail and plumbing
I'm in a fairly small, bare, carpeted room. I'm on the phone fighting with the new voice mail system at work. The old one was great; numbers for everything ("Please press one for ..."), favorites, etc. Sending a voicemail was as easy as pressing the key to send voice mail, followed by the "favorites" key, followed by the number of the favorite I was sending to (assuming it was someone I often send voicemail to). Three key presses which could be entered one right after another, nice and quickly. The new system uses voice recognition, expects you to wait for the full prompt, and doesn't have favorites. It expects you slowly to speak the whole phone number you're sending to. I try using the keypad anyway, and it works for the phone number but not for the menus. I try to think what the best place is to report my intense dissatisfaction with this change.


Now I'm in the nearby bathroom. It's pretty dark, even though I've turned the light on. I realize that, though I've flipped the switch, the light is still off. Looking around, I see that the toilet has been unbolted and moved, and I assume someone must have turned off the breaker to avoid problems with the toilet. I realize there's a bad drip coming from the ceiling. Now I'm elsewhere in the house talking to my wife. She's not surprised when I mention the drip, saying it's been like that ever since we moved in, but it was such a small leak that it only occasionally got a bit of bread in the bath water. I explain that it may have always been there, but it used to be so gradual I never noticed it; but now it's dripping every couple of seconds, and it'll destroy the ceiling if we don't stop it. We're in the dining room, and I can see through the windows that it's raining. Maybe that's why the leak is worse now than usual.


Short dreams
I'm with my wife in a hotel room. We're on some sort of long trip (we've been away from home for weeks), and we're both tired. She's laying down on her bed and I'm moving around doing something. Suddenly, I get really really tired and I mention it to her, noticing that she also seems to have lost all energy. I realize her sister is doing something to drain energy from us and I mention it, but my wife just thinks it's the long trip. Some comments are made about the kids.

I'm on back roads somewhere, waiting at a stop sign at a T intersection, getting ready to turn left. Now I've turned left and am approaching another intersection. This one also has a stop sign; but the intersection is big enough that there's a left turn lane as well as a go straight lane. There's already a car here waiting its turn to go straight, with another behind it half in the straight lane and half in the left turn lane. I can only assume he decided at the last minute to turn left, though I'm not sure why he can't just pull all the way forward and out of the straight lane. I wait behind both of them in the go-straight lane.


Fragment
Something about church and changing pants in the bathroom. The church building is huge.

Fragments from the middle of the night
A teenaged boy, a non-Rithmatist, is somehow maintaining a woman made out of a translucent blue liquid. Her shape is very well defined. They're both in a classroom; she's sitting at a student's desk, and he's standing. I wonder how a non-Rithmatist is able to do something like this.

Something about driving past houses near the beach.

Another dream kept nagging at me, though I have no idea what it was.


Fragments from the morning
Vague impressions about something I'm forgetting.

More about Rithmatics.

At the zoo
I arrive at the zoo with my kids and some of their friends. I see a sign on the wall talking about a new acquisition, a tiger of some sort, and how important it is to maintain eye contact with the tiger so that it stays interested in you and doesn't retreat to the back of its habitat. I start to read it to the kids, but they're all excited and not paying any attention to me. I turn to them, calling for their attention and explaining that this is important, then turn back to read the sign. I look to where the sign was, but it's not there any more. I'm really confused. Looking around and back, the wall has somehow flipped around to expose the sign, and I realize it must have flipped back before. The wall plank looks very irregular as if it wasn't designed to be pulled out and flipped around. I read the sign to the kids.

Now we're walking through a very open area. It's arranged kind of like an amphitheater, concentric half-rings descending to a central point, except that it's very, very shallow. The whole area is decorated in a very eastern style, and people with flowing colorful clothes are walking around. It's a bright, beautiful day. As we're walking down the giant steps I end up giving my eldest daughter a hug and holding her close for a moment. In the dream, she's fully grown, a young adult; but I tell her I'm glad she's smaller than me and will always be my little girl.


Old presents
I'm in a fairly small room. Somehow this is game related, but I'm present in the room. There's a counter with some kind of person (an elf, maybe?) handing out things that need to be delivered. We talk about some kind of special. Now we're talking about the special, but it seems time has passed and it's no longer valid; it was some sort of seasonal thing and it's expired. On the wall, I see a list of expired seasonal specials. I notice the table in front of him has some kind of cloth over a pile of stuff. The table is shaped like a fish tank: it's long and thin and doesn't have a lid. Pulling the cloth aside, I see wrapped presents underneath, and I know they're for members of my family. It's way past Christmas now, so I feel bad they'll be getting them so late, but I know they always love to open presents. I pull them out (somehow having to reach around or under things) and look at each one. They're all between four to six inches on a side.

Now I'm at home, giving the presents to my kids; except now the presents are from our pastor. My oldest daughter gets a coconut. It looks pretty, but upon opening it we find it's aged poorly, with dry brown stuff (like the gills of a mushroom) inside. My son got a pumpkin, but the top near the stem looks gooey. My second daughter got some trinkets that are just fine. We're standing around a tall flight of stairs as we're looking at them.

Fragments
As much as ???? likes the NFL, he doesn't like how they have a history of not following their own rules.

Something about a hallway in a dorm.

Taking the bus
I'm walking towards a bus. It's the first time I've used it, and I'm somewhat anxious about it. I have a brick red RFID fare card still in a plastic baggy. A conductor is walking around outside the bus directing people. I see RFID readers in a number of places; I wave my card nearby one of them and it beeps. I board the bus.

Now I'm inside. The bus has a long gentle curve. I'm standing in the middle of the curve, and I can't see the front or back of the bus. Seats along the outside of the bus are facing inwards; most of the bus is empty space. Everything is very sleek and shiny, looking very "futuristic."

Now I'm at work. It's the end of the day, and I'm talking on the phone with my wife arranging how I'm to be picked up. We hadn't considered that the bus wouldn't actually drop me off at the house but rather at a nearby bus stop. She'll have to load the kids into the car to come get me from there.


Revolving doors
I'm spending time with my friend Peter. He's showing off his college project, an improved automatic revolving door. It's got hand rails on the revolving part that people can "click;" once the bar has been clicked, the floor will vibrate to let people know it's time to leave the revolving door and walk into the building proper. It's also got a new "smart" floor that automatically adjusts itself so that it always works well, even when it's on a boat. I ask him about whether he'll be able to sell the design, since he did it as a school project; he replies that some companies he's worked with in the past have volunteered to help build the prototype, and that he may or may not sell the design later. I notice he seems a bit cagey about the topic. While we've been talking, we've been walking around and around and around.


The buffet
I'm going through a buffet line behind my parents and my wife. Somehow I've arrived late; they're already nearly done, and the conference will be starting again soon (though no one is quite sure when). I hope they give us sufficient warning. My wife advises me to get a bunch of food in my bowl and take it to the conference hall now, since I probably won't have time to finish out here. I put some Chicken Tagine on one side of my bowl and some desert on the other side. I'm not happy about their mixing, but there aren't any plates available and I don't want to try to carry two bowls. Mom points to the tagine and asks what it is; I tell her the main ingredients, though I tell her she'll have to ask my wife about what's in the sauce.


Fragments
I'm leaving a parking deck.

I'm wandering around a grocery store.

Cat girl
I'm at church, sitting near the back of the sanctuary on the left side. A young woman dressed largely in white walks past me into the sanctuary. She's walking oddly, and I wonder if she's drunk. She walks to the front and onto the raised platform, then goes to a laptop on the left and starts doing something to it. The pastor notices her and tries to shoo her away without disturbing the sermon too much. She turns into an exact copy of my white cat, then somehow jumps through the slats disguising one of the HVAC return vents. I'm concerned - both of my cats are here, and if she's a duplicate of one of them, how will I tell which is my cat and which is the girl?

Now, my wife and I are looking through her stuff. We find something that looks like a screwdriver except with a hex bit on the end; I make some comment about it. Now we're talking about her leaving the building. It'll be tough with all the people here, and if she tries to leave once everyone has left she'll set off the alarm system.

Now I'm looking through the windows towards the parking lot. I see Rebecca R pull up parallel to the church, then an SUV pulls up behind her. I see Rebecca go to the window of the SUV to talk to the occupant, and I realize it's her mother.

I remember something about powders or sprays you can put on the floor that are invisible to normal light but shine under ultraviolet. If you can get someone to walk through the stuff, then you can track them by following the footprints they leave behind. I tell my wife that I think we should spread it around the church to track the girl through the vents to catch her.

Now we're driving through "our neighborhood," looking for the girl. I think it's a waste of time, but my wife thinks it's worthwhile. We start to get further away from actual houses and start to pass rental banquet halls, and I think they're a more likely place for the girl, if only by a hair. Eventually we turn around. On the way back I notice a nicer looking hall. It's one story and fairly boxy, but it's got a couple of pillars outside the front door that improve its appearance.

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

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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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


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


Fragments
Something about "medieval court posturing"

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

I'm in a dimly lit hallway.

Jeopardy!
I'm in a large, darkened auditorium, walking towards the front along with my son. We're on the set of Jeopardy, and both of us are contestants. I'm surprised I got on, and I can't believe my son did - he's not even ten yet! He submitted his application as part of a school project, but we didn't think he'd even be considered, let alone accepted. As I walk up the steps towards the stage and the podiums, I realize that I'm missing my shoes and socks. I wonder briefly how that could have happened, but I try to be nonchalant, hoping no one else notices. I see someone else wearing only socks, so I feel a bit better. I have the podium on the left and my son has the one on the right. Now I'm standing behind my podium looking out. Something is asked or said, and each contestant is supposed to respond. No one else seems willing to be the first one to say something, so I do. I hope that there are a lot of computer and electronics questions and not too much about sports.

Now I'm sitting in the audience a few rows away from the front. My family is around me, and I overhear the video manager behind us talking to someone else involved with the show. I think about whether I should have told Mom that I'd be a contestant so she could be sure to watch, or whether it would be better to leave it as a surprise so she realizes it when she sees me on TV. I like that idea better, but I'm concerned she may happen not to watch it that night.

Now I'm taking my son to the bathroom. I'm a little nervous (and annoyed), since they never told us what time we needed to be back, so I hope we don't miss anything. As we're walking back into the auditorium through the doors at the top/rear, we find they were looking for us, and since they couldn't find us they were about to replace us. The audience sees us at the back and starts chanting "We are here! We are here!" (straight out of Horton Hears A Who) and I take it up the chant as well as we walk to the front.

Now I'm standing behind podium, wondering about security of podium computer. I somehow manage to minimize the Jeopardy application and get to a Windows desktop. I play with that for a while, seeing what I can do. The contestant next to me sees what I'm doing and asks me about it, and I say something. Eventually I want to bring up the Jeopardy application again but I don't see it on the task bar; I have to alt-tab to it.

During another break, we head to the bathroom again. As we're Walking down a hill towards the main building, I somehow see the Jeopardy that's actually airing right now, and I see that it's got Arthur Chu again. I wonder how long he's been a champion and find it strange they're playing a prerecorded show at the same time they're recording a new one. Walking down a dirt incline reminds me that I still don't have shoes or socks.


Truck driving
I'm driving a big rig, currently idling in a parking lot. A train comes by on tracks across the road, blowing its horn. I toot my own horn back, pleased that mine is louder than the train's. I ponder the layout of roads, tracks, crossings, and bridges in this area, trying to think why trucks drivers take such a strange path. I can only assume it's to ensure they never get stopped by a train.