Nazrax

Dreamsign Missed opportunity

Clark's advice
I'm walking around in a bare house listening to Clark Howard on the radio. A man has called in complaining about discrimination against him at work. He says that for years, he's had ??? on his computer, but recently they decided that wasn't appropriate. The guy rambles, never really getting to the point, and Clark is getting annoyed with him. When he finally does get to the point, Clark is quiet for a while, and the guy says something like "Are you still there?" which annoys Clark even more. As Clark keeps asking him questions, the story changes. It's no longer ???, but now it's games the guys plays on his computer. He still doesn't see it as a problem. Now it seems that Clark has managed to remote into the guy's computer and is poking around. He doesn't find the ??? or the games - instead, he finds porn, and he tells the guy that he could be fired for that.

Graduation + bad driver
I'm at the Christ College graduation. I'm hearing (maybe giving?) a commentary on what's going on and what I'm seeing. My viewpoint is drifting slowly over a path as it winds back and forth across a small stream, past flowers, and eventually reaches a single banquet table. At the table are the president of the school, my father, and four young men who are graduating. I know one of them, and I'm acquainted with one of his friends. The banquet table is sitting out on the grass. It's a beautiful day.

Now I'm walking down the street after leaving the graduation, and I see the two graduates I know. I go up to them and comment that I'm amazed they've left already, and that at Tech the graduation would be going on for hours yet. I had to interrupt their conversation to say it, and it took some effort to get their attention. Both of them are dressed in black suites with a splash of red - maybe a flower?

Now I'm in a parking lot with my wife and kids. A guy in a small red SUV comes in too fast near us and does a terrible parking job. He's just letting his family out, so he doesn't care. He's entered his spot at a fourty-five degree angle, and the side of his car is a fraction of an inch from the bumper of car in the next spot over. My family was nearby, and I'm amazed he didn't hit them.

Now it turns out that he was so close to them that they got pushed inside his car, and we're all in his rear cargo area. Now the car is driving back out of the parking lot. I try to get the guy's attention and ask him to stop the car so we can get out. He sort of acknowledges me, but he keeps driving. I don't know what to say. My wife says he lives on the island, as if that somehow explains it. I think that maybe he's taking us to a better place to drop us off, but then I realize we'll have to walk back to the car. I have a moment of confusion as I can't remember where the car is. I remember that it's where I was talking to the graduates, but I also remember that it's in the parking lot we just left.

For some reason, I don't want to speak my thoughts aloud to my wife. I consider writing them on the tablet, but that's too slow. I'm reminded of the trouble Robert had in Rainbow's End when he first started wearing and was using the eye-board.
Now we're at an intersection. It's just a 2-lane road either direction. As we're waiting to go, I notice he's listening to the radio.

Pizza and a baby
I'm taking my baby and another of my children into a pizza place to pick up our pizza. I'm not sure how I'm going to hold the baby and the box of pizza at the same time.

Side-note Third-person Dreamsign

The shark
I'm in a small boat with two other guys. A larger boat is nearby. A shadow in the water is circling us, nudging us away from the big boat, I don't see a fin, but I know it's a shark.

Research station
I'm at a tropical research station. It's a picturesque place, with trees all around, a river to my left, and a row of low off-white buildings. Due to the government shutdown, many of the experiments running here have been ruined and will take months or years to redo. They can't even afford their normal buildings, so they're renting out a motel to have space for the few of them who are left to work in.

Now, I'm driving, making a tight corner near the research base and driving up a mountain road.

Messed up clocks
I finally give up on my WILD attempt and try to check the time. First, I look at my phone, but it's showing something crazy. It looks like a clock, but the characters are thin and purple and show an impossible time. I'm concerned that something's crashed or gone haywire, but then I realize I was in the media player and this is showing the play time.

I look at the clock on my nightstand and see that it's just short of eight o'clock, and I'm horrified: I overslept by nearly 2 hours, and I'm late for work by one hour. I check the alarm settings on my phone to see what happened. As far as I can tell, I set the alarm properly, but it never went off. This is the second time this has happened; I'm seriously concerned about the reliability of this phone now.

I really had been trying to WILD; I must have fallen asleep during the attempt.

City transit
I'm in a city, driving, pulling out of a parking lot. A shuttle bus gives me room to pull out of the parking lot I'm in, which I'm grateful for - traffic is heavy. I get in the right-most lane, then move over another lane. This is a big road with at least 4 lanes in each direction.

Now I turn onto a road, then realize it's the wrong one. It's fairly narrow and has no markings. Up ahead, I see a spot that looks like a good turnaround; when I get to it, it turns out to be a small parking lot with slots on either side of the road, so it's perfect. I swing right, then all the way around to the left. As I start to head back down the road, I see giant white arrows painted on it pointing the direction I was originally heading, against how I'm traveling now. Whoops: it's a one-way street. I'm not too far from the entrance, and no cars are coming, so I go ahead and drive back down it anyway.

Now I'm on the sidewalk with my bike, walking beside it. I think about getting on it properly, but then I see another guy also walking with his bike - running, in fact, to get to a* traffic light and across the crossing before it changes. I follow his example.

Now that I'm across the street, I think again about mounting the bike, but I can't figure out how. The handlebars are a kind of oval shape, so I try sitting on it, but that doesn't work at all. I'm coming up on a really crowded part of the sidewalk, so I fold up my bike a little, but not very well. Troy's road bike folds much more easily, and I consider again whether it was a mistake to get a mountain bike.

Now the sidewalk across the street in front of me is completely blocked - it looks like people are getting ready to view a parade. I'm forced to turn right; I'm going to have to figure out how to get back where I need to be.

Now I'm in hallways underground. Near the stairs out, I come across a troubled youth. He's black, with short frizzy hair, and he's mumbling something I can't really make out. My first reaction is just to avoid him and keep moving, but then I have compassion on him. I realize he probably doesn't get much love, and I determine to show him some. I rest my hands on his head, and he seems to calm down some. He's still mumbling something - I think it's about nuns or the Roman Catholic church - and I try to think how to tell him about the saving work of Christ. I happen to look down and realize that his right foot is about the size of my young daughter's, though his left foot is normal. A male teacher walks by and makes a brief comment about him.

Attack animals
Someone has engineered a bunch of little animals designed to take down a huge animal. I see them swarming the huge animal's feet, generally getting crushed underfoot. They're calling strategy to each other.

Stuck
Underground, I see a huge door. It's been damaged at the bottom, and there's a chipmunk boy scout stuck under it (he's wearing a red-and-green uniform). A nearby adult mole (also in uniform) is trying to figure out how to free the scout. Suddenly, flame erupts from the top of the door right above the scout and starts to drip down. The mole panics and flees, ashamed that he couldn't save the scout; but the flames actually end up burning away the part of the door trapping the scout, freeing him.

Side-note Third-person Dreamsign

The documentary
I see a couple of people on a mountain trail. The trail itself is has a good slope; on one side is a steep incline up, and on the other side is a dropoff. Up-hill is fairly barren, but the valley below them is very green. It's a man and woman; they're fairly plain, wearing generic exploring / hiking clothing. They're near some kind of broken-down building. My viewpoint is from uphill, looking downhill towards them.

Now, the view shifts to look down the trail, some theme music starts, and a guy rides up on a raptor. He looks very dapper, with slicked back hair and finer clothing. He's doing some kind of documentary of the area. Unfortunately, it's a mess of different territories, so the woman with him is there to manage the beurocracy and get them permission to go where they need to.
Initially, I think they're at a state park in the US, but then the guy on the raptor talks, and his accent is funny. I decide they're in Canada, just across the border.

At some point, I switch to watching them from behind a chainlink fence. From this viewpoint, the valley is again behind them.


Captain's Journal
A young man is staying with a well-to-do family. He's interested in starting a relationship with their daughter. In talking with the father, they decide that, even though the relationship is new, there's enough interest between the man and daughter that they should be courting.

Now he's downstairs, talking with another man. This man tells him that the father is an old captain and that his journal is hidden in a crack near the bed. The young man is very curious and decides to look for it.

Now I'm in a hallway with the young man. A single bookshelf is by the wall with a lot of books put on it in no particular order or arrangement. I pick up a book at random, open it to a random page, and start reading. It's something out of the Wheel of Time. In the scene I'm reading, Rand and Perrin are doing something around a camp fire. It's not a scene I'm familiar with.


Approved hardware
I'm lying on a bed, lost in thought. my wife is sitting on the bed, doing something. On her nightstand, a phone is in speakerphone mode, connected to a conference call at work. I become aware that someone just asked me a question, but I have no idea what it was. I try to answer vaguely, hoping to get an idea of what the conversation is about and what the question was; but the person asking sounds like they know I wasn't paying attention, and they're being careful not to clue me in. Eventually, I just ask for the question to be repeated.

Infra wants to know why I want to have a port opened on the Sonic firewall, since that's such an inflexible solution, and why I can't use one of the prebaked packages with connectivity built into it. Now I'm looking at a list of the available packages.

Now I'm looking at a list of recommended hardware. Each piece of hardware has an accompanying video showing the testing it went through. Now I'm looking at a video of someone testing a microphone. It's a traditional mic, silver, about an inch thick with a 2-inch ball on the end, with a cord coming out of the bottom. He's holding it up high in the air, an expression of excitement on his face, as he proclaims this is the best microphone EVER, and it's only 10 cents.

Now I'm watching them test headphones. Each pair of headphones they try has a pair of RCA connections at the end of the cable, which I think is odd. Now I'm watching them test amplifiers. They go through three or four of them, each looking exactly the same, each time doing the same thing. First, they turn it on, and a female computer voice announces the name of the amp. Next, on the left side, near the front, they plug in a small card with 3 RCA jacks (yellow, white, red) on the edge. Then, they hook speakers to the white and red jacks, leaving the yellow unplugged.

They're unhappy with each of the storebought ones, so the last one they try is homemade (though it looks identical to the others). According to the announcer, the name of this amp is "Shock Hazard." They're very pleased with it and declare it to be the winner.


Bee Powers
This one is kind of fuzzy, and the scene changes don't make a lot of sense, but I think I have it in the right order.

I'm in a living room watching a movie. The TV is a fairly large one mounted in the middle of a whole-wall entertainment center. My wife and I are standing behind a couple of plush recliners; someone else is sitting in one of them. The movie is about supernatural forces. Somehow, in conjunction with the movie, we find that my wife has been given the ability to read Bee Writing. She's holding a small piece of paper (about the size of a large Post-It note) covered in it. It reminds me of an Eastern writing system, something like Hiragana. At first, she's just staring at it, saying it doesn't look like anything; then she gets a funny expression and says she got a glimmer of meaning; then she says she can read it easily.

Now I'm in Publix at the checkout counter. It's more like the customer service area, since I'm behind a counter and the cashier (a young woman) and bagger (a young man) are standing in a clear space behind it. They're both turned away from me, doing something with the bags. On a nearby TV, I note that there's a commercial talking about the excellent customer service you always get at Publix, and it's showing a live feed of the employees completely ignoring me.
A manager walks over, tells me it'll just be another minute, and walks away.

The cashier turns around, tells me that I don't have to swipe my credit card yet if I don't want to, then turns back to the bags. I look down at the cash register and see it's showing me a prompt asking me if I want to preswipe my card to save time, YES/NO. I ignore it. While I've been waiting, a couple of other people have gotten in line behind me, and another guy has tried to go to the side, skipping line.

Now the line has turned somehow. It's going back and forth between guide rails, and I'm somewhere near the middle of the pack. I look at the line behind me and realize there's a guy near me that I haven't seen in years. We start talking. Now the line is moving, and we're making progress towards the cashier.

Now someone past the next turn makes a snide comment to me. As I turn to see who said it, someone else with me uses some kind of psionic power. Now I see who made the comment: it's an older woman with straggly salt-and-pepper hair. Due to the psionic attack, she's got a whole bunch of her hair in her mouth, and she can't get it out. She's making MMM MMM noises. Somehow, I know this is related to my wife mysteriously learning to read another language.

Now I'm in our bedroom. My wife is heading downstairs, closing a baby gate on the landing as she goes. I pick up and start to organize a box of cards, and I see that all the cards have Bee Writing on them. I realize there must have been some catalyst to cause my wife to learn to read it, and I intend to try to figure out what it is. I decide it must be either her new pajamas or her quilt. I don't really want to wear her pajamas, since that would look very silly, so I decide to try the quilt.

I curl up on the floor and cover myself with it. After just a few seconds, a very strange feeling washes over me. I take the quilt off and stand up, then grab a card from the box. I'm disappointed it's still completely unintelligible, but I keep looking at it. When I see it out of the corner of my eye, I get the feeling there's something there, but I can't make it out. Now I start to get the impression that some of the Bee words are overlaid / mixed with regular English words. Suddenly, the whole thing "snaps," and I see plain English words written on the card with no sign of Bee.

Now my wife's with me, and we're talking about it. I tell her the quilt was responsible, and that while I'm excited that I can read it now, I'm disappointed that I'm no longer consciously aware of the Bee, since that means I can't describe how to translate it.

October 13, 2013

A side-note
A lucid dream
A dreamsign

These dreams came after insomnia kept me awake from 1:30 to 4:30. Before going back to bed, I listened to the dreaming self-hypnosis files I made for myself.

Drugs at a wedding
I'm at a wedding with my wife. We're walking around "back stage." Lots of people are moving around, getting ready. We pass the photographer's area and see at least half a dozen giant camera lenses - they're inches wide and at least a couple of feet long. I think ruefully back to the few weddings we shot with our "cheap" DSLR.

Now I'm standing above the seats. The place looks like a concert hall, with the seats in a semicircle around the stage. The floor is incredibly sloped, going down at at least a 45 degree angle. There are countless rows, so the stage is far, far below me. The curtains are still drawn. My wife is sitting on the top row, which is still a good 10 feet below me. Her chair is all by itself, with a table and lamp next to it. I realize she'd expected that I would sit with my friends while she stayed in the back to feed the baby. Now I'm next to her, seeing if there are any seats nearby we can move to and sit together.

Now we see a group of her old friends a few rows beneath us. They see us, too, and are waving at us to come down to them. Now we're with her friends. They're in a roughly circular area that's clear of chairs. I don't know any of them, so I'm staying at the edge of the clearing, near the chairs. I want to sit down, but even though this area doesn't have many people sitting in it, they're sitting in such a way that no three adjacent seats are empty: if I'm going to sit, I'm going to have to sit next to someone. I finally resign myself to it and sit by a stranger.

Now my wife is gone - I don't know where to - and her friends are acting very strange, very loopy. They're trying to give me something that will make me feel really good. I don't know what's going on, but I want no part of it, so I start to walk away. A girl from the group comes running around in front of me and tries to slap something on me. I don't know what she's doing, but I'm sure it's nothing good, so I dodge. I think she missed me, but then I notice there's a small sticker on my nose. With horror, I realize it must be some kind of drug patch. I try to peel it off, but it's too late. I feel the drug start to take effect, and the world slips away.

Now I'm on a pool deck. I feel very strange, and I'm not myself. I think I'm a mouse, though I'm really just very small. A tiny dog is nearby. The deck furniture towers around us. We swim out into the pool and make it to a small floating platform, which we climb onto. I manage to tie the platform to the dog, then we both jump back in and swim back to the pool deck, with the dog dragging the platform behind itself.

Now I'm in a dusty town. Something is wrong, though I'm not sure what. I see the town sheriff and deputy go up to a large door with two keyholes. They each take a key, insert it into a keyhole, and turn at the same time. Somehow, I know that they were given these keys by a stranger, and that by unlocking this door they've corrupted themselves and unleashed destruction on the town. Now I'm running from something in the town.

Now I'm running down a wide hallway when giant yellow squash, a.k.a. Squashers, come bounding in from the other direction. I hope they didn't see me and try to get out of their way, but one veers off towards me. As it's pushing me towards the back wall, I wonder what it's like to be killed in a dream. That stray thought gets me lucid.

Candy and flying
Now I'm in a small room, the size of a small closet. It's kind of like a little tiny cubicle, since it's not actually closed on all four sides. At this point, as is usual for my lucid dreams, I'm still following the dream's plot. I decide to make the room bigger, so I point at one of the unconnected edges, then move my finger, and the edge of the wall follows my finger, growing longer. I make a similar gesture and push the wall back.

Then I remember that I have 2 goals I want to accomplish (flying and one of the basic tasks of the month, eating candy) and I should be doing those instead. I decide to tackle eating candy first. I start to think about how best to summon some candy. I remember that most of my attempts at direct dream manipulation in the past have failed, so that's out. Believing that something exists behind me, then turning and finding it, has always had a great apeal to me; unfortunately, it's also always failed in the past. Then, I remember reading that ordering DCs to change the dream tends to be very reliable, so I decide to try it. I walk through the gap in the wall into a living room. A few women are sitting around on overstuffed chairs, some with ottomans, some without. I walk up to the nearest one. She's in a tan chair next to a small round side-table with a lamp, with her feet resting on an ottoman. She's wearing an intense blue, maybe a purple. I tell her to give me candy.

She looks up at me, and I see that she's a friendly middle-aged woman. She gives me a motherly smile, grabs her purse, and starts to look through it. It's packed full of odds and ends, but nothing looks like candy. She looks up at me, then points to a long, narrow, zippered bag (also a violent blue) on the ottoman. It's already open, and it's packed to overflowing with all sorts of candy. I pick it up and look through it. I remember that in the waking world I'd been planning to try to eat some chocolate, so I look for a chocolate bar. I manage to find a "Fun Size Snickers" bar near the top of the bag, so I take it. I tear off the wrapper and look at it. It looks just like a tiny square chocolate bar, with smooth brown sides and a wavy top. I take a bite through the middle; it tastes like chocolate. I look at the section I bit through and see that it looks like a Three Musketeers bar, but with a thin ribbon of dark chocolate running through the middle. It actually tastes about as it looks.

One goal finished, one to go. I leave the house through a sliding glass door. I find I'm at the top of a grassy hill. In front of me, the hill leads down to the ocean. I can see the waves lapping against a rocky shoreline with just a bit of sandy beach. Off to my right are a few trees. To my left, the grassy hill just goes down with nothing in the way. I turn to the left and start to run down the hill, then jump up and spread my arms like wings, holding them straight out to my sides. At the height of my jump, I'm three or four feet off the ground, but I quickly come back down and stabalize in a glide just a foot or two above the ground. It's not quite the flight I'd hoped for, but I'm still moving quickly through the air.

I'm half pleased, half disappointed. Gliding in the air was neat, but I'd really wanted to *fly*. Now I'm back at the top of the hill. I get another running start, jump, spread my arms, and start flapping. I have a clear picture of the roofline of the house - I believe I managed to hang in the air for a few seconds this time before coming back down. This time, I'm gliding so low that tall pieces of grass are hitting me in the face.


Motorcycle seat
I'm outside with Andrew, looking at his small motorcycle. He's trying to fix it, but he needs to go get something. He asks me to hold the bike while he steps away. Now I'm holding the bike, but I don't know why. Don't motorcycles have kickstands? I look down and see not one but two: one on the front-right, and one in the normal place at the back-left. Both kickstands are already down, so I gently let go of the bike to see what'll happen. The bike starts rolling forward, pushing the front-right kickstand back. The rear-left one is holding. I stop the bike and try to reposition it so that it'll stay up on its own.

Now Andrew is back out with another man, someone who looks at home on a motorcycle. There's something wrong with his seat. It's a piece of leather with a plaid pattern inserted into a square wood frame. During the cut, they removed the sealant keeping it watertight and pulled it up from the frame, away from the glue that held it down. They've fixed whatever the problem was and have re-glued it, but now they're worried about how to reseal it. They keep talking about using tape, but none of us likes that idea, since it wouldn't work very well, not to mention looking very tacky. I suggest using more of that same acrylic sealant that was used on it originally, but they shoot that idea down. They're fixated on trying different kinds of tape. I'm still convinced the clear sealant is the way to go, but I suggest they should call the motorcycle company and see if they can order some of the original compound. They consider the idea for a moment, then realize that it's a holiday so the company won't be open, and later in the week is an important company event, so they'll be too busy to talk to people about fixing broken seats.

October 12, 2013

A third-person memory
A dreamsign
Missed opportunity

At the beach
I'm standing by the road near a beach. From where I'm standing, there's a steep, rocky incline to get down to it. Along the beach to my right is an impassable wall of rock; to the left, the beach goes on forever. Now I'm down on the beach. I've come here to feed the birds, but there aren't as many birds around as I'd expected. I remember there's supposed to be somewhere nearby where there's a cabin in the water that the birds like to flock to.

Now I'm inside somewhere, sitting at a table with some other people. We're trying to figure out where the cabin-in-the-water is. Someone finally figures it out: it's a nearby Crab Shack. I can see it now: it's a small building, made out of wide, dark boards, covered in strings of big Christmas lights, sitting out in the water and accessible by a 20 foot long pier.

We have no desire to go there, but thinking about a restaurant has made us hungry. We try to figure out where to go. Now we're at a restaurant, looking at the menu board. We're disappointed: all the options are either incredibly cheap ($7 for the whole family, which seems questionable) or very expensive ($40+ for one plate).

Now I'm sitting at a small table, looking at a "magazine." Across the pages I'm looking at are thumbnails of the other pages in the magazine. I somehow choose one of the thumbnails; now I'm looking at the full-sized page. It's a super-hero comic book / graphical novel of some sort. I'd been interested in this for a while, and I was excited to find a copy; but now that I'm looking at it, it's very revealing. I have no desire to look at this kind of material, so I close it and put it back on the table.


Working for Maudia
I'm at a large house meeting with a woman named Maudia. She's interested in having me do some work for her around the house. Now we're in a large tool shed, and she's showing me a drill bit that's about an inch wide and about 3 feet long. It comes with a special tool that hooks onto the drill that pushes it forwards as it drills. I ask her what she could possibly need such a large drill bit for. She explains that they needed it when they were working on some pipes. From the end with the faucet, the pipe went back into the wall for a couple of feet, then hit a 90 degree angle and went down. They needed this drill bit to go along from the faucet end and put a hole in the back of the angle piece. With the hole in place, they were able to stick a feathery something in that hung out the faucet end. It all sounded pretty strange, but it was somehow involved in a publicity stunt, so it was supposed to be strange.

This is actually the second time I've met with Maudia. I first met with her a couple of months ago, and she went over her list of tasks with me then. I apologize for not getting back to her sooner, and she accepts my apology on the condition that I don't do it again.

Now I'm filling a collander with water. Even though it has lots of holes, it's holding the water easily. Now the son is in the same room as I am; he just ignores me. Now Maudia's husband is talking to me about a project he wants me to work on with him. It's something to monitor the house while they're gone, and it'll involve both hands-on electronics work as well as a fair amount of programming. I ask him what kinds of alerts he wants available, and he starts out with both phone and email alerts. I explain that email is easy, but that phone alerts would have a number of additional challenges. As an alternative, I suggest both SNMP and RSS, and he approves. He also wants a nice web page to go with it. I explain that I'm a backend guy, and while I can build a web page, it'll be functional yet ugly, and that a modern second grader could probably make a better looking web page than I can. I'll design the site to be very modular so that someone else with more design skills can come along later and reskin the site without having to touch any of the logic.

Now it's night, and I'm with him in the car. He's driving, I'm in the front passenger seat, and his daughter is in the back seat. She keeps tapping me on the shoulder, trying to get my attention. When I finally acknowledge her, she says she found stuff in the back seat that belongs to me, and she's been waiting to give it to me. She gives me a handful of coins and a key. I'd been given the key so I could get into the house, but then I promptly lost it.

Now we're at his office building. We walk into his office, which is a large room with a single fairly large cube in the middle. He gets something - a key - from his cube, then walks over to the corner of the room. He sticks the key into a crack in the wall and pushes, revealing a secret door. I ask him about it; all he'll say is that it's a "red room," which means it's not on the blueprints. I follow him in, then close the door behind me. I become self-conscious and ask if I did the right thing, but he shushes me. He walks over to a pair of laptops on a shelf on the other side of the room. He logs into the first laptop by speaking: it recognizes his voice. He then logs into the second laptop by doing a perfect impression of his coworker's voice. Some kind of video conference is started between the two laptops.

Now the room is changing around me - I think it's using holograms to appear different. It's also projecting many people - the place looks like a dinner party with people mingling and talking. No one seems to notice me. I see a few famous people walking around, including Patrick Stewart, who walks right past me.

Now my host is lying on the ground, dead. Someone says that he knew that next time he threw up, he'd die, and it'd finally happened. He must have known it was coming on; that explains why he was moving so quickly tonight. Someone finds a blanket and wraps him up with finality.

Now I'm back home, walking up a long driveway to a house in the woods. To the right of the entry stairs is a large hanging garden. I walk up to it and insert the key into one of the beams.


Sidewalk work
I'm in the office with two of my daughters. I hear some odd noises from the outside and go to the window to look. A construction crew is doing something in my front yard. Now I'm downstairs looking out the front window at what the crew is doing. I'd forgotten that, as part of the work they'd be doing, they'd have to rip up and re-pour the sidewalk leading up to the house. They're ripping up the sidewalk now and are nearly done. I'm momentarily confused when I notice that the sections they've already pulled up are already overgrown with grass, as if there had never been a sidewalk there; but I don't give it any furthe thought. To remove the old sidewalk, they first use a hammer-like tool to knock holes in the concrete, then they use a narrow white tube (looks like a piece of paper, rolled up) to deliver a blasting charge into the hole. Once they've prepared an entire segment of the sidewalk in this way, they blow it up. I realize my son would like to see this.

Now I'm upstairs in his room. His bed has some kind of lid to it, and it's currently down, closing him in. I know he closed the lid because he likes to sleep where it's really dark. I open the lid and tell him he needs to come quickly if he wants to see something neat; but since he's still really groggy, I pick him up and carry him. As I pass the office, I tell the girls to come too.

Now I'm back downstairs. I'm disappointed that the workers aren't outside any more. A worker lounging in one of my chairs inside says they finished a long time ago. I take my son over to the window and start to point out what they were doing so that my getting him up wasn't a complete waste. As I'm pointing things out to him, I see a fish tank near the street. Inside the tank is a doll in the act of throwing a basketball into a doll-sized basketball hoop. I remember the workers told me the kids could practice throwing a basketball if they wanted to, and I realize they meant they could use this piece of junk. I'm glad I turned the workers down and didn't get my kids' hopes up for nothing.


Women at the airport
At an airport, my viewpoint is following a young man who's up to no good. He goes up to a ticket booth and starts talking to a young woman inside, who is very taken with him. An older woman in the ticket booth scolds the younger woman for being too easy. She explains that any time her thoughts stop syncing properly, that she gets very excited; and that once her thoughts get back in sync, she doesn't remember any of the out-of-sync period. The older woman doesn't accept this explanation and keeps scolding her.


Fragment
I'm trying to find something, and I finally remember that it's in my wife's purse.

The high rise
I'm high up in an unfinished high-rise, in a corner office. Two walls are all windows, and the windows in the corner of the room are open. There's a blue and white rope hanging outside the window. One end is tied up near the top of the building, and the other end is tied to a bar outside one of this office's windows. An older, more experienced man is in the room with me. He congratulates me on having the foresight to put the rope out there at an earlier stage of construction, since we'll need it now. He needs me to go outside, through the open window, and install a ventilation fan. I can use the rope to support myself so I don't fall.

This makes me very nervous; I had no idea I was going to have to do something like that. The rope itself makes me nervous. The knots at the top are very amateur work: the rope criss-crosses between a number of bars and is laced with all sorts of different knots; but just because it's a crazy mess doesn't mean it'll hold. The knot on the bar outside the window is another matter: it's small, elegant, and tough. I can't even reach it to untie it without reaching through the window, and I'm worried I won't be able to safely untie it.

Now I'm looking at a series of photos taken of the outside of the building. The first photo is the top of the building and is the oldest; subsequent photos are lower down and newer. Near the top, there's a huge mess of ropes and wires of all different colors. The wires stop fairly quickly, but a few of the ropes keep going. In the next few pictures, most of the building is obscured by a man and a woman kissing. The first shot shows the tops of their heads, and the next few shots show different parts of their faces.

Now I'm standing on the ground talking to people. The ground is hard-packed dirt with no grass in sight. Now I'm being driven somewhere. We're taking a shortcut from the construction site to a road near our destination. The shortcut is bumpy and narrow, but we make it to the road with no problems.

Now I'm in a fancy restaurant. I've just finished talking to someone in authority, and they agreed that since I was kidnapped, I'll automatically get 5 stars on every course I'm taking this semester. I think about how amazing this semester has been: first, to get in tuition-free, and now to get 5 stars in every class! I still have to attend class, but I won't have to take the finals.

I'm walking around in the back of the restaurant. Closer to the front, I can see diners, but back here the tables are empty. There's a mostly-circular depression near where I am that has more tables in it. The Maitre'd / Dean's podium is in the depression; he's the one who recorded my 5 star ratings for my classes.


The tower
I'm running along a road. I encounter a poorly drawn boy and cat. The boy tries to talk to me, but I don't have time.
I'm near a gate in a wall around a tower. A guard is just opening the gate. I punch him and get through the gate before he can stop me.

Now I'm climbing the tower. I'm playing on easy, so there's an open window not too far from me. Now I'm playing on hard, so there aren't any open windows on the tower, and I have to climb all the way to the top. I know that means I'll be winded when I get there, and that'll make the battles harder. I'm at the top of a ladder, climbing over the battlements at the top of the tower. On the inner wall, there's a small (2x2) platform a few feet up, with a larger platform above it, with an open window above the larger platform. I need to get into that window. Between the battlements an the inner wall are half a dozen tables filled with guards eating a meal. Most of them are simple guards; there are a few that look like jesters; and there are a couple of really tall guys.

I start to battle the regular guards and don't have too much trouble, even when the jesters join in. The tall guys are still finishing their meal, ignoring me. Now they've finally gotten tired of me and stand up, getting ready to join the battle. This is going to be ugly.

Now I've lifted one of the tall guys and I'm swinging him around, trying to get enough momentum to throw him off the tower. A guard gets in my way and messes up my swing; but I still manage to hit the tall guy's head against the guard's head, knocking him out.

Buying lunch
I'm at a grocery store with my wife. We're on the snack isle, getting crackers. She asks what I want for lunch, and I reply that I don't know, lunch is always the hardest meal of the day because my stomach never feels good for it. She says that I've been gaining weight, and I reply that I'd rather gain weight than have a sour stomach, since at least you can take action to lose weight, but you can't take action if your stomach feels bad.

House cleaning
I'm in bed in a living room. My wife is still asleep. I realize there are shreds of paper towel all over the room and start to clean them up so she doesn't have to. Now I'm still in the same room, but the bed is gone. It's still dark, so I want to turn the lights on, but they're not working. I try a couple of different switches, thinking that maybe the outlet is controlled by one of them, and that's why the Insteon module isn't working.

Now the lights are on. On the floor near the middle of the long wall, there's a gigantic toy chest with a stack of toys all around it. I start cleaning them up. Now the room is fairly clean. Now I'm in the next room over, the dining room. It's a fancy room with a long table that would probably seat 20. The room looks good. Now I'm in the entry area. It and the parlor next to it look pretty good. Now I'm back in the living room. It's been cleaned up even more since I left. I wonder if my wife and I are moving in circles around the house, never catching up with each other.

Working late
I'm at work very late; it's dark outside, and it's near midnight. I need to use the restroom. Now I'm walking into building A. I'm really not sure why I'm doing this, since I had been working in building B. An overweight bearded man goes in ahead of me; I think he must be arriving for 3rd shift for tech support. In the entryway, between the two sets of doors, I realize I'm still listening to my dreaming MP3. I step to the side and pull out my phone to turn it off so no one thinks I'm crazy. Once I'm in the lobby, I again question why I'm in A. I decide to head back to B and use the restroom there. I leave out a side door.

Now I'm in a part of the building I've never been in before. It looks like a loading dock. I have the feeling I shouldn't be here.There are a couple of doors in here besides the one I came from. I choose one at random and walk through it, not knowing where it goes. Now I'm in the inner part of a nice hotel suite. Some business men are having a meeting and stare at me as I walk past them. I find the exit to the suite and walk out it. It's a strangely narrow short hallway.

Now I'm back in building B, on the ground floor, walking through a hallway next to the windows. I can see through the windows that it's still night time. When I'm almost to another external door, I walk through a group of programmers, all men in their 20s. One of them, a thin guy, stops me and asks if I've learned Spring yet. I tell him that I've only gone through the intro tutorial. He doesn't look pleased, so I explain that I'm not in his group, that I do all sorts of different things, but not much with Spring. One of the other guys gets an amazed look on his face and asks if I'm the one who wrote the digiclean script. I say that I am, and the first guy changes from annoyed to pleased and says that they love it, that everyone on the team has to run it at least once a day or things just stop working. I realize that none of these people is real, but I keep talking to them anyway, since it's nice to be complemented.

The island
Ben is in our kitchen (it actually looks like our real kitchen), describing his trip to <island>. Now I'm swimming around <island>. It's a tiny piece of land; I can swim around it in just a few minutes. I see a lot of trees but no signs of life. On one side of the island, there's a really dark patch of water. Swimming to it, I find that it's got a very strong up-current - so strong that I can actually get on my hands and knees, raising my body out of the water. It feels like I'm on something squishy with an inch or two of water on it. I try to swim down into it, but that's a complete failure. I swim out of the dark area and try again, but I still can't get down into the water.

Fragments
1) I'm in a store, checking out. I talk with the middle-aged female cashier.

2) Something about a plumber in a bathroom. He has to go get his tools. I stay outside the bathroom and fiddle with my phone.

3) I'm in a building with people. There's some conversation about traveling to other countries and needing passports. Something about a boat.

Lucrative numbers
Our neighbors across the street have had their driveway torn up at the street. There's a large sign on their lawn telling the construction company what to do.

A friend has set me up with software that generates the sequence of numbers that go on these signs. If I do it enough, I can earn rare in-game potions. I need to figure out which company made the sign, get the number currently on the sign, and give the company a call to get a new seed number. Once I've got those three pieces of info, the software will churn out new numbers in the sequence.

The company is Callna, and the number on the sign is 3887. The whole thing sounds kind of shady, so I don't make the call. My friend tells me that Callna isn't one of the usual companies, so their potions raise one of the more unusual attributes.

Vacation vortex
I'm at a vacation house with my family. The layout is wide open, with the kitchen, dining room, and family room all in one big area. Everything is very white. In the kitchen area is a set of French doors. Some kind of vortex just blasted through the French doors and all the way across the house, damaging anything in its path. We know another one is going to be coming through soon, so we try to move everything out of its way.

Now it's almost time for the next vortex to hit. Most of the stuff is out of the way, but there are a couple of last-minute things still in its path. I'm running around, trying to move them, knowing I'm almost out of time. I look through the windows of the doors and see the vortex coming, so I run for shelter in another room. I look back one more time and see my friend's friend standing outside the French doors. My friend is in the house with me. I yell for him to get the doors open, get his friend inside, and get out of the way.

Now we're in one of the bedrooms. My friend's friend is talking, apologizing for not being able to find something he was given. It seems his backpack is constantly changing, adding and removing pockets, and the thing is in a pocket that disappeared. He's moving the zipper in a strangely curving way, and the backpack seems to be growing, getting taller and wider. New loops of zipper appear. He's happy because the pocket with the missing thing has reappeared, and he's intrigued because a couple of new pockets he's never seen before have appeared as well.


Baggy clothing
I'm inside somewhere. Two guys I don't know are near me. One of them is pouring very diluted blue paint between containers, and some of it splashes on my clothes. I'm mad at him, since my clothes are probably stained. He takes a look at my pants and explains that I got paint on them because they're a terrible fit, and that if I were wearing properly fitting clothing, I'd still be clean. Looking down at my clothes, I see that they're very baggy on me and look terrible - but that has nothing to do with getting paint on me, so I'm still mad. Even so, I ask him if he has any suggestions for where to get better fitting clothing.

Adam Savage shows up and starts talking about a couple of places he shops at. He really likes one of them because if you park in their handicapped spot without a permit, they'll send their own security guys to give you a ticket instead of letting the police handle it. Since it's only $150 instead of $500, it saves a lot of money. He starts giving me directions on how to get to these stores, and I ask him to wait while I pull up something on my phone to write in. I open my normal note-taking app and start writing down at the bottom of whatever note is open, not
taking the time to make a fresh one.

I ask him to continue and try to jot down what he says quickly, not worrying about accuracy, just trying to keep up. When I glance at the screen, I realize it's complete gibberish and assume that the autocorrect has butchered what I typed in. I keep trying to write down what he says, being more careful to spell it correctly so it doesn't get mangled, skipping words instead of letters.
Now I'm looking at a map. There's a faint gray dot by one of the roads, approximately where the store is. It's faint and gray because what I wrote is misspelled and confusing; I know that when I go back and clean up the note, that the map will have a higher degree of confidence where the store is and use a bolder dot.


Steam application
I'm in a dark room. A commercial for Steam is being projected on a wall. The announcer is moving between icons for games, describing how amazing they are. I think about making games myself.

Now I'm working through a form somewhere in Steam. I'm on the phone with a man giving me guidance on how to fill out the form. The first thing is my credit card info, which I type in (I'm pretty sure I used my real number). I fill in the next field, then realize I should have left it blank. However, the field disappears before I can correct it. I exit the form without saving, then go back in. I fill in my credit card info again, then move past the next field without touching it. I appreciate that the guy on the phone is being very patient with me.

October 8, 2013

Interstate lake and hotel telekenisis
I'm southbound on the Interstate with my family, approaching our exit, and I'm surprised at how light traffic is. On the exit ramp, traffic finally grinds to a halt.

Now we're still on the off-ramp, except it's for foot traffic, not for cars. It's a long, wide line of people. We're standing on the ramp looking over the railing at the lake beyond. At a distance a ways in front of us, a short, wide waterfall is dumping water into the lake. There's some kind of outlet to our right going under the Interstate. It's a beautiful clear day, and the water is very reflective. Most of the lake is smooth, except for near the waterfall and the outlet. The whole scene is incredibly beautiful.

Eventually, we realize the line in front of us has moved quite a ways, and there's a big gap that's opened. We leave the
lake and hurry to catch up so we don't inconvenience the people behind us. As we walk, I think about how we used to have 2 interstate 109's, that they were always congested, and how much better things have been since they combined them into a single wide road.

We walk up hill, turn corners, climb stairs, etc, until we finally come out in a small house. All our shoes are wet. My kids scatter and take off their shoes; I go after them to collect the shoes and make sure they don't get lost. I'm supposed to be meeting with someone, so I apologize that I need to get the shoes, and I'll be with him in a minute. He understands.

Now I'm talking with one of my church elders, except that in the dream he's my boss. He's explaining that they debated
about whether or not I needed a pager, and finally decided that they'd just give me an old one that someone else wasn't using any more. There's a buzzing/ringing coming from deep inside my backpack, and I know it's my new pager. I can picture it: an oblong ball, shaped to fit in the hand, with a large silver toggle switch and a launch button with a red cover. When I find it and pull it out, it doesn't look like that at all. The size and shape are about right, but instead of switches and buttons, it has various fold-down panels. I open the one on the front-top and find some sliding pieces. When two of the pieces are slid together, it's activated; but if the third is slid in place, the first two can't make contact. It's some kind of security measure to make sure it doesn't get activated by accident.

When I look up from fiddling with the pager, I find myself in a gigantic hotel. I'm not aware of the ceiling or the far walls. A golden statue is mounted high up on the wall near me. As I look at it, it starts to glow. After a moment, the eyes start to glow red. and I realize I've left it for too long. I make a tapping gesture towards it and knock it off the wall. Down the hall, a fat freestanding pillar falls over. I make a kind of lifting gesture towards it, and it goes flying back into the wall, shattering. This is fun!

Now I'm at the end of the hallway, in a lounge area (still too big to comprehend). There are sofas, tables, and chairs scattered around, with people milling. A woman walks past near me carrying a mug of coffee. I make a kind of two-handed pinching gesture, bringing my hands together, and her coffee (just the liquid) streams out of her mug and forms a sloshing ball in front of my hands. I bring my hands further apart, and the ball grows until it's bigger than a basket ball; then I make another gesture and launch it a woman sitting on a couch, getting her all wet (thankfully it wasn't hot).

Now I'm in another room, large yet comprehendable, with another statue. I'm doing something to it. I know that this is all part of an experimental gesture-based game on a new system Nintendo is going to be releasing soon. I wonder why Nintendo forbade developers from making games with any sort of violence, but then I realize that violence is always the easy option, and that this restriction forces developers to really be creative and use the system to its fullest potential. After the fun I had in the hotel, I'm glad they made the decision they did.

Nuts at Brusters
I'm at Brusters' with my wife and the kids. It's not a normal Brusters' - it's a large sit-down restaurant with dark
furnishings and low lights. You still have to go up to the cash register in the middle of the restaurant to place your order.
It's our turn to order. The cashier is a late 20s woman. While Bethany figures out what she's going to order, I get out my
cash to see if I have enough. I have a lot of trouble counting it, but I finally figure out that I have 3 5s and a handful of 1s. I also manage to find my Brusters' punchcard.

When I look back up, I realize my wife only ordered a small cup full of chopped nuts and is busy covering the nuts with chocolate syrup from the complementary syrup pump near the register. When I express my confusion, she says she wanted to save money by getting a topping to spruce up the ice cream we had at home. As we're leaving the restaurant, we run into the cashier, now wearing a jacket and heading the other way. It looks like we were her last customers for her shift.

Now we're outside the restaurant, walking on a sidewalk to the parking lot. I'm in the rear, making sure the kids all stay
with us. There are a lot of people out here and it's hard to keep them all in sight.


The Robinsons' house
I'm watching a live-action Meet The Robinsons (never seen it). They're moving into a large rental house. This is their first time seeing the house, so they're touring it. I'm watching Mr Robinson as he explores the finished basement, which is pretty much one huge rec area. Everything is painted white. With the stairs a ways behind him, he opens a door on his right. Looking through it, we can see a sitting area with the garage past it. I'm confused: we're in the basement, so how is there a garage? I don't think any more about it.

Now I'm there with a friend of mine. Turning back towards the stairs, we see a gigantic TV mounted on the wall, near the ceiling. It's turned on, showing something I can't remember. One of us notices a projector on the ceiling, and we Ooo and Ahhh and turn it on. It's actually very disappointing: the picture it projects isn't any larger than the TV, it's dimmer, and it's actually badly calibrated so that the picture is crooked and overlaps the TV.

The son is being pampered by a group of girls. His sister is hanging up-side-down from a hole in the
ceiling, watching him. He sees her; she gets embarassed and hits a button on her harness, reeling her back up into the ceiling, back to her bed, which is half out over a hole in the floor that's a good 10 feet long and runs the width of the room. There are a couple of other beds, also half over the hole.

Now the father is standing on the other side of the hole, away from the beds. He has a good friend with him, a black man. The father tells his friend that the friend's favorite show (some kind of home improvement show) is coming on soon, and that he needs to talk to his daughter - it's her birthday.

Now I'm watching another son. He and another boy are up on a second story platform. They're wearing headgear like what Stark wears in Iron Man 3. They're going to be boxing, but they won't be physically doing anything. Instead, down below, a couple of other boys (also wearing headgear) are going to be doing the boxing, controlled by the boys up above. But, to ensure no one gets hurt, they won't actually touch each other: instead, the pain will be simulated by the headgear. An adult is with them to make sure that there are no accidents.



Wizards' Tower
This dream is something about a group of wizards in a large tower. Some of them are in a very tall round room. They're on the floor; a couple of stories up, a bridge crosses the room, and enemy wizards standing on the bridge are slinging spells down at them.

October 7, 2013

Bad parking
I'm in the van, on the phone, driving in a dirt (maybe gravel) parking lot. It's completely full - I can't see anywhere to park. Eventually, I just stop the van behind a couple of other cars, then get out and start walking away. I get honked at, but I figure I'll just be a couple of minutes, so it's OK.

Now I'm inside. Lots of people are walking around. I worry about leaving the kids in the car, but I figure this won't take long, so they'll be OK. Now I'm on the driveway leading to the parking lot. I'm carrying a long orange extension cord, and some other people are with me.


Costco frozen pizza
I'm at Costco with my wife, near the food court. It's closing time, so they're lowering the entrance gate to stop anyone new from coming in. A young woman is doing it, but she's having trouble. She's trying to jump up to catch the door, but it's too high for her. Her shirt is coming untucked. She finally manages it.

Now we're in line for the food court's last call. Someone says that it's just not cost effective to leave the ovens on after this since they draw so much power. My wife wants a slice of pizza, and I decide to have one too: a slice of pepperoni instead of my usual combo.

Now we're ordering. She orders two slices of "frozen pizza." I don't know why she mentioned "frozen" - Costco's pizzas are freshly made. Now the food court lady has our pizzas, and they're still frozen. She takes a small butane torch and starts waving it across the pizzas to warm them up and give them a fresh-from-the-oven look. Initially, I'm skeptical, but I have to admit it seems to be working. That being said, it takes a while, so it's no time saver; and it's hard to get right. I see no advantage to it.

Now I have the pizzas and the torch, and I'm still using it on the pizzas. I'm worried about getting it right, but my wife isn't concerned.

October 4, 2013

Challice Strategy
I'm watching medieval/fantasy soldiers talking about what they need to do. There are lots of large "challices" scattered around. Somehow, hitting them makes the area safe from a dangerous gas, and if the challices in the area are close enough together, the effect chains.

They're coming up on an area where one of them is missing, so they'll have to cross a dangerous space, and when they reach the next one, it could be dangerous to hit due to the buildup of gas. The leader points to a tiny guy - probably about a foot high - and says that he'll be the one to hit it, just in case. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a shirt of chainmail that's sized for the tiny guy (I remember hearing it clinking). He seems sorrowful as he hands over the mail.

Now I have more of a tactical view and I can see units moving around the 'map'. At the top (north), there's an opening into another area. For some reason, I can't scroll through it, but enemies are coming from it. Towards the south-east of the map, I see some greenish swirly stuff that's slowly growing. I realize it's our spent resources that are somehow regenerating. It's regenerating, but it's also moving towards the enemy's pass, and it would be bad for them to get all those resources! Somehow, I (or maybe the commander) redirects some of them to our troops, but some still make it to the enemy.

Now I realize that I can't scroll into the pass because I can't scroll past where the challices have been activated, and there's one near the pass that's inactive. Now it's active, and I can scroll up through the pass.


Sick pastor
I'm at church, sitting near the front-right. Our pastor is walking around near the chairs - this is unusual, since he's normally behind the pulpit, but I don't give it much thought. Instead of his normal almost-invisible mic, he's got a big announcer-style headset, but I don't think much on that either. His voice is off, and he explains he has a cold. He got it from Ben ... Ben ... he points to one Ben and says "not that one, the real Ben" and "that one"'s father is mock-offended. He finally remembers it was Ben C that got him sick.


Popcorn at the vacation house
I'm at a vacation house with my wife and her parents. Things are overwhelmingly white. She's in the kitchen with a huge bowl of popcorn. Her father and I start munching on it, and she's not happy with us. I do something with a bottle of BBQ sauce. Someone says something about a family watching a baby, that it's a bit unusual but that it'll be good for them.


The train
It's dark. I'm going to try to sneak onto a train - one of the little ones like you find at amusement parks. As I'm nearing the crossing where you get on, it's just pulling away, and I'm annoyed. I end up waiting with a few people for the next one.

Now I'm on the train, near the back.

I think the train was pink.


Recording dreams in a false awakening
I have a false awakening in which I'm recording my dreams. I'm using my bluetooth keyboard as usual, but I'm surprised that I'm recording the dreams on my phone instead of my tablet. I don't think much of it.

I'm really pleased with the recall I'm having. I'm getting good detail from many different dreams.

Then I wake up for real and most of it is gone

July 14, 2013

A Changing Household
This dream starts in third person. I think I'm watching a movie. I have a passing thought that it's probably The Mummy. Leonardo Di Caprio, Penelope Cruz, and a couple other people tumble into a large sandy pit. The sand is bright white; a few small plants are scattered around. I think it's amusing that in movies, the top-billed actor always stays nice and clean, while everyone else gets dirty. Sure enough, when they all get up, LDC is pristine, with nicely combed hair, while PC is all muddy and has hair everywhere. She's grumbling about how if she'd been the top billed actor, then she'd be all pristine and he'd be a mess.

Now he's gone. The rest of them think he's abandoned them. Now I'm looking at him. He's just gone though a kind of tunnel to another part of the pit to look around. Looking up, he sees a waterfall and realizes it's going to fill the pit. Now I'm looking at the other group of people as LDC comes rushing back through the tunnel shouting at them to climb for their lives. His footsteps fill with water as he runs.

Now they're at the top of the pit. The waterfall is visible to the right in the distance. They're wet and exhausted. A woman meets them and invites them into her home to dry off and clean up. She's standing next to a blocky wooden pillar of some kind. I have the feeling it was a grandfather clock.

Now I'm in her home. It's a standard entry-level subdivision home, somewhat on the cluttered side. I'm at the end of the central hallway. A bathroom is to my left, with a small room (probably meant to be a bedroom) to my right. My wife is coming out of the bathroom. I ask her where the clean clothes are, and she indicates they're in the room across the hall.
I go into the bathroom. It's more of a laundry room that happens to have a toilet and sink. Brightly colored stuff is around.

Now I'm in the room across the hall, holding the clothes. I've got a long sleeved shirt and some pants. I decide that since I'm dreaming, I'm going to change the shirt into a one-piece outfit. Now I'm wearing the shirt, but it still looks like a shirt. I try again. Now I'm wearing a maroon one-piece outfit. Unfortunately, it has a gaping fly with no way to close it. I try to will it closed, but nothing happens. I touch the bottom, not for the actual touch, but so that I can't see what I'm doing. I move my finger up, *knowing* that the part I can't see is in fact closed. Sure enough, as I move my finger up, I can see that the hole is closing. I get to the top and remove my finger. I can see a faint glowing line where the fly used to be; the line quickly disappears.

I decide that, as cool as this is, it's too much work - I'm used to wearing shirts, and if I don't keep concentrating, it'll turn back into a shirt. Unfortunately, I can't find the pants anywhere. I ask the teenaged son where they are; he says he'll go get them.

Now I'm wearing a shirt and pants. The rest of the family passes through the room. I know I'm supposed to follow
them, but I have a bad feeling about it. Instead, I look at the fish tank near the door. It's got a symbol on it that shows I can unlock a minor achievement with it, but I don't know how. As I'm looking at the fish tank, I notice a couple of fish swimming in the air near me, but I ignore them. One fish, green, swims straight towards the glass, straight at me, and opens its mouth. Even though it's a normal sized aquarium fish, I have this vision of a LONG green tunnel. At the far end is a large glowing object which starts to shoot forward. Right as it reaches the end of the tunnel (the mouth), it hits the aquarium glass, and the fish is thrown back, dazed.

Now I'm in the living room. The woman is doing something strange. Outside the window, I see a large board that starts to light up with symbols in different colors. As she describes what's going to light up, it does, as she's described - symbol and color. Then it starts to display the wrong colors. I know something is wrong, so I leave the living room.

Now I'm back in the aquarium/changing room. The teenage boy is there working on a math problem. Whatever it is, it's a trick question. I help him with it for a minute.

Now all the people who were in the living room are in the room with us. They have red skin, and they're attacking us. Whatever strange ritual she did with the board was clearly evil. They're throwing small bombs at us with lit rope fuses. I keep knocking them away from myself. They bounce into the corners and explode harmlessly. I realize that if I could hold onto one until the fuse was nearly gone, then throw it back, I could kill them; but I can't bring myself to do it.

There's a lull in the attack. A man is siting in a cushy rotating chair looking at something on a computer. I decide to go over and try to get him distracted by showing him some Simpsons. It turns out he's already so distracted with whatever he's doing that I can't distract him further.

Now I'm sitting in a similar chair. My left arm is on the armrest. A young woman with red skin)is next to the chair, laying her head on my arm, asleep. I can't move for fear of waking her.

I become aware of my heartbeat. It's actually fairly normal. I remember that if you want to summon something in a dream, you have to have a convincing reason why it'll work. I've been reading Way of Kings, and some of the characters have Shard Blades they can summon. It takes 10 heartbeats from when they start to summon it to when it appears in their hand. I hold my hand out, try to summon it, and count my heartbeats. At 10, I feel a tingle, but no blade appears. I try again; this time, after 10 heartbeats, nothing happens.

I know another way to summon things in dreams is to imagine them where you can't see them, then "find" them. I decide that there's always been a sword under my chair, and I just need to pull it out. Unfortunately, I can't move far enough to reach under to get it.

Somehow, in conjunction with the teen boy, I know that this transformation is temporary, and that if I just wait long enough they'll go back to normal. Up on the wall, I see a clock. It has too many hands, they're not straight, and they're moving too fast; but I know it's almost time.

Now everyone is back to normal. This includes the boy, kind of: he's really a girl, and now that everything is back to normal, "he" is female again. She's wearing a tight fitting purple latex top.

I can feel the dream start to fade. I try to take some action to stabalize it, but whatever it is I tried, it didn't work. The dream continues to fade.

A moment of transition comes: I'm present in the dream, remembering all that's happened, watching it fade; then I'm in bed, watching the dream fade, remembering scattered bits of dream memory, knowing that just a moment earlier I was there remembering it all.

July 14, 2013

Church, a pet store, and an oil furnace mechanic
I'm at church, in the sanctuary. I have no memory of walls or ceiling. The chairs are set up in a huge semicircle around the pulpit. They're not in nice orderly rows, though. They're in small clumps of a few rows with a few columns, though they all face towards the pulpit. I'm at the far left of the semicicle, about half way back. Sam is sitting to the right of our little cluster. My son is with me. My wife and the girls are elsewhere. We get up to go find them.

Now we're most of the way around the semicircle. There's a low wall, probably 10 feet long, and they're sitting/laying on the floor behind it.

Now my son and Iare back at our seats. Christopher walks by.

Now I'm in another room; a good sized bedroom. The lighting is low but not dark. Against one wall is a bed, probably a full or a queen. Right across the room from it, on the other wall, is a large desk. It has a number of computers and monitors on it. A few monitors are ceiling mounted, angled down towards the desk. At least one of them is running a full-screen terminal: it's got a black background with text of various colors. On the floor near the desk is a huge white plastic shopping bag (the kind you get from a clothing store when you buy a bunch of clothes) with a box of dog treats. I'm on the bed, fiddling with something, listening to something. I realize that my wife is walking towards the room, that she'll be here in a minute, and that I totally forgot to listen to the sermon. I try to shut down the music(?) and listen to the stream, but I can't find the window that's playing the music.

Now we're in the van, driving through a bright white tunnel. Along the left side of the tunnel is a row of stores. My wife stops at the pet store; she wants to look at the dogs. Our dog)is with us, but he can't go in. I strap him into the baby's car seat so he won't go anywhere. IRL, he's a large dog, > 50 lbs, but in the dream he looks like a large stuffed animal and fits easily into the car seat. I realize I forgot the dog treats. I have a moment of doubt - maybe it's in the back of the car.

Now I'm standing behind the van, looking in the cargo area. I don't see the treats anywhere. I close the back and realize that I was looking in the back of some random van, and that our van is next to this one.

Now we're inside, but we're in some old guy's house. He's very diminutive, but he has that weird spry, wirey strength that old people in good shape have. His house is dark with lots of stained wood. As we walk through the house, he's extolling the benefits of an oil furnace. Unlike gas, it can be run all year long. It's more efficient than gas because, when the hot water reaches the house, it trips a heat sensor that shuts off the furnace to save oil. It's nearly maintenance free, needing only a change of water every so often.

Now we're in the kitchen. His wife and son are there. The son is preparing a batch of the water. In a bowl, he puts some water, some black rocks, and something else; then he holds an electric can opener on its side and uses the blade to crush the rocks. I don't think that's a good idea, especially with how close his face is, but he clearly does this often, so I'm not too concerned. When the rocks are small enough, the old guy takes a small black ladle, gets a bit of the water, and drinks it, proclaiming that it's just right. The wife shows us the thing that sprays oil into the furnace so it can burn. She actually sprays some up in the air; I hope it doesn't catch fire, and I hope it doesn't make too much of a mess.

July 13, 2013

Spies and Doorways
It's night. Two guys (spies) are up high somewhere looking down at a door set in a wall. Next to the door is a large knife switch. A guy (an enemy) walks up to the door and flips the switch. The door opens revealing a larger door and a larger switch. As the guy is about to flip the new switch, the watchers do something to flip the first switch back down. This ends up giving the new guy a fatal electrical shock when he tries to use the second switch. The spies are a junior/senior pair. The senior spy is the one who did it. The junior one asks why.

Somehow I knew there are 4 doors to get through before you get in.

Spy Fragment
Two women are standing on a catwalk, unseen. A third woman walks by below. All three are spies. The two are senior, and they have "plans" for the junior down below. Little do they know that, in the end, she'll be the one to overthrow them.


Spies in a Church
I'm in the van with my wife. We stop in front of a third world church. We have stuff in the car that I'm worried may be affected by the heat if we leave it in the car, but we're running late and don't have time to do much about it. I grab
my camera lenses and shove them under the seat.

Now we're inside, walking through the halls. Everything is a light tan/yellow. A number of people are walking around us. I don't say anything, because I'm worried about the language barrier. Someone else in my party says "hi" and someone responds back in an American accent, reassuring me.

Now we're in a room at the end of the hallway. Somehow I know that the building is kept cool by cold water pipes running right under the floor. Unfortunately, one of the pipes has broken through in the back-right corner, and water is coming into the room. The puddle is spreading towards some wires on the floor near the closer corner to my right. I pick up the pipe - it's clear plastic tubing - and make a Z kink in it to stop most of the water flow. The pastor (a small middle-eastern guy who speaks perfect English) grabs the other end of the pipe, which has a light blue connector on it. I get the end of my pipe closed, and he slides it onto his pipe. I let go of the kink, and everything is OK.

As thanks for my help with the pipe, he offers to give me a massage. I lie down on the table in the room (it wasn't there before) and he starts asking me what hurts, asking about specific points. I just tell him that my neck, shoulders, and back all hurt. He starts on my lower back.

Before he can get far, our kids' PCP shows up, except in the dream he's my PCP. He's a spy, too, and he's been sent to do something bad, but he doesn't want to. He changes to my side, and to show evidence of good faith gives me his boss' boss' phone number, which he managed to get from his own boss when she was being careless. Now another woman shows up. She's also changing to my side. Her cell phone is how she's contacted and tracked, so she drops it into the pool (we're outside now), and it explodes. In the dream, I think that's rather silly and over-the-top, even for a spy flick.

Another woman materializes (not just the dream poof-she's-there but actually beams in). She's wearing street clothes, but they morph into body armor. She takes her sword and starts swinging at the first woman. Both of them are creaming at each other - not screams of anger, fear, or rage, but something that just sounds silly. Somehow, the first woman is able to defend herself even though she has no sword or armor - some kind of energy field. Eventually, the second woman's own energy runs out. Her armor vanishes (she's back to street clothes) and she collapses.
I have a passing thought that I'm going to have to finish Bourne now (I gave up on it weeks ago) to find out how all this spy stuff ends.

Now that the excitement is over, the pastor can get back to my massage. I lean over the table, except this time I'm on the wrong side, so it's not very comfortable. He notices a bump near the base of my spine and squeezes it, popping it.
A bit of power line comes out. He takes it and walks away. The doctor comes over and squeezes it more, trying to get more to come out. No more comes, and it's fairly unpleasant.


The Convenience Store
I'm standing right by a convenience store's door. A guy in a van drives under the extended roof in front of a gas station. The van is piled to the ceiling with stuff. This foils a sniper who can't get a good shot at his target's head with the boxes in the way.

Now I'm inside. I really want something sweet. A friend of mine gets a drink and has a choice between Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb. He takes the Dr Pepper, and I get one too, though I'm surprised by how much it costs. I still need something to eat, so I look at the vending machine. It's only half full - many of the spots are empty. I see that one of the spots is the apples my wife got for me a few days ago. I get one, but I'm disappointed that I have to pay for it, since it's mine already. The vending machine also had GIANT hot dogs. They don't look very appetizing.


A Game
I'm playing some kind of strategy game, but there's no "I" in this dream. In the game, tanks are moving around in a city. It seems kind of like a reverse tower defense game. There are a couple of defenders sweeping their lines of sight back and forth. I need to use some kind of blocker unit to block their line of site, then sneak my other units through. My first attempt fails, so I restart the checkpoint and try again.

Now I'm looking at a new hero I can choose. His stats and attacks aren't as good as the other heros, but he has one huge advantage: he can absorb attacks of all 8 elements and then send them back out as devestating combos.



Van Maintenance
It's night. Our van needs work. There's a long driveway that goes down a moderate slope, curving gently to the right for a while, then making a sharp turn back to the left. Just before the sharp turn there's a round parking pad just off the driveway where our van is parked. We need to get it down past the sharp curve. For some reason, this is going to be tough.

July 12, 2013

The Bathroom at Work
I'm at work walking to the bathroom. I pass the normal one, but it's currently got construction going on inside it, so I walk past it to the smaller one. The hallways are wide - at least 10 feet - and the carpet is a muted red or orange. A couple of other guys (including a manager I know) are walking ahead of me, also to the restroom. It's one of the kind like you find at Walmart or an airport, where you walk around a couple of walls to get in - no door.

Inside, everything is white tile - floor, walls, counter. A few feet ahead of me, a 3 or 4 foot tall wall runs all the way from the right side of the room to a few feet from the left side. It's got some small potted plants on top of it. The back wall has a counter running all the way along it. There's a single sink at the far left. 3 urinals are evenly spaced under the rest of the counter. When I enter, 2 of the urinals are already in use, and as I'm walking around the short wall, someone takes the last one. I think "full house" to myself and start looking around for the stalls, but the guy at the first one finishes and heads to the sink.

A Girl Travels
A young girl, probably 10 or so, is traveling somewhere. In one scene, she's at the front of a vehicle - I think a train - along with a strange old guy and some pigs. The guy is in front, driving. The pigs are sitting in the seat behind the guy.
He speaks "pig," so every so often he turns around and starts oinking at the pigs. It sounds horrible.

I look again and there are two young boys sitting where the pigs had been a moment earlier. I wonder if the pigs turned into boys.

Now They're going up a hill.

Now she's back in one of the train cars. She's talking to some other boys her age by one of the windows. Suddenly, all the other boys in the car get up and start singing and dancing. I think to myself that this is a clearly musical along the lines of Oliver.


Tablet Case Discussion
My mother-in-law is showing us her new tablet case. My father-in-law asks why I got the case I did. I hold it up and show him how thin it is and how much I like how the tablet snaps into it. He asks if I've used the storage pockets behind the tablet yet and shows me the stuff he's got in his. I explain that even though mine is built similarly to his, it's not from the same company: Marcase doesn't make a case for my tablet, even though they've often been petitioned to and even though the N7 sells better than the Kindle.

I realize the case I've currently got on it is made of wood and about 2 inches thick. It's like a box where the tablet is the lid. When I open it, various electronic components and wires fall out in a jumble. I realize I've somehow got the backup case on. I fish around in my backpack for the normal case.

My wife is there, though I don't remember her doing anything.