lucid

Bed @ 2235
Woke @ 0600; WBTB /w mantras, BTB @ 0620 (took a bit to get back to sleep)
Woke @ 0700

Feeling gravity
I'm in the bathroom at work. I've finished washing my hands and am about to leave when I decide to check my phone to see if someone's sent me the information I need. I don't have any new messages, so I'm about to head out, but something reminds me that I should do an RC. I do a nose-pinch, fully expecting it'll show reality, but I find that I can breathe. I'm completely convinced that this is reality, so I must have done it wrong. I do it again, breathing in, then out, and I can still breathe. I'm having a really hard time believing I'm dreaming, but I clearly am. I rub my hands, then reach out and feel a screw in the side of a stall. I'm amazed at how accurate everything looks and feels. I realize I'm doing the "move really slowly so I don't pop the dream" thing and make an effort to move normally from this point on. I grab a paper towel and wad it up, again amazed at how real it all feels.

I remember my goal of increased awareness and run my senses over my body, immediately noticing that the gravity is wrong: I feel much too light, and there's hardly any pressure on my feet. For a moment my balance goes funny, but I get it back quickly. I jump into the air, then slowly float down, enjoying the feeling. I leave the bathroom and walk down a hallway trying to decide what to do. I'm going to try to get outside to fly again. I see a T intersection coming up and stop, trying to think what to imagine that would get me outside most easily; but I wake up.

Bed @ 2145
Woke @ 0215; BTB @ 0230, couldn't sleep; BTB @ 0520
Woke @ 0640

Going to a wedding
I'm at Bob W's house. I pull up YNAB on my phone to check something, and he sees it and asks me about it, appreciating that I'm taking good steps to take care of my finances. Now we're getting ready to leave to go to a wedding, and I'm still in my grubby clothes. I'm not sure where my good clothes are, but I think they're waiting for me where the wedding is being held. Now I'm in the house by myself; I know that everyone else has already loaded up in Bob's van and they're waiting for me. I have a moment of doubt about whether we'll all fit, but I assume he knows what he's doing and that we'll be fine.

Now I'm sitting by myself in a vehicle. I look around and realize I'm not in a minivan. I get out and see that I was in a large station wagon. I walk out of their garage onto their driveway, and I see a huge double-decker tour bus, and I know they're waiting for me. I get on board. To my left, a narrow stairway goes up to the upper deck. Another passage leads off to my right to the driver, and I can only see one chair - a nice big padded one - in front of me. Now we're driving down his driveway, and the driver makes some comment about having shifted too many gears too soon, and that he can't shift back, so it'll be a tough merge into traffic on the main road.

Now we've arrived and are in the room where the wedding will be held. It's a small room with lots of dark wood; very attractive, but I'm concerned that there are only three chairs plus a lectern. I look around the room again and realize that it's actually a hallway; there are many closed doors going this way and that. A woman - the wedding organizer - says that a couple more chairs are on their way, but I know that's just not enough - it won't even be enough for our small party, let alone for all the other guests. Looking through a window, I notice that one of the doors leads out onto a balcony.

Now I'm standing on the balcony with Blake, looking down at a steep beach. A huge wave crashes over the beach, going way up the sand, eventually cresting the top and going down the far side. I can see a large bag get washed over, and I know that there's a path down there - though I can't see it - that's about to get washed over.

Tasks of the Month
I'm in a house, and I realize that I'm dreaming. I start to move slowly and carefully, then I remember that I always do that in my lucids and force myself to walk normally while making it a priority to remember that I'm dreaming. I try to remember what my goals are and remember that the first TOTM is to find a missed present. I try to visualize what a Christmas tree with a single present under it would look like, then turn around, expecting to find it. Instead, I find a whole bunch of small, sparse, undecorated trees. I don't see any presents, but I walk over and look under them. I see something small near the wall, so I crawl under the trees to get it. It's a huge pouch of Fruit by the Foot. I tear it open, curious as to what I'll find inside, and I'm almost surprised that it actually has Fruit by the Foot in it. I pull the roll out and see that it's not well rolled, and it's somehow really gooey. I unroll a bit and try a bite. Because it's so gooey, I end up getting a bit of the paper in my mouth, but I decide that, since I'm dreaming, the paper won't be a problem, and I can't even feel it. It tastes just like the real thing. I get some on my fingers, and I have trouble getting it off.

Now that I've completed the first task, I try to recall another one, and I remember the pencil task. I start to form an image of a table with a piece of paper and a pencil; then I notice that there's already a table in front of me, covered with arts supplies, with someone sitting at while drawing. I'm already fixated on the idea of summoning a table and completely ignore the one in front of me. Once I have the image in my mind, I turn around to find a table exactly as I'd pictured it. Walking up to it, I mentally command the pencil to draw something. It rises to a 45 degree angle and starts to scribble all over the paper. Some areas are densely colored in with jagged strokes, and other areas have wide, flowing curves. Oddly, the pencil is drawing in blue. The paper was already half-covered in some kind of picture, and the existing design is quickly hidden by the scribbles.

Now that I've completed both tasks, I try to think of something else to do, and I decide to summon Jadzia Dax (I have absolutely no idea where this idea came from - I haven't watched DS9 in years). I think of what she looks like and turn around, but no one is there. I start wandering the house looking for her. I see a couple of people and ignore them, then finally find someone who kind of looks like her, even if she is wearing a dress. As soon as I start walking towards her, she changes into a grizzled man with a buzz cut. I try to change him back, but it doesn't work, and the dream fades.

BTB @ 0650.
Woke @ 0810

Foiled flying
I'm in a house looking at a post from Heather. A picture shows two of her boys playing with a strange toy: one of them is holding something in his mouth, and the other is pulling on a long elasticated cable attached to the mouthpiece. I can't imagine what this thing is supposed to do and how they can play with it without one of them getting hurt; either the one with the mouthpiece gets a face full of elastic or the other one ends up with a hard mouthpiece flying at him. The caption of the picture says something about home-made gifts often being the best ones.

Now I'm working on Poppy's table with Bob H. The table has been pulled apart in the middle, and he's trying to put the leaves (3 of them, each 6 inches wide) back in. He's having trouble, trying to put them in the wrong way, and I really want to tell him that I'll take care of it, but I don't so I don't offend him. Eventually he puts an extension in the tip of the table (since when has this table had extensions?). I try to look at it without being obvious to see if the grain of the wood matches - I don't think he got it right. Thankfully, he announces that he needs to leave and asks me to finish up and then put the table away somewhere safe (it's currently off to the side of the living room just to get it out of the way).

Now he's gone, and I realize I'm dreaming. Vividness is poor but not bad. I rub my hands, but it doesn't really do much. Nearby, I see my dog and cat lying down in front of the fireplace, and the dog is licking the cat. I praise him for being a good dog, walk over, and pet the cat. Her fur is warm and soft, and the dream grows more vivid. I try to focus on more of my senses to see what else I can pick up. I can't smell anything, and there's nothing to taste, but I can hear her purr. I stand up and decide that this time I'm going to practice flying.

I walk down a hallway and turn left towards the front door. I open it and pass through and am disappointed to find myself in the garage. I decide there's no need to wait until I'm outside to fly and jump into the air then zoom towards the open garage door. Unfortunately, there's chain-link fence covering the doorway. I steel myself to pass through it, knowing that I've flown through things before; but as I'm about to hit, I have a moment of doubt, and I get caught my it. I manage to force myself through, but I'm disappointed to find myself in another indoor area. I scold myself for failing to properly imagine what I should find. Looking around, I see that there's a section of the ceiling that seems to be open, and I fly towards it. As I get closer, I see that it's also covered by chain-link, but at least I can see sky beyond it. Once again, I get caught by the fence, and I end up waking up.

Bed @ 2230
Woke @ 0520

High-rise hotel
I'm in a high-rise hotel room, wearing my bath robe, moving around quietly so I don't wake my wife. Something strikes me as "off" and I realize I'm dreaming. I look around, marveling at how good everything looks. I remember I'd intended to rub my hands together to stabilize, but I decide to just run my hand along the wall instead. I remind myself that this is a dream and that everything I see and touch is a creation of my own mind (but it doesn't really affect me). My wife gets up, and I worry that means that my real-world wife is going to wake me up. I try to about how to use the dream, but my wife is telling me about some problems she's had with our email lists, and I don't want to ignore her in case I'm wrong about this being a dream. I half-heartedly answer her while trying to think how I can prove to myself whether this is a dream or not (doing a nose-pinch never even crosses my mind). Eventually, I decide that, yes, this really is a dream, and I need to get to it.

As I'm trying to decide how to use the dream, I remember that the current task of the month is to find a buffet. I picture a table full of food in a hallway, open the door, and go out. I do end up in a hallway, but there's no food. The hallway dead-ends to my right at another picture window, so I follow it around a corner to my left. I see an open doorway to my left and a stairwell (going down) to my right. I marvel that this place looks exactly like it does in real life (which it doesn't - this place doesn't exist). I look through the doorway and find only a small room. Turning around, I see that there's now a plastic card table (white) set up between a new doorway and the stair railing. Some of my kids are arranging bags of candy on it. It's not quite the buffet I'd been planning on, but it's still a table full of food, so I think it's close enough. I remember I'd had an additional goal of eating something, so I walk over to see what's there. I see some large bags of peanut butter M&Ms, but they're not open yet, and I don't want to open them myself. To their left is a large bag of small assorted candies, and it's already open. I reach in and pull out what I believe to be a small Snickers. My eldest daughter laughs at me for my choice and makes a comment. I rip it open and am surprised that it has a small heart covered in red foil. I'm amused - even though it's Christmas time, the table is full of Halloween candy, and now I have a Valentines chocolate? Somehow I know it's dark chocolate, so I don't mind the weirdness. As I'm unwrapping it, I wake up (for real).

Points: 27

Bed @ 2310
Woke @ 0520

Fixing an old injury
I'm in a long, narrow room in an old house. A doctor is preparing to do surgery on a man's arm, trying to fix an old wound that was never properly dealt with. He takes a pair of X-rays of the man's arm: one from the top and one from the bottom. The X-ray from the top looks normal, but the one from the bottom shows a long, slightly wavy, finger-width groove running the length of the bone. He explains to the family that he's going to have to fill this groove.

Lucid introspection
I'm with my wife. We're in a wide stairway / hallway area in some kind of weird multi-tenant house (maybe a bed and breakfast). I know this is a dream (though my awareness is extremely low). I want to get into a bathroom (I have a reason in the dream, but I don't remember it). In front of us, on the wall to my left, is a large plate-glass window. Looking through it, I can see a bathroom. A young woman is in there, doing something, but I'm not concerned since this is just a dream. Now my wife and I are in the bathroom, and the young woman* leaves without a word. * The bathroom is fairly wide and very long. The long wall across from the window is completely covered by a mirror. Running the length of the mirror is a shallow counter, maybe a foot deep, which is covered in a variety of small things (toiletries?) from one end to the other. I take a closer look at some of the stuff in front of me, then turn right and walk through a doorway into a very large bedroom. Carpet is on the floor, a king size bed is off to our left, and there's a small dresser and a door on the right-hand wall, but otherwise the room is empty. * I mentally run down my lucid 'progress', thinking that my daytime practice is doing pretty well, and my dream recall is generally OK, but that the only thing left is the frequency of my lucids, which is much better than it's ever been but still has a great deal of room for improvement. Of course, since lucid frequency is the only thing that really matters, it's not saying a lot to say that it's "the only thing left."

BTB @ 0530 (took a while to get to sleep)
Woke around 0700

Steam controller fiddling
I'm sitting at a dining room table, working at a computer, fiddling with my Steam controller. Some of my kids are standing around behind me, watching me. Ever since I got the controller they've been fascinated by it. Now I'm going down the steps in the house (dream-me thinks I'd been upstairs in my office and I'm coming back down), and I'm thinking about Steam's streaming. Would it be better to have the controller's receiver plugged into the computer receiving the stream, or would it be better to have the controller plugged into the computer sending the stream? After all, if the receiver is being controlled, then there might be input lag; but if the signal is strong enough to make it all the way upstairs, then even if I get video lag I won't have to fight with input lag as well.


Fragment: I'm outside, somewhere grassy, with a group of young adults from church.

Points: 15.5

Bed @ 2225*
Woke @ 2330 /w nothing.*
Woke @ 0200 /w nothing.*
Woke @ 0345 - unknown reason

Remote pairing
I'm in "my room" talking with my team lead on the phone, using my Bluetooth headset. My phone shows me a notification that something's crashed, but I assume it's some background process since everything seems to be working OK. My lead is doing most of the talking, and I'm generally making "Uh-huh" noises. It's only when I actually try to add something that I realize he can't hear me. I start fiddling with the phone, trying to get 'unmuted.' Eventually, he asks me a direct question, and after trying again with the headset I disconnect it and hold up the phone to my ear. This time he can hear me and I explain what happened with the headset before getting back to the conversation at hand. He wants to spend most of tomorrow pairing with me on our project, some kind of radio hardware, and we're planning out what we want to accomplish.

Now I'm walking away from my building, crossing shopping center parking lots. I need to get some distance from my office to test something out. I'm concerned that radio signals are just too finicky, and that all the stuff around here will create all sorts of 'hot spots' and 'cold spots' and we just won't be able to make sense of our results unless we get much better testing hardware. At a minimum, we're going to need a proper signal strength meter, but we're also going to need ... something else (I forget in-dream). Now I'm still moving away from my building, but I'm somehow in a sitting position, sliding backwards over the ground, frictionless, though it's a very bumpy ride and I have to watch out for hedges lining the driveways.

Now I'm walking again, approaching the intersection of a couple of busy roads. A utility truck is pulled up onto the grass, and the utility guy is walking around. I can hear rock music blaring even though I'm still a ways away from him. This is my general destination - my lead wants me to test from here, though I don't think it'll work, since I no longer have line-of-sight to my building.

Now I'm standing on the steps of what seems to be a condemned tenement building. The whole thing is painted brick red, though the paint is peeling. There's another similar structure across the street, though it's actually made of brick. My lead is with me, and I point over, saying that we may be able to 'spike' the building across the street near its top with a radio repeater if we can figure out who to ask for permission. As I descend the steps, I look around, wondering if anyone still lives here despite the terrible condition of the building. The board I try to use as a railing turns out not to be connected to anything and I jump, not expecting it to pull away in my hand. I put it back down, then descend the steps even more carefully.I walk along a grassy area until I can finally look back to see the College of Computing, which is at the end of a shopping center strip. It's got a drive-around that I didn't remember being there.

Now I've walked back and gone inside, and I'm in the waiting room of a doctor's office, standing in line to pay. To my left, a frosted glass window opens and the receptionist spays me with water as if from a shower head. I yelp, dashing around, trying to get out of the stream, and she laughs uproariously. I'm not pleased, but I like the people here and I can't feel too annoyed at them. Back in line, I look around carefully, and no more ambushes seem to be forthcoming. The guy in front of me turns and hands me a wallet he thinks I dropped - it certainly looks like mine. I open it and find it's full of British pounds, not dollars, and I tell him it's not mine. Hearing "pounds," another man turns, sees the wallet, and exclaims that it's his. He gives me a hand-written note and some American bills he's been carrying, explaining that he wanted to give a reward to whoever gave found and returned his wallet. His English is good if rather accented - German, maybe. I'm not sure what to do - I wouldn't mind a few extra spending dollars, but I don't want to take advantage of him either. I make a very small effort to return the money, but he rebuffs me, and I don't press it. I'm having trouble counting the bills - at first, I think it's a five and a one, but each time I look at it it's different. At one point, I think it's a twenty, a ten, and a five. Eventually, I remember the note and look at it. It's scrawled in nearly unintelligible handwriting, a thank you for finding his wallet. Along the left side is his own recipe for something. I don't try to interpret the note or the recipe since the handwriting is so bad, but I do keep it for later study.

Now I'm talking to one of the doctors. He's amused, smirking, reminding me of the reason I trust him, that he doesn't take any of my personal information; but then he runs through all the various agencies, groups, and regulations they have to deal with which completely destroy any semblance of privacy I may have had.

BTB @ 0410; can't sleep until 0610
Woke @ 0715

Delta lucid?
I'm looking at a gray-on-gray "field," and I know I'm asleep. I'm aware of the feeling of my right hand. I manage to form an image of a hand and open and close it without affecting my physical hand.

Searching for sky; flight!
I'm in a rather plain room with a family I feel I know, a man and couple of teenage kids. I'm working with some food laid out on the lid of a large Rubbermaid tub. I take a small piece of fish steak out of a square Glasslock container where it's been sitting on wax paper and marinating in something dark. Someone asks me if I know how to handle fish and I answer yes.

I remember that I'm dreaming and reach out to feel the edge of the lid, its plasticy sharpness. The people are gone. I stay calm, moving slowly, breathing deeply, fixing the knowledge that this is a dream in my mind (I forget to rub my hands). I feel the top of the lid, then the wall near me, then start to head outside. I need to get outdoors so I can fly. I move very slowly, as if quick movement will shatter the dream or make me forget (I need to work on that ...)I walk through the doorway and find myself in something like a small enclosed garden - grass on the ground, other growing stuff around, 4 walls, and something overhead. I walk through another doorway and find myself in another small room, then in another enclosed outdoor space. I see a screen door (it's green all over) and launch myself through it, but I just find myself in another enclosed space. I start to get concerned - what if I can't find a way out? I calm myself and don't let myself get sucked into it. I reflect that I'm not yet very good at dream control, so I don't trust myself to bust through a wall, but I can still use simpler, more reliable methods. I stop, telling myself that there will be a doorway around the next corner, picturing it in my mind, picturing the sunlight shining through it. I turn the corner and find myself in a garden with a fence. There's still something overhead, but there's a gap between the covering and the fence, and sunlight is streaming through the gap. I'm so relieved, I feel a huge weight lifted from myself.

I launch myself up through the gap, and I'm out, hovering in the air about ten feet up. I'm so happy, but I keep control of myself. Buildings are on either side of me, and a kind of wide alley stretches out before me; but I can still see the blue sky above. I pause for a moment - I've never gotten beyond this stage, so now what? I focus on feeling confident, go into what feels like a natural flying pose - right arm forward, left arm cocked backwards - and start moving upwards and forwards, out beyond the buildings. I remember that part of my goal is to really feel the sensation of flying, of wind in my face, of speed and height, but I get nothing. I'm out in the open now, with nothing around me. To my left, I see a woman flying in, holding an umbrella. I wake, feeling amazing and slightly emotional.

Fragment: I'm holding my mini-massager, trying to use it; but the battery is so low that it can barely vibrate.

Points: 36

Bathroom hunt
I'm in a long, fairly narrow room. The walls and floor are all tiled a light green, and a doctor is with me. We walk from one end of the room to somewhere near the middle, and I realize I really need a bathroom. Sheepishly, I ask her where one is, and she vaguely gestures to one side while giving instructions that I don't follow. I head off in the direction she waved in.

Now I'm walking through a large area. In front of me, off to the right, I see a doorway labeled as a single-seat bathroom. It seems odd for such a large place, but whatever. Now I'm inside the bathroom. It's a large room, at least 20'x20'. I don't understand why a single-seater would be so large, but whatever. In the middle of the wall on my right is a door, and I realize it's a second entrance. I look to see how to lock it and see a long bar - as long as the wall - which can be rotated to block the door. I rotate it into the 'locked' position and latch it. I assume that the person who works on the other side of the door must use a wheelchair.

I turn back around to lock the main door and find that a whole crowd of people is coming in. A few people are already seated on the couches, and a couple more are still standing. I kick myself for not locking the main door first, but it's too late now. I can't kick out a whole crowd, especially not when they're here for a meeting. I leave, intending to look for another bathroom.

Now I'm in a kind of food court area. All of the tables are on a giant raised platform. I make the connection that food courts always have a bathroom nearby, so I find some stairs that lead onto the platform and take them.

Now I'm walking along a wide hallway with stores on each side, looking for a sign for bathrooms. This is a mall, so one can't be too far away, though it'll probably be down an inconspicuous side hallway. Now I'm running, and I can hear my pursuers as they talk to each other. They're confused by my running style - somehow I'm using my hands as well as my feet - and amazed by my speed. They admit to each other that there's no way they'll catch me, and I thrill in my speed.


Raising the sun
I'm in my bedroom with my wife. I start talking about the book we're reading (IRL) and something I didn't agree with in the last chapter. Now I'm in the hallway outside our bedroom, and I notice that the lights are off and the light-up light switches are dark. I realize that the breaker must have blown and start to head downstairs to flip it. Now I'm in the pantry, at the breaker box. The lights are off, and I reach for my cell phone to turn on its flashlight. As soon as I touch it, the flashlight turns on, which surprises me. I don't think about it too hard, since it's what I needed anyway. I hold it up and scan the panel, looking for a flipped breaker, and find it. I turn it off, then back on. It immediately flips back off, and my other hand feels warm and goopy. I worry that the breaker might have a short and start feeling the panel for heat, but the panel is fine. I decide to go back upstairs to see if I can find what's tripping the breaker.

Now I'm walking through our entryway on the way to the stairs. I see a bright orange flash and fear that there's a fire upstairs; then I realize that the explosion was outside, across the street. I walk over to the window to look out. It's dark, and I can only vaguely make out the shapes of children playing nearby. I have a vague thought along the lines of "I can't believe how bad everything is; this must be a dream" and something clicks. I don't yet believe I'm dreaming, but I do a nose-pinch to make sure. I can still breathe, and I realize I'm dreaming.

My daytime daydream practice kicks in, and I remember what I'm supposed to do. 1) Remember and hold onto the sure knowledge that I'm dreaming. 2) Slowly rub my hands and feel the friction between them. 3) Look around myself, study my environment, and affirm that everything I'm seeing is created by my own mind. 4) Find a way outside. 5) Fly. I quickly go through steps 1-3, and I keep telling myself "This is a dream" for the rest of my dream. I'm in my entryway, so all I have to do to get outside is to open the front door. Curiously, the whole wall rotates as if it's a secret passage, but I don't really care - it opens the path to my front porch, and I go outside. It's still night, and I don't want to fly around in the dark, so I decide to pull a Truman Show and make it day. I stretch out my hands towards the horizon (I know it's not east, but I don't care), command "Sun, rise!" and lift my arms. The sun comes shooting over the horizon and disappears over my head. I turn around to see where it went, but I can't see it.

I turn back around and try again. I stretch my arms to the horizon and slowly lift them. The sun comes up with them, and I "stick" the sun to about 10 o'clock. Over the next few seconds, the sky fades from a starry black to a beautiful blue. I'm excited it worked, and I wake up. I try for a DEILD, then do another nose pinch, but I'm awake.


Fragment: My van is at the top of a driveway, and I'm doing something with the cargo in the back.

Bed @ 2245
Woke @ 0300, lost recall. Meditated, took G, attempted WILD until 0430, got to sleep around 0515.
Woke @ 0700

Broken switches
I'm in my bathroom and flip a light switch. Nothing. I flip it a couple of times with no result, then try the other one. Still nothing. I pull out my phone and try to turn it on, to use its flashlight, but it won't turn on. I realize I must be dreaming, but I don't feel very certain of it. I do a nose-pinch and it takes a couple of times before I'm really convinced, and I realize my RL nose must be stuffy. As soon as I'm convinced that, yes, this is a dream, my vision dims. I start shouting "I'm dreaming! I'm lucid!", rubbing my hands, and spinning, but the dream fades.

I have a false awakening which I don't notice. I'm in bed, in my bedroom, and my family is in the room. I can feel a small body next to my leg under the covers. At first I think it's the baby, and I'm surprised he's under there, but then I see him with my wife and realize it's my youngest daughter. I reach under the covers and rub her curly head, and she giggles. Now we're getting ready to go outside, and the kids are putting on snow gear and asking what kinds of pull-ups to wear. I'm confused for a minute, but I guess it makes sense that if we're going to be out in the snow, someone might have an accident.


Robot wheels
I'm watching a WALLE-like robot go up to a larger robot with bicycle tires (thin square pipe frame with thin pipes coming down at each corner to wheels) and cut off the two front tires. Somehow, the robot is still able to move, but without its front tires it's lost its brakes and can't stop. There's some kind of cylinder behind where each of the tires was, and they're getting red hot. The robot ends up getting onto a moving walkway and launching off into the distance while an old man laughs.


CTRL-ALT-DEL Book
I'm looking at a couple of CTRL-ALT-DEL printed books, trying to line up comics from one with comics from another. I turn the page in one book and see that it has a nude drawing of one of the characters, with "strategic" bits blurred out, and I quickly close the book - I had no idea he'd ever drawn risque/nude pictures of his characters.

I was camping tonight, so my records are incomplete. I'm frankly amazed I remembered anything ...

Naval infiltration
I'm in a huge elevator, going up. On one wall, there's a giant glowing "6," but I don't know if it's showing what floor it's going to, or which elevator is it, or what. Off to the side, I see a door that leads into the bathrooms, and I'm amused - I've never seen an elevator with onboard bathrooms before, but this one is certainly big enough for it.

Now I've done something, gone back down, and gotten back on with a friend. I look for the bathroom and am surprised that I don't see it any more - I'd really been hoping it would be there ... I also note that the 6 isn't glowing any more. We reach our destination floor. Now we're in a dimly lit room. It's long and narrow, and we're near what seems to be a bathtub. Somehow, the bathtub is related to our reason for being here.

Now we're in a speedboat headed away from some kind of small floating "base." My companion indicates that "they" managed to get tracking devices onto us. He takes my bluetooth headset and a pair of wire snips and snips them right down the middle of the boom mic, then hands it back to me saying that it's safe now.

Now we're going along at full speed. A large bouy is in right in front of us and we end up crashing straight over it. It's where we were headed for, so we turn around as quickly as we can. As we turn, I can see that another speedboat is almost on top of us - they were following us the whole time! Without waiting, I dive into the water knowing that I must get to <the thing> before they do! I'm concerned that I didn't have a chance to get any breathing gear, and I think how nice it would be to be able to breathe underwater.

With that thought, I'm reminded of my personal goal and realize I'm dreaming. I completely forget about my pursuers and look around. The water is a light blue and is beautifully clear. Many swimmers are in the water around me, though most are higher up towards the surface - I'm already pretty far down. * I open my mouth and breathe in the water. I'm actually a little disappointed - I'd hoped it would feel really weird, but I just feel my real body breathing. In fact, even though I'm breathing through my dream mouth, I can feel the breath in my physical nostrils. I get a huge feeling of dissonance and wake up before I can do anything else.


Sick friend
I'm on a nice grass lawn outside a large house. I see a man come onto a small balcony with his wife, and I'm pleased: he's been sick for a long time, and it's good to see him up and about.

Now I'm sharing a bed with him, and his wife is in the bed next to us. I know I was glad to see him, but I can't figure out why we'd share a bed. I'm grateful to his wife for her kindness to us, and I feel bad for taking the spot which should have been hers.

On waking, the dream was explained: I'd been sleeping with my toddler who was having trouble sleeping in the tent.

Bed @ 2245
Woke @ 0120.
Attempted BTB @ 0145 /w MILD & SSILD
Meditated, got up, went back to bed, got up, had a drink, listened to a book, back to bed, etc. Fell asleep past 4.
Woke @ 0440

Meeting with my boss
I'm in my (old)boss's office for my every-other-weekly meeting. She's finishing something up and has a few papers on her desk. They're up-side-down, but I can see long lines of highlighter on them. I have a brief thought that maybe it's paperwork for a raise, but I squash that - I got one recently from "my other boss." I have a moment of confusion, since I just had a one-on-one with "my other boss," but "remember" that he's actually her boss and I meet with both of them. She's listening to some really weird music that's making it hard to think, and I hope she'll turn it off. I see her move what looks like an ipod, but I have the odd feeling that the music isn't actually coming from it. She starts saying something about duct tape, how tempting it is, how it needs to be controlled, and I'm really confused. I think I must have missed her opening sentence and that, if I'd caught it, then everything would make sense.

She keeps going about the duct tape, and I suddenly I realize that none of this makes sense and that I must be dreaming. I do a confirmation nose-pinch and am able to breathe. I have almost no "did I do it right?" hesitation and am extremely confident that this is a dream, and I have no qualms about doing weird stuff in "my boss' office." I stand up and walk over to the wall trying to decide what to do - I consider trying to phase through it, but I know that that's a good way to get somewhere totally random, and I don't want to lose lucidity in the transition. As I'm considering, I notice that my head is closer to the ceiling than it should be. I decide to see if I can grow further, and I do - I actually get my head within a hair's-breadth of the ceiling. Everything in the room looks a bit smaller, a bit further away. I remember a task of the month, to reach into my pockets and pull out whatever's there. I do so and find only my usual setup: my right pocket has my keys and Swiss Army knife, and my left pocket is empty.

Now I recall my 3-step goal. I've done steps 1 and 2 in a previous dream, and I kick myself for not posting a new step 3 - I've never successfully banished something from a dream, and I'd intended to update it to something simpler. Oh well, I'll give it a shot. I look around for a good candidate and see some baby toys on my boss's desk, including a small blue tower filled with marble-sized balls and a couple of plastic keyrings. I decide to banish one of the keyrings. I turn around, concentrate hard on making it disappear, then turn back. They're still there, though I have the feeling the contents of the desk shifted slightly. I decide that trying to remove something when there are two of them is a bad idea. I decide to do the little tower instead, but I don't want clutter around it in case that makes it harder. I walk over and rearrange things, moving the tower to the center of her desk and leaving a large space around it. I face the wall, focus on making the tower disappear, and turn back. It's now a tiny fraction of its original size, but it's still there. I decide that if doing the behind-the-back trick won't work. I'll just forcibly will it out of existence. I stare at it, willing it to vanish, and it starts vibrating madly; then I wake up. I check for an FA, but I'm back in reality.


BTB @ 0445
Woke @ 0630 /w alarm


Fiddling with a Steam Controller
I've just received my new Steam Controller and I'm showing it off to my kids. I'd heard it was large, but it's much larger than I expected. I'm also a bit disappointed by its appearance: in photos, it was always a dark shiny black, but it's actually a kind of matte light gray. I take note of each of the inputs, noting that something right in the middle also seems off, though I can't put my finger on what's not right. To the left is the fake D-pad - I try it out, and it feels like a normal D-pad. I look again, and it's not circular but is actually D-pad shaped, and that confuses me. Right in the middle of the pad is a tiny clickable Steam button. There's a circular pad on the right and another one in the lower-right, partly on the grip. A trigger button just to the right of the D-pad surprises me - I have no idea how you could press it without really contorting your hand. Triggers are all over the back, both on the main body and on the grips. Now the D-pad has changed, and it's a large layout of tiny red thumbsticks laid out in a three-tiered pattern: the outer tier has them in up/down/left/right positions, the middle tier has them for diagonal movement, and the inner tier is back to up/down/left/right. I note something in the software controls which allows each thumbstick to function independently, or you can lock each one to send only the direction corresponding to its position (so the left stick could only send 'left,' no matter which way it was being pushed). So far, I haven't actually plugged the controller into my computer, but I do so now so that I can finish its configuration and give it a shot in a game.


Watching a skilled player
I'm watching someone playing a game. Right now, he's in some kind of top down view of what I assume to be the game's galaxy, showing many planets, solar systems, and other astral objects. His ship is just a tiny dot currently orbiting a planet. Now he's received a mission to deliver something quickly to another planet which is on the other side of the galaxy, and I'm curious to see how he'll manage it, whether he'll try to use any kind of subspace gate or some-such or whether he'll just fly there without using any shortcuts. There's a lot of movement of the planets and systems, and he brilliantly uses gravity assist after gravity assist to fling himself to the other side of the map faster than I ever thought possible.

Now the game has switched to 2D side-scrolling action. He's not strong enough to fight the enemies here, so he's just running to the right, jumping over enemies as he encounters them, never stopping his movement. Now he's reached the end of the level, and he's got quite the crowd of enemies following him. There's only one enemy left between him and his goal, and it instantly kills him. He's a bit disappointed, but he's not really concerned, saying he'll get it next time.


Mad scientists
I'm watching a scientist in a lab. He's recently been exposed to a mutagen and needs to focus to keep his body from 'pooling' - but despite his constant attention, his gut is still very distended. Now he's overheard a junior scientist talking about revealing what's going on to their superiors - who have been kept in the dark - so the scientist manages to expose him to the mutagen. His skin ends up turning red and bumpy all over, and another scientist starts to permanently close his mouth by fusing another mutagen-infected <something> onto his face. I'm horrified, but thankfully another scientist convinces him to pull it off before it's too late.


Another vacation
I'm strolling through a beach town with my family and in-laws.

Now we're at the vacation house. My father-in-law needs some kind of charger. I run through the list of what I have, and he says he's already got the right cable, so he just needs my charger with the standard female USB port.

Now we're watching video provided by our management company showing a family touring the duplex we have up for rent. I can't believe how much stuff is left over from the previous renters - we're going to have to get over there and deal with it ASAP. In particular, the living room is full of baby toys and baby furniture. Now I'm looking at an application from a lady who'd like to move in. It says that she's requesting assistance to pay the rent - I've never seen anything like that before, and I show it to my wife. Looking more closely, we see that she's requesting a 3rd party source to pay $90 of her monthly rent. As we continue to look at it, we realize that the listed monthly rent is wrong; it's currently listed at $600 which is way too low. I can't remember exactly what it should be, but I think it's somewhere in the $700 range. In fact, the management company controls the rent and recently bumped it up due to market conditions. I'm going to have to contact them to find out what's going on. I'm frustrated that we can't probably change it for people who have already put in applications, but they really need to fix it immediately before any more applications come in.


Watching kids
I'm helping watch some kids who are all fairly young; I don't know any of them. One of them in particular is poorly behaved and doesn't want to go to bed. We end up doing something weird with sofa cushions and his crib to make a bed that he's willing to sleep in, and we're very relieved when it actually works. Some of his siblings are in the same bedroom as he is, so it's important for him to sleep so that they can sleep too.

Bed @ 2230
Woke @ 0015 /w no recall
BTB @ 0020 /w water
Woke @ 0340

Bad timing
I'm in my bathroom in the middle of the night taking galantamine and choline. I'm having trouble swallowing them; I put a pill in my mouth, take some water, swallow the water, but just can't get the pill down. After a couple of tries, I can start to taste the pill and realize it's already dissolving in my mouth. Eventually I just give up and chew up the pill and hope that it won't mess with it. I chew up the galantamines but manage to swallow the choline (which I think is ironic given how much larger the choline is), but then I notice there's still a galantamine on the counter; I could have sworn I chewed up both of them, but oh well. I go ahead and take the one I "forgot." As I'm finishing with the pills I start to hear my wife moving around. I assume she's just woken up to use the bathroom, so I head out so she can use it; but as I leave the bathroom I'm shocked to find that it's 6:58, only two minutes before I'm supposed to get up to go to work! There's no way I can sleep and dream in two minutes, and not only did I just waste a dose, but it'll be another four days before I can try again! Arg! I can't understand how I could have done something like that.

Now I'm helping my wife by collecting laundry from our room. Clothing, along with a few blankets, is scattered on every surface in the room. As I'm trying to figure out what to do with my daughter's quilt, she comes in and takes it from me. As she's leaving I look out into the hallway and notice the baby gate at the top of the stairs: it has only its top and bottom bars left, with nothing in-between, and I can't imagine how it could do anything at all to stop my toddler from going up or down the stairs.


Breakfast conversation
I'm eating breakfast with Steve B. He asks how I'm doing with my Bible reading, and I confess that I'm actually not doing so well. He's concerned and asks why, and I tell him that when I'm trying to read it my mind feels like it's getting pulled in a hundred directions and it takes a white-knuckled grip to stay focused, and it's just really exhausting. He says I might want to consider reading other good books to build up my spiritual reading muscles and suggests a couple. One of them I've heard of, and I ask him about the other one. He explains it's a biography of <someone who did something.> As we're talking, I'm getting more breakfast. There's some kind of cooked banana dish, and there's some kind of bread-based casserole. Both are pretty tasty, though the bread one is starting to get soggy.


Infiltration observation
It's night. I'm 'hovering' behind a youth as he sneaks along some narrow walkways above water. I'm not concerned about his seeing me - I'm somehow 'present' without actually being here physically. I stay fairly close to him, hanging back far enough to watch what he's doing. He's pretty spry, hopping over locked gates with some fairly slick moves. Eventually he reaches doors to go inside somewhere and passes through, unaware that a lady (with dark skin and black clothes) is now following right behind him. As I pass through the doors behind them, she actually holds the door for me and looks straight at me. She's wearing a lot of fancy spy gear and must be able to 'see' me, or at least sense my presence. She gives me a 'so you thought you could pull one over on me, huh?' wry smile before continuing off behind the boy.


Honey map
I'm holding a wooden honey dipper and trying to place small dots of honey on a map where I believe the final battle of a campaign was fought. I know that the map will alert me when I've gotten the right spot, but despite putting dots in a number of places I thought were likely candidates, nothing's happened. Finally a 'touch here for a hint' button appears and I press it with the tip of the dipper, but nothing shows up. For a moment I wonder if it's broken, but then I realize I'm zoomed in so far that the battle sites aren't visible. I zoom out and try again, but the honey is nearly gone and I'm having trouble getting any to drip. I end up spinning the dipper, thinking that maybe centrifugal force will help honey get to the edge so it can drip down.

Now I'm 'hovering' over the roads I just saw in the map. Both sides of the road are packed with booths selling many different things. I can see little icons hovering above people, and I know that they indicate that the person is going to do something important, even if I don't know exactly what each of the icons is trying to represent. In a larger booth, I see two people with icons, and I somehow know that talking to one of them will cause a quest to succeed while talking to the other will fail the quest.


BTB @ 0405 /w 8mg galantamine
Woke @ 0520

Staying with my in-laws
I'm standing on the driveway at my in-law's house. My wife is loading our car, and my mother-in-law is getting into her car. I really need to use the bathroom, so I tell them I'll be right back and jog up the driveway to the house. The garage doors are already closed, so I call back to ask one of them to use the remote. Both of them try, but the garage door won't go up. We're all confused, and both of them try again, but still nothing. I look back at the door and see that it's open a couple of feet (though now it's become a single-piece garage door, so it's opened by tilting). I ask them to stop using the remotes so I can crawl under the door and not worry about being crushed.

Now I'm in bed in their guest bedroom, and I know that I'm dreaming. My wife is still asleep next to me, so I gently scoot down towards the foot of the bed. As I'm trying to stand up, my movement feels "off," and my arms are leaden. I have trouble getting off the bed and end up face-planting on the floor. I take a moment to pull myself together and get up, and I can move around OK now. I head down the hallway and out the front door and look around. With the house at my back, I'm looking down a (beautifully manicured) sloped lawn. The rest of the neighborhood stretches out below me, and trees surround the property. I remember my personal goal of flying above the treetops and jump as hard as I can. I go shooting up into the air and get at least fifty feet in the air, well above the nearest trees. Success! I look around and thrill at being so high, though I have a brief moment of confusion as I find that I'm still not above the roof. Oh well, dreams are weird. I try to go higher, but I'm not able to; instead, I start to fall. At first, I'm falling slowly, but I quickly build speed until I finally slam into the ground, feet first, with a tremendous thump.

That was fun! I look forward to doing more flying in the future, but I decide to try out other stuff now. I remember my 3-step goals and that my intended narrative was to summon my cell phone, use it, then disband it. I normally wear my cell phone on my belt, though it's not there now. Without looking, I reach down to my belt, to where I usually wear it, intending to grab it; but my hand comes back empty. I try again, and this time I come back with an Insteon module. Huh? Oh well, at least I summoned something ... I head back inside looking for something electronic to mess with to complete step two. I enter the kitchen and go to the dishwasher which I see has some kind of electronic display. I mess with the buttons on the control panel and manage to change what the display is showing; I end up in some kind of menu and manage to change a setting.

Now I decide to hunt for a bathroom - I want to see if I can use a mirror to change my physical appearance. I go down one short hallway, but all the doors are closed and I don't want to barge in on my in-laws. I try another one and, once again, the doors are closed; but I remember this is a dream and it doesn't matter. I decide to go through the door I'm at, but I'm surprised to see that it has only a deadbolt. I decide that, since this is a dream, that's not going to stop me and that I'm going to phase through the door. I make some progress, but there's resistance, and before I make it more than a couple of inches through the door bursts open. I'm a bit disappointed, but oh well. Whatever's behind the door, it's not a bathroom. I try a couple more doors before finally finding what seems to be a dressing room with a large wall mirror. *I stand in front of the mirror and manage to alter a couple of physical characteristics. Unfortunately, my rib cage looks emaciated, and I can't seem to do anything about it.*

Now I'm walking on a wide sidewalk next to a park. A tall, well-dressed woman is walking towards me, and *I order her to stop. She does, standing completely still, with eyes staring straight ahead. It's actually a bit creepy.

At one point, I hear something I assume is my wife's alarm. I steel myself, trying to stay in the dream. Once it stops, I assume I'll have five minutes before it goes off again.

Many times through the dream I lose sight. I rub my hands until it comes back.

BTB @ 0545 - though I never actually get back to sleep

Bed @ 2125
Woke @ 0155

On an alien spaceship
I'm watching a movie in which a general is addressing his men. The general and his men are all aliens which just look like men who have been painted with a mix of silver and gold metallic paint. I recognize that the general is a famous actor, but I can't remember who he is or what else he's been in. For a famous actor, I'm surprised at how "ordinary" he looks - he's got a rather blocky face and some pretty bad buck teeth. In a way, I'm kind of glad - Hollywood tends to put forward people who are "too perfect." The general is telling his troops that he's been working on making a movie, and that it's almost done, but that higher-ups in his command have demanded that he add a new character, "Hiss," before the film ships. He lets people know that they're going to have a rare chance to watch filming happen and possibly even be involved in the process.

Now I'm looking at a screen of some sort. The general starts distinguishing between groups of reptilian soldiers based on whether or not they're married and whether or not they've helped a female bear eggs. The screen is split into columns, and a pattern of tiny lizard footprints appears in the relevant column as he speaks of each group and their eggs. * Now I'm walking through the spaceship. I pause and look into an open doorway on my right and see a small, poorly lit room. Now I have the feeling that the general has his eye on me and is toying with me. I'm walking down a very bare hallway, and I feel that something is wrong. I turn around and find a closed door right behind me where a moment ago there was only empty hallway. I turn back around to find that the end of the hallway is now just a few feet away. I look at the wall to my right and find that, while it was bare a moment ago, it now has an unmarked door. I decide to try using diffuse vision (from the dream yoga class) to watch both ends of the hallway at the same time. I look straight at the wall and let my vision unfocus slightly, and I find I'm able to watch the wall, the door, and the end of the hallway. After a few moments, I can see the hallway actually redrawing itself. When it's done, the single door has been replaced by a pair of doors for men's and women's bathrooms. I briefly consider going into the women's but decide to go into the men's instead.

Now I'm in the men's bathroom. A white tiled hallway extends away in front of me, eventually opening out into the bathroom proper. Halfway down the hallway I see a very petite woman standing across from a large wall-mounted mirror. She greets me and lets me know that, by entering this room, I've lost. She asks me to look at the floor, at the pattern of white and grey tiles, and notes that every single white tile is a bad end. I realize that I'm dreaming. I say something about her dog, and it lies down and rolls onto its side. I don't like her, so I tell her to turn around and put her hands on the wall. To my surprise, she immediately complies.* Now I'm talking to the guy who's responsible for building traps on the ship.


Fragment: I've got an overhead view of small pools of water connected by narrow streams of water, laid out in a kind of grid.


BTB @ 0215
Woke @ 0700 /w no recall

Nap: 1445-1615

Playing on a trampoline
I'm on a large rectangular-ish trampoline with my eldest son and eldest daughter. At first, I jump near them; but when my daughter tries to hold me down, I scold her, saying it's dangerous to do that, then start jumping away from them, trying to keep them from getting me. There's enough space on this trampoline that I bet I can do it indefinitely, so I'll need to be careful to give them enough success that they don't get frustrated.


Japanese infiltration
I'm in Japan, getting ready to board a bus. It's large and black, and it has white writing on the side. The driver is standing to the left of the steps, greeting passengers as they get on. I have an armful of stuff, and I've got some kind of identity/payment card in my right hand. As it comes to my turn to board, I remember my card and free my hand a bit from my bundle, kind of waving the card at the driver; then I realize it might not actually be what I need, so I try to ask him how I'm supposed to pay for the trip. He doesn't understand my question and answers something completely different. I try asking my question another way, and he says that the steps will turn into a slippery ramp if someone tries to board who shouldn't be there. I'm starting to get a bit flustered, and I ask him how the bus knows if someone belongs or not. At this point, a woman who's standing nearby starts laughing and tells the driver I must be a tourist who doesn't know that this is a reserved bus. I'm annoyed and embarrassed, but I go over to talk to her since she seems to know knows what's going on and is fluent in English.

Now I've been talking with her for a while, but we're now standing on some kind of steps in the corner of a huge room. I thank her for her help and her advice and apologize for having to excuse myself. I'm doing some kind of infiltration, and she's gotten me inside, but there s more to do. Now I'm flying out of a huge indoor tunnel, and pursuit is close behind. Now I'm struggling along a walkway running on the outside of a large missile that's in flight.


Fragments:
I'm in a cozy room filled with small rectangular tables. Something about Emily and her family.

I'm outside on a grassy field - something is worrying me.

Rambling dream
I'm standing in what I believe to be a Home Depot watching some kind of laser cutting large wooden rounds into doughnut shapes. Each round is around six or eight feet across and about a foot or two thick. They're very rough-cut, and they still have their bark on. The rounds are hanging from a track in an upright position. One at a time, the machinery moves a round in front of a laser, cuts out the center of the round, and moves it onward. Each time, the bright orange laser stabs through the round, moves in a wide circle, and lets the slightly cone-shaped center drop out. As this keeps going on, I watch more closely. Oddly, the later doesn't leave a nice clean cut - the remaining hole is just as rough as the wood itself. I turn my attention to what happens to the scrap pieces and am surprised to see that they fall then seem to dissolve. My wife is standing nearby, and I call her attention to it. After a couple more times I look more closely at what the scrap is falling onto. At first glance, it just looks like a fairly industrial metal table but, looking more closely, I realize that it's supposed to be a replica of the Last Supper: most of the table is empty, but one place setting has a plate of bread and a cup of wine. Even though this is just idolatry - we're not authorized to use religious symbols like this, nor to profane the Lord's Supper - it's clearly having an effect on the wood.

Now I'm sitting at a small table with my wife. I'm still facing the same direction, and she's sitting across from me. A chain-link fence and gate are now standing where the cutting machinery had been. The gate opens, and a police RV drives in and parks. I wonder what's going to happen. Now I see a police officer trying to handcuff a man. He surprises the man and gets one wrist into the cuffs, but the man struggles and holds his arms straight out. Another officer comes over and helps pull the man's arms together behind his back so he can be cuffed. Another young officer comes over to my table and, in a lightning move, cuffs my wife's hands to the table. He's young, friendly, and very apologetic, explaining that they need to keep witnesses to <something> around for questioning. I put my hands on the table to show I'm cooperating and won't fight, but he doesn't cuff me. Instead, on older officer comes over and starts talking to me almost as an equal and asking my opinion on things. I realize I must be the main character. I make a gaff and he assumes I'm just joking and scolds me, telling me to be serious. Now I see the female lead getting ready for a fancy gathering, wearing a fancy blue dress, and somehow I know this is important to the case.

Now I'm watching a commercial for a TV show. The guy talking is the main character, though he's addressing the audience directly, talking about what a fool he gets to be on the next episode. The camera is showing him from the waist up, and behind him is an aerial view of a tropical island in a deep blue sea. He uses a couple of strange terms to refer to himself, referencing some other silly show, but I don't know enough about it to understand the references. Now the camera passes him and starts to zoom in on the island. Eventually the perspective is from ground level. The main character is with a bunch of old guys, and they're all lining up their motorcycles in a small front yard. They've all got some piping hooked up near the backs of their motorcycles to shoot water in the air up behind them as they ride, kind of like a speed boat's rooster tails. Even though they're not riding, they've got them turned on, and they're all getting wet. The main character is looking pretty goofy and has a rather long-suffering look on his face. Now the camera cuts to a dog in the street. It's gotten all wet from the bikes, so it prances around for a while, lays down on its side, and sends a stream of urine high in the air in an arc. Everyone laughs even harder and says the dog won.

Now I'm the main character, and I'm climbing the steps to the house, heading to a party thrown in my honor by a bunch of people I only barely know. I don't really want to go, but I can't very well back out of my own party. I go through the outer door, through a small laundry room, and out into a kitchen. I see my paternal grandparents and instantly know I'm dreaming, since they've been dead for many years. I hug my grandfather, wave to my grandmother, then look at them a bit, enjoying their presence. They both look really (really) old and, though spry, also look very sickly with pale, age-spotted skin. *I decide to try to fly and focus my efforts on soaring into the air. The only thing that happens is a feeling of a slight "shift." Oh well.

Now I "wake up" and find myself in the same living room, but with all the people gone. I remember that my wife and I are house-sitting for friends, and I feel bad about how everything looks. I go hunting for paper towels, but every roll I find - in the kitchen, in the utility room, in the bathroom - has exactly one sheet left. I finally get a grocery plastic bag and a length of toilet paper and return to clean up the mess. I notice that there's a bit of water coming down from the ceiling, but I ignore it for the moment. The toilet paper is single ply stuff, so it doesn't work well, and by the time I'm done it's squashed into something the size of a marble.

Now I hear someone yelling something from the second story. Now there's something about a fish and what a struggle it was to reel it in. I look over and see a strange fish, very flat and angular (as if it were cut out of a piece of wood and painted) sitting on a small table nearby. My wife comes over and I show it to her, explaining how it got here - something about the guy upstairs. Initially, I hadn't thought it had any usable meat on it, but on second thought I think it does.


Monster in town
I'm in an unfurnished house with someone else talking about the monster that's recently invaded the town. We're trying to figure out what to do - maybe hide in a closet, or maybe barricade the doors. Now a police woman is talking to the townspeople, letting them know that the monster has been defeated but that the police have decided that all female officers must quit.

*
Fragment: I'm at a concert. Two guys are singing - The Rock and someone else - and they're having mic problems. The Rock's singing is much better than I'd expected. *

Nap time
Dog double
I'm in my bedroom. A shower head is mounted on the wall above the bed, and it's spraying towards the door. I notice that it's missing the bed and getting the carpet wet, so I turn the knob (mounted on the wall above my pillow) to turn off the shower. Now I'm walking on the carpet near the door, and I'm confused that I still hear water falling. I wonder if it's because I'm squishing the wet carpet, but the noise just isn't right.

I notice my dog near my feet, then notice another dog out in the hallway. My first thought is to wonder how another dog got into the house. My next thought is concern that my dog and the other dog are going to get into a fight. I look back towards my dog and see him staring at the new dog. I realize that both dogs look identical and look around to see if I'm somehow seeing my dog in a mirror; but I don't see one.

Now I'm standing near my window looking at both dogs - but this time the new dog is white. I briefly wonder if I'd thought he was black because he was in a dark hallway, then I wonder if I'm dreaming. I don't really think I am, but I go ahead and do a nose-pinch test, and I'm surprised to find that I am, in fact, dreaming.

Now I know I'm dreaming, but my vision has almost completely grayed out. I can see through only a very narrow vertical sliver, and it's closing. I raise my hands to where I can see them and start to rub them together, but it doesn't help. I can feel my hands rubbing, but only barely, as if they're mostly numb. I try to will my vision back, but it's no good. My vision grays out completely, and I lose the dream.

Bed @ 2230
Woke @ 0540

Leaky ceiling
I'm in my master bathroom relieving myself. As I start, I notice that there's a drop of water on the ceiling. This concerns me, but I figure that maybe there's an explanation that's not terrible, though I'm not hopeful. My first guess as to a cause is that something is wrong with the weather sealing around the window. I'm surprised by how full my bladder is, and as I keep going, I notice more and more wet drops hanging on the ceiling. They seem to be popping up constantly. By the time I'm finished, the entire ceiling is covered with large droplets of water. I'm saying something like "no no no no no" and call out to my wife "Honey, we've got a problem!!!" As I continue trying to find out what's going on, I notice a place where the ceiling changes levels. Inside, I see some small pipes and immediately jump to the conclusion that they're the source of the problem.

Missed meeting
I'm sitting at my computer in my office. I realize it's eleven thirty and that I didn't dial into the daily meeting earlier; but then I look at my daily calendar and see that it's been moved to five PM. I hate it when my team lead does that; the new time is after I'm done for the day! Now I'm on the phone with someone. Now I'm closing browser tabs, trying to get things organized again. I'm really confused by the contents of the tabs - there's lots of gaming stuff. I keep closing them and finally notice a stylized blue E at the corner of the window. Oh, of course, I'm in Windows, which I only boot up for gaming. When did I boot Windows?

Contaminated food
I'm at a party with some people I know. Everyone else has food, but I don't. Now I'm in the kitchen to see what's available, but all I see is a half a rolled-up something on a cutting board near the sink. I try to nonchalantly look around to see if there's a plate I can grab to get some, but I don't see anything. Suddenly, weird stuff starts happening. Little statuettes start exploding and everyone starts behaving very very oddly. I realize their behavior has something to do with the food and am thankful I didn't have any. Somehow I manage to talk to some of them and snap them out of it. Now I'm listening to a group of them talk afterwards (mostly older women I don't know, though Jen is also in the group). Someone is saying that the stuff in the food is pretty nasty, that even touching it will let it enter your DNA and make changes to your aging process, and that it affects women more than it does men.


Lucid in the lab
I'm watching the opening credits for a TV show which takes place in some kind of laboratory. In the footage, a lot of shining stainless steel and a variety of fancy-looking instruments are pretty constantly in the frame. Now the credits are showing a character who's young, strong, and not quite all there. He's used for simple manual labor, moving stuff from one place to another; but really he's used for comedy relief, always banging into things and messing up the other characters. Sure enough, he comes through a door pulling a giant metal cylinder that's much bigger than he is, acting as if it's nothing, but as he makes the turn he swivels it into another character who gets stuck between it and the wall. I recognize this guy from something he did much later - I hadn't realized this is where he got his start. Now I see another guy in what looks like a glass elevator, but he's rotating slowly around. When his capsule lines up with the door he has a brief moment to connect something, but he keeps missing his opportunity and having to wait until it spins around again.

Now I'm walking along a hallway in the building. Strangely, many pieces of equipment have handwritten signs on them with very strange, humorous (to someone) instructions written on them.

Now I'm walking down another hallway with a group of people. Over the PA, someone announces that they're going to drop meat on our heads. What kind of lab is this? What kind of experiment is this? The ceiling starts to open up, and something starts to fall out. People start screaming and running for the far end of the hall, but balloons are already falling out of the ceiling. Balloons? Strangely, they pop the moment they touch anything. At first, I'm relieved they weren't really dropping meat on us, but then I look behind me and see that the balloons did actually have stuff in them, and that the floor is now littered with unidentifiable bits of red chunks and red stringy stuff. Ewww.

Now we've entered an area with some other people. A woman dressed only in white bra and panties starts swaying her way towards my group. I don't make eye contact and try not to stand out, hoping she'll ignore me. She ends up fixating on the guy right in front of me and starts making out with him. Somehow she ends up sitting on my chest (she's very soft) while she's kissing him. I'm repulsed and try to think of a way out of this when I realize I'm dreaming. I shout out "This is a dream!" and wonder if any of the DCs will try to argue with me, but they just ignore me.

Now I'm standing again, and I'm by myself. The dream is rather dull, and I know I need more vividness. First, I look at my hand. It's got four fingers and a thumb, but all my fingers are too long, and the thumb is pointing almost straight downwards. Colors are better now. Now I start to go through my memorized list. First, to help activate the logical side of my brain, I calculate the first few numbers of the Fibonacci sequence. Getting to 13 is easy, but the jump to 21 takes some effort, and I stop there, not wanting to focus too much and lose the dream. Next up, I try to activate my creative side by singing Mary Had A Little Lamb. I manage to sing one verse, though it somehow gets muddled together with B.I.N.G.O. I know it's wrong, but I don't care - I sang something and that's good enough. Now, onto the real tasks. I know I need DCs for both basic tasks, but I haven't seen anyone since right after getting lucid, so I'm a bit worried that I won't be able to find anyone. I turn around (I'd been facing the hallway) and find that I'm now in some kind of cafeteria area. Tables are scattered around haphazardly along with large ornate pillars, and lots of people are milling around.

The closest person to me is a really cute, impeccably dressed (sweater vest, long sleeved shirt, slacks) little black kid. I ask him what a good task of the month would be. He very clearly enunciates something, but it's not a task. I go to a nearby woman and ask her, and she also says something that's not a task. I round one of the pillars and talk to an older man, and he says something that, again, is not a task. Oh well.

I move onto the second basic task: I throw back my head and do my best mad scientist laugh (Mwa ha ha ha ha ha). The guy looks at me like, did I really just do that? But off in another part of the cafeteria I hear an answering high pitched cackle (Eeeee hee hee hee hee hee). Score!

Onto intermediate one. I pull out my phone and will that Frank will call. Nothing happens. I decide that I'm going to count down from five and that it'll ring when I reach zero. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Zero. The moment I count "zero," the phone starts buzzing (it's quite a strong sensation in my hand) and the notification light starts blinking white, but the screen doesn't come on. I press the power button and it turns on to reveal an RPG. In the dream, I recognize that it's a smashed-up mess of at least two different games, and the city names shown on the map clue me in on what they are though I can't remember them now. Flush with excitement over successfully completing both a basic and an intermediate task in one dream, I wake up.


Fragment: I'm walking through what I know to be a college campus. My wife is with me, and she mentions going to visit a place on campus "now that she can put the baby in the Ergo." I don't understand what that has to do with anything, but whatever.

Alarm @ 0230
Bed @ 2240
Woke @ midnight, used bathroom, BTB


XKCD shirt
I'm somewhere with Allan (a coworker I haven't seen for about five years), and I'm thinking about XKCD. My initial thought is that he's a programmer, so of course he saw the most recent comic, but then I figure there's no harm in asking. It turns out he's never heard of it.

Now I'm ordering an XKCD shirt. It's white-on-orange, and they have a choice of about a dozen shirts. Now it's arrived. I'm pulling it out of the package, thinking about how I blew half my monthly allowance of "do anything " money on a silly shirt just to tell my coworker about an online comic. Oh well. I pull it out and look at it, realizing with horror that I must have ordered the wrong shirt by accident. It is an XKCD shirt, but it doesn't have a print of a comic, only some kind of list. I wonder if I can return it, but I probably can't, and the return shipping would probably make it not really worth it anyway. My wife sees it and asks me about it, and I explain it's to introduce my coworker to XKCD. She gets a sort of "wow, that's weird, but whatever" expression on her face.


Woke around 0100 with a crying baby. Woke around 0130, ditto.
Woke @ 0230, BTB @ 0245.
Woke @ 0320 after feeling something on my head. After flinging it away with my hand, I did a nose-pinch which indicated reality.


Smartish watch
I see an ad for a watch on sale: a nice Casio men's watch. It's not a "smart watch," but it is a very nice digital. It's got a lot of nice features, including an mp3 player, a stand (how does that even work?), something that changes how the watch acts depending on your current activity and time of day, and a bunch of other stuff. The list is very long, covering the whole right side of the page. I see a URL on the page, something like www.move2watch.com (whatever it is, it's two words separated by "2") and visit it. I see that that all the extensions for the watch are currently on sale. I didn't realize this watch even had extensions; that's pretty impressive. I glance briefly at the list of available extensions, but none of the descriptions make any impact on me. I wonder if I misunderstood the flier - maybe the extensions are the only things on sale, not the watch. Looking back at the flier, I see that the watch itself is on sale for e$49.99. I'm not sure what that works out to, but I'm guessing about $60.

I see a note somewhere indicating that if you're going to get a law changed, please do it before commissioning a new extension. If a law is changed and it requires updating an extension, you'll have to pay a re(something) fee. Email Allison (someone) <some dept>, Allison (someone) Heating Dept to request it. Reading further, I find details about the process. It says she creates a VM based on the current law to simulate how the watch will respond, so she'll need to make a new one after a law change. Her simulation uses four units: witches, guards, citizens, and <something>. I see a whole lot of colored wooden kids' blocks stacked on the floor in a bunch of piles: yellow for citizens, blue for guards, red for witches, green for <something>. Each pile has different numbers of each blocks, but each pile has all four colors and has them stacked in the same color order with the entirety of each color grouped together (e.g. 5 greens, 3 blues, 6 yellows, 2 reds). According to the rules of the simulation, witches kill citizens, guards kill witches but lose their own lives in the process. I see blocks starting to disappear from the stacks as the simulation runs its course.

Before returning to bed, I try to set the intention that in my next dream I'll see the watch and become lucid.


BTB @ 0345
Woke @ 0530

Long FA chain
I'm in a house, in a small bathroom, getting ready to leave. My wife and family have already left. I notice that something is wet and look up to find what looks like a pipe sticking out of the ceiling and dripping - but as I look, it starts pouring. There's a whole pile of clothing on a counter under the window, and it's soaked in seconds. I try briefly to think what could be above us to do this but I'm drawing a blank. I call my wife, but the connection is terrible - then I realize that I'm not talking to her over the cellular network but instead over a barely-connected Bluetooth connection. She's a couple of miles down the road - how is Bluetooth even working?? - so I hang up, intending to disable Bluetooth and try again. I realize something is off about this whole situation and nose-pinch, finding it really is a dream.

Now I'm driving on a four/five lane road through a commercial area with shopping centers to my left and right. I see an ad for something, and it seems really familiar. I do the nose-pinch test and realize I'm dreaming, though it takes a couple of iterations to really sink in that it's working - I can tell I'm still breathing with my nose pinched, but at first I think I'm accidentally breathing through my mouth.

Now I'm parked in my car in the parking lot. I find myself moving really slowly so as to not disturb the dream, and again I realize this is silly - I need to intensify the dream, not move as if on eggshells. I remember my goal for intensifying is to do the first few Fibonacci numbers, so - keeping my eyes open - I count 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 - which was as high as I'd intended to go - but it seems so easy I keep going - 13, 21, 34, 65 (I think I must have accidentally added 21+44 instead of 21+34). It's starting to get hard, and I don't want to lose the dream because I completely lose focus on it, so I stop there, pleased with how well I did.

Now I'm standing on the parking lot, and I decide to fly. I remind myself that this is a dream, that everything around me is a creation of my mind, including my body (though I don't go so far as to remember that my real body is asleep in bed), then try to lift off. Nothing happens.

Now I'm in an alley behind the stores. Ivy is growing everywhere. There's quite a lot of exposed wood - something like trellises - along the side of the alley. The far end of the alley is completely blocked, though I know there's a road behind it. Again, I walk around touching everything, feeling it, yet remembering that it's not actually there. The ivy is a dark green with large leaves. I touch the ground, some wood, the leaves. I think about how I wish I had some way to record this so I didn't forget it after I wake up, and I remember my project with my DIY dream mask to attempt to record Morse code from inside the dream state and read it back later. Unfortunately, that project is benched for the time being, so I'll just have to remember everything as best as I can. Oh well. I decide not to fly back here but want to get back to the front of the store for the extra room, but the way back is blocked. Somehow I dig through a wall of dirt, but I'm not happy with the feeling of dirt clinging to my hands. I look at my hands and at the grayish dirt clinging to them, remind myself that the dirt isn't real, and mentally command it to fall off. To my immense satisfaction, the dirt does just fall off, leaving my hands almost (but not entirely) clean. I wake up.

As I lay in bed looking around the (well-lit) bedroom, my wife walks in. She's talking to John and Jenny who follow her into the room. She notices that I'm awake and asks if I've had any success with my lucid dreaming. I excitedly tell her that I actually just woke from a lucid dream, that I couldn't manage to fly, but that I did manage to get dirt to fall from my hands. They're clearly enjoying my enthusiasm, but my wife - who's always thought that the whole lucid dreaming thing is pretty silly - turns to them and mock-apologizes for me, saying something like "I'm sorry, he really is a good man." Something seems off, so I discretely nose-pinch and realize I'm still dreaming.

Details are really fuzzy for this scene. I'm walking through a field towards a small building build in an Oriental style. Getting closer, I see a patch of dirt under an overhang. Somehow I use my dream powers of dirt manipulation to dig down into it and/or toss it aside to form a path to the evil queen. I wake up.

I lay in bed with my eyes closed and try to perform a DEILD chain. I can hear the sound of the rain/ocean playing through my pillow speakers. I'm a bit disappointed when nothing happens (though not too much, since I've never gotten a DEILD to work); but then I remember that I had a false awakening just a few minutes ago and this might be another one. With my eyes still closed, I slowly reach up a hand and do the nose pinch, finding that I'm still dreaming. I have a moment of "what do I do now" since I'm in blackness; but then I open my eyes and find myself in a bedroom - to my sleeping mind, it's the one from my parents' house in Virginia.

I find myself in a house with a rather rustic feel to it. I walk over to the window and look out to see a landscape covered with snow. Trees stand out here and there, and dozens of snowmen - some large, some small - dot the yard. I think how much my kids would love to be here in real life. I have a passing thought that it would be fun to summon a blizzard. I give a brief mental "push," but nothing happens. I decide I don't really care and shouldn't spend my mental energies / focus on this. I can't really fly too well indoors, but then I remember Ophelia's story from one of her podcasts about how her eyes changed when she looked into a mirror. I head off down a nearby hallway in search of a bathroom.

I quickly realize the hallway is stretching off into the distance, and I decide I'm NOT going to lose lucidity to something stupid. I turn left, intending to try to find a bathroom that way, and come face-to-face with a mirror mounted to the wall of the hallway. Looking at myself, I'm dressed as I am for bed during the summer: wearing a pair of boxers and nothing else. Thinking back to Ophelia's story, I start out by closely examining the reflection of my face. The shape is a little off, the bottom half too triangular, the eyes too large, the skin too smooth and light, the whole impression somehow too childlike or perhaps Anime-like? I don't even watch Anime - but each individual change is fairly subtle. I turn away from the mirror to see what else I can do in the house, but I wake up.

This time I'm expecting it to be a false awakening, but I keep my eyes closed (again hearing the speakers) and attempt a DEILD chain just to be sure. After a few moments, I again do a nose-pinch, and again I find I'm still in the dream. I open my eyes, get out of bed, and find one of my kids waiting for me. I pick her up, thinking to myself that if she starts fussing about something I'll just put her down and walk away - after all, she's not real. I decide that even if I can't lift off the ground, maybe I can step into space and not fall. I get up on the bed and walk to the foot, noting (but not questioning) the nice wood chest a few feet away and the stairs beyond. Disappointingly, when I put my foot down on the air I just fall to the ground (though somehow I remain standing). Oh well. I think about other ways to start flying, and I remember people talking about baby steps, of using means to achieve flight before you just will yourself into the air. I decide to go outside, hold out my arms, get a good running start, and launch myself into the air. At the very least I should be able to glide a few feet off the ground as I have before. I go down the stairs, turn right towards the front door, unlock the deadbolt, open the door, go out onto the front path (detached garage to my right, house to my left, lots of greenery - I note the snow is gone), and wake up.

Again, I try to DEILD chain, do the nose pinch, and find myself in my real bed. I note that my real bed felt different from my dream beds - rougher, perhaps, providing more sensory input than the fake ones did.

BTB @ 0605.
Woke @ 0730.

Fragments: Someone is playing a side-scroller on a console, about to fight a boss.