october 21st, woke 4:46am

ok, this is my first journal entry from last night, which contained perhaps my first real experience, however short, with lucid dreaming... here goes.

I was in england with a friend from school, who has been back in the country for a while. For some reason we were in England, at some kind of popular alternative club. I saw an English friend, Will as we were lining up, but only in passing, and only said hello to him.
As we went in, there were gambling tables all lined up near the entrance, covere in huge piles of cards. It seemed the dealers would throw the deck away each round.
My fried went over, and gathered up a full deck of cards, we play a lot of games like chess etc at coffee shops around town, so i figured he wanted to play cards a bit too. we wandered over tot he dance floor, and had a look around. after a while the music changed, and everyone was getting in to sleeping bags. the music, if it was music, i dont recall wether it was that or strange noise, i recall thinking it was odd. after a short time all the people got up with blank faces and started leaving the club, it was obvious to me they had been brainwashed somehow. We left also left, exclaiming how lucky we were not to be affected by it, we got onto a tour bus and felt quite relieved.

the scene changed here, and shifted to a basement, where a man seemed to be pulling teeth, or breaking teeth, i dont recall exactly what he was doing, but teeth were involved, perhaps some kind of torture. or maybe he was just a dentist, although I got bad vibes from him at this point.
People came to steal some kind of vast fortune or treasure he had hidden away, apparently in the ceiling of his house. The boss climbs off a saw horse into the manhole into the ceiling, which is filled with jagged bit of concrete and reinforcing bar. as he crawls to another part of the ceiling, where he obviously thinks the treasure is, he crawls through some kind of lasers, which I think must have been for a silent alarm, as they didnt do anything, however passed through holes drilled in the oppisite side of the ceiling partition.
He finds no money in the ceiling at all, and is very angry about it, so he sends his henchmen to search the house, in which they find nothing, but a pair of muddy footprints leading to the carpark, which is empty.
I am in the bus with the bad dentist, who turns out to be quite a nice guy, and I am driving, helping him to escape the other guys who want his treasure. He suggests going to his island, Distiller island" where we'll be safe. there is some argument about which way to drive, north, south etc. eventually we drive north, and pass through a town of narrow, cobblestoned roads.
a bit of a change here, we're on foot, with the dentist, and my brother. We go around a lake, still going north, and pass through some houses. We lose sight of my brother, but can still hear him somewhere ahead. we pass through a house, and get caught by the lady owner, who says "thank goodness the plumbers are here to fix my sink, i wondered when you'd get here."
I am with a workmate instead of the dentist now, and we unblock the sink. the ladies son is pointing a small rifle out the door onto the hillside, and tells his mother he can see a deer. his mother says something along the lines of 'thats lovely dear' and dissapears.
the fat little boy comes over, and tells me it wasnt a deer he saw, but my brother, and that he had shot him. I was of course very angry about this, and took his rifle and threatened him with it. for some reason i gave it back, and he threatened me in return. i took it, and broke it over my knee and threw it on the floor. he was grumpy about it.

Here the scene changes again, and is perhaps the first moment of lucidity i have experienced and recalled.

I'm in a strange house, the light is funny, i think kind of ornage and yellow and red. perhaps funny patterns on the walls and ceilings.
I leave my room, and look at my watch. I rememebr thinking of a time, but noticing that the watch showed no particular time at all, and was in fact just a blurry mess.
This where the last two days of reality checks by looking at my watch often has paid off.
I look again right away, and think of a completely different time, and realise i must be dreaming, and see the watch for the blurry mess the face of it is. "I must be dreaming".
I walk down the hall and encounter my mother and father, just getting out of bed.
I tell them im dreaming, and my father tells me not to be so silly, and the notion is ridiculous, I look at my watch again, and think that the time hasnt changed after all.
I am dissapointed and wake up.

1:30am
I woke, but rememebred little, except perhaps something about ladders, and chess.

I woke again at another point in the night, and I believe I used a 'reality check' in my dreams again. I tried the one where you can push your finger through your hand, and it seemed to go through. I also used this at periods throughout the night when I woke up.

The one dream I recall a little more clearly, although not in all details was this:

We were in a large building, an apartment building I suppose. I don't recall what we were doing there, maybe cleaning, or some kind of work.
Now, I don't recall if I ever went into room 44 in the dream, but i do remember it had a bad feeling about it.
At some point in the dream, some people go missing in the building, and for some reason we can't get into the building anymore, or its not safe in there.
Leading from the building we find imprints in the ground, like giant footprints, only the imprints are man shaped, as if someone had been squashed into the ground over and over, forming a trail leading away. As we followed it, the imprints got somehow shorter, although the head part always stayed the same size. They led us to a sloped field, where it ran around the edge in a square, then into the middle to a kind of flat grassy plinth, where we found only his head. (I was with his family, including children, who reacted very calmly considering)

I guess I would describe the next part as a vision, as it never really had much more to do with the dream..

I was then in a small box, with two tiny people, who had been shrunken, and buried at the same grassy plinth in a small box that was filled with sand. they had been there for a while now, but were still alive.

From here we had to return to the building, to thwart the evil guy. And of course there was a lot of fighting with laser guns.I managed to knock off all the guys at the main door. somewhere around here the building turned into my house, and the bad guy was running around shooting at me from the windows, off the deck, etc. eventually, after a couple of skirmishes, I defeated him.

After this, I was living in a caravan with my father, nervous because i didnt feel we had really finished the baddies off, although he was quite comfortable that we had.

I was in a house with some cousins of mine, and we had decided to acess the roof, via a flight of stairs leading to nothing but a small widow you had to climb through. My cousin J. was climbing back through the window just before i started to climb out. When I got out, I climbed up a flight of stairs towards a higher roof, and deck where there were people drinking, and relaxing in the night. the deck/roof was shaking, but no one seemed to notice or care, and they all seemed to think I was a guest at this place, which was apparently a flash hotel.
I decided to go in and explore, and found myself wandering around my apparently old house, which had been sold and was now owned by these hoteliers. I was grumpy that they had taken the old old vinyl, that hasnt been in the bathroom for donkeys years, and rerevinyled it over the nice tiles that are there now. also the layout of the bathroom had been altered, and a large spa pool had been added at the end of the hallway

I had another dream previous to this, but i have now forgotten it. I will buy a new dream journal, that I can write in by hand.

I'm beginning to think that maybe my house is a dreamsign for me, as this is the second night ina row i recall it being in my dreams, usually owned by, or in control of someone else?
Also there were a coupkle of staircases in this one, I will keep working on my recall and have a better idea some time in the future.

ok, three dreams tonight.

I was at stewart Island again, where we went for a work fishing trip a few weekends ago. this seemed to have been a repeat, as I was with all my workmates, plus a few other people I know through work. Everyone was at the pub, drinking. I suppose I wasn't because I couldn't last time I was there, or I guess I didnt want to in my dream. I went outside with some friends who happened to be there, and we found a huge stone gorilla, which we climbed to the top of.
after a while I went back to the cabins we were staying in, I remember looking at my watch and thinking it was about 6am (duh).
After this we were coming home in my car, and the guy driving was someone who I really don't like at all, which is odd because I would never let him drive my car. we were pulling into a car park building when the hood popped up of its own accord, the guy driving it continued driving and caught the hood on a big concrete support slab, and wrecking it. after this we couldnt get the car to start again, so everyone got out of the car and went to look at the engine.
I said "no wonder its not *&^$ing going, the engines gone". And of course the engine had been left up at the ticket collection booth.
at the same time another car had bellied out on a rail leading to the exit beside us.

also:

I was working, helping re-grade some ladies driveway outside my own house, which seems to be featuring a lot in my dreams.
we worked for a while, but had an emergency, and the neighbours water supply started to burst in multiple places. we werent to fussed and left it to worry about later.
after this I was sitting on the sidewalk, watching a helicopter come over. he had a rope dangling from it, and was hooking it around my leg, liting me into the air a short way, then lowering me down again.
then he would come nose first down to the ground, and perform all kinds of impossible stunts.
after a while he came down really low, and my father got in. i also got in because i have always wanted to go in a helicopter. he took off, and started doing loops and all kinds of aerial acrobatics, it was really fun.
he flew along for a ways, and eventually landed in an animated film. it was one about a sheep who lost all his fur, and was freezing cold, plusa allt he other sheep were making fun of him i believe.
I remmeebr laughing and saying how great this film was.

also:

I was at a bar of some sort, there was a fight going on between two men. one had a close fitting skull over his face, with kind of protuding top row of teeth. he bet the other guy easily.
After this I went back to where I was staying, a backpackers i think, where I saw this guy again.
He left and after a while, another guy came in, and started to talk to me. he was the top fighter from another part of town. he had gas camp stoves, and gas bottles strapped all over himself. one gas stove was half in his mouth.
He told me about how he beat his other opponents, and gave me a demonstration.
He poured gas from a bottle on his head to ward the stove in his mouth, which collected somewhere, and he set alight, there was a big kaboom, and he was left sitting there looking a little singed but not bad.
I suggested he could fight the skull guy.
the scene kind of changed to other mutant ninja types now, I dont remember much of them, except one was a guy dressed ridiculously as a woman, and had big wings which he could apparently hide at will.
he was walking across the tops of poles, saying how it didnt really matter if he fell.
he looked in the window, where a row of people were sleeping, one was a fat little kid, who woke up, and he tried to frighten y spreading his wings out and appearing threatening.
he woke the next guy in the row of people who were sleeping, and it was a guy I worked for in the states. the wing-man hid up on the roof.

thats all i recall from the last one.

I really need to work on these reality checks i think. I keep seeing so much stuff that should alert me to my dreaming.

I was in a car, having dinner with some of my relatives, and a friend I have lost touch with over the years. I began t read the TV guide in the paper, and rememebr seeing a movie called 'amerikan idol' or something like that. (i hate american idol). after this, I am driving to port, and stop off in a market type of place, where I see another friend R.I havent seen a few months.
after talking to him for a moment, i get a call, or a message of some kind from another friend, G.,who is going on about sandals. I respond, and go back to talking to R. I think we go fishing at lake dunstan, which is quite a distance away.
After this we all return home, and watch TV. on TV is the animated movie, Amerikan idol, which is about a guy who can throw a baseball to the moon. the main kinda story is that the very first baseball he threw to the moon was some kind of idol, or talisman that had special powers, maybe like travelling tot he moon or something, i dont recall exactly. all the balls the guy throws to the moon all have names, and the one on the Idol is something like Neferiti.
eventually the balls start to fall back down, and some people find them.

after this all the people watching the movie had to leave, and i had to shift my car so some people could get theirs out of the driveway.