All DJ Entries

Dl1 - Driving around the neighborhood, indistinct local roads, all very grey. Collide with other car driver (old ds). Agree to give him some more and pull out wad of cash. But trick him, the money is not to fix his car but to pay for him to do some work for me.
He has to write a long essay for me.

Dl2 - In an office, im given a form that has been filled out. I must change the form as its all filled out incorrectly: wrong address, lots missing. I fill out some details then ring firm to check they have not acted on application yet. It's ok there is still time to change the details before they go live on their system. The application is fraudulent, all the needed information is taken from random spurious sources.

Dl3 - A country had been invaded by someone. I can see a kind of zoomed out view of the country with the natives highlighted black and the invading army highlighted in red.
It shows there are far more invaders that native peoples and where highest concentrations are.
I am standing on a hillside (zoomed out) overlooking the shores of the other country and far off towns, undersiege. I need to save the country. I abseil down cliffs to the beach below. There are some caves below the chalk cliffs.
A bearded man asks if I want to buy some vials of earth. The earth is in different colours and is good for your health. I buy some and taste it, it's disgusting.

He then sells me a selection of balloon like worms of different colours. I take one out and it crawls/slides onto my face. This one is whitish in colour, looks a bit like intestines. Every hair on my body stands up as it crawls over my lips and feeds on me. I try to move it away and it goes onto my neck. I scream inwardly Aaaaaaaaaa!!!!

Dl4 - I go across the sea and again see a zoomed out view of all the important towns and roads. I choose to land away from the main towns where the land slopes down. I travel through some weird stick forest, where the trees are like giant twigs. I manage to get through without being spotted.
Again, I see zoomed out view of towns on hillside. I set fire to a giant CD, shiny silver and roll it at town at bottom of the hill. It sets fire to the town and a chain reaction is set in motion as town after town is set ablaze.
The main towns do not realise until it is to late and the battle is won.
The leaders of the opposing army are brought to meet with the other sides leaders.
All seems victorious until a knight of the other sides army grabs a gigantic sword, claymore and proceeds to cut everyones heads off in one swing. Leading to a sudden reversal of fortunes.

The bit with the worms were too vivid and bit with the earth was the first time I recall tasting anything in a dream...I think.

I go to a school called JMU in Virginia. I was on campus for this entire dream. The landscape and buildings were slightly different but in my mind I was at the same locations on campus that are in my real life. Of course I don't remember where the dream started, but the first memory I have is that I'm walking with four or five guys as they're following me down this path that has locker room buildings to the left and expanse on the right and in front of us. We walk up to a table where a person is sitting with a paper. He asks us to check in for camp so I look back at the guys and say this is my group and I'm the leader. In high school I did a youthgroup called Younglife so in the dream I'm their Younglife leader and we're at a camp that I've been to IRL. We go into a locker room building that's supposedly our cabin and I start to change my clothes because I remember what the next event is. I mean to change into gym shorts but instead I put on pajamas and curse myself for it. I walk down a hallway into another room which has someone on a bed and a girl on the ground playing with a laptop. The person on the bed tells me to play with the girl as I assume in my mind it's the game League of Legends.

The dream turns to me waking up in a different locker room on my campus. I see that there's our football team and its coaches around a fire screaming. Then, a random player runs and jumps over the fire. Another one comes and jumps but lands in the fire, but he seems to not be feeling any pain though he's now on fire.

Then I'm in this building that I think is a dining hall on my campus with my back up against a wall. There's a group of people around me and I see this girl that I've had a past with, let's call her Kristen, with another group of people. I start telling the story of the fire to the people around me but really I'm looking into Kristen's eyes and she's looking right back at me from across the room.

It jumps to me walking out of one of the dorm buildings on my campus, this time everything is completely alike that of real life. I pass Kristen and she looks at me smiling and says "Grey Swanson" and I say "hello" to her as I keep walking. Then I see another girl that has a boyfriend irl but continues to try to lead me on, I go up to her and give her a hug where my arms go under hers and I press closely to her. I don't think I've had many kinds of these hugs ever. She hands me her phone and I'm looking at her snap story and it's of me first walking up from a different way with buildings that don't exist, then me hugging her, then me hugging her and looking at the camera and saying something. The dream skips to me riding a skateboard towards a building on campus passing people. I remember being very afraid of falling and embarrassing myself.

Then, I was in my car with a friend named Grayson riding up to another place on campus but there was snow on the ground going up the hill so we couldn't make it. There was snow covering half of the road so I go around it then the road goes right up a very steep hill with snow at the top so it's blocked. I'm trying to turn my car around but it's getting stuck in the snow. There's a small place where it looks like someone turned around with a 3 point turn. Meanwhile, there's another story of this bomber going on simultaneously setting up mines to blow up the bridge (which was a hill) that we are on. We get the car turned around and it's sliding back down the hill. There's a piece of road missing so one of my brothers is there trying to figure out how to fix it.

My mind thinks it's time to wake up so it creates this alarm. I'm lying in my bed listening to this music I've never heard before. It sounds sort of like an ancient hymn maybe from a long time ago, but I can't really describe it. I manage to get my dream arm over to the desk next to my bed to look at my phone as the music playing happens to have an album cover showing on my phone. It was white and brown of clouds with a blue background.

Next, I was in another dream walking behind a friend on this massive hill that in my mind was the big hill next to where I live irl but instead it's a huge mountain expanse. We are walking sideways on the steep hill as I remark to whoever is in front of me that I'm afraid that I'm going to fall down the hill. We are grabbing tree branches as it starts to get steep but the trees are falling out of the ground. The owners of the house come out, 1 old guy and 2 old ladies. They start to yell and say that I have to pay for the trees but I'm already pissed off about that. He writes a check for 5,000 dollars but the notion is that I have to pay that so I laugh and grab the check and rip it up.

The music part of my dream really interests me. I want to hear more music that I've never heard before.

I was a general, leading an army consisting of cavalry and bowmen. We were moving uphill. We could see enemy forces down the hill, in a huge valley. After placing bowmen on the hill, with cavalry we charged the enemies.

I was on the hill when I checked the RC. I counted 5 fingers, they were hard to count, so I knew that I was in a dream. I wanted to fly but I could not fly, because my lucidity was not high. I watched the surroundings for a few minutes. Then I woke up.

FA - Night of the rats

Midnight. I went out of my bed and took some clothes from wardrobe. Next, I went to the kitchen and looked at shelves. They were occupied by hordes of rats. When I came closer, thay started to make squeaky noises and chased me. I ran outside through the door.

It was dark and cold. The weather was rainy. I decided to go for a walk onto a hill that's just behind my house. I got to my destination in a few seconds. When I turned around to look at my house and it's neighborhood, I saw sun going up.

I told to myself "It took me much longer to get here before." And ran towards the house. When I walked through the door, everything looked like a 3D animation. I entered the kitchen and saw my siblings sitting on chairs, and a weird man. He had burned face, and was wearing black leather cape. He looked like Freddy Krueger.

He moved to the shelves, opened them and got attacked by rats. I asked siblings "What's going on?" And my sister said "It's the night of the rats... now animated in 3D!" Then the doors opened and a girl from my class appeared.

She asked me if I can go with her to her birthday party at my neighbor's house. I told her "But I've got no shoes!" She said "Don't worry, I'll give you mine!". She gave me shoes with spike heels and we went to the neighbor's house.

At the entrance I met with her boyfriend, gave her shoes back and stayed outside with him. We talked about nothing in particular. After a while she came back with other girls from my class. I told "Oh, I've got to go now. Bye!" and went away.

When going straight the wet, cold road I heard them saying "Is he drunk?" "No. He just appeared... and went away.". I entered the kitchen and looked at the shelves, witing for rats to come.

April 25, 2015

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My New Mommy
I was in class with the kids but we were in this weird room. I sat in the corner with my computer, and I greeted the kids as they came in because the door was right in my corner. I remember that the room was made with light wooden floors and walls, and was very open to the outside; there were big windows. We all had on headphones with microphones that were all connected, so all we could hear was each other. I was checking kids' papers (we did research papers) and sources. M and T had the same source for their paper about women's suffrage. I walked around a little more and then sat down and turned on my headphones. K said "if i loose my mom and I'm all tragic will you be my new mommy Ms. Kestrel?" And I pretended I didn't hear it, because I wasn't sure what an appropriate response would be...

I was with K, T and M later at recess or something and we walked around the back of the school. There were interesting stairs and weird structures so I climbed the stairs and came to a pretty hill overlooking an orchard of sorts with some forested areas surrounding it. It was sunset and very pretty. It reminded me a lot of the space Zukin and I found in Germany while biking one day.



The Next Level Cult

I was in some kind of survival game, or a spiritual/intuition test. A bunch of people were let into a big room with about 7 holes in the ceiling and ladders hanging down from them. We had to pick one of the ladders to go through. N (one of my students) was there but I don think I recognized anyone else. He was trying to reach one of the ladders but couldn't because he was too small. I lifted him up to it and then went to a spot where two ladders were in the far left corner. Almost everyone was choosing the ladder that had a platform to reach it, but something drew me to the other one. It wasn't a lot harder to get to or anything, so I didn't know why everyone was going up the other one. I had to fenangle just a little bit to reach it, and climbed up...

I came up into another room with a really tall ceiling. There was also some ledges. It was as if the room before had a huge box over it, if that makes sense. There was a very short (maybe a foot tall) fence down the middle of the room, which was made of spaghetti, or something else that wasn't all that strong. There were about 15-20 people on my side and lots of people on the other side. There was a voice through a speaker somewhere. It told us that anyone who tried to cross the fence in the middle would be thrown off the edge, into something deadly... The voice also told everyone on the other side of the room to go back home. Then the guy in charge of this event came up the ladder on our side, and greeted us as people who had good intuition. The ladder test was to weed out the people whose intuition wasn't good enough for the following tests and trials.

We all sat in a circle and he explained the point of this all to us. He said we would be feasting tonight... he was sitting between me and a guy I had met and been chatting to, and he seemed to be favoring us, like talking mostly to us, or at least looking at us more. Anyway, he said we'd be feasting and then looked right at me, ran his hand down my back to my waist. "Feasting," he repeated and I was just like "No." Very firmly.

He seemed put off but in a good way, as if I had impressed him, and moved to the girl sitting next to me and said "feasting?" She said hesitantly no. He tried a few more girls and then said something about us "not liking vampires too, I guess." I rolled my eyes and we were all thinking, ugh, Twilight. The Master said, "well, I mean, I read the first books." I had to confess that I had as well in high school. Then he talked about Bella birthing Renesme and this is where it got even weirder... He got on the floor and spread his legs, pretending to be giving birth, scooting around on the floor on his butt and making weird faces. "You'd pay to see that, right?!" We were all a little disconcerted. "Right?!" He was a little crazed here, and then he zeroed in on me again which made me feel super uncomfortable. It was as if he was targeting me more now, and planned to get me pregnant, then keep everyone here for 9 months to watch me have his baby... That or like he knew I was already pregnant or something. I was starting to think this guy was an insane creep... But this test was somehow important to complete.

We moved on to a new conversation though I can't remember the topic. I know that we broke off to do a series of tests but that whenever the Master stood up and held out his hands we were to create a linked circle. It got more and more cultish. Eventually we ended up at my house; we were competing in my driveway. One of us had a little chocolate-ish blob and the other was supposed to try to squish it. I was partnered with H (one of my students) who had just appeared there. H's blob started going down the driveway hill and I was able to pretty easily squish it, so I won and started up the driveway again. It had been all nice and warm and spring-like, but once I got to the top of the driveway, in front of the garage, there was snow on the ground. I was walking through it barefoot (we were all wearing barely anything by now; short shorts and tank tops with hair pulled up) and then the Master threw snow at me and it got in my left ear. He started throwing snow at all of us, and we weren't quite sure what to do about it. None of us were sure whether this guy was a mad creep or a genius.

I went into the porch but noticed a circle gathering in the garage, so I dropped my stuff and went to join the circle. We were all standing. The Master was standing opposite me and said, "everyone sit down." But even though i heard him clearly, at the same time there was a crystal clear, loud, strong voice in my left ear that said "Don't. Move." So I stayed standing. 3 or 4 other people stayed standing and the rest were sitting. All the sitting people closed their eyes and seemed to be asleep. The Master looked at each of us (one of them was the guy I met at the beginning and had a slight crush on) and was about to give further instructions (I knew now that I had passed some sort of spiritual or other-worldly test... I had been chosen, but I don't know what for) but I woke up.

It's strange, because I think I was in and out of waking throughout this whole dream. Like, I knew I was awake in bed even as I was in the dream. Two places at once, almost. It was strange.

I was walking away from a place. I saw buses. I was trying to choose one to ride. It's daytime. I see many buildings to the side, but no skyscraper.

I was inside a mall of sorts. I went to a fruit stand.

I was with Emman. We were in a park. He was walking up hill/bridge. He was wearing really short shorts.

I was trying to fly using an airball (Avatar Airbender reference).

---

Notes:

- No alarm, slept at around 1, woke up at around 7 am, but got up at 8.
- Slept listening to Game Theory. I let it finish.

I was in a dark corridor. A hospital? I felt afraid. I was becoming lucid but it's hard to maintain. I thought of a recently deceased person, a priest, and I saw an old man along the corridor. I think he was sitting down or standing by a door. He looked mild but I "rushed" (slowly) towards him and jumped-kicked. We both fell down. I lost lucidity.

I was in a school. USLS. I was walking down the corridors. I was looking for something. I was with a few people. They keep changing. I was looking for the library. I checked the map. There's one nearby, but then I had to go elsewhere.

I went up a small hill. I tried to slide through the roots of a tree but I got scared and went up the hill and walked down.

Lucy, you did it again! I got another DILD this morning! I was dreaming that I was driving this car...it was such a beautiful scenery. Then, I approach this very steep hill and I thought to myself, "There is no way possible I will live if I go down that hill...this has got o be a dream!" For a split second, I thought about me driving down that hill, but I thought, "What if you go down that hill and die?" Don't try that as a reality check! I did my levitation RC instead and levitated and then like magic, everything stopped and I was lucid. I felt the vibrations and just laid there waiting to pop out but I never did. I could see my room through my closed eyelids so I concentrated on my third eye and the vibes came back, but I just couldn't wiggle out...sigh. Oh well, keep them coming Lucy!

NOTE TO SELF: What I should have realized was that I was already 'out' and just changed the dream scene

With my friend's car, I drive around town. He needs it back soon, so I get on a motorcycle and start going really fast. It's awesome. I'm mostly looking for a pawn shop so I can get a guitar for cheap, but don't see any. I end up riding the whole night and as the sun comes up, I find my mom at the University welcome center. She's trying to get me to live on campus a year before I start taking classes. I explain that housing is way cheaper off campus, and ride up the hill through lots of tents as she follows me. Apparently there is a big cult that has set up camp at the university, and they're kind of threatening. All dressed in the Sam white clothing, and full of pride, they all stare at me blankly as I ride along their camp. I pass them quickly but reach a dead end. Not for me. I dive and slide under a barbed wire fence to freedom! I see a road in the distance and make my way back to the relative safety of society.

Riding that dirt bike really stood out as a main part. Throwing it around, taking really sharp turns, power sliding all over, just an amazingly fun time.

I'm driving my mom's car for the first time in a while, and am having a grand old time doing 360s on the snowy road, while avoiding crashing into the other traffic on the road. I turn up a hill to my right and the back end of the car whips around half way, I turn the wheel the other direction, slam it in reverse and put the pedal to the floor, causing the car to do 2 complete spins. I'm heading toward a big snow bank, so I turn the wheel the other way and keep the pedal to the floor. The car starts going back down the hill toward the road. It's really slippery, so I start turning about a hundred feet before the road. Sliding sideways pretty fast now, I keep my foot on the gas and power slide out into the main road. Another car is coming the opposite direction. I do some fancy maneuvering with the steering wheel to get out of the power slide and just barely avoid the oncoming car. Close call there. Now on the main road, I'm just driving normally. Another car comes, but it is really straddling the center line. I move over to avoid it, but it's too far on my side. I spin my car sideways to avoid a head on collision, and just tap the front headlight of the other car with the rear bumper of mine. I pull over into the nearby store to see if the other car is damaged or not. She has already pulled in, and the store owner and her are looking at the car. I get out, turn the car off, and walk up, seeing a bunch of fluid pouring out of the other car. It looks like radiator fluid. At least it's coming out of the radiator, it really looks just like water. The store owner says, "You might want to add some oil or antifreeze to it." The other driver looks at her, gets a really upset look on her face and yells back, "Really?!? Obviously I'll have to add more coolant to it! How could I not?" I notice a pipe has come completely loose. If that pipe could just be welded back on, she'd be good to go. I think about possible repair costs and mechanic labor. Looking at the pipe again, a new pipe might not be that expensive, it's a straight tube going between two fittings. So one pipe, one fitting, and an hour tops to weld it, can't be much more than $200. I'm relieved that it won't be very expensive because I'm broke. Although it's really ironic that I didn't crash at all while messing around, but only when I started to drive safely that something happened...

Riding my bicycle along a road, it begins to get steeper and steeper. There are other people also on bicycles who had to stop and walk their bikes. I even see a few cars that are unable to climb the hill. It's so steep, that it's hard to walk up. I'm in a higher gear, but the hill came on so fast that I am unable to downshift as quickly as I would like, and just muscle through it for a few pedal strokes as the bike downshifts. People tell me I can't make it, but I believe I can. My legs feel like they are on fire, as they shake with all my energy going into each pedal stroke. I'm still not in the lowest gear, but I know that if I downshift, I will lose all my momentum and that will be the end of it for me. So I push on, letting my legs burn, shake, and otherwise crank the pedals in each revolution. As the hill gets even steeper, I push even harder - beyond where I thought my maximum limit existed. I even start to gain some speed as the hill gets steeper. It's like my legs are growing stronger the more I push myself. Passing beyond everyone, I feel happy that I didn't give up when no one else believed in me.

I take this dream as encouragement to always believe in myself and give life everything I've got, no matter how things look to others, and even no matter how hopeless things may look to me.

Late to meet someone, I am walking quickly down the road. I reach a train crossing just as a train does and have to wait. I walk right up to it, standing a few feet away as it rushes by. Looking down, I see two golden vajras protruding up from the platform. I think that maybe this is a bad idea in case it derails so I step back a bit. As soon as I do, I see one of the train cars sway, and hit a bump, jumping off the track. All the cars behind it are pulled off the tracks as well, and it jack-knifes off the tracks, one of the train cars slides off right where I was standing.

I see another train approaching, but on a parallel track as the first one. It hasn't derailed, but I don't know what it will do when it reaches the first one. It's coming in fast. I don't know if it will be safer to run away the direction it is traveling, or against its direction of travel. If I go against the direction of travel, I'll run into it sooner, but also I'll be upstream of the trouble sooner.

I decide on upstream and quickly run. The second train going 90 mph hits the side of the first derailed train that spilled over to its track, and it is pushed off the tracks as well. Pushed off the opposite side as me, I feel relief from danger. But only until the car that is pushed off the tracks forces the one behind it to bend the other way, where it hits the back of the first train and stops, sending the rest of the train flying off my side of the tracks.

In mid-sprint, I duck, and feel the train fly just inches away from me before it smashes into the ground, dirt flying everywhere like an explosion. I feel a strong continual blast of air as the train continues to rush by, totally filling the entire area I would have been if I ran the opposite direction!

I walk down the tracks to see if anyone got injured or trapped that I might be able to help, but it seems to have just been a freight train and no one else was in its path. Walking down the tracks, I notice a bunch of stairs leading up to the tracks - the only remains from some old industrial buildings that have been dismantled. I don't see much of the foundation, just the inner stairs following the nap of the earth.

I walk up one of the stairs, and notice a few sets of golden 4 pronged vajras built into the tops of the stairs, and in other places of the foundation that just now becomes visible. I feel like there were forces and beings beyond my comprehension that helped me survive this.

One of my friends comes at me, totally distraught over the loss of her friend in the crash. Which is odd, because no one else was there, but I try to find her friend anyway. We find a man who has a 3D map of the entire Ft. C. city, and he gives it to me. Quite a nice map really. My friend realizes that her friend is okay, and we continue on our way. I walk into a building and try to spit out a huge wad of gum. So massive, I don't even know how I got it in my mouth. Other people come in right as I'm trying to do this to brush their teeth. I have my tooth brush with me as well, and they comment that "we're brushing our teeth too!" I get the gum out and throw it away.

Ritual: I had a vibrating alarm in my hand, but I think it was the cat that woke me, as there was still four minutes left on the alarm when I got up after the end of the dream. The cat is a likely culprit, since he frequently comes and meows at me several times in the morning, even after he's been fed. Whatever it was, luckily I had the presence of mind to remember not to move, and if the cat was meowing, somehow I did a great job of tuning him out. I focused on trying to maintain a state just below the threshhold of full waking that would allow me to DEILD.

My DEILD technique developed unintentionally out of my WILDs, since I had always instinctively chained them through inadvertant half-wakings. For this reason it feels natural to try to DEILD by "separating" my sense of the dream body from my physical one rather than incubating visual impressions, since I do WILDs the same way, so I started by trying to move my dream-limbs. I wasn't entirely sure if it was working, as it felt a lot like I was really moving, but it also seemed suspiciously easy and I wasn't getting tangled in the bedcovers. Eventually I was raising my knees alternately until it felt almost like I was marching in place. I had the impression that I was lying on my back while doing this, although it is almost certain that in WL I was actually lying on my side.

I hadn't been dreaming right before I half-woke, at least as far as I could recall, so there was no particular scenario to dwell on. Instead I just let imagery form randomly. There was a series of brightly-colored hypnagogic scenes that for some reason were all very cartoon-like. None of them turned into a dream, nor did I expect them to. All my thrashing was with the intent to integrate myself well enough into the dream body that I could "get up" out of bed.

(Actually as I was writing this account I did remember a non-lucid dream that must have occurred in the previous sleep period. But I didn't remember it at the time so it did not influence the attempt.)

I thought I could be more certain I was really dreaming if I moved in an unnatural way, so I tried some rotations. I was unable to rotate laterally, but eventually managed to rotate around my body's vertical axis until it felt like I was lying on my face. This was especially interesting because the whole time I was convinced I felt the cat standing on me, so the impression of his weight went from being located in my chest to on my back. At this point things seemed sufficiently unnatural that I was confident I was dreaming, so I continued to roll horizontally to the side until I fell right out of the bed. It still felt remarkably lifelike, but my landing was much too soft and painless to be real... in RL I'd likely suffer serious injury if I rolled out of the bed that way, since the bed is quite high and I suspect I'd hit my head on the bedside table on the way down!

DEILD: As I scrambled up from the floor, I noted that my mind felt very clear but my senses were vague. I danced a bit as I left the room, since I was still trying to transfer sensation and awareness fully from my sleeping self to my dream body. I still had a shadow of a doubt that I might be confused and actually awake, so I was slightly concerned about the prospect of leaving the house naked. However, I didn't feel like bothering with clothes if I was dreaming, and I figured as soon as I left the house I'd know for sure, because in my dreams the landscape outside is usually different.

Sure enough, as I stepped out the sliding door from the kitchen, instead of the concrete pool patio I found myself standing next to a steep hillside heavily overgrown with brush and small trees. I started climbing it and the earth was loose and leafy enough that it was easy to get purchase on it even though the slope was extremely steep; it seemed like a 60 degree incline. I remembered that my goal was to reach a winter forest, and promptly noticed the patches of wet snow on the ground, like those that appear when it has snowed recently but much of it has already melted. I momentarily wonder if I will be cold without clothes on, but remind myself that my dream persona is often a vampire, so the cold shouldn't bother me.

I have elaborate tasks stored up: there are a lot of things I plan to do in the forest, like another attempt at my lucid dare and perhaps "Hansel and Gretel" for the TOTY. But the snow reminds me of the TOTM, and I recall that was the reason I had specified a "winter" forest in the first place. I decide that it would be nice to get wings again and that the basic task won't be too hard to accomplish as long as I can find a DC to throw a snowball at. I scoop up some snow and pack it into a ball. The texture feels a little off as the snow comes together, too smooth and almost slick, rather than with the crunch of real snow.

(WLR: I realize that the odd texture of my snowball was probably influenced by dolphin's post on the TOTM thread where he says that his snowball ended up being a rice ball! I think the plasticky texture was also influenced by a knickknack I saw the other day in a Paper Source store: it was a little snowman made of some sort of white latex-like material that you could build up into shapes and then it would slowly "melt" again.)

Snowball in hand, I need to find some DCs. I look around but there is no one in sight. However I see a couple houses in the distance, off the to left beyond some open ground. I come down from the hill and go that way instead, in the direction of the houses. I figure I can ring the doorbell of one of the houses and lob the snowball at whoever opens the door—a bit rude, perhaps, but it will get the job done! But soon the problem is simplified when I see two DCs walking directly toward me, women dressed in business casual. I feel a bit anxious that something might go wrong before I get close enough to hit them with the snowball. Maybe I should just throw it now? I try to remember how the TOTM was worded: did it specify that the snowball needed to hit? [In retrospect I see that it does.]

While I vacillate we are still walking toward one another, and soon it looks like they are in range, so I throw the snowball. It misses, so I quickly make another and try again. It misses as well, so I pack a third one and aim more carefully. This time the snowball strikes the woman walking on the left on the lapel of her teal-colored suit jacket. The women seem nonplussed at first, but instead of protesting they soon start making snowballs of their own to throw at me, so we have an old-fashioned snowball fight.

Meanwhile two more DCs, middle-aged men, are approaching from another direction, and quickly get drawn into our game. One of the men seems annoyed initially when he is struck by a snowball, but before long he is participating enthusiastically and exclaiming, "I love this! I love this!" as though rediscovering the pleasures of childhood. The other man is older and well-dressed, with a strong accent that sounds not quite German but something in that neighborhood. He says, "Uh... apologies for staring. A rigorous loser, poor loser." I can make out his words distinctly but I don't know what he's referring to, and at this point I wake up.

Riding my bicycle up a really beautiful hill through a summer meadow, the road continues into a cool forest tunnel, thick with trees and vegetation. I go a few hundred feet into it, then turn around to zoom down the road really fast on my bike. I go too fast, and can't stay on the road. Trying not to crash, I go into the meadow off to my right, and bounce to a stop before walking back to the road to continue on. Lots of fun!

I reach home at the bottom of the hill, and feel a sharp poke on my hand. I look and there are several small spiders on me, apparently biting me. My hand and upper arm start to go numb, followed by my shoulder. They seem to have a powerful venom, so I try to brush them off without killing them so they stop biting me. As soon as I brush them off, I notice more on me. Using a soft leaf, I brush those off as well.

Now that I appear to be spider free, I prepare to take a shower. Suddenly, I am covered with the little spiders, and also a single other bug, not very large, but with a painful bite. It is very strong, and I can't brush this one off. I have to pinch my skin together and grab it to remove it from my arm. Tossing it aside, it runs really fast. Not sure if it is going to get me again, I am quickly distracted by the several hundred tiny venomous spiders all over my arms and legs. I also feel something on my back but can't see it.

Trying to get all the spiders off harmlessly, as they bite me, I flinch a little, and probably hurt a few of them. It takes me a while, but I manage to get all of them off that I can see, and quickly get in the shower to the relative safety of the running water. I suspect that when I veered off into the meadow, I picked up all those spiders on me somehow.