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08-29-2013 -- [Short dream with not too much to it, that turned out to be quite detailed and long.] Something about cats, other animals, and possibly digging holes in the back yard at the Hickory house. Something else about BC being around. Then I find myself in a classroom setting. It feels very like a high school class, though the teacher is Julie Davey. No idea what the subject is. I've just finished a test of some sort, and it seemed somewhat quick and simple. I seem to be spending the time afterward brainstorming some fiction writing or something, perhaps a Victor story, when Julie comes by for my test, surprised I am done so quickly.

I explain I think I did quite well, and she agrees, knowing how I always seem to test pretty well, and I start rummaging through my things until I come across the newspaper clipping we were supposed to be reviewing after the test. Glancing at the picture, wondering what it is about, I see almost a full-size model of a rocket, made out of huge balloons, and am thinking how I've made a similar ship out of a 160 and a bee body many times.

Julie looks at the clock, and it is just a couple of minutes before 5:30, so she tells us to start gathering our things, and get back to a more usual seating arrangement than the random groupings we'd been in. I end up sitting next to a cute blonde, waiting for the last couple of minutes to end, and we somehow seem to be talking about how about half the class had left at 1:30. Perhaps it was an optional class or something.

Class is soon over, and I find myself approaching Dale's house. I almost seem to be floating over the Nabisco plant to reach his driveway. (Considering later in the dream I am lucid and do some flying, perhaps I was flying here, as well.) I am driving a car, but as I approach their driveway, I remember something about them repaving it, and I walk up carrying my motorcycle, trying to get it on the strip of grass next to the paved driveway, where all their cars are parked, right now. (In real life, that strip of grass is at most a foot and a half wide.)

I find myself passing three animals that seem to look a lot like wolves, and I am a little worried, but not much. Then they shift and sit up, then start to hop off, and I realize they aren't wolves, but kangaroos, and wonder what the heck they are doing in Buena Park? Somehow I seem to be soaked, so I am taking off my pants and shirt and dropping them on the cycle, and wrapping myself in a big gray towel. About that time, Kevin wanders out of the house, says a couple of sentences of what seems to be gibberish, and then climbs in a car and drives off, which worries me. (He's not allowed to drive.)

I open the door to the house and walk in, only thinking about what I might walk into to barging into somebody else's house without knocking after I get inside, so I kind of bashfully knock on the wall. Fred and Betty are in the living room, and they don't seem to have minded my walking right in. I spot odd movement on the floor, and find myself looking at an odd white and pink puppy that seems to be a cross between a bijon and a poodle, though the coloring looks like some of the white and pink snakes I saw pictures of on the internet a few months ago. Soon I see two more wiggling out from under the blank. I ask Betty "You got new dogs?", kind of surprised. She tells me they don't know if they will keep them.

I have brought a cheap pizza with me, and open the refrigerator to put it in there, and see they have maybe 3/4 of a huge 26 inch party pizza from Ciro's sitting in there, pepperoni and sausage. Wish I'd known ... I wouldn't have bothered with the lousy one I got. I'm thinking I have to see if I can snag a couple of slices. Meanwhile, I am trying to find Dale, so I walk a few feet down the corridor to his room, but when I glance inside, he has a couple of girls in there, with him. [Not doing anything wrong ... this isn't that kind of dream.] I'm thinking about razzing him about it, until I realize I am still walking around wrapped in a towel, and decide I had better get some clothes on. It seems today is a big ball game of some sort, and they have a lot of people over to see it.

I walk outside, wanting to get my clothes, but somehow the area has changed a little, and I have to climb a fence (like we were going to visit Bertha) to get back to where my motorcycle is parked, I finally find it, and grab my blue shirt and start putting it on, just to discover I am putting it on over the top of another one. Somehow a shirt and pants just appeared on my body, and I realize I am dreaming. I try to hop the fence back to Dale's, but somehow I seem to be being pulled in the opposite direction. So I leap up and try to fly, and manage the flying, but am getting sucked at high speed toward what was the Nabisco plant. I go crashing through a wall, and find myself standing in a room surrounded by people.

It seems I have somehow been kind of summoned, as I am now surrounded by lots of people, and they have called me to be a candidate, as they try to figure who they want as their candidate for president. There are a bunch of other candidates as well, and they are talking to people, making speeches, and all of them are holding on to their wives. Every one. I look around and see an attractive blonde (she kind of looks like Reese Witherspoon) watching everything, and I grab her and pull her to me, just kind of joking around. She turns to tell me off, and our eyes meet, and wow! It's like we suddenly know everything about each other. Her head kind of tilts to the side as she studies me, and a small grin starts to form on her face before I lean in and give her a gentle kiss, then wrap my arm around her shoulder. We're now a couple, and very happy to have found each other.

But she is working here, and has things to do, so I have to let her go for a time. The others and I are writing speeches and songs or something, and I am singing a little ditty I've been working on. It's not fabulous, but it's not too bad, either. But one of the others makes a really nasty comment about it. I turn to him, ready to rip into his song, but I don't really want to run that kind of a campaign, so I have to settle for simply telling him his needs some work, too. Besides, I don't really have all that much interest in singing some kind of political song. Instead, I decide I want to sing to my new love, and am trying to remember the words to a song I wrote about 18 years ago called Love with Me. In waking life I can remember it fine, but in the dream, it was a struggle. Meanwhile, I have no voice, so I am not going to be able to sing well, but I hope the words (and the fact that I wrote it) will still have meaning to her.

Dale is here, as well, and we are wandering around the convention, and for some reason I am carrying a fire hose with me, though it isn't spraying. We're just approaching a stadium, and preparing to look for seats, and I am wondering just how much length this hose has, as I've dragged it a pretty far distance by this time. My new girlfriend shows up, and I drape my arm around her shoulder, lean my head against her, and just relax in the wonderful feeling of having her there next to me.

07-20-2013 -- I'm on a college campus, taking a class. The instructor is assigning classwork and homework, and we're working on it. The overall class seems to be some sort of art class, but it spans a wide variety of artistic forms. The biggest thing is that, at the end of the semester, we are going to New York, where we will be making a red, white and blue balloon dress for the Statue of Liberty for some sort of patriotic celebration. I think during the course of the dream I attend three classes, but all three sort of flow together.

During the first class, several students show up for the class who just don't seem to be very into it, not paying much attention, showing little interest, and leaving early. The classwork is some very interesting reading and questions, and I am really into it and find that I am able to do an excellent job with them, and earn compliments for them. Unfortunately, before the class is over, I am called away to home for a few minutes to do something for my mom. Thankfully it doesn't take long, and I am soon back for the rest of the class. As it ends, I am trying to find all my papers and assignments, and hoping I don't get called away again, as it seems sort of unprofessional.

During the next class, some of the students are talking about others that were here for the previous class, but aren't here today, and they are the same ones who didn't really seem to be into things. One student is telling of one of them who supposedly left because he had to tutor another student in another subject, but the person telling the story insists the supposed tutor doesn't know the subject well enough to tutor a first grader and teach them anything. There is also some discussion about a somewhat cute brunette, probably about 16 or 17, that was here the last time, but isn't here now, but then she shows up with the gray haired professor (who looks kind of like a non-cartoon version of Lisa Simpson's band teacher), arguing almost violently with him about her being late, and her not having the assigned homework done. She seems to be demanding to know why he can't cut her some slack, and he finally loses it and almost screams at her "Because I'm the ogre ... erm ... teacher, that's why!" Then he tells her that she is well on her way to becoming an ogre, and we all start to chuckle. Then he puts her in charge of the whole class while he goes and runs some short errands, and we're suddenly no longer laughing!

The first part of the class is taking place in an almost bowl-shaped seating area just outside of the building the class officially takes place in, and we start by turning in the homework, which is one of those sort of adult coloring sheets, perhaps 11x17 or 12x18, with a black-lined image that one is supposed to color using fine markers or colored pencils. It is a picture of perhaps five generic super heroes in poses outside a building. Our assignment was to color it in, developing the heroes or the building or the scene ... whatever we were interested in. I concentrated on the heroes, designing their costumes and hinting at their powers, as many did, but some worked on the scene or the building. One didn't seem to have much time, and just took two colors and did what he wanted throughout with those colors, and left the rest in black and white.

The professor is handing out the classwork, and it doesn't seem to be nearly as in-depth or involved as the last time, but instead seems to be mostly ads for Universal Studios. Joking, I raise my hand and ask if this is a hint about our next field trip. He says actually they are trying to arrange a visit, but for now we are to compare and contrast the different ads and decide which ones work better, and why. Soon we move into the lecture hall and continue the class.

The teacher seems kind of disappointed with us as a class, because out of the entire class, only me and one other voted to do some extra prep work for this New York visit, and he worries we aren't taking the honor of being the ones tasked with making this massive balloon dress seriously enough.

One of the students in the class is another professor who is taking the course. She is a fairly attractive red head, perhaps about thirty five, with a reasonably nice figure. She is wearing a sort of orangish dress that comes down to just below her knees, kind of muted and professional, but she is doing some minor dance steps that hike it up two or three inches above the knee, before saying oops, she shouldn't show her legs like that or "..." (a student whose name I can't remember) will overheat himself. I don't quite follow the transition, but within minutes, this red headed professor is on her belly on the ground, showing off one of her favorite exercises, which somehow has her undulating like an earthworm. The thing about this is that it has her dress riding up her body and pooling around her waist, showing every inch of her luscious stocking-clad legs. Worse, something about the movements also causes her panties to not hold, and they go falling down her legs, flashing the entire class. Pleasantly shocked, one of the male students turns to glance at me and says "Did I just see ..." "Yes ... yes you did," I reply, while the ladies in the class are horrified, and all the men are trying to find a better viewing position.

Thankfully (or not), we're just about done for the day, so we start gathering up our things as the professor/student straightens out her clothes. She leaves, and goes to her office to gather the rest of her things, done with all classes for the day, and a few of us run into her again, near the parking lot. She still is going on about how much she loves that exercise, and ends up lying in the grass demonstrating it again to the great pleasure of some of us. This time the girls act, however, and are trying to pull her panties back up as she undulates. I'm just grinning as this already reasonably attractive professor becomes more and more so. For the first time in quite a while, I find I'm growing hot for teacher!

Soon the third class rolls around, and we are all back together again, though I am struggling to find my papers and supplies, which for some reason seem to be scattered all over the classroom. I find myself having to go through several stacks of other people's works to find the scattered remains of my own. But I don't really care, as very shortly the red head is doing her exercises again. Somebody comments on her form or something, and she shifts to look at them in such a way that has her plainly visible twat undulating inches from my face, and I can't help but think she has to know what she is showing, and to be doing so like this, she must be desperate for some attention. I might just have to give her some. Meanwhile, the young brunette student is getting tired of this, and seems to decide that she wants some attention, too. She suddenly starts talking about how she likes doing handstands ... while wearing a loose top that gathers around her neck, showing off her small (but still growing) breasts. Unfortunately, she doesn't have anything interesting enough to distract from the red head's salient point. You know, it is really too bad that I awoke at that point!

---

Earlier in the night had a long, involved dream, but of the kind that you can't remember many of the details. I know it involved a lot of super heroes or vampires or that sort of 'ultra-human' beings running around, but soon it kind of switched to less ... talented people, but just tough guys and gals. Not quite wrestler sorts, but tough fighters. One guy tries to grab me by the neck and flip me over his shoulder, but I see him coming and grab him at the same time, so we both flip each other, but as we lay on the ground, I am the one that recovers first, which kind of tells them to be a little wary of messing with me. After a while, when they are trying to determine a sort of ranking, they pair me with a kind of short guy. Not a midget, but like five feet tall or so. Very broad and muscular, though. We grapple for a few moments, and I throw him to the ground on his back kind of gently, so there is less chance of hurting him, but again showing I am not somebody to mess with. Two other small bits involve me somehow coming in with what I, and everybody else in the dream would swear is a jaguar kit, but it truly is as small as a kitten. Also, a lady who was a bit of a tough fighter, earlier in the dream, is now back, but cares nothing for fighting, but is only worried about finding her dogs, before they get lost or hurt. Strange stuff.

07-17-2013 [Long, detailed, and fun. Sometimes I love my dreams.] I seem to be doing some sort of mystery shop at Circle K, and it seems to involve buying a slurpee which is poured into a cone-shaped cup. The problem is, the slurpee almost immediately freezes solid, making it impossible to drink, while at the same time it somehow slips out of the bottom of the cup, leaving the customer to only get a sip or two before it is gone. I go to get a refill, but they jump all over me, telling me that isn't allowed, which annoys me, as I want more of the green apple slurpee. Instead they throw me out, and I am thinking they're going to get a very bad report this time.

I stalk back to my car, past some guys on a football field, and as I reach it, I find that I have been working security with Pedus again, and for some reason was using one of the furry bomber jackets as a sort of a car bra, but large parts of it have been ripped off. I find one of the nearest football players with a couple of pieces of it, and he grins kind of sheepishly and gives those pieces back to me, but one of the other players has more pieces, and he refuses to give them back. I notice he is wearing a Boone High School jersey, and figure I'll try to report him to the school to see if they can do anything about it, but then I glance at some of the other jerseys, and at least four teams are represented here.

I ask who's playing, and one of the ruder players explains that the season is over, nobody is playing, they are just celebrating the end of the season ... and I'd better get out of there if I know what's good for me. I back off and start moving toward my car, but then all the cheerleaders start pulling off their uniforms, and underneath they all have body paint in team colors that do nothing to really hide their jutting nipples and neatly trimmed pussies. I enjoy a nice look as I slowly climb into my car and start to drive away.

I seem to be driving somewhere further south on a mystery shopping trip, down around West Palm Beach or maybe Lauderdale. I'm trying to figure the best route to get home, or maybe to my next shop, just driving along making turns, but things start to slowly change. The busy highway is turning more and more to a wooded path. The car is turning more to a horse, and then to me walking along the path, as things start to greatly resemble a generic fantasy novel.

Soon I find myself facing a Confucius-like Oriental wise man who is telling me to guide my thoughts, and to go backward to go forward, so I turn around and head back down the path I'd been on, looking for others involved in my quest that I might be able to help. I come across a guy who is working to fill a very tiny chest with 'valuable silver' (actually just quarters and fifty-cent pieces) and I am really not impressed with the treasure. The tiny chest is maybe 4" x 8" X 1" and I was expecting it to be more like 6" deep, and filled with gold, rather than fake silver. With such a small chest and such limited content I am thinking the 'treasure' is rather worthless, but they assure me it is still enough for the bad guys to kill us over, and send me on my way.

Soon, while walking through the woods, I come across a sexy young Oriental fighter who is on my team, and turns out to be the daughter of the wise man, though she isn't sure she believes he is all that wise. As I am talking to both of them, my very nice, very sturdy hiking boots kind of dissolve off of my feet, and I find myself standing next to a very beat up pair of leather sandals that most closely resemble a pair of flip flops. They seem to expect me to be upset about this, but I try to tell myself there might be a reason for this, and just slide on my new (to me) sandals. My acceptance seems to impress them.

There is some sort of very handsome but powerful beast that suddenly turns violent, but thankfully it mostly seems to ignore me, and attack the bad guys. Soon I am 'told' to concentrate strongly on a number, something like 4,600 or 46,000, in my mind, and it turns out we are passing someone or something that can read minds, but if I only seem to be thinking about the 'inventory' we are carrying in our merchant disguise, they won't have reason to press any deeper in my mind.

I am carrying only a very small box, and am acting sort of weak and unimpressive, but they tell me to act strong, but like dumb muscle. So I approach somebody struggling with a larger box and swap with him, then a yet larger crate, and a few moments later, I take over the lifting and pulling of a fairly large cart loaded down with huge logs, really showing my strength as I pull it up the hill to the city we're infiltrating. It has a sort of Pirates of the Caribbean vibe to it, with lots of wild folks running around the place, carousing.

Though it is not Pirates, there is a slight hint of 'jumping' the cart/boat into a slightly different 'flume' that takes me closer to where I want to go, but that sense soon vanishes. I drop off my huge load, and am paid a $5 bill, and trying to play my part, I try to act proud and excited to have 'so much' money, ready to defend myself against others who might want to steal my pittance, while laughing inside about the whole farce and just carrying on.

Now we are carrying much smaller, more valuable cargo to show to the big wigs. I think I am carrying a small but valuable snack cake, something like caviar or truffles, but a decadent dessert. The person next to me has something like compressed apples or something, really good stuff, but the big wigs are ignoring us and acting like we and our products are nothing, and nobody is buying anything. This is really annoying the guy next to me, and he suddenly throws one of his compressed apples into the water, where it causes a huge blast and shows just how good an explosive it is. He's thinking that'll teach them not to ignore us, but I just think it'll make them mad. I'm right, and soon we're all being chased again!

This was the third of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #108: The Torrent

I'm watching one of the Star Wars films with some friends. We're sitting on the floor of some strange classroom and even though I hate to miss any of the movie, I have to pee so badly that I can't wait. I get up and enter some public restroom, approach the urinal, and start going.

While I'm doing this, some guy comes in to use one of the stalls. The bathroom has this horrible design where there's a mirror on the wall which is angled so that I can see straight into the stall. The guy sits down on the toilet and commences his business without bothering to close the door. It's an awful sight. "Shut the door!" I wail. He obediently slams the door shut.

Meanwhile, I keep peeing and peeing. The guy in the stall finally finishes his business, washes his hands, and leaves... yet I'm still going. Something's not right about this, and I realize that this is a dream. I still need to pee just as badly as when I first arrived, and there seems to be no stopping things. I'm vaguely worried that I'm wetting the bed but I figure that whatever is happening to my waking body, the die has been cast. Time to get out and enjoy this LD.

I step away from the urinal, still peeing all over the place, and exit the restroom. I emerge in a huge store that looks like a Walmart. I survey my surroundings, and every time I look in a direction, I start peeing all over the floor that's in my field of view. Most of the DCs in the store ignore this, but a few run away. Fortunately, after a few seconds, the urine seems to just disappear.

There's a huge mirror covering one wall next to a crudely-constructed wooden stage. I check how I look -- exactly like myself, except I'm pissing all over the place. I find the actual sight of myself doing this totally revolting and devote some dream control effort to making it stop. Soon it does, and all is forgiven (or forgotten.)

I hit a quick double-biceps pose in the mirror, and it occurs to me that the Advanced Task of the Month is to get naked in front of a crowd. I leap onto the stage and all of the DCs in the store turn to look at what I'm up to. I grab my shirt by the back of the collar with both hands and rip the shirt off of my body. It looks like I'm just in jeans and socks now. (No idea where my shoes went -- did I go into the men's room in just socks? Gross!) With one quick downward move, I simultaneously pants myself and pull off the socks, now stark naked.

I feel strangely relaxed and confident about all of this and throw in a few little stripper-style dance moves. Scanning the crowd, I notice that every audience member is now female. I'm not sure whether that's strictly a trick of the menthol or just something that somehow makes me feel more comfortable but I take note of it. With the task satisfied, I jump off the stage, imagining myself clothed once again.

I can't remember what else I'd wanted to do so I have a bit of fun wrecking displays in the store -- I force-push some chairs into a shelf of goods, levitate a bunch of stuff in the air, and generally act like a bad kid. As I'm looking around for my next bit of mischief, an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late 20s approaches me. She's wearing a close-fitting, dark blue dress. Menthol? I think.

"Hi," she says. "What were you hoping I was going to say to you?"

The truth: "I was sort of hoping that you were looking for sex." In spite of myself, I feel pretty embarrassed when I say this.

"There's an honest answer! But don't you think that you ought to get to know me first? Here, sit down," she says, gesturing at a long row of wooden chairs. "I'm Gina."

I sit down with her and she pulls out a notebook that looks exactly like my written dream journal. "What's that notebook?" I ask.

"Dream journal!" she answers cheerfully. "You've got to write everything down if you want to remember it."

She looks like she's about to ask me something when a guy sits down in the chair next to her. He's a black guy, about 30, a touch pudgy. Gina leans back to let him speak, looking a little impatient. This new guy speaks to me in a lecturing tone, saying, "Do you think you can just close every door that you open?" I'm confused by what he's saying and as I'm preparing to ask him what he means, I wake up.

Swimming Pool (7:15) (LUCID)

The play I'm watching turns out to be rather experimental. First they pretend like the play was over, then they keep going. Then they even turn on the house lights and go offstage, but somehow I know that the play's not actually over yet. I wonder how they're going to catch everyone's attention again to continue the show.

Later, walking down a hallway, I realize that I'm dreaming. Time to go on an adventure! I'm carrying a backpack, which would be an annoyance to deal with, so I get in an elevator to take it back to my room first. But then I realize that that's stupid. I'll make it disappear instead. Setting it against the wall of the elevator, I focus on it. How to make it disappear? I imagine being able to see the corner of the elevator through the backpack--just a wireframe. Then fill it in with some colors . . . the dream doesn't feel stable . . . it was a bit dangerous to try to control things this directly . . . but just a bit more . . .

Suddenly, the backpack disappears! Immediately, the dream feels twice as vivid, twice as stable. Success! Now I go straight to the floor of interest, instead of going back to my room first. After getting out of the elevator, I start taking off my clothes. Then I pause to do a reality check: I wouldn't want to be doing this in real life. Although, now I think on it, why would I want to do it in a dream, either? It's kind of taking a lot of time to remove every blasted item of clothing. Well, whatever. As I continue, I think about what I want to do with this dream. I remember one of my dream goals: "swim beneath the ocean."

Later, I look through a window. Gravity and architecture aren't quite behaving properly; the exterior of the building slants diagonally away from the window, ending many stories below in a pool at ground level. I dive out the window and splash into the pool. Darkness and confusion reign for a few moments as a bodiless voice narrates something about symbolic significance of water, representing protection from the danger of the outside world. Moments later, I break the surface and see undulating hills of water all around, like small ocean swells. The narrator then says, "You know what else represents protection?" and suddenly a girl floats into view and up to my side. She's not wearing anything.

Obviously, the expectation is that I'll take this chance to have sex. "Squirt me," she says with an encouraging smile. I give her a wry look and reply, "No." I'm not interested in doing that right now, although I do "squirt" off to the side just to acknowledge the temptation, or something. We pick a direction and start swimming that way. On a whim, I decide to go in for some manual stimulation and reach between her legs. She doesn't react, though. "That doesn't do anything for you?" I ask after a few moments. She shakes her head and replies, "Like I said, I'm trying to quit." Soon, I wake up.

Personal Tutoring (8:20) (LUCID)

Alone, I'm exploring a castle. After a while, I realize that walking is taking too long, so I take out my bike and start riding around instead. But even that gets boring, and I start wondering what else I could be doing. Just like that, I remember my dream goal about swimming in the ocean, and I realize that I'm dreaming.

Moments later, I find myself again underneath the water in a swimming pool. Dumbledore is tutoring me in dream control. Rather than trying to force myself to the surface, he says, I should trust the dream to buoy me. This strikes me as real wisdom. I hold myself in cannonball position and focus on the sensation of being lifted and turned by the water. Soon, I wake up.

Christian String Quartet (9:00)

I'm sitting in a public area when suddenly I hear an acoustic guitar behind me. Cool, live music! When the string quartet starts playing a song, I'm not sure exactly what it's about at first, but I suspect (slightly uncomfortably) that it's Christian rock.

Previous hours:
Feb 25, 0:27-8:40
Feb 26, 2:38-9:03

Fragments (LUCID)

[Okay, I know this was a lucid dream, but I didn't have time to record it at the time, regrettably. Here's what I can remember.]

A topless girl is in bedroom.

Later, I reset to a checkpoint in a bedroom. I unplug the ethernet cable. Outside there is a TV. Earlier I was tasting Goldfish and some other food. I go out to a glowing hall. An old man catches my attention: I wonder if he's my dream guide. I approach him and open my mouth, but he cuts me off.

"Shut up, just shut up and follow that guy," he says, pointing. "We'll meet you here in a few hours. Don't look for us; we'll find you. Shut up and follow him."

So I do. I catch up to the other guy. He comments that I was the fastest person to catch up so far. I arrive in a common area with people wearing Hogwarts uniforms. They've been training their lucid skills inspired by the Harry Potter universe. Right now they're trying to jump up and touch the high, vaulted ceiling of the room. Someone says something about having enough brains. They don't think I can do it because I've only just started training. But I try, and after a few warm-up jumps, I manage it. Somehow a backwards roll is involved.

12-01-2012 -- I'm running across town with Rosemary, Cheryl, and the kids, heading for Wet 'n Wild or some such place. It is the end of November or the beginning of December, and at one point we are even running through snow, but we're all in bathing suits. We're carrying a Slip 'n Slide of all things, planning to ride it down the slides to make them slide better, except eventually the kids forget about it, so I have to wrap it up and half-carry, half-drag it.

The water park is one that is very close to what I've been dreaming about the last few years, not like the ones I dreamed about decades ago, and I think it is a Disney water park, though perhaps not based on a real one. Cheryl has gotten quite a bit ahead of us, the kids are more or less with me, and Rosemary has fallen behind as we reach the place. Cheryl has already run through and paid, and we come running up, explaining we're with her. There's no problem with the kids, but me they aren't sure of. Before it can become a problem, however, the guy questioning me has disappeared, and we're inside.

We have to pass the main pool area to reach the locker areas, and the beginnings of the paths up to the water slides. There is no firm division between the male and female portions of the locker rooms, so people are just changing everywhere, and I am a little shy, but am trying to look without looking at some attractive ladies, but it doesn't yet register that this is dream stuff.

I'm heading up through the almost empty lines because we're so close to winter, until I come to the lowest of the water slides. This thing only seems to have a single loop to the slide before it drops into the water ... and when I try to ride it, the dream even skips most of that, and just drops me into the pool at the end, but it is still fun. I go up again, and slide back down again, and in the dream I am having fun, but looking back, it wasn't all that special.

At one point the slides are turning more into a log ride, and I am riding it without one of the logs, as usual. There also seems to be some guy threatening me, but I am trying to ignore him. Soon things are turning back into regular water slides.

There is some lightening and thunder, and some rain that is getting heavier and heavier, and rumors of possible flooding. I'm surprised the place is still open. Cheryl is in front of me in the lines, and disappears into the crowds, but them comes back for me. "Come on, come on," she's calling out, urging one of the kids to catch up to her, just before one of the sets of switch-backs in the lines. The kid cuts through a narrow area between the wall and the lines, but I look at it, and there is no way I'm going to have a chance to fit.

Finally I decide to give up on it, and just turn around to exit the line, but the crowds keep growing, and now I am having to kind of push my way through them even to get out. I make my way back to the locker room, and it is still sort of combined. I am glancing around to see if I can see anything nice, but I can't. Too bad, I'm thinking to myself. If I could see a little female nudity here, I would know I'm dreaming. [Conveniently forgetting the nudity I saw earlier, passing through.]

Turns out somebody got hurt, so the line quit going forward, which is why it is now backing up so quickly. There are sirens, and the paramedics are coming through with stretchers, trying to reach the person who got hurt. They push their way deeper and deeper through the crowds. Meanwhile, I am on the outermost portion of the line, and I find myself standing by a stretcher, watching it for them. The crowds are so thick, the paramedics end up passing the girl through the air over people's heads, with the crowds helping out. It seems to be a bit of a cross between Amy F. from high school, and somebody in a badly sewn Catwoman costume.

I help to position her on the stretcher, and start to move her out, figuring the paramedics will catch up with us soon, but somehow I accidentally drop her on a weird sort of elevator going back up into the ride. Darn! I wait, knowing somebody will bring her back out again, soon. There are people that I actually know in the line ... Bud DeVries from Cadets, and a couple of people from high school (including a person who was a punk in the past, but has since apologized for it, who I am being kind of snotty to).

The girl is being passed back my way, and by this point is a completely random dream character. Somehow I have now come to realize I am dreaming, so I am planning to heal the girl with a touch, and then have a little bit of naughty dream fun with her. But as she is passed nearer and nearer to me, she slowly disappears. "No big deal," I think. "I'll just find another girl to have some fun with."

I'm just starting to look for one when I run into Kevin. Unlike usual, I am actually thinking it is a good thing that his brother Dale isn't around, because I know he wouldn't approve of what I have planned. I glance up at the boat I am leaning against, and darn it, there is Dale, dressed in Runescape-like fishing gear, and fishing from the boat. I'm really disappointed because he is really straight-laced, and won't approve of me having the kind of fun I'm thinking of, even in a dream!

Shenanigans and Skydiving (LUCID)

[I don't remember how this dream began, but at the beginning of our tale I am lucid, I'm standing in my room near the exterior wall (with a window), and I've decided to go outside.]

I consider crashing straight through the wall using a shoulder, but I think in this case something more elaborate would be safer. I back away from the wall, staring at it carefully. I'll try to use a fireball to blow it up, but in order for that to have even a chance of working, I need to have a pretty clear idea what I imagine it would look like. I concentrate on the wall, imagining it heating up. The colors start changing: the wall becomes red-tinted, or maybe purple. I thrust my hands at it, and the wall turns black and splits into triangles in an isometric pattern. As the triangles shrink and fade away, I charge through the wall. I realize the explosion wasn't very realistic, but at least I did get through.

I start jogging down the road. I'm wearing clothes again [I took them off at some previous part of the dream], probably because the weird explosion made me lose concentration and the feeling of lying under the covers made me unconsciously feel like I should be clothed. So as I'm jogging, I take them off again. Since it's fairly early in the day, I pass only a few joggers going the other way, which is probably a good thing given my state of undress. There's a lot of construction on the road--so much that only a narrow path for joggers remains, going down the middle. I go down the path. At the other end, the path even narrows a bit more, just to make absolutely clear that no cars are allowed to go this way. There are three guys my age standing up there, waiting for some cars to pass. Once the cars are gone, two of them start pranking the other. I hang around for a few minutes in order to see what's going on, but then I decide that this could get ugly and I'd better get out of here. I turn around and go back the way I came, but not before I give the guys a thumbs-up to take the edge off of my departure. It occurs to me that I'm using that thumbs-up trick a lot in this dream. [I think I did it once before to my mom before I left the house.]

Walking up the driveway to my house, I feel like I'm giving up on the dream, like all my adventures are over. I look over my shoulder at the clouds. They seem an awfully long way away, but I might as well take a risk and try something new! Putting my arms into Superman pose, I blast off. As the clouds approach, I wonder if they'll feel chilly or misty. And indeed they do, sort of. I fly through a few layers of clouds, looking around at the cumulus cloudscapes. Experimentally, I blow some air at the cloud I'm flying through, and indeed it seems to thin a bit in the place I'm aiming the air. Then I decide that's enough of that, and I start falling back towards the ground. At first I try a cannonball shape, then I try pretending to dive headfirst, but then I decide to adopt a spread-limbed pose as if I'm skydiving. Unfortunately, the ground is already approaching very quickly. Just a few seconds later, I reach behind me and mime pulling a parachute cord. It works, but I'm still going too fast. It looks like I will land in my front yard. Spying a tall tree, I shoot a grappling hook from my right wrist. It tangles in the branches. Then I shoot another from my left wrist, sort of jerking my arm sideways so that the hook swings around another tree trunk like a tetherball. Increasing the tension on both arms simultaneously, I'm able to slow myself almost to a stop, hanging a foot above the lawn. Then I drop the rest of the way, attempting to release the grappling hooks so I can walk. It doesn't work too smoothly until I pretend like my right pinky nail is a small knife, which I use to cut the wire. Then I walk towards the front door of the house and wake up.

Frags:

• I'm singing an improvised melody, trying to incorporate some fast scales as a unifying motive. One of the scales works really well, ending up on the right note at just the right time. But the next one is rather less smooth, and I stop my improvisation with a rueful grin and an apology to my listeners.
• A man suddenly stops talking to do a strange pose: some kind of contorted lunge. While posing, he's a naked woman.

11/14/2012
5:30am
non lucid

Spoiler for Adult Contentish:

My girlfriend and I were just leaving an awesome swimming hole when two young couples were showing up. There was a small water fall, smooth rocks to lay out on and a nice ledge near the falls. I was aware that sometimes people would strip down here and I wanted to see the two sexy young girls naked and swimming about.

Their boyfriends were somewhat homely and non aggressive so I was considering staying a little longer. One of the guys gave me three blue marshmallows on a toothpick. They tasted fine but were a little stale. He gave me another three and I ate them too.

I started to get undressed and had my pants awkwardly around my thighs when I finally realized that my girlfriend my not be approving of this arrangement. The girls were swimming already and looking mighty good. Then they crawled up on the ledge by the falls to sun bath a bit. I was having mixed feelings of arousal and guilt when the one guy proceeded to tell me that the girls had seen me hear before and were cool with me. He then told me that it was OK with the girls if I stripped down and went over to check them out.

At first I felt this was kinda of a joke but realized that they were serious and that I could actually do what they said. Thoughts of making out with them crossed my mind as well as the strong possibility of being given oral sex by the two hotties. But then a little common sense came back to me as I glanced at my girlfriend. I was about to tell the guys thanks but no thanks and leave when I woke up.

Meanwhile, in High School (6:59)

I'm sitting at a table in a room filled with tables, working on an assignment, when I see someone out of the corner of my eye. It's my mom, sitting at another table, trying to catch my attention by waving something. Exasperated, I acknowledge her, but she wants to start a full blown conversation. I pack up my things and say, apologetically, that "I just can't right now." Predictably, Mom gets furious. I walk over to her table (Dad's there too) and try to explain that I'm old enough now that she can't expect me to share every detail of my life with her. My voice sounds like maybe I'm about to start crying. Nothing doing, though. Looks like I'll have to pack my own lunch and find my own way to school, today.

I go back downstairs and check the time. It's later than I thought! Forget packing a lunch, I'll barely have time to shower and get dressed. I also think I should do my laundry, but when I look into the basket, I realize that I have more clean clothes than I thought. No need to bother, then. But later, when I actually go to choose an outfit, I have trouble finding clean shorts. I'll have to do my laundry tomorrow, which will be harder since it's a weekday and I'll be busy.

Dad drives me to school. I'm sitting all the way in the back of the car, and I'm surprised to see some orange traffic cones passing by my window. Some road work near the left turn just before the high school's parking lot. Looks like Dad's doing what he's supposed to be doing.

I take a seat in the classroom. I've decided that while I'm back home, I may as well sit in on some Spanish classes at my old high school to get in some extra practice. The teacher, a dark-haired man, begins the class by introducing himself and explaining about the course textbooks. Apparently he wrote one of them--part of a series of textbooks on a variety of subjects, all published in the same format but written by various guest authors. At one point, the teacher switches to English for a bit. His accent is kind of cute. Then we go around the class and introduce ourselves. I don't know anyone there, obviously. When it comes to be my turn, I explain that I'm actually a college student. There's something of a commotion from another student in the class, and I wonder if maybe he's doing the same thing as I am and I should have recognized him? That would be embarrassing.

At one point, the teacher's been talking about something, and he asks the class which of us consider ourselves to be "a member of that crowd?" I'm one of the few who raises a hand. A few minutes later, I realize that he might have been asking which of us have had sex, but with so much circumlocution that I didn't realize it at the time. Oops. Well, if so, I'm sorry for misrepresenting myself, but there's not much I can do about it now. Besides, I'm in college, they'll have expected it of me, anyway.

The teacher starts a presentation, and everyone puts away their drinks. Except one is still on the table, and one of the students accidentally knocks it over, spilling soda pop everywhere. The teacher interrupts his lecture to go find cleaning supplies, and I try to help out by mopping up some with a napkin. I hope that my helpfulness is a mark of being more mature than the majority of students in the classroom. But the teacher holds out his hand to throw away the napkin for me, and I let him take it, even though it sort of undermines what I was doing. Anyway, the napkin wasn't very absorbent, so now there's pop on my hands. I need to find a sink. I find one in the hall only a few feet away from the classroom.

A lot of the students are handing out out here until the presentation starts again. I look around and see an office whose name plaque carries a very strange title. I wonder if high schools can hire people to do things as strange as that because they're government-funded. Someone walks past me and into the office, and I wonder. I also talk to one of the students outside. They tell me they wanted to go to the big concert today, because it featured a big presentation about Mormonism. I had heard about the concert, but I didn't know it was about Mormonism, and now I'm kind of sad I missed it, too. [IRL: The concert is this afternoon, and it has nothing to do with Mormonism.]

When we go back into the classroom, there's a stage at one end, complete with curtains and a podium. A man at the podium tells us that as a surprise, Mitt Romney has come with his campaign team to give a presentation. After this introduction, a few people walk out on stage. I'm not sure which one is Romney [although IRL obvs I know what he looks like], and the introduction kind of trailed off, so it's not surprising that the applause is slow to start. It's also very quiet, and peters out quickly. One of the campaign people says "Wow," loudly and sarcastically. Well, I'm not sure what Romney expected. We're mostly Democrats here at my university.

They launch into the presentation, which is an animated, rhetorical speech delivered while the campaigners circle and crisscross the room, making sure to invite each audience member personally to agree with what they're saying. It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Somewhere, I've found a pillow, and I clutch it to my stomach like it's some kind of security blanket. I stare at the floor, only half listening. I feel like I've read this argument before, somewhere, anyway. Something about how the Democrats are trying to convince you not to vote Republican because of what the Republicans /won't/ do, but when election day comes, you need to vote based on what /will/ happen. And so on. One of the campaigners notices my aloofness, so he gets up in my face and tries to engage me by giving me a manly punch on the shoulder. I look at him expressionlessly and say in a carefully controlled voice, "Please don't do that again." The man puts on a mock-surprised face and looks around at people nearby as if to invite them to start bullying me, but in the end he just leaves.

From behind, a woman crooks an elbow around my neck and good-naturedly shakes me a bit. Addressing herself to someone I can't see, she asks, "Is this called 'egging?'" (as in, "egging someone on"). Ah, so she's playfully imitating the campaigner. The person says yes, it is, so she laughs and releases her hold on my neck. Pressing herself against my side, she murmurs, "There's someone touching you right now, and you don't seem to mind." Bemused, I try to think of a socially proper way to respond that it's okay because she's a woman. But before I can, she lets go of me, and I can finally turn to get a good look at her. To my delight, I definitely recognize her from somewhere. While I'm snapping my fingers and trying to place where that was, she just introduces herself again as [XXXX]. Surprised, I tell her I remember her as a campaign assistant for [XXXX]. She laughs and says no, then dances off to the other side of the room with another girl. I'm reminded of the friendship between Meekakitty and Nanalew. Suddenly, the dream ends, and I wake up. For a moment, I think that it's only been about two and a half hours since I fell asleep. But that must have been a FA, because it was more like six and a half.

Supermarket (8:15) (LUCID)

I'm in a supermarket, and at some level I'm aware that this is a dream. As I walk through the crowded checkout lanes, I look closely at all of the faces that I pass. Each one is unique and distinctive and interesting, and I wonder whether they all come from people I passed on the street in waking life. I read somewhere on a forum that that's where they come from. The dream seems pretty stable, but I feel compelled to keep moving, or else it will fall apart. I walk up to a cashier and ask her for the credit card that a customer just gave to her. "Sure, one moment," she says, and then she hands me something, but it's not a credit card. I leave the checkout lanes and continue through the store. It crosses my mind that this counts as a lucid dream. Cool; I haven't had one of those in a while.

I decide to call Mom on my cell phone. I worry that maybe I'm actually sleep-calling her in waking life, too, so I try to think of conversation topics that wouldn't sound too bizarre. Meanwhile, I'm still walking quickly down one side of the store, looking around at everything. The store's wide entrance is coming up on my left. I can't think of anything else to talk about, and Mom seems more confused than anything, so I just say goodbye to her and hang up. I leave the store.

Somebody's angry at me for turning out into the road in front of him, but I'm sure I wouldn't have done it close enough that you would actually call it "cutting him off." I decide to play out the scenario to see what actually happened. I get in the car and start driving toward the hilltop road that passes near the supermarket's parking lot. Indeed, there's almost a solid line of cars coming that direction, with one little space in the middle that perhaps I could grab if I timed it right. But there's something strange about the road configuration that makes me think I wouldn't be able to accelerate quickly enough to avoid pissing someone off. Okay, better to avoid that.

I stop the car and get out. There's a mid-sized lake to the right of the road with a big yacht anchored near the shore. A bunch of sailors are walking around over there, presumably on shore leave. I start walking along the narrow path between the lake and the side of the supermarket, going over to see what's going on. But then one of the sailors starts walking along the path toward me, shouting something about me not being allowed to come this way. An irritating fellow, but only doing his job, I suppose.

I keep walking, but suddenly I need to poop. I remember how in the past this has always made me panic and wake up, only to find that I didn't have to use the bathroom at all. Well, I know better, now, so I'll just go to the bathroom in the dream. I squat in the middle of a grassy lawn and start doing my business. The sailor is still walking towards me and shouting, so I interrupt him to warn him that even though I've avoided behaving "beaverishly," if he keeps it up, I may have to. (Apparently, in this situation, "behaving beaverishly" means that I'll strip totally naked just to annoy him even more.) Going to the bathroom is taking a long time. Some of the sailors are running close nearby. I hope for their sake that they don't accidentally step in any of the poop. The sailor still won't leave me alone, so I carry out my threat by pulling my T-shirt over my head. This makes my vision go completely black. Oh, darn.

I wake up to a confusion of covers. After a moment, I figure out that somehow I've come into a squatting position. Uh oh. Looking down, I see that my worst fears have come true--there's quite a bit of poop on my covers. Despairingly, I try to wrap up some of it using the sheets, but it's not enough. This will be hard to deal with. Then it occurs to me that there's something distinctly nightmarish about this situation, and I tell myself exasperatedly, "Come on, wake up for real." And I do. [No, I never did have to go to the bathroom. Why my dreams always do this to me, I don't know.]

Pop Quiz (9:42) (LUCID)

A smart math major I know is pacing the front of a classroom. He's quizzing me about details from my previous dreams tonight. I know I definitely missed a few when I wrote them in my dream journal, so this will be a perfect opportunity to recover them--my unconscious itself is telling me what they were! He mentions something about a homework assignment, and a few different people named Erik. [Ironically, I can't remember the details of these details.] It occurs to me to wonder if he's even telling the truth. I have no recollection of the events of which he speaks, so he could easily be inventing them, and I'd never know. Still, I wake up and write them in my dream journal. Only, it was a FA, and when I actually wake up, I can't really remember them any more.

10-11-2012 -- [Time to play catch-up. Have been dreaming for the last five days, but haven't got anything posted. So again my mind sends me a dream neat enough to force me to get off my butt. Its also slightly dirty, but not that much, more suggestive. So I'll get this one, and hopefully all else from the last five days posted today.]

I'm in the Hickory house, and my room is the second bedroom in this dream, though I don't spend any time in it. I have been cleaning it out, and just tossing boxes into the kitchen, but now there are so many old, empty boxes that you can't get to the cupboard or the garage. So I am trying to stack the boxes together to take as many out at once as I can. I think I end up carrying about seven boxes (including a pizza box) in two hands.

Somehow I find myself in a big area that kind of reminds me of the outside entrance to the lower level of the Buena Park Mall that was located near Sears behind Newberry's. There is one shop entrance in the immediate area, with the cage-like gate that rolls down to block the entrance at night kind of acting like a mouth. It drops violently with a loud bang which causes dust to rise, the room to shake, and the pillars in the corridor next to the store to look like they are going to collapse and bring the corridor down.

I suddenly find myself in an episode of the Simpsons, sort of. I am standing in the living room of the Simpsons' house on Evergreen Terrace. Bart and Milhouse are running around playing, but they are being watched by Lois Griffin in a fairly skimpy and quite lacy slip. The kids are doing something they shouldn't, or talking about something they've done that is really terrible (along the lines of literal attempted murder or worse), and some sort of voice-over narrator is talking about a hidden camera in the very roof of the house that is going to catch everything.

The camera pans to the ceiling, zooming through a large hole that somehow looks like it belongs, and it almost feels like I am flying up there to have a look, though I don't. It is just the camera technique. Either way, we're being shown the angle from the camera in the ceiling, and regardless of what the narrator is saying, the angle is wrong to actually see anything the kids are doing. Heh.

Still, this narrative voice out of nowhere is slightly frightening, even if we characters can only hear it kind of subconsciously, and Lois is kind of leaning back in my arms for a little comfort, and she is really quite sexy in the dream. As the kids continue to play, I start to lead her through the house looking for somewhere we can have a little fun. We soon find ourselves in a huge bathroom with multiple showers (kind of like a locker room) and I'm just about to have some fun when Bart and Milhouse walk in.

"Are you guys gonna do it?" he asks, "because I'm gonna watch!" So much for that. Guess I just have to settle for some light kissing. Phooey. Soon we're sitting at a long table in a large room, and Bart and Milhouse start to give a presentation on what they've been doing. It is long-winded, rambling, and terribly boring. The length and comprehension of the 'report' is more what you would expect from Lisa, but it is both boring, and impossible to understand. Bart has even gotten lots of collateral materials to present to us, so much more involved than anything you would expect from him. Too bad it is all nonsense.

He brings in two more people to 'help' with the presentation. One looks like a Simpsons version of Lisa Tuttle from Saved by the Bell, the other is a quite attractive blonde with a fairly large bust. The voice-over announcement is back, and says something about the girl looking like Marilyn Monroe, but thinking she is Bette Ford because that's the clinic she's been in. Lois says "Marilyn?" and I kind of repeat the voice-over and the Bette Ford Clinic part, and she replies "I heard that part," in a slightly annoyed voice, though she is still in my arms. At this point the woman is standing by a trash can, routing through it.

As Bart is still rambling on, I grab some of the collateral material, and find myself looking at a refrigerator magnet about the size of the magnetic calendars that Hosanna Printing did one year, but with an advertisement for whatever it is Bart is talking about on it, instead. (I think it is some sort of movie he is making, but again, nothing makes sense.) Problem is, he's done his usual half-arsed job on it. The magnets are at angles, sticking out from under the ad, with extra glue spilled everywhere and dried out. Very unprofessional looking.

I try to call Bart over to talk to me, but he doesn't want to come near me, fearing I am going to choke him like Homer would. I just plan to have a discussion with him about focus, and goals, and whatever it is he is trying to accomplish, but in truth I fear the entire presentation has no point, and he is probably just doing it to annoy us. Bart has tried to hide by dropping to the floor, and the blond has joined him there and they are messing around. By the time she gets back to her feet, one of her breasts is hanging out of her loose, low-cut green top. I ignore it.

As I try to talk to Bart, suddenly the blonde is half-lying on the table, completely nude, legs spread, showing off all her bits. Actually doing this in front of a couple of little kids makes it far more disturbing than erotic. I get kind of excited, but not about her nudity, specifically. "I never thought I'd get to say something like this in an episode of the Simpsons," I begin, "but I don't care if we are on Fox, that's never going to make it past the censors!"

The blonde is now gone, and Lois is asking me what I am talking about. She was looking at a brochure that was part of Bart's materials, and didn't see the girl showing herself on the table, so I'm explaining about her showing her bits, all of her bits. About that time, Flanders walks in, and I'm thinking if he were just a few seconds earlier, he would have lost his mind! He's trying to understand this presentation of Bart's, as well, and has decided to try to take a disc from the computer on the table.

The computer is a very odd model, and seems none-too-stable. It is slightly rocking on the table, and as Ned tried to open the disc drive door, it somehow kind of snaps at him. Before our eyes it is slowly changing. It is still a computer, but more and more it is a computer that looks and acts like a cartoon-style robot dog.

At this point we're all still at the table, but it is set up in that entrance corridor at the Buena Park Mall, and as Flanders reaches for the disc drive again, the robot dog sends some sort of radio signal, and the roll down cage door thing on the one present store front starts to snap down with another big bang. The room shakes, the dust starts rising, and the pillars are shaking terribly, and Ned bolts down the corridor in fright!

College Medley (4:06)

On a college forum, one of the residential houses has posted something that they shouldn't have. One of the house members has edited the post to add a lot of his own text, in red font, pointing out why it was a stupid decision to post this online. I can empathize with his frustration--it's hard to stop a hundred different people from doing something stupid.

We're not sure who will be teaching our math class. Suddenly someone offers to call a professor he knows. I recognize the name--it's one of my old physics professors. He was . . . not very formal . . . when it came to math, so I'm worried at the prospect of taking a math class with him. I try to communicate this to a nearby classmate of mine, but then I realize that that classmate might not have been in physics with me. Oops.

This classmate and I take turns driving each other around. We listen to classical music while I'm driving, but when it's his turn, I can't find anything but pop on the radio. I've no idea how to make a good soundtrack with such music, so I decide to stop fiddling with the radio. Then we see a truck careening around a corner ahead of us, passing us to go back the way we came. That must be the professor arriving. We should head back.

As I'm getting out of the car, I see to my shock that there's a crocodile lying across the path in front of the car. It's too late to jump back inside, because the crocodile charges! Yes, it's as fast as I've always been warned that they are. Desperately, I try to fend it off with a chair. Eventually I scare it off by singing very loudly. I continue singing as I run down the path towards the house, knowing that the crocodile could return for another attack at any moment. Sure enough, it does.

Board Game Foul (7:07)

In excitement, I accidentally bump the game board, and pieces go sliding everywhere. Dang it, that's such a board game foul! Except somehow magically they stayed in their original configuration, they just slid off of the board. Phew. Okay, so now I just have to move them carefully back onto the board. We start giving the pieces vocal commands, and they go back to the board as if marching in formation, turning together and doing about-faces and everything. When the last piece gets back into position, though, I don't recognize the configuration. Is that really what the board looked like? Now the pieces are actual, life-size people, and I'm standing on the ground with them. Part of the configuration involves people crouched on all fours, each one with another person standing straddling them. I shout that I don't recognize the scenario, and a man shouts back that that's because we haven't played this one yet! Before I can reply, we're under attack, and everyone is moving. A woman dressed in furs brandishes a sword at me, and I figure that I'd better fight back.

Feces (7:07)

[This is my second dream about poop in recent memory. What the heck?]

Our pet dog is about to start defecating in the yard, so I'm trying to force her out through the gate to the other side of the wooden picket fence. The trouble is that I'm about to start defecating, too, and I don't know how much other poop is already lying in the yard. I could step on it at any moment, so I need to watch the ground, but I also need to focus on getting the dog out of the yard. It's an impossible situation, and gross. I wake up, sort of.

Notification of Acceptance (7:07)

I've been playing a handheld game, but the battery's almost dead. I save quickly, then shut down. The computer asks if I'm sure I want to turn it off, giving a list of files that will be deleted. Since I just saved them, I think it's safe to continue shutting down, so I do. Then I plug it in and turn it back on to check whether the files are still there. When I check in the game save location, I find an old version of the files--the most recent one wasn't saved! Then I check the other location, and the new version isn't there, either! Oh, no! Then I enter some kind of computer recovery mode, and I find a bunch of swap files (or whatever) that the text editor uses while it's in use. Some of them contain almost-up-to-date versions of the files, thank goodness.

Later, my orchestra conductor is walking around the dorm, notifying people personally that they've been accepted to the orchestra. I watch as she knocks on one door and it is opened by a pair of boys who look like they're about seven years old. The boys tell her about how they're in the middle of taking a practice SAT right now, but they don't look like they're in a big hurry. How did they get into this university at that age, and without taking the SAT? I peer into the room, and I see the practice SAT on the TV screen. It's a sort of video game. The current question has something to do with baseball, and there's a timer counting down from about two and a half minutes. I hope they don't lose the game because of this interruption. Then my alarm wakes me up, which makes me happy. No wonder both save files disappeared, and no wonder those kids were so young.

Frags:

• An old woman points out that my mother couldn't have been a cat, because then I'd be a kitten, and I'm not a kitten. Her observation has more to do with my age than my species.
• I'm watching a TV show. I notice that many (probably half) of the people in the current scene are naked. I'm glad that, here at least, the TV industry has gotten over its insistence on censoring nudity.

Cave Channeling (6:58)

Rand al'Thor is in a giant cavern, being attacked by a fairly weak enemy creature. He tries to use the One Power to make its brain explode inside its skull. The first one or two tries are unsuccessful, and in the meanwhile, the creature is hurting him. But eventually he succeeds.

At another time, someone is trying to levitate a giant rock and drop it on his head. But he manages to deflect it and send it into the depths of a chasm.

There is a dock in this cavern that seems suspicious. Rand does something to it, and a round, apparently dead fish pops out of the water and lands on the wood. After making sure it won't suddenly come alive to attack him, Rand takes the fish back to the place he's made his camp, wanting to cook it. It seems like too much effort to conjure an entire stove to heat the fish, so instead he just warms up one patch of the rocks.

At another time, there is some kind of confrontation on a rock platform jutting out from a wall. The camera for this scene is level with the platform, but a great distance away. You see a woman run from the platform into a doorway in the wall, followed by a man. A heartbeat later, the man comes flying back out and slides backwards along the platform as though punched with considerable force. A few moments after that, there is a burst of fire from the doorway and the woman comes running back out, crying or screaming or in any case in desperate need of healing. I'm impressed by the creativity of the cinematographer, to shoot the scene from such an unusual angle as that.

Back on the platform, there is a discussion going on. One of the Forsaken, Sammael, is lying to a main character. He claims that he's not Sammael. There's another person from the Age of Legends present on the platform who knows the truth of Sammael's identity, though. That person frowns at Sammael whenever he lies about himself, but doesn't immediately say anything to the main character.

Asmodean and Sammael get to talking, and eventually it comes out that one of them is gay. He turned to the shadow mainly because of the difficulty he had in admitting this fact, and also because the other one didn't return his feelings. While watching this, I think wonderingly that it really has become cool to include gay people in all the new TV shows. I also hope that somehow having had this important discussion, the two of them will make up and get together and join the good side.

Passing the Time with Lanfear (6:58)

[Major spoiler for book five of WoT! Also, this dream involves sex.]

Spoiler for Passing the Time with Lanfear:

Lanfear, clad only in black underwear, is lying on a table, masturbating. She's in her headquarters, somewhere, and I guess this is what she does with her free time. I'm sad to learn that she's still alive, since that means Moiraine's sacrifice was for nothing. There are about three men in the room with Lanfear. One of them walks around and gets in a position to have sex with her from behind. I assume he's doing this without asking her, so chances are when she notices him, she'll blow him to smithereens, or something. But to my surprise, she doesn't do anything right away. Only, a few moments later, the man simply disappears, then reappears dressed in a woman's outfit, complete with a wide-brimmed, white hat with a flower.

At one point, Lanfear says something, and suddenly her underwear disappears. Somehow I suspect this was a trap laid by Rand. She triggered the trap a while ago, setting the weave, but it didn't do anything noticeable until just now, when one of the words that she just said set off the effect. Clever. She gets up as though about to go somewhere, and I wonder if she means to do it naked.

Gendered Web Browsers (6:58)

I'm talking to my grandma when she says something about web browsers "for girls." With an internal groan, I try to explain to her that web browsers aren't gendered. I realize that she's from an earlier time, where the distinction between the sexes was more marked, but I have to do what I can to advance the cause of gender equality. I expect to have to repeat myself a few times, since she's hard of hearing, but to my surprise she understands me pretty well. I look at her ear to see whether she's wearing her hearing aid. Her ear looks strange--it's more like a cavity in the side of her head than a projection on the outside of it--but yes, the hearing aid is in. Well, good for her.

Grandma takes me to a room full of computers to demonstrate her point. All of the computers are showing the desktop, and most of the desktop backgrounds are pictures taken by the computer's user. The pictures tend to feature moments from family history--birthdays, vacations, that sort of thing. Admittedly, a lot of these pictures look like they could only have been taken by a female. Grandma sort of has a point, but I still feel like there's something she's not understanding.

Urine (6:58)

Someone from my family is trying to shoot a pet video about a dog. We're all outside in the back yard. They try to get it to do some cute tricks and then howl for a while. They're going to autotune the howling into a cute melody. [Actually, while I'm watching them shoot the video, the howling is already autotuned. It's like I'm half watching-them-shoot, half watching-the-video.]

Later, there's a pet rat sitting at the top of the hill. It's about two or three feet tall. Its trick is that it can pee on command. When I learn that Mom and Dad are planning to have it do this trick, I try to dash out of range, but I'm not fast enough. It feels like I've been hit by a sprinkler from behind. That rat has demonically good aim, and it always makes sure to hit absolutely everyone in range. Well, crap. Now I'm going to have to take a shower.

I look around to see how fared the rest of the family. Mom's not wearing any pants or lower underwear, and she's peeing while standing up. [For some reason, I just take this in stride.] I start walking back to the house, carrying a jar of the rat's urine. My sister is saying something about how we should have collected more urine to donate, and my mom is disagreeing with her. She says that the place accepts only a small amount of urine with each delivery, so there's no point collecting more.

Grappling Hook

I'm playing a James Bond video game on multiplayer. On my end it's two-person splitscreen, but there are four players in the game altogether. The person on the lower screen suddenly stops, and I freeze as well because I was screen-looking. But we're nowhere near each other, so I start moving again, hoping that he didn't notice. He's currently in a skirmish with the other two players.

I enter a warehouse. There's a metal cabinet in the back corner that looks worth investigating. I walk up to it, and eureka! Among other useful items, there are a couple of bazookas. I take them, then screen-look again. Accidentally, I swear! But this time the lower screen corresponds to one of the other two players, and both of them are running up behind me. I try to turn around and get them with the bazooka, but my character is moving really slowly. "What am I, encumbered, or something?!" I say in frustration. I've never heard of encumbrance in James Bond games. But that must be what it is--there was too much big stuff in that cabinet. I get off one rocket, and then the others start firing rockets as well. Damn. I get to the bottom of the metal ramp leading to the cabinet; the other two people are standing there, too. The range is really too close to be using rocket launchers, but I shoot again, anyway. And I die. Grr.

I respawn on a lower level of the map, near a raised highway. I decide to try out my grappling hook. There's a target for it (a small beige circle with a sort of raised knob in the middle) on each of the lampposts near the highway. Using the grapple here is a shortcut from the lower level to the upper level, so I see why it would be useful. I shoot the hook at the target and the wire pulls me up, but that just leaves me hanging a few yards off to the side of the highway, swinging slightly back and forth. I try to pump my legs to get a large enough swing that I can jump onto the highway, but I can't get it large enough to be comfortable with the leap. I let myself back down. I try again, this time standing farther back from the light. I'm not going to give myself any time to swing back and forth and lose momentum--the moment I get high enough, I'm going to release the hook. Since the wire will be pulling me forward, I should have enough sideways momentum to reach the highway. It works!

Now I just need to figure out how to go _down_ using the hook. I go out on the balcony of the third floor of a building. It's dark out. There's a security guard in the parking lot below, locking up for the night. The grapple hook target is right on the railing for the balcony, so I attach the hook. I expect some kind of automatic animation showing me sliding down the line, but nothing happens. Well, I guess it's more realistic this way. Manually, I toss down the line. Some how the line attaches to something at a diagonal slope, so when I send my gear down, it slides out into the night like it's on a zipline. The security guard sees the gear going past and starts beating it up with a baseball bat. Shit, that gear's expensive! Hurriedly, I pull the gear and the zipline back up to the balcony. It only takes a couple of tugs. The guard peers in my direction, then suddenly points at me and starts shouting--and running towards my building. I'm not sure how he plans to get up here, until suddenly he shoots his own grappling hook at a target on the edge of the sloping terra-cotta roof that leads straight to my balcony. Uh oh. My only chance is to run past him while he's busy getting up here. I jump over the railing and onto the roof. It's hard to keep my footing as I run to the roof's edge, and I end up slipping over the side and landing on the ground with a painful thud. Okay, realistically, there's no way for me to escape from this. So I wake up.

Ziplines and Triangles (LUCID)

I'm hiding in the woods from the delegation of thirteen Aes Sedai who have come to take me away. Crouching beneath the bushes I listen to them walk nearer, I hope they will not find my hiding place. Wait, no, there are fifteen, not thirteen. That doesn't make sense; thirteen is the magic number. Oh, right--just five Aes Sedai, with ten wood nymphs to guide them through the trees. I look up from the book for a moment, thinking rather lecherously that at least I'll be able to imagine that the wood nymphs are topless green women, like in Shaiya.

My hiding place has become my bedroom on the ground floor of my family's house. I hear a knock on the door, and I know it's because the wizards have found me. They mean to take me away with them to train my magical powers in a distant school, but I don't want to go. They'll be polite about it, at least at first, so I open the door to find my youngest sister with one of her friends. They hand me a letter, which I'm sure comes from the people waiting outside. I take it, but then I flip off the girls (they don't react) and shut the door.

Later, I decide to go outside and look at the cars in which these people arrived. There's no one in sight as I walk down the driveway, but there are six or seven unfamiliar vehicles parked along the sides and along the road. Some look like they came from the early 20th century, and they're painted rather garishly with the names of the institutions to which they belong. I'm not sure how many of them belong to the wizards, and how many to other groups that happen to be in the same area.

When I return to the top of the driveway, I decide to drive in the Pathfinder. It's parked in such a way that it faces down the driveway, so I just hop in and drive it with my bare feet. I don't even have my driver license with me, which kind of bothers me, but this is rather fun. As I go down the driveway, I realize that it will be hard to turn around, so I brake and try to turn the car so that it goes between two of the big pines along our driveway. I slide sideways for a bit, but eventually I make it through and onto the lawn. I realize that I've never gone off-roading in the Pathfinder before, even though it's an SUV with a very off-road-y kind of name. It's fun, bumping along in the grass, but I have a bit of trouble getting the car back onto the driveway where it started. So I get out and walk the car, instead.

As I'm about to go back into the house, I see my mom in the garage. We talk about bikes for a moment. It looks like she's about to take something to the bottom of the driveway. It looks heavy. I ask if she wants help, but she declines. It must be about five in the morning; I wonder if she got any sleep at all. She works too hard. But without asking her a second time, I just go back into the house.

When I reach my bedroom on the top floor, suddenly I wonder if this was all a dream. I do a nose RC. It works! My bedroom is very dark. I decide to try verbal commands. "LIGHT!" I shout. "MORE LIGHT!" The lighting changes a bit, but it's not really any better. There are probably people sleeping nearby, but since it's a dream, that doesn't matter. "WAKE UP, EVERYBODY! THIS IS A LUCID DREAM!" My vision's gone wonky, like there's another image overlaying my bedroom. It looks like a curvy triangle, and I suspect it's the shape my covers are making in front of my face. Not good. Desperately, I try the light switch. Of course, it does nothing. I decide to abandon the bedroom and try my luck outside. I dash down the hall and into my parents' bedroom. As I run to their balcony, I shout some bullshit statistic, like, "Did you know that 80% of socks are hung on the sixth and seventh clotheslines?" Then I grab one of the socks that's hanging over a thick cable slanting down from the outside of the house, and I slide down the cable like it's a zipline, knocking the other pairs of socks willy-nilly to the ground.

I land in a large city plaza full of trees. Miraculously, the curvy triangle has vanished. It's a beautiful day, and there are a few people walking around. I decide to try speed-running down the sidewalk. I turn to my right, and I manage to get some speed, going perhaps twice as fast as I'd be able to sprint while awake. As I approach a heavyset guy my age going the other direction, I notice that he's looking straight at me. I slow down for a closer look. He's smiling, and he's got one hand held out like he's pointing a pistol at me. Well, that's weird, but maybe that's just how DCs say "hi" to people. I laugh and smile back, jokingly asking what he would have done if it turned out he actually shot me by accident. Then I realize that it wasn't a very funny joke. Oops. I elect just to walk away from that one.

The sidewalk ends at a highway where there are a lot of people standing around. Another guy my age tries to get me to play catch with a remote-control helicopter. Agreeably, I climb up onto a horizontal metal pole and get set to grab it. But at the last minute I chicken out. Those blades look dangerous. A few moments later, I [falsely] wake up.

I keep my eyes tightly shut. I might as well try to chain into another LD. I lie still, trying to picture the scene I just left. Then I wonder whether my theory was correct, the one about the blankets making that curvy triangle, and I decide it's worth it to open my eyes and check. Yep, there's that triangle. But wait, before I draw any conclusions, I should make sure I'm actually awake. I sit up and do a nose RC. Oh.

I decide to try using the makeshift zipline again, so I run through my parents' room and slide down. It's not as spontaneous, though, and everything outside seems to be darker and more indistinct. Moments later, I [falsely] wake up again. I lie underneath the covers with my eyes open, not sure what to do. Suddenly I notice the window. It's raining, and it looks like there's a sinister figure standing just outside, staring at me. I sit up in terror. Turns out it was just a tree and a strange trick of the light. I do an RC to find out that I'm STILL dreaming. I get out of bed and decide to try snapping flames again. Just one snap, and it doesn't work. I start trying to picture candle flames in my head, but suddenly I get very frustrated with the whole situation and I deliberately wake myself up.

[I forgot to check whether my covers in waking life were actually making a curvy triangle. I suspect they were not. Also, during the original LD in my bedroom, I said something clever involving the phrase "What the frack." Soon after, I tried to review the moment in my head so that I'd remember it when I woke up. But apparently it didn't work.]

Alex Day's Penis

Spoiler for Alex Day's Penis:

I've been watching Alex Day's newest video. It's almost over. As a grand finale, he apparently takes off his pants (though you can't see for sure, because only the top half of his body is in the shot). I feel like rolling my eyes. But then suddenly he starts messing with the camera, and there are a few frames in the resulting jumble of camera angles where I think you might actually be able to see his penis. It looks like he has an erection. This is over the top, even for him; I'm astonished that he got permission from YouTube to do something like this. There's one shot where he has an empty can of energy drink with the bottom cut out; he's holding it over the top of his penis, I guess to imply that it's longer than it is. I notice that although his penis is quite long, it's rather spindly as well. Heh. The whole time, of course, he's grinning like a maniac. I feel like I should finish what I started and watch this video to the end, but I don't like it. I keep looking at the play bar to see how much time is left.

Study Abroad

I'm visiting an old high school acquaintance while she's studying abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. Feeling brave, I decide to try talking to her in Spanish. She responds in kind, but she talks so fast that I can't really understand her. I do understand that she asks me how much Spanish I've done while in college. Slowly, I manage to formulate a response, telling her that I've studied a bit on my own but she's clearly better than I am, now.

Shootout

[This isn't really a legitimate dream, because it happened this morning when I was half awake and feeling too comfortable to get out of bed. But I definitely wasn't fully awake, and I think it's interesting, anyway.]

Not wanting to get out of bed, I'm entertaining myself by imagining various soccer plays that involve me scoring a goal. The first one is too slow, because I shot with the side of my foot. Ruefully, I remind myself that in order to get any speed, you have to have your knee over the ball and kick with the laces. Then I have more success. I bet the coach is glad about putting me in as forward. Our offense was hurting, before. I'm still frustrated with some of my fellow forwards. Then, one time at the moment when I take the shot, my actual, waking-life right leg jerks as though it's doing the kicking. Surprised, I wake up fully.