Craig Dreams

Residential Preserve

2011-07-05T21:54:00.003-04:00

It's late at night and I'm walking down a residential street in a crisp white naval officer's uniform. I'm walking behind a woman dressed the same way (in slacks, not a skirt). She's about average height, with thick, dark hair that is cut short. The residential area we are walking through is a preserve, like a nature preserve, but it's all residential. We're not exactly sneaking, but we shouldn't be there, and we'll be arrested if the police catch us.

We cross a bridge over Emmet Street where the walking bridge to Ruffner Hall is, but it's an automotive bridge, not a walking bridge. We come to a large, single story building on our left (which is not Ruffner Hall). We go around the left side of the building. There's a wide ledge running along side the building, with a railing of square pipes in a rectangular pattern. As we go along the ledge the ground drops away and we can see that the building is several stories tall. The woman I am with has gotten ahead of me. I can see in the windows of the building and we are walking past a college class room. The woman goes into the class room through a door at the end of the ledge, and gets a note from the teacher. She comes back out as I get to the end of the ledge and we start to climb down the building. The ledges and the railing make it really easy.

We go down about four or five stories and then go into a room full of naval uniform hats. We each get a hat matching our uniform, and the woman start to fill out a form authorizing us to take the hats and go into the building. There is a tall black man who is approving the forms while others wait behind us. He is questioning the woman about mistakes on the form. She is blustering her way through it good-naturedly, saying things like "You think so?" and "Is that right?" Finally he okays the form and leaves. After he does, another woman who was waiting says she noticed another place where we filled out the form wrong. I think about passing it off with a joke about Al-Queda, but then figure that mentioning Al-Queda will make her security conscious and she'll report us.

I put on my black army jacket and we walk out into the hall. Then we go out a door and we're in the back yard at Tandem, walking toward that new building with the auditorium. I start to get nervous, thinking that someone will notice the discrepancy between my army jacket and my naval uniform. That's when I realize I don't have a back story prepped in case we are questioned. I think about passing myself off as on detached duty under Major Rolf Huntsman out of Fort Bragg, hoping they don't notice that I pulled the name Huntsman out of recent political news (the name Rolf comes from a Chess writer). But then I realize that I don't know if Fort Bragg is even an Army base, much less active. Then the alarm goes off and I wake up.

The Me Who

2011-05-26T17:47:00.002-04:00

I was at Tandem, walking out into the parking lot (it was the wrong parking lot and road entirely, but was no place specific). Obama had decided to drop out of the presidential race, and I had been tapped to take his place. I was going over demographics in my head, trying to figure out who I would get for my VP running mate. As I was figuring that I probably couldn't get away with a black woman, I got to my car. My cell phone rang as I was getting in. It was some guy from the Democratic party. He told me they hadn't announced yet, and that my mom was freaking out about the whole thing. I told him to go ahead and announce.

"That will calm her down?" he asked.

"No, but it will smack her in the face with the reality of it enough to shut her up."

Then he said I'd probably have to start wearing suits. I looked down at my t-shirt, black jeans, and chucks and said that I was a Quaker and they would just have to get used to it. By then I was driving out of the parking lot, which they were getting ready to repaint. They had put up traffic cones marking the old lines. I kept hitting the traffic cones, even though I was trying to avoid them. Eventually I got out of the parking lot and came up to the light, where I got in the right hand left turn lane, with a purple, crotch-rocket motorcycle (the rider had a matching helmet) on my left. When the light turns green I have trouble accelerating. I realize I'm in third gear, but before I can shift into first I stall out in the middle of the intersection. I look over and see that the motorcycle next to me has stalled out too. I turn the ignitions, and even though there is no key in the ignition it starts up. I'm still having trouble accelerating. In the street I'm turning onto there is a line of people making a left turn towards me from the parking lot behind Slice of Olde Town (a pizza joint in Gaithersburg). Some of them are pedestrians. Two of them are old, fat white men in leather and facial hair, walking their motorcycles (hogs this time). We manage to maneuver around each other and I pull up at another stop light, the square red brick building of Slice of Olde Town on my right with its windows reflecting the clear blue sky.

As I wake up I'm thinking that the old fat guys with the motorcycles were famous, and I should have recognized them.

The Random Navy

2011-01-21T22:28:00.004-05:00

I'm in Random Row having dinner with several older people who are friends of my mom's. However, Random Row is in the Vinegar Hill McDonald's. I'm talking to one really old lady in particular who taught me Japanese religion in grade school. We're looking through a small gift bag of stuff from my trip to Japan in middle school. We just got it out of my mom's attic.

In the bag are two not very expensive gemstone hook-style earrings on cards, one green and one brown. I remember that there is one of each left because I gave the other ones to my girlfriend at the time, who had only one ear pierced. We also find two cards the old lady sent to me while I was in Japan. One is sort of off-green, with a tan page attached to the front that has a black bamboo design painted on it. Neither of us can make sense of what it says. I shyly admit to the lady that I couldn't make sense of it at the time either, and that I had thought it was evidence that she was going senile, seeing as she was really old even back then.

I get up and move to the side of the restaurant that is facing Preston Avenue, or would be if there were any windows to face out of. To get there I have to go up three steps, made out of darkly stained wood like everything else in the restaurant. I sit down with a white guy in his 40s. He's got a round, shaved head and is wearing a dark bomber jacket.

Agent Gibbs from NCIS walks in the back door with another naval officer. All of the naval personnel in the restaurant stand up, salute, and start screeching really loudly. Agent Gibbs walks up to our table. I tell him that I'm new to NCIS and I don't what the correct protocol is. He just looks at me with a little expectant smile on his face. So I stand up, salute, and start screeching at the top of my lungs. I'm doing this face to face with a younger, square faced black guy. We're standing there screeching at each other, staring into each others' faces.

When the screeching is done I sit down to have lunch with Gibbs, the guy he walked in with, and the guy in the bomber jacket. I'm the lowest ranking person at the table, and they don't really pay a lot of attention to me. The booth is weird, with the bench on my side extending into the wall and forming a cubby about three feet deep. I shove all of our jackets in there.

After lunch I walk through the door facing Preston Ave., and walk around the corner of the building to the door facing 5th St. By the time I get back in Gibbs and the others have already left, but there is a young, white trash navy cadet greedily going through a gift bag that I realize Gibbs meant for the both of us. It has gray Civil War style caps with black rubber attached and cut away in cool, tattoo-style designs. I get real angry, bunch up my fists, walk toward the cadet, and wake up.

This dream was posted one day late. It happened Thursday, January 20th

Thomas Jefferson Stole My Clothes

2010-11-11T15:23:00.004-05:00

I went down to Iron Crown's offices on High St., but it's not the two houses. It's a ramshackle set of offices built into some old stables. I don't have any clothes so I walk down the row of offices dressed in two towels. I sling one towel over my shoulder toga style, and I am surprised at how comfy it is. I get to where Coleman sits, but he's not in. There is just an old flannel shirt draped over a ratty wheeled office chair. Bruce's door is closed, but I can tell he is not in. That's fine, I came here for my clothes, not a confrontation.

I turn left at Bruce's office and head back through a storage area to where the offices connect to Monticello. I keep walking back through areas alternating between storage and museum. The path I'm using depends on knowing the right doors to go through, so not many people know about it. The storage areas are dimly lit and dusty, full of wooden boxes painted shades of blue and gray. The museum areas are a little better lit. They're full of fancy chairs that would break if you sat on them and old paintings in elaborate gilt frames, each with a little light attached to the top of the frame. I can see out the windows on my left to a large field with trees and people having fun playing frisbee and bocce ball.

Somewhere along the way I realize I am dressed in my street clothes, which I must have gotten from one of the storage areas. I'm also carrying some heavy, odd-shaped object covered in black vinyl. The museum is closed, but hear some lady walking around looking at the paintings. I get a glimpse of her and her short tan skirt but I manage to sneak past her into a storage area. I come out of that into another museum area and there is another lady walking around. This one has noticed me, so I take a right toward a door to a balcony. I started on the first floor, but the ground has been sloping away and I'm now on the third floor. The woman is old and taller than I am, she has a huge chest with a push up bra that looks like it was built in a naval yard [This is basically Lady Wilburdon from Neal Stephenson's Interface].

Just as she demands to know what I am doing, I jump off the balcony. The vinyl thing is tucked in my left arm like a foot ball, and I grab the second story balcony (which is more like a fire escape) with my right hand to stop my fall. Dangling from the balcony, it's an easy drop to the gravel road running along the side of the building. I start to run toward the front of the building where my car is parked. The woman is trying to figure out how to call security, but she can't figure out what name it is stored under because it is my sister's phone. I know that because my sister has to deal with so many security firms that she would have just stored it under "Monticello," but I keep my mouth shut and keep running.

As I'm coming up to my car I reach in my pant pocket for the keys, but they're not there. I realize that I left them in my leather jacket. But then I realize that I'm wearing my leather jacket. That's why I came here in the first place, right? I reach into the inside pocket and there are my keys. I get in the car and pull up to the exit on Market Street, next to Bob's Wheel Alignment. I need to make a left, and I can see two cars and two motor scooters coming from the right. I've dealt with the security company before and I know they'll pull a bootlegger reverse in their Hummer and block the exit from the parking lot. So I take a left into the wrong lane. I the two cars and the two scooters pass me on the right and then try to merge to the right and out of oncoming traffic. But another car passes me on the right, honking it's horn. Then another and another. I've got my signal on, but no one will let me over. Finally, after Market St. transforms into Avon St., but before it dead ends at Monticello Ave., I am able to pull into the right hand lane. I figure it would be better to keep a low profile, so I take a left onto a side street rather than turn onto Monticello Ave. The last thing I remember is driving around Belmont with a satisfied smile on my face.

This dream was posted a day late.

Ryan and the FBI

2010-11-03T21:00:00.004-04:00

Ryan C. is running in a race sponsored by the FBI. I'm in my car with someone to watch Ryan run the race while the rest of the family eats lunch in a restaurant in the strip mall I'm parked in front of. Ryan is really tiny, like a doll. He's waiting to cross the street, which is full of traffic. He darts through a gap in traffic across the first two lanes, but the other two lanes are packed with fast moving cars. He goes for it anyway, and I think he's going to get hit, but he makes it to the other side dodging between cars like a squirrel. When he gets to the other side he's in front of a storm drain, with some other doll-sized runners waiting for him up on the sidewalk. He jumps up to catch the edge of the drain, but he misses the top and falls into the drain. I jump out of the car and run across the street, but by the time I get there, he's gone.

Since his death is obviously the fault of the director of the FBI, I got the FBI store with my family the next day. I find a large pad of paper, about two or three feet wide, on a shelf. I lift up the cover of the pad, and surreptitiously use my lanyard to tear off the top sheet. At this point I can see that the paper is lined for little kids who are just learning how to write. I screw it up with the lanyard and have to tear off the sheet blatantly. I know I can use this sheet of paper as a fuse to make my attack on the FBI completely anonymous. I fold up the sheet of paper and walk out of the store into the fourth floor lobby of the Primary Care Center at the University of Virginia hospital. The FBI director is sitting in a chair there, and we exchange wary glances. I go around the (wrong) corner to the elevators and get in one. Russ from DC is in there and he says "So now he knows." I reply grimly, "Yeah, now he knows."

It's Not The Horse That's Crazy

2010-11-03T20:49:00.005-04:00

I had to sell my horse, so I drove down Olney/Laytonsville Rd. to where it dead ended at the Agricultural Fairgrounds near Shady Grove Rd. (If you're not from Gaithersburg, note that this is completely not the way things are set up). I walked around the race track to the bar, which was a big L shaped outdoor bar. I walked around to the long end and saw they had valet stables, so I knew I could sell my horse here.

The next day I drove back with my horse (in a four door hatchback). When I got around to the end of the bar this time I saw that the stables were closed. I realized I should have known this from reading the schedule. As I was standing there trying to figure out what to do (with my horse standing next to me on two legs), two short, muscular blonde guys walked in. They started talking about how they were going to be up me and my horse. (Note that throughout this scene there is a roof that flickers in and out of existence. Every time I turn my head it either disappears or appears. Also, in the dream I knew why these guys came after me, but now I can't remember.). I held my horse protectively around the waist and started yelling at them. My voice cracked at first, but then I started yelling up a storm. Soon enough the yelling attracted the local sheriff. As soon as he walked in I started beating the two thugs with my army jacket. Then I stormed out, but somehow I was behind the bar and I had to storm out through the kitchen.

I think I forgot the horse.

I posted this dream a day late.

Dangerous Elevator

2010-04-04T08:29:00.004-04:00

I'm in New York City for my interview with the L1 society. I wake up in my hotel room only to find that I don't have my luggage, so I have nothing to wear to the interview except what I was wearing yesterday. I put on those clothes but the pants are horribly wrinkled and I can't find the shirt.

I walk out of my hotel and realize I don't know which direction the L1 society is. However, I know that the L societies are in descending order going down the street. I know that if I walk out of my door in Belmont and turn right, walking so that the street numbers decrease, I pass the L4 Society and the L3 society and so on. So I turn right and walk so the street numbers are descending.

It takes me a long time I walk through the buildings instead of on the sidewalk. But I'm not worried. I pass the L4 Society and then the L3 society, so I know I'm going in the right direction. I know that L stands for lemma, and I'm trying to guess what the different lemmas are for the different societies.

Finally I get to the Flatiron Building, which is right across the street. I'm up on the fourth floor, so I push the button for the elevator. Waiting for the elevator to get there I realize I don't even have any shoes or socks, and I haven't clipped my toe nails in ages.

The elevator comes and it's in the corner of the Flatiron building, with glass all the way around so that you can see the city around you. It starts going up instead of down, so I figure I must have gotten on the wrong elevator. As it goes up it keeps getting smaller and smaller, until I'm sitting on the floor and squeezed against the door. I'm wondering how far up it can go, because I didn't think the Flatiron building was that tall. That's when I notice the recorded voice of a tour guide, talking about how the cars on the street don't stop as they pass the building. The elevator leans forward (or is the whole building) until I am dangling over the city, scared out of my wits that I'm going to fall.

Connections with reality: I've been thinking a lot about axioms and lemmas in relation to what we can say about God if we reject the Bible. I was also thinking last night that I needed to clip my toe nails.

Chess in the Morning

2010-03-23T17:29:00.000-04:00

I wake up in my old room on Concord Drive. I need to get the Fischer Random Chess game ready for the day, so I go over to the shelf with my chess set on it. The chess set is a brown and white miniature marble chess set, with a king about 3/4 of an inch tall. I noticed that the knights were broken, and looked around for the glue. Eventually I realized the Elmers glue-all was hiding behind the rat's water bottle. I couldn't see it directly, but I could spot it's distorted label through the bottle. As I'm gluing the knights back together, I figure that this is a good excuse to finally get the nice wooden miniature magnetic set I was looking at. I try to remember what price it is and a price tag floats in front of my face with 29.99 written on it.

I set the knights aside to dry, but the condensation from the water bottle has left two drops of water right where I place the knights. After thinking about it for a second, I figure it's okay. I'm going to need a place to put two pieces while playing anyway.

I pick up the FRC computer. It's a small tan box with a red button on it and a small LED screen. I press the button, and the screen reads 4012. I'm not sure what that means so I get out the instructions, which is one of those one page with a dozen fold jobbies. The initial 4 apparently doesn't mean anything, as no matter what you start with rook-knight-bishop. The next two are Python style indexes, so 0 means to the left of the rook. That's where you put the first "matching piece." I'm not sure what that means, but I'm guessing it means "duplicate." That gives me rook-rook-knight-bishop, and the 1 then doubles the knight. The 2 then gives the order to put the pieces in, but there's no details on what 2 specifically means.

I'm totally confused and ready to give up, but before I can I wake up.

Pseudo-Taxi

2010-03-12T18:55:00.002-05:00

I was driving my car down Avon Street in Belmont, giving a taxi ride to some guy sitting in the back seat on the right. We're listening to the radio, and a Widespread Panic song comes on. I pull over to the side of the road and stop behind a parked car. Somehow I am now on the passenger side. I put my feet up on the dash and lean back as Widespread Panic starts to sing, "I've done so many bong hits/that I can't move."

"I love this song," says the guy in the back, "it was practically the anthem of the 70s."

"It might as well have been my anthem of the 70s," I reply, "considering how I acted in the 70s." I pause for a bit before speaking again, "Not that I want to go back to the 70s."

The Moleskine Lecture

2010-03-10T20:48:00.003-05:00

I was at a lecture in some auditorium. There were no chairs, and everyone was sitting on the floor. I was sitting next to a very beautiful woman. She had dark skin, and thick, dark, wavy hair, but no definable racial characteristics. She was one of those women who didn't have a great body, but just had the most beautiful face.

The lecture was about Moleskine notebooks. It was all about how to use them to make notes about things, and how to use systems of symbols to condense the notes. The lady started the lecture on a stage with a green blackboard, and then came into the audience to use one of the audience member's Moleskine's as an example.

The beautiful woman with me tells me about a Moleskine that a friend of hers had. Somehow I know that this friend was an older white man, with greying hair, that she was attracted to. Her friend took notes the way the lecture was suggesting, with a half page key to the symbols he used.

I tell her about a guy a met on the National Mall. It takes me a second to think of the word ... he was an entomologist. He made notes in his Moleskine about all the bugs he found on the Mall, with sketches and notes using symbols in the same way. When I was done telling her about this, the auditorium was gone and we were all sitting on the National Mall.

Connection with Reality: On weekdays I write notes about my dreams while I take the bus to the Metro. I write them in a small Moleskine notebook.

Why Didn't They Steal My TV?

2010-03-08T16:11:00.002-05:00

Ryan H. and I were walking up the wooden steps outside my condo, which was facing Girard St. He is saying how he is happy to be with "the two men who helped me through the toughest and longest periods in my life." I figure that one of them is me helping him through Zen, although I'm not sure which one. I figure the other is Kid helping him through being gay, but when he turns around and gestures to the other man (who is across the street at the bus stop) it's Wyatt Cenac from The Daily Show.

We go in the door to the building, and then take the first door on the right into my condo, which has obviously been robbed. My TV is there, but in the master bed room they've stolen my flat screen monitor and my laptop. I look to the side of the drafting table and see that my desktop is still there. Then I go down the hall to the den, where I see that the other flat screen monitor is gone too. I think I see my backup laptop in a pile of gadgets on the floor, but it just turns out to be my old cable modem. I'm worried about leaving finger prints all over the place, but it doesn't seem like a serious enough crime that the police will dust for them.

I go into the kitchen and out onto the (wooden) back porch, but I don't find anything else stolen. I come back inside and see that Kid is stripping the sheets from the futon in the den. My dog comes running down the hall to me. He's a great dane, but he looks like a wiry white guy with short dark hair and a big nose. He's scared and crying because of the break-in, and I hold him and try to comfort him. I am thinking that I should have set the genetic engineering to make him look like a dog, so that I would be comfortable with him sleeping on the bed with me. I feel bad that he is locked up in the bedroom all day, but if I let him out he'll trash the place.

Kid is staring into the bathroom and his cell phone rings. He pulls it out and it is really huge, but very sci-fi stylish. It turns out it doubles as a police scanner, and the police are almost there.

I wake up afraid that I won't be able to ID the laptop for the police because I have forgotten the names of all the files stored on it.

Connections with Reality: I have been reading a lot about the legalization of gay marriage in DC. The night before this dream I watched the movie Following, where the main character follows people around and then breaks into their houses.

Firefly, Season Two

2010-02-28T10:25:00.002-05:00

I'm watching TV in the house on Concord Drive with a woman, but I can't really tell who the woman is. We're watching Firefly, and I realize that it's an episode I haven't seen before. I get really excited, and the woman I'm watching with confirms that they have started filming a new season. There is a small box next to the couch I'm sitting on, and it has DVDs for the first two episodes of the new season, but there isn't one for the third episode, which is the one we are watching.

It's very hard to make out what is going on in the episode. The episode is shot in high contrast, with everything turned into shades of blue. As I concentrate on it, it resolves into a more normal shot.

River Tam and my friend Bethany are walking through the Serenity, although it is much bigger than in the first season, very dark, and full of strange pipes and machines. It is much more like something out of Aliens. River and Bethany are trying to track down a ghost that has been haunting the ship. As they're walking up some steps River suddenly turns around and starts to stalk down the steps. The ghost had been right behind her, and turning on it makes it appear. It floats backwards as River stalks down the steps and across the circular platform at the bottom. It looks like some big cartoon Frankenstein monster, wearing a sweater with horizontal yellow and orange stripes.

It suddenly dodges around River and melds with a car that is on the platform. River tries reaching into the ethereal space where the car is, but she can't find the ghost to grab him. Then she tries to reach into the physical space where the car is, and in one punch smashes out all of the windows on the driver's side. She doesn't get the ghost, but where the windows were there are scraps of something like red fabric, blowing in a wind that isn't there. Then River tries to reach into the space that isn't ethereal and isn't physical. Her hand goes through the side of the car, which ripples like a Stargate effect, and she pulls out the ghost.

Now the ghost is a big red line, about seven feet long, with a loop at one end and a claw at the other. The claw is trying to grab River and Bethany, and Bethany starts screaming. River gets angry and starts smashing the arm into the car until it shatters into thousands of little pieces which disappear as soon as they hit the floor.

Connection with reality: I almost started re-watching the first season of Firefly last night, but decided to go with Star Wars instead.

Fifth Grade was Never Like This

2010-02-28T10:23:00.001-05:00

I'm in fifth grade, sitting at a long table in front of Mrs. Chase. On my right are an ex-girlfriend and Mark H. On my left is Stephen Colbert. Mrs. Chase is showing us a graph of our predicted grades. All of the dots on the graph are the letter 'R,' and they form a pattern that looks like an owl. I'm thinking that it should be called the Owl of Doom, but before I can say anything Mrs. Chase says she was thinking of calling it the Owl of Doom, "if that's okay with Mr. Colbert." Colbert feigns humility, but eventually gives in to having the graph named the Owl of Doom in his honor.

This is when I notice that a woman is standing in front of Colbert. She's wearing white panties and a green hoodie that she has unzipped. She is trying to gain Colbert's favor by displaying herself in front of him. My ex-girlfriend remarks that it makes her feel bad because the woman's tits are so big. I'm thinking, "They're very nice, but they're not that big." When I look back, the woman has zipped up her hoodie. It has a fascinating fractal design over her right breast.

Connections with reality: I just reconnected with my fifth grade teacher on Facebook. I've always been irritated with NASA's ISS Node 3 getting called the Stephen Colbert rather than the Serenity, and I was thinking about watching Firefly last night. A woman I know got in an argument with her boyfriend because he said that an actress on TV was really hot.

Fratricidal Pythonic Rats

2010-02-24T16:41:00.000-05:00

I went to see Jason, who was living at the house I grew up in on Concord Drive. We were down in the basement, which had been remodeled to look like Evan's parent's basement. I brought over my rat Hermes but was having trouble keeping track of him. At one point I was holding Hermes in might right hand, and I looked to my left and found another rat and his baby desperately clinging to my right arm. I realized it was Hermes long lost brother, and was overjoyed. Then Greta sat down next to me with a large albino rat, which I realized must be the mother of the baby.

At this point Jason had to get up and deal with some other people who had come over to visit. I was trying to find a box to take the rats home in. But all the boxes were full of colored wooden blocks. When I would empty them out they would turn out not to be the right size for the rats. Meanwhile, the rats were all scurrying about, so once I figured out that a box didn't work, I would have to crawl around the room collecting more rats. In the middle of this Greta gave me a note saying that Jason wouldn't be able to get back to me.

Then after a couple more tries with boxes, the people Jason was supposed to be talking to came in. They were very well dressed Russian nobility. I looked down and Hermes' brother had become really huge in my arm, with Hermes' head sticking out of his mouth. I didn't understand what I was seeing. The Russian woman took a cigarette in a long cigarette holder out of her mouth and said something snotty to me about rats. I looked down and realized that Hermes' brother had completely swallowed Hermes. I freaked out and started smashing the brother's head against my cheap folding table from the Game Cave, but he wouldn't die, he just kept whining at me piteously.

Spidersuperman and the Restuarant

2010-02-23T16:59:00.002-05:00

I was Spiderman, but the other super heroes were making fun of me because of my cowboy boots. Then we heard of a crime and all ran off across the city. I was swinging down the middle of the street watching the Thing and Gort (from The Day the Earth Stood Still) swing down the street on flag poles.

When we got to the building where the crime was I was suddenly Superman. I was in the stairwell and I flew down a few stories. There I found a grey, shifting, and floating mass. It was wearing a fedora, and there was a hand coming out of it. It said it was an FBI agent, so it was okay for it to be beating someone up in the stairwell. It was making me really nervous, and it started making fun of me for being Superman and being afraid of him.

At this point I realized I was dreaming. I figured if I was dreaming, there must be a door that I could use to get out of there. I looked to my right, and sure enough there was a door disguised in the wall. I opened it up and went through it, and I was in my next door neighbor's house back on Concord Drive. It was night out, and it was dark and spooky in the house, so I went to the front door to go somewhere else. Since I knew I was dreaming, I figured I could make it so that there was a beautiful woman on the other side of the door.

When I opened the door it was very bright and sunny out, and I had forgotten that I was dreaming. I went to the family restaurant I worked in with my mother, my sister, and a baby sibling (none of whom matched my real family). It was an open air place, very much like the parking garage on Elliewood Ave. We were selling the place, and my mom was taking the baby to our new home. My sister and I had free run of the place for the next two weeks, as long as we didn't damage it for the new owners.

Strangling an Island on a Train

2010-02-21T10:26:00.005-05:00

I was on the train, and I realized that sitting in front of me was an ex-girlfriend. Since we'd known each other she had become a famous science fiction author. I debated whether or not to leave her alone for a while, but finally decided to talk to her.

I started by telling her how much I appreciated what she had done with her last novel. In the second edition second edition the last part of the novel (where the hero goes on a journey to China) was removed to form the start of her next novel.

When she replied was when I got my first good look at her. She looked like Bridget Fonda in Point of No Return. She said that the journey to China was really a "panel piece," an idea she had gotten from reading Chinese romance novels. "The heroine asks where the emperor's palace is, and her guide points and says 'Three blocks down on the right.' And eventually we get there, but it takes us nine hours." She had been really nervous about the change, afraid that she would lose readers one way or the other. "I make a lot of money worrying about losing readers," she said.

"As long as you don't make Bujold's mistake, you won't lose me," I replied.

"Well, I hope that when you read my books, you get something more out of them because of the connection we shared."

"No, your writing is so good that when I read it I get totally lost in the world you have created, and I don't realize who has written it." I realize as I say this that it hurts her. But it's the truth: I can't realize who wrote it because it would hurt me.

At this point in the conversation I'm lying across two train seats with her leaning over me. Another fan of her work comes up behind her and starts talking to her, so we both sit up. He's a very geeky kind of guy, like a small Andy Dick. He waves his arms around a lot as he talks. He's talking about how there is this empty place inside him when he reads her books. I'm trying to decided if my ex would be more disturbed by me hanging around while she is trying to talk to another fan, or if she is more disturbed by the other fan, when he says "It's like trying to strangle an island."

I wake up thinking that I should have stuck around.

Connections with reality: I've been getting Lois McMasters Bujold's books on the kindle and rereading them, although I stopped this week because I ran out of money on my book budget. I went to a mall last night that had a lot of Chinese New Year stuff set up in the central atrium.

Kindergarten Tree

2010-02-14T10:45:00.004-05:00

My brother and I were walking through the area around Park and High Streets in Charlottesville, although we were in Richmond. I used a key I had so we could take a short cut through a building I used to work in. I was thanking him for giving me a ride down so that I could move to Richmond. I was telling him how it would be nice to be near all my old friends who ended up in Richmond after going to VCU.

Then we walked in to Jefferson Park and my brother was gone, and I was walking with Bill and Mark H. They said, "Let's go to kindergarten and get high." They started climbing up this huge tree. The trunk was at least 15 feet around. They were climbing with their arms and legs bent at inhuman angles, like something out of a Japanese horror film. They were climbing up by gripping the edges of the bark on the tree, which spiraled around the tree like a barber pole.

As soon as Mark and Bill headed up the tree, two random guys appeared and tried to follow them, but the random guys were unable to climb the tree. They yelled up to Bill and Mark, begging them for help, saying that they wouldn't have fun unless they helped the random guys up the tree.

Then I tried climbing up the tree. There was no bark, and I had to grip on to some sticky bumps that were protruding from the tree. At first it was hard but doable, but after about fifteen feet I just couldn't go any farther. I fell down, but landed on my feet staring up at the tree. I woke up wanting to get high.

When I first quit smoking cigarettes, I used to have lots of dreams where I would smoke in the dream. Then I would wake up feeling like shit, thinking I had smoked a cigarette the night before.

Watching Myself on TV

2010-02-11T09:30:00.001-05:00

I was called down south to one of the Carolinas to help work on a murder mystery. I got to the FBI command center for the investigation, which was in an old hotel, the kind with one level of rooms all with doors leading outside, arranged in a row with a covered walkway in front of the doors.

The room that the FBI had taken over for their command center was huge. I wander back through it, chit chatting with various people, many of whom I knew from high school. Most of it was personal stuff, catching up with each other, but a fair bit of it was about the investigation. Eventually I passed a table with two women I didn't know at it. However, they knew me. When I looked at their name plates on the table, I realized that one of them was the woman I was supposed to report to, but I had forgotten her name up to that point. I sat down and handed her the manila folder I had been carrying around with my orders in it.

The other one, who looked like Mary from work, asked me if I had any concealed weapons on me that I needed to register with her. I hesitated, because I had my butterfly knife in my back pocket, and while I was with the investigation I wasn't a law enforcement officer. The Mary look alike went on for some time about concealed weapons, and what a pain it was for her, especially when people held out on her about them, and how we could deal with it now or later, how she (as part of the FBI) could confiscate it now, or she could just turn me over to the Mountain County Police. I asked her if we could deal with it after dinner, figuring I could just stash it in my hotel. She agreed.

At this point, the other woman had come back. She handed me a white t-shirt with several strips of masking tape on it. There was cursive writing on the masking tape done with ball point pen. It had a list of parking spaces that I could use. I assumed it had my hotel room number on it as well, but I didn't read all of the numbers to be sure.

I got up and went back to the interrogation room, where there was a group of people standing together talking over what the interrogation strategy would be for the suspect they were bringing in. They were somehow all managing to stand facing away from me. They had long dark hair, so I couldn't see anything of their heads, and I had the impression they had no faces. I realized that I wasn't quite ready for an interrogation, so I left to go to the bathroom to freshen up. When I got back from the bathroom, I got lost and couldn't find the interrogation room again. I kept walking down the hallway opening doors, but they were all the wrong door. Eventually I realized that I had gotten into the wrong hallway. As I got to the door of the interrogation room, I realized that maybe I shouldn't walk in during the interrogation. I started to open the door, which had two huge stickers on it with lots of warnings using incomprehensible ideograms and lots of fine print. Kathleen, my supervisor, came up behind me in a white lab coat, and reminded me that Lt. Bone was running the investigation, and he was a real hard ass.

We backed out and went next door to the observation room. Inside was Russ, Kathleen's supervisor. It was a very cramped room. It was narrow in the first place, and one whole wall was packed with filing cabinets. The window between us and the interrogation room wasn't a one way mirror. It was dirty, yellowed sheet of thin, clear plastic. Down at the bottom was a small slot for passing notes back and forth. Clearly, the whole thing was improvised.

There was a huge crowd of people sitting and standing at a table. Again they had their backs to me, with long dark hair, and the impression of facelessness. There was one man in a light blue button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, who's face I could see. I figured he was Lt. Bone. The suspect was an overweight black guy with close cropped hair, dressed in an electric blue track suit. He was totally at ease and answering a lot of questions. I could barely hear anything, but I looked down and saw a small black cube, with a screen on one side. I could hear someone typing, and notes about what was being said were showing up on the screen. They were talking about being constructive at the moment. I looked over to see who was typing, and I saw Marishka Hagaritay with a small keyboard. I hadn't noticed her because she had been hidden behind one of the filing cabinets. I remember think that she didn't look nearly as hot in reality as she does on TV.

At this point the show ended. The whole dream up to this point had been a TV show that I had been watching in my hotel room. I was impressed with it too. I was thinking that this was maybe a second TV show that was worth watching on Hulu, along with the Daily Show with John Stewart.

I got up and left my hotel room. The hotel I was staying in had the exact same exterior as the hotel in the TV show, but with new paint on the trim. I walked down the block to a small diner. While I was eating (at the counter) I noticed that the time zone here was an hour and fifteen minutes off Eastern Standard Time. They had these weird clocks with all the numbers rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees, so that fifteen after was at the top. The clock wasn't round, either. At each fifteen minute interval there was a rounded lump sticking out, and each one had another circle of obscure numbers in it.

When I was done with dinner I went back to the hotel. Kirk had been working outside of town, and had just gotten back in. He was wondering if it was time for dinner yet, and I noticed another of those weird clocks in the hotel room. After making some comment about the clocks to Kirk, I suggested we go to the diner for dinner. He wasn't interested, so I suggested the Italian place I had eaten at the night before. But Kirk wanted to go to some weird ethnic restaurant. So we went outside and walked over to the street, which was 355 near the White Flint Metro Station. We jumped on a bus. It was more like a trolley, with an open back with two benches facing sideways away from each other. The whole thing was painted in Rastafarian colors, and the driver was playing Bob Marley's Exodus really loud.

The bus pulled a U-turn and started heading north on 355. It was wobbling back and forth a lot, and there was no way to secure yourself in the seat. Kirk and I were both sitting up on the top of the seat backs, grabbing onto the poles supporting the roof. I was really nervous about it, but Kirk was totally casual, having ridden the bus a lot in Richmond.

When we got to our stop the bus just slowed down a bit. We had to jump off and hit the ground running. Kirk and I got off, and so did a family of black people. The family was really confused, because they hadn't been here before and they didn't know which way to go. Kirk walked over to the shoulder, hopped the guardrail there, and ran down the hill. I looked, but that section of hill seemed too steep, so I went around the guard rail. Here there were strips of mulch with small shrubs in them. I managed to run down the hill without stepping on any of the shrubs, although I did step in the mulch twice.

There was a parking lot at the bottom of the hill. Kirk had already run across the lot and ran into a cave that went under the next parking lot and led to the restaurant. I ran across the lot after him, but when I got there all the cave mouths were really small, and I would have to crawl through them between the narrow gaps in the stone columns. I wanted to go further to my right, to try and find a larger cave mouth, but I figure that by the time I did that Kirk would be so far ahead of me that I would get lost in the caves. I was thinking what an asshole Kirk was being by running ahead like that when I woke up.

I haven't had a good dream memory like this for a while. I think the key is to remember as much of the dream as possible while still in bed. When you wake up from the dream, try to remember as much as you can right then and there. Then as soon as you can after you get up, write it all down.

Connections with reality: Kirk is thinking of coming up here this weekend. Brad Warner is planning on moving to North Carolina.

Wheelchair Protest

2010-02-07T10:29:00.001-05:00

I ride my bicycle into DC, down into the U street area near Ben's Chili Bowl. I stop across the street from the internet cafe that I want to get lunch at. When I go to lock my bike to the street sign, I realize I left my other bike here from last time, and I need to lock that up too. There is already a third bike locked to the sign I usually use. It's secured to the sign with a bike chain (as in, the chain for the gears). I stand there for a while trying to figure out how to lock my two bikes to the third bike so that the other bike can still be unlocked and ridden away. Then a bunch of people in wheelchairs (most of them motorized) come down the street in the bicycle lane. They are all dressed up in black suits. They are protesting the way that people on wheel chairs are treated on city streets. The light turns red and they all stop, and some guy starts walking down the line haranguing them. He's asking the wheelchair people if they would behave this way if they were at home.

Owen and the Ambulance

2010-01-29T21:11:00.000-05:00

I was driving an ambulance. My partner was Owen Wilson. It was icy out from a recent snowstorm and we skid out of control and crashed driving onto the top level of a parking garage. Owen and I stumble out of the ambulance, trying to get away from the cops who are chasing us.

We run down the parking garage, dodging ice and having a fascinating intellectual conversation (part of which is unintelligible to me). After doing this for some time we are still on the top level. Owen (who is now John Schuck, in his role as Capt. "Painless" Waldowski from MASH, complete with a cigar) finds an old car hood, and rides down and around the slope of the parking garage on it like a sled. Unfortunately the recent earthquake turned the garage into something out of an Escher print. We he gets out of sight there is a bang and a yelp, and he pops back up in the air and lands right in front of me.

We walk down and get to the dark overhang of the next level, looking very much like a cave. We hesitate before sneaking into the darkness. Creeping around the corner, we find the cop who had been chasing us. His leg is injured such that he is standing up but he can't move. We walk past him and he orders us to stop. My partner (back to being Owen Wilson) keeps walking. The cop keeps saying "Don't move, Blue!" Owen is wearing a red motorcycle outfit, so the cop must mean me, but I'm not moving.

Owen is walking carefully sideways along the edge. All of a sudden he jumps for it. I walk over to the edge and look down. The back of his head is totally caved in, but he is still alive, mumbling apologies.

CSI: My House

2010-01-29T20:51:00.002-05:00

I was having a party at my house. One of my coworkers went out into the back yard with some hip surfer dude. They didn't come back, and when we went outside we found her strangled to death. She'd been zipped up in a big mesh bag with a coffin sized mattress. The mattress was on a wooden bench next to a camp fire. The mattress was supposed to catch fire and burn up all of the evidence. Kirk and I walked carefully around the crime scene, crouched low with arms and legs curved out, looking for forensic evidence.

I had this dream Tuesday night, but didn't post it because it disturbed me so much. It wasn't like a nightmare. During the dream it was just like an episode of CSI (without the inevitable gross out scene). But the second I woke up I was totally freaked out by it.

Time Travelling Bank Robbers

2010-01-24T10:00:00.001-05:00

Me and the rest of the gang of bank robbers walked into a garage early one morning. It was the sort of garage that hadn't been used for a car in ages, and was instead a place to work. As we came in, one guy found a shell casing on the floor. We figured that this meant other bank robbers had used this garage before, and saw it as a good omen.

We sat down and starting working on our own bullets. We would unscrew the tops, pack them full of explosives and shrapnel, and screw the tops back on. All throughout this we kept up a lively conversation. It was a good bunch of guys, laughing and joking with each other.

Once we had our bullets ready we packed everything up and headed out to the bank. The garage was on High Street, and we walked through Jackson Park to hit the old Jefferson Savings and Loan on the downtown mall. When we got to the bank we got into a ferocious gunfight with another gang of heavily armed guys very much like us. It became pretty clear during the gun fight that we were the bad guys, and they were the good guys, even though they were another bunch of bank robbers. We decided that we didn't like being the bad guys, and somehow we got a chance to go back through time and change what we did, so that we could be the good guys.

So once again me and the rest of the gang of bank robbers walked into the garage early in the morning. But it wasn't the same gang. By going back in time to become the good guys, the first gang had left a void in the time stream. There needed to be a new gang of bad guys, and somehow I had gotten stuck with the new bad guys, instead of remaining with my old gang, who were now the good guys.

It quickly became clear that these guys were not up to muster. As before, we find a shell casing. Instead of being on the floor it is in a small chute hanging from the ceiling. The guy who finds it doesn't see it as a good omen, but starts talking about how it's evidence that the cops have been here, and the whole thing is a set up, and we're all going to die. The gang leader starts yelling at him in this shrill, piercing voice, telling him to shut up before his paranoid delusions ruin morale.

As before we start working on our bullets, but it's not as before. Instead of packing in shrapnel and explosives, we have brightly colored wooden shapes and square rods, and teeny bullets that we unscrew to pour Goldschlager into the bigger bullets, which are huge fat things half made out of glass.

And there is no friendly conversation. One guy is this introverted obsessive compulsive. He keeps organizing his bullet making materials. Whenever he does this, the gang leader yells at him with that shrill, piercing voice. The leader says that every time he's seen someone organizing their bullet making materials it has turned out bad, and someone had died. Then there's a woman who mixes her materials with the introverts, saying that they can then share. Then she takes three quarters of the materials, leaving him with not enough to make his bullets.

I sit quietly through all of this. I'm confused by this new method of making bullets, especially the bit with the Goldschlager. So I just sit and watch the other make their bullets so I can figure out how to make mine. I figure this isn't going to work out, and these guys are all going to die. But I just bide my time, waiting for the chance to slip away quietly, hopefully before the shooting starts.

Country, Color, Object

2010-01-22T17:11:00.002-05:00

This dream was posted a day late.

I'm staying with Coleen and her family in a large house full of college students. There was a big party the night before, and the place is a total mess. Every surface is covered with garbage or a spill of some sort. Coleen and I are surveying the damage when she tells me that my job is to help Benjamin with his Blues Clues book. I'm confused. I thought she would need help cleaning up the mess.

So I go and find Ben in a back room. He starts giving me instructions on how I have to write my sentences. David is there, and he's chiding Ben for insisting that things have to be so exact. I open the book, and each page has blanks for a country, a color, and an object for me to fill in. Then Benjamin has to guess what I wrote.

Somehow, the three of us end up in the bathroom arguing about it. Something jumps up from behind the toilet and start to climb the walls.

At this point I woke up and rolled over. I kept doing that all night, with little snatches of the dream in between. The only one I can remember is that everyone was standing around talking. Everyone had fractals growing out of their faces, except for one person who had smooth skin that everyone was treating like a weirdo.

Sporty New Car

2010-01-22T17:09:00.001-05:00

This dream was posted a day late.

I have a sporty new car, and I'm showing it off to people at Walker Middle School. Somehow Kara gets a hold of it, and I have to drive out of the parking lot in her car. I drive up to Dairy Rd., and she squeezes in beside me on the right, even though I'm making a right turn too. She zips around and down to 250, but loses control and slides out into traffic. Cars keep coming and smashing into her, spinning the car around like it's on ice. I end up being the one who has to explain everything to the cops.

Bad Drivers

2010-01-19T21:47:00.003-05:00

It was late at night, and I was down on the old track at CHS. All of sudden these two cars drive onto the field. One is an old, rusted VW bug, and the other is a non-descript VW rabbit. They start racing around the track, but not really paying attention to the track. They're driving off the track and onto the field all over the place, and when they get to where I am (on the corner closest to the back entrance of CHS), they split around me, zooming by on either side. There are women and children running all over the place screaming.

After a few laps, the VW rabbit turns and drives up the hill, along the houses on Grove Rd. and toward the back entrance. The VW bug tries to follow, but ends up going into the creek with a tremendous crash and lots of tinkling glass. I run down to the creek to see what happened, taking out my mini-mag light and waving it around. When I get there the cops have already shown up, and one of them makes some sarcastic comment about how helpful the light was.

The VW bug crashed into a white truck, which was on a smuggling run down the path cleared for the power lines. To get it open we had to pull the front end forward and down. The first guy out of the cab has some blood spattered on him, and he's stumbling around and babbling incoherently. The Don Dennis comes out, as cheerful and dapper as ever. Then I woke up.

Toys and Airports

2010-01-18T08:58:00.002-05:00

I drove down from Maryland to Virginia to see the people who were designing the new toy. When I got to their offices, it was like the corner of Preston and Mad Ave. in Charlottesville, but Preston and Mad Ave were major multi-lane roads, and the small apartment building on the corner was a 15 story glass box office building with a huge parking lot. I got out of the car, but it was a bright sunny day, and I was covered in layers and layers of clothes because it's so cold in Maryland.

I got to the receptionists area of the toy designers, but they weren't ready for me yet, so I had t sit in a corner while people filtered in and out, having end-of-the-day type conversations. Then I went through a door into a conference room. There was a oval table with a bunch of people sitting around it talking about the new designs.

The toy was going to be a freedom and mobility toy for little kids, so they could drive around and see their friends. The idea was to get a jump on the teenage desire for a car. It looked like a complicated rocket on wheels, with all sorts of pipes running around the outside. At one point I was passed designs for two pieces of safety equipment. The one I remember was the seat belt, which looked like one of those complicated weight-lifter belts, but it was made out of red plastic. I was thinking that I should have talked to the engineers back at my job at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to find out what the latest in safety technology was. I knew I was going to be coming down to look at safety designs, so it was really stupid of me not to have thought ahead.

I got up to get something to drink, and there was a ton of noise from the reception area like a bunch of people leaving for the day. When I turned around it was night and the offices were dark and empty. I wandered around for a while trying to find people, but the modern high-tech offices were now some huge old house. Every office I looked into still had a big old bed in it. Eventually I ran into two of the women working on the toy. They were on the floor above me coming down. One of them was really pretty, and had on two tight white tank-tops. There was a light coming in one window and perfectly lighting up her breasts, just like a shot from American Beauty. The other woman with her was wearing a loose black skirt, and I had the impression she was very pretty, but I was just entranced by the woman in the tank tops, and never even really looked at her.

They came down the stairs to show me the toy, which was a light brown Zhu Zhu pet. They put it down on the floor and it drove around running into the walls. Eventually I realized there was a guy following us around with a remote control, and he was the one driving it. He wasn't intentionally driving it into the walls, he was just having trouble controlling it.

But then it was time for me to go to the Metro and catch my train to the airport. I went outside with my luggage slung over my back. I was running through the streets, and my sister Kara was running along side me. But I outpaced her by running through the gutter of a right turn lane. Then I was running side by side with a banker down the street. The banker had on a grey suit and a red tie. The light hadn't changed yet, so the street was empty, but we could see the cars behind and in front of us getting ready to drive down the street. I was running at an easy pace, but the banker was really panicked and running full out, although he was going no faster than me.

We jumped through gaps in the hedge on the median and made it across to the Medical Center stop on the Red Line. There was a huge circular drive to get up to the Metro station, but I took a shortcut around the right side. I got down into the concrete canal where the train ran, and then all of a sudden I was at the airport, walking through the parking lot. The airport was like a huge version of White Flint shopping mall, and I walked in through an Indian shoe-repair store. It had a bright red sign just like this Vietnamese Restaurant on 355, but instead of Pho 97 it was Mo Der 85. And it was in some weird font with bent lines. [I think "Mo Der" is a refernce to Mohinder Singh, a character in the novel Interface by Neil Stephenson and J. Frederick George.]

Inside was like a shopping mall, but instead of a wide open area between the stores it was a huge waiting area of rows of armless chairs, packed full of people. I wandered around for a while before I found my way to the departures area. I had to go down this long tunnel to get there, all cinder block and overhead pipes. Whenever there was a turn in the tunnel, huge signs had been made out of orange construction paper. They all said "Hey Kid" in three foot high letters, with a huge arrow pointing the way. The signs were in various states of disrepair, with the individual sheets of construction paper falling off the wall.

When we got to the security check point I panicked. I was searching through my backpack looking for my baggage claim check, because I knew they wouldn't let me through the security screening without it. As I'm going through all of the junk in my backpack, I realize that I haven't put it all into clear plastic bags for the screeners. Then I saw my utility knife, which I obviously forgot to put in my checked bag. That's when I realize that I never checked my bag, and I left it in the trunk of my car. I'm so panicked I can feel my heart pumping in my chest, vibrating my whole body like a jackhammer.

A helpful guy with curly hair in a white t-shirt comes over and we head back to the parking lot to get my bag. He asks me when my flight leaves, and I pull out my ticket and see that it leaves at 4:00. Then I take out my Droid cell phone to check the time. I turn it on and it says 4:40 and I freak out because I'm late by 15 minutes [apparently I'm not so good at math in my dreams]. But then I realize that 4:40 isn't the time now, it's just something from one of the apps. But I can't get the phone to tell me what the time is. I keep pressing buttons and changing apps, but all I can find is a lengthy definition of time in some fancy script. Eventually I force the phone to shut down and reboot, and find that it's 12:40, and I have tons of time to get my bag and check back in.

Me and the curly haired guy exit the concrete tunnels and walk out onto a grassy area. By the time I get to the actual parking lot the curly haired guy has disappeared. The section of the parking lot I'm in is completely empty of cars. However, the land is curved in a bowl, and I can see the rest of the parking lot going on for what seems like miles, and it is packed full of cars. I'm walking down toward were my car is, and there are a bunch of black teenagers in the parking lot. They're walking around in a way that's almost like a dance routine and singing. Most of them wander off, leaving one guy behind. He's balancing on a rock the size of his foot and singing. I get to my car and get my huge black bag out of the trunk.

I start the long walk back to the baggage check, which is near the Mo Der 85 place on the other side of the mall. When I get there a woman is sitting in the chair with one of those old beehive hair dryers over her head. I reach down and push the button on the front of the chair near her ankles, and out pops a baggage claim check. I turn around and leave, and as I'm walking out the door I can hear the woman behind me saying "Oooh, that was the last one."

But now I can't remember where I put my luggage. I'm wandering around the outside of the mall, looking into stores, trying to find the one with the locker that I put my luggage into. Eventually I get back to Mo Der 85, but as I'm walking in the door I wake up.

Ed's Books

2010-01-11T15:48:00.001-05:00

I had this dream on the same night as the previous dream post.

I was sitting in my bed room at a house on W High St. that I have dreamed about before. The room I'm in has a hidden door to a secret room. You have to take a few steps down into the room, but it is bigger than my bed room. The room is full of shelves and boxes, and has two old metal desks in it that used to belong to police detectives. I have a lot of storage in the room, mostly mine, but also my parent's art collection.

While I'm poking around in there Ed Gatewood comes in. He's looking for his copy of Catcher in the Rye and some other book of the English-class variety. He has to do perform a play later based on the two books, and he'd left them in the secret room. We start searching for them, and as we do more and more searchers start showing up until the room is full of people looking for Ed's books.

Eventually Kirk turns on a light I didn't know about. It not only helps the search but illuminates the shelves of African statues nicely. At this point I remember seeing the books in a rectangular container with a bunch of other books. So we start searching all of the boxes and drawers. My girlfriend comes in and gets mad at me, because I'd told her the door to the secret room just lead to a closet.

Eventually, we find Ed's books. But when we leave we realize that the door to the secret room is broken. There are two sliding panels, but we can't figure out how to slide them so that they blend into the wall, and the two steps going down into the secret room are getting in the way. Finally Virginia helps us fix it.

Afterwards we are all sitting around in my bed room talking about it. Someone says to me that now all my wishes can come true. I emphatically state that I wish I was out of "this goddamn town." Jane laughs and says "Now that's a wish!"

Where's my Luggage?

2010-01-11T15:46:00.000-05:00

I got to the airport on a bus. This is an airport I have dreamed of before - It's a huge modern airport where all the buildings, roads, and parking lots are circular. So I'm standing there waiting to get my bags off the bus. I start walking around the bus looking for my bags. After a while I come around the bus and see the ambasador. I'm relieved because I need to talk to him to solve the problems with my visa. However, he's talking to someone else near a huge pile of baggage. So I keep walking around the bus. He's still busy talking to other people. As I start to walk around the bus again it drives off. On top of the bus I can see my bags: two huge black gym bags. I run across the parking lot chasing after the bus. Eventually I caught up with it at the bus depot, but that is when I woke up. It was 2:00 am.

This dream was a lot longer than the description makes it sound. There was a lot of walking around the bus, and then there was a lot of chasing the bus.

Bicycling Past Dancers

2010-01-07T16:35:00.001-05:00

Note that the date is off for this one, I woke up from this dream on 1/6

I was in Charlottesville, bicycling around town and arguing with Jim. It was not clear at all what we were arguing about, but it wasn't a very heated discussion. We were going west on High St., but when we came to the light at Park St., the way was blocked by dancing women. It looked like a bunch of women had just come out of the offices nearby and started doing a Broadway dance routine in the middle of the street, although by the time we got there several of them had just wandered off. It was obviously a planned event, because the city had put up traffic cones and sawhorses to block the street off for the dancers.

We turned right on Park St., which somehow became 5th St., which we rode up to the intersection with Main and Water. That intersection had become a huge traffic circle that was jam packed with bicycle traffic. One overweight teenage boy with dark hair cut me off, but other than that we got through onto Water St. okay.

We rode down Water St. to the parking garage, but there was a bus blocking the entrance. Jim was really nervous because the bus was beeping and it's reverse lights were on, but I could see it was moving forward. But the parking garage was full of small concrete ledges like the edge of a sidewalk, but twice as high. I managed to bunny hop over them and around the bus at which point I was at the entrance to the UVa bookstore.

That's when I was woken up by my rat going nuts running around his cage and rattling the bars.

Crawl Space

2010-01-05T15:22:00.001-05:00

We made a late night run in my pickup truck to the outdoor Consumer Product Safety Commission fax machine in downtown Charlottesville (near the old CSX station). We needed to get copies of death certifications for a potential emerging hazard. I keyed in the numbers for the death certificates, typing a 2, then a 6, then running my finger down the 1 through 5 buttons to get a batch of five at once. We had backed up to the fax machine, and the death certificates came in the little back window of the cab, and kept hitting me in the back of the head. Only three of the five came through, so I thought I would have to key in each death certificate number separately.

However, that's when we heard the sirens coming from all directions. Obviously, the CPSC thought we were working for an NGO and were trying to discredit them by finding coding errors in the data. We saw the police coming from all directions (I vividly remember one cop car that was an old station wagon), but someone got away and back to my condo, which was built like one of the old dorms at UVa. We snuck in through the crawlspace that ran around the outer edge of the building. Lots of people were using the crawlspace for their kitty litter pans, and one lady had decorated the crawlspace near her unit with lots of colorful tie-dyes.

[All through out this I've been talking about "we" did this or that. There was someone with me through the entire dream, but I never got a clear image of who they were. The best I got was that they were sort of female: either a tom boy on an effeminate guy. I'm guessing the former, since I watched Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome the night before, and I've always been attracted to the Savanah Nix character in that move.]

Dice Club

2009-12-31T13:43:00.002-05:00

I was hanging out with a teenaged Edward Norton in a high school. It wasn't any particular high school, more like a generic high school from some movie. We were trying to get into the locked corridors that that janitors used to move secretly around the school. We had managed to hack the computer security system, and enter in a fake PIN for a short period of time. As we were trying it out we heard some people coming, but we punched in the code and got into the room before they saw us.

I could hear the people talking, and realized it was the principal (an overweight fellow with dark hair) and the new janitor (who I'd never met, but somehow knew was a pretty-but-plain blonde lady). The principal was giving her a job orientation, and mentioned what her pass code for the locked corridors would be 2-0-3-6. This was great, because Ed and I now had a permanent code for the corridors, but it also meant they were coming in to the corridors so we had to high tail it out of there. We snuck through the secret corridors and out into the woods behind Charlottesville High School.

The next day in Algebra class at Walker Middle School we started organizing an underground student rebellion. Some other kid (an overweight pompous type) challenged us for leadership of the revolution, so we went down to the cafeteria to fight it out. The challenge was resolved with some dice game, which involved throwing the dice at your opponent. I beat the guy in the challenge. Norton and I were leading an angry mob of students into the locker area when I woke up.

But I was still dreaming.

I was in Jason McLeod's old room on Locust Ave. (East side), but it was my brother Kirk's apartment. I was waiting for Kirk, Mom, and Ryan to get back, and to kill time I was reading Cerebus #9, although the comic otherwise looked like Cerebus #51. After a while I stopped reading it and put it down on top of the plastic bag it had been stored in.

When Kirk and the others got home he noticed that the tape from the plastic bag had stuck to the cover of the Cerebus comic, and peeling it off stripping the ink from that part of the cover. He was really mad about it, and wanted to know who had been reading his comics. I owned up that I had done it, and promised to buy him a new copy of that issue. He pointed out that the issue is rather hard to find, especially since most of the comic shops have closed because of the recent economic downturn. He thought the comic shop near me might be a good place to try, though.

[Now this is interesting. The comic shop he is talking about is not a real comic shop: it's one that has shown up in several other dreams of mine. You get their by catching a bus at the corner of Monticello and Altavista in Belmont, which goes a few blocks out of Charlottesville and ends up in Rochester, NY. It's a big and wonderful comic shop that takes up several buildings, completely in contrast to the actual (sucky) comic shop in Rochester (at least when I was there)]

Ryan was confused and didn't understand what the problem was. We explained how the tape that hold comic storage bags closed often adheres to the comic itself, damaging the cover. By that time we needed to get ready to go to the rock concert at the bat perserve in Gainesville, FL. I put on my punk skull T-shirt that Kirk had made for me, which was drawn in a Southwestern Voodoo style. Mom was running around with a mesh bag full of orange onions, trying to make sure we had enough food.

That's when I really woke up.

Dirty Check Chashing

2009-12-30T15:06:00.001-05:00

My sister Coleen and I went to a check cashing place together. It was a really dirty place. We didn't want to wait in line so we watched two TVs that were hanging from the ceiling. They were showing a news report of an earthquake that happened somewhere in South America.

We got tired of standing there watching TV, so we went back into the waiting room. It reminded me of the lobby of the hotel the Kurgan stayed at in Highlander. I got the comfy chair, or what would have been the comfy chair if it hadn't been ripped to shreds, with stuffing poking out and holes going down to the wood frame in places. Coleen got a folding chair that was a weird combination of a plain metal folding chair, a beach chair, and those canvas folding chairs people always take to outdoor events.

In front of us was the door to the bathroom, and to our right was a bed. There were two homeless guys on the bed. One was sitting up in bed, with a watch cap pulled down over his eyes. The other one was curled up under the covers at the foot of the bed. I was talking to the watch cap guy about the guy under the covers, and watch cap said the guy's name was Frankenstein. I thought that was odd because Frankenstein wasn't the guy who was there last time Coleen and I went to the place. Then Frankenstein poked his head out from under the covers. He had curly, light brown hair and a full beard.

I looked back and Coleen was gone. I leaned over and looked into the bathroom. Coleen was on the toilet in underwear and socks, but it looked like some badly manipulated video putting Coleen's head on someone else's body. She stood up and jumped to grab an overhead pipe so she could swing over an especially dirty part of the bathroom floor.

Missed the Bus

2009-12-29T09:25:00.003-05:00

Just a fragment last night: I was waiting for the bus at Shady Grove station, but I had to peer through the bushes to see if the bus had come. All of a sudden I saw that my bus was leaving. I knew it was my bus because it was the Redskins bus: a RideOn bus painted in Redskins colors.

Three Evil Geniuses

2009-12-28T10:23:00.001-05:00

It was a sunny day in Belmont, and I was playing in one of those yards on a hill that is flat on top but slopes sharply down on one side to meet the hill. That's when an evil genius drove up the side of the slope in a VW Rabbit and tried to run me over. I figured it was just random chance and didn't pay it any mind until another evil genius tried to run me over. Pretty soon I was being chased through Belmont by three evil geniuses trying to run me over.

Eventually I managed to break into a house by the lake, which I crawled through like a soldier under fire. I made it through the house to the patio, where I hid behind a chair watching traffic. Someone I couldn't see whispered a hint to me, and I dashed to my right through a hedge, and into my brother's neighborhood in Richmond. The evil geniuses were still after me, but I managed to get into one of the alleys and finally evade them.

Once I made it to a safe house, I was shown a comic book for each of the three evil geniuses, detailing the particular way in which that evil genius is considered a pathetic loser in the evil genius community.

Later in the dream I became an evil genius myself, but I don't remember that part very well.

Bicycles, Cats, and Drugs

2009-12-23T14:51:00.003-05:00

The dream started out with me riding my bicycle. It was a warm sunny day, and I was riding down a long straight two lane road with almost no cars on it. The road went up and down hills much like the stretch of 29 north of Charlottesville. However, the sides of the roads were more like the area around Gainesville Florida. I was riding along incredibly fast. It was mostly under my own power, but when I went up hills I could feel some sort of powered assistance pushing me along.

I rode my bike down the road for a long time (this part was one of the best dreams I've had in a long time). Eventually I came to a large building on a large artificial hill with a flat top. At first I thought it was Ash Lawn, but it turned out to be some big, blocky University building with a neo-classical front. There was a warning sign saying not to approach the building, but it was ambiguously worded so I rode past it up to the building.

When I got into the building I found that Chris had finished breaking into the safe with the prescription drugs. I took two pills back to the cats who were on the bed, and fed them the drugs. I figured I could get them addicted to the drugs and then they would do whatever I wanted. On my way out Chris showed me the drugs, neatly pinned down and labeled like a butterfly display. I reminded him that we needed to get to New York before the cops showed up, and went out for a jog.

I went out onto the flat top of the hill and jogged around top on a macadam path. I got a look at myself I was a man-cat. I was thinking that our latest projections showed that global warming would destroy mankind, but we could still save the cats. We just needed to trick the humans into thinking that preserving enough salt would save them, when really it would save the cats.

When I got back from my jog I was on Wisconsin Ave. north of Dupont Circle. All the lieutentants of my gang had gathered there, and I had the drugs in my blue backpack. I started handing out the plastic baggies full of white powder to my lieutentants, and then set the open backpack on the ground between two parked cars so the others could get their own, and so I could look around and make sure no one noticed.

Unfortunately someone had noticed and police started pouring into the street. A huge gun battle started, and I grabbed my backpack and ran around the corner. There one of my lieutenants, a Japanese guy in a blue jacket, got chased into a store by two police officers. It was one of those stores with a small inventory of incredibly high priced items that look completely empty. I chased them in, two pistols blazing. I shot both of the police officers, but not before they shot my lieutenant.

Then I saw an undercover cop running toward the store, another Japanese guy, but this time with orange streaks bleached into his hair. I tried to keep out of his view behind a section of wall, but he saw what I was trying to do. As he dove into the store we shot at each other. I missed but he hit me square in the chest and I went down. He then ran out the store to deal with the rest of my gang.

Of course, I was wearing body armor and got up after he left, grabbing the evidence off my lieutenant as I snuck out of the store.

Then I woke up with Michael Jackson's "Beat It" stuck in my head.

Three Fragments

2009-12-22T10:40:00.002-05:00

Last night I kept waking up and falling back to sleep, so I had several dream fragments.

In the first fragment, my old friend Jason was giving me advice on playing poker against a porn star in a black lace teddy.

I wasn't even in the second fragment. It was a scene where David Hasselhoff is playing poker against a Russian gangster. Hasselhoff was trying to play it cool, but it was obvious he was desperate to get the gangster into a game, and that he had some scam he was going to pull on the gangster. But the gangster was saying that even though he folded in the last round, he would have won because he had a five in the hole. The cards they were using were really strange. They were covered with diagrams like teeny tables of numbers that were blank except for colored bars across them.

The third fragment was me getting ready to go to Bethesda for work, except I was in the house I grew up in on Concord Drive and it was the middle of the night. I went out front, and then realized I had forgotten something. When I went back into the kitchen I realized that the back door had been wide open all night, and anyone could have come in the house. Then I walked back to my room, but I hadn't turned the hall light on and the light in my room wouldn't come on, so it was pitch black. Then I realized that someone else was in the room and it was too late.

Teleporting Kobold

2009-12-18T21:46:00.000-05:00

I was playing live action Dungeons & Dragons with some friends, and I was the dungeon master. So I come up with a plan where a tribe of kobolds will put all of the children in the town to sleep and kidnap them.

Keep in mind that from this point on, I am a kobold.

We (the kobolds) shoot our sleep-poisoned arrows way up into the air from Concord Dr. I run around the back of the house I grew up in, past one of the children and on to the one I am supposed to kidnap. This is really disturbing because the children are all dead. They all have arrows sticking out of them as if they came straight down out of the sky. The kids are standing up, held up somehow by the arrows, but with dead, zombie-like expressions, and red splotches of blood covering them like the spots on a cow.

But not wanting to let incredibly distubing imagery get in the way of a good plan, I grab the kid and run toward the other end of the back yard, where the player characters are hanging out. This may not seem like the brightest thing for a dead-child-kidnapping kobold to do, but I still have to steal the bicycle part, which is near the rickety and rusted jungle gym we used to have. I am quickly spotted by the frisbee playing swords and sorcery characters, and pursued at high speed out into the street.

Seeing as I can somehow run about 40 mph as a child and bicycle part laden anthropomorphic lizard, I quickly out pace them. Behind me I can hear the cleric (an older woman I don't know) yelling a spell at me. As the sound chases me down the street I realize she is casting teleport hold on, because she knows that kobolds can dimension door. [Note for those who do not play D&D: kobolds cannot dimension door.]

I manage to outpace the sound of her spell, but keep running until the duration wears off so that I can use the dimension door to teleport the hell out of there. I manage to do so, ending up in Belmont near the intersection of Boling Ave and Monticello. I teleport onto the shoulder of the road, and I am almost immediately run off the road by a large truck. It is a truck for a shipping company whose name I can only read because I studied Russian in college and therefore know the Cyrillic alphabet.

Then I woke up. It was about three in the morning and I had to take a piss.