non-lucid

Got quite a good haul tonight; 3 decent-sized sequences that I'm going to split between two posts to denote a break where I woke up and wrote down some notes.

This first one may have been longer on the front end, but this is where my memory picks up: I'm living in a house with just my dad. I'm in the back yard enjoying the beautiful weather. I'm sitting at the top of a hill, looking at the sky. As I look back down, I notice the back yard is a mess, stuff is scattered everywhere and there is dog poop and urine stains all over, on the ground, and on the walls. I notice my neighbors' back yards are nice and neat, they're all separated into distinct sections by a short chain-link fence. I go inside and it's a mess inside as well. Pissed, I call for my dad, who shows up quickly. I yell at him for letting the dog shit everywhere. I tell him I'm going to go to the store and that everything better be cleaned up by the time I get back. I get into my car, but I decide instead of going to the store I'm just going to run away and live somewhere else. I try to plan where I want to go, I decide I'll fly to Alberta, Canada, then from there to Vancouver. I figure my dad might still be able to find me there and he'll be mad, so I decide I should keep going to Europe. I pick an arbitrary spot to land in Europe, so I pick Budapest (I had to check Wikipedia to verify Budapest is even in Europe and apparently my subconscious knows exactly where Budapest, Hungary is on a map; I should also note that my starting location was in southern California and as I was planning it I was seeing the path I was planning to take on a map with a line for the air route Indiana Jones style). So I go to the grocery store, which had an airport on its roof. I go up to the roof to get on a plane.

This dream may have transitioned into the following one; my memory of it starts (as I'll describe shortly) with flying as the previous one ends with it, and the sky in both situations was yellow as though it was dusk.

It's the future, but it's a zombie apocalypse. But not quite an apocalypse; there's pockets of humans living comfortably and there are quarantine zones. I'm at an airfield near a forest, learning how to fly (the airplanes are these tiny hover airplanes). I watch another student (who is Jesse Eisenberg of Zombieland fame) successfully take off and then do a couple loops in the air to show off. I do my own take-off and continue flying to explore. I wander into a massive city, only I notice that it's conspicuously abandoned (also note, the sky is now blue). As I continue, I suddenly realize I've accidentally flown into the quarantine zone, just in time to just barely miss getting hit by a raising camera bot with a zombie hanging off of it. Since it's the future, and there's some advanced technology, they use automated hovering camera bots to watch over the quarantine zone. However, sometimes one of the zombies would grab it, causing the hover blades or the bot itself to be destroyed, so to solve this problem they programmed the bots to fly up and continue flying up if they get grabbed until the zombie falls off. Looking forward, I see several more upward flying camera bots with random zombies hanging off them, some occasionally falling off. Though I'm filled with some dread, I figure I'm fairly safe up in the sky so I continue exploring. Some ways in I find a series of very large buildings that are completely intact. One of them has a large airport on top of it (what's with the airports on top of buildings in these dreams) and as I continue I can see into some of the buildings. I come to realize that this is some evil corporation who's trying to exploit the zombies. In some places there are crowds of people moving around normally as though they are busy at work and aren't in the middle of a zombie infested quarantine zone, but in other places I can where swarms of zombies are attacking people who are desperately trying to escape. There's places where it looks like there's a special forces team fighting zombies. Another place looks like a grade school; a nervous student answers a teacher's question but is wrong so she is taken to a closet and left outside, zombies burst through the door and attack the girl. At another classroom area, a student lures the teacher closer but then attacks them in rebellion so they can escape. The other students attack him too and knock him out, so they all flee. I find what looks like some kind of vent that's large enough for me to fly down into. I come out in a busy office hallway; the ceiling there is high, so I can hover above everyone's heads so most of them don't notice me. There an intersection, and nearby is a black guy in a suit who is apparently the boss of the whole operation. He's giving some sort of evil monologue. I continue to look around while listening; there's windows into labs where technicians in sterile suits are working on something. The boss guy's assistant has noticed me and is trying to get the boss guy's attention but the boss is too into his monologue to be interrupted. I start to head back the way I came to leave, but as I get back to the vent I notice it's been covered over. While I'm trying to figure out what to do, the boss notices me and approaches me enthusiastically, he shakes my hand and asks me how I've been and other small talk; apparently we've met before. Another guy comes up the stairs nearby, I recognize him as a supervisor that I had for a previous job and I'm worried because I know he'll recognize me and know I'm not supposed to be there. The boss waves him over and "introduces" me to him, then tells him to find me a room. After boss guy leaves, I tell supervisor guy that if he lets me in on whatever the evil corporation is doing I'll keep quiet and won't try to escape or anything. He agrees and we get on an elevator. Inside there is what looks like some sort of special forces team. One of them looks half-zombified and is wearing some kind of special suit. We get off on an abandoned floor, the team goes first and readies assault rifles so I assume it's an unsafe floor. I wake up hereabouts.

This dream may or may not have been longer, but here are the parts that I can remember.

I was living with my family again at our old house on Broadway, only there was also this other guy living with us who kind of looked like Gabriel Iglesias only shorter and not quite as fluffy. Anyways, I was in what must have been my brother's room (because A) it was really heavily cluttered and B) there was a scene coming up where I was in my room, which was different) and my brother was there too when Gabriel Iglesias guy came in and demanded something. We were both blew him off so he took out an uzi and sprayed the room; he didn't hit me at all but it killed my brother. Shortly, it cut to a courtroom where I was watching the verdict in the murder trial; GI guy was somehow found not guilty. So I wake up in my bed some morning after but I'm all depressed so I just lay there for a while. When I finally got up, I found my dad and GI guy in the kitchen packing up my brother's stuff. I asked if I could look through it for anything I could use (there was kind of a neat looking fan, and a lot of our old Nintendo hardware). As I started looking through his stuff, I said, "I know we didn't get along, but now that he's gone I kind of miss him." Then I broke down in tears.

Now here's the kind of weird part: I sensed something was weird, I guess probably from the emotional breakdown so I thought, "AM I DREAMING? REALITY CHECK!" But instead of doing a proper reality check I ended up just waking myself up.

Oops.

There was a little bit of dream bleeding with this one too. I woke up into reality trying to figure out how I could sneak some concentrated potassium chloride into GI guy's bloodstream.

So it seems the new mantra has a bit of a gaping flaw, and I suspect I know why. Namely that I haven't associated it with an actual reality check. I'll maybe fix this in the future, but for now this'll go on the back burner.

Had another lucid-for-a-few-moments-but-lost-it episode.

It started with a longer sequence for which I only remember some. I was with a few people whom I suspect were my parents (at least one of them was my dad) and we were in a car going to what was some kind of mall/fast food restaurant combination--it had a drive through window. We ordered and picked up...something, but we forgot to order something we needed so I got out to go into the store and get it while they circled back around to pick me up. When I came out, as I got into the car my dad asked, "Do you know what 'los loco lobos' means?" to which I replied, "The crazy dog."

Cut to me sitting in a theater watching some romance movie. It featured an Asian couple from New York City. The only part of the movie I can remember was a segment where the girl went into this long-winded monologue about how her boyfriend was so awesome because he had all these manly, rugged qualities because he was such a "Minnesota man", which I recall thinking was outrageously stupid because they were both from New York City.

Cut once more to me in bed; I would wake up, my wife would tell me something, and then I'd go back to sleep. This would happen over and over. At some point she woke me up and started reciting sappy lines from the romantic movie from before, and when she did so I thought, "Oh god, I'm in a nightmare now!" semi-jokingly, then did a nose pinch reality check which failed. Had a quick "Yeah!" moment, then got up quickly (thus far I'd been thinking my last lucid slipped away because I stayed laying down) to get to work. My wife was now babbling incoherently, trying to get my attention so I waved her away since I was planning to clear out my apartment as a start to environmental control practice. I started to head to the front door of my apartment to turn on the light (since it was still dark in the room), but the dream dissolved to awakening. Reality check passed; lost it again quickly unfortunately.

It's nice that I'm still getting lucids and that they seem to be occurring with a little more frequency, but I need to find some way to stabilize them.

Had another dream I was playing Starcraft 2 (I should iterate that I neither own nor have played the multiplayer thereof). I was playing what was evidently my first 1v1 with some guy that I may have kinda known. It was TvT and I was playing predictably newbish and sloppy, but it was a close game that came down to a base razing race that I won just as my opponent was attacking my command center. I noticed some unusual gameplay behavior; he was scanning around his base and I was able to see his scans as though they were my own, and when he started banshee harassing I switched to viking production and my first viking was produced instantly--seems my dream wanted me to win.

I was in some sort of human immune system MMO (I'm describing it as an MMO for the sake of description; the dream seemed to actually take place in vivo). I was a young lymphoblast fresh out of hematopoesis with everything to prove, wandering about trying to decide on a specialty. Did I want to live the short violent life of a natural killer, play it safe and be a long range nuking B cell, or perhaps settle on the utility of a T cell. As I was wandering there was a mission alert, and we were being sent to the stomach. When I arrived I could see what looked like a weird biological space battle; B cells were firing antibodies like machine guns at some pathogen I couldn't see because it was blocked by macrophages engaging it in melee range. Afterwards I was looking at the internet for more information on specialties and I recall being frustrated at the trouble I was having finding information that wasn't written by internet retards.

I'm evidently back in high school again, trying out for the annual play. It's some Sherlock Holmes play directed by Mr. Lucas, much to my surprise I end up with the lead role (I should note now after the fact that the fact I knew it was directed by Lucas should have been a red flag, he would never put me in a decent role). It's early in the week but I seem to think that the play will debut that Thursday so we're already in dress rehearsal and somehow I already know most of my lines (or am completely improvising them). My costume, heavily unfinished, is mostly large pieces of wool cloth held together by pins. As we get to the end of the dress rehearsal I line up at the end for the curtain call, but they wave me up to the front since I'm the lead. I apologize making my way up through the tight space--I'm not used to not playing insignificant shit roles. After my exit (I note a curious lack of Watson hereabouts), I hopped off the stage and left, eager to tell my dad about Fargo North High School's production of Sherlock Holmes.

It seemed to cut to what was either me in bed at home; I suspect I may have gone there from the school in the previous dream but it feels more likely that it was a false awakening because I recognized that something wasn't right (I awoke in a strange room that was clearly not mine) and did a reality check. I was lucid for a moment, I closed my eyes and kept my nose pinched to try to collect focus but it dissolved back to my bed in real life--my hands had clearly dissolved back to my real hands which were nowhere near my nose and additional reality check confirmed it. I guess I'll add it to my lucid tally, but it was disappointingly short.

I just woke up, and in my half-awakening I was in a combination of frustration at my mini dry spell and thinking about news footage of Yo-Yo Ma's death. Fortunately it occurred to me that Yo-Yo Ma was neither dead nor yet elderly.

The dream apparently consisted of what seemed like security/surveillance footage of a very old Yo-Yo Ma and another old woman who was apparently his wife, overlaid with what was either my own inner monologue or some sort of news commentary (or a combination thereof). The story centered around the fact that they, both wheelchair bound and frail, had entered separate hot tubs to relax, however once they wanted to leave, nobody would help them out of the hot tub (which seemed to be just a pit in the ground with no stairs or anything to exit). Yo-Yo Ma had apparently already died from being trapped in there with no help, which was what warranted the media buzz. Most of the imagery I remember was of his wife now having the same problem. Several people were standing outside the hot tub, refusing to help the old lady out. The hot tub had been drained and her wheel chair was there. She had a younger handmaiden with her, but she too refused to help the old lady out, though she would occasionally help her back into her wheel chair.

Inspiration for this dream seems to have come partly from the fact that we were working short-staffed at the retail pharmacy I'm on rotation at now last Friday, so I was able to hijack the radio for some classical music. Sometime during the day they played Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, featuring Yo-Yo Ma. For readers who don't know who this is, Yo-Yo Ma is a Chinese cello prodigy and, while I was still a classical musician, was considered to be the greatest cello player in the world.

I have a vague memory of what may have been a larger/longer, more complex dream, but all I really have of it is the memory that it may have existed.

Edit: Added that little explanation of who Yo-Yo Ma is for the curious. Also, taking this edit opportunity to add here that following this, since it woke me up fairly early, I tried to do some WILD (this would make it attempt #3, with the previous two being during late afternoon naps) but with no measurable success. I gave up after my wife shifting around a bit broke what focus I had left and just fell asleep normally, where I put a huge dent in my "dry spell" and experienced the following entry.

Another fragment/short sequence this morning.

I was with my family again and we'd just arrived at a restaurant for dinner. As we got out of our vehicle we notice we'd parked next to a really cool looking pickup truck that was painted all in gold. There was a post in the bed of the pickup on which was mounted a video camera, so I figured whomever owned it was using it to shoot movies. As we walked around it, the coolness was ruined slightly by the realization that it was only painted on that one side. We went into the restaurant; there was a line of people going up to the cash register at the front where we were to order, evidently. It seemed to be some sort of continental restaurant that specialized in seafood, but I couldn't decide what I wanted to get. There was some sort of bound ghost towards the front of the line that was trying to get my attention; it appeared as a woman with long, bright blond hair and pale skin, wearing a white robe. She was blindfolded and bound by several brown leather straps. I went over to try to figure out what she was trying to tell me, but I couldn't understand or make out what she was trying to say. I noticed there was a computer in the corner then I noticed some people whom I identified as friends outside the restaurant, so I went to see what they were up to. I talked to them for a while and then we went into the restaurant. I remember recalling that the layout of the entrance had changed some (and now I recall my family was no longer there, it seems as though I had gone to the restaurant with these friends now). We were still in line trying to decide what to get when someone told me that someone was sending me instant messages on the computer in the corner. I sat down to see what was going on, some girl (a nurse maybe?) was frantically complaining about how my mom had left the hospital (she's worked there for years in real life) and was sending other weird-looking messages. I was confused and trying to figure out why she was so upset. Dream ends around there at some point.

Again, parts of this dream were likely heavily inspired by last night, when my wife and I discovered there was a Golden Corral here and went to check it out. For the record, it was alright (not top tier) and had a pretty decent selection. Might be worth a return trip in the future. Wasn't a fan of the ambient country music though.

Edit: Additional notes, it feels as though I'm in a bit of a dry spell, though I'll admit it could be worse; I am still able to get at least some material for entries still. This certain relative timing of this morning's entry (i.e. Morning of X) comes from the fact that my wife's earlier alarm this morning woke me up earlier than usual without any dreams to record, though fortunately I was able to get a little bit more sleep and experience the above. I believe in my enthusiasm earlier this week following last weekend's first lucid dream I may have been trying to run before I could walk, so I'm returning my effort to push forward to instead focus on solidifying the basics. Meanwhile, I've been at least trying to ramp up efforts to pepper in reality checks throughout the day. We'll try to remain optimistic.

A couple super short fragments last night.

First, I seem to remember a still (?) image of standing on the corner of Broadway and...whatever avenue it was outside King House/Metro Drug, looking south down Broadway.

Second, there was a short sequence where I was working in kind of a medium sized room by myself on a computer against the far wall of the room. I was at what was evidently the Meritcare/Sanford downtown hospital. I was working on some sort of project. I heard some sort of commotion outside, so I went to take a look and people were hurrying about busily as though they were getting ready to evacuate. I stopped someone to ask what was going on and they told me the company was closing this area to save money. I shrugged and went down to the ground floor to leave. After I exited, I paused to turn around and look at the building's south face. I thought, "Time Magazine is going out of business because it's unable to appeal to any demographics."

I couldn't tell you why I thought the hospital had anything to do with Time Magazine, but it's likely that the thought was inspired by this: TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults | The Onion - America's Finest News Source | Onion News Network

A weird sequence, likely inspired with a chance meeting last night with an old FFXI friend as well as an unrequited mystery from those days as well as several related events earlier in the day.

There was an early sequence where I seem to recall a Starfox-style shmup that I can't place within the context of the rest of the dream.

It seems that I lived in some unfamiliar downtown location, and that members of my old TiamatsFangs FFXI linkshell were getting together in real life to do some sort of video game-esque covert operation. We were to try to get into some kind of factory, the entrance to which was on the roof of a tall building, to demolish...something. We went in, and made our way to the end, but my partners started dying as we got ready to blow up the place. There was some kind of weird monster/alien thing killing people. As I fled out I turned and saw it grotesquely kill two people. I managed to escape back onto the roof-entrance, the only survivor. Except it flashed back to before the operation began. Since I knew what would happen I began trying to prepare an escape route, cleaning up excess ammo, weapons, and items on the floor to make picking up things for use easier, however I became frustrated that my partners were sitting around goofing off instead of preparing for the mission so I gave up and left. On my way home I realized I could use the opportunity of the TiamatsFangs' gathering to track down Jillia. I had already called and talked to her at some point during the preparation for the operation, so on my way home I called her number again but she didn't answer. When I got home to a room that looked like some sort of home office I sat down and started to think about how I could proceed. I started looking through the contacts on my phone and noticed I had a second number for Jillia, so I called it. An older woman answered the phone; I asked her if Jillia was there to which she replied yes. I asked the woman for the location of this phone number to which she replied that it was a place called "The Dungeon". I thanked her and hung up to consult the internet for the Dungeon's location; I remember that the first time I searched for it I forgot to specify the city I was in (when I corrected it, I corrected it with Fargo, ND or 58102, so evidently this dream was supposed to take place in Fargo). I quickly found it online, it was some sort of arcade. I went there; inside I met the older woman I had spoken to earlier behind a counter just inside the entrance. Also there were several teenagers there, I thought it odd that several of the boys were shirtless--and also that none of them were playing any arcade games, in fact there were no arcade games at all. The area was mostly empty except for some furniture and beanbag chairs. I asked the woman if Jillia was there again and she offered to take me to her. As we slowly made our way back I continued to observe the bizarre behavior of the children here. The woman explained that Jillia was a poor girl, having been abused and I recall ending that explanation mentally by adding "by these people" to the end. As we reached the entrance to the basement, I observed a short, ugly-looking girl and a boy getting ready to have sex, and they were eventually joined by a second boy. I went down into the basement alone. At the bottom was a large room, the room was pitch black except where it was sparsely lit by a small television in the middle on the other side of the room. There was some kind of clothing rack blocking the direct path to the television, instead leading a path around the outside of the room. In the far back corner there was a green couch that was very brightly lit. I called out for Jillia and she answered, though I couldn't see her at all. I replied, "Now there's a voice I recognize!" She sounded somewhat paranoid however. She instructed me to go to the couch in the back corner. Standing in the light it was even harder to see into the darkness, but I sensed that she had moved from near the TV to around between me and the door. She instructed me to remove my pants and shirt so I removed my black coat, shirt, and pants and set them on the couch. She then instructed me to go over and play the game. I went over, in just my underwear, and sat down by the TV. There was an old school Sega console there with what looked to be some sort of hacked old school Sonic game. I picked up the controller and hadn't even started playing when I heard the door to the basement slam shut. Alarmed that Jillia may have ran off, I quickly got up and returned to the couch to put my clothes back on and try to follow her. As I was putting my clothes back on the lights came on in the rest of the room. The floor was concrete and the walls were painted a bland white, it looked for sure like somewhere people may be held captive and I recall thinking, "Aw shit, I'm trapped down here." I immediately suspected the bizarre people on the floor above of foul play. When I checked the door, however, it was unlocked so I went upstairs to leave. The teens that were there before were outside in the rain, apparently having fun and taking pictures of each other. I quietly left, trying not to draw attention to myself. About a block away I turned and looked back, trying to think of how I could find her now. The dream ends there.

Side note: with some more effort into reality checking around phones as previously planned, I might have been able to catch this one.

I'm pretty sure I just had my first lucid dream. It seemed kind of long at the time but I may only remember some bits and pieces now, gonna try to get down as much as I can. And it's weird, it feels so foggy now. Was a very intriguing experience. There was another dream before it but I want to get down as much of the lucid as I can so I'm writing it first.

I'm trying to recall what it was that triggered the reality check. I think it was that I was laying in bed or on the phone with my wife and she said something absurd (I think it had something to do with her saying she was on her way home from class at university, and I quickly realized she doesn't go to school in reality) that caused me to quickly consider that this isn't real and pull a nose-pinch reality check. I was able to breathe like my nose was just a little stuffy despite the nose-pinch. There was an obligatory, "Holy shit, I'm lucid!" moment. To keep the dream from fading from excitement and to calm down, I closed my eyes and (for whatever reason) pictured a topographical map key. Feeling it was stable, I opened my eyes, did another reality check (marveling of course at how weird it was to be breathing through a pinched nose, and then started wandering my environment. I seemed to be in what looked and felt like my old house on Broadway. I was a little unprepared for my first lucid; I hadn't thought of anything cool to do. The first thing I did was go into the bathroom. I figured since I was lucid I might as well start playing around with how well I could control it. I went to the door of the bathroom and decided I'd summon something on the floor outside and close the door to see if it appeared; I arbitrarily chose cake, and then I sort of glanced up and back down and it was there on the floor, slightly stale and with a big slice missing--I didn't even have to close the door. Happy, I went to the big picture window out front and continued experimenting by swapping between night and day by closing my eyes for a second then looking at the sky. I noted some unusual mixed success, namely whenever I wanted it to be day or night it would literally only be just starting day or night (ie at dawn or dusk). It's a little foggy if there was something occurring between now and what happened next, but the next thing I remember was that I was quickly running out of ideas for things to do, so I thought, "Well, I've always wanted to experience sex as a woman, let's give that a try." So I went back to the bathroom (it's notable that the previous time it was the bathroom from the old Broadway house, but it was now the bathroom from my previous apartment on Oak Street), stripped down, then looked in the mirror. Quick comment after the fact, the mirror worked just fine for its purpose in the dream, but before transforming I started in my normal dream avatar--which is myself as I recognize but much thinner. I was able to transform myself by pointing to the parts of my body that I wanted to transform and focusing on them. I started with breasts, then moved on to my penis. I recall being amused/annoyed that as I was shrinking my penis my foreskin wasn't shrinking with it so I had to do that separate. I started to get a little impatient so I just waved my hand around in front of my crotch and looked up at the ceiling to try to speed things up. Eventually everything looked pretty good, wasn't perfect, and I noticed that at some point I had lost all my body hair without intentionally trying to, but it was good enough for a first attempt. I was trying to decide what I wanted to do first with my new body when I noticed I sorta needed to pee so I decided to get that out of the way first, so I did. Just that was an unusual new physical sensation. There was some toilet paper sitting in the bathtub next to the toilet, so I grabbed some to clean things up a bit (since I was planning to shortly be playing around down there soon anyways); as I was cleaning up the phone rang and I answered it. The voice on the other end was some woman trying to tell me about how there were cloths in the tub that I could use for whatever but to leave them there so she could wash them later (I noticed here that it was hard to focus on what was happening now while I was on the phone trying to listen). I looked back into the tub and the toilet paper had been replaced by dark blue cloth. I shortly regretted flushing a few of them down the toilet. I checked the mirror one last time to see if things were still good and then went back out to the living room. I'm think there may have been somewhere here where I experimented with my new body, but if so unfortunately I don't remember it. Eventually there appeared in my house (as though she was familiar with the place) a thin, light-skinned black girl. Delighted to find another person to help me experiment with my new body, I asked her if she wanted to have sex with me. She seemed apprehensive; focusing on her I first removed her clothes then, noting of course that she too was female and thus would make proper copulation difficult, made her instantly grow a penis. She wasn't very amused by this, however, and she angrily stormed off to the basement. Shrugging, and once again bored, I decided to turn my attention on mentally recreating graphic-update remakes of old school video games I love in my mind for entertainment. I started with what I assume was Final Fantasy 6, though thinking on it after the fact the action doesn't match up properly with the game (though I specifically recall Terra's appearance). At some point this was interrupted with my wife calling, when she called what had been the video game scene taking up my entire stream of consciousness suddenly appeared as though I'd taken it out of full-screen mode on my monitor on my computer at my current apartment. I even had my headphones on, so I had to remove one of side of them to expose an ear for the phone like I usually do. I was annoyed at the distraction but answered the phone anyways. I don't remember the contents of the actual phone message, but I note again after the fact that it started to break my lucid concentration. The last part I remember now was going down to the basement where I found the black girl (who had now been transformed into some sort of small Pokémon-like creature) cuddling on a table with another small Pokémon-like creature. Saying, "Oh, so you'll have sex with him but not me!" and did my own storming-off-angrily upstairs and back to the living room, where I waved my hand and did some sort of mental slash across the table they were lying on and killing them both. My memory of this dream ends here, though when I woke I seemed to think that there was more non-lucid dream that came after this. I awoke just prior to starting this journal entry and did a quick reality check that passed, officially ending my first lucid dream.

Note to self: be wary about answering phones once you're lucid; it seems to help break lucid focus. In fact, I'm going to try to make an effort to start reality checks whenever answering and/or ending phone calls. I'm going to try to remember that the next thing on my agenda for practice when a dream goes lucid is controlling the environment; this time I kind of let the environment do what it wanted around me.

There was a dream sequence either prior to or leading up to where it went lucid. There was a long prelude to most of what I remember, but the bulk of what I remember was that there was this stretch of interstate that I would drive down as though I was in a GTA-ish sandbox type game and try to score points on this segment of highway. The segment of highway was kind of a long straight section with a curve off to the right. I'm thinking I may have lost more memory of this dream out of excitement for the lucid one, so maybe more will come back to me later.

At first when I woke this morning I thought I only had one fragment that I'd managed to maintain, but when I was in the shower I had a bit of a revelation. Since I'd awoken this morning I'd been thinking in the back of my mind, "Crap, I cheated on my wife!" But when I was in the shower and the thought crept up I immediately realized, wait a minute, no I didn't, that was a dream! And then like floodgates a lot of missing detail from that dream came back into memory.

The fragment, which I seem to recall being first, involved having a nosebleed. Oddly, it was coming out of both nostrils. I remember looking down at my chest and the blood was flowing down in two nice neat streams that curved symmetrically sideways and then back down in sort of a Y pattern.

The earliest point I can recall of the larger sequence was parking in a parking lot on the south side of a block that would be across from my old middle school, Ben Franklin. It was night. I entered the school; inside it was dark. I went into a poorly lit room where 3 people were waiting: a female teacher of whom my memory is quite blurry, Dr. Biberdorf, and another girl whom I identified Bethany P. (though she looked more like Emily G.) and seemed to think was either a friend or colleague. We were there for some sort of awarding ceremony. At some point, a fire broke out in the building and my viewpoint switched to a sort of retro-video game 3/4 view floorplan of the building and I watched little flame icons appear where the fire was and spread. As it reached my location it went back to first person and Biberdorf yelled at us to escape. I led Bethany outside and back to the parking lot, where we paused to recover. In a bit of only-makes-sense-in-Hollywood, Bethany and I proceeded to have exasperated survivor sex, complete with Hollywood fade-out and fade-in without being able to see any of the juicy details. Afterwards I offered to drive her home. I remember driving, seeing a few intersections. She lived at a building that looked like a college building, but inside was kind of a wierd mall-with-no-shops/college dorm hybrid. We stopped at some office where she had to grab some papers and some other guys came up to me and asked me if I had sex with her. I confirmed it, smug and apparently proud, and they congratulated me. A few other students (all of them in green shirts with some small, unidentified white words on them) continued to gather and congratulate me. When she came out of the office I waved goodbye and then left. I went back to the middle school, which was again somehow intact, back to the poorly lit room. Biberdorf was still there. I started telling him everything I remembered from the dream, leaving out the sex part (for some reason even now I couldn't remember who the female teacher was), when some random black kid came in. They began discussing something quietly, when I suddenly panicked as I was thinking to myself, "Crap, I cheated on my wife!" Apparently I had thought this out loud, because Biberdorf and the black kid stopped talking and looked at me. After a short pause Biberdorf briefed me on the importance of keeping this secret. He turned to the black kid and told him that if there was ever any rumor that I had cheated on my wife that he would personally kill the kid (I realize now after the fact that this is a little silly, being as there was already a mall-with-no-shops/college dorm hybrid full of people who already knew). I think the dream ends there.

Edit: This is a partial entry with one dream sequence omitted. See file 0818-0819; recall note: mall apartment, egg achievement, delivery man.

I've got a few fragments to record, unfortunately I ran into a problem wherein I woke up perfectly to remember them, thought about the dreams enough to crystallize them somewhat (or at least for sure the fragments I'm about to write down), but then I intentionally neglected to get up to write them down. This is something to work on overcoming in the future. I was reluctant to get up under the justification that it was sort of the middle of the work week and I was too tired to get up and write for a while to justify doing it. Plus some of the subject matter of the first one made me reluctant to bother to remember it at all (in fact, although I feel it's beneficial to write as much detail as I can remember, I'd still kind of rather any readers skip over this post). I would like to congratulate myself on the noticeably improved dream recall though, it's amazing what just a little effort can do to go a long way towards awakening at the end of dreams and remembering plenty of detail.

So here we go. As usually I'll try to keep it as chronologically in order as possible.

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The next one was a shorter fragment. I was with my immediate family. Everything seemed kind of retrograde; my brother was younger and both my parents were heavier as though it was before they both had gastric bypasses. We walked through a small junkyard into the waiting room of what looked like a car repair shop, but was apparently a combination car repair shop/walk-in clinic. Everyone sat down in a chair to wait but me; I paced around the room being annoyed and angry that once again people I'd known for years had nothing but contempt and disregard for my medical opinion. At some point I noticed my mother was missing a foot, and I thought, "Diabetes." Curiously, she was still able to walk fine despite the missing/invisible foot. She got up to ask the receptionist what was taking so long, she sounded frustrated, in pain, and desperate. She then went and sat down at a different spot. She was trying to partially cover her face with her coat, but I noticed she was crying. I continued pacing around and making mental notes about my family members until the dream ended.

One last quick note: just went to start breakfast and I remembered one more super short fragment wherein I noticed that the free expired 2-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper I brought home from work a few days ago expired in 1995.

Had a short dream wherein I copped out and bought Starcraft 2. Was trying to play Zerg but was suffering from some annoying connection issues. I was also annoyed because in the dream version you had to pay in game currency to play practice games.

Also, the apartment I was in was different. The common area was similar, but outside was also different.

I remember two, probably related, segments, but my memory of them is a little limited so we'll see how much I can remember as I start here.

The earlier segment I can only seem to remember a few random image of. It was like some kind of futurey sandbox FPS scenario. I remember it was night for the duration of this segment, but it was that kind of movie or video game style night where it isn't really night but everything has kind of a dark blue filter over it (except where there's lighting). I remember seeing gray metal husks of tanks and fires all over streets. I was moving from place to place, destroying vehicles or robots or whatever I perceived as an opponent I guess. I'm not sure what my motivation was or what I was trying to do. I remember at one point I discovered a new way to take out some vehicles and was trying to describe it to an outpost of humans/allies but they were refusing to listen so I left them. I remember a segment where I was moving down a large bridge, with vehicle wrecks everywhere, sorta vaguely L4D2 style (only at night and no zombies).

The second segment was similar. There were two outposts of human survivors whose outposts were on an upper level. These two groups made up two Team Fortress 2 teams, the one I was with had a yellow outpost (and appeared on the minimap in the lower right corner of my vision as yellow), which was just kind of a crowded camp with people wearing mostly yellow clothes, and must have been the blue team since my opponents on the lower level were mostly wearing red. Everything on the minimap was represented by small, colored triangles, yellow and green for the outpost bases and control points, and gray for uncaptured control points. The other team had a green outpost (and was correspondingly green on the minimap) and was apparently the red team. On the lower level was kind of a Doom-style research outpost where most of the action took place. There was three objective locations arranged in kind of a triangle formation on the map that we were fighting over. In place of the usual TF2 characters, it was real-looking people just pretending to be the classes. I was a spy, and playing decent, but being constantly frustrated that my backstab was rarely working. I didn't have an actual spy's knife in my hands but I did the backstab animation with my fist and it would only work occasionally. There were a handful of players, both men and women. I remember there was a spy-girl with the spy's mask and blonde pigtails who would spawn and I'd keep following her and killing her because she wasn't very good. There was a larger guy with a red shirt on who was apparently a heavy. He was running around doing stuff and ignoring me as I tried to kill him. I backstabbed him and he said, "Okay, that's one." and I apparently understood I needed to do it twice to kill him but the second stab refused to work. Towards the end I somehow got to see the green outpost and I remember thinking it looked way cooler than the yellow one; for one it was green, there were light green lights everywhere and the people there looked like a cult, in green robes worshiping a triangle or pyramid thingy that was hovering a little ways up made out of the light green light. I remember a little ways before it ended it transitioned into what seemed like some kind of preview trailer for this little dream game where two people were discussing features; the one that one of them highlighted was how sometimes a third team would enter the game, something that was represented by another team (though I seem to remember it was the same color of green) popped up on the minimap and a line moved from their base to the outposts.

A lot of triangle imagery in the second segment.