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."

It's Not The Horse That's Crazy

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

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

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

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

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?

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.