non-lucid

Gathering downtown
I'm using Waze while driving in a city. I'm unsure about following its directions due to how much it likes using left turns, but it's OK because all the one way streets make it easy. I end up parking some distance from my destination. I'd been planning to take the bus the rest of the way, but it's really full and I'm carrying a box, so I decide just to walk. On the way I see Chris and Jeff and wave to them. I happen to catch a bit of their conversation and call out an insult about Jeff's getting old.

Now I'm waling into a large hotel. An imperious man at the door directs me to my inlaw's gathering. Now I'm in a smaller room with a bunch of people, talking. A random guy comes in and we need to help him with something. I leave the room with him. Now I see my father-in-law talking to the imperious guy, so I show them the way to the room. When we get there, the doors are closed with an "only open in case of emergency" sign on them. I stop, confused, but they open to reveal an older man I don't know. He says he's fiddling with the doors to figure out how to keep out people who don't belong.

Now we're wandering around the main space which is a Christmas shop. We're looking for a certain kind of ornament, but we can't find it. I say it may be because the store won't restock until people get back from Florida in the spring.

Rescue trebuchet
I'm playing a game [maybe inside one?]. I'm standing on a cliff looking over some desolate land. A ways in front of me, some people are trapped in a station wagon that's suspended above the desert. I somehow rig up a trebuchet, then test it. The test projectile gets near the car, but doesn't hit it. Once I get it tuned, I'm going to launch myself.


Vacation reservations
I'm walking into a building while on vacation. It's mostly deserted, but there's a lady at a table asking if I want to make an appointment to go to the department store. The earliest time slot she has is eight AM the following morning. I decline her offer and keep walking, since I'm actually here to look at a selection of capes. Unfortunately, the selection is terrible, so I just leave.


Reporting tool
I'm at work, reading a ticket from one of our infra guys talking about upgrading some kind of reporting tool we use. He's not happy about it, since the new version is more expensive and under a worse license. He wonders if there's an open source tool for it. I wonder if the one I used years ago, the Apache project starting with B, would do the job. Before I can look it up to get the name, I'm pulled off on something else.


Fragments
I'm in a parking lot at night with my family and our pastor. We walk towards the road, since our cars are actually parked there. We talk as we go, then go our separate ways.

I'm at a table with my wife and brother-in-law. He doesn't seem to notice us as he talks to his father, asking what it is that I've done that makes my children obedient. Mine come when called; his ignore him.

I'm in a house, going back for something.

Sharing an office
I'm in the office I share with Scott M. It's not a large room, and we both have a lot of stuff. The door is in one corner of the room. On the same wall as the door I have a table covered with computer stuff, some of it half built. On the wall left of the door is my desk. Underneath it are at least three computers. The network jacks are under my table, so network cables go across the floor both to my own computers and to Scott's.

As I'm doing something, I manage to disconnect Scott's network. I reconnect it, but I'm worried that something important on his computers may have shut down, so I go over to his desk to try to log in. I know he gave me his password for cases like this, and I take a moment to remember it: SnakeOil. I try to log in, but the password is rejected. Uh-oh. Now the login screen shows a failed login attempt. I try a couple of variations, and the computer gets tired of my repeated attempts and automatically reboots. I realize that would have solved the problem of any services that got shut down when I unplugged the network cable, but it still leaves the login failures. I wish I could log in successfully and clear it, but that's just not going to happen.

I was particularly worried that I may have killed his IM client, since he uses that as part of his working-from-home workflow. If his IM client isn't running, he can't access his computer from home.

Fragment
Lots of small groups in a field, each trying to assemble something. I guide my group in assembling it in a different order than everyone else, and it seems to work well.

Burger restaurant
I'm with three or four guys, friends of mine. We're standing across the street from a huge burger restaurant - their building is just a huge light-blue cube. Near the door is a sign - a printed tarp type thing hung on the wall, advertising a few of their menu items. A regular burger is about $4.50. They also list double burgers, one pound burgers, and hot dogs, but somehow the prices for each of these items is covered by something else that's been stuck on top of the menu. Without my noticing, one of my group has gone off and come back with a burger, which he's now eating. I ask if he got it from this place, but he says that he went up the street to another restaurant. I decide I don't care, the prices can't be too bad, and this place looks interesting, so I go in followed by the rest of my friends.

Now we're inside. I grab a plate and a napkin, since it's a kind of buffet. I don't see any burgers in this part, but there's salad stuff laid out across many small tables scattered through the area. As I'm pondering what to get, I see one of my friends with a tray. That would make things so much easier, so I ask him where he got it and he points back to the table with the plates. Going back to it, I can see where the trays are supposed to be, but there aren't any now. I see a couple of employees walking around, so I ask one about them. She says there's a problem with the tray dispenser, but then another employee - a young woman - pipes up with a workaround. Going back over, I'm able to reach down into the tray hole, grab one, and pull it up and out. It's still wet - it seems they leave them in a warm water bath, but that if things are working properly they'll be dry before anyone picks them up. With my plate and tray, I return to the food. I'm still a bit nervous about the price and hope that I don't end up with a really expensive meal. The only price I see in this room says that extra toppings for your burger are one dollar for as much as you want. I reason that the salad is probably cheap or free with the burger, since they want you to fill up on the cheap stuff, so I start loading my plate with stuff that looks good.


Timezones
I'm in a living room with my brother in law, talking about time. My watch has somehow gotten badly off - I wonder if I forgot to wind it. We end up talking about time zones, and I suggest that it may be easier if the whole world goes to zulu time. He laughs, but I explain that I'm at least partly serious, then use a couple examples I know of to demonstrate what an incredible pain timezones and timezone conversions are.


Covert Op
I'm part of a team trying to pull off some kind of covert operation. In my possession is a picture frame, roughly eight by twelve, which is subdivided into smaller frames by an ornate silver border (five subframes, I think). I'm taking this to an artist who specializes in making paintings of people after they've died. This is a bit outside his normal realm, but since it belonged to a mam who recently died, we think he'll be OK with it. Now in the store, I'm explaining to the man what I need, and he agrees. I need to ask him to do a rush job and have it ready by Thursday (only a day or two away) when some rivals start to come in ( I see them through the store front windows before they see me). Now I'm in another room looking through at them. I rig something up with expanding foam and socks. They're superstitious and, fooled by my large wobbling blobs carrying what look like weapons, flee.

Since this place is important to our cause, I spend some time improving its defenses, making sure the guy isn't interrupted while he works on our thing. At some point I notice a little gallery of his handiwork, and I actually think it's pretty ugly, but that doesn't matter to the plan.


Fragment
I'm in a back room with some guys looking at some sites. Now there are more people in here and one of our elders is about to start some kind of lesson.

Conference aftermath
I'm at work in a huge conference room. People are setting up for a presentation. Later, after everything is over, most of the room is cleaned up, leaving only a couple of six-foot folding tables pushed together. I'm sitting with some guys, eating. At the other end of the table, a group of people sits down and starts to play You Don't Know Jack. I move closer to them to listen in.

Later, it's just me, Ben C, and Bob Ba. I end up splitting some gigantic wings and legs between us, getting rather greasy hands in the process. Later, I put a small car (toy car?) under/on the table for Bob to be his ride home. He'd been planning to take a different car, so my having this one for him actually complicates things.


Dining hall experience
I'm in a dining hall with a friend. Before going through the line, we head to the restroom. Now we're in the restroom. It's huge, and there's a waist-high wall making a kind of "maze" to get to the urinals. We end up fairly close to each other. As I'm relieving myself, an attendant - female ! - comes by and does something under me. When I look down, I realize she's turned on a bidet, and there's a stream of water shooting up at me. I jump back in surprise and shock, and I feel pretty weird where it was hitting me. Now we're back in the dining hall, about to go through the line; but I realize I don't have pants on. I must have left them in the bathroom! I dash back that way to find them, and I look around as I do, but no one seems to have noticed me. I find them in the hall outside the bathroom, which I think is kind of odd. I return to the line and end up a couple of people behind my friend. This seems to be a pay-first dining hall.

Now I'm walking along with my wife, talking about leaving this place, describing the roads around here. I point to one nearby exit and tell her where it goes, then describe another one a level down which puts you on a road with a pedestrian lane running in the middle. I tell her that neither drivers nor pedestrians know what to do with it, that it's a terrible idea. She comments that it's the kind of idea Mrs Bo would have come up with.

Now I'm walking around downtown with her. I don't see a pedestrian lane, but I do see one for the trolley. We pass a strange storefront - black, but very strange architecture - and toke a closer look. It's announcing upcoming plays. As we're looking, I hear bells start to ring. I find the one nearby and realize it's some kind of remote gizmo that has dozens of copies across the city as part of a promotional from a music store. Eventually, my phone alarm [which sounds kind of like bells] wakes me up.


Fragments
Something about creating keyframes in real life somehow related to my second and third daughters. I'm working with three tracks. Two are easy, and one harder but still doable.

Finding Shoes
I'm in the garage, in my car, looking for some small dress shoes. As I'm hunting around the front passenger seat, my wife comes out and apologizes for whatever she said that made me think they're out there, saying she knows exactly where they are inside. She's holding a large trash bag. She turns around and says that she sees our third daughter standing on the table and gets a kind of deer-in-headlights look. I snap her out of it by telling her to drop the trash and GO!

Church Fragment
I'm at church, in a large wedge-shaped room. The service is over, and we're heading for a door half way along one of the straight sides (the left, if you're looking towards the point of the wedge).

Before bed, I read over some of my DJ and the current TOTM thread. I get in bed at 11:10, wearing my mask, and wake naturally at 1.

The construction site
I'm walking around the construction site next to our house, seeing what's here, when I spy a stack of poorly cut plywood. I remember advice about how constructions sites are *great* places to find scraps, so I decide to start my collection with this piece, then go look for the foreman to find out if it's OK to take and to find out where I can find more. As I'm walking, I look at the board and realize that it's already been stained. I have second thoughts about whether it's actually scrap or not and decide to head back to the pile I got it from. I end up walking under a big "tent" and jumping down a short steep incline caused where some of the ground angled down and some went straight. There's some larger machinery here under the tent. As I'm continuing to walk back towards the pile, a car pulls up nearby. I'm worried it might be someone who's going to take me to task, but it ends up being Josh instead. This is great! He's been a foreman before, so if I've done anything wrong he can vouch to the site's foreman that I'm an OK guy and didn't mean anything by it. Now a second car has pulled up, and I'm talking to a shorter middle-aged guy. He's looking me all over in a very detailed way that makes me a bit uncomfortable. Finally I ask him what I can do for him, and he says he's here to record the history of <thing> and needs both my scan data, which he's already collected, as well as the results of some surveys we need to take. There are a handful of trees around. I try to take a pouch filled with these papers and climb high to escape, but it doesn't end up working and I decide to come back down.


Mech pilot and superhero
I'm playing / experiencing some kind of game. I'm currently piloting a small mech. I've left the interior of the building and am now in what feels like a small control room. The room's power dies and I have to turn on my lights. As I leave the room, the door closes with a solid CLICK and I know the game is using the plot-point of power failure to make it so I can never get back in there. I hope I got all the items I'll need. Walking around the corner, I run into <?>. After talking with him, I turn another corner, getting ready to destroy the back half of the building. I see a door that looks like it should lead back into the now-dark control room, and I'm curious about it.

Now I'm with some other people in a downtown parking lot. Some of the people with me, as well as myself, are super heroes. A man comes running, breathless, to tell us that nearby is a bird with a shadow bomb. I'm the fastest, so I head off (fly?) to check it out. I find the bird in a hallway, hanging from the ceiling over a trash can. It seems to be sleeping. People nearby are oblivious to its dangerous presence. I carefully get the people's attention and instruct them to leave the area quietly and orderly, and they actually start to do so. Unfortunately, my father-in-law happens into the area, sees me, and decides to come over to see what's going on. I try to warn him away, but the bird wakes. It enters into a discussion with my father-in-law in which my father-in-law reveals that he's kind of bored. The bird says that he'll remedy that and drops the shadow bomb. Now I'm in a room somewhere. The bomb has gone off, and things have become very strange. All the light has a purplish glow to it, and I look like I'm covered in bruises. Even so, objects in this strange light also seem much clearer, much sharper. I'd never admit it to anyone, but I kind of like the effect. We'll figure out how to get us back to normal reality soon enough, so it shouldn't cause any real damage.


Trouble flying
I'm inside somewhere, in a very strange layout. I'm trying to fly and not having any success at all. A man arrives to help me out and runs me through some basic exercises. He has me lay down on the floor, on my back, spread-eagled, and then somehow will myself towards the ceiling. It works, and I start to rise. He's been flying (or at least hovering) the whole time. Now we're in another part of this strange place. He's otherwise occupied so I decide to try it again, but this time I can't manage to get off the ground.

I return to bed at 1:20 with a bit of SSILD, waking at 5:45.

Fragment: Something about a restaurant kitchen and a wide selection of nice knives.

I return to bed at 5:50 but don't actually fall asleep, and eventually I just get up.

I went to bed just before midnight and woke a little before 6.

Robot in the beach
I'm watching two people on a rocky/pebbly beach. One is a youth of maybe eleven or twelve. The other is probably late teens. The youth is nervous about what they're about to do, reiterating that they just CAN'T damage his mom's house. The teen reassures him that everything will be fine. The youth looks over his shoulder at his mom's house a few hundred feet away. It's built of stone, and it's four stories tall. Now the teen has started to use some heavy machinery he brought. It's a giant pincer that he's using to dig and shape the strange rocky beach. I start to see it shape what I think is the top of a head, and I wonder if they're trying to carve a statue of the youth's mom. Now my perspective changes to right outside the house. His mom has felt something odd and comes out to see what's going on. Now she's aware of slight vibrations in the ground coming from the beach. She looks at the house to see how it's holding up, and now I can see that it's made of stones anywhere from a foot diameter all the way down to pebbles and dust. There's no mortar holding it together, so the vibrations are gradually shaking out the small stuff. She sighs and starts to head down to the beach. Now I'm looking at the boys again. By this time they've gotten down to the waist of the "statue" and I realize they're actually excavating an ancient robot. The work goes quickly and soon the whole robot is exposed. They're very excited, right up until it shoots a salvo of four rockets from its back towards the house. The youth gets an "uh-oh" look on his face.

Paralyzed teen
I'm watching a group of friends, all late teens. One of them is a boy who's always been very helpful, especially when it comes to computers. Something's happened, and he's been paralyzed in both arms from the mid-forearm down. His friends are very sad for him, and a couple of them hold his hands (though he can't feel their touch). They're outside somewhere. Now I see them in a room. He's talking about the keyboard and mouse he was able to get that he can use. It's slow and annoying, but it's better than nothing. They start talking about some rating about how much precision you need to use a given input device. His new weird mouse is rated a six. A normal good keyboard is rated a twenty, and the Apple PerfectTouch keyboard is rated a forty. Someone comments that the white Apple keyboard look a lot better than everything else.

I go to bed at 10:30. I wake just after midnight as a sleepwalking child tries to climb over the baby gate. For a minute, I really wonder whether I'm dreaming and do an RC, but it turns out it's real. I return to bed and wake at 4:45. At first, I had no recall at all, but eventually these two popped in. I feel like there was a lot more I couldn't recall.


Breathing test
I'm in a fairly small room with three other guys. I've just finished telling a story. I've been holding Stormlight, so I don't need to breathe, but I lost a lot of it during my story. The real reason I'm here is to test whether I can hold my breath for a certain period of time. One of the other guys is undertaking the same test, and the other two people are our testers. I've almost reached the goal time, but because of the lost Stormlight I'm starting to feel the need to breathe. I look through some large cabinets behind me, since I could have sworn there was a canister of Stormlight in one of them, but the cabinets are nearly empty and I can't find any. I'm really starting to run out of air, and it's only a few seconds before I'm going to have to breathe again. The other guy taking the test with me gave up a long time ago and has been breathing normal air for a while now.


High school music competition
I'm driving through the parking lot of a high school at night. Most of the cars are gone, though there's a handful parked in a bunch near the school. A bunch of school buses are parked at a fourty-five degree angle from the school, looking like they want to be able to pull away quickly once loaded.

Now I'm inside walking through a large hallway. The auditorium is coming up on my left, and I know I need to get something from inside it, near the right side of the stage. As I reach the doors and look inside I see that it's not empty - this must be where the people with the cars have gone. The floor in there is really steep, much steeper than a normal auditorium. Down at the front I see Jake sitting behind a piano on the left of the stage. A couple dozen people are sitting on the front row, and I assume they're the judges of some kind of competition. A couple of students are walking around handing papers out to the judges. I realize Jake was the last person to play in the competition, and the judges are about to figure out the final results.

Fragment: Frozen's Elsa is standing by the side of a road dressing up as different things. An older lady is with her and is pushing her to do better.


I've never even seen Frozen; and seriously, what is it with all these high school dreams? I never went to a normal high school, and I don't know anyone in high school, but I've had a high school dream for days in a row now. I guess it's time to focus on it as an important dreamsign ... I return to bed at 5 and wake with my wife's alarm at 6:30.

I go to bed at 11:45 with my wife's alarm set for 6:30. At 3:30 I'm woken by noises from one of my children.

Factions at high school
I'm at a high school. Kids at the school are divided into five factions, each of which have their own section of the school. The walls and floor of each faction's area are color-coded (some nice pastel colors) to make it easy to know who belongs where. Some factions are friendly with other factions and allow each other in their territories; otherwise kids in one faction have to stay out of the areas belonging to their rivals.

I try to get into one cafeteria but am denied access. Now I'm in another one watching the kids go through the buffet line. Part of me is surprised at how short it is: just two or three thin tables end-to-end. I expected something much longer. I watch as one kid seems to be hunting for mustard. Watching him, I realize that while the kids are moving slowly, they never stop: if they want something, they have to get it as they pass it or miss out. Now I'm in the line, about two thirds of the way down. I'm nearing some scalloped potatoes and decide they look good. As I'm about to get some, a kid on the other side of the table from me takes its serving spoon (metal handle, red silicone spoon) to use on another dish. I'm moving past the potatoes, and I still don't have them, and the utensil is gone, so I quickly whip out my own fork (metal) and scoop some onto my plate. At the very end of the tables I see plates full of dessert, and I'm surprised to see that today's dessert is cheese sticks.


I feel there's more to the dream, but that's all I can remember. I quickly return to sleep and wake with my wife's alarm. Again, I feel that there's a big dream that's *almost* within reach, but I can't get it started

I go to bed at 10:15 with my alarm set for 5:30. I wake naturally at 3.

Felisin's mistake
I see Felisin and a couple of men. Felisin is trying to <something> to gain power over the people more quickly, but I know it'll backfire since she's doing it's too soon. I try to dissuade her from this path to do something else, but she won't listen to me.


I get back to sleep some time after 4:15 I try all kinds of things, but nothing seems to help (self hypnosis; focusing on breathing and then on a visualized candle; sixty-one point meditation (then again, I only remember making it down both arms, so maybe it did actually help)). My alarm wakes me at 5:30.

Consequences of a bad night
I've driven to a house to work on something. I'm here really early: I couldn't get back to sleep once I woke up during the night, so I just came on over. I realize that I don't have either my backpack or my phone and consider going back home to fetch them (I have time since I'm so early), but I decide against it. I can manage without them, and I'd hate to waste another hour and a half in the car. I feel a blocky shape in my pocket and feel relieved: it seems I didn't forget my cellphone after all. I feel it more closely and realize that it's actually my old, broken smart phone. I feel it even more closely and realize that it's actually the clamshell I had before I got my first smart phone.

Now my family is here, and we're talking about something, maybe doing some brainstorming. Now I'm at the other end of the house in a small enclosed porch. As I'm going back into the house proper, Daniel W comes out. Now I'm in a bedroom along with one of Mike B's sons. He's working on laundry, folding the newly clean stuff and putting dirty stuff into a big pink plastic container (just like we took camping). Somehow I mess him up. I apologize, explaining I had a terrible night, and leave the room.

Now I'm in the car driving to school. The roads feel familiar, but some of the road markings aren't: where I'm sure there used to be proper driving lanes, now they're all covered in the diagonal "don't drive here" lines. I don't think much of it besides figuring that they were trying to make traffic flow better. I become aware of a low sports car driving behind me. He's being really obnoxious, tailgating me and trying to swerve around to pass me. I'm concerned, but I don't change my driving patterns at all: I know that if I give in to these kinds of people, it'll just encourage them. Eventually we reach a multilane section where he swerves into the other lane, guns his engine, and shoots past me. I'm thankful to see him go.

Now I've parked and am walking the last little way to class. I realize that I don't have my backpack, but it's much too late to go back to get it now. I realize I've been walking for a while, much longer than I should have been. I press forward and eventually come to a road I've never seen before (I see the road name on a little green sign). I start to get worried, since class will be starting soon. I pull out my phone to check the time and see that it's 8:59. Class starts at 7:00, so I've only got a minute to get there (No that's not a typo. Yes, that's what I really thought in my dream)! I'll be late! I turn around and start jogging back, at the same time pulling up Waze on my phone. Now my eldest daughter is at my side and starts talking about inane things. I try to explain that this isn't the time, that I'm running incredibly late for my classes, and she starts asking inane questions. As we're walking/jogging through a fairly large parking lot, I'm trying to type "high school" into the Waze search box, but it keeps coming up as gibberish. I'm trying to think whether it would be better to enter class late or just to skip it altogether. I try to think what my first class is, but I can't remember. Math? PE? I can't even remember if this is my first day of class or not - what if the teacher gives instructions we'll need to remember?


Protecting the device
I'm driving my car. A woman I don't really know is in the passenger seat, and a cat is somehow involved. We've got some technology that Melissa T, some kind of spy / government agent / something wants to get her hands on. We enter a wide tunnel (at least three or four lanes wide) and get stuck in a traffic jam. As we're coming to a stop, I see Melissa a couple of cars in front of us. She turns around and makes eye contact with me. I think about ducking down, but I know there's nothing I can do. She knows we're here, she's going to come for us, and there's nowhere we can go! My companion decides now is the time to activate the device, a brick-shaped thing. We touch the tips of the fingers on my right hand to the tips of the fingers on her left hand, then she presses something on the brick. I'm not sure what will happen - will we switch bodies? If so, how does that help us get away from Melissa? Why is the cat here? Will one of us end up in the cat and escape that way?


An icy river
It's night, and I'm outside a house. I'm standing on some kind of large deck, and I'm aware of the house rising up a couple of stories behind me. As I stand at the railing looking out over a small river passing under us, I become aware that a man (who looks like Sean Connery) is standing at the railing a few feet from me, also looking out over the river. As I look more closely at the river, I notice strange foamy white stuff on top. I ask the man if it's ice flows, and he confirms that it is. It's beautiful. Now my youngest daughter comes toddling out and somehow falls into the water, quickly going under. I don't hesitate but jump in after her, somehow knowing the water will only be up to my waist. Sure enough, I'm able to stand comfortably in the water, bend down, and scoop up my daughter, who's unharmed. I'd expected the water to be painfully cold and am surprised that I really can't feel it all. Now the rest of my family is here, and we're wading through the water to see something on the other side.

I go to bed at 10:20, wearing my mask, with my alarm set for 6:30. I wake naturally at 1:30 with no dream recall. I quickly fall back asleep and wake again at 3:30.

At work at night
I'm in my cube at work building a new computer from new parts. Now, I'm walking through the office without any real destination; I'm just going for a walk. It's getting onto evening now. A number of us are going to be spending the night at the office, and I see sheets and blankets already laid out in some cubes. Now it's night. There's very little natural or artificial light, and I have to be careful as I walk around not to bump into or trip over anything. I'm still enjoying my walk, since I've never walked around the building in the dark, especially not with a bunch of people sleeping here.
The office layout is pretty true to life.

I return to bed around 4. It takes a while to fall asleep, and the rest of the night is pretty restless.

Resin casts
I'm with a couple of friends playing with some kind of sticky sap I'm calling a resin. I'm tell them that it gets incredibly hard once it solidifies, and that it could be used to make an amazing cast. We're in a time period from before plaster casts were invented, so I have to explain what it would be like, wrapping a sheet of resin (still soft) around my elbow and talking about how once it gets hard it would hold the elbow totally still so that a broken bone there would heal better.


At a gun "party"
I'm at a the house of a gun dealer, attending one of his "gun parties" where he (legally) sells guns at a very fair price. I've been to a couple of his other little "parties," but I haven't bought anything yet, though I really want to. I'm strongly leaning towards a shotgun for home defense, though I'm also tempted to get something small that I can carry concealed. I briefly think about ammo types, whether bird shot is enough for home defense - I've never fired a shotgun before, though I've heard they work well. I know they're also incredibly loud, and I wonder whether I'd need to use ear protectors. I'd hate to go deaf from firing it, but if there were someone in my house I'd also need to hear them. As I'm thinking about all of this, I run into the dealer and we chat for a couple of minutes. He asks me if I'm still "upside-down" on what I've gotten from him, and I remind him that since the only money I've given him was for the entry fee, I'm completely upside-down and will be until I actually purchase a gun from him. We're in a room with Subway sandwiches laid out, and I ask him how much a sandwich costs. He tells me they're free for the taking since he couldn't in good conscience charge for something that poorly made. I thank him and grab one, then look around for condiments. I see both packets and bottles of mustard and ketchup. I grab some mustard and squirt it over my lettuce, then start to eat. I don't add ketchup since that just sounds weird on this kind of sandwich - except there's ketchup dripping out of it. I must have added it when I wasn't paying attention. Oh well. As I'm eating, I realize the bottom bun is almost completely gone while the top bun is barely touched. Normally I do a better job holding things together and keeping the top and bottom buns even. I flip it over so the larger top bun is now on the bottom and try to pay more attention to where I take my bites from.

Now I'm upstairs in the house, where the customers usually are. His property is such that one can enter on either level, but I'm not sure why I started downstairs this time. Now my wife is with me, and she asks me questions as we walk around. Now we're in another room looking at some strange bird crafts laid out around a round coffee table. They're really unattractive and have zippers in strange places. Someone picks one up and shows me, indicating that the zippers are there to imitate bodily functions. The person asks if my children would be interested in trying to make one, and I decline on their behalf.

Now I've left the man's house and am driving home. I'm currently driving through the old section of a city with narrow, strange roads. I end up having to make a left by turning right down a 270 degree cloverleaf-style "ramp", going under a tunnel under the road I was just on, then coming back to street level. I consider how strange that was and wonder why they couldn't have just left everything at a normal level and had me make a normal left-hand turn. Someone is with me in the car and says that city traffic is always terrible and every little thing they can do to improve it helps.


Fragment: Something about walking through a park?

I go to bed at 11:30PM. I'm woken by a kid at some time during the night, then I wake naturally at 4:30.

Going to the movies
I'm at home at my computer ordering movie tickets. I''m appalled that the normal price is $40, but I'm thankful that online I can get them for $7 each. I get enough tickets for our group to go see <movie>. Now we're at the movie theater. It's one of these old glitzy places, but it actually looks pretty good for its age. We're all dressed up really well. The place is huge: I'm not aware of the ceiling or of the far walls. We're standing in the middle of the huge space. Nearby, I see a huge sign covered in gold frufru around the edge. I think that maybe this board will tell us where to go to get to our movie, so Steve and I walk over to check it out. The board does have information about the movies, but none of it looks anything like what's on our tickets. I wonder if I somehow purchased tickets for the wrong theater (though I can't imagine how that could have happened), and I wonder if it wouldn't just be easier to buy new ones here, but Steve can't stand the idea of wasting the money on the initial ticket costs plus the crazy markup we'd have to pay to buy the new tickets here. Right behind us is some kind of informational desk. Steve goes over and shows the attendant (an older black man with fairly dark skin) his ticket. The man is incredibly scornful and condescending, saying that our tickets are for 77 and we're currently on 177, can't we read? I don't even know what those numbers mean, but now I'm afraid to ask him in case he gets even more scornful. He visibly gets himself under control, apologizes for being so rude, then starts telling us about this place. As Steve is talking to the information guy, I see my old friend Jamie M walk by. He's holding a violin and dressed in a white shirt and black pants, and I wonder if he'll be performing tonight. He comes up to me and asks if I know if anyone's had any success getting on the WiFi. I throw my head back and laugh a HAHAHA laugh, since the people around here aren't exactly technically savvy. I get myself under control and tell him as much.

Now I'm going to audition for a part with my old coworker Dave Z. We're walking along a wide sidewalk in a city, and dusk is falling. Eventually we reach an unmarked door in the side of an indistinct building. I'm skeptical, but he grins and tells me it's in here. Now we're inside and need to get to the fourth floor. He's going to take the stairs, but I decide the elevator would be better. After waiting for the elevator for a moment, I realize it's not coming soon and dash after Dave to take the stairs with him. These stairs are HUGE, very wide, and with dozens of feet between each story. Now we've made it to the second floor. I check the elevator bank to see if there's one here, but there isn't. We continue. At the third floor, I check the elevators again, but then realize there's a very important reason that I couldn't take the elevator even if it were here.


Fetching the kids
I've gone to fetch my kids from where they've spent the last few hours with the B'n family. I'm in a long room that I think is a dormitory with many many beds. I can hear my family, but I can't see them yet: I'm hidden from them by some kind of huge block. I climb to the top of a nearby bunk bed and decide to lay there for a minute listening to them. At the top of the bed, I find it's actually two pieces: one for my upper body and one for my feet, with a gap in-between. It's really uncomfortable, so I manage to hook the foot part with my feet and slide it back towards me, closing the gap completely. I have to bend my knees now, but it's better than having the gap. My second daughter realizes I'm here and comes over and climbs up, wanting to snuggle. We lay there together while the other kids play for a few more minutes.


Fragment: I'm in a big hotel(?) room, then out in the hallway talking to someone.


I return to bed at 4:45 and wake naturally around 7.