05-23-2013 -- [All over the place, took place between about 1:30 am and 3:15 am.] I have no idea where I am at when the dream starts, but am in a weird store, kind of a cross between an antique shop and a thrift store, with lots of odds and ends and big and little crap. Something about the place is familiar, and I think I have dreamed about it (or something quite close to it) in the last year or two sometime. Also some ties to the bookcase in the dream from a day or two ago, though no Wodehouse books this time. First I am looking at one of the small wire rack displays some libraries use for their paperback books, and come across a very old and much-worn copy of Vic Crume's Wiz Kid and the Carnival Caper adaption. (I wanted that book so much as a little kid, but didn't buy it the one and only time I ever saw it.) Soon I am walking further into the store, and am in a sort of sloping hallway on a hill, approaching a single short bookcase (maybe 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide) sitting horizontally across the hall, almost blocking the path through it, and am looking at more books on it. I see most of the books from the bookcase a coupe of days ago, including the large collection of Choose Your Own Adventure titles, but this time there are also two four book gift boxes of CYOA books, one with four titles set in the X-Men universe, the other with four set in the Star Wars universe. I pull a couple of books off the shelf to look at them, and seem to start a landslide, with about half the books on the entire bookcase falling off. I start to try and pick them up and put them back on the bookcase, but now it is falling over, and I can't get it to stay up where it was. I finally turn it sideways, so that now there is more space to walk by it on either side (it was like this | -- | but is now like this | | | ) and it becomes more sturdy, so I am able to start putting the books back on it. About this time I am attacked by some nutty demented dwarf (Billy Barty type, not long bearded fantasy type) and as he keeps throwing himself at me, I have to fight back. I grab him by his clothes, and am throwing him around the room, swinging him against one wall and then another. Eventually he is latching on to the chandelier above our heads, and as I continue swinging him around, he brings down tons of stuff, including the chandeliers, and brings it all (and himself) crashing to the ground some 20 or 30 feet below. What a mess! I quickly end up exiting the store. I find myself with my car, which doesn't seem to have a roof or sides, but is just wide open. I have tons of stacks of paper (mostly note paper) on a wide variety of subjects, including some writing, but with the car so open, I am afraid of how much stuff might blow away while I am driving. At this point I think I am in Chicago, and am about to drive back to California. There is an interstate freeway that makes the trip almost directly, and passes through Indiana and Kentucky on the way, so I plan to stop and look for a couple of Old Spaghetti Factory restaurants and some Hostess O's donuts on the way, but I've got a long trip ahead of me, and am really worried about my stuff. So I end up talking with my mom (who is dead) who is in the back yard of the Hickory House (where we lived in CA) which is now somehow in Chicago, and she agrees to put the rest of my stuff in storage, since she already has tons of it, anyway. She leads me to the corner of the back yard / side yard where I once tried growing corn, and helps me bury all the stuff in a pit I've dug here. I don't argue with her, but I am worried of rain and such. I'm very happy to not have to worry about the stuff in my car blowing away, but now I would like to have some cassette tapes to listen to on the long car trip, and I just buried most of them. Worried about it, and looking for some tapes, I step out of the house and find myself standing on a long, curving driveway in front of a big Chicago hotel, where a lot of my stuff is laying on the ground where it might have fallen out of my car. It is the kind of stuff you might find laying on the floor after you have been cleaning a very, very messy room for a while, and you've gotten up all the big stuff, and all that is left is a few small items you haven't gotten to yet, and small bits of paper and detritus that you still have to clean up or vacuum away. Among this are several cassette cases, and I am hopeful, but they have all been run over, so are broken and damaged. [Happened a few days ago to my gas cap when I left it on my roof.] This is all in the middle of the parking lot, and there are cars honking at me to get out of the way as I try to find any whole tapes, so soon I dodge out of the way and wander a few rows down in the parking lot. I start walking through a row of parked cars, but it quickly morphs to riding a bike down a path that seems to be for a combination of pedestrians and horses, and I seem to be moving against the flow. Making my way around the walkers is no problem, but the horses, walking three or four abreast and filling the whole path are a lot more difficult to dodge. They don't make room or get out of the way very well, and they seem to be slightly grumpy at the situation, and yet they aren't at all mad at me, they just don't like making room for somebody going the other way. Weird. I make it through this area and head back up toward the hotel entrance, where I find myself in an odd sort of room where I seem to have instantly fallen asleep, because a few seconds later, mom is shaking me awake and I find myself in just my underwear, scrambling to find my clothes and shoes and get dressed. I'm supposed to follow mom to the cars so we can leave, but I decide to make one last stop at the strange shop. It is on a hill, and I walk in to find it very, very busy. There are customers everywhere, and about four people at registers behind the counter, and it is almost impossible to get anybody's attention. I explain about the bookcase and apologize for it, and for any trouble I caused them, and they tell me I will be welcome back at any time, that they actually really like the new layout from my moving the bookcase, and that the dwarf was to blame for the damage he caused by attacking me, so it's all good. I wander the store a little bit, and at the entrance to the upward sloping hallway where the bookcase was, I come upon a strange sight. Sylvester McCoy (the 7th Doctor) is standing there wearing a space helmet (reminds me of a couple of the 10th an 11th Doctor stories) and his usual 7th Doctor outfit, being choked by a huge guy that looks kind of like Wreck-It Ralph. I run up to him and start to pry his hands away from Sylvester's neck while saying something like "Please stop choking Mr McCoy!" He just kind of grunts and tries to wave me away, but I manage to pull Sylvester free, and start to walk away. I soon find I have bought two of those small bubble packages you find in kids' gumball machines, and as I open them up, I find one contains two kind of mangled cassettes, and the other contains the box the two cassettes originally came from, and it is some kind of audio production Sylvester did (like Big Finish, but possibly not from that company), and I suddenly realize I may have interrupted a play or a recording session of some sort, and I'm a bit embarrassed. I'm now standing outside the store, in Chicago (it still fells like I am in Chicago) though it is the home of Mardi Gras, and the hill I am on has the exact layout and buildings of Walt Disney World's Pleasure Island, though none of those buildings are being used for the Island's nightclubs. I can see the Mardi Gras floats making their way up the hill, while people are screaming for beads and things. I am about 2/3 of the way down the hill, and am standing by the store when McCoy walks out, and I start to follow him, hoping to apologize and tell him how much I loved his portrayal of the Doctor, but he almost seems to be avoiding me, and dodging into paths and alleyways. When I catch up to him, he is back with the guy who choked him and an attractive young woman who looks like a show girl, and the guy who looks like Wreck-It Ralph is saying his name is Dan Spivey. I ask him "Dangerous Dan Spivey? Like the guy from 80s Disneyland entertainment?" and a bunch of people walking by who look exactly like various Disney entertainers who are walking by ask me what I am talking about. I say I think I remember a Dangerous Dan Spivey from Disney entertainment back when I hung out there as a teen. [In reality, Dangerous Dan Spivey was a wrestler back in the early days of the WWF, I think.] Anyway, by this time all the entertainers and Sylvester's group have wandered off, and the cassette tapes that I am trying to stick into the pockets of my large jacket have turned into 12 green apple lollypops. The thin, short-haired black woman at the meeting at First Baptist on Monday who somehow looked familiar is standing near me, and tries to seal some of my lollypops, but I catch her and pull them away from her, and a heavier black woman who seems to be her mother tells her something like "You can't do that, that's wrong ... but you might succeed if you try again." By this time we have reached the building that, at Pleasure Island, would be the Adventurer's Club, but here it isn't, and the black girl tries to steal my stuff several more times. By this time the lollypops are in my pockets, and I am pushing the girl's hands away, while the mother is berating me for daring to touch her daughter. I eventually grab her hands in my arms and shove her away hard enough that she slams into a wall, as I explain that I am helping to teach her daughter not to try and steal ... at least from me, and the mother acts like I am a horrible person. Then I duck out the lower level back door by the river (lake?), and find myself walking in a kind of darkish alleyway where I come across chorus girls dressed up as Cadillacs. They are wearing costumes that look like full-sized Cadillac cars from the waist, up, while still having the usual nylon-wrapped gorgeous gams beneath, as they dance around in a Vegas-style show, and I wake up. Very odd. --- Somehow I find myself in a public restroom with Carl, and it is one of the nicest, cleanest, and most private restrooms I have ever seen ... if you remember to close the stall door! D'oh! I push the stall door shut while Carl is doing the embarrassed 'I didn't have to see that' thing, as we discuss different job possibilities, as somebody familiar walks past and comments I ought to get a job doing what he does. I look at him and he looks much like a middle aged Andy Griffith, and I eventually recognize his uniform as that of a fire fighter. I am thinking I am in no shape to be a fire fighter, and he agrees with me, but says I could drive the truck and do record keeping, and stuff like that. I eventually start to recognize him, and place the name Conrad to him, but I can't quite remember where I know him from, then finally it clicks, Jeff's next door neighbor on Hickory. Turns out he moved right after I did, and now also seems to live in Orlando, and somehow we end up talking about internet connections. In the dream, I have a rather cheap internet connection through GEnie or something like that (with hints of Prodigy thrown in), and am complaining about the signal I get, but he explains that I need to get two modems to double up the signal, and then it works much better. Very strange (and pointless) stuff. Soon I find myself literally running down I-4 with Dale, as we're trying to get to the airport on time to catch a plane back to CA (I think), and Dale is wondering if we are going to make it, as we pass his rental car, which ran out of gas. Dale says it is no big deal, and that the rental car company is coming for it soon, and will add a couple of gallons before they take it back. We soon find ourselves boarding a bus, which as we try to make our way to seats is turning into a plane, we find ourselves taking two seats next to a guy in the window seat with a bag in his lap that looks like George Takei, but isn't. With Dale and I being big guys, and him with his bag, we ask if he is OK with us sitting there. He indicates he has had a bad day, is tired and sore, but our sitting there will not cause him any problems. Soon the plane is flying, and we are listening to the conversations around us, and a slightly older, attractive lady (about 55 to our 45) almost seems to be flirting with us. I'm shocked when suddenly Dale and this lady seem to be in one of the plane's restrooms making some very improper sounds, as this is nothing like him, and everybody on the plane can hear. But it all turns out to be a practical joke, she and Dale come out of two different restrooms, and it turns out she was showing him the weird phone system the airline has installed in the lavatories, which connect all the bathrooms, and broadcast everything said across the entire plane. Very weird system. I've reached the point where I need to use the restroom (no intention of using the phone, though), but all of them are in use. And the keep being in use. And when I finally get to use one, the plane suddenly takes off without me. Things have gotten weird, and the lavatories are no longer on the planes, and it seemed to touch down for a couple of minutes to let people use the restrooms, just before the end of our trip (which is now flying into Orlando, instead of out.) I find myself on Landstreet Road, chasing after the plane, waving my hands before a truck almost backs into me. Turns out I was running down the road trying to flag down the airplane while in between two small trucks, and they are mad because my running isn't as fast as they want to drive. I dodge the truck, then start the slow walk down Landstreet and up Orange Blossom Trail to get home.
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