Nazrax

Side-note
Third-person
Dreamsign

Breakfast craziness
I'm at home, getting breakfast ready. My kitchen looks like my real kitchen; I'm working on the short countertop between the fridge and microwave. I'm trying to make tea and fry a couple of eggs with bacon, but nothing is going right. I'm cooking on a portable propane burner, though I never stop to think about why. The lighting is very dim, so I go to turn more lights on. The kitchen light isn't responding to the controller at all. I try to control the lights in the breakfast nook and in the dining room. The breakfast nook light responds properly, but the dining room light is having trouble. It's at least starting to come on, but it gets stuck at less than half brightness, not producing much light. I keep trying the kitchen light and eventually it starts to get the glow that shows a fluorescent bulb is warming up, but it never actually comes on. Even this concerns me - with the newer ballast we've had the last couple of years, there's no warm-up time, so the ballast must be going bad. The controller is working strangely too. It's supposed to be back-lit at all times with a dim glow, but the back-light is off. At first I'd assumed it was because the controller didn't have power, but it's clearly sending the signals, and lights that actually come on have their keys back-lit at full brightness.

Now I'm back to the food. I'm trying to make tea, and something's not right, though I don't remember what. I've got a couple of eggs and a strip of bacon cooking in the pan, and I decide to add another strip. Somehow, I know the package of bacon is in the cabinet, not in the fridge where it's supposed to be. I pull it out and note that it still has a slight chill to it, but I know that's not enough for it to have been protected from going bad. I know you're not supposed to eat stuff that's been out for more than 2 hours, but I also know that most people don't actually get sick. I open the bag and give it a sniff test, and it smells fine. I reason that it's already been smoked and cured, so it should be reasonably well preserved and safe. I get out another strip and add it to the pan.

Now I'm upstairs finishing getting ready to leave. It dawns on me that I left the burner on downstairs and my food is still on it. I race back to deal with it. Now I'm downstairs, heading through the hallway to the kitchen. I'm glad the smoke detector isn't going off, and I don't even smell the slightest hint of burning food. Now I'm back in the kitchen getting the food off of the pan. The eggs look good, though I have no doubt that the yolks are fully cooked through. The strips of bacon stuck together, but they don't look burnt either. I put them into something to take to work.

At work, I'm walking around with Scott. I'm carrying a plastic tumbler with some green tea which is still brewing. We start to go down some stairs (a very wide stairwell) but he stops me. Looking down the stairs, I see that a huge section of stairs is missing, and that if I'd gone another few feet I would have fallen to the story below. Scott explains they're doing some work on the walls that's incompatible with stairs. He points to a vertical bump running up and down the wall, and it does seem to be the limit of where the stairs go. We're trying to figure out a different route to get to the floor below us when I notice some chairs propped against desks at strange angles. Somehow I know these are makeshift stairs that will let us go down; I point out the "clever" idea.

Now I'm sitting at a table with Scott, preparing to eat breakfast. The table is long and rectangular; we're sitting near the end. I've still got my cup of tea, but now it has a lot of ice in it. I think that I added the ice to help it cool down so I can drink it faster, but I hadn't meant to get so much. I decide it's probably already too cool to drink as a hot drink, so I go all the way and stir all the ice in trying to make iced tea. Scott and I both have a small slip of paper with some information and an "inspirational quote". Looking at mine, it's nonsensical. I show it to Scott and we start making derisive comments about our company, that they would let such ridiculous stuff be passed around in their name. Now Troy is sitting with us. I ask him if he's seen the quotes and he says he hasn't. I try to find mine or Scott's, but I don't see them anywhere. I glance over at the little trash can next to the end of the table, but I don't want to dig through it. I see other things - seed packets for one - but not the little piece of paper. Troy sees it, though, and reaches in and grabs it. He also thinks it's crazy. Looking at it as he holds it, I'm a little confused. I thought that when I had it, it was covered in English with the quote in bold at the top; but the slip Troy has is covered in Asian characters with the quote in English at the top.


Airport security
I'm watching people go through a security line at an airport. There's a single security arch with two lines of people going through at the same time. The line closer to me is comprised entirely of clones of a young woman - they're all completely identical, down to their movements. These people are in no particular hurry. They're going in a nice orderly line through, turning at the end, and going down the stairs. The line behind her (further from me) is comprised of clones of an older woman dressed in rather severe business clothes. She's in a hurry and not paying attention to what she's doing. One of her runs into something at the end of the line; she gets bent over it. Other copies of her start running into her, piling up.

Now I'm seeing further down the steps, at a point where the steps change from carpeted for passengers to being plain concrete for the employees. A passenger walking past says something about needing the restroom; I tell him that I hope he brought one in his carry-on, because he's not allowed to use anything he didn't personally bring. He looks confused, and I laugh, telling him I'm just joking.

Now I'm in another room. I see a man at a long table opening someone's carry-on and pulling out all the stuff inside, looking over it.


Analysis
Dreamsigns:
* Lighting failure
* Things generally not working right
* Paper changing contents
* Gap in stairwell

Third-person

Hanging out with Wil Wheaton
I'm watching something about Wil Wheaton. For his birthday, he decided to show up at his favorite diner wearing a sandwich outfit. The video I'm watching is taken from inside the diner, starting right before he arrives. The place is packed with people eating, and waitresses are wandering around, serving people. One of them sees him, goes rigid for a moment, then goes all crazy fan-girl, pointing and screaming. The other waitresses go nuts moments after. The patrons take longer to notice him - some are amused, some confused, some are unbelieving ("that can't really be him"). A few patrons and at least one waitress have their phones out now, taking pictures of him. The video I'm watching still isn't actually showing him.

Now I'm watching Wil and one of his friends sitting at the bar. At first, I assume that even though the restaurant was packed, they somehow made room for him; then I realize that the restaurant is nearly empty, and I'm a bit confused. He's dressed normally now, with no sign of the sandwich suit. He and his friend are talking about random stuff, including the mountain the diner is on. Wil says the mountain is epic, but the friend counters that there's a very specific definition of an epic mountain, and this isn't one. It's in the Rocky Mountains, but it's not epic.

Now I'm talking with him. I tell him that earlier an older man was saying that this mountain really IS an epic mountain, that it fits the definition perfectly even though it's in the Rockies. Wil is excited and can't wait to spring it on his other friend, since that friend hates surprises, puzzles, or being wrong.

Now the other friend is sitting with us. Wil decides to give him a logic puzzle, but he's having trouble getting it out. He gets it started (a next-in-sequence question) with "five is fourty-five, six is, uh ..." and I complete with fifty-four, seven is sixty-three, eight is seventy-two. Wil thinks about it for a moment, then is disappointed, realizing he'd meant to offset the low numbers by one, so that four would be fourty-five, five would be fifty-four, etc.

Now the three of us are standing on the ground, outside, next to a fence. The outer fence is an attractive wrought-iron; the inner fence is a mesh carrying a high voltage. We've got wire snips and are reaching through the iron fence to snip the electric mesh. Wil isn't sure it really is electrified, so he sticks his tongue out to touch one of the wires we've snipped, and a spark arcs to his tongue. He confirms that it is, in fact, electrified. The shock doesn't seem to bother him at all.

After we've been at it for a while, the other two guys decide it's been long enough and decide to pack up. I want to do it for a few more minutes, but they hear something and say that it may be the police. They quickly grab their packs and head off. I try to pack up to follow them, but I'm having trouble getting everything in my backpack: the pillows and bedding just aren't fitting right. Eventually, I manage to cram just about everything inside, though I can't close the zippers. I start walking in the direction the other two went - but now I'm not walking outside next to a fence, I'm walking down a hallway in a large hotel suite. I come out into a family room near the entrance to the suite and find my family playing.


A mage's success
A mage has ascended through a castle, mastering its puzzles and traps, and has been rewarded with thirteen kinds of magic, including "age" and "convenience." As she's walking back down through the castle, talking with the ancient caretaker, I know she's going to use the age magic on him to make him younger again. They pass by a microwave covered in dust and cobwebs, and I know that it was made long ago with convenience magic, though the making of it has long been forgotten.

Now I see them in the castle's bell tower. The mage is present, though I don't actually see her; the caretaker is now a middle-aged woman with strong features - I notice the age shift but not the gender shift. I wonder about whether the mage will make any of the caretaker's family or friends younger, but I realize that no matter how many or how few people are changed that the ripples of sadness from death and general confusion will be huge.

There are two teams of people in the bell tower switching off shifts of waiting in case the bells need to be rung. There's a rack of eight bells with one person assigned to each bell. They seem to expect to ring them individually and to have control over the timings; but the bells are huge, as big as each person, and I know there's no way they can have that level of control. I think they must not know how the system works, since there should be a single master pull that moves the bell frame and causes them all to ring.


Analysis
Dreamsigns:
* Clumsiness, things not working out right

Third-person | Lucid

Dark ride
I'm driving to church on a motorcycle in the dark. I'm on the surface street near the church and all the traffic lights are out. I know people are supposed to treat such intersections as 4 way stops, but since it's dark I don't know how many people will even realize there's supposed to be a traffic light. I realize my headlight is off and turn it on, but it doesn't work very well, only shining a small pool of light a few feet in front of me. I have some loud music playing on my phone, so I hope that will help people notice me.


Military home
I'm in a beautiful old home that's been "borrowed" by the military. The home is clearly very expensive, with lots of dark reds and browns of hard wood everywhere, with lots of high quality fabrics hung and placed everywhere. Mom (who used to be in the RAF) is showing me around. She shows me the men's room and decides to make use it; the men's room guard completely ignores her since she's well known on base. Now I'm in one of the bathroom stalls by myself. Someone else comes into the bathroom.

Now it's not a bathroom stall, it's a bed alcove. I know I woke up at about 4 AM and now I'm trying to get back to sleep. As I'm lying there, I'm going over my dreams, trying to increase my recall. Suddenly, I realize I'm dreaming. Now I'm standing near the bed, and I realize I have a task of the month to do. I think about doing the ask-a-DC task, but that requires having someone nearby; but since it's night, everyone's asleep, so there won't be anyone to talk to. Instead, I decide to count the months backwards. Since I've been practicing this one in real life, I had no trouble counting backwards from November to January. I still want to try asking a DC what he's thankful for. I realize the guard should still be awake, and I can ask him; but I need clothes first, so I go to the open closet and start looking around inside for something to wear. Unfortunately, the light isn't working, and I can't see inside well. I try to use my key-chain flashlight, but it barely casts any light at all - I'm surprised it's working so poorly and figure the batteries must be almost out. This also surprises me until I remember that they're rechargeable, so of course they're almost dead.


Electronics and groceries
I'm working on electronics with the kids. We're going to make a simple LED+resistor circuit on the breadboard, but I decide that it would be better if each child had an individual cut-off button. I decide to implement it with my microcontroller so that pushing a button cuts power to the LED for a few seconds before automatically bringing it back on. I have some trouble getting everything hooked up right - I'm having trouble remembering which way the connections in the breadboard go - but I get it eventually.

Now I'm riding my bike to the nearby grocery store. Going up the hills is a lot easier than I remember - I attribute it to not pulling the trailer with the kids in it. Riding on the roads with cars goes well.

Now I'm at the store and find a table set up with my electronics; one of my daughters is sitting at it. I still haven't finished the programming, so it doesn't work right. I head home. As I'm preparing to make a right onto the large road near our house, I see a huge store on the corner. It doesn't look very nice, but it claims to be a runner's emporium with everything a runner could ever need. Looking more closely, I see that their front room is filled with random riding toys - it must be because we're close to Christmas. Turning onto the road, I'm looking behind me and using a rear set of pedals - but car pedals, not bike pedals. I face forwards but I'm still contorting my body to use the pedals behind me. I want to switch to the ones in front of me, but I can't remember which is gas and which is brake. I think the big one the left me is brake, but I'm not sure, so since I don't want to hit the car in front of me I just stay stopped by putting my feet on the ground.

After I get home I realize I left my daughter and my electronics at the store. I don't want anything to happen to her, and I don't want the store to trash my electronics, so I head back out.


Coleson's recovery
I'm watching something about Agent Coleson being on life support, waking up, and pull tubes out of his mouth. He should be dead but he's not. The tubes he's pulled out are dripping various things - gastric juice is making a mess, and some unfertilized (human) eggs are producing little red sacks where they've fallen into some water.

I'm looking at a Facebook page for a pastor. At the top, it's talking about the pastor's amazing recovery, except it's describing word-for-word what happened to Coleson. Further down, comments are going back and forth between praising the pastor for his good work and throwing insults at him for his views.


Workers and doughnuts
A bunch of men are at our house to help with some work. There's a really nice breakfast laid out for everyone. I'm particularly interested in the pastry table, but I'm disappointed when I see that most of the really good doughnuts are gone when I get there.


Experimental radish cure
A guy with little time to live tries an experimental treatment made from concentrated radishes. It's a partial success: he grows large and strong, but he's covered in wrinkles and looks like an old man.


Pizza zombies
I'm walking around a house filled with pizza-eating zombies.



Analysis
Dreamsigns:
* Very dim lights
* Bathroom weirdness

Lucid awareness: Poor. I didn't realize dream control was even an option, but I did remember to do the TOTM
Lucid control: Non-existant. I didn't even try.

Dreamsign

Family encounters
My wife is driving. We're finding a space in a parking lot to go to a store. For some reason, she picks a spot in the far corner of the parking lot, as far from the store as we can get. Other parts of the parking lot have cars, but this bit is deserted. The parking lot is huge - I can barely see the store we're going to. I ask Bethany why she parked all the way out here, and she says that last time we got a good spot near the store, so we should let someone else have it this time around.

As we're getting out of the car, a car with a Hispanic family drives by. They pass us on the main parking lot road, back up, and come down our row. The husband is driving, and he's irritated with us for some reason. We continue getting out of the car (I think I get the baby) and trying to pacify the husband. Eventually, something clicks, and he becomes friendly.

Now I'm in our home with that family. I'm going to be giving his late-teens-early-twenties daughter a ride somewhere. Now we're in the garage, and she's loading her stuff in my trunk. She asks how it opens, and I explain that you can either use the button near the driver's seat, use the key, or use the remote, but that it doesn't have a button on the trunk itself to open it. She accidentally closes it before she's done, so she comes around to me to get the keys; I remind her that she can just use the button near the driver's seat.

As she's putting her stuff in the trunk, I'm standing in front of the car, looking at the window in the garage. A whole collection of large, very colorful insects is on the fly-screen (which is closer to me than the glass). She comes up; now she's supposed to be finding ammo, but instead she reaches out and touches one of the bugs, thinking it's the ammo she needs. Some of the bugs in the window are dead and on display, but others are alive, and the one she chooses is alive. It starts flying around angrily; I hope we don't get stung. We have a conversation about insects; she's amazed by the bright reds and yellows of these bugs, that they attract so much attention yet warn other animals not to mess with them.


Basement weirdness
I'm in a daylight basement. The stairs are behind me, and the outside door is in front of me. The main door is open, and the storm door is closed. It's split into 3 panes; a big one covers about 2/3rds of the door at the top, and a couple of smaller panes are on the left and right at the bottom. The right-hand bottom pane is missing, and the dog that lives in the house is trying to get out through it. This isn't my house or my dog, but I know he's not supposed to get out, so I grab him and try to hang on.

Now I'm outside. I'm sitting at the end of an 8 foot table; two tables are end-to-end, pushed up against the house near the door. A bunch more similar tables are arrayed behind me. Just inside the door in the basement is a compressor or some other loud piece of machinery. I can't switch tables, but I'm staying as far away from it as I can. I'm trying to work, using my laptop, and the sound makes it hard. I'm trying to send my team lead an IM to let him know that I ended up taking the previous afternoon off. It's time for the daily call, and I don't have anything to share because of my unplanned "vacation." Unfortunately, people keep sending me messages, distracting me, and I can't ever seem to send the message. Eventually, my team lead sends me one, asking why I'm not on the call. I give up on sending him a message of my own and try to call in, but there's a problem and the call isn't going through. I manage to send him a message about that.

A stewardess comes by with her drinks cart and asks me what I'd like. I'm amused that a stewardess is bringing me drinks at work, but I also recognize her, and she me; this isn't the first time she's ever brought drinks around. It's already been a rough day, so I loudly say "whiskey!" and we all laugh. I eventually tell her I want a ginger ale. She pours a tiny bit into a cheap plastic cup and gives me the cup and the can. She tells me that IBM has an alternate phone system that uses radio (I see an image of a radar screen with blips on it), and it's more reliable than the normal phone conference system. My team lead and I discuss trying to use it but eventually decide not to.

Now I'm walking around outside. The tables are gone, but the building is still there. I'm talking with someone about some kind of natural disaster. A reporter is trying to do an extremely politicized report, blaming the disaster on the incumbent.

Now I'm back in the basement, talking with a young woman who lives there. She's having trouble with her oven. It takes some extremely exotic fuel, and it's not burning right. The oven is in the middle of the room, near the door; another oven is by the far wall. Other than that and a table near this oven, the basement is empty, but it's huge.

Now I'm looking at a guy sitting at the end of the table. Something is wrong with him. He's embarrassed about it, but narrating his symptoms for someone. Something strange happens, his skin becomes very pale, and I enter into a minigame in which I need to catch fish that pop out of his body. At first, I don't realize they're fish because they look so strange - just brown blobs - so I have to restart the section. I click through his narration to get back to the minigame. This time, I do better getting the fist, though the controls are really flaky. At one point, I manage to block up the drain the fish fall through so I have a much easier time, but eventually it unblocks. Little tiny green gems start coming out along side the fish, and I make sure to grab these, since they're probably worth 1000 coins (I don't know it for sure, but it's common in these kinds of games). The gems start getting bigger, and I start concentrating on them more to the exclusion of the fish. They start to get so big that I can't collect them without breaking them down. I can't do it by hand, but I find that if I bite them they'll break into smaller gems that I can collect. Eventually the gems get so big I can't even bite them. The edges and corners are very hard, not quite sharp, and I have to be careful not to hurt myself as I work with them. Eventually the minigame ends. I step away for a moment, then back, and find that everything from the minigame is gone. I realize the ambient light melted it all and hope that my collection was recorded.

Now I'm back at the insect window in my garage, since that's what displays my achievements. I see that I have eight-hundred thirty-six green gems, which is less than I'd been expecting; then again, I have no idea how many I'd had before and what's considered good, so I don't worry about it too much.

Third-person

Kroger checkout
I'm with my daughter at Kroger, checking out. After I check out, I have to go by a table near the door to have stickers put on my food to prove that I bought it. The sticker table is manned by an old man and a middle-aged woman. Going up to it, we hear the old man telling another customer that they're out of stickers. After that customer leaves, I ask what we need to do since we can't get them, and he says to go to [unintelligible] and get signed out. The woman also mutters something, but I can't make it out at all.

Now I'm pushing through a door to go outside; I see another cash register out here. It's like the Home Depot outdoor plant area, except this doesn't have any products - it's just a wooded area with a fence around it and a cash register stand in the middle. The ground isn't even flat. No one is at the stand. I turn around to go back through the door, but now it's locked. I realize it's late and that we must be here past closing time. I wave and get someone's attention, and they come and open the door for us so we can get back in. They say just to leave and not worry about anything else.


Reality TV
I'm watching a reality TV show my parents were talking about. It's following a young woman who's just entered college. She's making a nuisance of herself in pretty much every way possible. Not only are her academics terrible, but she's filed a sexual harassment suite against her gym teacher, claiming he's singled her out for harder work. I see her running with a group of girls through some kind of course - narrow path, high walls. A female teacher is talking in a voiceover. Now I see her sitting in something like a yoga class, taught by the teacher she's filed the suite against. The rest of the class seems to be having a pretty easy tome of it, but from her facial expressions, she's struggling. The teacher (the one she's filed against) is now giving the voiceover, talking about how he can use the student's facial expressions to see if they've prepared or not, that if they stay relaxed he knows they've had enough sleep, but that she always looked exhausted coming into class. On-screen, he's slowly circling the group on a motorcycle, calling out instructions. Now the show is interviewing the girl directly. She says it was at this point that she got pregnant and didn't know if she should tell the school or not.


Full pool
My wife and I have just arrived at a swimming facility. It was a long drive, but we're here because we've got coupons giving us free entrance. We've got at least a couple of the kids with us. As we're talking about something, someone else who was with us comes out from the hall leading to the locker rooms and tells us that the place is full and they're not accepting anyone else. We're disappointed and find out more about what their full policy is.


Fragment
I'm watching someone sneaking around town, doing something like spy work. I think it's dusk.

Side-note | Third-person

Driving to church
I'm driving early in the morning. It's still dark and there are very few cars on the road. I'm waiting to make a left turn onto the Interstate near my house. I've got a red arrow, and I'm annoyed because no other cars are around and it'll be minutes before I can go. Now I'm on the on-ramp. I can't believe I just ran the red - I never do that! - and I'm trying to think back to think if saw any police around. I try to think if there was a red light camera, but I don't think there was - I've never noticed them, and I didn't see a flash.

Now I'm merging onto the Interstate. Again, it's completely deserted. I make a wide sweep on, going left a couple of lanes before coming back right into my normal lane. I wonder at my doing this, and I'm glad no other cars were around for me to hit. Now I'm driving straight in my lane, but I'm having trouble seeing the road ahead of me. My headlights are on, but they're barely illuminating the lines on the road. I can't see anything up ahead of me. I risk turning on my brights. I don't see any other cars, so I'm OK, and it helps a little with the illumination, but everything is still very dark. I look at my speedometer and realize I'm going 50 in a 65. As I accelerate, everything gets brighter, and I realize that, just like braking makes the front of the car go down, when I was going slowly my car was angled forwards so the headlights were pointing down.

Now I'm going under an overpass, sweeping to the right, and preparing to merge onto a road with some traffic on it. It's early dawn. On this new road, I can see a large purple church off to my left.
Now I'm meeting with my pastor in the purple church's belltower. Everything is purple, even the bell.

I actually did have an early morning prayer meeting at the church. Driving over there, I had a real sense of deja-vu.
Also, I don't think I actually ran the red in my dream. Instead, I think my mind noticed the discontinuity and rationalized it as "One moment I was waiting at a red - now I'm on the ramp - I never saw the green - I must have run it!"


DS9 weirdness
I'm watching Sisko and Dax walking around brightly lit starship corridors - probably on the Enterprise. They're talking about Bashir. Sisko is a little annoyed, but Dax is just amused. Now Sisko and Bashir are walking through the corridors. Sisko is annoyed and trying to hide it. I realize something else must be going on. Now Sisko and Garak are walking, and Sisko isn't even trying to hide his annoyance any more, getting somewhat hostile with Garak. In the middle of their conversation, they come to transporter pads (5, in an X pattern) set right into the middle of the hallway. Some of the other pads are already taken; Sisko steps on one and totally ignores Garak as the team beams away.

I'm watching DS9 with an older woman, a relative of some sort. She asks me how they did that (beaming away), and I realize she must never have seen Star Trek before.

Now I see the team in a cave. Sisko is wearing ceremonial robes, and I realize he's there for some Bajoran religious ceremony - that explains why he was so stressed out earlier.
My memory gets fuzzy here. There's something about a large pool of white stuff that gets sucked out by a pair of pipes, then replaced by water. Someone comments that usually they only use one pipe, that two pipes is reserved for special occasions. There's something about Kira dressed in civilian clothes after escaping from something. She's really unhappy because they've tattooed the back of her neck.


My new forum
I'm in my home office, at my computer. I've just opened a new forum to talk about games. It's almost a direct clone of an existing one, both on topics covered and software used. For some reason, a bunch of people didn't like the old one, so I took it upon myself to set this one up for people to bail to. So far, there's only a handful of users and very few threads. One of my friends has the most popular thread; it's already up to over 30 posts.

One of my coworkers is here with me. I let him use my computer to do something on the forum, but he can't type since my keyboard layout is still Dvorak. I hit the hot key to switch back to qwerty (pausing for a moment to wonder why I have that hotkey set up on my accounts) and let him do his thing. I switch back to my layout and account to sticky a thread.

Side-note

Craziness at home
I'm in the family room working on the laptop (though I have no memory of actually seeing the screen). I've placed an order with Amazon for about $20, but since I had a $20 gift card code, the order ended up being free. I wasn't entirely happy with one of the items, but I decided it'd do. Later, I find the item I really wanted. I check the status of the original order, and it's still processing, so I'm able to cancel it. I'm not sure what to do about the gift code, though, since I threw away the original paperwork. I hope they'll give it back to me or give me a new one and that it's not just lost. Later, leafing through some papers in a drawer, I come across some Amazon paperwork. I look through it more carefully, hoping it might have the gift code. On the second or third page, I see a box for a "sponsor code" and realize this is what I'd been looking for.

Now I'm in the dining room. The dining room table has been moved right under the window, and there's a tiny plant on it, no more than a couple inches high. It's an ugly thing, thin and spirally. The plant is dangerous, often shooting energy beams at anyone nearby. I tried to take my own shots at it, but I missed, so now I'm hiding under the table with a couple of my daughters. I'm hoping the long tablecloth will be enough to hide us from the police when they come looking - they're the ones who put the plant here, and they don't like having them messed with. I realize my younger daughter is moving around too much, that she'll give us away by moving the tablecloth, and I get her to calm down and sit down. I look up and realize that the table above me is gone. We're still surrounded by the tablecloth, but I can see up to the ceiling. Now I'm out from under the table, backing away, hoping the plant doesn't fire on me.

Now I'm standing at the kitchen window, looking out. Something is different, but it takes me a moment to realize what it is. With a start, I realize there's a big tree down between our house and our neighbour’s that hadn't been there before. It starts in our yard and goes back towards his house, coming uncomfortably close to it. I realize it was the big old one that was dying; then I realize it can't be, because we had it cut down. I'm trying to think what tree it was, but I don't worry too much about it, since it's obviously there and has to be dealt with. Looking at its base, I can see where the tree fibers ripped away from what's now the stump. On the side where it fell, some of the fibers are still connected to the stump, just bent at a crazy angle.

Now I'm back in the dining room area (though the plant is gone). I'm trying to explain something to my parents, something about what a D&D wizard can do. I'm looking at a chart showing levels, HP, MP (yes, I know D&D doesn't use MP), success probability, and other stats. I'm trying to show that wizards aren't bad because they can use a certain really handy spell. Loooking back through the stats, I realize it's not so great, because this spell will use up most of a high level wizard's MP and it only has slightly better than a 50% chance of success. I start poring over the numbers again, trying to find a better way to use his resources to accomprish the same thing. On the spell chart, I notice there's a version that can be cast from the main menu, and I decide to take a look.

Now I'm looking at a projection of a game on the wall. I'm poking around the main menu trying to find the spell. Instead, I end up in control customization. It seems the game was designed for phones, not tablets, so by default only the left side of the keyboard is available for shortcut keys. I switch it to tablet mode to get the full keyboard available, but when I try to save and leave it warns me that my layout will have to be completely redone. I don't feel like doing that now, so I just cancel it.



Disturbance at church
I'm in church, waiting for it to start. It's getting quiet, but our pastor hasn't stood up yet. I turn around and ask a question of the eldest daughter of the family behind me; then I realize it's completely quiet and that one of our elders has stood up and is waiting for me to be quiet. I sheepishly turn around and sit quietly. The elder announces we'll be starting the service with hymn ???. Along with the rest of the congregation, I grab my hymnal and turn to it.


Strange flame
I'm in a room with a man and a woman. In the middle of the floor, a tall thin flame is coming up from nowhere. We can't leave the room, and it's getting hotter by the moment. For a while, we stand in a wide barrel near the flame. It helps, but it's still no solution. We get out, and the other man moves the barrel onto the flame. I don't think this is a good idea, and I'm proved right when the flame melts through the barrel's bottom in just a couple of seconds. We actually get back in the barrel, standing with the flame at our center. We know some people are going to be coming soon, but it's not going to be a good thing.


House styles
I'm talking with someone about pencil and ??? houses, how ??? houses tend to be small and dingy where pencil houses are nice. I'm walking through a ??? with my daughter. It's small, dark, but still attractively decorated. Right next to the back door is a tiny kitchen which is only big enough for one person to stand in. A woman is in it, and I talk to her for a few moments.


Fragment
Something about sailing and friendly pirates.

Side-note Third-person Dreamsign Missed opportunity

Rambling dream
As I'm driving out of my neighbourhood, I see a police car sitting in someone's front lawn. I realize he's running a speed trap and check my speed, realizing I'm doing forty in a thirty-five. I let off the gas, and I'm surprised when the car suddenly slows down to about twenty. The last thing I wanted was to look suspicious, so I try to get back up to exactly thirty-five, but I have trouble doing so. I keep checking my rear-view mirror, but he's not following me. I make it to the turn onto the main road, but a lot of cars are coming, and it takes a while for a break to appear. As I'm watching for a break, I keep watching my mirrors, and I finally see the police car coming around the bend, though his lights aren't on. A small break has appeared in front of me, so even though I would normally wait for a larger break, I dart into it to make sure the police officer can't get right behind me and turn on his lights.

Now I'm driving along the main road. I forgot it's rush hour, so everything is very slow. I see a lot of school kids being let off in a parking lot surrounded by really shabby looking businesses. Other stuff happens here?

Now I'm on my way to somewhere to help the police crack a case. I've already spoken to someone about this, and he advised me to do it, but to be very cautious, to make sure the criminals involved don't try to take me out and to make sure the police don't decide to use my presence here to frame me and call the case closed.

Someone else has arrived at the scene. He's stuck, somehow, unable to leave, and he's trying different things. Finally he decides to try on a pair of headphones. I want to call to him not to do it, but I know he's going to do it, that I don't have any control over what's going on here. For a moment he holds the headphones a few inches from his ears, and I can hear something normal plus something grating just on the edge of hearing, and I realize the thing on the edge of hearing is some kind of mind control signal. He puts the headphones on, and instantly his reflection in a nearby window changes, adding a goatee that wasn't there before. He notices it and jumps. He tries removing the headphones, but the goatee stays, so he puts them back on. A woman talks to him. By the end of whatever she says, he's agreeing with her.

Now she's showing him visions of women, floating in the air in front of him. The vision starts out as a beautiful woman, but then certain aspects start to morph. Sometimes the face changes, sometimes the body, sometimes the arms. Some of the forms are very attractive; others are very ugly. One form has arms which are so emaciated that the shape of the bones is visible. The headphone woman tells him that he needs to appreciate all women, no matter what they look like.
Now he and a friend are back at his house. The friend is notorious for doing stuff that causes small explosions in his basement, doing minor damage, and he hopes that doesn't happen today. Today, they're both wearing powered exoskeletons, courtesy of the woman on the headphones. For some reason, the friend tries to slam his arm into the wall; all he does is hurt himself. There's something about a Back to the Future reference.

Now they're outside. The man is telling his friend about something the woman told him: that it's possible for people to change which of their genes are expressed. For instance, a man of mixed race could choose to express the genes of only one race or the other, changing his color. The man wonders whether, since men are a mix of X and Y chromosomes, a man could choose to express only the female genes and turn into a woman.

Now I'm outside with one of the guys, trying something else the woman talked about. I have a plastic chainsaw mounted on two wheels with a long handle; as I push the contraption around, the wheels drive the chainsaw (it's like a reel mower, but with a chainsaw). I'm not actually touching anything with the chainsaw, but I'm managing to crush a lot of plants. Somehow, this has something to do with homoeopathy, but I thought the idea was to take the essence from one plant and give it to another, not just to crush everything.


Possessed by a program
A teen / early twenties man is recounting the story of his father being possessed by a computer program. He knew something was very wrong when his father told him to call him Carl (his first name) instead of Dad. The program always made very sure to rub that in, and the son really hated that. I see the son is in a hallway in a restaurant, purposefully spilling something brown on the wall, then covering it with paint so it can't be seen. He didn't do it right the first time, so he has to do it again.

Now he's in a contemporary building, in a giant entry/atrium area. Now he's in a hidden back room covered with monitors. They're showing the "code" for the program, but it's just a bunch of really long numbers. He's wandering around the room, noticing some of the numbers, commenting on them, on their complexity, their subtlety. He notices one number containing one point six zero nine nine nine ... and realizes that was the string that was supposedly corrupt that drove a big part of the plot of what he had to do.


Moving day troubles
I see a snapshot, a still image, of a girl in the middle of a move, having trouble. She's at the top of stairs with some kind of furniture unit below her. I look closer and see a dresser on the landing above her. Now I'm there, along with some other people. I'm not sure if she's trying to move in or out. As I'm talking to her, I realize she's moving back in after being gone for a short while. She's trying to re-glue something on the unit while it's still laying on the stairs, but she's not hopeful that it'll work right, since there's already too much dried glue in the spot - something that happened when she was moving out of here a few months ago.


Boarding house infiltration
Three women and a man are role playing. They need to infiltrate a boarding house. To fit in better, they're wearing clothing that's a little rough though still clean. They're in the boarding house's entry room, talking to a motherly old woman. Behind her is the locked door that leads into the boarding house proper. To her right is a dresser with some odds and ends on top. Somehow, the man knows how this scenario should play out: there's a key on top of the dresser that they can use to get in, if they can bluff the woman well enough. As one of his companions is talking to the old woman, he glances around casually, as if just taking the place in, and can see the key to room 321 on the dresser. Another man shows up, one who stays at the boarding house. The old woman asks us to wait while she deals with the newcomer, who's lost his key yet again. She ends up riffling through one of the drawers in the dresser; the man can see that the drawer is packed to overflowing with pairs of jeans.

Now the newcomer and the old woman are gone, and a slightly younger woman is in her place. The man in the party is looking for an opportunity to get the key, and when the woman turns her back, he manages it. With the key in his possession, he's able to bluff the woman into thinking they belong here, and they get inside.

Now they're in room 321. One of the women is in the bathroom, taking a shower. The man starts to undress, then stops, deciding to look around first - he doesn't like the feel of this place. Turning around, he see the door to the hallway to his left and the door to the balcony straight ahead. The balcony door has a keyhole on the inside, but the hallway door doesn't have an obvious way to lock it. He opens the hallway door a crack and looks out, seeing another room across the hall. The outside of the door doesn't seem to have a keyhole either. He closes the hallway door and examines the balcony door. He starts to try the key in the lock, then realizes he only has the key head: the shaft is missing. Looking more closely around the lock, he finds the shaft. When he brings the head and shaft together, they glow for a moment and are joined into a working key.

I tried SSILD between the first set of dreams and the boarding house dream

Third-person
Missed opportunity

Muddled at church
I'm at the adult Sunday School. A guy out of rotation is teaching, though he's still seated in his normal spot. I try to start a conversation with him, then realize he's still trying to teach, so I sit and listen. When he's done, I want to make a copy of his Bible on the page it's at. I try, then realize I've managed to make a copy of just the cover, and I'm embarrassed. I also realize I've bent his Bible's spine the wrong way - I'm horrified, since I don't want to damage it, and I'm also confused, since how could I have copied the cover if it's bent this way? I unfold it, resolved to copy it correctly this time, but the page has changed. I can't imagine how I managed to change the page just by bending the cover back, but I know it's different, though I can't remember what it's actually supposed to be on. At this point I think I'm trying to do this for the church web site, so I'm further embarrassed that I won't be able to get the website right.

By this time, a couple of other people are talking to him. I notice that even though he and his wife have only been expecting for a few weeks that he's already showing. I get a brief moment of "something's not right", but it quickly passes.


Wrong turn
I'm driving, about to turn onto an Interstate ramp. I make the left, then realize the ramp isn't there, that I'm in a U-turn only spot. I'm very confused, but decide I must not have been paying attention and turned left too early. I make another U-turn, resolving to pay attention and make sure I reach the ramp light before turning.


A game
I'm playing a 2d game with a flying main character. I'm currently in a large, roughly circular room fighting a boss, an insect of some sort. He's green with a long thin tail that moves and attacks very quickly. I have to dart in, attack, and dart away before he can strike with his tail. As I'm flying around fighting him in his boss room, pulsing jewels keep appearing. I make sure to collect every one I come across. After I finish the boss fight, I continue on through similar levels, finding more jewels, always heading generally up. Eventually I get a sort of cut scene back at HQ where a man and woman in lab coats tell me they've got something new for me.


Fragment
I'm in a house with some other people. I see something out the sliding glass window.

As far as I can tell, this dream didn't actually go lucid. Recently, I've been telling myself over and over that "I will fly when I dream!" - it seems my subconscious finally picked up on it, even if I wasn't lucid at the time. As for the candy? Maybe I was reliving my completion of the basic TOTM?

I'm in a wooded area with a group of people doing outdoor activities. From a clearing with the remains of a campfire, I've been walking certain paths over and over. The proper path goes to the left, nearly hits the road, turns right, and runs generally parallel to the road, snaking back and forth without ever getting too far from the road. In the clearing, I realize that if I walk straight ahead through a few feet of trees and underbrush, I'll come out on a second path which has a much broader sweep, with a swampy area to the right, eventually hitting the first path right as they cross the road. I like the second path much better and decide to use it.

Now I'm crossing the road. I don't pay attention and get hit by a car. Now I'm walking down a hallway towards a window. I step through the open window and over a small flower garden, coming out in the clearing. I see someone else from my group taking my cut through the trees to the second path and decide that I'm going to take the main path and try to beat him. I start to jog along the path.

When it meets the road and turns to the right, it goes down a long, moderate incline before it starts to snake. As I pass the top of the incline, I leap into the air, hold my arms straight in front of me (Superman style), and glide down the hill. Looking to my right through the trees, I can see the other guy. We're at around the same place, and I still want to beat him. As I glide down the hill, I quickly pick up speed. At the bottom, I "pull up" and am really pleased when I gain some good altitude - probably about ten feet. I don't want to loose too much speed and stall out, so I angle myself just slightly towards the ground and keep going. Ahead of me, the path kinks to the right and back to the left, going around* a tree limb at a bad height, but I fly right over it. As I'm flying I try both Superman arms-in-front as well as pretending my arms are wings and holding them to the side. They both work equally well.

Now I'm at the road crossing. I'm a bit nervous about crossing the road flying, just in case something goes wrong, but I've got enough speed and altitude that I'm confident I'll make it. I get across with no problem. Past the road, the path becomes wider and grassy and forks. I can go either straight ahead and then right, or I can turn immediately right. Somehow I know that ahead-and-right will be fairly flat while immediate-right will be downhill, so I turn right. It's even wider here, probably twenty or thirty feet, straight and smooth (it'd make a great ski run). I go down it faster and faster, picking up more and more speed.

At the bottom I "pull up" and shoot way into the air, higher than the trees, high enough to see both paths clearly, high enough to see the wooded areas as just a big blob of dark green and the paths as blobs of light green. I have a brief thought that I shouldn't be cheating like this, but I don't care. I fly a little high in the air until I see a brown patch that's a building at the end of the trails. I start to descend towards it. It rapidly becomes bigger, though it only becomes slightly more detailed - it looks like a falling-to-earth effect from an old SNES game. As I get closer, I see a brown boxy shape with square child icons moving around inside it, representing the building and the locations of the people inside it.

Now I'm in the house,* in a smallish room. A bunch of kids are moving in and out of the room, trick-or-treating. I know I have to get some of their candy, but I know it'll be easy: all I have to do is put out a container with at least one empty slot, and the next kid to come by will fill it (they have very basic behaviors coded). I put out some kind of flat partitioned container and take a lemon Starburst from one of the corner spots. I end up focusing on the Star Burst and ignoring the rest of the candy. Now I'm chewing the Starburst and holding the empty wrapper, playing with it.

Side-note
Third-person
Dreamsign
Missed opportunity

Meeting Kiin
I'm somewhere with a woman. We see a tall, wide man - somehow I know his name is written Caya?e, or somesuch. I think nothing of him. The woman runs up to him and hugs him and calls him Hunky Kay which is straight from Elantris, though I didn't realize it at the time. I realize his name is actually Kiin (pronounced Kai-ai-an), and I'm confused about the spelling I saw earlier, since it started with the Kai-ai sound, but it didn't end in an N.

Somehow I end up getting a bearhug from Kiin too; my face ends up somewhere in the middle of his chest. While I'm caught in the bearhug, I'm trying to unlock my tablet. Somehow I'm typing behind his back, but the password is coming up cleartext. I quickly erase it so he can't see it.


Clothes shopping
I'm in a department store, shopping for shoes. A sales lady is trying to sell me a "whole new look," but I'm not interested. I'm still trying to look at the shoes, but I don't like any of them. She finally agrees to show me some that are more like the sneakers I'm wearing, but what she comes out with is very strange - like a sneaker with the laces and tongue removed. Since the shoes she was trying to sell me earlier went well with the "new look," I finally agree to try on the clothes and shoes together. They're dressier than what I usually wear (she's given me slacks and a long-sleeved, colored button-down shirt), but they look good on me. She also hands me a color-coordinated pocket protector. I realize that with clothes like these, I need something less like sneakers and more like dress shoes.

I'm aware of something happening nearby at a black ops lab; it has something to do with a melt-down, a plumber, and a locksmith.

Now I'm comforting the saleslady, telling her it'll be OK.


Tower defense
[COLOR="#FF8C00"]I'm playing a tower defense game. I've just discovered wizard units that automatically cast freeze on anything that comes in range, and I decide these are my new favorite units. I do well for a while, but eventually I start to get overrun. I'm trying to pinch to zoom out, but it's responding really, really slowly - a single pinch barely changes the screen, and I have to do it over and over.


Impersonating the Dalai Lama
I'm traveling with some guy. For some reason, he's dressed me up as the Dalai Lama. We get out of a taxi near our hotel, and I see I have a couple of large suit cases that I really don't feel like lugging with me. My companion says "Oh, if ONLY there were SOMEONE to help the DALAI LAMA with his LUGGAGE," and suddenly we're swarmed by helpful people who would love to carry the luggage.


China's coastline
I'm on a boat, traveling along the coast of China. It only takes a few minutes to travel from one end to the other. At each end, I can clearly see the countries it borders, since each country is a different solid color (just like on a map).


Making pizza
I'm at my pastor's house, making pizza for him. It's time to take the pizza out of the oven, but I can only find one pot holder. I see that one of his daughters has the other one. I wait for her to finish using it, then take it and use the pair to get the pizza out. For some reason, I'm having a lot of trouble dealing with the pizza pan, and I'm really concerned I'm going to burn myself.


Fragment
I'm calling my credit card company to dispute a charge.

Third-person
Dreamsign

Sneaking to a party
I'm reminiscing with a friend about college, about the time we snuck off campus to go to a proper Halloween party. Our options on campus were either a campus-wide fling or ???. Now I'm walking through a giant cafeteria. I'm trying to walk with a confident step, staying away from everyone, but I still end up running into a security guard. We chat and hit it off; he offers me a slice of pizza from a box he confiscated from some guys earlier, and I accept. A group of suave bullies comes up demanding their own slices, and he gives them the rest of the box. They start demanding he finally show them the gym control room in the tower. He waffles but decides to do it as long as they're very quiet and don't touch anything.

Now we're climbing the tower. It's been decorated to look extra spooky. There's something subtly strange about the walls, and I spend a while studying them, trying to figure out what makes them so "scary." Now we're at the top. The guard has to go back to the gym but he gives us a short tour first.

Now I've snuck out the back door. I'm sending a text to my friend who's waiting in the parking lot. Now I'm in the parking lot. I close the door on my car so a red truck can pull away without hitting my door.


Train escape
A man is trying to escape from somewhere. He's got information that needs to get somewhere. Now he's acquired a train and is very pleased with himself. His feelings change when he sees a police train on a parallel track telling his train to stop for inspection. He realizes that a single car train is too suspicious. He hides somewhere on his train as the police train comes closer, but when they see what the single car is they let the train go without searching it.


Yard work
I'm working in the yard. I'm using a "tiller" - it looks like a drill with a marshmallow roasting stick spinning on the end. It's very effective: it can cut through any dirt, or even wood, turning it into loose soil. I'm working in my garden, tilling up the raised bed frame. I see my neighbor, a small middle-aged Asian woman, and talk to her about Centipede grass. I'm trying to get it to take over my lawn. My neighbor says she likes Centipede, but that it hasn't done well for her at her current house. As we're talking, I notice a drainage ditch between our properties. Looking closer, I see it looks funny; at first I think it's got little bits of ice floating on it, then I realize it's a lot of oil sitting on the top.


Workmen in the house
I've just come home and am walking into the breakfast nook. I notice the basement door is open and there's a new switch panel near the stairs. I remember there were supposed to be workmen here earlier, but I didn't expect them still to be working. I hope they didn't let the pets have free reign of the house. I walk over to the new switch panel and look more closely at it. There are 5 switches in a row, all looking the same. There's a large, seemingly fixed rectangle at the top with a couple of small buttons under it. I press one of the buttons to see what happens, and the light in the entryway turns slowly on, dimming from off to full bright in a few seconds. I press the other button and the light dims all the way off.

Now I'm down in the basement watching the workmen. They're trying to connect a small box to our furnace. It has a lot of wires hanging off of it, and they're having some trouble.


Fragments
I'm talking to my wife about cats and dogs. She starts to talk about how long the cats take to do something but realizes that's silly since the dog takes so much longer. Now I'm in a finished basement making some tea using an electric kettle. We both have chiropractic appointments soon, so I hope the water heats quickly. We have to call them to tell them that something has changed and to see if we can get an earlier appointment.

Third-person Dreamsign Missed opportunity

Mars Insurrection
A man and a woman are sitting at a cafe table outdoors, talking. They're some sort of insurrectionists, and they're discussing how to overthrow Mars. The man says they have a gas that'll make people's minds more pliable, but for their purposes it's not strong enough. The woman says that if someone ingests a drug in multiple physical forms that the effects are compounded; she likens it to the method some wives use to get their husbands extremely drunk so they get arrested.

Now I'm seeing the outside of the police station. The man is in a fancy wheelchair. I can only see his back, but I know he's handcuffed. A female officer is pushing the wheelchair up the steps. It's the kind of ostentatious government building with about two stories of steps as wide as the building itself. I'm a little confused how the wheelchair is making it up, but I don't worry about it.

Now they're inside. A judge has just finished ruling on the man's case - but it turns out that both she and the officer are in on the plan. The judge says something to the officer who clips a little card in front of the man's face. To an outside observer, it just looks like it's obscuring his view of the proceedings. Now I see it from his view; it's a panoramic greeting card. Goofy is wearing an apron and wig and working in the kitchen, and another Disney character is there with him. Now the card has become animated, and the judge and officer are singing. Part of the song is something about hoping he enjoys the long months on the prison ship to Mars. I realize that the officer and judge are using the man as the fall guy to set their plan into motion.


Newfangled video games
I'm in someone's living room, sitting on their sofa. I have the impression I'm in an open floorplan with a large, bare area, but it's behind me, since the couch is facing into the corner. In the corner is a fairly small entertainment center with a TV and video game console. A long black cord runs from the console to the controller next to me on the couch. A game is plugged into the controller, and it's currently booting on the console. It reminds me of an old SNES game with parachutes, planes, and boats. It's been so long since I've gamed on a console that I'm a little unsure of things. I have no idea which console it is, what the game is, or how to play it. I try to make smalltalk with the homeowner by talking about the old days when the controller cords were only 6 feet long and you had to sit right in front of the TV to play.


Home improvement
I'm looking at a house. There's a section of the wall under the roofline that's been ripped out and replaced. The rest of the house looks completely normal, but this section is composed of 1x3x8s, running top-to-bottom, covered in a clear coat. Now I'm watching a salesman talking to some people about some kind of project they want to do, and why they should go with him. He's describing a variety of really bad alternatives of how they can do what they want to do, explaining that his method is the only viable one. I point out the house next door with the strange section, that it seems to do exactly what they want, and it's much simpler and cheaper than what he's suggesting, and he freezes and can't think of a good response.

Now I'm on a flat roof with my grandfather (who's skilled in woodworking) and a handyman I know, and maybe a couple of other people. We're currently standing under a shelter, since it's raining. We're all holding a tarp over our heads, getting ready to head out into the rain to do the work, hoping to stay dry. A couple of people in the group decide they don't care, drop the tarp, and head out into the rain unprotected. Now we're all wet. We're back under the shelter, and the other guys have decided to go home and change because they're wet. I'm really frustrated with them because it's their fault they got wet in the first place.


Farewell boat tour
I'm on a largish tour boat, going around a manmade river. The river is actually a giant square; it even has precise 90 degree corners. We're approaching one of the corners now. In front of us, floating right next to the wall, is another similar boat. I can't see anyone, but I know my pastor is on it. Now he's talking to us (in-dream, I think I decided it was over a PA system), giving some sort of farewell address. As part of it, he mentions that there are three people on my boat whose fathers were military men and are now dead; I feel a tear coming to my eye.


Dress shop adventure
My wife and I go into a store in a shopping strip. It's very richly decorated, with dark woods, dark colors, and fabrics. The store isn't very wide, but it goes way back. It seems to be a dress store for plus size women: all the mannequins are extremely unattractive, with huge guts, but the dresses on them are clearly very expensive, well made dresses. There aren't actually that many dress stands around; most of the store is taken up with scattered bookshelves holding antique books. As we're walking through, I feel like I shouldn't be here, both because we have no need of plus-size dresses and because this place is so nice that my normal clothes feel trashy. We meet the owner near the back of the store, and she explains that this was a very difficult store to open, and that the antique books help to get people in the right frame of mind (or something like that)

Now we're in a back room, probably the break room. There's no finery back here. Everything is very plain. A stainless steel countertop with sink runs along the back wall; a cheap circular table with chairs is in the middle of the room, with someone sitting at it. Now we're moving back through the store, but we're in an FPS. We've just come up the hallway from the break room, and we're confident no one is behind us. We're in a corner with good cover (lots of scattered dress models), so we're safe for the moment. I have some special abilities that I haven't tried yet; I scan through them and try to decide which one to try next. I pick something explosive.

October 22, 2013

Third-person

Desert strategy
I'm playing some kind of strategy game. The map is of a desert area with a few ruined structures. Dots (evenly spaced) are placed in a semicircle starting at the top going counterclockwise to the bottom. Each dot represents a place I can take control of - some or all of them are missions that need to be done. I'm playing against an opponent (female, but I don't know if she is human or AI) who's also trying to take them.

This is my first time playing the game, and I have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm feeling my way around. At one point, I'm doing one of the missions, and I can see a huge, dirty, black tower that I know is part of an oil refinery. Later, on the overview map, I've made it most of the way around the semicircle. It didn't take much effort, so this must be a tutorial map.

I select one of the dots and see I have some weapon resources; I try to send them to dots further on, but I realize too late that I actually fired them at my own holdings. That's going to cause enough damage that I decide to restart.


Flooding structure
I'm in a smallish room with another couple of men. The room is all concrete and metal, with pipes running along the ceiling. We're trying to do something with a pipe lower down, which is leaking. Despite our best efforts, the leak is getting worse and worse. With horror, I realize that something has destroyed the seals in this pipe, and that it's probably destroyed the seals in other pipes as well.

Now the room is filling with water, and we're all trying to get to safety. We manage to get get through the door to the stairwell. Other people from below are evacuating (we're underground). Near the door, on the wall, is a phone: against the advice of my companions, I pick it up and try to dial 911. I don't expect it to work, but the call connects. I don't hear a voice on the other end, just some electronic noises, and I don't have time to wait. I know that they'll send someone to check out a hangup call, so I just hang up and start climbing the stairs.

Now I'm walking around in a building aboveground, through a hallway that runs around an open courtyard. The courtyard is mostly just dusty dry dirt. On the far side of the courtyard, the building rises up a second story. Now I'm climbing the steps to the second story and see that the bathrooms are up here.

Third-person Missed opportunity

Fat Darth Vader
I'm watching people in a huge space. The floor and walls are a shiny black material laced with silver stripes, rather reminiscent of the Grid in Tron. Something comes up about a "fat Darth Vader," that he may not look very graceful, but he's still very dangerous.

Now I see him. He's got a huge beer gut and looks like he's wearing an off-the-shelf costume. Oddly, the cape has a hint of purple to it. Now, a young Obi-Wan is there. He looks in his late teens, and he has bright red hair. He cheekily tries to rile up Vader: "Can you knock me down?" Vader uses the force to cause Obi-Wan pain. The ground flashes to bright white, and Obi-wan drops to the ground and gasps out "Good enough." Obi-wan does a terrible wall jump, then asks if Vader can do it. He jumps and swings his blade under his feet.

Now, instead of watching live action, I'm watching badly drawn animation. Anything Obi-wan's red beard/hair touches starts to smolder, and somehow he keeps getting close enough to Vader and his guards to keep singeing them.


Iron Man fail
A very limited Iron Man suit, not designed for actual use, is on display at an arena. Stark ends up using it anyway. Its battery only has six charges, and they run out when he' s sixty thousand feet in the air. As he's falling to his death, he comes up with some way to use the fall to get just enough charge to save himself at the last moment. After he's safe, he does something else completely recklesss, runs out of power again at nine hundred thousand feet, and manages once again to get to safety. Now he has a cold from the crazy altitude/pressure shifts in a poorly sealed suit.


School bus
My wife is driving a school bus, and I'm the passenger seat(?). She pulls into the school's parking area, through the bus area, and turns around. She slides her window open and asks the nearby bus coordinator if she's needed today. Unexpectedly, she is. The coordinator tells her she's needed in ???. My wife hasn't gone there before and asks for a map. The coordinator doesn't have one on her but tells my wife she can go inside to get one. While I'm waiting for her to come back, I'm trying to pull up directions on my tablet. I see my brother-in-law going by the driver's window and reach out to shake his hand. As I'm shaking his hand, I almost make him fall; I realize he must be skating.

Now my wife and I are in a room somewhere. I'm sure it's Monday, but she's sure it's Tuesday. I'm worried, since there were things I was supposed to be doing on Tuesday. Eventually I pull out my phone and see it's Monday.


Political bibs
I've received a four pack of bibs from by old boss' bodyguard. The bibs are heavily political, extremely right wing, talking about the failures of our government, making snide comments about California, but also making an offhand comment that it probably won't be around in another two weeks. My wife's more up-to-date on political matters than I am, so I ask her about the bibs, and she says they're pretty accurate, even about California going away, and is amazed I haven't heard this stuff before.

Now there's something about using cloth diapers. She's getting ready to change a baby, but it's not one of ours.


Food court
I'm walking with my pastor, going to a food court. We're in a multi-story building, near the top; the food court is on the ground floor. We're taking the stairs down. I take particular note that each landing has an oversized trash can on it. The doors into the hallways off of the landings are locked; I realize that's to give the dorm residents privacy.

Now we're in the food court, in line, talking with a few older guys my pastor knows. The tables in the court are mostly empty, and the line is short: we're almost at the food, and there's only one more group behind us. Now we've reached the food and have started filling our plates. One of the guys advises us that the meat is the best option. I wonder how full I can fill my plate, and somehow I know (or remember) that there's a half-ton weight limit.

Now I'm at a table, trying to eat my food. I got a lot of sliced ham, but the quality is terrible. There's more fat than meat, and I'm having a tough time separating the two. A guy at the table is reading the newspaper. On the front cover, I see a picture of an old guy with a cane that doubles as a light-saber.


Helping at the Chinese restaurant
I'm walking along the street with a group of friends. One guy is leading us to a restaurant he knows about. Now we're inside, sitting at table near the door. For a restaurant, the room is fairly small. The room is colorful - mostly red. The back wall is taken up with kitchen stuff; there's no wall or other barrier between it and the dining area.

They seem to be understaffed. The cook looks towards us and says that I look helpful and asks me to help with something. I'm unsure, but I get up and go over to him. To the left of the kitchen counter (stainless steel), I see a sink, so I go over and wash my hands. The sink has stuff around it, so it's hard to get to, and I have to reach way down to get to it - it's set way down into the counter. Though the handle (of the single stick variety) is slightly on the cold side, I'm surprised the water is uncomfortably hot.

Once my hands are clean, I ask what he needs. A woman comes over, hands me a large mug of brewing tea, and explains that I need to set it on the hearth for two minutes, then pour it through a filter into another mug. Now we're in the storeroom, looking for a second mug. The one I'm holding is one of my own large white-and-blue ones; none of the other ones in the mug cabinet are as large, so I think it'll overflow, but she's not worried. I finally find another large one; the design is different, but it should hold all the tea. I start to ask where the hearth is, but then I remember there's a fireplace near the door. We spent a while looking for a mug, so I ask her if the two minutes haven't already passed, but she says they haven't: it only counts when the mug is on the hearth. She's pleased and says they need to refund some of my credit card bill. I think it's odd that she spoke of my "credit card bill" in that way but don't think more about it.

Now I'm near the fireplace. There's a cheap folding table right in front of it. At first, I consider crawling under it to get to the hearth, but I decide just to move the table. I put the mug down and start counting my two minutes. A foreign (eastern European?) family comes in while I'm waiting: parents and a young son, around 5 years old.

Now I'm back at my table. Everyone else has been served their food and is eating. At my place is something that looks tasty but is more the size of an appetizer. I'll still need to order my real meal; I hope it doesn't take too long to arrive.


Twisted costume
My wife is walking down the street in a giant head Halloween costume. It's become twisted and she's having trouble seeing out of it. She manages to get it untwisted and can see out the front again.