The Ghost of Me

Very often my dreams play out in movie-style sequences. Last night I dreamed that I was a ghost in a hotel room and then the story of how I died replayed.

I was in a large, older model Bronco with many other people. We were 4-wheeling or having some other shenanigans when something went wrong, the driver slammed on the breaks, and my leg was impaled on a plastic cup.

The cup was like one of those red ones at parties, but it was clear plastic, and it was lodged about 1/2" deep all the way around the rim into my top left thigh. Holy crap, I thought. I believe some others were injured in the crash as well so I thought I should leave the cup in to hold in any bleeding (high school first aid class coming in handy in dream world!) and tend to the other people first.

Whoever our friends were, however, were not taking us to the hospital. Was this how I became a ghost, because I didn't get medical attention in time? Just then one of the stupid kids in the front seat saw the cup in my leg and reached back to yank it out. Thanks dude.

Now I was bleeding profusely unless I held the two parallel wounds together with my hands. I could no longer tend to the other injured people. We were still not at the hospital.

Later I finally did somehow arrive at the hospital where I realized that my left tibia was also broken. My leg looked bad, the bottom half of my leg sagged and a huge bulge stuck out of my shin where the bone was broken. The gashes in my upper leg were difficult to hold together. I needed surgery quickly.

The nurses and doctors were incompetent. No one seemed to know what to do and one nurse was prodding at my broken bone asking it if hurt. Yes, lady, it hurts. I didn't end up seeing how I actually died, but it seemed that the surgeons or whoever didn't act quickly enough and I died at the hospital from my seemingly-non-lethal wounds.

Then I was a ghost.

Superhero Socks

This dream took place outside my mom's house in the cul-de-sac where I grew up. I and a few other kids were roller blading around the bottom of the court where there were miscellaneous "bonus" items floating around about a foot off the ground like something from a video game.

There were gloves and hats and socks; each one would give you a special power if you picked it up and put it on. We were all racing around and trying to prevent each other from getting these floating items. I managed to grab a pair of knee-high, red and yellow knit socks and put them on quickly. They gave me super running speed!

I proceeded to race all around the court, running circles around my opponents. It was awesome!!

Overboard

It's been three nights in a row now where I've woken up in the morning in the middle of (or toward the end of) gnarly dreams. I wonder what makes a dream cycle act up?

This dream started on some sort of fishing ship; it was large and passing through a narrow canal (maybe 10x the width of the ship). There was some guy on board that insisted on hitting on me repeatedly and I was not happy to find that something had gone wrong and I needed to gear up and jump into the water with him.

I'm not sure what was wrong, it may have been something about a killer whale in the water? I don't know what we were supposed to do, but we got our wet suits on and went to the bottom deck of the ship which was right at water level and was open to the outside via a passage through the entire width of the ship. Just as we were getting ready, something happened to the ship and it jerked forward in one huge movement.

I had been putting my hair up and all my hair ties had fallen into the water along with myself and the man. We were now in the water and I was trying to find my hair ties for some reason...as though that were possible. I also realized later that my camera had fallen into the water during this accident and that my brand new camera had been lost! I was upset and intent on diving down all over the canal to find it.

After some time swimming/moving up and down the canal, I found myself with a few other people walking along a trickling, forested stream. My cousin Adele was one of the people but I'm not sure who the others were. We were searching for something but I don't remember what. We were traversing the stream over many obstacles; there were animals of all sorts disguised all along the banks and in the water that would hurt us if/when we disturbed them. There were huge eel-snakes that would whip you with their bodies, some sort of hyena that would bite you, and gigantic slug-looking things that would hurt you in some way if you stepped on them, which was almost impossible to avoid.

We had many dealings with these threats and were being continually accosted as we passed. I remember at one point someone in the party was being attacked by one animal or another and Adele was watching them a few feet away from me. As she watched, she stepped into one of those giant floor slugs and it started to freak out and flail all over the place trying to injure her. She wasn't paying attention so I called to her to move off the animal, but she didn't seem to hear me. I called her name again and again but she never heard me.

Party at Todd's

In this dream Kane and I were staying the night at Todd's house, this guy I knew from 7th and 8th grade. We had driven up from San Luis Obispo and had stayed one night and were now packing up to go home. I had packed my suitcase and folded up our tent (why? no idea) but the whole time Todd and his family were trying to convince us to stay for one more night. It was a holiday weekend and we didn't really have to be back home until tomorrow.

We had decided to leave when people started trickling into their home; it was a party! Suddenly it was actually Scott R's house (another kid from middle/high school days) and all the people were from Highland/Brett Harte/Hayward High. I actually knew quite a few people, but mostly in a "I remember them from 2nd grade" sort of way rather than actually knowing them.

Kane was playing console video games with some guy on a couch and said we could stay if I wanted to talk to some of these folks and hang out tonight. I said ok.

Alicia was there, and I was so thankful to actually know someone for real. After hanging out with Scott R for a while, I went over to talk to Alicia. She was talking to a couple other girls I didn't know and I stood with them for a minute but they were deep in conversation. I felt like a 3rd (or 4th) wheel so wandered off. I realized that even though I remembered a lot of the people, they didn't really seem to remember me or at least they weren't talking to me. It was awkward.

I noticed that people were dividing into groups in one part of the room so I went over to see what was going on. It was a scavenger hunt; I was assigned to "Group 3" immediately. I thought it would be fun but it turned out that we were looking for really stupid things and couldn't find a single one of them. The only things on the list I remember were: a girl in a swim suit, a garage full of duffel bags, and a "real" lamp.

I thought I came close to finding a "real" lamp when I stumbled upon an antique collection in one of the rooms; I was thinking we were looking for an oil lamp, though I wasn't sure. But there wasn't one, so I remained disappointed with the game.

Later we drove over to laser tag with everyone, but the facility had completely changed and was now super quiet inside. No music, no video games, and the employees briefed the players in the lobby before the game so everyone had to keep really quiet so people could hear. It was odd.

Shower in the Open

Ah, the classic shower out in the open dream. Refreshing. Almost as good as the toilet out in the open dream. I've had a variety of these dreams over the years. I'm not an exhibitionist - no - I'm stressed out in these dreams. Stupid shower in the open!

It's funny how sometimes you don't remember a dream when you first wake up, but sometime throughout the day or morning you see or do something that triggers a memory of a dream. Not entirely unlike that episode of Star Trek where members of the crew were being taken from the ship and didn't know it. They were reminded of their off-ship experience by random objects on the ship that evoked an odd emotion of fear, prompting them to discuss their common experiences and re-create the conditions of their experiences together on the holodeck. This blog is like my holodeck. I love Star Trek.

Anyway, what triggered my memory this morning was applying conditioner to my hair in the shower. Actually, it was squirting the conditioner into my hand. I looked at the blob of goo and thought, "why do I remember using conditioner so recently?". It was because I had used it in my dream, in an outdoor shower. Fun.

I think I was on vacation, as I often seem to be in my dreams. I don't know who I was with or where we were, but it was a big city and I think it was warm. We were with friends, possibly Marc and Alana, mimicking our Japan trip from real life, and we were at our hotel. There were two showers and one was engaged, so I used the second.

It was outdoors by a small wall. The wall was curved and only came up to about my waist. I remember showering next to the wall in plain sight of the sidewalk about 20 feet away. I hunched down so that I was at least behind the wall entirely, though people who were walking in the nearby courtyard could still see me. I was moving all around to see if there was any place I could stand where I wasn't seen by people. There did not seem to be such a place.

I gave up on this awful shower after putting conditioner in my hair. I went back inside to seek out (new life and new civilization...) the other shower and remember complaining about that outside shower to some people. Someone - a boy - was trying to tell me that the outdoor shower wasn't that bad. I got mad at him and said that's because he was a boy, he wasn't exactly getting the same reception from the public as a naked lady. It was true; every man passing by had ogled and/or called out in a rude fashion. I guess I don't really blame them - who showers outside?

Waitress

I often wake up with songs stuck in my head. They weren't in my dream, and I find that I have not necessarily heard them recently. This morning's tune? "What's Love Got to do with It?" by Tina Turner.

In my dream last night I was a waitress. I was being trained by another server, but they gave me a table to wait before even having shown me around the kitchen. I took the table's order (three people) and delivered them their pasta or whatever they ordered. I gave them their complementary bread and they asked for margarine.

The kitchen was a separate facility behind the restaurant. It was actually more like a huge concrete warehouse with an immense amount of stuff that appeared to have nothing to do with the restaurant. There were many staff in this area and one of them told me that this building experiences a great many earthquakes per day. I looked up to see if there was tons of cracking in the concrete (indicating that it's been fatiguing due to the quakes), but there were none so I felt ok in the building.

I asked one woman if she knew where the margarine was. She said she did, but then didn't. I asked another couple people and they didn't know. Then someone saw a huge spider hanging from the high ceiling and one woman freaked out. There was a sack of babies hanging under the spider, it was gross but it was like 15 feet over our heads so there was no immediate danger. My friend Damian had bought a new lens for his fancy camera and proceeded to start to photograph the spider. The lens was about 6" in diameter.

I finally decided that I needed to go tell my customers that I am new and cannot find their margarine. As I approached their table they were just finishing up eating and I felt really bad. I told them that this was my first day and that no one would tell me where the margarine was, and that I was sorry. I offered them something else instead - a drink or dessert - as an apology, but they said it was ok and handed me a big bag.

Inside the bag were their left overs; I didn't understand why they weren't taking them home. There was a whole chicken that was half eaten. Attached to the side of the bag was the bill that they had paid. They used a credit card and the receipts were there. There was a bunch of other paperwork with the receipts and one of the items was a survey. I could not read it. I wanted to because I'm sure they gave me a bad review, but couldn't. Another waiter came up to me and sort of scoffed at the review. I still wasn't sure what it said, and think that I figured out that they didn't tip me.

Escaping the Zombies

Maybe I talk about zombies too much. Maybe I think about them too much too. And maybe I did see a commercial yesterday for yet another zombie movie. Regardless, they're in my head, apparently.

There was a longer sequence of this dream, but my memory of it starts in a room of a house were I have never been before. Another girl and I locked ourselves in there to escape the zombies chasing us. Just before we were attacked by more zombies, Dr. Cuddy from House rushed in, gave us each a shot in the tricep of our arm, and ran out. This shot was a cure for zombie-ism. Not sure why she gave it to us; maybe they were just being careful, or maybe it was an actual vaccine, I'm not sure.

The zombies in this dream weren't the slow, thoughtless, funny kind from Shaun of the Dead. Thankfully they weren't the super human ones from 28 Days Later either; but they were more like the ones from the book version of I Am Legend. They still had working brains, and they could move like normal people.

Dr. Elliot Reid, from Scrubs, was the first to attack via the room's front door. She was pounding on it and shouting verbal abuse at us. I picked up a small, silver revolver in each hand and I'm not sure what weapon the other girl had, but she had something.

I was standing toward the back of the room on top of a floor heating grate. I started to hear noises beneath the grate, and realized that another zombie was somehow trying to get in from the ducting under the house. Smart buggers.

As she emerged from the duct, I cocked one of my guns and had a really hard time pointing it at her and firing, the trigger was very hard to pull. I hit her, but I had to shoot her a couple more times ("...removing the head, or destroying the brains...", Shaun of the Dead, anyone?) before she backed off. Then I moved to the next floor heating grate (why there was more than one grate, I'm not really sure) that I thought one might pop through.

Another girl did, and I unloaded on her too until she backed away. These zombies had the ability to regenerate, but if they got hurt too badly they would just die, so they'd leave to go regen before I killed them entirely. This was when Dr. Reid apparently got through the door and the other human woman started fighting her.

Then a 3rd zombie started poking up through the same grate, and I realized it was Kane. I could not shoot Kane, even if he were a zombie. Especially since there was a cure now and we just needed to hold out until everyone got it. So I yelled to the other girl to run.

She was confused, but there was no time to argue, so we kicked out one of windows (it was the shuttered kind like they have in Hawaii) and started to run. My companion was suddenly a man instead of a woman, and we were running wildly down a dirt hill.

The man I was running with started sliding on his butt down the hill instead of just running; it was faster and we needed to hide somewhere before the zombies could see where we went. I slid behind him and we headed for a nearby house to run behind it. In real life, my breathing started to speed up. I heard my faster breaths and I thought it was because I was huffing and puffing running away so fast, but it was probably because I was very tense. Either that or I was humoring my dream.

We reached the house and somehow got up onto the flat part of the mansard-type roof. This area was totally visible from the ground; it wasn't a very good hiding spot. The zombies could climb to get us easily. Four zombies climbed up to get us, my sister to our right, a small woman to our left, and two guys in front of us (neither of them were Kane). I started by running at the small girl and shoving her off the roof. But I knew that pushing my sister and the two guys would be harder since they were bigger than I am.

Fortunately, my brain decided this was quite enough stress for sleeping, and woke up.

Snow Games

These were no ordinary games but instead were an intense competition. There were two teams of people competing against each other in an elaborate competition, sort of like a triathlon, but all weird events instead of swimming, biking, or running (thank goodness, then I had a chance).

Each group had about 20 people, none of whom I knew. I also did not know where we were or why I was in this competition, but it did not matter. We all started out in a gym together; we had eleven days to train for the competition. I was going to start on the treadmill and then do kicking and punching drills (oh yeah, it was that kind of competition), but the trainer recommended otherwise, though I don't remember what he said.

The first event was a doubles team test where you have to steal a certain item from a house without being attacked by the dog or prompting the residents, or any nearby residents, to call the cops. My partner and I had to steal a yellow gardening glove from this woman's garage.

The only problem was the dog. It was a doberman but it was about the size of a lifeboat. It had a normal head and legs but a huuugely fat and ridiculous looking body. In reality, it would not have been able to walk. It was undecided about whether to bite us or sniff us; I as encouraging sniffing. We ended up arousing suspicion among two of the neighbors (as we ran from the dog), but they did not call the police. The woman who lived in the house was fast asleep (we could hear her loud snoring), and we won the dog over enough to escape without being detected. Challenge one: check!

The next challenge was more difficult. We (same two partners in the competition) had to chase down and tag two men in the snow. It was sort of like hide and seek except that the people we were chasing were like native snow people and could maneuver and hide in the snow like nobody's business. So they set off and a few minutes later we were allowed to go chase them.

By some fluke I found the first guy before he could hide somewhere. He was sliding down this little hill with this crazy scythe-like instrument that he used to dive into the snow. I caught him off guard and tagged him and took his little scythe to help me in the snow. Yeay!

The second guy was going to be more difficult to find because there were three guys that looked very similar and I couldn't remember which we had to find, and because we totally didn't see which way he went down the hill and there were many forks in the snowy hill road. After finding that we were after #19 (or was it #17?) I chose one way to go and ended up in some sort of facility at the bottom of the hill. There was a cafe, but behind that was some sort of manufacturing facility where people from the competition were working for some reason.

I waited in hiding while spying on the people to see if our guy was there. I saw him working, but he saw me also and hid in some locked room where no one would let me in. I waited a really long time for him and he finally came out and I ambushed him and tagged him. We had won! I'm not sure if we won the whole competition because I think other people had finished faster than we did, but we still had accomplished our tasks.

For some reason my Dad was suddenly there with me and helped lift me out of the manufacturing facility because there were no stairs and I was exhausted.

In the Army Now

So yeah, I set my alarm on Christmas morning. I wanted to get a jump on the day; we're having a party here today! But it was my alarm that woke me from this elaborate dream, and which I ignored to sleep more.

I was in the Army (or some branch of the military) and it was my first day of training. We started to do typical marching drills (or at least what I would imagine is typical from the movies) and then some other drills. I hadn't realized that it was going to be hard-core exercise intensive, and I was not terribly happy to find this out.

A large group of us lined up in rows opposing another group of lined up people. We were competing with the other group. Each row had to do squats as the group counted off. One lucky person in each row had a mat put under them and they had to squat down all the way to the ground with each count and touch their knees to the floor, but still keep time with everyone else doing regular squats. That lucky person was me.

Time after time, I could not keep up with my group doing the squats. They were just going too fast and my legs couldn't move that fast. And I was pointed out to everyone by the people in charge as the loser every time. :(

Finally we stopped this drill, but not before I realized that my group had been counting too fast. They were counting faster than any other group - no wonder I couldn't keep up! I realized that I should have been leading the count since my squats were the hardest and I was mad that I didn't figure that out sooner.

Then we started some running drills (good lord, my favorite) and everyone just kept running faster and faster. Eventually we were all so spread apart that it was difficult to follow the line since the leader was weaving us through a large building complex and through all kinds of doors. I would round a corner and not know which door the person in front of me went in.

Finally, I realized that the officers were trying to trick us. They were purposefully going too fast to make us lose our way and enter dangerous rooms on accident. I have always thought that I'd be no good in the military because I refuse to do irrational things just because someone tells me to - so I just quit running and wouldn't go into any more rooms where I thought I could get hurt. It was just a drill after all.

Alarm went off sometime around now, and I didn't get to see what happened in my training program.

In one ear and out the...other?

This was a segment of a dream that happened just before I woke up this morning. Besides this part there was a family in a 3rd world country and their apartment was all torn up and one of the kids was mad at me for something...

But that's neither here nor there for this entry (ok, maybe it's there). In this very last part of my dream I was hanging with some friends in some room somewhere (mysterious unidentified dream location) and my nose started to bother me. I looked in a mirror on the wall and saw that in each of my nostrils I had an open orifice at the back that led to my sinuses. Like take the regular holes at the top of your nose that go to your sinuses and put them right at the bottom/back of your nose just inside your nostril where they are visible. They were small holes and looked like they should be in your mouth (made of the same skin a the back of your mouth).

So, if you think that's disgusting, when I looked in the mirror I noticed that there were 2 Excedrin pills poking out of the holes. I pulled them out and was horrified to find that the asprins I took the other day didn't go to my stomach (so that's why my headache didn't go away!) but instead had gotten lost in my sinuses and came out these holes. I looked in my nose more and other stuff just started pouring down the chute. More asprin came out, I think some other stuff that I don't remember, and then finally my collection of Metcards from Melbourne.

Metcards are like BART tickets: little credit card sized pieces of paper that you validate when you get on public transport. I had collected a whole stack of them living in Melbourne and in this dream, they were now all exiting via my nose. It was disgusting and somewhat painful in the dream (not sure how that works).

I gently pressed on the outside of my other nostril to see if there might be stuff in there too and it was tender. I figured I'd be cleaning this out all dang day, yuck!

Race to the Lodge

I woke up laughing. My dry lips curled into a smile and I lay on my right side chuckling away at my dream. I woke Kane up and he asked what was so funny. I told him. He did not laugh. I don't blame him; you had to be there.

I was working at a restaurant with some friends. It was the end of the shift and we were cleaning everything up. Actually, it was a bit of an episode of Scrubs and Elliot was one of the other waitresses. A group of her customers was all mad that she had gotten their bill wrong. I tried to help by telling her and asking her to re-do the check.

At the end of our shift we were all going to like a Tony Bennett concert or something across the street. We all needed to change and there was a small wooden lodge out back where we could do that. It had wooden verandas all around it and ramps up to the glass front doors. We were all running toward the lodge to claim a good area to change.

Just then, children started pouring out of the back of the restaurant; they also were running for the lodge and needed to change. It was like a class full of 2nd graders or something, all button noses and corduroy jackets. We all freaked - we had to beat them in!

That's when I turned to see Turk stopping in-place to change. He was putting a pair of pants on over the pair he already had on. I didn't know why exactly he was doing this, but I kept running. A couple of my colleagues had fallen behind and I looked to see Trevor, Shak (our friend, Shakib, from college, not Shaq the basketball player) and a couple other boys from college sitting outside the lodge at a picnic table all eating some food and cheering us on.

I was now in the lead to the cabin, but my running skills were even worse in my dream than in real life. I was in freaking slow motion. The children started to pass me. I had to make a decision and so I reached my right arm out, bent down, and tripped the first little blond booger who made it past me. He plummeted face first into the deck; I was smiling.

That's when I started to laugh in real life. I had tripped a child so that I could beat him in a race. Trevor and my friends were laughing so hard behind me that I burst out laughing in real life. The laughter woke me up and spoiled the dream, but I was going to trip more of them, I already knew it. It was fabulous.

Hotel Vandals

We're staying in a hotel at the moment, but the hotel in my dream was slightly different. It was far nicer than the one we're actually in – dang. Kane and I had gone to some party in the hotel lobby and had returned to our room late. It was 1am and we were just turning in for bed, reading our books. That's when I heard a shuffle outside our door and someone trying to get in with a key card.

It sounded like a family, children and all. Their key cards weren't working, which I was thankful for. Kane and I glanced at each other and then I went to answer the subsequent knocking at the door. When I opened the door, a woman holding a small girl, a man, and a small boy barged in the room in a big fumble of confusion and talking. I stared, confused, at them and asked them what they were doing. They rushed into the bathroom at the back of the room, insisting this was their room. I assured them it was not, but they insisted. I didn't exactly know what do to.

I looked at Kane and he told them, no, this was not their room or else their key cards would have worked. This was room 211, perhaps they had read the numbers wrong. They were insisting still as they fumbled around our room. It was odd with the kids there because we didn't exactly want to start a confrontation with children around. I don't remember if I just waited until they left or if I ran straight to the reception desk for help, but when I arrived at reception and told the woman there what had happened, she assured me that the family were thieves.

I was shocked. She said that this happens often. They steal your valuables while you're confused as they rush in. The woman handed me something and told me that the authorities had retrieved this from what the family had taken from us: it was a light brown bar of soap shaped like a grand piano, still shrink wrapped. I was relieved that this was all they were able to acquire from our bathroom. Then she informed me that they probably also stole more stuff but they weren't able to retrieve it. I replayed their steps around our room in my head and wondered if they got my wallet or our passports.

I felt really stupid for falling for some con; I tend to be very cautious about things like that and am typically very good at reading people. It was very odd and alarming.

Haircut Nightmare

Dreamed: Friday Night April 24

I'm getting a haircut soon, in real life, so this was an obvious reflection of my feelings toward this event.

I went to get a haircut somewhere and they shaved the front half of my head and left the back long. Not like a mullet, like a freak haircut you've never seen before because it's too ugly to exist in reality. Wait a minute - god damn it - I love the internet, here is the haircut I'm talking about. But imagine it's me and the back part is my super long blond hair. I wasn't all that upset really, but I did need the rest of the hair cut because bald me is better than that, let's face it. So I'm walking around this town with whoever happened to be with me trying to find a hair cutting place that's open.

It was approaching dusk so places were all closed or closing. I found one place that was just closing and the effeminate receptionist man (I even stereotype in my dreams, imagine that) informed me that the owner/main stylist could cut my hair. I thought this would probably be expensive, but didn't ask about it. He came out of the back and started to cut without even asking me what I wanted. He was also rather flamboyant.

When he was done, I had my front hair back, somehow (Brittany Spears' stylist?) but he had given me this goofy shoulder length bob cut that made me look like a 1950's mom. I was displeased with this for some reason and left.

This was actually part of a much larger dream where I had to get to some high school dance that night but didn't have a dress to wear or (obviously) an appropriate haircut. It was a bit stressful and I ended up at some antisocial guy's house party where my dad was going on and on about how he can fit into size 30 jeans now. I watched him parade around in his tiny jeans and wondered how that was possible since I don't even think I wear that small.

Capoeira Hostages

Dreamed: Thursday Night February 26

I was at a sort of factory taking a break after work or something, hanging out with some friends at a patio adjacent the building. It was a concrete paved patio, terraced and with handrails around the paths that led to other parts of the site. We were sort of just standing around talking at dusk. I was with, at minimum, Trevor and Nate, and possibly some other guys.

Some guys came up to the patio area and started doing Capoeira. Nate and Trevor are big into capoeira, so they asked to join in. As they did, it became obvious that the other guys were not just playing around, they really wanted to hurt us. They were doing really major kicks and hits, and barely missing Trevor and Nate as they dodged.

Suddenly they kidnapped Trevor by putting him into an empty dump truck with a guy who had a stun gun. I was not really me anymore, but rather, I was the viewpoint of a camera following Trevor in the truck. From an overhead view, I watched the guy with the stun gun just stand in the truck bed with Trevor. The walls of the bed were taller than either of them and were plain yellow colored; the top was open. The "bad guys" were driving him somewhere. At one point, Trevor had escaped the bin of the truck and was hanging onto the bottom of the truck like in an action movie (the "camera" appropriately followed him for an under-truck view - very tense). I'm not sure why he didn't just jump off to escape.

The truck drove down a ramp into an underground level of a parking garage and Trevor and stun-gun guard disembarked. The head bad guy was there to meet them, and it was Marko from last season's So You Think You Can Dance - Australia (yeah, I know the people's names on that show, so sue me - I wanted Rhys to win). Marko (in my dream) was known for stun-gunning his captives to death. Just as he was approaching Trevor, Paulo came out from behind the truck. He was a bad guy but since he was also Trevor's friend, he told Marko that he'd take care of Trevor. Marko begrudgingly let Paulo lead Trevor away.

Paulo led Trevor to a little alcove in the parking garage and told him to stand in a corner and not move an inch. In the time that Trevor was standing there, he turned into a blue steel I beam with a concrete block base. A group of bow-and-arrow armed men suddenly ran toward Trevor, awaking him from his trance. They had been sent by Marko to scare him. And if an "accident" happened and Trevor was killed, Marko wouldn't have been very remorseful.

The group of archaically armed men told Trevor to stand on a concrete handrail in the middle of a nearby ramp. As he did, he and Paulo realized that they could take out all of the bow-and-arrow clad guys in one huge Matrix-like slaughter. They were about to do so when the camera panned back to me, suddenly a guest in the Harris' house across the street from my mom's place.

I was getting up from their living room and walking through the kitchen. Al Harris (the dad) was carrying in a tub (like a 2' diameter x 1' deep steel tub with handles) full of huge purple grapes. I proceeded through to the adjacent dining room to find Andrea Harris (the mom) holding Laurie as a baby. Next to Andrea was her mom (who I never met in real life) who was crushing pieces of dry rice to make a "traditional" Panamanian dish for dinner. Andrea was smiling as she held Laurie who was very cute. She was telling me what a good baby Laurie was and how much I was going to like her when she was older. I almost told her that I will like Laurie when she's older, but I didn't want to freak her out with the whole being from the future thing, because clearly I was in the past.

I woke up rather exhausted (from this and Flying with Medieval Worf, they were back to back).

Parties and Olympics

Dreamed: Tuesday Night February 17

Three separate dreams:

1) We're having a patented "family party" at my mom's house in Hayward. The party is in full swing and most of my extended family is there, including my Grandmam (in real life, she passed away a few years ago). For some reason I only bought one two-liter of Mountain Dew for everyone to drink. I was just becoming aware of this as I watched my Grandmam drink a glass of Mountain Dew, which was amusing since she would usually limit herself to more dignified beverages like tonic water.

Noting the deficiency in refreshments, Tiffany and I decide to go to the weird nearby corner store/party shop for some Sprite. This place (a fictional establishment) was a one room store that sold flowers, cards, balloons, streamers, and assorted other nonsense. I thought they'd have soda for some reason, which they did, but they were fancy sodas in strange bottles. I asked the clerk if they had Sprite and she showed me to the closest thing they had: ginger ale in a fancy, three foot tall glass bottle. In reality, I'm not sure if I could have carried the thing home.

2) It was night time and I was downstairs in a dingy house where a party was going on. There were lots of people around, the lights were dim, loud music pulsing - the standard. I don't remmeber being there with anyone in particular, but I wasn't self conscious about being alone either. There was suddenly some sort of emergency that required everyone to evacuate, but it must have been a drill or something because no one was very panicked or rushed. I was one of the last to leave; I think I was helping evacuate everyone properly. I vaguely remember adorning some sort of vest for this purpose. On my way out, I passed Vida Soto and gave her a high five.

3) I was in the audience at an Olympic event. This event does not really exist; it was a ridiculous setup that was basically men's gymnastics - like the parallel bars or the rings or something - but these acts were performed about 10 stories up in the air over a really big pool. The strange thing (stranger) was that the audience couldn't really see what was going on because all the seats were under an overhang that made up the walls of the giant cyllindrical atrium where this athlete was performing. So basically, there was a large, very deep, circular pool and a tall atrium shaft directly above it. At the top of this shaft, some guy is doing gymnastics. The audience is tucked into a ring around the pool at the bottom, such that there is no direct line of sight between the audience and the gymnist.

The really tricky part about this event though, is that the gymnist has to climb the walls to get up to the top to do his tricks. And before he climbs, he stands at the edge of the pool, right in front of the audience, and a member of the audience (me, this time) hands him some hairs (like ones that I shed from my head - oh god, they're in my dreams too - they're everywhere!) which he has to use to climb up the atrium. Yes, he had to use hairs, no, I have no idea what that even means.

I remember hearing one of the other audience members saying that the hard part about this event is doing it in front of a crowd, which I thought was odd because the guy couldn't even see the crowd from the top of the atrium; it's not like it was in a normal stadium. When the gymnist finished his routine, he dropped through the air for about 100 feet and into the deep pool below. I thought it was odd even in the dream.

AK on the Airplane

Dreamed: Monday Night February 16

I'm not sure where we were flying, but we were in the plane on the runway, ready to go. The plane was a really big one and every other row of seats was turned around so you could look at the people behind you. Which was nice because I was there with a group of friends (no idea which ones) and this way we could all chat on the plane.

Cedric the Entertainer was the plane's captain, though he was seated in the middle of the plane instead of in the cockpit. He was yelling at everybody to sit down because we can't take off if everyone isn't seated. But he wasn't using the microphone, he was just yelling it out loud.

The plane started to take off, then Cedric got all in a fuss and set the plane back down on the runway. A girl had gotten up out of her seat, so he had had to land again. He yelled at her, then tried again to take off. My friends and I made snide comments about her for being so stupid. Why would you stand up when the plane was taking off? The same girl got up again, looking totally clueless. She was seated in the back row, and was a small asian girl. I couldn't figure out why she would keep getting up; she did not even appear to be heading toward the bathroom.

After Captain Cedric yells at her a second time, I watch her go into the bathroom and start to assemble an AK-47 gun. There was a little window in the bathroom door (pretty rude, remind me to complain to the airline) where I could see her assembling the gun. I almost thought it was funny because, how did this little girl smuggle in a gun the size of my leg?

We all see her doing this and get under our seats (for some reason it's possible to fit under these plane seats, and we feel this is the best defense at this point). I pull my backpack near the side of me so there is only a little bit of me exposed. I watch as the girl walks down the aisle slowly.

Cedric is trying to talk her down. I keep thinking she's just going to shoot him, but he keeps talking to her, telling her to not be stupid and step off the plane with him. She keeps walking toward Cedric, but then turns to my aisle. I believe it was a guy named Matt from my high school who she was targeting; he was sitting kitty corner to me, huddled under his chair. She pointed the gun at his back; I realized he was the one making fun of her the most audibly before.

I also then realized that she just gave him the chance to be a hero: he turned, in slow motion, and grabbed the gun from her, knocking her down in the process. He had totally saved the day from this unprepared terrorist girl.

Somehow Cedric had been injured in all this hubbub and I took it upon myself to assist him as we left the plane. The stairs we were using to disembark were not a regular set of airplane stairs on wheels, but were somehow a large set of Roman-esque stone steps. They were very nice, if I do say. I was practically carrying Cedric down the stairs, surely a comical sight.

When we got to the bottom, Cedric was magically someone else's concern and my friends and I were in a stone paved square in what seemed like a nice European town. There was a woman in the square, and she was one of the only people around. She was immense; at least 6' tall, and wearing 6"+ heels. We approached her and realized it was Nicole Kidman. She looked very odd - way too smiley to be standing there alone in short shorts, ridiculous heels, and like a bonnet or some weird hat.

Suddenly I was a "character" in my own dream again, sort of a hillbilly type, and I decided that it was "in character" for me to take a picture of Nicole. So I took some pictures, but I made sure they weren't terribly good ones (didn't zoom in or make sure I was at a good angle or anything) because my character surely would have taken only mediocre photos.

Rambo Nomads*

Dreamed: Friday Night February 6

I show up to "my house" - not actually any house I've ever lived in, but is a nice sprawling one story with nice carpet - to find that Kit has been "attacked". All the lights were off but dim light shown through the drawn blinds. Someone had broken in and acupunctured Kit, but with bigger needles than normal - more like golf tees - which was obviously hurting her. I approached her as she sat in a wicker chair. She was sitting upright and looking pained. I pulled out the "needles", gathered up her and my stuff, and headed somewhere else for fear of the people who did this coming back.

Cut to me traversing a random township and wilderness area with a group of people who are being similarly threatened and have nowhere to go. It's daytime and overcast. No idea why I wouldn't call family or friends; I was somewhere completely foreign, though it looked surprisingly similar to some scenes from the original Rambo.

And like Rambo, we were similarly vagabonding. In addition to Kit, who was ok at this point and seemed to be able to keep up with us without being caged, I also had a rottweiler that was white and brown spotted and a giraffe who I was leading by a leash. The leash had sunk down to the base of the neck of the giraffe, so I was more leading it by the top of the body. It must have been a baby since it wasn't huge like an adult giraffe. Either that or the dream was wacky, but we know that's impossible.

This dream had no resolution except that all of the sudden on this random meandering trip, Kit became extremely sick. She looked like she had been dunked in water with her fur all matted and she was vomitting a lot. I was panicked and in a rush to find a vet to help her**. I was holding her as we walked.

*Note to self: This would make a good band name.
**Having chatted with Eric the next day, I found that Kit is actually doing just fine and is probably closer to boredom than sickness.