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Two sequences of note tonight.

I was in a large metropolitan city. I was driving (with some other people?) to some shop that sells herbal products. I/we went inside to check things out; I walked around checking out products, being my normal smug, condescending self when confronted with herbal products. For whatever reason, I stay inside wandering around after they close, I end up staying there overnight. During the night and as morning approached I argued with the owner, some hipster chick, over why the vast majority of her products were utter bullshit. I stick around for a little while after they open then eventually leave.

I either am or am playing my paragon adept femshep in some ME2-like game. Our ship is under attack by some unknown force, so I'm scrambling about the ship doing damage control. We take a big hit and something notifies me that I need to go check it out immediately or the crew will die, so I quickly head there. There's a big hole in the ship, but it's blocked off automatically by a glass door or a forcefield or something, but I can see that two crew members had gotten sucked out through the damaged hull. I grab three oxygen masks and then jump out after them. I'm able to get to them and get them set up with oxygen in time, but we're now out in space and drifting away from the ship. I turn to look back and observe that it doesn't look like the Normandy, but it looked reminiscent of one of the airships from Final Fantasy 6 (only more obligatorily high tech). It's facing away from us, and it jumps out to light speed but then immediately jumps back so that it's coming towards us again to pick us up.

There were definitely some dreams last night, but my memory of them is kind of a messy whirlwind of scenes. It seems I was in some sort of weird remake of Suikoden 3. I remember there was some kind of flashback scene where Thomas and the gang from Budehuc Castle were all children and living in some kind of mansion when they get attacked by some unidentifiable monster. They flee to a room, but it follows them and they enter into a battle that they're supposed to lose for the story (very Suikoden 3-ish). Later it seems as though the army of the protagonists are lined up on a beach, getting ready for battle, but it seems that Luc is with them and when the battle starts he uses some big wind attack. Sometime later again, I'm chasing someone through some ruins, and in these ruins are intermittent portals that lead to various other passageways. Whomever I was chasing managed to trick me into going into a wrong portal, and it seemed to transport me to a mansion-like place where I run into young Thomas and the gang, who see me and run away scared. I follow them to be sure that whomever I was chasing wasn't here. I follow them into the same room as before, where they turn around and attack me. I fight back and easily defeat them all (even more Suikoden 3-style Trinity Site dickery). I then go back to the ruins where I give up, having lost whomever I was chasing. Next, I recall I'm staying as a guest in a bedroom at the top of a tower on a white mansion that belongs to the mayor of some kind of small town I was passing through. During the day I explore the town, it's surrounded by a high wall on the outskirts and when I find the lone gate the gatekeeper turns me away and tells me that I can't leave at this time. As I wander back I come across a small-town grocery store, that I briefly wander through before returning to my room. That night, I decide to sleep naked, but sometime during the night I need to go to the bathroom so I go down from the tower to use a bathroom. While I'm in there I hear the mayor's daughter and several of her girlfriends return from a night out. I try to sneak by them and make it to the tower, but there's a room I need to pass through on the way up where there's one girl on one side of the room playing video games on a TV on the other side of the room so that I'd need to pass by in front of her. Realizing I can't sneak by, I surrender to circumstance and try to quickly walk through the room with as much dignity as I can muster. The next day, the mayor is making an announcement that the girls did something wrong and have to be sacrificed; I wonder to myself if it was because the girl saw me naked, but nobody seems to think I'm responsible for their girls getting sacrificed. The girls are placed intermittently on top of the walls around the village, and then bombs in the walls are detonating, knocking them down and presumably killing the girls. Afterwards, the townsfolk return to their lives nonchalantly, but I decide to check the wrecked walls for any survivors. When I make my way over to the destroyed walls. I see many people walking around outside the destroyed walls, but no sign of the girls. There's one guy who's standing still, I notice him and he waves me over, he tells me he has a mission for me. As he's explaining it, I turn and see the person from before whom I was chasing. They also notice me and take off running. I chase them up from the wrecked wall to a section of the wall that's not destroyed and across several rooftops in a way that's reminiscent of Assassin's Creed. We go through another portal and I find myself in an Assassin's Creed style city. I see a map that outlines my mission, to eliminate a target somewhere in the city, however my memory of the dream ends before I head out to start the mission.

Third sequence: this one was longer, but my recall only retained a fragment of the ending. The dream was some kind of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG; it was in slightly dated video game graphics and all the dialogue occurred in dialogue boxes Suikoden style. Some villain (who may or may not have been Shredder, who made an incidental appearance during the villain's escape) was disguised as Donatello. They go into a plain, empty bland rectangular room with wooden plank floors. On the fall wall near the corner there's a bay window. Someone whom I'm not able to recall enough to identify approaches the window, and is suddenly kidnapped as fake-Don reveals himself. He grabs the person, then runs to the picture window, where he teleports away (as the villain escapes, an image of Shredder is projected onto the window. Michaelangelo is devastated, but is comforted by Raphael.

The fourth sequence is another interesting and memorable one, for a handful of reasons. There were several subtle indications throughout the dream that in this particular dream I'm female. As it was, I was trying to infiltrate some kind of evil amusement park (thinking about it now, it's reminiscent of L4D2). At the lines to get in, I'm able to jump over the in order to sneak in. There's a direct passage in off to my right and up some stairs. It leads to an area just off one of the busy pathways in the park. There I met my contact, who happened to be Neil Patrick Harris, whom I was starstruck to see in an unusual, excitably girlish kind of way (subtle hint #1). We walked through the crowd as he explained my mission, but as we were walking I noticed another Neil Patrick Harris casually stroll by. I looked at the NPH who had been talking to me and suddenly realized he was a fake. He knew that I knew he was fake, so he pinned me to a wall and then proceeded to try to rape me. At this point (and I'm finding some more comic irony in how it reminds me of L4D2) the dream went third person, so while my gender in this dream may now be obvious looking back, what with the slim girlish figure, long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, breasts, and a vagina, keep in mind I was going by dream logic at the time so none of this seemed outlandishly apparent. I remember having that odd sort of rape victim psychological crisis where I was simultaneously scared and angry that I was about to be forced into sex against my will and slightly flattered that NPH wanted to have sex with me. Anyways, before it got particularly graphic the dream reset back to the beginning where I was a the line to get into the amusement park. This time, sneaking in I took a pathway to the left. It leads into a backroom/warehousey area. I realize I may have tripped some alarm or that somehow they knew where I was trying to sneak in, because a ways up ahead I could see several strangely dressed girls whom I identified as being with the amusement park's security. I'm able to disable most of them by stealth shooting a barrel that explodes and then a fire extinguisher, knocking them all out but one. The remaining girl looks around suspicious and confused, so I attempt to sneak by her. I make it about halfway through the area she's patrolling when she sees me. I immediately run forward, trying to find an exit while she gives chase. We go running for a little ways down a wide hallway, then up some stairs to a raised catwalk for a ways, then up another set of stairs to a higher catwalk where I find a door. I go through the door and close it behind me. I'm now on a platform jutting out from the building; there's nowhere to go but fall a few stories down. Fortunately, for whatever reason, there's a column of stacked wooden chairs a short distance away from the catwalk and I realize I can jump onto the chairs and then ride them slowly down as they break under me for a soft landing(!?), so that's what I do. I'm now in kind of dusty and sandy area that seems to be a seldom traveled passage around the outside of the park; I can hear music and crowds off in the distance and it's now dusk. Dream ends as I walk towards the amusement park.

Hit quite the jackpot on dreams this morning. This is made somewhat ironic in that I'm in the nadir of an annoying upper respiratory tract infection, so I didn't put any effort into dreaming for the night. Finally, since our alarm didn't go off this morning, I didn't have time to fully write these up in the 10 minutes I had to get ready and arrive at work. Also, splitting the rest into two entries to make room for plenty of tags.

Second sequence (note that this is #2 following the short sequence in the previous entry): I was driving in a car with my family again. We were turning onto University Drive from 19th avenue north. For some reason we were discussing Oblivion/Morrowind mods. We were apparently headed to the Fargodome for some reason. We parked and got out to go inside. Inside I spent most of my time at the food court there, ate a meal and loitered about. When my mom was ready to go we went out to the car and then pulled up to the entrance to wait for my dad and brother to come out. They came out just as I was getting impatient. As we turned back onto University Drive the dream transitioned into me physically playing in one of the mods we were discussing earlier (everything seemed real and not as though it looked like video game graphics). I enter some random house. As I walk in, a thin, thugish looking man comes to see who entered and meets me. Surveying the room, I notice he has a desperate-looking woman naked and tied down (I'm not sure if I realized it at the time, but I recognized after the fact that she strongly resembled my wife). Inferring that the man was about to rape her, I immediately slew the man. I turned and was about to leave without untying the woman when I figured I might as well not waste an opportunity and stripped down to have sex with her. At this point she didn't resist as though I was going to rape her, but she was very inviting and willing and quite turned on as well. It was very sensual and amazing sex; I entered her slowly and completely at first and then held it there, feeling her around me. She reached down to play with her clit as I held there, which was very erotic. After a short while we begin to have a good old aggressive, animalistic fuck.

Unfortunately it ended before it reached a climax. I have a reflex I've developed over the years that wakes me up from some sex dreams before they finish in order to avoid having to clean up the aftermath. This time it was mildly disappointing, but not in that it at least left me with the memory. Though the dream wasn't lucid, it is a memory I enjoy recalling and it's something I need to remember to perhaps emulate in lucid dreams in the future. It's also worth noting that my dream avatar is much thinner, allowing for some unrealistic actions during sex.

Had a couple of dreams. When I woke up after the first one, my wife was awake and using my computer so I couldn't document it, but I tried to focus on retaining the memory and I believe I've still got everything from that particular dream that I remembered as of waking then (though I note even by then it felt like the front part of the dream is partially missing).

I'm living in some different house or apartment and decide I'm going to bed so I go to my room which has just a lone single bed. When I turn off the light, I sense that there's some kind of demon was in my bed so I call an exorcist. The exorcist tells me they'll be over soon, but meanwhile I should put a clove of garlic in my pocket for protection. I didn't have any garlic at home, so I went out to the grocery store to buy one. The exorcist was there by the time I returned. The exorcist brought me into my room and pulled back the blanket the foot of the bed. There was a tiny demon that looked kinda like trolls from WoW, but it had horns. The exorcist explained that this demon was an "Ettin" and is not extremely dangerous but can be annoying. The exorcist showed me that you can stretch and mess with the Ettin's horns. Somehow this transitioned into the exorcist and me (who had both now changed character) walking around a war camp in a place whose art style resembled World of Warcraft (I wonder if I was perhaps just lucid enough that my observation on the Ettin's appearance warped the dream's progression?) We were walking around the camp while the former exorcist explained to me the situation; we were camped in an Elwynn Forest-like area outside of a large gate. I was told that this was the entrance to a fortress that was heavily guarded and we were having trouble finding a way to bust in.

Now I'm reasonably sure I woke up there in that first dream, but there was what was either an interlude before I woke up that I'm only now remembering or the dream semi-continued when I went back to sleep. It featured a handful of characters from the Suikoden series. As it continued, I zoomed out to watch the action. The gate to the fort was the last major fortified objective between the protagonist army and their objective--a large castle in the northwest. As the attack on the fortress was renewed once more, Griffith led a large force out of the castle to the fort, where fighting intensified. Meanwhile an expedition led by Chris was deeper in the forest to the southeast, trying to find some secret weapon that would help them get through the fort.

The following is what I remember from the dream I just woke up from. At first I thought this sequence may be separate, but thinking about it now it makes some sense in context if I argue that the first person sequence that occurs here is where I am part of Chris' expedition. As it went, I remember thinking I was in either some new MMO or some new patch for WoW where there's a new instance. It's inside of a cave in the side of a mountain cliff outside of a large grassy field. I go in with a party of people; the cave is wide but straight back. We fight our way back, but decide to stop and call it a night shortly before reaching the boss at the back; at the back there was a pillow that you were supposed to touch to activate the encounter. Outside I'm talking with some people, apparently mad that we didn't keep going when we were so close. I eventually decide I'm just gonna go in and pull the boss to at least see what they are. I enter the cave by myself but the layout has changed considerably. The cave is still wide and generally straight, but the pathway now winds back and forth and there are many more monsters inside. I run my way back through the cave, dodging attacking monsters. As I reach the end I jump across a series of small rock platforms in the water and then jump onto the final platform, where I continue by jumping onto the pillow. I seem to think there was a black demon that appeared in front of a mirror on the right wall, but I woke up right about here.

I had an interesting set of dreams last night, but my memory of them is rather disjointed. It was heavily inspired by Myst and Riven, which I have been replaying and playing through respectively after having picked up the Cyan pack on Steam (a nice, reasonable $20 for some hardcore classic PC games). The dreams take the form of that sort of exploration through surreal-yet-logical realms. I seemed to have a sense of dread most of the time; I imagine this mimics the emotions one trapped in a Myst-like experience might have. The first area I can remember was sort of a Myst-island style hub area, but looked a lot different. I was in a grassy plains area; there was a path heading through, several large rocks or canyon walls, one path led off to a lagoon area, another path led off to a large, imposing purple-black castle in the distance. Every so often along the path some animals would try to attack me: a swarm of insects near the lagoon, a snake in the grass a ways in front of the castle. I stopped playing this game and decided to try the older original version. I remember seeing an intro sequence and the Myst intro theme music playing, and thinking that this intro sequence was absent in the remake. It was mostly the same as the 3D one, but presented in still images like the original Myst; the creatures attacking me looked like they were relatively poorly rendered. I moved on to an apparent sequel, this one also in 3D. I have a small memory of something in a village that was on stilts above a lake or ocean; the water and sky were both black or dark gray. There was also a forest, with different patches of green, blue and purple, and red and orange forest. I remember having that same sense of confused frustration as to what to do next that I had yesterday when playing Riven. I found a pair of ropes hanging in the orange forest, whenever I pulled one a basket on the end of a rope would come down from the treetops and there would be some unusual objects that were meant to be hints inside.

Thinking about that last bit reminds me of a different sequence, though again I only seem to remember a few details. I was in some sort of RPG. We were in a city mostly. I knew there was a hard boss fight we had to go to at the top of a several-story-high building, so I was spending a lot of time doing various tasks to prepare for it.

Tonight's dreams came in kind of random fragments, which I suspect might possibly be due to waking up several times over the course of the night and not even realizing I'd dreamed before dozing off again. Here's what I can remember:

I was with my family, we were in a car (it seems it must have been either an SUV or our old Isuzu Trooper, judging from how relatively high I was seated) and one of my parents was driving, I was in one of the back seats. We were on our way to the lakes, which I was somewhat excited for; I had been vaguely wanting to spend a weekend at some lakes place all summer (also, I had read a classified ad for a luxurious-sounding lake cabin yesterday, which probably contributed to the dream's inspiration). The lake area we were going to was in a sparsely wooded area, but for some reason we were going to stay in a hotel at the edge of the woods. As we turned into the hotel, we were stopped by a woman and a young girl. The young girl walked up to the window and was telling my parents something; apparently they were from another family that we were traveling with. Apparently, the hotel we were going to go stay at was either closed or full, so we'd have to go stay in our proper lake cabin. I noticed the hotel was in a fenced off lot, and was several feet deep in water as though it was flooded. We went back onto the road to go into the woods, but a short ways in we came to a line of traffic that was backed up behind the main road, which was closed for some reason. My family used this as an excuse to turn around and go home. I was pissed because there was a clearly visible side road nearby that we could have used.

I was playing Metal Gear Solid 5 (!), and was increasingly concerned that Hideo Kojima has gotten a bit too avant-garde, because it included several highly unusual elements, such as Pokémon. There was one part where I was trying to figure out how this summon thing worked; it would summon a ghost night who would get more powerful with time but the summon didn't last very long. I eventually figured out that you have to restart channeling the spell to continue and doing so wouldn't resummon the ghost knight. Later, I tried to get my brother to try playing the game, but he wasn't interested.

At some point, I decided that if my family wasn't going to the lakes, I'd go by myself. So I took a car and drove there. At the woods there was a large grouping of camp sites and paved areas for RVs. It looked like a fun place to be, but was disappointingly empty, which I attributed to it being early in the season. I found a quaint-looking cabin that I parked at (though curiously I note that it wasn't near any lake).

I'm not sure if there is some chronological shuffling that's going on with my memory, but this is all I recall for now.

1. My family has a coupon for half-off four cones of premium ice cream. I get some sort of chocolate cookie dough flavor, but toward the end it turns to vanilla with the consistency of cream cheese, and I'm eating it out of a foil wrapper instead of a cone. Dad goes on a rant about someone leaving the bottom tip of a cone on the floor and irrationally blames me, even though I always eat the entire cone.

2. Trying to photograph ocean waves, but getting more interested in a plant on the boat.

3. I'm upset about the concept of some new game. (Something to the order of having Sonic the Hedgehog wash dishes and do housecleaning.)

4. I'm walking home at night in the rain through a maze of sidewalks, courtyards, and imposing Victorian architecture. I get to a house that is apparently mine, and head up to the bathroom, while telling my butler (apparently I have a butler in this dream) to have a fresh change of clothes ready. I get undressed, but before I can take my bath, I have to break a bunch of gems that represent some enemy. I'm about to break the last one, but it's chained to one that represents me, and if I break it, it would kill me. So instead, I pull a sword out of my chest (Revolutionary Girl Utena-style) and use it to slice the chain. Then there's a copy of myself on the floor in agony as part of her face breaks into purple light. I kneel down to hold her still and comfort her until it's over.

5. I'm at an anime convention, but I can't find the dealer's hall. The artist's alley is a set of bleachers with the different artists progressively higher on the benches in proportion to their prices. There's a room with food, but I wasn't allowed in, because they said it was "exchange only" - you have to bring food to trade for theirs. But it was all potatoes and zucchini anyway, so I wasn't missing much. I also wander into an art installation where there's a big screen behind you that shows your silhouette in trails of color as you move around (something I remember from the Lincoln Children's Museum when I was a kid, and miss dearly - curse the "adults must be accompanied by at least one child" rule!). I spend a lot of time playing, because I'd probably never get the chance to relive those memories again. When I'm done, the person in charge of the installation invites me to a ballet, but it's scheduled for several months after the convention, at which point I'd be in a different state.

fixed. new video game dreamsign?

Vancouver or Korea (non-lucid)

I was in Vancouver or Korea at some big convention. I entered an elevator and up to the second floor where I was playing Starcraft at some computer lab. Some on screen text read "hacking". I felt my account was unsafe and went to the first floor. I was looking at marijuana edibles. Some guy offered free real hash browns but it had a hair on it. I went to another booth and got a giant piece of cake and sat down to eat it as the dream ends. My uncle was there.

Frags:

1. I was hanging out with a friend playing xbox. I was thinking "Last time I saw you I was dreaming."

2. I was playing mw2 and seriously destroying the opponents.

3. forgotten dream: I was at blizzon and just sort of waiting in a big line. Then I got to computer lab room with a big projector. Playing sc2.

Had another dream I was playing Starcraft 2 (I should iterate that I neither own nor have played the multiplayer thereof). I was playing what was evidently my first 1v1 with some guy that I may have kinda known. It was TvT and I was playing predictably newbish and sloppy, but it was a close game that came down to a base razing race that I won just as my opponent was attacking my command center. I noticed some unusual gameplay behavior; he was scanning around his base and I was able to see his scans as though they were my own, and when he started banshee harassing I switched to viking production and my first viking was produced instantly--seems my dream wanted me to win.

A weird sequence, likely inspired with a chance meeting last night with an old FFXI friend as well as an unrequited mystery from those days as well as several related events earlier in the day.

There was an early sequence where I seem to recall a Starfox-style shmup that I can't place within the context of the rest of the dream.

It seems that I lived in some unfamiliar downtown location, and that members of my old TiamatsFangs FFXI linkshell were getting together in real life to do some sort of video game-esque covert operation. We were to try to get into some kind of factory, the entrance to which was on the roof of a tall building, to demolish...something. We went in, and made our way to the end, but my partners started dying as we got ready to blow up the place. There was some kind of weird monster/alien thing killing people. As I fled out I turned and saw it grotesquely kill two people. I managed to escape back onto the roof-entrance, the only survivor. Except it flashed back to before the operation began. Since I knew what would happen I began trying to prepare an escape route, cleaning up excess ammo, weapons, and items on the floor to make picking up things for use easier, however I became frustrated that my partners were sitting around goofing off instead of preparing for the mission so I gave up and left. On my way home I realized I could use the opportunity of the TiamatsFangs' gathering to track down Jillia. I had already called and talked to her at some point during the preparation for the operation, so on my way home I called her number again but she didn't answer. When I got home to a room that looked like some sort of home office I sat down and started to think about how I could proceed. I started looking through the contacts on my phone and noticed I had a second number for Jillia, so I called it. An older woman answered the phone; I asked her if Jillia was there to which she replied yes. I asked the woman for the location of this phone number to which she replied that it was a place called "The Dungeon". I thanked her and hung up to consult the internet for the Dungeon's location; I remember that the first time I searched for it I forgot to specify the city I was in (when I corrected it, I corrected it with Fargo, ND or 58102, so evidently this dream was supposed to take place in Fargo). I quickly found it online, it was some sort of arcade. I went there; inside I met the older woman I had spoken to earlier behind a counter just inside the entrance. Also there were several teenagers there, I thought it odd that several of the boys were shirtless--and also that none of them were playing any arcade games, in fact there were no arcade games at all. The area was mostly empty except for some furniture and beanbag chairs. I asked the woman if Jillia was there again and she offered to take me to her. As we slowly made our way back I continued to observe the bizarre behavior of the children here. The woman explained that Jillia was a poor girl, having been abused and I recall ending that explanation mentally by adding "by these people" to the end. As we reached the entrance to the basement, I observed a short, ugly-looking girl and a boy getting ready to have sex, and they were eventually joined by a second boy. I went down into the basement alone. At the bottom was a large room, the room was pitch black except where it was sparsely lit by a small television in the middle on the other side of the room. There was some kind of clothing rack blocking the direct path to the television, instead leading a path around the outside of the room. In the far back corner there was a green couch that was very brightly lit. I called out for Jillia and she answered, though I couldn't see her at all. I replied, "Now there's a voice I recognize!" She sounded somewhat paranoid however. She instructed me to go to the couch in the back corner. Standing in the light it was even harder to see into the darkness, but I sensed that she had moved from near the TV to around between me and the door. She instructed me to remove my pants and shirt so I removed my black coat, shirt, and pants and set them on the couch. She then instructed me to go over and play the game. I went over, in just my underwear, and sat down by the TV. There was an old school Sega console there with what looked to be some sort of hacked old school Sonic game. I picked up the controller and hadn't even started playing when I heard the door to the basement slam shut. Alarmed that Jillia may have ran off, I quickly got up and returned to the couch to put my clothes back on and try to follow her. As I was putting my clothes back on the lights came on in the rest of the room. The floor was concrete and the walls were painted a bland white, it looked for sure like somewhere people may be held captive and I recall thinking, "Aw shit, I'm trapped down here." I immediately suspected the bizarre people on the floor above of foul play. When I checked the door, however, it was unlocked so I went upstairs to leave. The teens that were there before were outside in the rain, apparently having fun and taking pictures of each other. I quietly left, trying not to draw attention to myself. About a block away I turned and looked back, trying to think of how I could find her now. The dream ends there.

Side note: with some more effort into reality checking around phones as previously planned, I might have been able to catch this one.

I'm pretty sure I just had my first lucid dream. It seemed kind of long at the time but I may only remember some bits and pieces now, gonna try to get down as much as I can. And it's weird, it feels so foggy now. Was a very intriguing experience. There was another dream before it but I want to get down as much of the lucid as I can so I'm writing it first.

I'm trying to recall what it was that triggered the reality check. I think it was that I was laying in bed or on the phone with my wife and she said something absurd (I think it had something to do with her saying she was on her way home from class at university, and I quickly realized she doesn't go to school in reality) that caused me to quickly consider that this isn't real and pull a nose-pinch reality check. I was able to breathe like my nose was just a little stuffy despite the nose-pinch. There was an obligatory, "Holy shit, I'm lucid!" moment. To keep the dream from fading from excitement and to calm down, I closed my eyes and (for whatever reason) pictured a topographical map key. Feeling it was stable, I opened my eyes, did another reality check (marveling of course at how weird it was to be breathing through a pinched nose, and then started wandering my environment. I seemed to be in what looked and felt like my old house on Broadway. I was a little unprepared for my first lucid; I hadn't thought of anything cool to do. The first thing I did was go into the bathroom. I figured since I was lucid I might as well start playing around with how well I could control it. I went to the door of the bathroom and decided I'd summon something on the floor outside and close the door to see if it appeared; I arbitrarily chose cake, and then I sort of glanced up and back down and it was there on the floor, slightly stale and with a big slice missing--I didn't even have to close the door. Happy, I went to the big picture window out front and continued experimenting by swapping between night and day by closing my eyes for a second then looking at the sky. I noted some unusual mixed success, namely whenever I wanted it to be day or night it would literally only be just starting day or night (ie at dawn or dusk). It's a little foggy if there was something occurring between now and what happened next, but the next thing I remember was that I was quickly running out of ideas for things to do, so I thought, "Well, I've always wanted to experience sex as a woman, let's give that a try." So I went back to the bathroom (it's notable that the previous time it was the bathroom from the old Broadway house, but it was now the bathroom from my previous apartment on Oak Street), stripped down, then looked in the mirror. Quick comment after the fact, the mirror worked just fine for its purpose in the dream, but before transforming I started in my normal dream avatar--which is myself as I recognize but much thinner. I was able to transform myself by pointing to the parts of my body that I wanted to transform and focusing on them. I started with breasts, then moved on to my penis. I recall being amused/annoyed that as I was shrinking my penis my foreskin wasn't shrinking with it so I had to do that separate. I started to get a little impatient so I just waved my hand around in front of my crotch and looked up at the ceiling to try to speed things up. Eventually everything looked pretty good, wasn't perfect, and I noticed that at some point I had lost all my body hair without intentionally trying to, but it was good enough for a first attempt. I was trying to decide what I wanted to do first with my new body when I noticed I sorta needed to pee so I decided to get that out of the way first, so I did. Just that was an unusual new physical sensation. There was some toilet paper sitting in the bathtub next to the toilet, so I grabbed some to clean things up a bit (since I was planning to shortly be playing around down there soon anyways); as I was cleaning up the phone rang and I answered it. The voice on the other end was some woman trying to tell me about how there were cloths in the tub that I could use for whatever but to leave them there so she could wash them later (I noticed here that it was hard to focus on what was happening now while I was on the phone trying to listen). I looked back into the tub and the toilet paper had been replaced by dark blue cloth. I shortly regretted flushing a few of them down the toilet. I checked the mirror one last time to see if things were still good and then went back out to the living room. I'm think there may have been somewhere here where I experimented with my new body, but if so unfortunately I don't remember it. Eventually there appeared in my house (as though she was familiar with the place) a thin, light-skinned black girl. Delighted to find another person to help me experiment with my new body, I asked her if she wanted to have sex with me. She seemed apprehensive; focusing on her I first removed her clothes then, noting of course that she too was female and thus would make proper copulation difficult, made her instantly grow a penis. She wasn't very amused by this, however, and she angrily stormed off to the basement. Shrugging, and once again bored, I decided to turn my attention on mentally recreating graphic-update remakes of old school video games I love in my mind for entertainment. I started with what I assume was Final Fantasy 6, though thinking on it after the fact the action doesn't match up properly with the game (though I specifically recall Terra's appearance). At some point this was interrupted with my wife calling, when she called what had been the video game scene taking up my entire stream of consciousness suddenly appeared as though I'd taken it out of full-screen mode on my monitor on my computer at my current apartment. I even had my headphones on, so I had to remove one of side of them to expose an ear for the phone like I usually do. I was annoyed at the distraction but answered the phone anyways. I don't remember the contents of the actual phone message, but I note again after the fact that it started to break my lucid concentration. The last part I remember now was going down to the basement where I found the black girl (who had now been transformed into some sort of small Pokémon-like creature) cuddling on a table with another small Pokémon-like creature. Saying, "Oh, so you'll have sex with him but not me!" and did my own storming-off-angrily upstairs and back to the living room, where I waved my hand and did some sort of mental slash across the table they were lying on and killing them both. My memory of this dream ends here, though when I woke I seemed to think that there was more non-lucid dream that came after this. I awoke just prior to starting this journal entry and did a quick reality check that passed, officially ending my first lucid dream.

Note to self: be wary about answering phones once you're lucid; it seems to help break lucid focus. In fact, I'm going to try to make an effort to start reality checks whenever answering and/or ending phone calls. I'm going to try to remember that the next thing on my agenda for practice when a dream goes lucid is controlling the environment; this time I kind of let the environment do what it wanted around me.

There was a dream sequence either prior to or leading up to where it went lucid. There was a long prelude to most of what I remember, but the bulk of what I remember was that there was this stretch of interstate that I would drive down as though I was in a GTA-ish sandbox type game and try to score points on this segment of highway. The segment of highway was kind of a long straight section with a curve off to the right. I'm thinking I may have lost more memory of this dream out of excitement for the lucid one, so maybe more will come back to me later.

1. I arrive at my college for a new year, but as I'm unsure where to go I end up meandering through random hallways. In one of them I find my friend Mary T, who directs me up to her room. She's very happy to see me, and we hang out by playing a music theory game using a piano controller against another friend via Skype. Soon we start to cuddle, but as we do we're rudely intruded by an orientation activity. The RAs are leading a "Parade of Geeks," dressed in suspenders and huge glasses. They take my friend CW from the room after asking "Is anyone weird?" and Mary and I join him in support. I get lost on the way and stumble into a succession of other rooms on the floor. One contains freshmen girls from my old high school, another is an office space, and another is an apartment housing my roommate from the research station and his father.

2. CA and I are the only survivors of a pandemic that is changing all of my college into gibbering lunatics. I commend her as she singlehandedly diagnoses the disease and develops a cure.

3. I'm present in the final level of a Paper Mario game that takes place in the bar level from Guitar Hero. I am playing bass in the background, but when the final boss shows up I start to interact in the Paper Mario world. My dialogue is extremely cocky as I fight rather poorly, but as people criticize me I say I'm roleplaying. Another band leaves in fear and I insult them, leading to one of their members and I exchanging insults. He ends up kicking me in the face, which loosens the glasses I'm wearing.

4. I am watching a dinner show at the Dollywood theme park. Each guest is given a light gun to interact with the show as it goes on. As the show starts, the main character boasts how presidents (Bush father and son) and other dignitaries love it. The seats then move backwards to proper viewing distance for a massive screen, where a trippy music video appears. In the video, a redneck pharmacist has placed the world in a stupor by distributing colorful pills in colored Solo cups. The audience seems to enter the music video, and there's a crowd marching single-file through a large mansion.

At this point, I remember the main character declaring that the whole thing is a dream, and I feel a mild awareness for the rest of the scene. However, I don't feel any control and the faintest of physical sensations, so I'm not counting it as a true lucid. For some reason, I know my name is Vincent in the dream, and my body has split into several selves. One looks like the waking me, but several are burly black men and one is a golden robot. I feel pulled away from the march through the mansion, and my other selves go exploring with me. The robot leads the way to a golden cabinet, where I see a camera and a cell phone. Out of the corner of my eye I develop an X-ray vision and see the two objects go down a shelf in the cabinet. I know that to go further into the mansion, I have to move the objects myself, as the vision was an illusion.

Had a short dream wherein I copped out and bought Starcraft 2. Was trying to play Zerg but was suffering from some annoying connection issues. I was also annoyed because in the dream version you had to pay in game currency to play practice games.

Also, the apartment I was in was different. The common area was similar, but outside was also different.

Key: Non-Lucid, Lucid

I was playing a Mario Kart game on DS with my brother, except it wasn't Mario Kart DS -- it was a new game. The controls were messed up, L or R to power slide then the opposite shoulder button to initiate the speed boost. It was awkward and I was complaining about it sucking really bad.

I also recall there being really hard to see short-cuts on the track we were playing. It was extremely frustrating.

The dream started to change in to a physical race on foot. I was no longer holding the DS but an active participant in the race. There were a few people I was aware of also racing. I recognised most from different periods of my life.

I was running through a castle themed area. I remember stopping and hiding to ambush the person behind me. I had some kind of tray or disc, strangely turquoise in colour, and I jumped out from behind a wall and hit them with it.

I raced up some steps and overtook someone ahead of me. They tried to stop me, but I avoided them. I recall that I was now on wooden rope bridge over some water. It wasn't very far, and there were other rope bridged around. The water was very oldskool video game looking: opaque blue and pixelated.

Finally I recall reaching what must have been the end goal. It was a room with containers built in to the walls on either side. It looked like the inside of some kind of temple. I wasn't the first here, but I learned that it didn't really matter. I had to open a box with a number on it. More of a game of chance it turned out. There were low and high numbers.

I saw J, a hot girl that went to my secondary school. She was next to largest number. I walked over and said I was going to open it. She and the others in the room were shocked. I understood that the higher the number the higher the risk that whatever was inside was more dangerous, but also the higher the potential reward. I felt like injury or death might await. I was trying to be daring though.

I opened it. My vague recollection is of reading some instructions inside on a small brightly coloured scroll. J was also helping me by explaining something.

I either woke up or just can't remember the rest.