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."

Time Travelling Bank Robbers

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.

Missed the Bus

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.