Thena

Still aiming to do the advanced task of the month. I'm only getting partially there, as the train shows up in my dream but I don't become lucid.

I'm on a train. I have an empty seat next to me, and two empty seats facing me with a table in between. The train crew is coming through the car and serving tea. They're dressed in Union Jack uniforms with additional red, white and blue hats. It looks a bit over the top. I would be annoyed, except the crew member serving my tea is all worried about how I'm sitting alone when I'm not traveling alone according to their records. I stand up and look behind me. Dad is on the same train, but he's also sitting by himself in a group of empty seats.

The train arrives at a station and I get off. I end up climbing the stairs to the upper levels of the station, excited to see the sights, before I remember that I haven't met up with Dad. I look over a railing and see that the train is still parked at the platform. I go back to the train. Dad doesn't seem to be anywhere around, and I guess he's doing his sightseeing without me.

I head out of the train station to the local sight, which is some sort of tower. It must have an incredible view since the top seems partially obscured with fog. The building doesn't look very tall from where I'm standing, but I guess the whole area must be at a higher elevation. I pull out my smartphone to do a Foursquare check-in. That's when I realize that I have no clue where I am. I ponder this for a moment and think, "Well, no problem. My phone has GPS, so it will figure it out." Except that when I look at my phone, I see nothing.

I head up to the upper floor of the tower, only to find that access is restricted to ticket holders for some special event. They allow me to stand in the back while the ticketed visitors have access to a grandstand to see the view. Here, I realize that this is not a tower after all. It's some type of sports facility with roller skating on one floor and ice skating on another.

A brief awakening, and then onto the next dream.

I'm building a model of an expressway interchange out of foil and duct tape on the kitchen table. My goal is to figure out how to make cars get through the interchange faster. I'm testing it out by rolling a rubber ball. It's not entirely successful as the ball weights more than the aluminum foil can support. My guess is that making the ramps much longer might make it easier on drivers. To do that, I magically add extra foil onto the end of two ramps.

Dad passes through the kitchen on his way out. He says I should have checked with the road department first to make sure I was allowed to build a model. He tells me he'll be waiting in the car. Funny, I don't remember being told that we're going somewhere. I head for the stairs so I can go upstairs and change my clothes. On my way, I pass by the front window and see Dad driving off. So he didn't even wait for me?

I return to the kitchen. Here, I find that my sister is waiting with a lost cat that she found. I remind her that it can't stay here since Dad is allergic to cats. She tells me she knows, so she got a crate to keep the cat outside. As she puts the cat in the crate, I notice that the car has an extra tail protruding from its abdomen (Uh, seriously? ). I remind her again that Dad's allergy is pretty severe, so we head outside to look for the cat's owner. We seem to have walked into the heart of the city. After passing under a viaduct, I see a bus about to turn onto the street we're on, going on the opposite direction. I hustle my sister across the street to see if we can make it to the bus before it leaves the stop.

But instead of being on a bus, I find myself in a waiting room of some sort. The cat has turned into a crystal, and I am meeting with someone to see if he's the original owner. The scene cuts to a restaurant kitchen with Ali Velshi doing a live news report. He's basically using CNN to tattle on a chef who eats all the shrimp in the kitchen, then serves skimpy seafood entrees with the leftovers. I'm not quite sure how I got into the middle of all this. It turns out that the woman who owns the restaurant was also the original owner of the crystal. She wants me to find a way to mount it on the wall. I pull out a Swiss army knife and find what I think might work as a screwdriver. There's a small toolbox on the counter, and I start searching through it for screws.