All DJ Entries

After WBTB.

Flashing Light
Method DILD (absurdity)
Lucidity C
Vividness B
Control B
I'm sitting at my computer desk in my bedroom. I'm looking at the monitor, which is an old CRT monitor instead of a flat screen. I'm looking at a folder browser. It has a bunch of zip files. I navigate through some other similar folders. I stop in one that has only one file. This surprises me for some reason. Then I look at the folder options and it shows that it's only showing recently created files. There's a button to show all files. Wait, this is weird. I don't think Windows has this feature.

I become lucid but the scene shifts abruptly. I am still at my desk in my room. But the monitor is off and am I suddenly aware of the rest of the room. It's completely dark except for a flashing white light outside. Maybe it's raining. The light barely slips in through the vertical blinds but I can tell it is bright. It's intense like lightning but it's pulsing about every two seconds. As the light flashes, the room is briefly illuminated but there's no color. It's like a black and white movie.

I see my hands in front of me. My vision seems blurry and two-dimensional. I concentrate. Stabilize! I rub my hands and I see them move but I can't feel them touch each other. Gradually the picture sharpens and seems more three-dimensional. The flashing light becomes steady and it seems calm.

Now what? I haven't been lucid it about a week and I am unprepared. I look to my left toward my bed. The sheets are grayish-white and the pillow is out of place in the middle of the bed. I suddenly wake up.

This whole adventure stared with a normal dream that I can't remember the details of, and lead into a false awakening.

I woke up the same place I had fallen asleep, on the couch, to my roommates L and S and S's family getting home from the Chinese New Year Parade. I turn to tell S my dream, but in stead she mocks me for falling asleep instead of doing my homework. I told her I didn't plan to sleep for long, and she asked when the paper was due on the story I was reading. I told her there was no such paper, I just had to read the story. She gave me the face of "sure there is no paper" and began to walk away. I decided to write my dream into my dream journal and that reminded me to do a reality check.

I pinched my nose shut, closed my mouth and was able to take a full breath. "Oh my God! I am dreaming" I say with excitement. For awhile I was just nerding out that I knew I was dreaming and the dream began to shift. I looked through the house and saw sections missing. Not like the walls just weren't there, but a loss of detail in the dream. I if I had painted white over it with photoshop. Not many of the things in the room were retaining their detail. I thought it might be because I was not able to retain all the information within my conscious mind.

I began to wonder what I should do. I could do anything. I turn to see my roommates S and M on the couch. I turn to M and say "hi" in a silly way. (It almost a ritual irl to keep saying it over and over each time getting more silly) She turns and looks at me with a blank, neutral stare. Clearly not interested in socially interacting with me. I am not phased (for I am used to that irl) I say hi again in an even more ridiculous way. She smiles and says hi back, waving in a cute way. I start to tell her that I am in a dream. I decided not to try and convince her she is not in a dream, I just feel like I needed to tell someone . I open my mouth to speak, and words come out in a soft raspy whisper. It was very similar to loosing your voice. I thought of a speech from a brain scientist I say on TED.com where she has a stroke and is analyzing herself from the inside out. There is a particular part where she is unable to understand language that reminded me of it. (which I found interesting upon awakening that I was drawing from my rl memories) I try to talk a bit longer and words become a bit clearer, but I decide to move on to try other things before my dream collapses.

I turn to see M's computer in the living room. It is playing mabinogi (her fav MMO RPG) by itself. I think, that maybe she is just set on follow, since we have made the mistake before, but at a closer look it is actually fighting and wining. After deciding that that was awesome I step away from the screen to find that nearly the entire living room has disappeared. I feel exhausted, and I begin to have trouble focusing my eyes. I decide to concentrate, and begin to think of what everything looks like so that nothing collapses. It did not take long for me to feel back to normal and for the house to be restored. I again decide to move on.

As if to answer the question of what to do next I begin to float in the middle of the room. I smile, totally thrilled, because that is the main reason lucid dreaming is appealing to me, flying. I continue to float until I bump lightly into the ceiling. I giggle at the amateur nature of my flying, but decide to try anyway. I open the window, and begin to soar into the peaceful, foggy city of San Francisco. I almost start to cry I am so happy. I am lead into another false awakening.

I wake up on the couch again to everyone coming home and I begin to tell S about my lucid dream. She does not seem as excited as I expected, but I am having trouble telling the story because I am super hot and fumbling over my words. I feel sick and she seems to think I am also. She makes the comment that if I ever think she looks like she might be sick it is because I am sick. I remember saying that earlier (not irl) and realize I must be running a fever. I am unable to move most of my body very far, so I ask her to help me up. She grabs my hand and pulls me to a sitting position, but I only fall back down again because I can not keep my body erect. I try to get off the couch, only to sort of slither with my blankets onto the floor. I still can't move. S then asks me bout my lucid dream. I tell her about how I did a reality check. I actually went through the motions, but purposely left space so that I could really breathe. (I wish I hadn't because then I would have known that I was dreaming ). After I explain about how the world was not there, it seemed like it had been photoshoped away, she begins to say how I am sick because I am working to much, and how I need to slow down, yada yada yada. I begin to defend myself and wake up on the couch.

I do a reality check immediately to find I am awake.

The Halls of Data
I am heading to work at a hospital where I am a computer operator. I am parking in a huge parking garage that is arranged more like a massive maze than a regular parking garage. My mother is in the car with me, I am taking her to show her my office. We park at what is near the far side of the parking garage and then navigate the endless passages to get to the entrance of the hospital. I know exactly how to get to the data center, though the halls in the hospital are just as confusing as the parking garage. Two different times I lose my mom and I have to go back to find her. The data center is full of various computers, some of them are state of the art, others are ancient dinosaurs.

It turns out the dinosaur computers are nearly as useful as the new ones. Several employees are heading out for a smoking break, and I go along with them. We are outside on a patio and everyone lights up cigarettes and starts to smoke. A woman coworker notices I don't have a cigarette, so she lights one and hands it to me. I take the cigarette and take a drag from it. The smoke tastes gross, though I get a nice calm feeling along with it. The feeling has nothing compared to the horrible foul taste, and then there's the smell. The foul odor. I definitely don’t want any more of that. We are all playing a game of cards to win small colorful dragon figures that are encased in yummy candy. I win a large number of them and I sit back against the wall eating the candy.


The Missing Link
I am on an island in the middle of the ocean. I am looking all over the island for Link, from the Legend of Zelda. There are enemies attacking me, they look like some kind of piggish orc or something like that… I have a sword and shield, I am able to fend off their attacks. I am cutting down the attackers as they come. Finally there is a break in the attacks, and I am able to search the island for Link. No sign of him. I go to a dock and get on a small ship and I head to the next island. I know Link should be somewhere in this area, somewhere in this little group of islands. So I search the islands one by one, fighting my way through each of the islands… but I still have not found any sign of Link. I am getting quite worried now, thinking I might not be able to find him at all. This quest might end with epic failure. I am standing on a high cliff overlooking the ocean below when a strange old man walks up to me. He is a short and fat old man, wearing a really ratty hat and an otherwise nice suit. He says he knows what I am looking for, or rather who. He says Link is in the underwater kingdom of the merfolk. He says their kingdom is directly down below, in the deep ocean. I look down off the cliff and into the water. I think I can just jump down into the water and I can swim down and find Link. I ask the man if the water below is deep enough to jump into, but before he even answers I say to hell with it and jump out as far as I can. I plunge into the deep water and swim down from there, heading down into the depths. Merpeople of some kind are interfering, attacking me with spears, I fight back with my sword, though it is a bit harder to do underwater.

I can breathe underwater just fine. I swim into some caverns below, into one big underwater chamber. There is a bubble of air in the center of the chamber and Link is in that bubble. I fight my way through some more merpeople until I reach the bubble.

I take out a ring of waterbreathing like the one in DDO, and I give it to Link. A bubble of air forms around his head, somewhere I find an extra sword to give Link, and we are able to fight our way out of the cavern together and make it to the surface. We are get out of the water and onto one of the islands, the merpeople can do nothing but float in the water and throw curses at us.

Plans: Nomad wasn't acting like himself in chat today, and I know I have been depressed lately… MoSh said he could also use some healing, so the main plan for the night was to do a group healing with the three of us. Other plans took a bit of a back seat for the night.

A Healing Mist
I am in the biodome with Basara. Most of the depression I often feel in waking life is no longer with me, Basara currently has his arms around me to comfort me.

I am there in Basara's arms for a short time before a portal he says that if we're going to do a healing we need to be sure everyone is here. I open a portal to MoSh's inner world and go through it. On the other side of the portal I find MoSh wandering around outside the house and calling out to Asuka. I don't see Asuka in the area, so I start searching for Asuka with MoSh, I call out for her as well. I focus on opening a portal to find Asuka, then I lead MoSh through the resultant portal. It turns out Asuka is in the biodome near the healing hot springs. I leave MoSh there with Asuka and focus on a portal to find Nomad. He is in the mountains of the biodome speeding down the slopes on a pair of skis? I don't think I have ever seen him skiing. So I meet up with MoSh, Asuka, and Basara back at the healing springs. We all do healing spells together, and the area fills with golden energy. A soothing mist rises off of the water and surrounds all of us as the healing spells take their effect.


All For Nothing
I am working at the data center in a hospital just like I have had to do in the past, I am working on one of many computer terminals hooked up to the servers there. Even though there are many other people there and many free computers available, it seems I am the only one doing any work there. I find this to be really annoying. The only bright side is I have a really cool computer terminal to work at, a fancy one that has a lot of power behind it and three screens showing a lot of data.

Right now I need to be pulling up some information and printing it out for the nightly reports. I click a few different things and pull up what I think is the report I need, then I click for it to print. The printer springs to life, but the data it prints out is the wrong report. It is not what I told the printer to print, not even vaguely related. I try again, and it prints a bunch more crap that has nothing to do with what I want. This is getting frustrating, and I have the idea the other people in the room know how to fix things, but instead of helping, they are sitting around making fun of the fact I can't properly print out the nightly report. I am very frustrated with being here, does this mean that the time I spent getting my Bachelor's Degree was completely wasted?

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in a forest, possibly a snowy forest. There was an animal like a wolf that would eat humans. I may have seen it.

I was then at the house or apartment of an old friend of mine. My friend had me go into some bedroom. The bedroom was dark. There were clothes all over the floor. A mattress lay in the middle of the room. The mattress was also covered with clothes.

My friend kept insisting that I try on some of the women's clothes he had. But I felt like he was just trying to put me into a position where he could do something bad to me. I also felt like he wanted to do something bad to my family as well.

I was then watching some show on a stage. The show had an old variety-show feel, but it was somehow related to an anime. There were some really hot girls dancing around on stage. They were dressed in jeans and tight shirts, just casual clothes, but they had something to do with the anime, too.

At some point I came to understand that the plot line had something to do with lesbianism. This really turned me on. The show was now controllable, as if I were watching it on YouTube. I did all kinds of frantic forwarding and rewinding, trying to get to the point where this assumed hot lesbian scene had occurred.

But suddenly, the screen went blank. I realized I had been watching this on my computer the whole time. My computer's screen was black, with only a cursor blinking in the upper left corner. I started to smell a plasticky, burning smell. I could tell it was coming from my computer's disk drive.

I knew I had burnt out my computer. I was pretty sure I couldn't get a new one for a while. I wondered what the heck I was going to do.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm at a set of buildings that look kind of like an old-fashioned elementary school. I'm there to sign up for offline 'HITs' [Human Intelligence Tasks, small jobs for which I will get paid]. There are various organizations offering HITs to people, such as the Registrar of Voters. To work on each organization's HITs, you have to go to that organization's counter to sign up for them. When I get to one of the counters, I discover that signing up requires you to show an ID card, and I don't have mine with me. I have to go back to my car to get my purse and driver's license. Before I leave the counter, though, I notice a sheet of paper lying on it with P.'s name written on top. That means she's signing up for one of that organization's HITs, too.

When my next dream begins, a boy from my high school class appears. As soon as I see this happen, I lock on to him as the focus of my attention, knowing that the appearance of an image out of darkness like that must mean that a dream is beginning. Then other classmates of ours begin to appear around him, followed by the environment we're all in. We're in what appears to be a restaurant seating area, sitting around long, high tables on chairs designed to match their height. This area is covered and enclosed on three sides, and it's on our high school campus. Every single student sitting in the area is someone I recognize from high school. A female teacher I had and another, male staff member are also in the crowd there, walking around between the tables.

I get up from my seat and walk out of the seating area, heading out into the main part of the campus. Beautiful morning sunlight illuminates the campus. I take two steps, then take off from the ground and start flying around, staying at about the height of the roof lines of the single-story buildings. Typically for me, flying is the first thing I think of to do when I find myself lucid dreaming. Flying is fun, as always, and feels good. I have good flying control this time, but not perfect control. I don't feel like I'm being pulled or pushed in any direction, but at one point, I start losing altitude, and reach out to touch the top edge of a concrete-block wall with my fingers as I pass by it. It feels exactly like it would in reality, but I get the strange sense that it takes a split second for my brain to generate the simulated sensation, creating a tiny delay between touching the wall and receiving the sensory input. I recover and continue flying along.

As I pass the edge of one building's roof, I notice a crawlspace that you can't see from the ground. It's formed by the flat, real roof and the pointy, upper edges of the building's decorative facades, which extend above the real roof and slant toward each other, creating an empty space shaped like a long, triangular prism. I try to make a 90-degree left turn and enter this space, but I find I can't; I just start sinking down again. I shrug off this failure, recover, and continue flying across the campus. I reach an area where the long walls of two buildings run parallel to each other, and have crenellated ramparts [those square things on the top of the walls of a castle] at the top. As I'm flying along in between these two walls, the dream ends and I wake up.

I make a post at the beginning of a thread on a message board that turns out to be ridiculously, insanely popular, so that my computer is flooded with e-mail notifications from people posting to the thread at a rate of about one or two per second. [This dream may or may not have been at the beginning of the previous sleep cycle, I don't remember.]

I'm in a building that consists of a bunch of interconnected rooms that are filled with a colorful, random assortment of furniture and stuff. It kind of looks like a cross between someone's house and an antique store. [I just visited a bunch of antique stores on Friday, February 4.] I know I'm dreaming without any particular clue. I walk through the series of rooms, admiring the details of the dream environment, observing it with close attention. [That has been my lucid-dreaming goal for the last couple of days.] I think, I have to stay here as long as I can.

I reach a point when the sequence of rooms ends in a short T-intersection of passageways. I come up to the place where the long passageway I had been walking through ends. There is a piece of light-blue yarn hanging down in front of a low wall that stands in front of the back wall of the room. I touch the piece of yarn, running my fingers down it; it feels real. Then, I realize that the low wall it's hanging in front of is a mirror. It's a very speckly, dim mirror, and I can't see my reflection in it very clearly, but I can tell it's a mirror. I think, Hey, in a dream, you can walk through these and get to somewhere else. I straighten up and step forward with the intention of walking through the mirror.

First my arms, and then my head and part of my upper body go through the surface of the mirror. It is the coolest feeling. Like when I walked through the wall, I feel a slight resistance at first and then it yields to me, but this time, instead of feeling like something thin and hard breaking, it feels like going through a thick, liquid membrane. The membrane stays where it is as I go through it; I can feel it on my skin. There's nothing beyond the surface of the mirror but blackness, though. I realize that I didn't really think about what I expected to be on the other side before I started going through the mirror. Not wanting to go into the unknown, I pull back, out of the mirror.

I notice another, smaller mirror to my right. Just to continue experimenting with this newly-discovered ability, I start putting my fingers through the surface. Once again, they go right in. I don't really want to try to get anywhere else anymore, though, so I pull them back out. They come away with a silver coating of liquid mercury on them. I shake my hand to get the stuff off my fingers, but I'm aware that liquid mercury can't really hurt me in a dream.

In the small room off to the right, there is a slightly fat, female DC. I know her from somewhere, and know that her name is Melody. [Which is strange, because I've known several people named Melody and this DC didn't look like any of them.] We talk briefly [I don't remember about what], and then I turn away to explore the other side of the T-intersection, the small room off to the left of the big mirror. As I'm going into that room, I go, “Oh, yeah.” I remember the basic Task of the Month. I turn back around and say, “Melody. Melody!” She starts approaching me, and I approach her. When I get close enough, I put my arms behind her head and shoulders and lean in to kiss her. She realizes what I'm trying to do and pulls away with a look of revulsion. I say, “Just on the cheek. Please?” She stops pulling away and just stands there and lets me kiss her. I give her a kiss on the closest, most convenient spot I can reach, which is on the forehead, just above her right eye. Then I let her go, and she leaves. I look back at the big mirror and consider trying to get to Neopia by going through it, but I decide not to because I don't trust my dream control abilities that far. I've never done that before, and I'm afraid of it going wrong.

False awakening in my current, real room. I hear a sound that I recognize as the sound of fish splashing in a fishtank. I also hear P. moving around in her bed, which is on the other side of the room, parallel to mine. I don't open my eyes to look, but I do say aloud, “No! P. can't be here, and neither can her fish!”

“Yes, I can!” says P.

“When did you get home?” I ask her.

“Yesterday.”

“Oh.”

When I woke up for real, I found this FA rather amusing. Also, I was surprised that I'd had a dream that consisted entirely of sounds, with no visuals at all.

DELETED

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm on a strange version of the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. Instead of one continuous waterway that meanders across solid ground like a real river, it consists of a series of interconnected, rectangular pools that are separated from each other by waterfalls. They're all still surrounded by jungle foliage, though, and they all have some kind of animatronic animal in or around them. One of them has an animatronic person swimming in the middle. It's nighttime.

I'm navigating these waterways all alone, in a single-person canoe. As I paddle my canoe along, I think, I hate going through this ride by myself. There's no one to do the spiel for me. I try to do it myself, but I'm not as good at it as the regular skippers are. I go over at least one waterfall in my canoe. There's no impact when my canoe hits the water; it just calmly transitions from one pool to the next.

I reach a particularly tall waterfall, with a bunch of gray rocks between the pool I'm in and the one below it. I'm tired of putting in the effort it takes to paddle, so I give up trying to canoe my way through the ride and just climb down the rocks. When I reach the lower pool, I decide to go swimming in it.

When I get into the pool, I start treading water. I move very quickly across the large, rectangular pool by this means, keeping my head completely out of the water the entire time, and feeling very proud of the fact that I've mastered the skill of treading water. [Which I haven't done in real life, by the way; I can sort of do it, but I'm not any good at it at all.] Being in the water feels really, really nice.

[Recall is a little hazy here. I think I remember the following two things:] Two or more people pour more water into the pool I'm in, making it colder. I get into and out of the water at least once. [I definitely remember everything from here on out:] I'm now in a smaller, but still rectangular pool, right next to the bigger one I initially got into. The shorter ends of the two rectangles are right next to each other. I look around in this smaller pool for a way to climb out. At first, I'm disappointed because I don't see one, but then I see it. There are some metal steps leading out of the pool, attached to the interior wall near the far corner. There are two girls I don't know in the water near the steps. I also see the B. brothers crouched down near the other short end of the pool, looking at me. [They're acquaintances from real life; I've mentioned them in my dream journal before in this entry. They're the two brothers who sang with the Parrish girls.] I'm naked, so when I see them, I imagine a bikini, and it appears on my body. [Despite this, at no point did I ever become lucid.] Then I climb out of the pool.

[Different dream.] I'm at home [or possibly in a hotel room; it didn't look like any of our houses], lounging around on a bed, doing something on my laptop. My parents want to go out somewhere, but I'm not ready. My dad jokes, "This battery-powered computer is called a 'wait-for-me device!'" I laugh a little, then stop what I'm doing, get up, and go to finish getting dressed so that we can go. Then my alarm went off and I got up.

I'm on a break from thinking too much about LDing. This has made my dreams easier to remember, perhaps because there is less pressure on my brain.

Just like in real life, I am sick and laying down to rest on the bed. It's my same bed, but it's in the flat I had with my ex, near Berlin. Or at least, I recognize it as such, but this flat is actually much more beautiful and expensive looking.

My ex is in the other room, with him are two of his friends, both of whom I know from when we lived in Vancouver. I get up to go out, passing through a room/hallway that has my ex's computer in it. It's on. I glance at the screen and see some form of Messenger running - though it's not MSN. On it are active conversations from other friends of his in Vancouver. They all appear to be congratulating him and the two friends that are visiting, wishing them all the best and lots of fun. It doesn't say so, but I gather that my ex and his two friends are going to move in together. I wonder to myself if it will be here in Germany, or in Ireland, where he is living in RL now. I briefly wonder why he is back in Germany again.

I move to the next room. They are talking and laughing loudly, but go quiet when I enter. Awkward. I am looking for something healthy to eat, as I am not feeling well. All I can find is a big paper bag full of all kinds of junk food. They all freak out when I find it, and I tell them to relax, I don't want their stupid crap food. Not finding anything, I leave the room. My ex follows me.

In the room with the computer again, my ex immediately notices that his screen has been scrolled. He looks worried and slightly angry, asking me if I read his conversation. I say "Why would I want to read your conversation?" and look away. He seems to believe me. I feel guilty for lying.

Flash now to one of his friends questioning me - he's asking me if my ex and I are getting back together, or "kissing and making up" as he calls it. I look at him like he's nuts and tell him as much, saying that's the last thing I want. I can tell my ex's friend is just asking to make sure it's a safe bet to move in with him, but I'm not supposed to know so I stay quiet.

Feelings: confusion, guilt, bitterness, alienation, a feeling of jealousy when looking around the nice flat

I wrote down notes for this a few days ago, but I never fleshed them out into narrative form. It would take a lot of work to do that now, and I'd probably forget some details, so I'm just going to post the notes:

[INDENT][RIGHT][SIZE="1"][COLOR="#808080"]09.01.2011[/COLOR][/SIZE][/RIGHT]
[SIZE="3"][COLOR="Black"]1/9/11 - 2[/COLOR][/SIZE] [SIZE="1"][COLOR="#808080"](Non-lucid)[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE="1"][COLOR="#808080"]NON-DREAM[/COLOR] [COLOR="#1E90FF"]DREAM[/COLOR] [COLOR="#DC143C"]LUCID[/COLOR][/SIZE]

[COLOR="#808080"][/COLOR][COLOR="#1E90FF"]

1) at desk on computer talking to some guy

2) Mr C's place looking for LD stuff see people I know look for Rockies jersey? get food put it down can't find it later write note about my dad Mr. S yells at me I wait for NBA and BS to go to school but it's 7:55 and they don't I'm afraid of being late can't find my school stuff but run out anyways hitchhike get a car outside of grocery store another car drives along and helps the driver is a scuba diver I tell her that's cool I get to school on time see genitals on the ground in a puddle of fluid must've been cut off disgusting i go into main office ask for stuff there are funny secretaries there kind of like BF and I I'm afraid to in public I'll get laughed at I go on computer to input information but it asks if I'm from Hull[/COLOR][/INDENT]

I'm still sick so I've been less diligent about taking notes. On the flip side, I'm getting a bit better at remembering dreams without notes.

Waves
Something about oceans waves. I think I'm discussing the science of waves with my sister. And the difference between waves and tides. Or something.

fragment
I know there was a dream in here. Maybe something about my sister.

Summer School
Why is this a recurring dream theme for me? I never took summer classes in my life. I've returned to my mother's house for the summer and I am attending classes in my old high school. I only have two changes of clothes, so I wear them over and over again. I am in a classroom with many of my high school classmates and my high school US history teacher. We are all seated at computers like a computer lab. I am and the end of the back row, at the farthest point in the room from the teacher. I'm trying to change the desktop background on my computer.

Then I am back at my mother's house, looking at my clothes in the closet. I think to go back to my apartment downtown for the weekend so I can pick up so more clothes and collect the mail.

Type: Regular dream.
Lucidity: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Vividness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Notes:
I seem to be more motivated to record my dreams when I'm in school. Holidays and weekends, less so.

Last night, I dreamed that I was on a balcony, overlooking some sort of Caribbean-style ocean, and the time appeared to be twilight. The ocean water was mint green and blue, getting darker as it radiated out towards the horizon. I knew the balcony was right where the ocean water hit the beach; if I were to look down, I would see the sand.

There was a square night table, probably only a foot high at most, which was made out of light wood, like oak. It wasn't polished and the edges were still sharp as if it hadn't been sanded down. It was basically slabs of wood that were shaped like a small table, but in my mind (at the time, anyways) it was normal. There was one large drawer in the front of it with a basic round handle, also made of unpolished wood. I pulled it out and saw a closed laptop. It was black with thin, white rubber grips on the sides, and a silver top. There was no logo on top, so I don't know what brand or type of laptop it was.

I put it on the short table, ignoring the fact that even though the drawer was still way open, I was sitting right in front of the table as if nothing was there. I didn't close the drawer at all, but instead just sat in front of the table and opened the laptop lid. There was no sliding mechanism; I just pulled it open, and immediately it opened to an iPhoto-like program, which definitely had an Apple-like air to it. The background was dark gray, and there was a cover flow sort of picture arrangement. At that moment, my mother had just appeared beside me, so I nudged over and let her look through them.

She clicked on one photo which enlarged it, and brought the cover flow to the bottom of the screen, making it smaller. It was a picture of her ex-boyfriend.

"Look!" she said, somewhat excited.

"Mom," I told her sternly. My mom's ex-boyfriend was an abusive jerk, and I knew this even in the dream.

She moved onto the next photograph, this time one with the two of them together, making funny faces.

"Mom! I don't want you looking through these fucking pictures of him on the computer." The word choice sounded very controlling, but it didn't occur to me in the dream that there was anything wrong with it.

She clicked on another photo, and I didn't get too good of a look at it; I simply looked at her again and pushed her a bit. "Mom! Did you hear what I fucking said? Delete them!"

That's all I remember.

I think I started to get sick this day, which might explain the weird and stressful dreams.

Jumbled Mess
0845: Software at work is breaking. We buy something close but it fails two. I want a chance to fix it. The whole thing catches on fire. I think if break it into pieces, it will work. I try to convince people I was wedding chaplain in the army. On a beach with a big bon fire. Also like SAV home office.

Weird Father Dream
1045: Father trying to sell solve computer problem. ... try to call Google but their office won't open for a few hours. He3 suggests we break into their office and steal what we need. I say let's not be so hasty. Since the problem can wait, no sense committing a crime. We can solve it any time during the week, when their office will be open.

Then similar situation in a college class. Father want to cheat on a test. He tries the ... way into a parking lot to avoid the fence. He wants to lie to the professor about being on vacation.

More Paranoia
1205: Trying to solve math problems with my sister. Don't have a calculator. My father's truck is in a parking lot. The brakes barely work. Security cameras everywhere.

I'm playing at Pokerstars on my laptop, and losing pretty bad, when my machine suddenly crashes with a blue screen of death. I panic and restart, then try and diagnose the problem. I find that I have a virus from the old music site Kazaa, and Google from another computer to try and find the solution. I realize my trusty flash drive has the antivirus software I need, so I grab it and jack into the laptop.

When I open up "My Computer," I realize that every machine on the botnet is listed, an endless list with constantly shifting names (failed RC). Finding my flash drive, with the appropriate software, will be impossible... The visuals for this are all very vivid.

My parents and I are at the Cincinnati Museum Center taking in an exhibit on history. Multiple periods are contrasted, from ancient Assyrian engravings to the civil rights struggles in America. The exhibit proper ends with a model of a very pretty African-American girl in pearls and a cocktail dress getting lynched... then opens into a gift shop. People are sitting on benches in the shop with laptops, playing poker on Pokerstars.net. My mom comments on this as rather silly, then goes to discuss some business about layaway.

Poker serves as a transition point to an outdoors scene, where I sit down to a large ring game of Holdem. My mom insists on joining me, and initially the other players are fine with it. However, she is slow at playing and screws up her deal of Omaha when it comes around to her. The game goes back to Holdem and I get AK in the hole. My mom goes all-in, and I look at my cards again (which have become AA, so missed reality check) and call. Other players are disgusted with me for some reason...

I false awaken into my room at home, then go downstairs. My brother and his friend are there and report also dreaming about poker. With some questioning I find that they shared my dream, varying in minor details. I freak out about this and wake up.