false awakening

Notes: This night was the first using a voice recorder for my journal. It may take a while to get used to and I might change up my DJ format to accommodate.

Shenanigans in a Park
I'm across the street from a park. It's a big grassy area with a few trees. I'm looking at 2 parallel parked cars. I third card drives up. I recognize the driver as Brian, a classmate from high school who I don't like very much. I recognized one of the parked cards as belonging to my old roommate Hugh. Hugh's car is a sliver luxury SUV, maybe a Lexus. Brian's car is one of those tiny smart cars, maybe orange? Brian parallel parks his car in the tiny spot between the two cars already there. Even though he can fit, he unnecessarily back into Hugh's SUV to push it back and make more room. This annoys me.

Brian exits his car. I cross the street. Brian, Hugh, and I start to play a round of golf. The dream skips to after finishing playing and we are returning to our cars. Brian gets in his car and again unnecessarily backs into the car behind him to make room. This time I think it's comical in a crass way. Before speeding off, Brian stops and shouts to me "Are you sure you're okay?" I am annoyed by the question. I reply "I'm like a bomb. Like a bob-omb."

Nearby, there is a white plastic lawn chair. I run and jump on it, make it slide like surfboard across the grass. I ride it toward the park entrance, disrupting several games of golf as I pass through. Before reaching the entrance, I jump off and leave the chair. I say something about not wanting to be accused of stealing it.

Camp Dorm, Part 1
I'm entering a dormitory, walking down a hallways, looking for the room assigned to me. It is either a college or a summer camp for college-aged people. I find my room and start setting up a big screen TV so I can watch the Super Bowl. Then the dream jumps around a bit. I recall meeting a man, maybe the dean of the school or maybe someone impersonating the dean as part of a con. I see him in his office. He falls the ground and starts doing pushups to hide his face from the visitor and speaks in a fake voice.

False awakening. I feel a cat sleeping on my stomach. It's very furry. I'm sleeping on the floor and feel stiff. I awake to the sound of a woman's voice. I don't open my eyes. She seems to be a police officer or security guard. She is nudging me with her foot to wake me and talking on her radio about determining when I got a cat. Apparently, pets are not allowed in the dorm. Wake.

Camp Dorm, Part 2 [WILD]
After recording the previous dream, I attempt WILD. It take maybe 5 minutes?

I enter the dream in a dorm room similar to the one from the previous dream. This time it feels more like a log cabin at a summer camp. It's somewhat dark in the room but I can tell it is lighter outside through a big window. In the room is boy about 10 years old. He looks like me at that age. Very skinny and with a bowl hair cut. I ask his name but don't recall his answer. I ask if he knows how to fly. He both phase through the window and fly into the open air.

Outside it is dawn and getting brighter. Besides the cabin we just exited, it's all grass for seemingly miles around. I fly around with the boy for a while. I spot a young woman below us. I fly down to meet her. She has elf ears and is a bit chubby. I ask if she can fly. She says everyone can fly. I fly with her too. We fly up high to get a good view of the surroundings, looking for more people.

Looking north, I see a few more chubby elf girls. They are practicing archery. I land near them and approach. They are just finishing their activity and saying good bye. But they actually say: "Fuck you!" and "Fuck you, too!" but in a pleasant and cheerful way, as if "Fuck you" is a polite way to say good bye. I ask one of them, "What does 'fuck you' mean?" I realize am in a strange world of chubby elf girls and they must have different language dialect. She replies with "I'll show you" and starts leading me west. I intuit that she is taking me to bed.

We fly for a while. Eventually we come on a wooden shelter with some beds. It looks like a campground. The shelter is only a frame with some wooden slats to provide shade, not a building. On one of the beds, there are two guys, with elf ears but skinny. I become skeptical of what the girl intents. Dream fades.

Camp Dorm, Part 3 [DILD]
I have a false awakening in an unfamiliar room. My laptop is open and there's a conference call to work that I should be listening too. I try to pay attention to the meeting. The door is open. Outside is a dark hallway. I can make out a few beds in the hallway. There's a girl in one bed and a guy in another and a row of other bed that I assume also have people. It looks like the summer camp dormitory from previous dreams. I try to close the door so that the sound of the meeting won't disturb the sleepers. But the door doesn't close right. The door is too narrow and doesn't fit in the frame. I try to move the knob toward the frame and it breaks off and slams into the frame loudly. I've obviously woken some of the people. The girl gives me an angry look. The faulty door makes me realized I am dreaming. My lucidity is not very strong.

I turn back to the meeting call. My boss is explaining that it will take a long time to download the file because the project is very big. I know the reason is not that the project is big but that it includes a lot of sample data. I try to explain this.

I give up on the meeting and move to the window to fly outside. But the window gives me some trouble. Wake.

Video Game
I am a character in a what seems like a FPS video game. I'm in a dimly lit rocky canyon. I seem that I have spawned near the enemy base. I take the long way around a rock formation to the back of the base, shooting a few guys in the process. I near the base and intuit that my objective is to capture what looks like a stone altar by standing on it. As I approach, a lightning storm starts. A bone dragon swoops in and lands on the altar. I intuit that the rules of the game prevent you from capturing the altar while the dragon is there so I have to back away. Someone yells "Dragon eggs!"

Camp Dorm, Part 4 [DILD]
I am suddenly in a classroom full of students and a teacher. I am in one corner of the room and have difficulty seeing the teacher at the chalkboard. I move around the back edge of the classroom to the opposite corner to get a better view and sit behind a girl. The students are college age. I intuit that all the other students know each other but I am an outsider.

The class ends and the students socialize as their pack their things to leave. I cautiously talk to the girl in front of me. A big group of them want to hang out outside. I just want to return to my room and organize my study materials. I realize the similarity to the previous dreams and become lucid.

As usually, I find the nearest window and fly out to explore the landscape. Now the campground seems like a futuristic city. There are giant water tubes encased in glass that act like freeways. I phase in and out the through the glass, water, and air. It's fun to breath under water. There are giant sea turtles and friendly sharks.

I fly high to see what's above the tubes. Above the tubes are concrete slabs and I get stuck in one of them. I turn to look up and see Optimus Prime. I grab his hand and he helps me out. He suggests I interact with the people.

Supported above the concrete slabs is a whole other level that appears like a giant park. This time more typical air, stone, pathways, grassy patches, and pools of water. There are people walking and sitting. Most of them are the same chubby elf girls from the earlier dreams.

I approach a group of three girls wearing bathing suits, relaxing in a spa pool. I flirt with them.

Camp Dorm, Part 5 [WILD]
I recorded the previous dream and then easily re-enter with WILD.

I'm back in the camp dorm and looking to interact with the DCs. I walk into a patio where many tables have been set up like an art fair. There are many presenters but I seem to be one of the few visitors so all the presenters are trying to attract me to their table.

Here my lucidity and recall start to diminish. I recall one girl had a table full of different name tags. They all had her name on it, which was a long Indian name, but from different professions like you would see on the uniform of a doctor, a mechanic, and soldier, and police officer. I think this is very interesting. She asks me to pick one, in a sense, to choose a career for her by picking which nametag suited her best. I shift through them all and pick a coffee cup with her name on it. The coffee cup is shaped like a golf club, suggesting a career as a professional golfer.

There was another girl who I think was trying to choose a color for her dress. And another had two post it notes with the same message but in different ink and style. At some point dream fades.

On exiting the dream, I'm left in some hypnopompic imagery. I see through my sleep mask a television playing what looks like a sitcom. Three characters are in a house when there's a knock at the front door. The three of them quickly hide in a closet. Then from the closet, a four character steps out. He looks like Louis CK. The laugh track plays but I don't get the joke.

I wait through the imagery for a while, hoping I can DEILD back into a lucid dream. After a minute or so I give up, thinking I've dreamed enough and my body doesn't want to sleep anymore tonight.

I haven't written in my dream journal in several months but I'm trying now to get back into the habit.

Magazine, Polar Bear
I'm with my sister and I think my mother. We are at a zoo, but the style of the architecture is like a Japanese monastery alongside a quiet brook and a wooden bridge. We are writing an article about the zoo for a magazine. I remember the image of arranging blocks of text and pictures on a white template.

Then we are looking at the polar bear and I admire how it's fur looks when it's all wet. But then the bear sees me and gets angry. He leaps over the railing of his pen and starts chasing me. I turn and run along the brook to the bridge and across. I feel that if I can just get across the bridge and over one more fence that I will be safe.

Then the bear chase scene repeats twice more. The last time, the bridge looks different and I am confused that I am going the wrong way.

I woke up pretty frightened. Just a dream.... Just a dream.... I couldn't get back to sleep. After about an hour of failing I got up and read for a bit. Eventually got back to sleep, not sure when.

Lucid, Can't Move
I start with a false awakening. It's quite dark. I look down toward my feet and see my room looks very different from what it should. I am confused, I try to think where I am and what time it is. I realize I am dreaming but without much clarity. I concentrate on my body for a moment as I prepare to move. I am afraid I am feeling my physical body and if I move I will wake up. I try to push that thought out of my mind and just do it. I try to sit up but instead hover and tumble as if weightless in outer space. My body just drifts through the air; I am paralyzed and can move my limbs or neck.

I drift through the room toward the door. I try to observe the place but it's very dark and unclear. As I float through the door and then the ceiling and walls, the scene seems to change, but always a dark room cluttered with unidentifiable objects. In one room, it seems to be a dark night club and I think I see people but they are all frozen and don't move.

After about a minute of this, I sense that I am not just floating but rather that someone is holding me and guiding me along. I speak weakly "Who?". Then with more confidence in my voice, I say more clearly "Who is holding me?" I try to turn my head to look but can't hardly. I start to be become unnerved and force myself to wake up.

Lucid, Come Fly With Me
I begin again with a false awakening. It is similar to the previous dream: a dark room that seems somewhat like my real bedroom but unfamiliar. This time, I hear my mother's voice from the next room. She's saying something about missing the bathroom. I think, wait, do I live with my mother? I have to think about that one real hard. No, I don't. This is a dream.

I sit up in bed and the dream is quiet unstable. My mother enters the room. I get up and walk towards her but she gets pulled back and disappears in the void. I turn toward the bathroom, I suppose instinctively as something I do when I wake up. I hear another voice. Not my mother. It sounds like a younger girl. I turn back to the door to look at her and I see faintly a pretty girl with brown hair. She's half invisible and the whole dream is still quite unstable. I walk toward and reach for her but she's floating away. It's like she's just an image on my retina that don't get closer as I move. I follow the image of her through several doors and hallways. Her image morphs and fades in and out.

I slow down, I try to focus. I stop walking and just look at my surroundings. Things become clearer and the girl in front of me becomes solid. I grab her hand and say "Hi, you're so beautiful." I lead her through another door and we are outside. It's sunny, though we are in the shadow of the building we just exited. It seems like a garden-style condo complex. I lead the girl toward the sunlight, not sure where I am going. As we pass a doorway, I spot another person peeking out the door. It's another girl, this one blonde and with a bright blue dress. I take her hand and lead both girls out to the edge of the building where there are some trees. I turn back and look at the girls. They are both very pretty. I see now that the first is wearing a red dress under a leather jacket. They have earrings and make up and handbags. They look sharp.

Without really thinking, I climb the tree and use it to get on the roof. I help the girls up as well. I want to fly and I want them to fly with me. They don't seem convinced that they can. I try to explain that they can. I'm not sure exactly what I said.

Then my recall skips. I think maybe I flew away alone and landed elsewhere. I can begin to recall again being in a different part outside of the condos. The sun is vividly bright. Looking down at the white sidewalk makes my eyes strain. I look up and see yet another girl. This one with a bright magenta dress. Looking at it too makes my eyes hurt. I walk closer to her to get a look at her face. Then everything fades away and I wake up.

fragment
0537: Prepare for sleep with games. Dreams get wiped.

The Beach at Night
Method WILD
Lucidity D
Vividness C
Control C
0618: I visualize a sunny beach, but instead I find myself on a beach in the very dark of night. Nonetheless, there are many people around, laying as if to sunbathe. I am laying down as if sleeping. A girl walks up to me and greets me. She extends her hand to help me stand up. She has short black hair. I can barely make out her other features in the darkness. She leads me down the beach toward the water. We hop over a man laying on his back.

We get near the water and I notice the water and sand. The sand isn't smooth. It's clumpy, like a stampede of horses just trampled through. The attention to detail improves my lucidity a bit. I turn to look at the girl and realize how pretty she is. I pull her in close and kiss her. Then I say confidently and excited: "Let's go in the water!" Now I lead her by the hand a few steps into the water. Then I say, "No wait, let's go ON the water!" I start running on the water's surface, pulling her along. She's a bit scared but also excited. I feel the wind on my face as we go faster and faster. I say "We can go anywhere we want. And we can go as fast as we want!"

We are zooming along the water, parallel to the coastline. We are approaching a city in the distance. A collection of twinkling lights and buildings barely visible in the darkness. I jump off the water and soar into the city, landing on a street surrounded by tall buildings. I look around. The girl is gone. Whoops. End.

fragment
0729: Person talking about dreams. In body. Other person gets trapped in dream. ... we are OK.

Work and Games
0757: Menial tasks at work. Patching and doing regression tests. Playing the game. Zombies in a dark room. Playing another game. Humans sieging an elven city. They reach the queen's chamber and challenge her army to a final battle.

Game with Trippy Time
Method DILD (absurdity)
0815: Playing a FPS game with Hugh. He takes the lead and I follow. We are walking down a hilly city street. We reach an intersection and I look left. I see a bunch of enemies. We all turn to shoot. I only have a pistol. I fire fire shots at a guy at point blank range. But the world seems to freeze. Then it unfreezes and the five shots all go at once.

Then suddenly I seem to be on an acid trip. I see swirling colors and symbols of drugs and poison. I notice this is all so strange and become lucid. Then immediately a false awakening. It's dark and I'm in my own room. I'm confused and disoriented. End.

fragment
One last dream in here but I didn't write down. It was long. Babysitting for some rich family. Then going to a bar near a beach. Tornado warning coming in from the water. Helicopters somehow fly over the tornado and weaken it. Order drinks at the bar. See the pretty young girl I was supposed to be babysitting. She's been following me.

Catching up after a few days without Internet.

Guests, Cookies
Method DILD (false awakening)
Lucidity C
Vividness B
Control B
0623: Start with a false awakening and I become lucid very quickly. I'm in my own room. It's dark and still. I am a bit frightened. I get out of bed and fall toward the far wall as it gravity is going sideways. Up against the wall, I think to leave this room and go to a more pleasant scene. I visualize walking out the door to be joined by my friends having fun. Gravity now seems to be normal. I turn to the door and see light through the crack. This makes me hopeful. I walk confidently through the door.

On the other side is my living room, just like my real apartment. But it's light and pleasant here. Two young kids are running around the room having fun. I don't recognize them but I am friendly toward them. "Hi, I'm so glad you guys are here!" I walk up to one of the boys and stoop down. "Hey have you seen my girlfriend? Why don't you go look for her in the hallway. The kid runs out the front door. I look around the room and notice the strange wallpaper. It's bright yellow background with brightly colored patterns. Maybe plaid. I walk toward the front door and peek outside. I see the kid with two other people. One is S from work. The other is a short middle-aged woman that looks a bit like my mother but is unfamiliar.

I am pleasantly surprised to see S, considering I spent a long lucid dream a few months ago trying and failing to summon her. She looks a bit strange, like she just woke up. Her hair is messy and her face is rough without makeup. But it's definitely her. I kiss her a few times, gentle pecks on the lips. I welcome everyone in. I notice the kids still running around. I walk to the TV. "Hey, I'll turn on the XBox for you guys." I bend over and turn on the the game system, but it's actually a PS3. I think for a moment that I'm silly to make that mistake. I start to correct myself but then think, whatever, and let it go.

I turn back toward S and walk to the kitchen. There, I see a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. "Oh my God, my favorite!" I say. I take one and take a bit. It's so soft and gooey and sticky and delicious. I turn to S and smile. She says that the old woman made them. I thank her. I beckon S to come closer so she can try one. But the dream fades.

Another False Awakening
Method DILD (false awakening)
Lucidity C
Vividness D
Control D
0727: Playing soccer. I throw-in the ball from near our own goal. My team's defense sucks and the other team quickly steals the ball and scores. I get mad and attack the goalie. I knock him down. I turn to the rest of the players and they all shocked and staring, afraid of me.

False awakening and I become lucid. My room is dark. I sit up but can't move my legs. I look around and fixate on the door. I remember the previous dream and how I got out by using the door. Then I look at my hands and rub them together. I alternate between looking at the door and my hands. I'm trying to inching along the bed but I don't seem to be getting any closer.

I think to summon someone to walk through the door. I look at the door and become distracted by what looks like a mirror hanging on the door. It's about the size of a sheet of paper and it's hanging just about a foot off the ground. In front of the door, there seems to be a video camera on a short tripod. Also just about a foot off the ground. The camera is pointed toward the mirror and there's a dim spot light shining. I think, what the heck is that?. Dream fades from my confusion.

Football Fragment
1016: I'm a football player in the middle of a game. I'm playing tailback. The quarterback hands the ball off to me and I run left and dive over the line to the goal. It's very vivid and exciting.

fragment
1048: Something about using a computer to erase memories of dreams. But you can't erase dreams with you are dreaming of while you are accessing the memory of the dream, so you have to be thinking of something else.

P vs D
I'm in a video game. It's a futuristic shooter. I'm just wandering through a spaceship when I come upon two teams fighting a match. One team has the clan tag P, the other D. P makes me think of Protoss, and for some reason I think D means Terran. The players where space suits like the marines in Starcraft. D's suits are blue, P is red. They aren't shooting each other though. They are playing a sport where you throw a ball, a bit like basketball but more like water polo without water (which, interestingly, is nothing like the game we call polo, but I digress). The glowing blue ball is in the hands of a player from the D team. The game is stopped and the two sides are arguing about something. Something about one team being rude. Then something about old forums posts for a clan called 3DM which later turned into D.

The Girl in the Window
Method DILD (false awakening), DEILD
Lucidity C
Vividness C
Control C
Short lucid here. Still got sex on the brain lately. Don't recall before, but start with a false awakening. I quickly realize I am not in my own room so I become lucid. I seem to be in a hotel room. The bed is near the window which is unshaded. It's sunny and bright outside. I look out the window. I figure I am on about the third or fourth floor. The window overlooks a swimming pool area which is surrounded by more hotel rooms on all sides. Down one floor and to the right, I see in through the window of another guest's room. It's an attractive young woman wearing just a towel. She sees me, we make eye contact. She smiles.

I step out through my window and directly to her balcony, all the way across the pool courtyard. It's as if the scene through my window is just a flat painting and I violate the fake 3D perspective and just step the short distance in 2D space. Does that make sense? Anyway, I somehow unrealistically get to the girl's room. Once I am in, things return to be more realistic. She is laying on a bed, still wearing just a white towel. She is brunette and nicely tanned. She smiles at me seductively. There's another bed in the room and another girl who I don't really pay attention to. I flirt with the girl in the towel:

Me: I'm the guy from the window.
Her: (laugh) I'm the girl from the window.
Me: Did you just get out of the shower?
Her: (nods, she stands up, walks behind me, takes my hand and starts to lead me away)
Me: (now aware of the other girl) Your roommate won't mind?

Then I wake. Damn it. I DEILD back. I'm in the same room, but the towel girl is gone. The other girl is still here. The towel girl had left my field of vision while I was looking at the other girl, so I guess this kinda makes sense. The second girl is blonde and pale, quite the opposite of the other girl. She walks to me and says nervously: "I'm not as good at this as she is", referring to the other girl who seems gone for good. We start to have sex but I'm still thinking what happened to the first girl. Dream fades. I try to DEILD again but no success.

Record my 50th LD this night. I think my actual count is off by a few but it's close enough. So yay me!

Playing Cards
In the desert, maybe in the wild west like Red Dead Redemption. I am with a friend around a campfire and there's also another DC. He's a middle-aged man. In the dream I recall thinking he looked like a well-known actor but I can't recall who. We start playing cards. My friend and I play a few rounds of Texas Hold 'Em. Then the third man is dealer and he deals out a hand of 7-Card Stud, which my friend and I don't really like. Then we play a different game where we are dealt out a lot of cards, like a whole deck. I ask it he dealt too many. Recall fades.

Sex DEILD Chain
Method DEILD
Lucidity C
Vividness B
Control C
Recall is a bit hazy. DEILD from a previous dream that I don't recall. I enter the dream in an FA, looking through my sleep mask at my bedside clock. I try to move my limbs but it either wakes me up or triggers an FA. So I lay patiently without moving, just waiting and staring at the clock. I begin to become sleepy and close my eyes which triggers yet another FA.

Now I'm in a different bed and the stability of the dream is better. It's a very large bed and there is a huge pile of laundry on it, almost up to the ceiling. I'm laying on one corner of the bed. I roll out of bed and put on my glasses. The dream becomes clearer and more vivid. I walk out of the bedroom. Outside, the hallway is an open balcony overlooking the entryway and living room of the house below. I don't recognize this house at all.

Confused and disoriented, I encounter an attractive girl who I don't recognize. I grab her and we do the business. The dream destabilizes and I wake. I DEILD back into a similar scene with a different attractive and anonymous girl. I lead her back to the bedroom with the bed covered with laundry and proceed. This cycle repeats 3-4 times, connected by a mix of FAs and DEILDs. Mostly I just recall that the sex was great.

Work and Pizza
I'm at work, which is surprisingly rare in my dreams. I sitting in one of the pens instead of my real office. I recognize many real coworkers sitting near me. CG is walking back and forth between me and LM, because LM and I don't get along. CG is calling him "Steel" for some reason. Anyway, I'm begin especially sarcastic and disruptive.

I walk to the kitchen where I see one box of pizza so I take a slice and return to my desk. Moments later, I return to the kitchen just as a pizza delivery man is dropping off another pizza box. This happens a few times, with a delivery man dropping off a single pizza just as I am there to take a slice.

Baseball
0551: C. I am playing baseball again after a long time. I start with batting practice and my swing is all wrong. I'm not holding my wrists through the swing. But the coach corrects me and it gets better. Then he instructs me on bunting. I realize I can't run as fast anymore either. The catcher is complaining about catching all day and his knees hurt. Then the coach tries to strike me out with some crazy screwball pitches.

Disturbing
0728: Ugh. This dream was weird and disturbing and it ruined my whole night. I don't even know how to describe it and I can't recall much detail now. Weird about my family and camping and people dying and accepting death and abused women.

was anxious from previous dream and couldn't sleep and ending up staying awake for hours

Movie, Cat, Alarm
1231: C. It's a movie with Sara Jessica Parker. She is dating a man and they are staying with his folks. A brick falls in the house and causes a chain reaction which hits the main character in the mouth and knocks out like 10 teeth. I have a false awakening in a bunk bed in the same house as the movie. There is a cat and a mouse and I am trying to keep the cat away. It is very vicious and has very sharp teeth and claws. A false awakening again to my phone alarm reminder to pick up the friend from the airport. But that should be in the evening. Is it really that late? Wake for real.

So I'm trying to get back focused on my tasks. My lucid rate has been ok lately but they have all been kinda aimless and accidental. I want to get into my fun and rewarding tasks. Didn't actually succeed in any this night, but it was a good effort so I feel good about it.

First Cycle Randomness
0755: B. First cycle. Bunch of randomness here. Not sure of the order. I'm in an airport, picking up lots of loose change. I think there was just a party of something and there's a bunch of change left. There are also pushpins with people's names written on them. I think the one I read said Bill. I am careful to keep the coins and pins separate. Then my father is here and he's haggling with a man to buy a coin sorting machine. I really want him to buy it to make my job easier. The fact that he's haggling over the price makes me think he is cheap. Then I'm talking to my father about the pushpins and the names on them. They were part of some party event where each person is given a pin and you're suppose to find the person whose name is on it. Or something like that. My father and I are talking about the psychology of it. Something about how people's anticipation always leads to disappointment and therefore people's happiness is always going down. Weird. Then I'm at another party or maybe back to the party that started it all. A group of people are sitting on couches around one guy. He looks like a frat boy with a backwards hat and t-shirt. They are talking about the pushpin game. He's bragging about how good he is at these party games. Last time, the game was to annoy people and he won four times in a row. He also has his own internet video feed on him all the time called "HD Hale." Then I'm watching a TV commercial for MetLife with a statue at the top of a building. The voice-over is talking about how they have solid investments on Mars. The statue is of Abraham, Jesus, and 4 other monks holding torches. But then the commercial turns into a comedy skit. Jesus is now Robert Downey Jr. and he's talking to the Abraham statue, who is played by someone named Carmack. He's saying, "Hey Carmack, why do you always get to be the father of God?"

Street Fighter Documentary
0927: C. Hugh is watching a documentary about Street Fighter. The original stages were in an underground hideout of a gang called the Panthers. But they abandoned it because it was radioactive. Then it talks about the possibility of a sequel and what will happen to the characters after many years. I see an older Ryu with his face starting to wrinkle and his hair starting to go gray. It says Blanka won't be around because he can't have children.

Counter-Strike, Lucid
Method DILD (spontaneous)
Lucidity B
Vividness B
Control C
0949: Very quick time from the previous dream. I'm in a game of Counter-Strike. I must be T because all my enemies look like CTs. A guy is camping upstairs in a building with the Para machine gun. I sneak in through a window and kill him. I take his machine gun and start camping the same building. I'm at the top of a stairway, overlooking the front room of the building which has a front door and several broken windows. Many CTs try to attack me from this front door and windows. One has a shield. But I mow them all down with my machine gun.

As I'm doing this, I sense that I'm narrating the action in my head. It's as if I'm trying to help myself recall this later for my dream journal. Now one more enemy comes to the front door with a flashbang in his hand. He throw it up the stairway and it goes off near me. This sudden flash combined with the self-narration makes me lucid. I stop fighting. I walk down the stairs and outside. I still see the CT enemies around but they are just standing still doing nothing.

I look at the scenery. Vividness is pretty good. It's bright day. It seems like a small town in France or Italy with cobblestone streets and stone buildings. I'm in a large city square or courtyard, with impressive buildings on three sides and a street lead up a hill to the north. I've been walking up the street on the slight incline of the hill. I start to remember my plan. I rub my hands and look at them to stabilize. Feels pretty good. Next task: summon music. For some reason, I think I should be indoors for this. I turn around and see one of the buildings. It's an old stone church with stained glass windows. Think Notre Dame. It's beautiful and vivid. I start walking toward it, but the dream fades.

More Gunfighting
1108: B. It starts a bit like the end of the last dream. I'm in a quaint European town, but now it's near the ocean. I'm in a large courtyard again. In one direction there looks to be a shipyard. In the middle of the shipyard is a futuristic airplane that looks like a giant green and purple hornet. Hugh is here and I guess it's his plane. He's sort of like Batman and the hornet plane is like the Bat-Mobile. Hugh says he just got all the armor upgrades for it. He gets in and it flies way.

Skip. The scene is now similar to the beginning of the previous dream. I'm in an old building that feels like a church. I'm on the second floor balcony that overlooks the large room below. I'm alone with a machine gun and I'm fighting off enemies below. This time, I think they look like marines from Starcraft. After a wave, I am reinforced by my friend H who leads a small group of his own marines. He says we need to move out. Before leaving, I pull out my dream journal, lay on the ground (still in the dream), and start writing in it about this dream.

Bus Station, Failed Task, The Moon and Mars
Method DILD (false awakening)
Lucidity C
Vividness C
Control C
1201: I think I am in a suburb of New York City. I am near the river at a bus station. It's early morning and it's mostly light but the sun isn't fully up yet. I'm looking around for someone or something, not sure what. There are a few DCs around and in the booth selling tickets. I walk all the way around the building and give up on what I was looking for. I am wearing a black sweatshirt and sweatpants but white shoes. I exit the bus station through a chain link fence. I get on a skateboard and start skating away toward a residential neighborhood.

False awakening. I'm in an unfamilar bedroom with very little furniture. I'm sleeping on a cheap cot. There's just a bit of morning sunlight coming through a window to my right. This is all wrong so I become lucid and back it up with a nose-plug RC. But for some reason I question whether I am really dreaming. I nose-plug several times, each time confirming that I am indeed dreaming.

So I finally accept that I'm dreaming and try to remember my plan. Rub my hands. Ok, I do that but I bit rushed. Summon music. The song I have in mind is "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I imagine it in my head for a moment and expect it to keep playing on it's own. No. I try to will the universe to play it for me. No. I gesture with my hand, as if pressing a button on a remote control toward a stereo. No. Hmm. Not working. Discouraged, I abandon the rest of the plan.

Instead, I hop out the window and hover and land on the street. It's a quiet residential neighborhood, like in the scene before the FA. The street is framed with big trees whose leaves have turned orange and brown for the fall. The sun is just rising in the distance and the sky is still a bluish-black with stars visible. I can also see the moon and Mars, which is right next to the moon and almost as big. The colors are so rich and it's a beautiful scene. I think to fly to the moon or maybe fly to Mars instead. I run and jump and get some height but then halt. It's like my rockets ran out and I slowly drift back down to the ground. Now I'm stuck and I start the feel my physical body. I can feel the sleep paralysis and so now my dream body can't move. Even my neck is stiff but I'm still looking up toward the moon and Mars. I know I'm waking up soon and I can't move, so I start bring the moon down to me! I pull the moon closer with my mind and it's getting bigger and bigger. It's about to fill my view and crash into the Earth when I wake up.

Zerg, Driving, Bar
1247: C. Was patrolling for Zerg (Starcraft again). I found some but forget to write down where on the map. (I think that was a false memory in the dream and I didn't actually experience it.) Anyway, I'm beating myself up for that mistake. Now I'm driving home in my car. The street looks like the area around my real office. I want to stop at a bar. I have to make a left turn into the parking lot and I have to wait a while as other cars are pulling out of the lot. I think I cut someone off. I walk into the bar and it's very small. Everything is wood paneled. I accidently bump into a guy near the door. He's with a group of rowdy people. They must be college students and I want to avoid them. I walk to the bar area. The stools are all out of place. I pick up one and place it at the bar and sit down. I'm sitting next to a middle-aged guy to my right. I think he says hello to me. There are two bartenders which I think is weird for such a small bar and only a few people inside. They are both young guys with short black hair. One says hello to me and asks what I want. I think for a moment and order a Corona Light (which I though was weird because I'd probably never order that in a real bar). Dream fades.

I planned to not record my dreams this night. I just wanted to get a solid night's rest. So no recall in the first half (the usual reason). And for the first couple dreams I didn't write anything down. By the last two, I realized the dreams were worth writing down so I did so.

"Do Nothing"
Lucidity: C
Vividness: C
Control: C
~0800: No written notes, so this is spotty from memory. I don't recall how I became lucid. The first thing I recall is doing a nose plug RC. I'm sitting at a campfire circle. It's dusk. It seems like I'm in the giant doorway of an abandoned factory or airplane hanger. A few other DCs are around the fire. They look like migrant workers. The scene made me think of movies like The Motorcycle Diaries and Mi Mejor Enemigo. I remember my plan: "Do nothing", practice reality checks, focus on all 5 senses.. For taste, I lick a rock on the ground and it tastes like dirt! I vaguely recall that I did things for the other senses. I think I had double vision and that frustrated me. I try to talk to the DCs but I don't recall they said anything.

fragment
~0915: C. No written notes, so this is from memory. First thing I recall is a false awakening. I sense there was more before but no detail. I'm in my own room. I get out of bed and look at the time: 1:30pm. Crap, it is really that late? I get up, take off my Zeo headband and dock it in the bedside unit. It gives me a sleep score of 42. Really? I thought I slept better than that. Wake up for real. It's only about 9. My Zeo score for the night ended up at a more respectable 83.

Unfocused Lucid
Lucidity: C
Vividness: C
Control: D
1100: Just a few notes so this is mostly from memory. I'm in a classroom. It's a art or shop class so all the students are standing at work tables. In the dream, I seem to be distracted or sleepy. The teacher is a woman and there are one or two girls sharing my table. The first thing I recall is the teacher scolding me for not paying attention. So I become aware of what we are supposed to be doing. We have a piece of paper with a drawing on it. On top, we have a piece of tracing paper and we are supposed to trace the drawing under it. The drawing is an architectural sketch of a colonial era boat, I think. So I start tracing but there is a time limit. The teacher is nearby, watching me. She thinks I won't finish in time. The other girl at my table is done and she is also watching me. I feel nervous but I act confident. I think we do two tracings like this. The next task is to trim a large piece of meat. It's really thin, more like a the hide than the flesh. The tracing paper has become butcher paper. I move to a larger table and spread this gross sheet of meat over the paper.

Skip. Now I'm outside in what seems to be a school campus but it's unfamiliar. I'm walking up a grassy hill. There are many other students around. It's bright daylight. I see a girl who I recognize as a high school classmate, Beth. I'm not sure but I think this must be what made me lucid. Her hair is weird, kinda like dreadlocks but also kinda like bananas. Anyway, her face is recognizable. Lucidity and control are low at this point. I don't RC or stabilize. I just march up to her, say hello, and demand a blow job. She starts doing it but soon turns into a weird creature and I stop.

I walk away and I'm starting to get my wits about me. But lucidity, vividness, and control are still pretty low. I try to think of my tasks. The only one I can remember is flying barrel roll. I hesitate because my recent flying has not been good. But I can't think of anything else to do so I jump and spin. It works! I'm able to hover horizontally a few feet off the ground and a spin multiple times. (Wikipedia tells me that this is actually an aileron roll, not a barrel roll) I fly around spinning for about 30 seconds. Maybe I popped out to third-person a bit. My lucidity was fading away.

Skip. Now I'm in a building. The school gym or theater maybe? Maybe I lost lucidity for a while and then regained it here. A troupe of clowns is performing a circus-style act. I am in a corner back stage, near the exit. I see a door but I want to try walking through the wall. I try a few times but fail. I try to convince myself that I can do it. I know this is a dream and that I can walk through the wall. But no luck. Dream ends. In retrospect, this attempt at control was too forced.

Dream Within Dream
1130 C. This was a combination of false awakening and false memory that made it feel like a dream within a dream. I sense that I am out of town for work (this is the false memory). I'm staying in a hotel and I'm sleeping and dreaming. In the dream, I am in a WWII-esque battle among the ruins of a bombed city. I'm with my childhood friend Collin. I only have a tiny pistol in this big fight. I see an enemy across the way and fire a few careful shots. The gun is very inaccurate but I manage to hit him in the head. Everyone is happy and celebrates me as the hero.

I have a false awakening in a hotel room. In the dream, I think that the war scene was a lucid dream and I remember the two real previous lucids. So I congratulate myself for 3 lucids in the night.

Skip. Now I'm back in my apartment. Combining the war dream, the false awakening in the hotel, and the false memory of traveling for work, this all creates the dream within the dream phenomenon. So anyway, I'm home in my apartment but it looks totally different. I sense that, as I returned from traveling, my roommate has just left. I see that he has left a bunch of books and devices about lucid dreaming. He is just starting to pratice having lucid dreams. I go in the bathroom and see that the faucet has been left on just a drip. But over several days, the drip has flooded the room with an inch of water.

Enjoyed a lot of alcohol the evening before, so no recall for the first several hours. Then I had some REM rebound and recalled these short dreams. In bed for a total of 12 hours.

Chelsea Clinton Playing Lacrosse
0527: C. I have to write a report on Chelsea Clinton. I am looking at the wikipedia page, but I am upset because someone deliberately removed all the images. Later I realize that it's just a written essay and I don't need images. Then I'm watching a women's lacrosse game on TV and Chelsea is the star of one of the teams. Her team is up 7-2 and she gets taken out to rest. The other team scores two quick goals to make in 7-4. I think I'm watching with my father.

GTA in SAV, Hangover
0630: D. I'm stealing cars and escaping cops in SAV, like Grand Theft Auto. Not much recall.

False awakening that I totally missed. I'm in my own bedroom and I'm still drunk (day residue). Everything is really weird, but I account for it as drunk stuff I did last night. I'm under the bed comforter but not under the sheets. I get up. I'm wearing a heavy jacket and a pair of swim trunks. My bedroom door is wide open. The water in the bathtub is running. I walk into my closet to change. I see something in the corner of my eye to my right. I think maybe it's my own reflection in a mirror. I move, but it doesn't which freaks me out. Turns out to be Dave who was hiding in my closet.

Comedy Show, Wrong Page
0808: D. I'm at a Dane Cook show in New York. In the first part, he's in front of a small crowd. Then as part of the big opening, this small section of seats separates and moves down into a large theater. Dane Cook continues with his act but it's like a classroom and everyone is following along with books and notes. I don't know what page we're supposed to be on and I panic. There's a girl sitting to my left and one in front of me. I guess we are in a group. They are upset with me and trying to get me to the right page. As I flip through the book, it becomes my dream journal. This happens a few times. Now Dane wants someone to read aloud from the book. We are at the far right of the theater and there is a microphone nearby. The girl to my left is supposed to read but she has lost the page too. I am embarrassed.

Touch Football, Libido
0921 D. I'm with a group of people. I sense they are friends but I don't recognize anyone in particular. We are in a convenience store, goofing off. Running through the aisles and knocking things off the shelves. The employees are upset. Then we divide into two teams to play football (day residue) in the middle of the store. I'm on a team of another guy and a girl. The other team is 4 guys. I don't think that's fair.

We have the ball first. Me and the other guy on my team alternate as quarterback. We basically ignore the girl and just pass to each other. The first time I catch the ball, I turn and see the other team running toward me. I think, wait, we said touch football, right? Not tackle, I hope? It's touch football and no one gets hurt. My team is successfully driving down the "field". The endzone is the freezers at the end of the store. I get the ball, run to the freezers, open the door, and place the ball inside among the frozen pizzas and ice cream. We win!

At some point I become lucid. I'm still in the convenience store but no longer in the group of friends. I have no control and the dream is not very vivid. I just know that I'm dreaming and there's no consequences for whatever I do. So my libido takes the lead. Naturally, I look around for the nearest woman and tear her clothes off. She looks to be in her thirties but I'm not bothered. Her underwear turns out to be some rather scandalous light purple lingerie. I move in and kiss her but this narrows my field of vision. I close my eyes and the dream fades away.

Lucid Supermarket, Libido
1021: C. I'm in my car, driving at night. I'm hungry and stop at a supermarket to get something to eat. The supermarket claims to specialize in lucid dreaming. I think at one point the store is called Lucida Monica Market. Then later it is La Lucida Market. But it's in Culver City (day residue), not Santa Monica. Inside it looks like a typical supermarket. I search up and down the aisles for something to eat but nothing seems appetizing. There are quite a few DCs browsing the aisles and also way too many DCs behind the counters working. It seems like they are all staring at me, waiting for me to ask for help. I feel a bit paranoid and shy.

Then I come to the aisle that is supposedly for lucid dreaming. The signs above mark the sections with various lucid dreaming topics. The one I remember is "Expectations". But the items in this section are just a bunch of mirrors, knick-knacks, and craft supplies. I struggle to see exactly how this is relevant to lucid dreaming.

Once again, I'm bored and my mind turns to sex but I'm not lucid as in the previous dream. I scan around me for the nearest woman. Like the food, nothing seems particular appetizing, so I continue to wander for a woman. Before long, the dream fades.

I slept GREAT last night. Zeo game me a score of 94, compare to my average of 68. I slept 9 hours total with 3h 48m in REM sleep in 6 cycles. That's a lot of dreaming!

I took the B-Complex vitamin one hour before bed and took a relaxing hot bath to meditate and adjust my body temperature for sleep. Tonight's dreams weren't as vivid as yesterday. Maybe the apple juice was the difference? But they were really really long. The three that I recalled seemed at least 30 minutes long each. I wrote a while page of notes for each and could still recall more detail that I didn't bother to write down. In fact, they were so long and not very interesting that I'm going to cut them short here.

Gordon Ramsey's Love Troubles
0503: B. Gordon Ramsey guest stars on a TV sitcom, maybe The Big Bang Theory. Gordon is a roommate with the dorky guys and there another group in the next door apartment as well. It's too crowded and someone says "Someone has to go back to Poland!"

Then scene changes to outside a nightclub with Gordon and the roommates. His part is to approach a shy girl and ask her for a date as a prank. She is supposed to be charmed because he's so famous. But she isn't interested and the prank backfires. Gordon is surprised and humbled. There's a taxicab in the scene.

Then the scene starts over but now it's "real" life and not the TV show. Gordon does the same thing of approaching a shy girl and gets rejected. He's humbled and goes into the club. A really hot redheaded woman meets him and comforts him. But then she finds out it was a prank and she's really really upset and leaves. Gordon is now completely devastated.

Then the dream really jumps around. There's a parking lot and a staircase. It leads to a college dormitory with a rec room. Gordon is in the rec room with a TV, arcade games, and a giant touch-screen computer thing. Some college students are in there watching TV. Now I am the main character in first-person instead of Gordon in third-person. Lance is looking for me but I am avoiding him. The students in the rec room cover for me.

Exchange Student
0651: B. I'm an exchange student living with a foster family. It seems like I'm still in the US though. The first part of the dream jumped around a lot. I'm supposed to film a TV commercial with this family. Then I'm making some kind of cake and pudding desert. But when I try to flip the pudding out on top of the cake, it spills on the floor and I feel bad because it's someone else's kitchen. Then the foster family has a bunch of kids and they are leaving for school but I stay at home. One kid, a girl of about 7, turns around and comes back into the house, refusing to go to school. There are a bunch of mothers from the neighborhood standing in the kitchen. Meanwhile, I am eating something in the living room and spill some red sauce on the couch. I feel bad again and clean it up with a giant beach towel.

Scene changes and now I'm in Japan with a different family. It's the first day of school and the student body is in the gym. We receive our grades from the previous year. I am afraid I failed but I get a B. Then I'm walking with the foster family toward a restaurant to celebrate.

Scene changes and I'm in a restaurant but now I seem to be in Mexico with yet another foster family. I sit alone in a booth away from the family. I order a hamburger and whiskey. I finish them and order another. A few teenage girls sit at my booth but ignore me while I eat. Then I ask who they are and what is going on. One has her face painted white like a geisha. She says it's a holiday and tells me the name in Spanish. I ask what it means and she says in English "Ten Years and Two Days."

False awakening. I roll over to write in my dream journal. I note the time is 1137 and my previous entry was at 10 something. But the light coming through the window is too dim for that time. I think, wait, is it really that late? Then I wake up for real.

short WBTB

Work Retreat
0825: B. I'm at work and a few people just got laid off. One was the other Michael, so I'm the only Michael left. I joke about this with coworkers that there won't be any more confusion.

Then everyone at work goes to a small restaurant out in the middle of a nowhere on a small rural road. It looks like a lodge. I ride along with Lance and we park across the street. Everyone is given sweatshirt and pants randomly in blue, gray, or black. We watch a movie about color and light and supposedly we have to study for a test on it next week. Then we watch some other movies made by people at work. Ex-employee Garrett is there and I avoid him. He made a film where he's looping a belt through the skin around his waist. It reminds me of a surrealist film.

Then it's time to go so I try to find my sweatshirt in the big pile of identical ones that people have left. Other people are also searching through the pile. There are other people in the restaurant. They seem like a biker gang and I feel nervous. I just grab a matching pair of small blue sweater and pants and leave. I'm going to ride again with Lance but I fall behind as we're running outside. He crosses the road before me. It's dusk and the highway has many cars going very fast with their headlights on. I try to cross a few times but turn back because I almost get run over. Then I walk to a narrower part of the road where there is just 2 lanes and cross.

I meet with Lance and there is also the other Michael who is going to ride with us. People from work have divided into their cliques in the parking lot and are talking and gossiping.

Took a B-Complex supplement about 2 hours before sleep and also sipped some natural apple juice throughout the night.

Colored String Competition
0200: C. In a competition. Each player has a small plastic toy bow (as in bow-and-arrow) with a colored piece of string. There are about 10 people including me. Some are vaguely familiar. There is a host, like it's a game show. The goal is to guess the color of other's strings. I think mine is plain white. The host guides us through a few rounds. Then one round is tricky. The choice is between two people who have pink and red. We are supposed to guess which is which. Only me and one other girl get it right. Actually, I just copy her guess. I realize she is Lexi, a childhood friend.

WBTB+MILD, short

Bunker, Dream Control without Lucidity
0452: B. Ok, this dream was really vivid. I could have sworn it was lucid, but on waking up and recalling I realized I never actually had the critical lucid moment. I'm on a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II map. I think it's called Quarry. But I'm not fighting. I look for a bunker under the hills and find one. It has a low ceiling, a locking door, and a narrow pillbox window looking out at the center of the map. I'm glad that the door has a lock for some reason. I look at the low ceiling. This is the point where I appreciate how vivid the dream is and I feel that pre-lucid tingle but never go fully lucid. The ceiling is bare rock with a tangle of metal braces, electrical wires, and light bulbs. There are also some spider webs and I carefully look for spiders but find none. The whole room is only about 10 feet by 10 feet. I think there is a bed and a few military-looking green crates stacked around.

Now Hugh and a girl are in the room with me. The girl is tall and skinny with a brown hair in a pony tail. Kinda tomboyish. She vaguely reminds me of the ex-girlfriend of an old friend from college. She's casually dressed in jeans and a tank top with some cleavage, which is distracting me. I show them the view through the window. It's bright day outside. You can see the part of the map where there's a big stack of cube-shaped cut stones. But in the dream, they are cardboard boxes instead of stones. I notice this is weird but not enough to become lucid. Then I try to impress both of them, mostly the girl, with some dream powers. I try to levitate an empty water bottle but fail. The girl is bored and wants to go somewhere else. I try to teleport us out but fail again. So we walk out the door, through a hallway and out into the open.

Hugh and the girl venture off. I'm looking around and see Justin, a childhood friend, walk up to me. His hair is buzzed really short, almost bald. He's wearing a light blue UCLA T-shirt. He says something about the UCLA football team. Then he asks if I'm bored and what to do something. He suggests we go watch a movie called "Cobalt Jungle." I say "Hell, yeah!" Here's where I start showing some dream control.

Justin jumps on a motorized dirt bike and I fly behind him. I'm parallel to the ground, just a 2-3 feet off the ground. We're traveling on a very rough dirt road with a steep hill bank on either side. The sky is now overcast and the ground is muddy with patches of green. Justin and I are weaving around telephone polls that are scattered on the road. I want to go faster so I concentrate and accelerate. We started at about 30 mph, now it feels like 80 mph. Justin hits a bump in the road and falls off his bike. But before he hits the ground, I reach with my left arm and use telekinesis to put him back on the bike and to keep the bike from crashing. Wake up and try to DEILD but no luck.

WBTB+MILD, long, read DV

The Blue Sweater
0638 B. Another very vivid dream. This time I become lucid for a while. I recall a fragment from the earliest part of the dream. I'm laying in bed and feel something warm at my feet. I lift the sheets and see my old cat Sam balled up. He wakes up and moves up the bed closer to me and lays down again next to my body for warmth. I think, aww, so cute.

False awakening. I roll over to write in my journal. It's early morning light outside. The window is at the head of the bed, which is the correct direction. Next to my journal, I see two pairs of glasses. One looks like mine, though this isn't where I usually place them when I sleep. The other pair looks similar in style but smaller. I think, hmm, who's are these? I get up and look around nervously. Is there someone else in my room? No. The room is fairly convincing as my real bedroom and very vivid. I examine the glasses more closely. They look like reading glasses that you would wear at the edge of your nose. They say "Granny" on the legs like a brand name.

As I'm looking at the glasses, I notice I'm wearing a very thick and woolly royal blue sweater. I think, Umm what? I don't own anything like this. I nose-plug check and I can breath. But I'm not convinced. The scene seems too vivid to be a dream. I do the nose-plug again and can breath again. Hmm. Ok, I guess I'm dreaming. But I'm still surprised. I do a finger-through-the-hand check to be sure. My finger doesn't go through but I look down and see my finger smushed like clay against the palm of my hand. Ok, I'm finally convinced.

What to do? I think of my plan. My plan that I set for tonight was: look at my hands, feel my body, notice my clothes, then take off my clothes and do something embarrassing while naked. I get up the taking off my clothes. I start pulling the sleeves of the blue sweater when I decide that I could be doing something interesting while disrobing.

I look at the window and realize it's wrong. It's a long and rectangular. It should be two tall narrow windows. Outside, I see a front lawn and other houses like a suburban neighborhood. That's also wrong; I live in the city with a parking structure across the street. This improves my lucidity but distracts me. Outside on the lawn, I see a giant TV screen. It's a billboard mounted just a few feet off the ground. There are a few adults throwing a football on the street. I intuitively know they are a news crew from the local TV station. I forget about my clothes and plan. I climb on the bed and try to phase through the window. I get halfway and feel stuck. Oh no!

At this point, my recall is broken and I lose lucidity. I might have woken up and DEILD back. Either way, the dream continues. One of the news crew is now in my room. He's an Asian man with a light blue dress shirt and slacks. He reminds me of a real TV reporter from one of the TV stations in Los Angeles. He apologizes for the billboard and says it won't be there more than three days. He goes on about how important advertising is for his station and who important the suburbs are. As we're talking, he starts standing, then sitting, then laying on the floor near my desk. Then he goes on about how television and entertainment are so important to our culture. He compares it to religion in the time of Jesus. I try to summarize his argument "So, the Internet is the new religion?" He says "Yes, exactly!"

WBTB, trouble falling asleep

Soccer
1107: D. Playing on a soccer team. Maybe a college team. Strict grid system with only one part of slack allowed. I am a controversial new member of the team. I make a play that leads to a goal.

Drank some beer last evening so no recall until the second half of the night, but wow what a night.

Freaky Room
0652: C. I'm laying in a bed at one end of a long room. It's almost pitch dark. I can just make out the silhouette of some bedroom furniture and I sense there is a doorway at the far end of the room. A creepy little girl is running around the room. Her face glows like a dim candle. As she gets near me I'm a little frightened. Maybe I'm a little lucid because I tell myself this is just a dream and I should just stay calm and watch. The girl giggles and says "Come, you should see!" And then she exits the room through the door. I still haven't moved. Then I see a large man sitting at the far end of the room. His face is also glowing dimly. He stands up and slowly walks toward me at a zombie's pace. As he gets close, he stretches one arm out toward me as if he intends to grab me. I'm afraid and turn away, still laying in the bed. Dream fades.

Bridgette?
0733: C. I'm in a dark room. Seems like a bedroom. There's some light coming through a door near me that leads to a hallway. I think I'm looking for something in a dresser. A girl walks in and asks for my help. At first, she seems to be Bridgette, a very attractive coworker IWL. She's talking about a forum post about collecting all the images from the game loading screens. She's holding a piece of paper and she wants me to burn it for her. I tell her this is a dream. Again, maybe I'm a little lucid but the vividness and control are low. She says, "Oh, I'm dreaming with you?" I get a closer look and she looks Asian, which Bridgette is not. I say, "Yeah, help me take of my shirt." She does but as the shirt lifts over my head it blocks out my vision and the dream ends abruptly.

Kiting Sleep
0830: D. For about 30 minutes, I'm drifting in and out of sleep, false awakenings, wake, and hallucinations. Here's a bunch of fragments, I'm not sure which was which. I'm calling this "kiting" for lack of a known term. Some fragments were lucid, so I'm counting this as one lucid dream.

Watching two people play chess. The person playing white is making illegal moves but no one else notices and I don't say anything.

FA in my own bedroom. I hear music coming from my computer. It's not supposed to be on. I recognize the artist is Jimmy Eat World.

Riding in a car with my father driving. It's his old pickup truck. We are exiting a covered parking lot. Maybe a sports stadium. He's arguing something. I say this is a dream and I'm just going to fly away to avoid him. I try to jump through the roof of the car but fail.

I'm at a store paying for something. I pull out a black Visa card. Supposedly it's a "Visa HILL" card and it's very hard to get so I must be a VIP customer. The cashier is impressed.

My underwear is on backwards.

Sisyphus in Wonderland, Dream Guide?!
0930 A! This was an incredibly weird and memorable lucid dream. It's much more fantasy and strangeness then my average dreams.

FA. I'm in a bedroom. It's mostly dark. The room is arranged a bit like my real room. But there is a TV mounted on the far wall where there shouldn't be. I become lucid early on but my control is poor at the beginning. My father is in the room and we're arguing again. I'm so sick of this recurring theme with my father. I'm aware in the dream that I've already been through this on same night. I tune him out and think what I want to do now that I'm lucid and have some control.

I get outside somehow. It's night outside in a residential neighborhood. But the houses and trees are all cartoonish colors. The trees are purple and blue. The houses are crazy colors like yellow and red. It looks like something out of Dr. Seuss or Alice in Wonderland. But since it's dark, the bright colors aren't as noticeable and it seems somewhat realistic. The street is dimly lit with street lamps and moonlight. I walk in the middle of the street to the corner of the block, still upset and without a plan. At the corner, there is a building that looks like a drive-thru fast-food restaurant. On top of the building is a big neon sign styled in black and white with a font like Corner Bakery. The sign reads "difficulty, inc." which I think is kinda funny.

My father is following me and we start fighting with our bare hands. I try to fly away but he can fly too. My flying sucks today. I can hover fine but I can only thrust by pushing off things for short distances. We're still wrestling in the air and through the neighborhood. After a minute or two I am fed up and just try to fly away. The dream starts to feel unstable. I land next to a brick building with vines growing on the walls. I feel the vines and brick to get some sensory stability. But I still wake up.

I try to DEILD. I'm imagining the same scene, trying to re-enter. I'm about to give up, but I hear my father's voice describing the scene. He says things like "brick wall, restaurant down the street, grassy lawn" and this helps me get back into the scene. As soon as I'm back, I'm fighting with him again. But now I'm just walking away, trying to ignore him. When he gets close, I push him a way and continue walking. I don't want to waste any more of my lucid dream on him so I start spinning to teleport away. I try so hard that I wake up and turn my physical neck. At least I think I was awake. I'm in my bed and stop moving my head.

I try to DEILD again. Again, about 20 seconds pass and I'm about to give up. I'm about to switch to recalling earlier parts of the dream for my journal. But I suddenly feel like I'm going through a tunnel. I'm back in the dream. The edges of the tunnel turn into leaves and I find myself hiding in a bush peeking out through a hole in the leaves. It seems like time is going really fast around me for a few seconds. The tree leaves are rustling and street lamps are twinkling really fast like time-lapse photography. Things slow down to normal. I'm in the same dark cartoonish neighborhood but a different area. I'm in the middle of the quiet street. My father is gone and I'm in the deep in middle of the block where there are just houses, no restaurants or retail buildings.

Phew. Ok. Now, what to do? I start walking down the middle of the street, looking at the crazy colored trees and gingerbread houses. I see an old lady outside. I walk toward her but she enters her front door. I think of Mother Goose. I keep walking and start to see the end of the block in the distance. I see a paint store far off across the intersection that advertises two kinds of paint: "DRIED" and "WET". I think that's pretty funny and congratulate my subconscious for the joke.

Then a short goat-man jumps out at me from the shadow of the trees to my right. I'm startled but he quickly seems friendly. He's about 4 feet tall with goat legs and yellowish-brown fur. I guess he must be Pan from Greek mythology. He asks me what I'm doing. I remember my plan, I'm going to practice teleporting by spinning or opening doors. He says, "Cool! I'll try too!" And he starts spinning like a playful child. I start spinning as fast as I can. The world becomes a blur and unrecognizable. I slow down my I'm still in the same place in the same scene. Hmm, didn't work.

Another character approaches Pan and me. I don't get a good look at him, but I sense he is friendly and familiar. He says, "There's a portal in the boat" and points toward the nearest house. Later, recalling the dream, I think that maybe this character might have been my Dream Guide! I still don't recall what he looked like. Somehow though, I was left with three separate vague impressions: A man-size yellow dinosaur (think Barney), Homestar Runner, and Ronald McDonald. I lead the way as the three of us walk up to the house he pointed out. It's yellow with red trim. It looks like a life-size gingerbread house or a cartoonish McDonald's. The front door is only about 3 feet high and I get a strong Alice in Wonderland feeling.

I'm puzzled. This is a house, not a boat. There's a lunchbox next to the front door. I bend over to look at it. "Is this what I'm looking for?" No, I sense my DG gesturing into the house. I look in a window where I can see through to the backyard. I stoop down and we all walk through the small house to the backyard. In the middle of a small patch of grass, there's an inflatable kiddie pool with a plastic toy boat floating. Okay, this must be the boat but where's the portal and how I am supposed to get in such a small boat? DG says exactly what I'm thinking: "Shrink down to size." Okay, never done that before. I bend over to get a closer look at the boat and see a USB port on it with some text printed under it. I squint to read the words. My alarm goes off and wakes me up.

Restful, but light sleep this night with many short interrupted dreams. The lucids are barely worth counting. I'm giving myself credit for at least recognizing some dreamsigns that made me lucid.

Food and Robots
0523 C. Hazy and jumpy. Two girls are competing for my attention. We are in a two story house. I'm resting on the couch on the first floor watching a boy singer who might be a robot. One girl is on the first floor and the other on the second. They are both cooking things for me. One cooks a steak but it looks like a big raw beef roast. Around it she puts a bunch of small Philly-style cheesesteak sandwiches. The other girl made something too but the first girl blocked her from showing me. I go to the bathroom and I think the second girl meets me in there to tries to tell me something. Something about the cartoon charactor Lisa Simpson. Maybe she is Lisa. Then the boy robot singer starts singing again but he's terrible. The first girls is upset about this: "Did you reset the game back to beginning?!"

Meanwhile, I recall cut scenes in between my plot to a different character. It's a guy pretending to be a robot. He's dressed a bit like the Tinman from Wizard of Oz but really skinny. He's trying to blend in with other robots that all look that same. The robots greet him in a robotic voice (think the infantry droids from Star Wars) saying "Left-hand side of you." To which he is supposed to salute his right arm across to his left side. Then "Right-hand side of you" and salute with other arm. The pretend robot catches on to this greeting and fools the other robots. At one point he is drinking from a water fountain. I sense he is my friend.

untitled
0654 D. Short dream. Not sure what to make of my notes: I'm baking a special bread that will make me lucid. Carry inside my body? The Simpsons.

WBTB+MILD 10 minutes

untitled
0748: D. I'm Homer Simpson and I'm practicing MILD. I go into a dream world with simple geometric-shaped objects like Tron. I'm being chased by men in suits with pistols like the agents from The Matrix. I can stop their bullets just like Neo.

Trouble sleeping, turned it into a WBTB+meditation and reading DV for about an hour total

False Awakening Chain
1018 C. This was about 20 minutes of false awakenings. In my own room. I can see through my sleep mask. I see my desk and alarm clock in the wrong place across the room. I'm lucid but can barely move my arms and legs. I manage to sit up in bed. At this point IWL, the garbage truck shows up and makes a loud banging noise about every five minutes. Each time, this either wakes me up or triggers an FA. Some times I could move my arms to nose-plug and I was awake. Other times I couldn't move my arms. I'm unsure how many times it happened but I recall a couple more lucid periods.

False awakening. I can see but the view is dark and blurry. I sense a small dog jump on my bed to my left. He gets close to my face and I can feel the heat of his breath. I can't move to look at him. I'm just trying to be patient for the scene to solidify. The dog starts growling. Interrupted by noise.

False awakening. I'm laying on my back and can't move my body. I can tilt my head down and look at my body. My view looks like an X-ray image highlighted with electric blue. A blue line extends along my body like my spine but continues all the way down to between my feet.

Eventually, I reach a real wakening and give up on this futile chain so I can note it in my journal.

False Awakening, Dreamsign
1044: C. Another false awakening. I can see through my sleep mask. I notice my bedroom door is open when it shouldn't be. I hear my roommate in the next room, whisking eggs I think. I can't move.

untitled
1000: F. I recalled this dream after/inside the dream that followed it all I remember is a fragment. A blond man?

Doomsday Program, Customer Complaint
1114: D. Really jumping with very short and fast scene cuts. I'm at work. I woman comes in and tells me I have to get out fast. It's like near the beginning of The Matrix when Neo needs to sneak out of his office. The woman leads me to a car and I'm driving. We are chased by some bad guys. I tell her to reach in the back seat and grab a special cell phone. I tell her to dial a special sequence of numbers. She does and it activates a doomsday program. We are on a bridge over water and parts of it collapse but the section we are on is intact. Buildings around in the distance all blow up and collapse. The bad guy car can't follow us but we're stuck on this section of bridge.

Cut to what feels like a ransom exchange with the bad guys. I hand a guy a brief case. He looks like Andy Garcia's character in Ocean's Eleven. He hands it to another guy who then runs along a the bridge cable but there's no bridge.

Cut to a big warehouse building with a dirt floor. I have my shirt off and I'm fighting the bad guys gladiator style. One of them is still the Andy Garcia character.

Cut back to me at work. I'm dozing on a couch in the kitchen (not real IWL). I keep thinking of the previous dream about the blond man. I'm trying to keep it in my mind so I can recall it later. I look up at the bulletin board and see a red poster with a very angry customer support email complaint on it. Something about a guy who lost his credits after they went over 4000. I ask, "Hey, has anyone looked into this?" A co-worker (IWL he's just an artist) gets angry at me. He says it would be so easy to look up the guy's account and he describes the few keystrokes that it would take. But he says he knows it's probably just a fraudulent claim and it's a waste of time. He's angry at me because he thinks I care too much and it's a waste of time. I'm taken aback my this.

Experimenting with some dream titles to break up the wall of text a bit.

0230: F. Two sentences of illegible notes.

Birthday Girl, Bro Code
0337: C. Even in a dream, I obey the bro code. I'm at a girl's birthday party. I came with Lance. It's indoors at a house. There are about a dozen people there. It's dark outside and mostly dark inside. Lance and I pull the birthday girl aside to give her the gifts, so the three of us are alone in a dark room. Lance forgot to bring a gift, but luckily I brought two. I say they are from both of us.

The birthday girl has short black hair. She's tall and pretty. She's wearing a dress. She opens the presents. One is wrapped in purple, the other in yellow. Yellow is her favorite color? I don't remember what the gifts are but she really likes them and is very happy. She starts making out with both of us. (Not the arrangement I had planned for my first threesome, but whatever) As things get heated, it's clear the girl is more interested in me. She pulls off my pants and ignores Lance. Lance gets up and paces around the room upset. He keeps saying "That's not cool." I stop her and get up. She wants me to come back. I leave with Lance.

Hell Is An Amusement Park Line
0510: C. I need to raise half a million dollars, fast. Maybe I'm in debt to a loan shark.

Scene change. I'm in purgatory. I guess I'm dead. I'm waiting in line to be judged to go to heaven or hell. The focus changes to someone else, like I'm watching the movie of some else's life. The main character is a man who died while trying to solve a crime. He's destined to go to heaven, but he chooses the go to hell instead. He hopes he can find more information in hell to solve the crime. I think that's heroic. His partner tries to stop him and says he's crazy. Our hero says he's from San Francisco. Somehow that makes sense to the partner and lets him go.

Scene change. Now it's hell. People come sliding down a big ramp into a large red cavern crowded with people. It's lit by flames and it's fairly bright. Our hero comes sliding down. The focus switches back to me in first-person. I'm already in hell when the hero arrives. In hell, everyone is standing in tight groups in little pens formed by metal railings. It's just like waiting in line for an amusement park ride. I'm standing near some elementary school classmates and they are talking on and on about boring stuff. I think, this IS torture. I think that's funny.

I yell to someone who just arrives down the slide. "Hey, I hope you can come up with the money, by the way. Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I don't have bills to pay. But it's not like I can do anything about it from down here."

Birthday Gifts, Annoying Ice Cream Girl
0716: C. I'm indoors in an unfamiliar place but I get the impression that it's my own bedroom in a house. Apparently, it's my birthday. I'm unwrapping presents. Most of the presents are children's toys like dolls and figurines. My sister gives me a new Blackberry. I walk across the room to plug it in to charge. Another gift is D&D-like role playing game. Hugh wants to play so I unfold the map across the floor. I remark how big the map is. It's about 6 feet by 3 feet.

Scene change. I'm in a outdoor mall in a food court. I'm wearing a blue shirt with faded white lettering that says "BIRTHDAY TODDLER." Everyone is gone except Hugh, but he starts walking away leaving me alone. There are other random people in the food court though. A girl from the crowd walks up to me. I'm not attracted to her. She says she want to satisfy some urges and then walks away somewhere, as if to go fetch something that she will bring back to me. I feel awkward. Another girl walks up to me. This one is attractive and I want to talk to her. She wishes me happy birthday. I ask how she knew it was my birthday. She says it's written on my shirt.

The first girl comes back and hijacks the conversation. The second girl walks away. I'm annoyed about that but I try to be polite. The girl has a variety of ice cream and she starts feeding it to me. She want me to guess the flavors and pick my favorite. I play along to be polite. The first one is dark cherry. The second is strawberry. There are two more that I haven't tasted yet. The next one is green so I'm thinking it will either be mint or pistachio. Dream fades.

0740: False awakening. I don't RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal about my last dream. I write something but I don't note the time. Then I wake up for real. I RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal. I think, wait! Didn't I just do this? Damn it! I write: "False awakening. I dream of writing in my journal."

Unstable DEILD
0811: D. Again, I'm in the food court of an indoor mall but this one is different. I'm with two friends but I don't recall who. We sit at a bench near the actor who played George's father in Seinfeld. But he doesn't say anything. A young blond girl walk up to us nervously. She says "Did you guys know there's a dance coming up?" We say nothing and she walks away.

Another group of girls comes and sits near us in the same set of benches. One attractive blond looks at me and says "Hi I don't know if you remember me." I don't but I guess just to keep the conversation going: "Did we meet last night?" She says no. "I'm on of the 'Real Players.'" I have no idea what that means. Then she starts talking about a family and farm animals. Scene fades.

I wake up and DEILD into a lucid. My view is totally distorted. It's like I'm looking at a blurry TV, off center and from an angle. On the TV it looks like Street Fighter and I struggle to recognize one of the characters is Guile. I turn my head to try to center the view. Instead, I enter a rocky tunnel. I'm floating through, like I'm being carried underwater. It's like in medical films when they stick a camera down a person's esophagus. I look at my hands and rub them. The view still sucks. Dream ends. I think, damn, another difficult scene. I guess I need to be more prepared to face anything that comes at me. Or maybe I just need to be patient and let the dream solidify before trying any control.