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I want to say this non-lucid dream was an hour long. It just kept going and going. And in cycle 2? Vividness was only average or below. It was memorable, but kinda boring at the same time. I'm just going to skim over it here yet it's still a wall of text.

B-Complex vitamin one hour before bed, drank natural apple juice

Longest Dream Ever
0637: B.
Paradoxical Architecture and Drug Party
I'm in a strange building with several floors and many staircases. It's hard to get to the room you want because each staircase takes you to a different place than you expect. I'm living here while going to college but I'm moving out soon, I'm trying to find someone to take my apartment. Then there's a family that moves in and I befriend their young 10-year-old son. Lots of deja vu feeling here.

Then I'm hosting a few friends in this strange apartment and we are doing drugs. Then it turns into a formal party for a community of strictly kosher Jews. Everyone is doing drugs and talking about being kosher. Then the landlord shows up and I'm supposed to give him the keys. But I remember the drugs in the bedroom so I sneak back in and put them in a briefcase. I run away from the building with my friends.

Mugged and Suspected
Now I'm alone, walking on the main street of a small town. Reminds me of Monterrey. Instead of a briefcase of drugs, I'm now holding a bottle of whiskey, open and half empty. I sense there are cops around and also a criminal. I let the criminal steal the bottle out of my hand as he runs by. The cops stop me. They think that I gave the criminal the bottle, like a planned exchange. They think it's hard drugs dissolved in water. But I'm so scared and clueless that they realize I'm no criminal and they let me go.

Bear-Lion Mating Season
Now I'm walking with the friends again and we still have the drugs. We're in the middle of nowhere on a dirt path through some grassy hills. We stop and one girl snorts it all. She turns into a bear-lion kind of thing. Looks like the head of those big Chinese lion parade costumes with the big floppy mouth. She has thick black fur like a bear. The rest of us stand back, not sure what to do. A male bear-lion appears nearby and stares at the female, as if to mate. I try to make eye contact with my friend to see what she's thinking. She can't speak. I think perhaps she is afraid of the male and wants my help. She gestures with her eyes, which I interpret to mean "you guys leave, I'll stay". So I leave and the male pounces on her.

Now I'm walking alone toward the nearest town. I see my bear-lion friend running down a hill toward the same town. I chase after her. She seems upset and I figure out that she didn't want me to leave. She wanted my help. Her eye gesture actually meant "let's all run that way." Now she won't forgive me. As we arrive in the town, she turns back into a woman. I plead with her but she'll never forgive me.

Dalai Lama in a Diner
Then, I'm sitting in a diner with Lance. He is reciting a quote from the Dalai Lama with a perfect voice impression. The quote (which seemed real, but I looked it up and couldn't find it IWL) is about idea of spiritual salvation contrasted with the distractions of modern culture. At the very end, Lance is just staring at me intently and I let the quote and the whole dream just sink in for a moment.

I slept GREAT last night. Zeo game me a score of 94, compare to my average of 68. I slept 9 hours total with 3h 48m in REM sleep in 6 cycles. That's a lot of dreaming!

I took the B-Complex vitamin one hour before bed and took a relaxing hot bath to meditate and adjust my body temperature for sleep. Tonight's dreams weren't as vivid as yesterday. Maybe the apple juice was the difference? But they were really really long. The three that I recalled seemed at least 30 minutes long each. I wrote a while page of notes for each and could still recall more detail that I didn't bother to write down. In fact, they were so long and not very interesting that I'm going to cut them short here.

Gordon Ramsey's Love Troubles
0503: B. Gordon Ramsey guest stars on a TV sitcom, maybe The Big Bang Theory. Gordon is a roommate with the dorky guys and there another group in the next door apartment as well. It's too crowded and someone says "Someone has to go back to Poland!"

Then scene changes to outside a nightclub with Gordon and the roommates. His part is to approach a shy girl and ask her for a date as a prank. She is supposed to be charmed because he's so famous. But she isn't interested and the prank backfires. Gordon is surprised and humbled. There's a taxicab in the scene.

Then the scene starts over but now it's "real" life and not the TV show. Gordon does the same thing of approaching a shy girl and gets rejected. He's humbled and goes into the club. A really hot redheaded woman meets him and comforts him. But then she finds out it was a prank and she's really really upset and leaves. Gordon is now completely devastated.

Then the dream really jumps around. There's a parking lot and a staircase. It leads to a college dormitory with a rec room. Gordon is in the rec room with a TV, arcade games, and a giant touch-screen computer thing. Some college students are in there watching TV. Now I am the main character in first-person instead of Gordon in third-person. Lance is looking for me but I am avoiding him. The students in the rec room cover for me.

Exchange Student
0651: B. I'm an exchange student living with a foster family. It seems like I'm still in the US though. The first part of the dream jumped around a lot. I'm supposed to film a TV commercial with this family. Then I'm making some kind of cake and pudding desert. But when I try to flip the pudding out on top of the cake, it spills on the floor and I feel bad because it's someone else's kitchen. Then the foster family has a bunch of kids and they are leaving for school but I stay at home. One kid, a girl of about 7, turns around and comes back into the house, refusing to go to school. There are a bunch of mothers from the neighborhood standing in the kitchen. Meanwhile, I am eating something in the living room and spill some red sauce on the couch. I feel bad again and clean it up with a giant beach towel.

Scene changes and now I'm in Japan with a different family. It's the first day of school and the student body is in the gym. We receive our grades from the previous year. I am afraid I failed but I get a B. Then I'm walking with the foster family toward a restaurant to celebrate.

Scene changes and I'm in a restaurant but now I seem to be in Mexico with yet another foster family. I sit alone in a booth away from the family. I order a hamburger and whiskey. I finish them and order another. A few teenage girls sit at my booth but ignore me while I eat. Then I ask who they are and what is going on. One has her face painted white like a geisha. She says it's a holiday and tells me the name in Spanish. I ask what it means and she says in English "Ten Years and Two Days."

False awakening. I roll over to write in my dream journal. I note the time is 1137 and my previous entry was at 10 something. But the light coming through the window is too dim for that time. I think, wait, is it really that late? Then I wake up for real.

short WBTB

Work Retreat
0825: B. I'm at work and a few people just got laid off. One was the other Michael, so I'm the only Michael left. I joke about this with coworkers that there won't be any more confusion.

Then everyone at work goes to a small restaurant out in the middle of a nowhere on a small rural road. It looks like a lodge. I ride along with Lance and we park across the street. Everyone is given sweatshirt and pants randomly in blue, gray, or black. We watch a movie about color and light and supposedly we have to study for a test on it next week. Then we watch some other movies made by people at work. Ex-employee Garrett is there and I avoid him. He made a film where he's looping a belt through the skin around his waist. It reminds me of a surrealist film.

Then it's time to go so I try to find my sweatshirt in the big pile of identical ones that people have left. Other people are also searching through the pile. There are other people in the restaurant. They seem like a biker gang and I feel nervous. I just grab a matching pair of small blue sweater and pants and leave. I'm going to ride again with Lance but I fall behind as we're running outside. He crosses the road before me. It's dusk and the highway has many cars going very fast with their headlights on. I try to cross a few times but turn back because I almost get run over. Then I walk to a narrower part of the road where there is just 2 lanes and cross.

I meet with Lance and there is also the other Michael who is going to ride with us. People from work have divided into their cliques in the parking lot and are talking and gossiping.

Took a B-Complex supplement about 2 hours before sleep and also sipped some natural apple juice throughout the night.

Colored String Competition
0200: C. In a competition. Each player has a small plastic toy bow (as in bow-and-arrow) with a colored piece of string. There are about 10 people including me. Some are vaguely familiar. There is a host, like it's a game show. The goal is to guess the color of other's strings. I think mine is plain white. The host guides us through a few rounds. Then one round is tricky. The choice is between two people who have pink and red. We are supposed to guess which is which. Only me and one other girl get it right. Actually, I just copy her guess. I realize she is Lexi, a childhood friend.

WBTB+MILD, short

Bunker, Dream Control without Lucidity
0452: B. Ok, this dream was really vivid. I could have sworn it was lucid, but on waking up and recalling I realized I never actually had the critical lucid moment. I'm on a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II map. I think it's called Quarry. But I'm not fighting. I look for a bunker under the hills and find one. It has a low ceiling, a locking door, and a narrow pillbox window looking out at the center of the map. I'm glad that the door has a lock for some reason. I look at the low ceiling. This is the point where I appreciate how vivid the dream is and I feel that pre-lucid tingle but never go fully lucid. The ceiling is bare rock with a tangle of metal braces, electrical wires, and light bulbs. There are also some spider webs and I carefully look for spiders but find none. The whole room is only about 10 feet by 10 feet. I think there is a bed and a few military-looking green crates stacked around.

Now Hugh and a girl are in the room with me. The girl is tall and skinny with a brown hair in a pony tail. Kinda tomboyish. She vaguely reminds me of the ex-girlfriend of an old friend from college. She's casually dressed in jeans and a tank top with some cleavage, which is distracting me. I show them the view through the window. It's bright day outside. You can see the part of the map where there's a big stack of cube-shaped cut stones. But in the dream, they are cardboard boxes instead of stones. I notice this is weird but not enough to become lucid. Then I try to impress both of them, mostly the girl, with some dream powers. I try to levitate an empty water bottle but fail. The girl is bored and wants to go somewhere else. I try to teleport us out but fail again. So we walk out the door, through a hallway and out into the open.

Hugh and the girl venture off. I'm looking around and see Justin, a childhood friend, walk up to me. His hair is buzzed really short, almost bald. He's wearing a light blue UCLA T-shirt. He says something about the UCLA football team. Then he asks if I'm bored and what to do something. He suggests we go watch a movie called "Cobalt Jungle." I say "Hell, yeah!" Here's where I start showing some dream control.

Justin jumps on a motorized dirt bike and I fly behind him. I'm parallel to the ground, just a 2-3 feet off the ground. We're traveling on a very rough dirt road with a steep hill bank on either side. The sky is now overcast and the ground is muddy with patches of green. Justin and I are weaving around telephone polls that are scattered on the road. I want to go faster so I concentrate and accelerate. We started at about 30 mph, now it feels like 80 mph. Justin hits a bump in the road and falls off his bike. But before he hits the ground, I reach with my left arm and use telekinesis to put him back on the bike and to keep the bike from crashing. Wake up and try to DEILD but no luck.

WBTB+MILD, long, read DV

The Blue Sweater
0638 B. Another very vivid dream. This time I become lucid for a while. I recall a fragment from the earliest part of the dream. I'm laying in bed and feel something warm at my feet. I lift the sheets and see my old cat Sam balled up. He wakes up and moves up the bed closer to me and lays down again next to my body for warmth. I think, aww, so cute.

False awakening. I roll over to write in my journal. It's early morning light outside. The window is at the head of the bed, which is the correct direction. Next to my journal, I see two pairs of glasses. One looks like mine, though this isn't where I usually place them when I sleep. The other pair looks similar in style but smaller. I think, hmm, who's are these? I get up and look around nervously. Is there someone else in my room? No. The room is fairly convincing as my real bedroom and very vivid. I examine the glasses more closely. They look like reading glasses that you would wear at the edge of your nose. They say "Granny" on the legs like a brand name.

As I'm looking at the glasses, I notice I'm wearing a very thick and woolly royal blue sweater. I think, Umm what? I don't own anything like this. I nose-plug check and I can breath. But I'm not convinced. The scene seems too vivid to be a dream. I do the nose-plug again and can breath again. Hmm. Ok, I guess I'm dreaming. But I'm still surprised. I do a finger-through-the-hand check to be sure. My finger doesn't go through but I look down and see my finger smushed like clay against the palm of my hand. Ok, I'm finally convinced.

What to do? I think of my plan. My plan that I set for tonight was: look at my hands, feel my body, notice my clothes, then take off my clothes and do something embarrassing while naked. I get up the taking off my clothes. I start pulling the sleeves of the blue sweater when I decide that I could be doing something interesting while disrobing.

I look at the window and realize it's wrong. It's a long and rectangular. It should be two tall narrow windows. Outside, I see a front lawn and other houses like a suburban neighborhood. That's also wrong; I live in the city with a parking structure across the street. This improves my lucidity but distracts me. Outside on the lawn, I see a giant TV screen. It's a billboard mounted just a few feet off the ground. There are a few adults throwing a football on the street. I intuitively know they are a news crew from the local TV station. I forget about my clothes and plan. I climb on the bed and try to phase through the window. I get halfway and feel stuck. Oh no!

At this point, my recall is broken and I lose lucidity. I might have woken up and DEILD back. Either way, the dream continues. One of the news crew is now in my room. He's an Asian man with a light blue dress shirt and slacks. He reminds me of a real TV reporter from one of the TV stations in Los Angeles. He apologizes for the billboard and says it won't be there more than three days. He goes on about how important advertising is for his station and who important the suburbs are. As we're talking, he starts standing, then sitting, then laying on the floor near my desk. Then he goes on about how television and entertainment are so important to our culture. He compares it to religion in the time of Jesus. I try to summarize his argument "So, the Internet is the new religion?" He says "Yes, exactly!"

WBTB, trouble falling asleep

Soccer
1107: D. Playing on a soccer team. Maybe a college team. Strict grid system with only one part of slack allowed. I am a controversial new member of the team. I make a play that leads to a goal.

Drank some beer last evening so no recall until the second half of the night, but wow what a night.

Freaky Room
0652: C. I'm laying in a bed at one end of a long room. It's almost pitch dark. I can just make out the silhouette of some bedroom furniture and I sense there is a doorway at the far end of the room. A creepy little girl is running around the room. Her face glows like a dim candle. As she gets near me I'm a little frightened. Maybe I'm a little lucid because I tell myself this is just a dream and I should just stay calm and watch. The girl giggles and says "Come, you should see!" And then she exits the room through the door. I still haven't moved. Then I see a large man sitting at the far end of the room. His face is also glowing dimly. He stands up and slowly walks toward me at a zombie's pace. As he gets close, he stretches one arm out toward me as if he intends to grab me. I'm afraid and turn away, still laying in the bed. Dream fades.

Bridgette?
0733: C. I'm in a dark room. Seems like a bedroom. There's some light coming through a door near me that leads to a hallway. I think I'm looking for something in a dresser. A girl walks in and asks for my help. At first, she seems to be Bridgette, a very attractive coworker IWL. She's talking about a forum post about collecting all the images from the game loading screens. She's holding a piece of paper and she wants me to burn it for her. I tell her this is a dream. Again, maybe I'm a little lucid but the vividness and control are low. She says, "Oh, I'm dreaming with you?" I get a closer look and she looks Asian, which Bridgette is not. I say, "Yeah, help me take of my shirt." She does but as the shirt lifts over my head it blocks out my vision and the dream ends abruptly.

Kiting Sleep
0830: D. For about 30 minutes, I'm drifting in and out of sleep, false awakenings, wake, and hallucinations. Here's a bunch of fragments, I'm not sure which was which. I'm calling this "kiting" for lack of a known term. Some fragments were lucid, so I'm counting this as one lucid dream.

Watching two people play chess. The person playing white is making illegal moves but no one else notices and I don't say anything.

FA in my own bedroom. I hear music coming from my computer. It's not supposed to be on. I recognize the artist is Jimmy Eat World.

Riding in a car with my father driving. It's his old pickup truck. We are exiting a covered parking lot. Maybe a sports stadium. He's arguing something. I say this is a dream and I'm just going to fly away to avoid him. I try to jump through the roof of the car but fail.

I'm at a store paying for something. I pull out a black Visa card. Supposedly it's a "Visa HILL" card and it's very hard to get so I must be a VIP customer. The cashier is impressed.

My underwear is on backwards.

Sisyphus in Wonderland, Dream Guide?!
0930 A! This was an incredibly weird and memorable lucid dream. It's much more fantasy and strangeness then my average dreams.

FA. I'm in a bedroom. It's mostly dark. The room is arranged a bit like my real room. But there is a TV mounted on the far wall where there shouldn't be. I become lucid early on but my control is poor at the beginning. My father is in the room and we're arguing again. I'm so sick of this recurring theme with my father. I'm aware in the dream that I've already been through this on same night. I tune him out and think what I want to do now that I'm lucid and have some control.

I get outside somehow. It's night outside in a residential neighborhood. But the houses and trees are all cartoonish colors. The trees are purple and blue. The houses are crazy colors like yellow and red. It looks like something out of Dr. Seuss or Alice in Wonderland. But since it's dark, the bright colors aren't as noticeable and it seems somewhat realistic. The street is dimly lit with street lamps and moonlight. I walk in the middle of the street to the corner of the block, still upset and without a plan. At the corner, there is a building that looks like a drive-thru fast-food restaurant. On top of the building is a big neon sign styled in black and white with a font like Corner Bakery. The sign reads "difficulty, inc." which I think is kinda funny.

My father is following me and we start fighting with our bare hands. I try to fly away but he can fly too. My flying sucks today. I can hover fine but I can only thrust by pushing off things for short distances. We're still wrestling in the air and through the neighborhood. After a minute or two I am fed up and just try to fly away. The dream starts to feel unstable. I land next to a brick building with vines growing on the walls. I feel the vines and brick to get some sensory stability. But I still wake up.

I try to DEILD. I'm imagining the same scene, trying to re-enter. I'm about to give up, but I hear my father's voice describing the scene. He says things like "brick wall, restaurant down the street, grassy lawn" and this helps me get back into the scene. As soon as I'm back, I'm fighting with him again. But now I'm just walking away, trying to ignore him. When he gets close, I push him a way and continue walking. I don't want to waste any more of my lucid dream on him so I start spinning to teleport away. I try so hard that I wake up and turn my physical neck. At least I think I was awake. I'm in my bed and stop moving my head.

I try to DEILD again. Again, about 20 seconds pass and I'm about to give up. I'm about to switch to recalling earlier parts of the dream for my journal. But I suddenly feel like I'm going through a tunnel. I'm back in the dream. The edges of the tunnel turn into leaves and I find myself hiding in a bush peeking out through a hole in the leaves. It seems like time is going really fast around me for a few seconds. The tree leaves are rustling and street lamps are twinkling really fast like time-lapse photography. Things slow down to normal. I'm in the same dark cartoonish neighborhood but a different area. I'm in the middle of the quiet street. My father is gone and I'm in the deep in middle of the block where there are just houses, no restaurants or retail buildings.

Phew. Ok. Now, what to do? I start walking down the middle of the street, looking at the crazy colored trees and gingerbread houses. I see an old lady outside. I walk toward her but she enters her front door. I think of Mother Goose. I keep walking and start to see the end of the block in the distance. I see a paint store far off across the intersection that advertises two kinds of paint: "DRIED" and "WET". I think that's pretty funny and congratulate my subconscious for the joke.

Then a short goat-man jumps out at me from the shadow of the trees to my right. I'm startled but he quickly seems friendly. He's about 4 feet tall with goat legs and yellowish-brown fur. I guess he must be Pan from Greek mythology. He asks me what I'm doing. I remember my plan, I'm going to practice teleporting by spinning or opening doors. He says, "Cool! I'll try too!" And he starts spinning like a playful child. I start spinning as fast as I can. The world becomes a blur and unrecognizable. I slow down my I'm still in the same place in the same scene. Hmm, didn't work.

Another character approaches Pan and me. I don't get a good look at him, but I sense he is friendly and familiar. He says, "There's a portal in the boat" and points toward the nearest house. Later, recalling the dream, I think that maybe this character might have been my Dream Guide! I still don't recall what he looked like. Somehow though, I was left with three separate vague impressions: A man-size yellow dinosaur (think Barney), Homestar Runner, and Ronald McDonald. I lead the way as the three of us walk up to the house he pointed out. It's yellow with red trim. It looks like a life-size gingerbread house or a cartoonish McDonald's. The front door is only about 3 feet high and I get a strong Alice in Wonderland feeling.

I'm puzzled. This is a house, not a boat. There's a lunchbox next to the front door. I bend over to look at it. "Is this what I'm looking for?" No, I sense my DG gesturing into the house. I look in a window where I can see through to the backyard. I stoop down and we all walk through the small house to the backyard. In the middle of a small patch of grass, there's an inflatable kiddie pool with a plastic toy boat floating. Okay, this must be the boat but where's the portal and how I am supposed to get in such a small boat? DG says exactly what I'm thinking: "Shrink down to size." Okay, never done that before. I bend over to get a closer look at the boat and see a USB port on it with some text printed under it. I squint to read the words. My alarm goes off and wakes me up.

Restful, but light sleep this night with many short interrupted dreams. The lucids are barely worth counting. I'm giving myself credit for at least recognizing some dreamsigns that made me lucid.

Food and Robots
0523 C. Hazy and jumpy. Two girls are competing for my attention. We are in a two story house. I'm resting on the couch on the first floor watching a boy singer who might be a robot. One girl is on the first floor and the other on the second. They are both cooking things for me. One cooks a steak but it looks like a big raw beef roast. Around it she puts a bunch of small Philly-style cheesesteak sandwiches. The other girl made something too but the first girl blocked her from showing me. I go to the bathroom and I think the second girl meets me in there to tries to tell me something. Something about the cartoon charactor Lisa Simpson. Maybe she is Lisa. Then the boy robot singer starts singing again but he's terrible. The first girls is upset about this: "Did you reset the game back to beginning?!"

Meanwhile, I recall cut scenes in between my plot to a different character. It's a guy pretending to be a robot. He's dressed a bit like the Tinman from Wizard of Oz but really skinny. He's trying to blend in with other robots that all look that same. The robots greet him in a robotic voice (think the infantry droids from Star Wars) saying "Left-hand side of you." To which he is supposed to salute his right arm across to his left side. Then "Right-hand side of you" and salute with other arm. The pretend robot catches on to this greeting and fools the other robots. At one point he is drinking from a water fountain. I sense he is my friend.

untitled
0654 D. Short dream. Not sure what to make of my notes: I'm baking a special bread that will make me lucid. Carry inside my body? The Simpsons.

WBTB+MILD 10 minutes

untitled
0748: D. I'm Homer Simpson and I'm practicing MILD. I go into a dream world with simple geometric-shaped objects like Tron. I'm being chased by men in suits with pistols like the agents from The Matrix. I can stop their bullets just like Neo.

Trouble sleeping, turned it into a WBTB+meditation and reading DV for about an hour total

False Awakening Chain
1018 C. This was about 20 minutes of false awakenings. In my own room. I can see through my sleep mask. I see my desk and alarm clock in the wrong place across the room. I'm lucid but can barely move my arms and legs. I manage to sit up in bed. At this point IWL, the garbage truck shows up and makes a loud banging noise about every five minutes. Each time, this either wakes me up or triggers an FA. Some times I could move my arms to nose-plug and I was awake. Other times I couldn't move my arms. I'm unsure how many times it happened but I recall a couple more lucid periods.

False awakening. I can see but the view is dark and blurry. I sense a small dog jump on my bed to my left. He gets close to my face and I can feel the heat of his breath. I can't move to look at him. I'm just trying to be patient for the scene to solidify. The dog starts growling. Interrupted by noise.

False awakening. I'm laying on my back and can't move my body. I can tilt my head down and look at my body. My view looks like an X-ray image highlighted with electric blue. A blue line extends along my body like my spine but continues all the way down to between my feet.

Eventually, I reach a real wakening and give up on this futile chain so I can note it in my journal.

False Awakening, Dreamsign
1044: C. Another false awakening. I can see through my sleep mask. I notice my bedroom door is open when it shouldn't be. I hear my roommate in the next room, whisking eggs I think. I can't move.

untitled
1000: F. I recalled this dream after/inside the dream that followed it all I remember is a fragment. A blond man?

Doomsday Program, Customer Complaint
1114: D. Really jumping with very short and fast scene cuts. I'm at work. I woman comes in and tells me I have to get out fast. It's like near the beginning of The Matrix when Neo needs to sneak out of his office. The woman leads me to a car and I'm driving. We are chased by some bad guys. I tell her to reach in the back seat and grab a special cell phone. I tell her to dial a special sequence of numbers. She does and it activates a doomsday program. We are on a bridge over water and parts of it collapse but the section we are on is intact. Buildings around in the distance all blow up and collapse. The bad guy car can't follow us but we're stuck on this section of bridge.

Cut to what feels like a ransom exchange with the bad guys. I hand a guy a brief case. He looks like Andy Garcia's character in Ocean's Eleven. He hands it to another guy who then runs along a the bridge cable but there's no bridge.

Cut to a big warehouse building with a dirt floor. I have my shirt off and I'm fighting the bad guys gladiator style. One of them is still the Andy Garcia character.

Cut back to me at work. I'm dozing on a couch in the kitchen (not real IWL). I keep thinking of the previous dream about the blond man. I'm trying to keep it in my mind so I can recall it later. I look up at the bulletin board and see a red poster with a very angry customer support email complaint on it. Something about a guy who lost his credits after they went over 4000. I ask, "Hey, has anyone looked into this?" A co-worker (IWL he's just an artist) gets angry at me. He says it would be so easy to look up the guy's account and he describes the few keystrokes that it would take. But he says he knows it's probably just a fraudulent claim and it's a waste of time. He's angry at me because he thinks I care too much and it's a waste of time. I'm taken aback my this.

Stove Fire
0424: C. This was early in the night and my notes aren't clear. Talking to a family of Italians in a kitchen. We're talking about food. One guy is sitting on the edge of the stove even while all four gas burners are lit, each cooking a small pizza. I try to warn him that he should move to another seat. Sister walks away very upset. He brags that a 9-inch pizza is 5 pounds of food. His clothes catch fire. Everyone is yelling at him to move but he seems paralyzed. Father puts out the fire with a fire extinguisher. Sister comes back with an "I told you so" attitude.

Backyard Ninjas
1100: A! Last sleep cycle of the night after 30 minute WBTB with MILD auto-suggestion. This might have been an unintentional WILD because of how the dream started. My plan was to practice teleporting, but I went off the script.

I start in bed, trying to fall asleep. I don't really know if I was really awake or dreaming INRA. Either way, I open my eyes and can see something through my sleep mask. I can still feel it around my head but it's like a hole is cut in it and I can see a blurry scene of what looks like a grand piano from far away. Now I know I must be dreaming but I still feel like I'm in my physical body. I'm not in the scene, I'm just seeing it without a dream body. So I just stay calm and don't try to move or control anything. I just watch what's happening in the scene and gently suggest that the "camera" move and zoom in. Gradually, the scene starts to look like a room with sunlight coming in a sliding glass door. This reminds me of the Daisetta house.

Then, WHAM!, I'm in the scene with my dream body. I'm not sure if this was a sudden change or a gap in my memory. It's the most vivid lucid I've had in a while. I phase through the glass door and out into the backyard which is a fairly faithful recreation of my true memory. There's a swimming pool, a concrete patio, a patio table with a giant umbrella and steep incline of dirt. The yard is surrounded by a tall fence and trees. I just look around a appreciate the vividness for about a minute. It's so calm and peaceful that the dream starts to destabilize and I wake up.

I remain still in bed to DEILD back. I imagine myself spinning in the same scene. And I'm back in the same spot. Phew. I figure I'd better do something but I forgot my plan so I think of any random task from my list. First task, I run and skip across the surface of the pool water with ease. I'm thinking of what to do next but my memory and vividness aren't as good as before. I figure I should stabilize a bit. I see a long garden rake laying on the patio table. I reach to grab the handle but I can't move my arms! I don't panic. I spin and recover my arms. I rub my hand and then grab the rake. All this improves the stability and I decided I'll just do something silly and fun.

I hold the rake like a bowstaff and assume a fighting posture. I suggest to myself, "Uh-oh... ninjas!" I look around and see four ninjas perched on the tress and fence around the yard. They are all in black with hoods and black sunglasses. The pounce off their perches to attack me with short swords. I fend them off with my rake and fight back for a few minutes. Eventually, all four are beaten and laying on the ground. I walk up to one, and snap his neck. Blood flows from his nostrils.

I walk up to another and realize it's a woman. I instinctively tear off her clothes. But I realize that I'm losing control and this will end the dream. I stop myself, stand up, and turn away. I'm now in the side yard and I can see a glimpse of the rest of the neighborhood toward the street. I think of all the houses with their doors and I'm reminded of the lucid dream from the night before. I begin to remember that my plan for today was to practice teleporting through doors. But before I can move, the dream fades away.

Elusive First Cycle Dream
0430: D. First cycle. Once again that strange feeling in the first cycle of having slept for a long time. When I woke up, I was a bit upset that maybe I had slept through the whole night without any recall. But when I looked at the clock I realized I'd only been asleep for about 75 minutes. By this time, the vague recollection of my dream had mostly faded. This is what I wrote: No plot recall. Just feeling of missing something. Feeling of change. Chasing to recover something lost. In retrospect, maybe the feeling was about the dream recall itself, not within the dream. Or maybe the feelings from the dream spilled over into waking. Anyway, moving on.

Girlfriend in India
0630: B. This is likely some residue of a conversation I had with a friend about his Pakistani girlfriend. I'm in India living in a cheap apartment. I'm dating an Indian girl. She looks like the contestant from MasterChef. We're fooling around in the bed and she wants to go further. I don't want to or maybe I'm just teasing her. Suddenly I'm wearing my sleep mask. She pulls it off and tells me to stop acting silly. We end up just cuddling and seem to drift off to sleep.

I wake up in the hallway outside the apartment. The girl is gone. Hugh lives next door. He's exiting his apartment and locking his door. He notices me and stops to talk. He's heading off to work and he's wonder why I'm sleeping in the hallway. He leaves.

I stumble into the apartment but now it's where the girl and her parents live. I'm trying to figure out how to turn on the A/C and hang a "do not disturb" sign for the maid. The girl and her parents are talking around a small kitchen table. The mother is concerned that her daughter is dating a boy. The father is proud of the job he has done raising her. Then an air raid siren goes off. The mother tells the girl to go tie up the reindeer.

Just Weird
0755: C. I live in a house is feels familiar but isn't recognizable. It's really hot and humid. At school, there's a contest to do something with two sheets of fabric. I guess I won and I bring home two blankets. I talk with my mother and sister about where to put them. Suddenly, instead of two blankets, it's a colorful table placemat and a frozen packaged crab. The placemat is white with blue and orange stripes. The crap is bright orange and the package says it's from Mexico. I decide to put the two items in the dining room where there is a very long large dining table. But I guess we barely use this room. There's a spider web above the table and a live crab walking across the table. My sister breaks the spider web and the spider falls near her. She and I are both freaked out and run out.

Practicing Dream Control
0905: B. A short WBTB where I used the bathroom and had a few slips of water. Practiced MILD suggestion going back to sleep. I sense there was more plot earlier in the dream but don't recall, so I pick it up as I'm in a nice quiet residential neighborhood cul-de-sac. It's a sunny autumn afternoon. All the houses are two-story with nice lawns, trees, and Halloween decorations. I enter one house in the middle of the block. Inside it's a crowded house party. I walk up the stairs to the second floor, stepping sideways through the crowd. I see a guy who I recognize as Nick, a friend from high school. I'm confident I'm dreaming and I'm ready to execute my plan. I continue walking through the upstairs of the house, walking with purpose and determination. I'm looking at my hands and rubbing them.

My first task is to touch and pick up a few objects, which I do as I'm walking through a bedroom and then a hallway. I think I picked up an empty can of peas. I'm looking for a window that overlooks the front of the house. I find one and run and jump through. It's a small window so I hit the wall as well but I go right through and hover gently down to the street. I don't recall hearing a crash so I don't know if I smashed through or if I passed through, but it's satisfying enough to count as my task.

So I'm back out in the middle of the cul-de-sac street. I'm feeling pretty confident and ready to try my next task. I want to summon a girl from work named S and then teach her to fly. So I'm looking for a door. The house on the corner catches my eye. I walk up to the front door of the house and I think, yup, this is S's house. I picture her opening the door and then I knock. A woman opens the door but she's not right. She has many of S's features and her voice is similar, but she looks about 50 years old. I roll with it. "Hi, you must be S's mother. Is she home?" She replies: "Yes, come on it!"

The house is a bit dark inside and decorated with oriental rugs which kinda makes sense. I ask, "Is she upstairs?" I look at the stairs, expecting her to be coming down. Again, there is a woman there but she still isn't S. Again she has similar features, tan and pretty with long black hair. She looks about 35. The girl I'm looking for is supposed to be about 25. The mother says exactly what I'm thinking: "Oh, that's her older sister." I try one more time. "Could you call S down?" Once more, another S impostor comes walking down the stairs. This one was pretty close. Her age and height are right and her voice is right on. S's Turkish accent is probably the most distinctive thing about her IWL. But this girl isn't as tan and she has freckles on her face. Hmm, my confidence is a bit shaken. I talk to this girl a little, I forget about what. I give her a hug and a couple of friendly kisses. I decided to leave and move on.

I walk outside. I'm a bit discouraged. That didn't go as planned. I recall the earlier part of the dream and, come to think of it, my lucidity is probably only average. I'm thinking of what to do next. Meet Dream Guide? Hmm. I look at the house at the far corner of the street. It has the most Halloween decorations on the block. I try to imagine opening the door to see my Dream Guide, who I imagine is Yoda. But on the heels of the less than perfect summoning, I decide to do something else. I resolve to spin to a new scene. I picture my office and start spinning. As I'm spinning for about 10 seconds I still see the neighbor scene around me. Hmm. I slow down. Should I close my eyes? What if that makes me wake up. I tell myself, don't think about closing your eyes! Of course, I close my eyes and wake up. Ah! Rookie mistake. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Missed Lucid, Facepalm Worthy
1125: C. I had trouble falling asleep after the last dream so I got up and read DV for a while and then got back to bed about an hour later. This dream might as well have been a giant light in my eyes screaming "Dreamsigns!" Yet I blew it. I'm walking in a bright outdoor school yard. The buildings are familiar to my high school. It's lunch time and it's crowded with students. Everyone is wearing the navy blue uniforms from my junior high. I think, hmm, if this were a dream this would totally be a dreamsign. I look around to see if a recognize anyone. I see a group of people that I didn't like in high school that often recur in my dreams. Yup, that would be another dreamsign. I walk near them through the crowd, hoping to overhear their conversation without them noticing me.

I continue through the crowd and see a white soccer ball bouncing toward me. I think, now see if I were lucid, I'd probably kick this soccer ball. I kick it but I still don't clue in that I'm aware that I'm dreaming. I actually feel disappointed that I'm not lucid and any amount of lucidity or dream control that I might have had fades away. I decide to leave. I walk to the parking lot but I don't find my car where I expect it. I get a little worried. I wander around pressing the lock button to trigger the car horn. I finally hear the horn on the far side of the school, which now is only one building that looks like a hamburger stand with some covered benches near it. I walk to my car and recognize it. End.

Experimenting with some dream titles to break up the wall of text a bit.

0230: F. Two sentences of illegible notes.

Birthday Girl, Bro Code
0337: C. Even in a dream, I obey the bro code. I'm at a girl's birthday party. I came with Lance. It's indoors at a house. There are about a dozen people there. It's dark outside and mostly dark inside. Lance and I pull the birthday girl aside to give her the gifts, so the three of us are alone in a dark room. Lance forgot to bring a gift, but luckily I brought two. I say they are from both of us.

The birthday girl has short black hair. She's tall and pretty. She's wearing a dress. She opens the presents. One is wrapped in purple, the other in yellow. Yellow is her favorite color? I don't remember what the gifts are but she really likes them and is very happy. She starts making out with both of us. (Not the arrangement I had planned for my first threesome, but whatever) As things get heated, it's clear the girl is more interested in me. She pulls off my pants and ignores Lance. Lance gets up and paces around the room upset. He keeps saying "That's not cool." I stop her and get up. She wants me to come back. I leave with Lance.

Hell Is An Amusement Park Line
0510: C. I need to raise half a million dollars, fast. Maybe I'm in debt to a loan shark.

Scene change. I'm in purgatory. I guess I'm dead. I'm waiting in line to be judged to go to heaven or hell. The focus changes to someone else, like I'm watching the movie of some else's life. The main character is a man who died while trying to solve a crime. He's destined to go to heaven, but he chooses the go to hell instead. He hopes he can find more information in hell to solve the crime. I think that's heroic. His partner tries to stop him and says he's crazy. Our hero says he's from San Francisco. Somehow that makes sense to the partner and lets him go.

Scene change. Now it's hell. People come sliding down a big ramp into a large red cavern crowded with people. It's lit by flames and it's fairly bright. Our hero comes sliding down. The focus switches back to me in first-person. I'm already in hell when the hero arrives. In hell, everyone is standing in tight groups in little pens formed by metal railings. It's just like waiting in line for an amusement park ride. I'm standing near some elementary school classmates and they are talking on and on about boring stuff. I think, this IS torture. I think that's funny.

I yell to someone who just arrives down the slide. "Hey, I hope you can come up with the money, by the way. Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I don't have bills to pay. But it's not like I can do anything about it from down here."

Birthday Gifts, Annoying Ice Cream Girl
0716: C. I'm indoors in an unfamiliar place but I get the impression that it's my own bedroom in a house. Apparently, it's my birthday. I'm unwrapping presents. Most of the presents are children's toys like dolls and figurines. My sister gives me a new Blackberry. I walk across the room to plug it in to charge. Another gift is D&D-like role playing game. Hugh wants to play so I unfold the map across the floor. I remark how big the map is. It's about 6 feet by 3 feet.

Scene change. I'm in a outdoor mall in a food court. I'm wearing a blue shirt with faded white lettering that says "BIRTHDAY TODDLER." Everyone is gone except Hugh, but he starts walking away leaving me alone. There are other random people in the food court though. A girl from the crowd walks up to me. I'm not attracted to her. She says she want to satisfy some urges and then walks away somewhere, as if to go fetch something that she will bring back to me. I feel awkward. Another girl walks up to me. This one is attractive and I want to talk to her. She wishes me happy birthday. I ask how she knew it was my birthday. She says it's written on my shirt.

The first girl comes back and hijacks the conversation. The second girl walks away. I'm annoyed about that but I try to be polite. The girl has a variety of ice cream and she starts feeding it to me. She want me to guess the flavors and pick my favorite. I play along to be polite. The first one is dark cherry. The second is strawberry. There are two more that I haven't tasted yet. The next one is green so I'm thinking it will either be mint or pistachio. Dream fades.

0740: False awakening. I don't RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal about my last dream. I write something but I don't note the time. Then I wake up for real. I RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal. I think, wait! Didn't I just do this? Damn it! I write: "False awakening. I dream of writing in my journal."

Unstable DEILD
0811: D. Again, I'm in the food court of an indoor mall but this one is different. I'm with two friends but I don't recall who. We sit at a bench near the actor who played George's father in Seinfeld. But he doesn't say anything. A young blond girl walk up to us nervously. She says "Did you guys know there's a dance coming up?" We say nothing and she walks away.

Another group of girls comes and sits near us in the same set of benches. One attractive blond looks at me and says "Hi I don't know if you remember me." I don't but I guess just to keep the conversation going: "Did we meet last night?" She says no. "I'm on of the 'Real Players.'" I have no idea what that means. Then she starts talking about a family and farm animals. Scene fades.

I wake up and DEILD into a lucid. My view is totally distorted. It's like I'm looking at a blurry TV, off center and from an angle. On the TV it looks like Street Fighter and I struggle to recognize one of the characters is Guile. I turn my head to try to center the view. Instead, I enter a rocky tunnel. I'm floating through, like I'm being carried underwater. It's like in medical films when they stick a camera down a person's esophagus. I look at my hands and rub them. The view still sucks. Dream ends. I think, damn, another difficult scene. I guess I need to be more prepared to face anything that comes at me. Or maybe I just need to be patient and let the dream solidify before trying any control.

Yet another LD cut short by my self-doubt about stabilizing. I've rehearsed my stabilization routine so many times that I think I've developed a fear that it won't work. Next time, I think I need to shatter that doubt. I'll say "This is my world and I can do anything." I will be bold and confident.

0010: Sleep. I daydream of Never. I think maybe if I take a nap in Never then I might enter the dream world. Nothing happens but it's pleasant.

0256: C. I'm in the SAV house. Mother and sister are with me. We are talking and worried about money. I'm planning to start college. In fact, I've missed the first day. My classes are already scheduled. We decided that I should go. Then we are folding laundry, but they don't hang my pants the way I like. I say this, but quickly thank them for their help. Sister tells me something about "action opportunities". I ask if I should accept the offers on campus to join research experiments for free pizza or money.

Then suddenly there are a few unfamiliar men in the room talking. One is old and dressed like a cowboy with a cowboy hat and long white beard. He talks about how he's such a good salesman. I explains that power is more important than position. If all you have is position, you are vulnerable.

0436: B. I am on my old college campus. I get there really early for the first day, before anyone is awake. I'm not really dressed or prepared. I have on an undershirt like I wear to sleep. I sneak into a dormitory to lay down on a couch in a common room. A guy down the hall recognizes me but I don't recognize him. His hair is messy from sleeping and he has a scraggly beard. He looks for a video tape in a pile. He says I made it years ago and it will prove that I was here before. I don't believe any of this and leave.

I keep looking at my blackberry where I have the times and room numbers of my classes. My first class is in a building called "NAS-ISI" but I don't know where that is. I don't have a map. I wander to the center of campus where there is supposed to be a big map. It's a cloudy, foggy earlier morning and there are lots of DCs walking around campus. A pretty girl, maybe the student body president, is talking on a megaphone to welcome people. A lot of people are wearing the same plain off-white hooded sweatshirt. I think there's a street vendor selling this sweater because it's cold (like selling umbrella when it's raining).

I can't find the campus map and I have enough sense to think this is weird. But not enough sense to become lucid. Instead I start wandering through buildings hoping to find it. I know the general direction of the engineering area so I think I'll probably find it. The buildings don't have hallways, just rooms. So I'm walking through classrooms where classes are taking place. In one, I accidentally bump a guy in the back of the head. I say "oops, sorry, very sorry" and continue walking. I hear him mumble, "you're not really sorry". I walk through a few other rooms and reach a dead end so I turn around. I go back through the same room and the same guy says something sarcastic trying to be funny and calls me "Smith". I say sarcastically back "You're funny" and keep walking. Again, I here him mumble "you don't mean that either." I feel so clever.

In another building I pass a classroom and see an old high school friend Chris. He wants to talk but I don't want to stop. I tell him I promise we can catch up another time. He says "we have an understanding" which I recognize as an allusion to an email I had sent him. I feel bad for not being friendly, but I keep searching for my class.

Yet another building is labeled as a church. Inside, a bunch of DCs are dressed colorfully and holding musical instruments. Through that building I reach an outdoor area that I think is the engineering area. The fog has lifted. I look around for a campus map again with no luck. Again, I think this is strange. I just stand looking around as people walk by. I feel hopeless and embarrassed.

0630: C. This was after a WBTB of about 45 minutes. I ate some bread, drank some apple juice, read, and journaled. I'm driving with my father on 2-lane highway out in the middle of nowhere. We come upon two wrecked cars in the opposite lane and stop. Maybe we hit something too? Father is looking at our own car. I walk over to the other cars. One is a old beat-up muscle car and the other is a like bank security van or maybe a military APC. It was a head-to-head collision and both cars' front ends are wrecked. An oldish man who looks like a trucker has the hood up and he's replacing the spark plugs. I think that's strange because it's not really going to help the situation.

Three or four DCs come walking up to the scene along the side of the road from the far direction. I think they must be from one of the crashed cars and went looking for help. I ask "Are these your cars? Did you go for help?" They say no and keep walking by. Scene fades.

False awakening. I open my eyes and I'm in bed. The color of the sheets is the correct brown but the light is coming from the left when it should be behind me. Also I don't have my sleep mask. I'm pretty confident I'm dreaming and am about to RC but I hear a voice that startles me. I look around the room. It looks like a hotel room. It's mostly dark. It seems bright outside but only through a think crack in the heavy window drapes. There's a man in the room. He looks like he's in the mafia. He has greasy hair, a tight black shirt, slacks, and a gaudy gold necklace. Have I been kidnapped by these men? I try to refocus. I can't move my left arm. I don't panic. I look at the ceiling and notice the texture. I feel the bed below me. I sit up and nose-plug. Things feel a bit better.

The man sees me get up. He's to my left near the open door. He looks like he's about to leave. I think I see another man, similarly dressed, in the hallway outside the door. The first man warns me not to leave. I say I'm just going to use the bathroom. I get up and I'm only wearing underwear. I walk to the bathroom to my right while the man leaves and locks the door. I touch the walls. The dream is moderately stable but I'm worried I will lose it if I don't do more to stabilize it. In retrospect, it was probably the worrying that was causing the instability.

I'm in the bathroom and close the door. I say "stabilize, sharpen, clarity." It seems to be working. I think of what to do next when the shower catches my eye. I imagine warm water running over me. Would that help stability? Or would that make it worse? Maybe it would get foggy and blurry. (I wish I could go back into that dream just so I could slap myself in the face.) I decide not to shower. I start to walk out of the bathroom but I have no plan. I only feel the worry about stability. Dream fades. Tried to DEILD but no luck.

0945 C. I think this dream was longer but I don't recall the first part. This is obviously some residue from the day when I watched a Dane Cook comedy act where he did a bit about The Price Is Right. I'm in my own apartment in the middle of the day. I'm watching The Price Is Right but I notice the set looks wrong. The backgrounds are dark blue and The Big Wheel is smaller and also blue. It looks like it has glitter all over it. I remember thinking this was strange, but not enough to become lucid. A woman spins The Wheel and wins a bunch of money. She gets excited and jumps around. On the set near The Wheel are two soda vending machines, one Coke, the other Pepsi. The woman pushes a button on the Pepsi machine a few times but nothing happens. The show cuts to commercial.

The commercial shows a futuristic Pepsi machine. A hand gets a cup, fills it with soda, then holds it under a spout that shoots out cold bubbles. A male narrator is talking over the images. I don't remember everything he said but at the end, it's a Coors ad, not Pepsi.

Two LDs, but hardly impressive. I didn't sleep well so I don't think I could have stabilized these tiny dreams.

But before all that, I once again practiced the daydream while trying to fall sleep. I'm going to make it a part of my regular routine so I'll note it in my journal in green. It's neat that I can recall the daydreams without any written notes. Wow, it's long. This is more like me writing a short story than a dream. If you're just looking for the actual dreams, skip down to the bottom.

Daydream: I'm running down a dark tunnel like a railroad tunnel with a light at the end. I'm going to search for the portal to the dream world, but first I'm going to look for that little town that I was in last night. As I'm running, I wonder what to call this place between the physical world and the dream world. But instead of picking a name, I decide I'll ask someone when I get there.

In the tunnel, a giant spider blocks my way. I'm afraid but I decide to face the fear. I try to talk to him and befriend him. I even pet him. I know that he's not a monster. He is a guardian, protecting me from entering a place I'm not yet ready for. It's the place that is dangerous, not the guardian. When I have faced my fear, I will be ready and the guardian will let me pass. The spider is friendly and lets me past. He will help me again in the future.

I emerge from the tunnel into a sunny valley with a quaint Renaissance-era town with cobblestone streets and houses. I imagine it looks like France and many of the people have French accents. I want to find Juliette and Marie again so we can all go to the dream world together. In the center of the town is a church. I go in and ask a nun where Juliette and Marie are. She says Marie lives across the street. I enter Marie's house and she's alone. I ask where Juliette is. Marie is worried. Juliette has gone missing. I say we'll find her. I grab Marie and jump high above the city. Marie points out Juliette's house and we swoop down. Inside we find Juliette's mother. She is upset. She says Juliette left alone to look for the portal. The mother is angry at me because I was the one that told people about the dream world. I promise I will find Juliette and bring her back. "Which direction would she have gone?" "East," the mother says, "toward the rising sun."

Marie and I head east and talk along the way. She tells me the name of this place is Never. It's a small town in the middle of a varied, realistic landscape. She says it's always been here. Apparently, nothing changes and people don't grow old. Kids go to school to learn Nothing. Marie and Juliette don't go to school, they are a few years older than that. No one has ever left. Juliette was the first one to try to leave. I ask, "What is east of Never?" She says, "The forest, and beyond it the mountains."

We reach the edge of the forest. It's a dark and foreboding woodland forest like one would see in Europe. Marie is afraid but I reassure her that everything will be okay. The giant spider returns. Marie is terrified but I try to stay calm and talk to the spider. I explain the situation and ask for his help. He gives me a rope made of his silk. He tells me to tie the rope to a tree at the forest edge. I can follow the rope back out of the forest so I won't get lost. Brilliant!

I turn around and Marie is happy and has a basket full of muffins. I eat one and it's delicious. I ask where and how she got freshly baked muffins. She says she's the daughter of the town baker and she can bake anything out of anything. She says Juliette is the daughter of the blacksmith and make any tool. She doesn't seem to think these magical powers are unusual.

We walk through the forest, trying to find paths and signs that Juliette would also have followed. We meet a large sparrow and I try to talk with him to ask for help. He doesn't speak, but he comes with us perched on my arm. We come upon areas of bright yellow light that teleport us to other parts of the forest. I check the rope and it's still taught, so I trust it will still lead the way out. Marie and I stop to rest and lo and behold Juliette finds us. We are relieved and follow the rope out of the forest and then walk back to town.

Me, J, and M try to think where the dream portal could me. They really want to know about the dream world and also the physical world. I become aware of physical body and I feel like I'm being pulled out of Never. Eventually I let go come back to the physical world, still awake.

0005: C. My notes are mostly illegible. I remember it being a robust dream but all I can decipher from my notes is this: Hugh, Dave, and I ... Star Trek. Dave ... beer ... has a character like Captain Picard ... They introduce themselves. One girl is a comedian and this intrigues me.

0637: D. I'm in bed and it's dark. I think I have a laptop. I hear Linkin Park music. I'm typing in "laser" to a web browser to search. But I keep spelling it wrong. Then I think I've got it right but the browser shows an error page. I think it's because I spelled it wrong. But I realize it's an internet connection problem. I think, maybe Hugh pulled the plug? Why would he do that? I start to get out of bed when suddenly I'm being dragged out of bed by the wire on my headphones. I'm pulled toward the desk in my room, defying gravity. Ugh. I'm dreaming. But these are hardly good conditions. I'm being ripped through the air by my ears in great pain and darkness. "Stabilize!" No luck. Dream ends abruptly.

0740: D. I'm in bed (again) lying on my right side. I open my eyes and the view is distorted. It's like the picture is being sucked into a vortex somewhere to the upper left. I realize I'm dreaming (again) but these aren't good conditions (again). "Stabilize!" I rub my left hand across the mattress sheet to get some tactile sensation. Dream ends abruptly.

1700: Afternoon WILD nap attempt. I slept but no dream recall. It had an effect on my sleep during the night. Zeo shows that my deep sleep periods happened late in the night instead of early.

0025: Sleep

0700: B. I'm playing a computer game with Hugh. It's a real time strategy game where the map folds around like a paper origami cube.

Then some old high school people join and we start playing soccer, but we're calling "football". They aren't friends. They are the group that hated me. We are playing inside an old abandoned two-story house. The people what to punish me for some reason so they put me on the team with all be bad players. We are defended a goal in the upstairs of the house, so I tell my team to defend the stairs. The other team is trying to get the ball up the stairs. I steal the ball from a girl and body check her. She falls down the stairs. She is hurt and bleeding from the mouth, but not too bad. I'm not apologetic but everyone else is upset and confronts me. I say that a real soccer player could have handled a hit like that, so it's her fault.

We stop playing and sit on some old couches in the abandoned house. I'm sitting between two girls. The girl I hurt is on my right. She is still upset but not seriously hurt. People are talking about how mean I am. We talk:

Girl: "My problem is you and your problem is me."
Me: "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one."
Girl: "OMG, I can't believe you just said that."
Me: "It's a Jay-Z song."
Girl: "Yeah, I know that."
Me: "My problem is me. I am my own problem."


0810: C. I start with a false awakening. I am immediately skeptical. I'm in my own room. I look around and it's fairly convincing. The light outside is late afternoon. That's pretty strange. Also, the window blinds are horizontal when they should be vertical. Nose-plug-check, confirmed. Now I notice there is a girl in my bed, to the right. She is just waking up too. We are both under the covers but not touching. I see she has on a blue polo shirt. She is young, maybe 16. She has long straight brown hair with bangs. I ask "Who are you?" She starts talking but I'm not really listening. She's saying something about the neighbors. I'm just staring at her trying to notice details. She has brown eyes and freckles. I'm inching toward her, but not sure what my plan is. The dream starts to fade. I realize that I should have stabilized earlier and I just feel dumb. Dream ends.

Notes: I forced myself to have good bedtime habits and it paid off with a good night's sleep. Snacked on only carbohydrates in the evening and watched some boring nature documentaries. I waited until I was very tired before laying down to sleep.

0155: Sleep.

0600: B. I am at home with my sister. I have my cell phone receiving work emails. My phone is acting weird. It shows the emails but everything is plain black and white. There's no color in the UI. I try to close all the running processes. For a moment, my phone is playing video of a football game. I get a "You've been invited" alert. I try to find the email message but the phone is still not working right. My sister wants to reset my phone. She tries to grab it away from me. I tell her I will take out the battery. Also, I'm sitting on the couch with the cat Oreo on the armrest to my right. At one point, she lays on my lap. She is facing me. My sister asks if she came there herself. I say yes. I feel annoyed with my sister. I also feel anticipation like I am expecting someone to call or email from work on my phone.

0727: A series of lucid dreams that I'm counting as one (cuz I'm so humble). I am laying on a couch, about to go to sleep. I t was like my childhood home. I was having trouble sleeping. A woman in the room starts talking to me. I don't remember about what. She sits on the couch next to me. She is middle-aged, but not bad looking. She turns seductive and straddles me and grabs my crotch. That doesn't happen in real life so... I'm dreaming. I'm not very lucid though. I just go along with what's happening. I think to do an RC but my arms are around her so I'm a bit busy. The excitement makes the dream fade.

I lay still and re-enter the dream. I am in an amusement park. It's dusk and there are few people. I nose-plug-check, good! I finger-check too which fails, but whatever. Rubbing my hands anchors me and now I'm ready to have some fun. I start flying and practice my skills of turning and looking around. I'm pretty good, except I have trouble climbing. I think about some goals. Hmm. Throw a fireball? Easy! I swing my arm like throwing a baseball sidearm and a fiery red-orange ball flies to the ground and explode a lamp post. I hover over a parking lot full of freight trucks and I blow them up with my fireballs. Then some hover tanks attack back and I blow one up. I fly away and land. Now I'm being chased by dogs. They are black and mean, like pitbulls. I try to make the dogs disappear my waving my hand over them, but no luck. I run into a building. I try to fly and smash through the ceiling, but no luck. The building I'm in is in on a college campus. I think to summon a DC. I walk outside and around a corner, expecting to see Lance. There he is! We go into another building; I open the door expecting to find a party, and there it is! I was expecting someone in particular but don't see them. There is a girl behind the bar or DJ booth with bright red hair. I ask someone where R is. I walk to the bathroom, hoping to find her there. I walk down a few steps and see one person waiting for the bathroom. Two girls are coming out of the bathroom with their arms linked. I grab one and head her back in to the bathroom while the other leaves. It wasn't the girl I was looking for but I'm not unhappy. I back the girl against the wall. She has on a skirt and bikini top. Her body is all oiled up. I remember staring at her belly button. She has short hair. I tell her how pretty she is. I'm about to go farther with her but the dream fades.

False awakening. I'm back on the couch at my childhood home. It's like we have cousins in town. A man (my uncle?) is sleeping in the other couch near me. My sister is also in the room. I get up and they get upset and argue with me. I try spinning to a new scene, but no luck. I leave out the front door. It's night and the starry sky is beautiful. I start flying. The dream fades.

0/3 Lucid/Recall

Notes: Went to bed really early on a holiday. Woke up in the middle of the night and went back to bed. About 12 hours total sleep.

2212: C. I work for a woman brewing beer. I arrange the beer bottles... to cool it down. The woman is upset to learn that the... in the same business. I tell her I will help.

0621: B. It's back to school. Prep is really in. All the cool kids are waring prep. I go to my math class. Matt R... Nintendo games. I refused because I have Madden 2010. This upsets him. .... borders between states. The teacher puts a bunch of crackers along a map. Everyone is class grabs them. Ashwin was the most and I am second. I have 6 total.

07:09: C. At school, Lance and I are selling pot to people. I think it's Ben from elementary school. We are talking about Los Angeles compared to the countryside. A lion follows us and it makes us afraid.

0/3 Lucid/Recall

Notes: Fell asleep drunk on bloody marys.

Analysis: Very irregular waking times for me, doubtless due to the alcohol. I usually have 90 minute cycles with uncanny accuracy. Poor recall and motivation this night. The dreams seemed rather plain and unimaginative. I observe two obvious influences from the waking day in the dreams.

2300: Sleep

0400: D. Something about new Facebook accounts and importing old friends.

0603: D. Mostly unreadable. Something about smoke alarm going off which woke me up [I cooked pork chops on the stove for dinner]. On waking up, I was disciplined enough to suspect FA and did an RC; I was indeed awake.

0850: B. I'm with a bunch of people, some from work some from high school. It's a bit like Disneyland. I have a girlfriend. She is white. I don't know who she is. We all play this game where we write personal stuff about us on these pre-made cards. I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. The bathroom is weird. People try to use the sinks as urinals [I drank two glasses of water prior to this sleep cycle]. At the end, the personal secrets are revealed. My girlfriend doesn't know me very well. At some point we're in a creek under a bridge.

I've had several weeks on no lucids. Even tonight my recall for the first two dreams was poor. But I finally had a lucid:

I had a false awakening to find Hugh outside playing games. I hear him playing and also tap dancing. Then he comes in and reads a note from my sister about giving me a hug. He hugs me. I think, "Am I dreaming?" I say it aloud twice. I look at the clock and it's 40:28. I'm dreaming! I become lucid. I kick Hugh out of my room, literal, and he sails off defying gravity. I used the commands "stability" and "clarity" to stabilize the dream. I look at my hands and feel my dream body. Then I meet Hugh on the balcony and ask if he has Sidal's phone number (mistake, I know). He dials and hands me the phone. I wait while it rings, then silence. It's like someone picked up but says nothing. I'm so focused on listening and the emotion of the situation that I loose the dream scene and I wake up.