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

I'm in a long, rectangular yard with a lawn, behind a building. I find myself flying backward over the grass. Recognizing the familiar dream occurrence, I mentally grab hold of the situation and wrench my movement into my conscious control. First, I start to fly forward, and then I just land and start walking across the grass toward the building, just because I'll have better and more reliable control that way. As I walk, I say something along the lines of, “If it gets me there faster, I'll just walk.”

Inside the building, I walk through several rooms until I find one that contains a table and a bunch of people. [I think they were people I know in real life, but I'm not sure who.] We all sit down around the round table and have a meeting. [I don't remember now what we talked about, but we were all talking about something.] During the meeting, I focus on staying in the present moment, paying attention to it, because I want the dream to go on for as long as possible. It works, for a bit, but then I start thinking, I wonder how much REM time I have left? I don't want to wake up. Of course, the dream starts to collapse and I find myself waking up shortly after thinking about that.

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Side notes:

I achieved this MILD by focusing intently on my feelings of intention and desire to have a lucid dream, mostly without thinking in words, and for a sustained period of several minutes. When I did think in words, they were, Lucid dreaming is easy. Everyone can do it, even me. I had this dream after several nights in a row without any dream recall at all, which made those feelings of intention and desire particularly intense and easy to focus on.

I'm at work, viewing the contents of my work e-mail account. I discover, to my surprise and dismay, that earlier, when I logged in to Petpet Park from work using my existing password and my new work e-mail address, the site created a whole new account for me and began sending e-mail alerts related to that account to my work e-mail address. Each of these e-mail alerts is marked with one of Petpet Park's pawprint icons. I'm very worried that my boss will see these e-mails and find out that I've been goofing off and playing games at work.

[Different dream.] I'm having a somewhat heated discussion with my parents about my living arrangements.

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Side notes:

I was already consciously aware that I was anxious about the topic of the second dream, but not the first one. That first dream brought my guilt and fear that my less-than-stellar work habits will be discovered to my conscious attention for the first time. I love it when dreams give me useful insights like that.

[This is a catch-up post. I had another good lucid dream on the night of April 27-28, 2011. It took me a long time to get around to finishing the writeup of this, but here it is.]

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

I'm at a meeting of my local community advocacy and action group. It's being held in a big, spacious, public multipurpose meeting room. There are no chairs or tables in the room, just empty floor space. A lot of the people there are wearing our team color, orange. We're electing the new secretary for the group. The election process begins with everyone who wants to run for the position walking out of the crowd and going and standing in a line, facing the rest of the crowd. My friend J. is there, and she starts to go and stand in the line of candidates. I tell her something like, “Oh, don't run for this. You already do so many things.” I'm specifically thinking of choir when I say this. [In real life, J. and I are in choir together, but she's not part of the advocacy group.] I say this to her because I don't want her to get overwhelmed with too many responsibilities.

[Later, different cycle.] I'm walking through House #1. Everything looks gray, dimly-lit and fuzzy. Because of that, I suspect that I might be dreaming, so I do a reality check. [I don't remember what it was; I think it was trying to go through a solid object.] It doesn't work. “Aw, nutbunnies!” I say aloud, disappointed that it isn't a dream.

And yet, a part of my mind is still suspicious. As I continue walking through the house, I decide to try doing the nose-pinch RC. This time, it works. I'm delighted to find that I really am dreaming! Breathing through my pinched-shut nose feels really cool, too. I do it several times, to verify that I'm dreaming and to experience that cool, weird sensation. It's been a while since I've experienced it.

As usual, I'm eager to just explore the world of this dream and see what there is to see, so I leave the house through the front door and go outside into the yard. It's a bright, sunny, breezy day, and now everything is in color, rather than shades of gray. I walk through the front gate and out into the front yard. Standing on the front lawn between the hedge and the liquid-amber tree, I allow myself to be lifted up into the air on the breeze. It's really fun. “Wheeeee!” I say aloud, enjoying the moment with pure, childlike playfulness. The wind blows me into the branches of the liquid-amber tree, which are pointy and scratchy. I return to the ground.

Our brown car is sitting on the north side of the driveway, the side furthest from the front lawn. [I think it might have been the Mazda we had when we lived in House #1, not the Honda we have now.] I decide to continue practicing my intangibility skills by passing through the closed car door to get into the car. As I start to go through the door to the back seat on the passenger side, the door becomes semi-transparent and stretches inward, like a rubber sheet. I get all the way through and feel the door pull away from my body as it snaps back into place. It feels like rubber, too. I'm now sitting in the back seat of the car. “Holy s***, that was awesome!” I exclaim aloud. I'm really proud that I succeeded in going through the car door like that.

I sit in the back seat of the car for a moment, just taking in the realism and detail of its interior and basking in the glow of my achievement. Then, I decide to get out of the car the normal way, by opening the door. By the time I get out, a van has parked on the other half of the driveway, right next to my car, and there are people getting out of it.

I think, Hey, I'm here in the dream version of my old neighborhood. This would be a great chance to go fly up to the top of the baseball backstop in the park. So I start flying toward the park. To get there, I fly above the streets that lead to it. “I’m not exactly going as the crow flies,” I remark to myself. I realize that I'm following the same route to get from my house to the park that one would follow if one were driving between the two points; I'm just following that route out of a habit that was ingrained into my mind in the real world. The thought crosses my mind that I might wake up from this at any moment, but I immediately push the thought away and ignore it, because I want to stay in the dream.

I arrive at the park. “I’ve always wanted to do this!” I exclaim. [Some background for DV readers: As a child, I once came across a book about out-of-body experiences in a bookstore. I didn't buy it, and I was too afraid to try to induce an OBE, but I thought the idea was really cool. I fantasized that if I were ever to have one, the first thing I would do would be to go to the park, fly to the top of the chain-link baseball backstop, and sit on the edge of it. I wanted to do that in this dream because it was something I had wanted to do for many, many years.]

I start flying through the park toward the baseball backstop. My dad is there, and he stops me and shows me a way to hold my arms that will help me fly better and faster. I do what he shows me: hold my arms out in front of me, elbows bent, fists out, right fist in front of my left one. He tells me that I can fly faster by pushing my right fist further away from me and pulling my left one in closer to my chest, as if I were pulling a rope taut. I try it, and it works. During this training session, I notice that I’m suddenly wearing red boxing gloves.

Using this new method, I continue flying toward my goal. It's a long, long way to the place where I think the baseball field should be, over wild, natural terrain. When I get to where I think it should be, there is no baseball field there, just a broad area filled with rocky hills. I spot the backstop among the hills and land next to it.

“What?” I say aloud, surprised and confused. There is a metal baseball backstop, but it's tiny [maybe two feet tall], overgrown with weeds, and covered with the spiky seed pods from liquid-amber trees. “That’s pretty lame!” I say in disappointment. I turn away and fly back the way I came.

I eventually fly back to what appears to be the counter of a sporting-goods store. I land there and take off the red boxing gloves I'm still wearing, and the bicycle kneepads I have on my feet. I then leave the store by flying through the big, high, square window above its front door. Flying through it creates a sort of flashing, ripple effect in the glass, somewhat similar to what I saw the first time I went through glass, but more visible and flashier. I knew I could fly through glass intangibly because I’d done it before.

I'm now flying outside. There is a concrete parking structure that looks a lot like the one at the local mall right in front of me, and there is another park off to the right. I head toward the park to fly up onto one of the baseball backstops there. As I’m making my way over there, I hear the very faint sound of smooth jazz music. I realize that there’s only one place that music could be coming from: my parents’ clock radio. [I notice that the music is playing at normal speed, too – this demonstrates to me that time does indeed pass at the same speed in my lucid dreams as it does in the real world.] The combination of the music and my knowledge of where it's coming from cause the dream to fade and me to wake up.

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

I wake up in my current room, go out to the kitchen, and start attempting to make coffee. The coffeemaker is big and complicated, with lots of buttons, and I can't figure out how to use it properly. While it's percolating, I decide to take the carafe out [I don't remember why], and press the Stop button, but it doesn't stop completely. Six thin jets of coffee continue to come out of it, streaming down onto the heating element and boiling and sizzling away. I look in the cupboard for breakfast, and find lots of mini-donuts and other packaged foods there. All the time I'm getting breakfast, my mind is on the fact that I have to get out of the house in time for my 8:00 A.M. meeting. [I actually had such a meeting coming up in the morning in real life, and it was on my mind as I went to bed, so, not surprisingly, I dreamed about it.]

I have another false awakening in which I check the time on my cell phone and see that it's only 6:17 A.M. Good; there's still plenty of time to get to the meeting.

I woke up, for real this time, at the end of a sleep cycle, and said sarcastically, “Well, that was wonderful.” I didn't bother to get up to check the time on my phone.

I'm on my college campus, walking around outside the dorm buildings, which are big and L-shaped and multistory. I'm trying to get to my room, which is room number 16999-A (that is, bedroom A in suite number 16999). I stop and talk to a resident assistant (RA), who asks me where I'm going. I tell him [her? not sure], and he [she?] consults a list and says that someone else is already in that bedroom. I know I'm supposed to be in that room, and I say so, showing the RA the key I have to that suite. He [she?] permits me to continue on and go to the room.

I continue walking, outside, among the dorm buildings. I pass another RA at the entrance to a new part of the complex of buildings, and speak to her as well. She tells me that there's a game of Sardines going on in that part of the complex, and offers me a raffle ticket, which shows that I'm participating in the game. I accept it and continue walking. I find the entrance to suite 16999, which is at the corner of the long, narrow building, on one of the longer sides. I stick my head in the door, but don't go in. [So I never did find out whether or not anyone else was in my bedroom.] All throughout this part of my dream, my mind is still focused on the fact that I have to make it to an 8:00 A.M. meeting.

I continue exploring around the sunny side of the building. There are basketball and handball courts there; it looks a lot like the playground of an elementary school. The sunlight is very bright and cheerful. On the other side of the courts from the building, there is a chain-link fence on the border of the playground. On the other side of the fence is a river.

Not far from the playground is a covered pavilion housing the queue for a tram that offers tours of the campus. It's the same kind of tram used at the parking lot at Disneyland. The tram passes through, setting out on its tour. A group of five students with ski masks on, their heads wrapped in white cloth, and dark sunglasses are walking alongside the tram. They're tour guides, and this is their on-campus job. They're holding a series of signs that say something like, “Be sure to pay your tram driver.” I wave at them as they pass, and they wave back. As the tram pulls out of the pavilion and drives away, a group of five or six people runs out of the queuing area, trying to catch up with the tram. They wanted to get on it for the tour, but they got there too late.

[Dreamskip.] I'm walking across a parking lot. I recognize that I'm dreaming, and that I've had this dream before. [Now that I'm awake, though, I don't remember having had it before.] I begin to concentrate on my feet, watching them move as I walk. I'm wearing dark red-brown, slip-on, closed-toed shoes with big bows on the toes that are made of the same shiny, leather-like material as the rest of the shoes. As I approach my car, I attempt to ensure that my computer backpack will be in the trunk when I get there by expecting it to be there this time. It doesn't work. Other stuff is in there, but no computer backpack.

Some guy starts talking to me as I look into my trunk. My boss is there, too. The other guy gives me a long, ornate, old-fashioned, brass key with a long, thin black string tied to the loop on one end. When he gives it to me, he says something like, “These instructions are very important. You must never let this item leave your possession.”

“Because it represents my soul?” I ask.

“It represents a lot of things,” he answers. I infer that my soul is one of those things.

[I don't remember the rest of the instructions, but they probably included the following information, because I do remember knowing it:] I understand that this key is a skeleton key. It's not just an ordinary skeleton key, either; it is magical and can unlock any door in the dream world.

That guy, my boss, and I go exploring somewhere else together. I use my key to unlock a door at one point. At another point, I ask that guy, “Do you have a name?”

“Karim, or...” he begins.

“Karim,” I say. “Okay.” To me, the way he said “or...” after his name implies that he has many names, and I'm welcome to use any of them, but I just go with the first one he says.

Karim, my boss, and I are climbing a ladder up through a narrow shaft. I look up and am intimidated by how long the shaft is, but I can see the top of the ladder, far away. [That's the last thing I remember from this dream.]

When my alarm finally went off, I was relieved that I was back in reality, and that there was still plenty of time to get to the meeting.

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Side notes:

I don't remember having the high level of conscious self-awareness in this dream that I've had in past lucid dreams, but if I started trying to use dream powers, I must have known that I was dreaming. Also, when I was receiving the instructions about the key, I was definitely aware that the context to which those instructions applied was my dreams, which I was in.

Have I met my dream guide? I can't say for sure. I feel uneasy about it. What I can say is that I hope Karim and the key show up in future dreams.

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

[Dream #1] I'm at the offices of a certain company. [The layout is slightly different than it is in real life.] I'm wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with some logo on it. As far as I know, I'm there to volunteer for the day, to test-drive the job I'm being considered for. [Specifically, the one I'm being considered for in real life.] From the part of the office where all the workstations are, I go out to the front reception desk for something. The person at the desk asks me to stop and let her take my picture for my ID badge. I'm surprised. If I'm getting my picture taken for my permanent ID badge, that must mean that they're actually giving me the job! I hadn't realized that today was officially my first day on the job! I had thought I was just there to volunteer and see what it was like. I'm so happy and honored that I actually got the job!

I speak to the lady at the front desk, expressing some of that excitement and those thoughts, and adding something along the lines of, “If I had known today was my first day and I was getting my picture taken, I would have dressed up more!” She tells me that since I'm not wearing any makeup or anything, I should go back to my workstation and look through my paperwork from the interview and application process, to see if there's still a good, professional-looking photo of me in there. I go back to my workstation and do so. There is, indeed, a good photo of me among many other pieces of paper in a manila folder. I bring the picture back to the front desk and give it to the lady there. “I have a nice smile in this picture,” I say when I give it to her. She accepts it, and we shake hands. I start to say something like, “You have no idea how much this means to me! This is only my second full-time job ever...” I kind of stop after that, because I've just realized that mentioning how inexperienced I am probably isn't the smartest thing to do at my new job.

I go down some stairs, which lead down and out of the building in a spiral. The outdoor part of the stairway is carved out of stone. On my way down, I pass my friends Linda N. and Janet [they're both friends of mine from real life]. I smile at them and say hello.

When I woke up and discovered that my first day on the job had just been a dream, I was genuinely surprised, then immediately became genuinely angry and disappointed. [It makes sense both that I would feel that way and that I would dream about getting that job; I've been waiting all week to hear whether I got the job, so it's been on my mind a lot and I really, really want it to happen. Also, I'd like to note that this dream was actually much longer and much more detailed, elaborate, and vivid than described above. I didn't get a chance to write about it until just before bed the following night, though, so I no longer recall all the details.]

[Dream #2] I'm out on a road trip with my family. At a store where we stop along the way, I buy a small children's book that is [somehow] about the song “Friday,” on impulse. We're on our way to stay at the home of some friends. When I get there, I sit on the floor in the living room and read the book. [I could read perfectly normally in the dream, as always, but I don't remember now what it said.] While I'm there, three teenage boys come into the room.

The house we're staying in is huge, and has lots of people living in it. I watch some younger kids get up to the second floor by climbing some stepladder steps that jut out from the wall in one corner of the living room and lead to an opening between the first and second floors. To get to the bottom step, they have to stand on the couch.

I wander into [what is most likely] the dining room, passing the woman whose house it is along the way. On the back wall of this room is a normal staircase leading to the second floor. The woman asks me if I want an entire room, or just a place to sleep. I answer, “I just need a place to sleep.” The woman tells me to go upstairs, and I do so. The staircase ends in a bedroom with a kid-sized bed; this will be my place to sleep. I'll have to sleep with my feet and probably half my lower legs hanging off the end of the bed, but I just accept this. Beyond this bedroom are other bedrooms and bathrooms, and even a third floor to the house, really just a loft bedroom situated in the highest gable of the house.

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

It's after closing time at a big, fancy modern office building, but I have to go back inside to retrieve something. On my way in, I see a couple of my friends from a club I'm in, and say hello to them. Someone closes the door that leads deeper into the interior of the building before I can get to it. There is a sign on the wall next to it that reads “Shift Workers.” Since I don't have a key to this door, I decide that whatever I was going to get can wait until the next day, and abandon my errand. I walk back out of the building and through the glass front doors.

Outside the doors is a wide, concrete entry plaza with concrete stairs leading down to the street on the side opposite the doors. The plaza and the stairs are crowded with people. As I cross the plaza, I meet Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. We walk down the stairs together, talking. At the bottom of the stairs, a guy in a movie-quality Darth Maul costume is greeting kids in character.

Ellen, Joe, and I have to get to a meeting or event somewhere else, so we start walking there. Ellen is wearing her teal evening gown [the one she's wearing in the picture I linked to above]. As we walk along a road in a semi-rural area, she carries me by holding her right forearm straight out to the side and parallel to the ground, and letting me sit on it. I can feel my pelvic bones digging into her arm. I wonder if she's doing all right carrying me all this way, since I'm bigger and heavier than she is, but I don't say anything, and she doesn't complain. She starts singing a song in Japanese, one I recognize and know well, so I join in and sing along. I think, I didn't know she was an anime fan. When we get to the end of the song, I identify it: “Digimon, season 1, ending 1.” [That ending song sounds like this in real life, but the song we were singing didn't sound like that at all. It sounded a little more like this one, but not really.] I think, The only other people I've had friendships this close with have been my AmeriCorps friends.

We come upon a park. There are several people there with some dogs that they, and Ellen, identify as Rottweilers, but they have reddish fur and look kind of fox-like. I somehow manage to drop my purse and the series of plastic bags containing the components of our picnic lunch all over the grass, and have to get them back without the dogs attacking me. I start picking them up, saying to Ellen, “I don't give a s*** about the food, I just want my purse back!” I'm scared of the dogs. One of them does end up biting my hand, but more playfully than viciously; I can feel its teeth on my hand. I try to get my hand out of its mouth without tearing the skin on a tooth. [I think] I finally succeed, after I've removed the mask that has slipped down over my eyes so that I can see it again. [I was, as usual, wearing a sleep mask in real life. I also remember having to remove covers from my ears in order to hear people at some point during this dream, but I don't remember when. I didn't have anything in or covering my ears in real life.]

We leave the park, and continue on our way down the road. I am now riding bareback on a big, black cow. Ellen is walking next to it. [Joe had disappeared from the dream entirely by this point.] I can feel the cow's fur, warmth, and movement. We're almost to our destination, which is a boxy, white, one-story set of office buildings on the next block. I think about how many different forms of transportation I've taken on my way to this place: walking, being carried by Ellen, riding in a golf cart, and now riding on a cow. [I don't remember the part of the dream where I rode in a golf cart anymore.] The office building is set back from the road a little bit. Before we get to it, and right up next to the road, there is a stable with a whole herd of black cows in it. The cow I'm riding stops in front of the stable, facing it, and moos. All the other cows moo back. This exchange repeats twice. I dismount from the cow so that she can go into the stable. She gets scared of something and climbs one of the support beams holding the roof of the stable up. She clings to the top of it, now about the size of a human child.

I turn back to face the way we just came. A woman is approaching me on the road. She has a geometric pattern of straight lines with corners all over her tan skin, and is busy putting on a silver loincloth-skirt thing as she walks toward me. I call her “Charissa” as I approach her. That's the last I remember before waking up.

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Side notes:

Two of the last things I did before going to bed last night were watching a Star Wars fan video and working on my current Arthur/Ariadne fanfic. I'm slightly surprised both that those elements showed up in my dreams immediately (unusual for me) and that it wasn't the characters themselves who showed up, but the actors who played them.

This was a really cool, fairly vivid dream with a lot of tactile sensation. I was also amazed to realize upon waking up that I'd slept right through my parents' morning routine, the sounds of which usually prevent me from getting back to sleep for that last cycle. This difference can probably be explained by the fact that I didn't get to sleep until after midnight last night, which is later than I usually do these days.

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

[This post contains dreams from last night and from Sunday night.]

Night of February 13-14

I'm out and about somewhere in town [Pat and Oscar's? It kind of looked like it]. Along the way, I sing a song: “I Run For Life” by Melissa Etheridge. [In the dream, I sang the lyrics correctly but in the wrong order, moving the first two lines of the last verse to the beginning of the first verse, and yet, I didn't take note of this as being strange.]

I'm at my kitchen table, eating breakfast. My mom is standing in the kitchen. We're carrying on a perfectly normal conversation about whether or not we're going out for coffee this morning. At first it seems like we are, but then my mom suggests that we could have premade bottled coffee here at home instead, so we do. It's cinnamon-flavored, and she prepares it by putting creamer into it.

When I woke up for real, I was slightly surprised to discover that the above paragraph had just been a dream, and that I hadn't actually gotten up yet.

Night of February 15-16

[Dream #1] I'm in a somewhat dark, upstairs room somewhere, with either my mom or my sister. [I can't remember now; the dream quality was low, but I did know that I was dreaming.] We've found a baby doll with long, red hair that sings Christmas carols. I sing along with whatever song it's playing as I walk across the room.

[Dream #2] I'm driving in my car on a freeway where everyone is driving much faster than I usually like to drive. Feeling like I have no choice, I match their pace. I want to get off the freeway soon, and as soon as I see an opening, I take advantage of it and move over into the lanes to my right, so that I can get to the offramp.

[Dreamskip.] I've now gotten off the freeway and parked in a parking structure. Somewhere around here, I realize that I'm dreaming. I walk over to the elevator to take it down to the ground floor. Two other girls are also approaching it, and they get into the elevator with me. One of them starts talking with me, and I introduce myself by name and shake hands with her.

When we're in the elevator, I get a good look at her. She has long, black hair, worn in two braids, and is pretty. I recognize her as my friend Tashi from my freshman year of college. “Tashi?” I say.

“No,” she says, shaking her head.

“Don't you remember me from college?”

“No. I know you, though.”

“So you do remember me, but not from the same place that I remember you from.”

She indicates that this is correct. I notice that the two girls are duplicates of each other. Then I woke up.

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

[I had four different dreams last night.]

[Dream #1] I'm at the apartment building where I lived in Japan. There are several different landlords who own parts of the building, which is reflected in the fact that different parts of the facade have different designs. [Of course, this was not the case in real life.] Inside the building, though, instead of many small apartments, there is one big, open space crisscrossed by wooden support beams. A few other people my own age are in the building. Several of the wooden beams are arranged in a tall pyramid shape, supporting a large heating/air conditioning unit at the apex of the pyramid. This pyramid collapses and the unit crashes to the floor. At first, I think it's killed the young man who appeared to be standing directly under it, but then I see that he's okay, just scratched up a bit.

One of the other people in this large, open space is President Obama. I follow him up into an enclosed hallway and eavesdrop on a phone conversation he's having with his wife. From the conversation, I gather that he's going to pay for repairs to the damaged support structure and HVAC unit.

[Dream #2] I'm riding on Ellen's Energy Adventure in Epcot. The ride vehicles move up to get to the room with the screens for the film portion of the attraction; I can feel the vehicle moving upward. We get to that room, and the film begins. The film starts out on only one screen, then widens to fill the wraparound screens on either side of it as well, but there are no curtains that pull back to reveal the additional screens. [There were curtains when I went on this ride in reality back in 2000, but according to an article I just read recently, they're not working anymore.] The film contains lots of exciting action sequences, punctuated and made more immersive and realistic by air jets built into the backs of the seats. The seats also have lap bars; I can feel mine. At some point during the film, it dawns on me that I'm dreaming. When the film ends, I exit the ride along with everyone else. As I walk along my row of seats, I say to the guy walking in front of me, “Hey! You're a dream character!” Again, I don't get his attention at all. I continue walking through the passageways that lead out of the building. They're very dark; I make sure to pay close attention to the people and the edges of walls that I can see by the few dim lights, because I know that if I don't, the dream will fade. As I walk, I sing a song aloud, which was my lucid goal for the night. [I don't recall now which song it was, but I have the vague impression that it was a current country song, one I know well, sung by a male singer.] It doesn't even occur to me to do anything other than go along with the dream scenario; this is a ride at Epcot, so of course I'm going to go along with it and enjoy the experience.

There's a bottleneck along the exit route that slows down the flow of foot traffic. This makes me go, “Huh? What's going on?” Then I see what's causing the bottleneck: Suspended by individual cords from a track on the ceiling are multiple pairs of 3D glasses with polarized lenses, with no earpieces, so you have to hold them up to your eyes. Each cord is attached to a little wheel inside the track, so you can move the 3D glasses back and forth along the track. This passageway is filled with painted, Star-Wars-themed scenery, and when you look through the glasses, the scenery looks 3D. I take a pair of glasses and walk with them the rest of the way out of the building. I say aloud, “Oh my God! Rope-Trak!” [While in the dream, I remembered a dream I had when I was a kid that featured a very similar system, only with harnesses attached to the ends of the cords instead of the 3D glasses. In that dream, the purpose of the system was to make sure everyone at a museum followed the same path through the exhibits. I named this system “Rope-Trak” after the fact, when I was awake and used the dream as inspiration for a school project.] I'm surprised and pleased to see this concept reappear in another dream.

I reach the outside of the building. This outdoor space looks very much like I remember it, and I can see everything clearly in the natural light. However, the sky is overcast and cloudy, and it's either raining or just about to; a hurricane is coming in. The dream ended here.

[Dream #3] I'm at my high school, just outside the gymnasium, looking south. Apparently, just being there is enough to make me realize I'm dreaming. It's nighttime, and the quad is filled with students. I decide to fly; it takes me two tries to take off. My first try turns into a big, parabolic jump. The second time, I succeed in getting airborne. To help launch myself forward, I kick off the wall of the gym with my foot, as one might kick off the wall of a pool while swimming. Among the crowd, I see the B. brothers again as I pass overhead. I think, They didn't go to my high school. I fly higher and see that the school is surrounded on two sides by ocean, which makes me go, “Huh?”

[Dream #4] I'm riding in the back seat of the brown car down a street in my old city. It's nighttime. I know where I am because I recognize the trees and landscaping on either side of the car. Looking out my window, I see a white car flying along, above and to the left of our car. This clues me in that I'm still dreaming. I wonder if I can make this car fly. Almost as soon as I've decided to try to do so, I find myself sitting in the driver's seat, alone in the car. I immediately realize that I'm now alone and driving the car, rather than riding in the back seat while someone else drove, because I had wanted/expected to be the driver. My dream control is improving. Cool.

The car is still going down the street at the same speed it was before. I make the same effort of will I used in my previous dream to fly on my own, only this time, I try to focus my will on the car rather than on my own body. As before, I concentrate on the thought of the object of focus rising up, on how that should feel. It takes noticeably more effort, but it works. I get the car into the air. However, I find that it's now traveling backward, and I can't get it to go forward. Looking out the front windshield and over the landscape, I notice that the moon is low on the horizon ahead of me and to the left, looks normal, and is full. Then the dream faded and I woke up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, I can!” says P.

“When did you get home?” I ask her.

“Yesterday.”

“Oh.”

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

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of January 4-5, 2011.]

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

I'm flying around a large, elaborate, indoor shopping mall that has an upstairs and a downstairs level. [I don't remember how I became lucid, but I did.] Like real malls I've been to with upstairs and downstairs levels, there are lots of open spaces connecting the two. I fly down through one of them to get into the lower level and explore it. Some of the people who are in the mall see me flying, and I talk to some of them.

The lower level is completely enclosed with no windows. It's all painted off-white and appears to be mostly offices, rather than shops. When I get into this enclosed area, I start walking. I encounter a female DC and we start talking. At one point, I actually tell her, “You're a dream character!” She either ignores this or doesn't hear me, I don't know which.

While exploring the corridors and passageways of this enclosed lower level, I find a door that is an entrance to the Arlington Theater. [Although I identified it as such, it didn't quite look like that in the dream. It looked like a big theater for live performances, but without the decorative, themed walls, and even bigger and wider than the real one.] When I enter the theater, I exclaim, “I was looking for this place!” Then it occurs to me, Couldn't you have used an ability to get here faster, rather than just searching for it? I go to take an empty seat next to some of my high school friends. The performance we're watching is a live-action version of Jaws. At the end, I walk up to the very front of the theater and take a picture of the audience.

Then, I feel a need to start floating upward, just like a helium balloon, so I allow myself to. The ceiling of the theater is made up of several layers of pieces of canvas stretched out with ropes. I make my way between the pieces of canvas, sometimes detaching a corner and folding it back, until I float out of the building and into the sky.

The next thing I remember is being on a street corner. My dad and sister bicycle past me and tell me to stop at the corner before crossing the street, to be safe. I say yes, I will. I walk along the road I'm on. I think vaguely of trying to do something else cool, like run really fast, but I don't do it. I look at a photo [presumably the one I took of the audience in the theater; I'm working off brief handwritten notes here] in what I at first think is reality before I figure out that it must still be in my head, because I know that I was dreaming when I took that picture.

While still outside on the street [I think; not sure of the specifics of the transition here], I suddenly find that I'm lying down, and my entire body is vibrating. When I look up and to my left, I see a sleep paralysis monitor. It's measuring how much I'm vibrating. It looks like an oscilloscope, kind of like this one, only in the dream, the screen is all black and there's only one bright-green line across it, that grows thicker and takes up more of the screen as the SP intensifies. Below that line is a numeric readout, also bright-green, that jumps from 40% to 88% as I watch. Below the numbers, I see the words “You did it!” appear on the screen.

So this is what sleep paralysis feels like, I think. I know what it is, but I'm still just a little freaked out by the all-over, shaking, vibrating sensation. I realized that I had to be waking up and thought, No! I don't want to wake up yet! Go back! I tried to DEILD, but I couldn't think of a scene to visualize, nor could I calm myself down enough to visualize one. Eventually, the feeling went away, and I was awake and back to normal. [First time I've ever woken up into SP. Very interesting.]

When I went back to sleep after that, I had another non-lucid dream. This time, I'm in my church. The room seems to be the same size and shape as it is in reality, but lots of things about it are different. The piano is front and center [rather than off to the side], and I'm sitting a few feet behind the piano bench, with my chair up against the windows that form the front wall of the room. I'm watching Wendi play the piano. We talk to each other about something. We're attending Betty's memorial service [which was held the Saturday after I had this dream, and I knew that both Wendi and I were planning to attend].

Later, when we're at the burial service, I look down into the box that forms the underground enclosure for the coffin, and I can see furniture inside it.

After the service, I leave the church building. Outside it is a big, complex interchange of road overpasses and underpasses that spans across a straight main road. Airplanes are using this main road as a makeshift runway. I walk across one of the overpasses with my family to get to the overpass on the other side.

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Side notes:
This was the second night that I wrote down a goal before going to bed. This time, I wrote: “Goal: become lucid, look around at scene, make sure it's stable, then see what other verbal commands I can use.” This time, I accomplished the first two, but forgot about the second two. So far, based on two nights of experience, my working hypothesis is that writing down my goals is definitely helping me to achieve them, but that in the future, my goals should only consist of one or two actions at most, not three or four, because I don't seem to be remembering more than two.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of December 30-31, 2010.]

I'm in a classroom in Britain. We're playing a game that involves the chalkboard, and walking in between two desks.

I'm in a room (possibly a hotel room; there's a bed in it, anyway) with Q [from Star Trek: The Next Generation]. I attempt to walk through one of the walls of the room, but get stuck halfway through it, and yell at him for messing with me. He manifests a bouncy ball made out of water, and we both bounce it back and forth.

[Dreamskip.] I'm still in that same room, but now I'm lying down on the floor under the bed. I'm stuck there somehow and can't get up. Q and some random (apparently) human woman are having sex on the bed. It's way too hot and stuffy in the room, and I'm starting to feel like there's no air in there. I get up and open the door. There's a screen door behind it. Later, I explain to Q why I did that. I say, “Did you forget that I needed oxygen to breathe?” He doesn't seem to mind that I opened the door.

I'm at a party with my mom and a bunch of her teacher friends. We're all on an outdoor patio of a restaurant at first, and then we all get into a rectangular ride vehicle that [somehow] works as a Gravitron. We all strap ourselves into our seats, and the vehicle starts moving forward. While it's moving, I look at a door on the side of the vehicle, labeled Door #6. I don't think it's closed all the way, so I reach over and try to close it, but I end up opening it. This makes the ride shut down, since I've just depressurized the cabin, and makes everyone else on the ride angry at me. A voice over the loudspeaker says, “Next time, the useless will have no reason to be here.” I defend myself by saying, “I didn't know how to close it!” An alarm is going off. I woke up at this point.

------------------
Side notes:
I realized after I woke up from this dream that, for the second time since I've been keeping a regular dream journal, sense data from my real body came through into my dream. In this case, it was so cold on this night that I slept with all the blankets pulled up over my head. I really was trying to breathe hot, stuffy air in reality, so that became true in my dream, too. I think that's a pretty cool phenomenon.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, Dream within a dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from December 24-27, 2010.]

Night of December 23-24

I'm playing Neopets, and I somehow obtain an item that makes a particular level of a particular Flash game easier.

I'm with P. in a hotel/bookstore. It's 12:30 A.M., according to an analog clock. [That's what my handwritten notes say, anyway.]

I'm at my high school, once again visiting the second row of portables located a little distance to the west of the main campus. [These portables don't exist in real life, but did appear in a previous dream, namely, the last dream in this DJ entry.] I'm walking around with no shoes on. As I climb up the steps into one of those distant portables, I wonder whether I'm going to get in trouble for that.

Night of December 24-25

[I only have a very vague memory of this dream, especially now that I'm reconstructing it from handwritten notes this long after the fact (1/15/11). I've reconstructed it from my handwritten notes as best I can.]

I'm at dream!Disneyland, watching a video in a theater. I also have a lucid dream within a normal one. When I first realize that I'm dreaming, I try to fly, but I can't. There are three DCs there, one of whom introduces himself to me and to the other two, and says something about how he isn't sure if we've met in reality or not. [Hmmmm... very interesting.] I actually tell the three of them that I'm dreaming. I get a second shot at completing a mission, and this time, I succeed. The mission involves saving the son of some teacher from someone. To complete it, I have to go into a room full of computer workstations and press a red, rectangular button that I find on someone's workstation. I couldn't find it the first time. At the end, when everything around me is blowing up [I think], I'm lying face down, going, “Please be a dream... please be a dream...” because I'm convinced that it's reality.

I wake up out of my lucid, back into the regular, non-lucid dream I'd been having before.

Night of December 26-27

I'm riding along on my bicycle. A mechanical arm attached to an overhead conveyor belt grabs my bike and pulls it into this big, elaborate, two-story construct that's a combination of a maze, a play structure, and an amusement-park ride, with me still on the bike. I think, I thought things like this only existed in dreams! I didn't think anyone had actually built one as a ride! [LOL, more dream sign fail...] I'm excited to be going into it, though, because I know it's an amusement-park ride/activity and it'll be fun. The conveyor belt goes up at an angle, taking me up to the second floor. When I get there, I get off my bike and go inside a room. Other people are there, including some real-life friends [I think; I don't really remember who now]. We're all role-playing that we're scientists in a laboratory [I think], because that's part of the ride.

The next thing I remember is realizing that being put in [artificial] danger is also part of the ride. I run toward the double doors through which I came into the room and open them by punching them. They swing outward, and I see that I've opened them just in the nick of time – just after the doors open, I see a locking bolt on one of the doors shoot out automatically. If I hadn't opened the doors when I did, we would have been locked inside.

[I don't remember the transition to the next scene.] I'm in a large bike repair shop. My red bike [the one I have in real life right now] has been taken here, and I want it back. The female DC who runs the bike repair shop gives it back to me, along with a brand-new pair of long black-and-gray bicycle shorts, which are lying in a particular spot on the floor, waiting for me.

[Fragment] Something about a [different] female DC who is infected with some kind of microbes that, when active, cause her body to become excessively warm.

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

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of December 22-23, 2010.]

I'm riding in the back of my parents' car as we drive to the home of a friend of mine in Wrightwood. As we drive along the winding mountain road [which has appeared in at least one dream before this one, but I don't think I bothered to write it down], I notice that a Walgreens has opened in this remote little mountain town, and I am bothered by its presence there. I feel that it spoils the natural, rustic ambiance of the place. As the drive goes on, I start to feel sleepy.

We arrive at my friend's house. I meet their dog, and I'm nowhere near as afraid of being met by a new dog as I used to be [in real life]. Inside the house, there is a party going on, with lots of people. I eat dinner with some of them in the living room. The topic of conversation is how people who move out here to the mountains do so because they want to be 100% original and avoid letting big corporations influence their lifestyle too much, which is why the presence of a Walgreens is so offensive to the people who live here.

I wander into another room of the house, where I find a dog and a cat. Oh, great, I think. Now I'm going to have an allergy attack. [This is exactly how I would react to this situation in reality, by the way.] There are a whole bunch of different games set up on two different tables in this room. One of them is a stack of bowls, each with a vocabulary question and answer printed on it and a logo that reads “OKWords.” Another is a fallen phrases puzzle whose solution is an invocation to some mythological (possibly Norse?) god of death. There are quite a few people in this room, too. One of them is wearing a purple dinosaur suite, and another has some Pokemon dolls. As I'm walking around in the room, someone sends me back into the other room to find out what everyone there wants to drink. I walk back into the first room to find out. There is a large tray of cookies and other goodies on the table in that room; I eat a blueberry off of it.

The dream shifts to a new dream. Now, I'm in a movie/book titled Tron. [It has absolutely nothing to do with the real-life Tron.] The story I'm in involves an alternate dimension, which is accessed through a big, hidden doorway. Said alternate dimension is a typical epic fantasy world, and the story that takes place there has a lot of the universal mythic feel of the original Star Wars trilogy. I can understand why people are so insulted by the lightshow that is the new Tron; it has none of this mythic feel at all. [In real life, I've seen the original Tron, but not the new one. The content of this dream was based entirely on Internet hearsay about the new one.] There is a very clear scene in which the bad guys get through the aforementioned hidden doorway, and watch the good guys' actions on giant magical screens that are really interdimensional gateways.

The scene shifts again. Now, rather than being in the scene from the old Tron, I'm watching it with a group of people I know in real life, including Guy and some of my fellow students from his classes. As I watch, I realize that the scene we're watching was shot at Disneyland, due to the disguised but clearly visible Matterhorn in one broad shot of the landscape. I say aloud, “Wow, awesome! I won't say it, I'm just thinking it very loudly.”

The scene shifts again. Now that same group of people and I are on the train that goes around [this particular dream version of] Disneyland. We pass several other park landmarks that have been disguised to look like other things, like the Matterhorn was. The train passes behind a large, white, curved, several-story office building. I am shooting ahead of the train, flying on hover boots. As the train and I approach the Tron station (where we started our train trip around the park), I tell the boots to slow down, because my legs are starting to hurt from being kept bent at a 90-degree angle at the knee so that I can stay upright while using the hover boots. I say aloud, “Slow down, boots. Please?” They don't slow down. My alarm woke me up out of this scene, which disappointed me, because it was a really cool dream. I was also dismayed to realize that meeting the dog and not being afraid of it had been a dream.

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

[This is a catch-up post. These are dreams that I had between December 16 and December 20, 2010.]

Night of December 16-17

I discover that every time the “Looney Tunes” theme music is heard on TV, it's always being played live by real live musicians, even nowadays. I tell one of the live musicians how awesome I think it is that Warner Bros. [yeah, yeah, I know, “AOL Time Warner”] still does that.

There is a research project going on. The goal is to research people with innuendo-y names, but without using the Internet. I am asked to make the necessary phone calls because of my “dulcimer” voice. [Um, I think the word you're looking for there is dulcet, brain.] Several of my friends, including Brianna G., are also involved in the project. We're all on vacation together, so, to help us out with the project, my mom reads silly names out of the newspaper every morning.

Night of December 18-19

[Fragment] My mom is entered in some kind of radio station contest.

[Fragment] To get a particular piece of e-book reading software to work right in Firefox, I have to install some Firefox extensions. The e-reading software works after I've installed them, but I discover that they've taken up all the remaining free space on my hard disk.

I'm going out to dinner with my parents. I don't want Mexican food for dinner because I've just had it recently. We're having dinner near the Starbucks that has taken over the cafe and adjacent motel that had originally occupied that particular building in Cayucos.

[Fragment] I'm pulling my car out of the garage when my cell phone rings. I answer it and talk to some salespeople.

I'm reporting in to work for a marketing agency. Usually, my job is to give out free samples of food in stores [this was my first real-life job, by the way], but today, my assignment is to go to Knott's Berry Farm and evaluate my experience there, like a mystery shopper. I'm running late, and I know I'm going to fall behind on the schedule the agency gave me, which includes seeing a show in a theater near the entrance to the park, but I'm still happy to be going there.

Night of December 19-20

[Fragment] I'm in line for Star Tours with P.

[Fragment] I'm in an underground complex of preschool classrooms.

I watch a full-length opening sequence for an animated show that is a fusion of “Bewitched” and “2 Stupid Dogs.” The animation looks like it was done by Hanna-Barbera. The opening sequence is followed by a behind-the-scenes clip of the Animated Actors who played some of the dogs. This clip was interrupted by my real alarm.