non-lucid

June 10, 2013

Train Smashup

I'm in my car, waiting at a railroad crossing. The lights are blinking, but the arms aren't going down. I don't understand why they aren't coming down. The train comes by (going left to right) really fast. It's only the engine plus one car, which also surprises me.

Strangely, the lights are still blinking. I look to the right and see another train heading towards the intersection, but it's moving at a snail's pace. I look left again and see another train coming on really fast, and I realize it's going to hit the slow train. They collide, and the trains start to accordian, with some of the cars in the middle coming off the track towards us.

They come close to the van, but they don't actually reach us. We all run out of the van and try to get away. The crossing happens to be at the bottom of a hill, so we run to the top to be less likely to be hit.

More trains are coming from both directions, and they add to the carnage.

Frosting Faux Pas
I'm in a house with a very open floorplan. Windows are everywhere. I'm talking to my pastor about something.
I'm carrying arounda small plate with frosting on it, eating some of it. His daughter's just finished baking him a cake, and the plate has the extra frosting. I realize with embarasment that she might have been keeping the plate of frosting for him, so I put it in the fridge.

Van Accident
I'm watching Frank drive down a driveway with a tight corner. As he rounds the corner, he runs into another van. He gives his van a cursory examination and thinks everything is OK, and he's going to drive on, but I take a look. I notice that something on his van has made a perfect block-shaped indention on the van he hit. I look at his van to see what made it, and I see that his van is horribly crumpled, with waves of metal going all the way along it. I realize the waves are split near the back, where the gas tank is, and that liquid is coming out. I tell everyone the gas tank is leaking, and we all back away.

Departing coworkers
I'm at work, though the room I'm in actually looks like the kitchen at church. My fellow employee, Scott, is leaving. I'm talking to megan about it, that I'll be the only build engineer left, and that I can probably ask for whatever I want and they'll give it to me. She wants to know why I'm staying at all, and I reply that I'm not condfident enough to set out somewhere else and that I enjoy my wowrk even if some of the requiremetns of my company are frustrating.

Chris is also leaving and we're talking to him. It's a Friday and he says that he was originally scheduled to have his exit interview on Monday but that they moved it up to today because he no longer has his keycard and they had to take a couple interns off of their regular duties just to follow him around and open doors, that that's just a huge waste of money, and that they originally only planned for them to do that through the weekend.

Somehow related to that, i'm looking at a control panel for the building. I can see my floor almost like one of the Sim games. I see doctors and patients arriving via various entrances. I see the conversations of the doctors in little text bubbeles next to their icons.


The strategy/space game
I'm looking at the overword map of some kind of strategy game. I think I'm looking at the surface of a planet as seen from space, but it looks pretty blasted. I'm on the rebel side; we're still small, but we're gradually starting to take more area back from whoever we're fighting against. The map I'm seeing is showing the currently contested areas of the planet.

Now I'm in a space fighter learning how to fly it. It uses standard WASD controls, so I already feel fairly familiar with it.

Now I'm on a space station.

Repaving
I'm driving. The edge of the road is newly repaved. It looks like they're still applying the finishing touches. One machine with big balloon tires is driving along it; another machine that looks like a big reel mower is coming along behind it. Even after they pass, I can see the marks from the treads on the balloon tires.

Now I'm out of my car. I touch the newly paved section, and it feels sticky and warm.

The side-scroller
I'm playing a side scrolling game with stick figures. Oddly enough, it goes right to left. All the characters are represented as small black stick figures. It's incredibly hard past a certain point. Eventually, a boss type character shows up; she doesn't look any different from any of the other figures, but she's a lot harder to defeat. The first time through, I have trouble controlling my character and she quickly kills me. The next time through, I do better. This time, I get to a downhill section where she kills me. The next time through I get to a part where she gets into a large walker vehicle and starts chasing me. I'm supposed to shoot her out of the pilot's seat, but it's hard to aim. Somehow I get behind the walker and end up fighting Roy and the other characters from The Order of the Stick. They're much bigger and actually look something like who they're suposed to represent. I die fairly quickly. Somehow I realize that there was a way for me to hover in the air directly above the boss's cockpit to shoot at her more easily.

Now I'm looking at the level editor for the game. I'm not actually making a level myself; I'm just seeing a beta level the developer is working on. Near the top, I see a ladder going off the screen. Something isn't right - I see the top of the level in the editor, but there's a flashing bar where the top of the screen would actually appear, and it's lower than the top in the editor. I don't know why this is.


Driving from the back seat
I'm driving. It's very difficult to drive - I seem to be sitting in the very back of a bus, but somehow I'm still driving it. I have to duck down and squint to see out the front, and my view is still terrible. I'm constantly worried about hitting something or someone. Thankfully there aren't too many cars on the road. At one point I find myself coming up on an older woman on a bicycle; she's right in the middle of the lane. Somehow I'm having a really hard time seeing her. I accidentally turn the bus a bit to the right, and I end up with half the bus off the road. It works out ok, though - I just barely pass the women on the right. I'm glad i didn't hit her. Shortly after this, I come to a T intersection with traffic coming in from the left. There's a traffic light here, but I don't know if it's still green for me (I haven't been able to see it for a while). The other cars don't move, so I keep on going. I hope I didn't cut them off.

Now i'm passing some buildings on my left. I've had trees to my right the whole time. I start veering a little to the left, across the wrong lane (no one is coming) and towards the buildings. I can't seem to get straight. I wake up and have the weirdest sense of moving to the left even as I'm still laying in bed.

No shoes, no service
I'm taking my kids to a shop on a strip mall. As we walk up to the entrance I see a "No shoes, no service" sign and realize that my feet are bare. We all go back to the van so I can get some shoes on.

Demon dog at the police station
I'm in some kind of private eye, film noir dream. I enter a police station via a lose second story window and find myself on a small landing. I go downstairs, but return upstairs to close and latch the window. Back downstairs, a huge black dog with glowing red eyes starts to chase me and my dog. With my dog, I run to the front door and open it just wide enough to get out through. I try to get my own dog out without letting the demon dog out, but he's somehow stuck. I wake up.

Game in a warehouse
I'm in some kind of puzzle game. I'm with a group of people in a gigantic warehouse. We're all riding along a huge conveyor belt that takes us from puzzle to puzzle.
Eventually, we reach the end of the conveyor belt. Something up in the air drops three big boxes down in front of us. Somehow, they're shooting at us. I know that this is really easy to solve if you just know the trick.
Now I'm looking at the summary screen for the last puzzle. I'm frustrated because even though I believe we solved it perfectly, we still lost points, and I have no idea why.

Bus to New York
I'm out somewhere doing some activity. Soon it's over, so Ron and I board a bus to go home. We're on the bus a long time - I wonder if we're going to the right place. I know Ron hates buses, so I look back at him and see that he's sleeping. The bus has a few rows of front-facing seats that recline slightly. Behind them are 5 seats on each side facing towards the middle of the bus. Ron is on those seats, laying down on his back. He doesn't quite fit. It looks like the seats at the end of the line can actually spread apart a bit more, but he hasn't done that. Behind those seats are a couple more rows of normal seats, then the back of the bus. I'm sitting a few rows back from the front. The row directly in front of me just has a couple of pairs of shoes on the floor. An older couple is sitting on the row in front of the shoes. I'm not all that happy with my seat, so I move and end up on the front row. The doors are immediately to my right.

I see indications that we're entering New York, and I'm worried. We pass through a toll plaza with "Welcome to New York" across the roof above the tool booths. For a while, we drive through a bunch of tall buildings; eventually, the view on our right opens up to a shipyard. The shipyard is large and is full of huge ships. One ship in particular stands out: a huge ship, carrying a cruise liner with plenty of room to spare, is being lowered into the water by a crane. Finally, we arrive at the La Guardia airport and the bus lets us off. The airport is a huge blue building with "La Guardia" written in white on the side. I'm discouraged that I'm probably just going to have to get on a return bus and spend the day on that to get home. I know I could fly home, but there's no way I can afford the ticket, especially trying to buy a ticket the day of the flight. I know I'll be missed at work today, but there's no helping it. I'll just try to be back by tomorrow.

Inside the airport, I get a call asking where I am. I explain that somehow we boarded the wrong bus. I'm worried that my phone is probably ready to die since it wasn't charged over night. I look around; I'm in a HUGE open room. It's almost completely empty, though there's a gift shop over in one corner.

I'm in a smaller hallway now. I've run into my in-laws. My mother-in-law is flying off on a missions trip and he's here to see her off. I think how nice it would be to fly home with him, but I know I can't.

The shapeshifters
I'm moving through a cave system trying to get away from something. I find some primitive bedding, and the thing taunts me. I move out of there and find myself in what seems to be a run-down cathedral. There are lots of tall, thin windows, but they're very dirty. The walls seem to be made out of stone.

Now he's there with me, but he's turned into a young man. He's some kind of shape shifter. I ask how that works, if he can change shape whenever he wants, and he explains. When he eats certain things, he changes; different things change different things about him. Where he comes from, there are lots of vendors who sell different items to cause different changes. You have to be careful only to use stuff that's compatible with you, or you could cause yourself problems.

Now I'm with him at an outdoor market. Booths all around are selling little squares with a color and letter; the color and the letter designates what they change.

Now I'm in a room somewhere. I have a bowl of colorful cereal. In the bowl, in among the cereal, is a yellow square with an H printed on it. I know it's not for me, but I accidentally start to eat it. I get it out of my mouth before I chew it too much. I know it's for a girl nearby. To hide the fact that I started to eat it, I wad it up into a ball. Somehow, even though the cube was fairly small, the ball ends up the size of a tennis ball, and I wonder where the extra size came from. I don't notice at the time, but the color has also changed from yellow to blue. I give the ball to the girl, and she eats it. No one is sure yet whether she can shapeshift, so this will tell. After chewing it, she bends over in pain - that means the change has started, that she is a shape shifter, and everyone is excited.

Waiting for the subway
I'm waiting for the subway; a number of other people are also sitting around, waiting. We've been waiting for a long time. Somehow, I miss it. I ask someone how long it'll be and whether it runs on a regular schedule; it seems I'll be here for a while.


Walking around downtown
I'm walking with my wife around a rather nice downtown area with attractive buildings and lots of green space. It's fairly close to where we live. Katie's started selling in an organic market near where we are, so we should go buy something from her to encourage her.

On the way we stop at a pizza place for my wife. She orders while I walk around and look at what's available. The restaurant is a large circular room with a cash register in the middle and glass counters (with food behind them) all around the edge. When I walk back over to the register, I see a bunch of plates laid out with slips of paper with names on them, waiting to have their order filled. I laugh because my name, not my wife's, is on the order. The cashier asks me if everything is ok, and I explain why I was laughing.


The restroom
I've just walked into a public restroom. I lock the door and turn around, but when I see that it's actually a fairly large bathroom with a number of urinals and stalls I unlock it again. There's one toilet sitting outside a stall near the urinals; there's no way I'm using that. I go into a stall and lock the stall door, but then I realize that the stall only has a half wall, and that I can see outside the bathroom through the gap.


The restaurant
I'm in a rather nice restaurant. Our table is near the main doors; the doors are open, and everything is wide open and airy. I go to find the restroom and end up in a cafeteria. It looks like any normal school cafeteria, except that instead of seats or benches, it has toilets. Everyone is sitting on the toilet lid; but people can relieve themselves whenever they need to.
I go back to our table and tell everyone else about the cafeteria/bathroom I found. A couple of strangers start giving me a leg massage. I see Bob, and he looks really old, with lots of missing hair and lots of spots on his face.


The field
I'm in a fairly level, wide-open field. A couple of trees are dotted around, but mostly it's just grass. I'm trying to load stuff into our van. Seth is standing a long way away aiming a hose at us; my daughter is running around trying to avoid getting wet.


Dystopian escape
I'm trying to escape from something. I'm jumping between pieces of ground that are rising out of and falling into lava. Eventually, I jump to a piece that has a manhole cover on it, and I know I'll be safe, that this piece won't sink back into the lava.
Now I'm in an apartment. Another man is here; he lives with me, but I don't talk to him at all. I'm worried about my friends; they decided to escape through the labyrinth, but I haven't seen them since. The leader gave me a phone number to call only in an emergency, so I call it. The woman on the phone wants to know how I got this number; I can't remember the name of the man who gave it to me, but I describe him to her, and she knows who I'm talking about. She asks if I'm interested in high energy particle physics, and I don't know how to answer. I explain that the other leader took my friends into the labyrinth to escape from the guards, and I haven't seen them since, and ask if she can help free them. I also explain my fears that they may have caught the plague down there.
Right then, my roommate warns me that guards are coming, so I throw my tablet phone under the nightstand. Some guards come in to scan us to see if we're sick. I'm worried that the woman on the phone will speak and that they'll find the phone, but she doesn't speak and they don't find it. They leave, but they come right back and take my roommate with them.

I'm in jail, but I'm innocent. The building is one story and massive; cells are on each side of the wide hallway, and I can't see the end of them. They're the old fashioned cells that are made of all bars with no actual walls. I'm alone in the cell. A guard and one of my friends are standing outside the cell.

My friend wants to pass me some food. He comes close to the door to try to slide something in, but when he gets too close, a fine mesh screen appears out of nowhere to completely block the door.

My friend is very concerned about my safety. Somehow, he can't talk directly to me, but has to talk through the guard. He doesn't want to say anything plainly, since his message would be analyzed; so he gives a verse reference - something in 1 Corinthians 29 [he specified a verse, but I don't remember it]. The guard is suspicious of the "coded message" and refuses to pass it. The guard then "suggests" that my friend walk with him; my friend becomes even more afraid for my safety, that they'll do something to me while he's gone.

---

I'm staying in a house with a lot of people [though I never actually see most of them]. The house is huge and has many bedrooms and bathrooms. Somehow, I end up using a bathroom that's not "mine." Someone is calling to me through the door; they think I'm the person who's supposed to be using the bathroom, and they're reminding "me" to take "my" pills. I look down and see that there's a large bowl near the toilet filled with translucent pills. I don't call back, since it would give me away and show that I was in the wrong bathroom.

Now I'm back in the hallway. I took a shower in the bathroom, but since it wasn't my bathroom, I didn't have my towel. Now I'm wet and naked and running to my own bathroom to get dressed. Someone else sees me; now I have a towel wrapped around me.

Now I'm in another room. I'm meeting with people about one of my projects at work, explaining what it does, how I made it, and what state it's in. First, I explain to a man. Next, I explain to a woman - the man's boss. Later, in the hallway, I start to explain to a third man (he's Asian), but it's lunch time, so we take a break.

Now I'm at Whole Foods. I'm talking about how you can tell a lot about a grocery store by looking at its shopping carts. The carts here are very small and only have two shelves, so it's clear that the store is high end and doesn't expect you to buy very much at once.

---

We're at some kind of church function. My wife has advised me to wear my black shirt and pants along with a tie (don't remember which one). I'm still outside with my car. I want to say hi to Chris, but he's inside doing something. I'm glad I took my wife's suggestion to wear black.

---

We're on the patio outside someone's house. There's a nice pool here. My parents are there. I'm talking with Mom about their pool, and she's describing how they dug a channel from the upper pool to the lower pool to install a salt water filtration system because they didn't want to use chlorine. I'm surprised at the cost, but she said they did all the labor themselves so it wasn't too bad. As she's talking, I visualize a dirt channel going from a small pool to a larger pool.

I'm biking around a city with a friend. We're biking through a parking lot for a strip shopping center.

Now we're on a road, heading towards a huge intersection, going pretty fast. As we get close to it, I glance at the crosswalk indicator - it's just counting down to 0. The moment it hits 0, the light turns yellow. We're close enough that we can't stop - we have to go through. Right after we enter the intersection, the light turns red. I hope no one is around to see us, but I see that there's a police car in the turn lane to our left.

Now we're on the side of the road, stopped on a little grassy spot. We hear a siren behind us - it's a bike cop coming after us for running a red light. I want to try to explain that I was in the intersection and my friend was past the intersection before the light turned red, but the cop isn't in a good mood, and I want to wait for the right moment. He tells us that we'll need to take a driving course.

Now we're in a van with the cop - he's driving. He's looking for food that's right for the test. We pull up by a stand by the side of the road that's selling something, but it's not right. Then, someone else in the back of the van offers pizza.

---

I'm in a conference room with some people. One of the people is asking for an older version of some Microsoft software. It's freely available, but he can only find the Windows 7 version, not the XP version that he needs. Someone else at the table gets mad at him - they had to go through the trouble of contracting with Microsoft to get the old version, so this guy should have to as well.

---

I'm in a house with some people.

---

I'm with a small group of people walking into the atrium of a shopping mall - it's a huge space. Displays are set up here and there; we pass near one of them that's for a video game. D tells me I should save up for it and buy it.

I'm at the beach, standing up on a hill beyond the sand. Lots of people are down on the beach proper. Beyond the beach, I can see the blue ocean; on the beach is a scattering of palm trees.

B wants a bear dog, and we've decided to get one. It's big, with curly black hair, and thinner than I expected it to be.

I'm down on the beach with Ron. He's driving his son's massive old car - it's a big black sedan of some sort. It's ancient and falling apart. I think it only has 2 doors. Ron's got the car because his son is coming to live at home again.

I get the dog loaded in the back seat then get into the front passenger seat - Ron is driving. As we're driving, I'm trying to get my seat belt buckled, but it's not working. I look down at the buckle and can see loose springs and trash inside it. Ron is disgusted. I really want a working seat belt, so I climb into the back with the dog; unfortunately, the buckle back there has the same problem. I get each arm through a belt (5 point harness?) and hope we don't crash. Now, Frank is in the front seat where I'd been sitting.

We arrive at Ron's house - it's huge. While Ron takes the dog inside, I take the broken mower out of the trunk and take it out back, leaving it near a huge tree. There's some lawn debris piled up nearby.

I go inside the house and find Ron dealing with repair and mortgage people. If his son can get the car and mower into the repair place by Monday, then he can roll the repair costs into his new mortgage.

B says something about the dog having puppies. I'm surprised - I thought the dog had been spayed/neutered and ask about it, but she doesn't respond.

I'm in a large outdoor common area. The ground is paved somehow, and there are large brick "planters" scattered around. I'm walking with at least one other person. As we're walking, I see someone in a very strange outfit. I comment to my companion that the other guy reminded me of a movie [can't remember which one], but he disagrees, saying it was a different movie.

---

I'm in the kids' bedroom. I'm helping one of the kids put a few knick-knacks in a box to use as a pillow. KJ's little orange ball bounces out; one of us gets it and puts it back in the box.

I start talking with Chris about Tree of Life. I thought I had smelled it before, and I remembered that it was a strong smell, spicy, both pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. I'm surprised I can't smell it now. I tell him that I must be right on the edge of the age where it starts to affect you.

---

I'm replacing one thing (method?) with another. Both old and new are very complicated.

---

B wanted our bedroom to be clean, so she took all my clothes off of the window seat and packed them in a box.

---

Something about the left and right sides of blocks.

I'm in a hospital room with a young girl. The hospital room is fairly large and connects to a large hallway; there's no door. The bed is right in the center, and the girl is sitting on the bed. Somehow I know that she's being treated for cancer and that she's on a lot of pain medication.

She really enjoys playing with the bed's controls. She can raise herself high enough to touch the ceiling, but once she's up high she can't reach the controls to come back down. Somehow I lower the bed to its normal position.

Now I'm driving on a 2 lane road with houses and lots of trees around - it looks like [road]. I have my new bluetooth keyboard on my lap and I'm typing as I'm driving. I don't have to look at the keys. I'm driving with my left knee, only taking hold of the steering wheel for tighter turns.

Now I'm driving on a huge road. My side of the road has at least 5 or 6 lanes. I'm coming up to an intersection. Every lane has arrows painted; a couple are left turn only, my lane is left turn or straight ahead, and a couple more are straight ahead or turn right.

Now I'm back at the hospital looking at a GPS map of where I was driving. The track is all over the place, but it's generally going in the wrong direction from where I'd intended to go.

I'm using my computer, IMing with someone at work. There's a connection failure and the IM client disconnects. I start to check my hosts file; I have a number of aliases for the IM server because I need to log into it with multiple credentials, but the client is stupid and won't let me log into the same server more than once.

I'm at home, and I know that someone from work is going to be showing up at some point, but with the IM client down, I don't know when it'll be. I hope it's not too soon, since I'm not ready. I look out the window at my driveway and see Phil already getting out of his car. I'm still wearing pajamas, but I'm not really concerned; my coworkers are coming to my house, and they just need to accept things how they are.

My family room is a complete mess. The furniture is all pulled away from one wall; the ceiling above that wall is torn open because the ceiling lights are being worked on.

We start talking about the movie Ronin. I try to explain who the actors are (Boromir plus that short older guy, you know). Someone else remembers seeing Ronin, but he remembers different actors. We decide that the one I saw must have been a remake of an older movie.

Now the dream switches to the third person. I'm watching the very end of Ronin where the hero declares that he never left. The girl starts running across a field, but then she gets caught by guys and dragged into a car.

Still in the third person, I see a house, and I know that the Nazis used this place to test different ways of teaching children.

Back in the first person, I'm driving away from the house. I'm in a small town; it's run down and looks deserted.