Uncategorized

Downtown at dusk
I'm walking around the downtown area of a large town at dusk. I'm not too sure where I'm going, especially because the roads come together in many odd intersections. Now I'm in a parking lot, at a small building, buying a parking pass. It comes as a tiny cylinder, about the size of the first segment of my thumb. Now I'm back at a different parking lot, hoping I haven't been ticketed yet, finding it odd that the pay station was so far away. I see a parking attendant wandering around checking for the parking passes, so I hurry to get mine in place before he arrives, looking my car over to see if he's already been here and left a ticket. I end up greeting him as he comes over, explaining that I just got back from the parking office as I show him the cylinder I'm carrying. He makes a comment along the lines of "I wish you hadn't told me that. " I'm afraid he's going to ticket me, but he goes on his way.

Now I'm standing outside a hot dog stand, holding a hot dog, looking at their condiments. The "stand" is actually a small building. To my right is a large "window" with a counter; to my left is a whole wall of condiments in largish cylinders set at an angle into the wall. Now I'm elsewhere, talking to someone about my hot dog. They ask where I got it, and I tell them it was <name of burger place>. I explain that even though it's a burger place, they sell hot dogs too.

Now I'm back at my car, getting ready to leave, since I've done everything I needed to; but then I realize my tent is still set up. Given how dark it is now, it's going to be a pain to take it down. Now I'm clambering around in the back of my car, trying to make room for the tent.


Hungry Schlock
I'm watching Schlock, Ebby, and Chisulo. They're discussing getting to the food court, but it's late at night, so everything is closed. The food court is past the gallery, and they're worried about some of the things they've heard about statues and lasers. Now I see them in the food court, wearing their heavy assault gear, glowing slightly. It turns out that there are statues placed around the gallery equipped with heavy-duty laser weapons, hot enough to come close to melting off their suits. They didn't try to stop them but rather just ran all the way through. Schlock is asking whether anyone got some good footage when a statue takes a parting shot at Chisulo. Ebbby gets some great footage, but when they examine it they see that Chisulo has a really strange look on his face, sticking his tongue out, and they all say "Ewww" and decide to use the lower quality footage that someone else got. I think how silly it is to put a food court behind lethal defenses.


Fragments
Something else about wandering through a shopping area.

Three older women walking on a driveway. It's bright.

I go to bed at 12:30 AM and took at least half an hour to fall asleep (Sunday naps are so nice, but they can cause such problems too ...). My wife's alarm wakes me at 6:30.

At the burger restaurant
I'm in a burger restaurant with my family - a Burger King, I think. I go through the line and order a burger for each of my kids. At $5 each, taking my family here isn't cheap. for some reason, I didn't order with the rest of my family, so now I'm back in line to order my own food. I think I know what I want, but I'm still conflicted. I end up talking to someone about the current menu items. He's got a paper copy of the menu that doesn't have some items, but I point out that his menu is good from <date> to <date> (I think one end was in August) and that we're one day outside that range. Now I'm placing my order. I don't know the name of what I want, so I try to describe something like "the burger with the sauce." The girl behind the counter apologizes that that's a seasonal item and we're now out of that season. I panic a bit, quickly looking over the overhead menus trying to figure out what to replace my order with. I'm having a hard time reading them, and I don't want to hold up the line, so eventually I just order something boring.

Now I'm siting with my family at a table by the window. A wave comes in and our table ends up completely under water. This restaurant is in the path of the tides, and some tables go underwater at high tide. I'm not sure how we missed the tide coming in, but it's here now and we need to move to a table past the tide. My wife and I try to move our stuff as quickly as possible, finding it from under the water. It's tough, since we can't see into the water at all and have to feel around for our things. We're both moving stuff from our old table to the new one, but she spends more time at the old one and I spend more time at the new one.



Driving to clean a house
I'm in a car with someone else, heading to a house to clean it. He's driving, and I'm in the passenger seat. I know we're near our destination, but neither of us is sure exactly where it is. We turn down one neighborhood road and quickly realize it's the wrong one. Up ahead, we see a team of landscapers working on a large grassy area to the right of the road. My companion does something weird, including backing up and nearly hitting a mailbox. I call him on it, but he shrugs it off. As we're leaving we see the landscaper doing <something>, and my companion laughs and says it's because he shook them up a bit. Now we're driving through another neighborhood - the right one, this time - looking for the house we're supposed to be going to. It's a pretty boring neighborhood with small lots, no trees, and lots of white houses.


Fragments:
Something about trying to make a case against a guy (or group?), that he (they) were responsible for wiping out another group. Somehow this is related to visions of backed-up cars on one lane of a winding mountain road with a view of the ocean.

I'm at my computer taking a survey about Steam produced by some college students. Some of the questions are really strange.

I'm taking a nap after getting home from camping. I'm exhausted and forget to set the alarm.

I see an empty camp site. It's long and fairly wide, with trees on the three sides I can see. Somehow it reminds me of the alarm I forgot to set and wakes me up.

I start awake.

Shooting from cover
I'm playing an FPS, but I'm actually in it. In front of me is a long hallway with a humanoid robot sentry at the end. I need to try to take him down before I continue. Between my spot and his there's no cover at all; where I am there's poor cover, but at least it's something. Taking aim, I start to fire, and I see my shots streaking down the hallway. Moments later, he starts to return fire. I'm easily able to move back and forth to dodge his shots, and I'm glad to see he doesn't seem to be dodging mine. In fact, as I move, he's unable to immediately start firing at my new position; instead, it's almost as if he can only rotate slowly as the line of tracers slowly comes towards me. After a few moments, another robot appears next to the first. Dodging two streams is certainly harder but not impossible, and I continue to fire. Now I start getting hit (though not hurt; my armor absorbs the shots). I'm confused until I realize there's a third stream coming from the enemy area, and that it's coming from some kind of turret above the robots. It's less powerful than they are, but its shots are very fast and much harder to dodge; it's also able to track much faster than the humanoid bots. I'm slowly moving to the right to stay ahead of the sweep of gunfire, but I'm worried since I haven't seen a gap I can make use of to slide back to the left, and I'm almost to a spot where I can't move any more. I realize my dog's old cage is to my right and I dive in. I'm hoping they'll have trouble targeting me in here and maybe reset where they're firing at so I can get a few more good shots in.

I've clearly been playing too much Epoch recently. It's a "cover shooter" that plays out almost exactly like this.


Underground complex
I'm in some kind of underground complex. In most of the rooms, you can't even tell it's underground, though the lack of windows may be a strong hint. One room I walk through has a suspended walkway going up and down and back and forth, looking rather fun. Stairs up to it are on one side of the room; at the other end it goes through into another room. I'd like to follow it, but there are a bunch of kids playing on it and I don't feel like trying to get past them. Somehow I'm able to see part of the next room and decide to go there. Now I'm in another room trying to find the room I saw earlier. I can't get wall lengths to line up right in my head, and I can't find that room. Now I'm back in the walkway room, up on the walkway, looking over a railing. I try to take a good mental snapshot of what I'm seeing. Now I'm back in the other room. After a moment of searching, I find the balcony I was looking down from, and that's enough to orient me so that I can find a hallway leading to the room I wanted.

Now I'm in a medium-sized room, probably about fifteen by fifteen feet. I'm in one corner rifling through a built-in cabinet. I find some haphazard piles of books along with some movies. A late thirties woman is there leading a group of kids through exercises. They're all dressed in fairly tight fitting black shirts and pants. Looking at the kids, I realize they're all special needs. Once the class ends, I get into conversation with her and find out that she's a special needs trainer of some, focusing on ??? (workouts?) instead of more traditional therapy. She tells me she got into it because her own daughter has special needs, and that this method seems to work well. Now she's asking the kids if they want to watch a movie. After a resounding chorus of "Yes!", she goes to the cabinet and pulls out the very videos I was looking at. I'm glad I left them where they were and didn't take anything. She offers them to the kids. Against one wall I see a tall rolling cart holding a TV (CRT) and DVD player.

Now I'm driving into the complex's parking deck with my family. I want to show my wife something. The deck isn't finished yet; it's obviously still under construction, though it's usable. Now we're parked and trying to find the way inside. We see a handful of workers come out of a tunnel. Now we're trying to enter the tunnel, but we find it's not yet ready for use. Backtracking, we find a better-looking tunnel and follow it. We run into the job foreman and start talking to him. He makes excuses but my wife will hear none of them. She marches to the "employees only" (though the wording is different) door. There's a sign instructing visitors to enter a code on a keypad, but she ignores it, instead pushing on the door. At that moment someone inside opens it, so she's able to go right in. The foreman isn't happy but doesn't force her out. The door is remarkably wide.


Exploding experiment
I'm walking with an older man through his house. We enter a room at the end of the house full of strange equipment. He's an inventor, and this is his workshop. He walks to a counter on the side of the room, picks up a small slip of paper, and reads it. It's a report of one of his experiments. He says something about ??? fifteen. Somehow he realizes another test is in progress, and he panics. He rushes to a 1-inch red pipe on the wall and turns the cut-off valve; then to be really sure he gives it a strong yank and breaks it in two. For a moment he looks relieved, then something behind us bursts into flame. We have to get out of here. Now we're racing through the house, burning goopy black stuff following us. Somehow I know it's slightly intelligent and rather malicious. We reach the living room and the man does something to cause a large hole in the floor to appear - some kind of escape tunnel in case something went wrong. All the humans in the room jump in. Other small creatures are around, but they're not real, so they don't need to escape.

Now we're outside the house having come out of the escape tunnel, standing next to a car in a driveway. We watch the whole house go up in a giant fireball.

Now I'm walking down the road with my family. We've decided to go to the nearby public school, find an empty classroom, and read for a while. We see a few school buses on the road and wonder if we're too early or too late, if maybe all the rooms will be in use. As we're walking along I have to keep ducking under (or moving) bush branches. At one point, my wife and I somehow end up walking along holding each other up, more for fun that because we need to.


Voicemail and plumbing
I'm in a fairly small, bare, carpeted room. I'm on the phone fighting with the new voice mail system at work. The old one was great; numbers for everything ("Please press one for ..."), favorites, etc. Sending a voicemail was as easy as pressing the key to send voice mail, followed by the "favorites" key, followed by the number of the favorite I was sending to (assuming it was someone I often send voicemail to). Three key presses which could be entered one right after another, nice and quickly. The new system uses voice recognition, expects you to wait for the full prompt, and doesn't have favorites. It expects you slowly to speak the whole phone number you're sending to. I try using the keypad anyway, and it works for the phone number but not for the menus. I try to think what the best place is to report my intense dissatisfaction with this change.


Now I'm in the nearby bathroom. It's pretty dark, even though I've turned the light on. I realize that, though I've flipped the switch, the light is still off. Looking around, I see that the toilet has been unbolted and moved, and I assume someone must have turned off the breaker to avoid problems with the toilet. I realize there's a bad drip coming from the ceiling. Now I'm elsewhere in the house talking to my wife. She's not surprised when I mention the drip, saying it's been like that ever since we moved in, but it was such a small leak that it only occasionally got a bit of bread in the bath water. I explain that it may have always been there, but it used to be so gradual I never noticed it; but now it's dripping every couple of seconds, and it'll destroy the ceiling if we don't stop it. We're in the dining room, and I can see through the windows that it's raining. Maybe that's why the leak is worse now than usual.


Short dreams
I'm with my wife in a hotel room. We're on some sort of long trip (we've been away from home for weeks), and we're both tired. She's laying down on her bed and I'm moving around doing something. Suddenly, I get really really tired and I mention it to her, noticing that she also seems to have lost all energy. I realize her sister is doing something to drain energy from us and I mention it, but my wife just thinks it's the long trip. Some comments are made about the kids.

I'm on back roads somewhere, waiting at a stop sign at a T intersection, getting ready to turn left. Now I've turned left and am approaching another intersection. This one also has a stop sign; but the intersection is big enough that there's a left turn lane as well as a go straight lane. There's already a car here waiting its turn to go straight, with another behind it half in the straight lane and half in the left turn lane. I can only assume he decided at the last minute to turn left, though I'm not sure why he can't just pull all the way forward and out of the straight lane. I wait behind both of them in the go-straight lane.


Fragment
Something about church and changing pants in the bathroom. The church building is huge.

Cat girl
I'm at church, sitting near the back of the sanctuary on the left side. A young woman dressed largely in white walks past me into the sanctuary. She's walking oddly, and I wonder if she's drunk. She walks to the front and onto the raised platform, then goes to a laptop on the left and starts doing something to it. The pastor notices her and tries to shoo her away without disturbing the sermon too much. She turns into an exact copy of my white cat, then somehow jumps through the slats disguising one of the HVAC return vents. I'm concerned - both of my cats are here, and if she's a duplicate of one of them, how will I tell which is my cat and which is the girl?

Now, my wife and I are looking through her stuff. We find something that looks like a screwdriver except with a hex bit on the end; I make some comment about it. Now we're talking about her leaving the building. It'll be tough with all the people here, and if she tries to leave once everyone has left she'll set off the alarm system.

Now I'm looking through the windows towards the parking lot. I see Rebecca R pull up parallel to the church, then an SUV pulls up behind her. I see Rebecca go to the window of the SUV to talk to the occupant, and I realize it's her mother.

I remember something about powders or sprays you can put on the floor that are invisible to normal light but shine under ultraviolet. If you can get someone to walk through the stuff, then you can track them by following the footprints they leave behind. I tell my wife that I think we should spread it around the church to track the girl through the vents to catch her.

Now we're driving through "our neighborhood," looking for the girl. I think it's a waste of time, but my wife thinks it's worthwhile. We start to get further away from actual houses and start to pass rental banquet halls, and I think they're a more likely place for the girl, if only by a hair. Eventually we turn around. On the way back I notice a nicer looking hall. It's one story and fairly boxy, but it's got a couple of pillars outside the front door that improve its appearance.

Sunday afternoon
I'm at home doing something on my computer. It's Sunday afternoon, so I need to get the kids down for a nap. My wife isn't here right now, so I need to take care of it myself. I look at the time and see that it's already a quarter past five; how did it get so late!?! I still need to get them down for a few minutes; fourty-five minutes will have to do. I quickly head to the living room where I find them all and tell them to get ready and get in bed, pronto. At some point I walk through my own bedroom and see some torn papers and envelopes on the floor near the bed. I go back to the kids, call them back together, and ask who did it. No one is forthcoming, so I look at the child I think did it and ask her point-blank. She looks me in the eyes as she answers that she didn't. I ask her a couple more times, but she responds back without batting an eye. Either she's innocent or she's gotten much better about lying. I warn her that if she's lying then the lie is worse than the actual act, but that I'll believe her. I get the kids back to getting ready for naps.

My wife calls to say she's on her way home. When I answer the phone it somehow goes to voip mode. I try to switch it back quickly but I don't see an obvious way to do so. Thankfully the call sounds pretty clear. I'm impressed; maybe I can use this for work like I'd originally planned.

On the phone, my wife says she saw an email that one of the B's was going to be dying soon and asking if anyone wanted to go with the other B's to say farewell. Bethany was the only one who responded. She said it was a little awkward since she was the only non-family member there, but it was still good. She says she'll see me soon and hangs up. Almost immediately a black sedan pulls up and my wife and the B's get out. I can't understand how they got home so fast. I go out to greet them and see that Jake is also out there. He's got four propane tanks and single burners (for his rentals, he says) along with a giant propane tank on a trailer. It's as tall as I am and so big around that I couldn't encircle it with my arms. It seems to be venting a lot of gas, though no one is worried about this. I try to ask Jake why it's doing this but his answer has nothing to do with my question. I try a few times to get an answer but I never do. When he gets close to it his hair gets a little icy; I guess the conversion of all that liquid to gas is sucking all the heat out of the air. My wife starts reminiscing about a mobile kitchen they used to take camping. It was its own trailer, heated by propane. It had some kind of tunnel oven, except the tunnel had only a top, bottom, and one side, and there were tools hung along the side of the tunnel. Eventually they had to get rid of it and replace it with ???.

Now I'm back in the house. Chris is holding a tiny baby and is going to hand it to me but then has second thoughts. He asks if I use ???? and I say I don't know what that is. He turns to John G and hands him the baby instead, saying he knows John's family uses ???. I ask again what it is and he says it's a brand of probiotic. I tell him that if he'd asked that in the first place I could have told hem we used a different brand. It seems he doesn't want to mix probiotic strains in the baby and he's concerned that even being close to someone using different strains could be a problem. He asks about a couple of other supplements, and I have no idea what they are. I describe the ones we take, including the blue liquid with minerals.


Train oddities
I'm inside a building looking at a departing train. Now I'm outside the building looking up at a wall. I see the stubs of tracks coming out from the second story and new brickwork covering a hole where the train must have come through. Since the train only just left, I have no idea how they did this so fast, or how the train got safely to ground level. Now I'm looking at it again, but the hole is unbricked. I don't understand why they would have removed their recent work. The edge of the hole is the stairstep of missing bricks; this hole was never supposed to be here.

Now I'm on the train in one of the sleeper cars, standing in the aisle. The side of the train is to my right, and two sleeping compartments are before me to my left. I find it a little odd that they don't go all the way to the ceiling of the train, but I figure that being an old train things would have been a little different. The doors into the compartments are wood and have handles to pull them so they swing open into the aisle. They look much nicer than the all-plastic modern sleeping compartments. I open the door and walk in. It's surprisingly spacious. Going back out into the aisle, I think of what I need to do - something spy/espionage related.


Fragments
Something about a long curving street with stores along one side. It's dark.

Something about using avidemux to edit videos.

Something about someone's health insurance not covering him even though he's employed with a company which provides group health coverage.

Some kind of Star Trek / Schlock Mercenary mashup. Videos of two wingmen, a big red one and small yellowish fighter craft. Something about big red one's history.

Dangerous place
I start out sailing around a large wooded landmass. Now I'm driving through an untamed area. It's not the safest for me, but I'm carrying small animals with me and it's extremely dangerous for them. To help protect them from the dangers, I rig up something with a ceramic dinner plate and sticks, putting the sticks around the passenger seat cushion to hold the plate in place. The animals can then sit on top of the plate, making it much harder for the predators to get them. At first glance, my wife thinks it's silly, but she has to admit that it's effective.


DS9: Ancient plague
Kira arrives back on the station dressed in archaeologist clothes, carrying some ancient artifact she found on a new planet in the Gamma Quadrant. She's excited, gushing about the trip to Sisko, hoping they can get a full archaeologist team out there to do a proper study. Now I see three men, dressed in archaeologist clothing, doing a Power Walk (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerWalk) down some steps, Sisko at their side. Now the four are in a runabout, headed for the planet Kira was at. It turns out these guys aren't really archaeologists - instead, they're interested in the planet because they hope to find an ancient plague they can use as a bioweapon. They didn't want Sisko along, but now they're stuck with him. For a while, they hold him as a prisoner, but he eventually convinced them he could be useful. The other guys consider this a suicide run, since other teams trying something similar in the past have sometimes been infected with the plague they're hunting and have tried to come back to infect everyone. This team has made all sorts of precautions to ensure they're on a one-way trip. Sisko keeps trying to convince them that it doesn't have to be this way. He can stay in contact with DS9, keep them up-to-date on how they're doing and what sorts of precautions to take when they're on their way back.

Now the leader is watching a recorded message from his wife. Now I'm watching the wife record it. She's being played by Amanda Tapping (SG1's Carter) as a guest appearance. She's walking around their home, talking about how she knew this would happen, and she regrets not stopping him sooner, but she hopes that he's able to fulfill his dream. Now she's walking around some kind of large gathering, still recording. She tells him she's sorry their child will grow up without its father. As she walks near a table in the middle with a food line, a Ferengi child points to a mug with a picture of her husband and says something like "I want to be just like him!" She makes some kind of noncommittal reply.


Conspiracy at work
I'm in the elevator at work with one other guy. I'm heading to the fourth floor, he's heading to the fifth. The elevator doesn't seem to be working right - things are taking much too long. Suddenly, the elevator doors bulge inwards towards us, taking up about a third of the elevator's floor space. I "know" that we're currently on five, and I'm praying that the elevator doesn't fall. I'm trying to think back to what you're supposed to do in such cases. I think I once read that you're supposed to lie down flat on the floor, but it really doesn't make a difference. Finally the doors open. I'm not sure what floor we're on, but my companion and I both get out quickly. We wait for the elevator to continue going up before hitting the elevator call button to make sure we get an elevator from the other shaft. Someone else joins us on the second elevator, but it's not working right either; the doors just stay open. We all get out and take the stairs.

Now I'm walking around the floor I work on. There's some kind of conspiracy going on. As I'm walking by the cubes near the window, someone mistakenly thinks I'm part of it and gives me a binder to take somewhere, then leaves her cube. I take a quick flip through it and see that it has all their plans in it. I realize I need to get to a copy room, make a copy of everything in the binder, then get out; but I'm worried that people will think me suspicious and discover that I'm not one of them. I try to take a roundabout way to one of the copy rooms, but it's not working out well. A group of people is walking behind me. I don't think they're intentionally following me, but they've seen where I came from and they'd know if I went back. I try to take an unusual path, but they're still behind me, and I think they may be intentionally following me now. I take the stairs up to five, then almost run through some of the cube areas, trying to lose them, no longer caring that I look incredibly suspicious.

Side-note
Third-person
Dreamsign

Breakfast craziness
I'm at home, getting breakfast ready. My kitchen looks like my real kitchen; I'm working on the short countertop between the fridge and microwave. I'm trying to make tea and fry a couple of eggs with bacon, but nothing is going right. I'm cooking on a portable propane burner, though I never stop to think about why. The lighting is very dim, so I go to turn more lights on. The kitchen light isn't responding to the controller at all. I try to control the lights in the breakfast nook and in the dining room. The breakfast nook light responds properly, but the dining room light is having trouble. It's at least starting to come on, but it gets stuck at less than half brightness, not producing much light. I keep trying the kitchen light and eventually it starts to get the glow that shows a fluorescent bulb is warming up, but it never actually comes on. Even this concerns me - with the newer ballast we've had the last couple of years, there's no warm-up time, so the ballast must be going bad. The controller is working strangely too. It's supposed to be back-lit at all times with a dim glow, but the back-light is off. At first I'd assumed it was because the controller didn't have power, but it's clearly sending the signals, and lights that actually come on have their keys back-lit at full brightness.

Now I'm back to the food. I'm trying to make tea, and something's not right, though I don't remember what. I've got a couple of eggs and a strip of bacon cooking in the pan, and I decide to add another strip. Somehow, I know the package of bacon is in the cabinet, not in the fridge where it's supposed to be. I pull it out and note that it still has a slight chill to it, but I know that's not enough for it to have been protected from going bad. I know you're not supposed to eat stuff that's been out for more than 2 hours, but I also know that most people don't actually get sick. I open the bag and give it a sniff test, and it smells fine. I reason that it's already been smoked and cured, so it should be reasonably well preserved and safe. I get out another strip and add it to the pan.

Now I'm upstairs finishing getting ready to leave. It dawns on me that I left the burner on downstairs and my food is still on it. I race back to deal with it. Now I'm downstairs, heading through the hallway to the kitchen. I'm glad the smoke detector isn't going off, and I don't even smell the slightest hint of burning food. Now I'm back in the kitchen getting the food off of the pan. The eggs look good, though I have no doubt that the yolks are fully cooked through. The strips of bacon stuck together, but they don't look burnt either. I put them into something to take to work.

At work, I'm walking around with Scott. I'm carrying a plastic tumbler with some green tea which is still brewing. We start to go down some stairs (a very wide stairwell) but he stops me. Looking down the stairs, I see that a huge section of stairs is missing, and that if I'd gone another few feet I would have fallen to the story below. Scott explains they're doing some work on the walls that's incompatible with stairs. He points to a vertical bump running up and down the wall, and it does seem to be the limit of where the stairs go. We're trying to figure out a different route to get to the floor below us when I notice some chairs propped against desks at strange angles. Somehow I know these are makeshift stairs that will let us go down; I point out the "clever" idea.

Now I'm sitting at a table with Scott, preparing to eat breakfast. The table is long and rectangular; we're sitting near the end. I've still got my cup of tea, but now it has a lot of ice in it. I think that I added the ice to help it cool down so I can drink it faster, but I hadn't meant to get so much. I decide it's probably already too cool to drink as a hot drink, so I go all the way and stir all the ice in trying to make iced tea. Scott and I both have a small slip of paper with some information and an "inspirational quote". Looking at mine, it's nonsensical. I show it to Scott and we start making derisive comments about our company, that they would let such ridiculous stuff be passed around in their name. Now Troy is sitting with us. I ask him if he's seen the quotes and he says he hasn't. I try to find mine or Scott's, but I don't see them anywhere. I glance over at the little trash can next to the end of the table, but I don't want to dig through it. I see other things - seed packets for one - but not the little piece of paper. Troy sees it, though, and reaches in and grabs it. He also thinks it's crazy. Looking at it as he holds it, I'm a little confused. I thought that when I had it, it was covered in English with the quote in bold at the top; but the slip Troy has is covered in Asian characters with the quote in English at the top.


Airport security
I'm watching people go through a security line at an airport. There's a single security arch with two lines of people going through at the same time. The line closer to me is comprised entirely of clones of a young woman - they're all completely identical, down to their movements. These people are in no particular hurry. They're going in a nice orderly line through, turning at the end, and going down the stairs. The line behind her (further from me) is comprised of clones of an older woman dressed in rather severe business clothes. She's in a hurry and not paying attention to what she's doing. One of her runs into something at the end of the line; she gets bent over it. Other copies of her start running into her, piling up.

Now I'm seeing further down the steps, at a point where the steps change from carpeted for passengers to being plain concrete for the employees. A passenger walking past says something about needing the restroom; I tell him that I hope he brought one in his carry-on, because he's not allowed to use anything he didn't personally bring. He looks confused, and I laugh, telling him I'm just joking.

Now I'm in another room. I see a man at a long table opening someone's carry-on and pulling out all the stuff inside, looking over it.


Analysis
Dreamsigns:
* Lighting failure
* Things generally not working right
* Paper changing contents
* Gap in stairwell

Third-person

Kroger checkout
I'm with my daughter at Kroger, checking out. After I check out, I have to go by a table near the door to have stickers put on my food to prove that I bought it. The sticker table is manned by an old man and a middle-aged woman. Going up to it, we hear the old man telling another customer that they're out of stickers. After that customer leaves, I ask what we need to do since we can't get them, and he says to go to [unintelligible] and get signed out. The woman also mutters something, but I can't make it out at all.

Now I'm pushing through a door to go outside; I see another cash register out here. It's like the Home Depot outdoor plant area, except this doesn't have any products - it's just a wooded area with a fence around it and a cash register stand in the middle. The ground isn't even flat. No one is at the stand. I turn around to go back through the door, but now it's locked. I realize it's late and that we must be here past closing time. I wave and get someone's attention, and they come and open the door for us so we can get back in. They say just to leave and not worry about anything else.


Reality TV
I'm watching a reality TV show my parents were talking about. It's following a young woman who's just entered college. She's making a nuisance of herself in pretty much every way possible. Not only are her academics terrible, but she's filed a sexual harassment suite against her gym teacher, claiming he's singled her out for harder work. I see her running with a group of girls through some kind of course - narrow path, high walls. A female teacher is talking in a voiceover. Now I see her sitting in something like a yoga class, taught by the teacher she's filed the suite against. The rest of the class seems to be having a pretty easy tome of it, but from her facial expressions, she's struggling. The teacher (the one she's filed against) is now giving the voiceover, talking about how he can use the student's facial expressions to see if they've prepared or not, that if they stay relaxed he knows they've had enough sleep, but that she always looked exhausted coming into class. On-screen, he's slowly circling the group on a motorcycle, calling out instructions. Now the show is interviewing the girl directly. She says it was at this point that she got pregnant and didn't know if she should tell the school or not.


Full pool
My wife and I have just arrived at a swimming facility. It was a long drive, but we're here because we've got coupons giving us free entrance. We've got at least a couple of the kids with us. As we're talking about something, someone else who was with us comes out from the hall leading to the locker rooms and tells us that the place is full and they're not accepting anyone else. We're disappointed and find out more about what their full policy is.


Fragment
I'm watching someone sneaking around town, doing something like spy work. I think it's dusk.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

July 13, 2013

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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



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

July 8, 2013

Dream Research
I'm researching dreaming. I'm finding stuff on Indian (i.e. in India) sites about dreaming, but they've got lots of religious over- and under-tones, and they're very poorly laid out. Even the article on Wikipedia has lots of the Indian religious stuff, though there's a note near the top that it needs to be cleaned up and get the "foolish superstition" removed. I look up from my laptop and out the window. I'm surprised that, even though it's night, the trees are well lit up - but they're siloetted, lit from the ground. I don't remember installing any landscape lighting.


Changing the Build
I'm changing our build/deploy process to allow linking libraries against other libraries in the build. I'm having trouble with linker errors, but I finally get the build working. I have to modify the deploy process to use the old mechanism before a certain build and to use the new mechanism after it. Beyond a certain revision, deploys are RPM based, so that makes it easier.

I remember seeing a web page that's a list of our builds, one per line: just revisions as links, nothing else. Near the top of the list were SVN revisions; later on the page were the newer Git revisions. I also remember seeing a terminal (white on black) with a linker error.


Consolation
I'm in a clearing in the forest, consoling a kid who's been beat up. In front of me, at the edge of the clearing, there's a steep incline. It's just dirt with a few roots sticking out of it. A tree has fallen down the incline and rests against it.


Long Driveway
I'm in a car driving down a driveway towards the road. I think I was the driver, but I don't actually remember being behind the wheel. I don't know what was to my right; to my left was some grass, a short gentle slope, then a big lawn
with a single small tree. As we drive past the lawn and the tree, we see a large ornate white house. A driveway goes off to the left, then splits. One fork goes to the house; the other fork goes to some kind of out-building.

I continue driving past the house and reach a T. If I turn right, I get to another small building. If I turn left, I'll get to the road.


The Healing Cat
I'm on an island floating in the sky. It's perfectly flat and is covered with grass. I can't make out the edges, so I don't know how big it is, but I know it's pretty big. There are no structures on the island.

Now I'm on another island. A woman wearing strange, heavy clothing is here; and I have a tiny, pure white kitten with me. The woman takes the kitten; now she's become young again, and the kitten is gone. I get mad at the woman for killing my cat, but she says it's OK, that the kitten will be back shortly. Sure enough, there it is. She explains the kitten can heal people, that it disappears for a bit after it heals, and that it enjoys it. The kitten is puring; the woman takes her glasses, sticks the earpiece into a hole in the kitten's head, and "stirs." The kitten purs even more.

Now I'm back on the first island. I have the kitten, and an older man is standing near by. There's also a cardboard box full of containers of toxic chemicals that I need to work with. Between my hazmat suit and the healing cat, I should be OK. I chose one of the chemical containers at random, fire it into the sky, and explode it.