The Me Who

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.

Thomas Jefferson Stole My Clothes

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

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."

The Moleskine Lecture

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.

Fratricidal Pythonic Rats

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.

CSI: My House

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.

Bicycling Past Dancers

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.

Dirty Check Chashing

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.

Bicycles, Cats, and Drugs

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.