non-lucid

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.

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

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 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.

July 11, 2013

Board Game Room
I'm in a fairly small room - maybe 10x10. Every wall has shelves, and the shelves are completely packed with all sorts of different board games. Many of the board game boxes are gigantic. One of them catches my eye; the front of the box is probably 2x3; I can't see how deep it is. The primary color of the box is red. It's advertising its complex gameplay with over 2 square miles of in-game terrain, and it's also talking about the great competitions that are held for it, that one out of every 7 players is able to compete.


Problem Solving
I'm at work, in my cube - except the cube is huge, probably 15x15. The walls are dark grey, like they really are. It's completely bare except for a shelf running around near the top that has some random stuff on it.
I'm slowly walking around, trying to solve a problem. I know one of our other products - the M - has solved it in the past with an XML converter. I can't quite remember what they did or what they were actually converting. The best I can come up with is that they were translating elements into attributes or vice-versa.

Now I'm on a conference call, wearing a phone headset. One of the guys on the call is talking about how much he loves his commute - it's only an hour and a half each way, and he's being completely serious.

June 17, 2013

Gas Station Trouble
I'm at a Citgo, getting gas. The pump says to insert a credit card to start the transaction. I stick in my Amex, and the pump promptly thanks me for paying $58.1x. A pump attendant is walking nearby, so I ask him for help, saying that something went wrong, that I ended up paying for someone else's gas and need a refund.

He takes me to the manager, a rather hard woman who has no sympathy for me at all. I argue with her that it's not my fault, that the pump said what it always said, except that this time instead of letting me pump gas, it paid for the last person who used the pump. After much assertiveness on my part, she finally agrees to look into it.

The pump receipt has the previous customer's full information, so the manager calls the customer. She takes my Amex and starts asking the lady if she's ever heard of a card starting with xxxxxx (the first six digits of my dream card) or of a card with a cssv of xxxx (whatever it was in the dream). The customer hasn't heard of such a card.

While she's on the phone, I realize that all I need to do is call Amex and dispute the charge; but I realize the dispute will work better if the manager is on my side, so I let her continue with her call.

When I woke up after that one, I was feeling rather stressed.


My Hand's Outline
I'm in my office. I've decided to draw an outline of my hand so that, if I ever think my hand has changed size, I can check it against the outline and tell for sure. I grab a sheet of paper that's already been printed on and spread out my hand on it. Oddly, my finger tips are off the edge. I turn the paper and try again, with the same result. So, I turn the paper back to vertical and put my hand on it with the fingers together, and this time they fit.

I start tracing on the right side of my hand. I'm using a rather fat pencil, so the line starts too far out from my hand. I need to be careful to keep the line to the actual outline of my hand. I make it up past my middle finger and start to come down the other side.

Except now, I'm not tracing my physical hand, I'm tracing a shadow of my hand. There's a lot of stuff already printed in this part of the paper, and I'm having trouble seeing my hand's shadow. With difficulty, I manage to trace it down further.

Eventually, I get to a point that I just can't make it out at all. There seems to be a wonderfully detailed city printed on the paper, and the city is casting its own shadow further down on the paper, hiding my hand's shadow.

I think about taking the city off, but there's some reason I can't.


Conversations at Work
I'm at work, in the parking deck. I get onto the elevator along with a couple of friends, hit the button for my floor, then hit what I think is the door close button. It actually turns out to be the alarm button, but for some reason, the alarm doesn't actually go off. I'm thankful it didn't go off, since that would have been fairly embarassing.

The elevator starts to move. This is an old-fashioned cargo elevator with no doors. If I reached out through the opening, I'd get my arm snapped off by a passing floor. I'm amazed they're still allowed to operate such things.

The elevator stops. We get out, go along a walkway into the building, then start climbing stairs. I would have taken the elevator in the building, but my friends are using the stairs, so I do too. I'm worried, though, because we're going to the 40th floor.

Amazingly, after just a couple of flights of steps, we're there. I ask them what happened. They explain that in building A, each floor is actually two floors (say, 15A and 15B), so to get to floor 40 you'd actually have to climb past 80 floors; but that building B isn't like that, and we're in building B, so it's OK.

Now I'm with only one of my friends, Peter. We're walking down a hallway. He's talking about most of us having to follow certain rules, but people who are important enough can get exemptions (as long as they clear them with the police across the street). We're going to one such person now - some kind of scientist. Her office doesn't have a door - it's just a big room off the hallway. Peter talks with her for a while; I just stand there, a few feet further away, watching. Eventually she notices me and Peter introduces me. I happen to have my mouth full so I mumble a hello.

Something comes up about one of my team members wanting me to run Snort on one of our lab segments, and she asks me my opinion of Snort vs Enterprise Scanner. I tell her Snort is much better, which surprises her. Out the window, I notice it's raining. I can't remember if the wind breaker I'm wearing has a built-in hood, so I reach up and check. It does.

Eventually, we leave her and walk further down the hallway. Peter asks me about public schools for my daughter. When I tell him we don't use them, he tries to prove his point by asking if I'm registered for the draft. My wife shows up and says that I'm not, that I might register one day. I reply that it's mandatory to be registered, so I've been registered ever since I was required to me. She gets really unhappy and wants to know when this happened and why she didn't know about it. That disagreement goes on for a couple of minutes, then we're looking at a flier for the draft. It's actually a story about a guy who got drafted into some war, quickly gained ranks, and left the military a few decades later as one of its most highly ranking people, and This Could Happen To You Too.

June 14, 2013

Airport Adventure
I'm at an airport gate connected to a mall. A row of security desks is at the entrance to the gate. I leave for a moment, then come back in. I try to go past the right-most security desk, but the lady there tells me that I have to pay to use that one; so I go past one of the other ones.

Just past the security desks is another desk where a lady was accepting baggage and taking money for it. Somehow, I know I have ownership of some of this, so I comment to her that I wished I got 10% of what she was collecting. She finds this legitimately hilarious and burst out laughing.

Turning around, I see a couple of people standing just outside the gate, and I know they're going to attack us. I quickly have a guy with me slow time around them so much that it's nearly stopped (Alloy of Law reference). Another guy with me has the power to speed up time. He goes and walks around the frozen pair; I'm worried he'll get too close and stuck in the slow time field, but he doesn't. Once he's scouted them out, he creates a fast time bubble around the three of them, pretending to help them out. His bubble only partially cancels out the slow time bubble. As he "helps" them, he waits for a good moment to take them out.

I'm seeing this happen as if from inside the bubble; the three of them seem to be moving at normal speed, and
all the people moving around them seem to be moving at double speed.


A Strange Assault
A small village in a dusty valley has had to evacuate. As they're trudging along the pass, the enemy commander decides to take them out; not for any stategic reason, but to hurt moral even further. They're no threat, so he sends a small force: a few dozen troops and a couple of tanks. They materialize in the pass right behind the refugees.

One of the guys sent in is much taller and stronger than everyone else; somehow, I end up talking with him. A woman I know has had part of her mind locked away, and he knows her secret. He says he's willing to help me, but I know he's just toying with me. He says he's modified some noncritical source code back at base with clues that will lead me to who she really is and remove the lock.

Now I'm back at HQ. It's a huge futuristic-looking room - lots of shiny surfaces and rounded desks. One wall is entirely a window. Along with another guy, we pull up the source code and look for anything out of place. I find it in a debug function. The function uses reflection to discover the name of any variable passed in, checks if it's in a list, and
prints it if it is. The tall guy modified the list of variable names to contain his "hint". It made the function worthless, but since it was only used for debugging, nobody noticed. As we're puzzling out the hint - more of a riddle - we look out the window and see a huge force advancing on us.


Dumpster Garden Trouble
I'm at home, working on my garden. We've got a dumpster, and I built squarefoot gardening beds all around it, using it for support. I'm told that the dumpster company has sent a truck to come collect it and I only have a few minutes before it arrives. I want to save the plants, so I grab a trowel and a bunch of plates and start scooping plants onto plates. I send Mom inside for more plates, since I'm going to run out. By the time I run out, she's not back, so I go inside myself, collecting a handful of paper plates and a few more ceramic plates.

Back outside, the dumpster guy has arrived, but he's willing to wait until I'm done moving the plants. In fact, he even helps me a bit. We finish, and he drives off with the dumpster.

Later, we're all walking around the neighborhood. We're at the top of our street where it joins to the main street. I see another dumpster truck making a left turn into our neighborhood, and I hear my last name. I approach the truck and ask if I heard correctly, and a woman in the passenger seat confirms that I did. When I identify myself, she asks me to lead her to my house. She gets out, and we jog along in front of the truck.

When we get to my house, the garden area is completely overgrown with trees, vegetables, tall grass, and a couple of tentacle-looking things. They're about 5 feet tall, rising out of the ground, moving around a little. They come to sharp points on the end, and I'm sure that they'll attack anyone who comes near.

The woman isn't concerned, but I am, especially since they're right where the dumpster needs to go.

June 13, 2013

Leaving the Museum
We're leaving the Civil War / Train museum (real place) with our group. It's raining (just like it was when we were really there). One of the couples remembers they parked by a lake, but they can't remember where it is. I tell them it's OK, I'll pull up a satellite image on my phone.

The map software puts the GPS marker at my house, then quickly moves it along the roads until it's at the museum.
I'm worried that, since there's no wifi, it won't be able to get an image; and sure enough, the whole thing is a green block. Then I remember I've been here before, so it should be cached, and the image clears up and shows great detail.

I'm zooming in and out using the volume rocker; my friend is amazed that I'm zooming without touching the screen and wants to try it.

I realize that we didn't see the locomotive in the museum, and it dawns on me that it must have been a temporary exhibit.


Fragment #1
I'm waiting at a traffic light. On the crossing road, two big rigs are waiting to make a left turn. There's something about people trying to cross the road in front of me and not get in the trucks' way.

Now, the trucks are to my left. Some people are dancing around with glow sticks. One of them sticks one in the grill of one of the trucks. I know that when she pushes the detonator, it'll make the driver go blind. She's some kind of environmental nut.


Fragment #2
We need to pick up a new car, maybe a rental. I realize that we'll need to drive to it together, in one car, so that we can each drive a car home.


Fragment #3
I'm sitting with some people around a table. We start discussing our favorite bits from "You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger."

June 11, 2013

Police Raid
I'm with Robert at the factory he runs (real guy, but it's not what he does). It was after hours, and we were just hanging out on some sofas, eating. A policeman walks into the building and asks me if I'm Robert. I say no and point to him. A whole squad comes in and starts tearing the place up. Somehow, Robert's personal plane, which he keeps on the second floor, gets damaged. Everything in the workshop is scattered.

Now I'm on the second floor. His wife arrives near me, excited that she's won some jewelry. I try to get her to go away before she's seen, but she doesn't pay attention to me and goes downstairs. The police take her and question her.

Later, Robert and I are outside the building. The police are gone. The plane is outside with us, totally wrecked. He says the official story is that a freak hurricane popped up and damaged his building.

Dream DVD
I dream that I have my dreams downloaded onto a DVD and I'm watching it, rewatching the police raid. I fast-forward past that dream. Now I'm in a house, in a kitchen, talking to someone.

I get interrupted watching the dvd when a couple of guys I know show up at my house with a broken riding lawn mower. I go outside to talk to them. On the yard behind mine, I see my neighbor's daughters doing something (the daugters are real people I know, but aren't my neighbors daughters) . I haven't seen them in years and I'm amazed at how tall they are, and that the younger is taller than the older. They wave, then go inside.