I dreamed that I was in some dark, urban, industrial-like "I Robot"
universe. well actually it was nothing like Asimov's book,
but this characterization reverberated in my head throughout the dream.

it's fading now...
everyone is trying to talk to me as I enter this.

my brain was jumping from dream fragment to dream fragment. there was some part where a large number of people were trying to gather breakfast ingredients. except one "person" was really not human but sort of an Aliens like creature.

but the real dream had to do with evryone gathering together for some sort of convention. the details kept shifting, but everyone at the convention was camping out refugee-style in the mormon temple in salt lake city.

I dreamed that we were at my mom's house. the back yard was in need of tending. I think I was there with James and my housemates.

in some places the grass was tall, and in some places bare. I turned to everyone and said, is it time? - in reference to planting wheat or alfalfa.[1] James said no, it isn't. Karine explained, they have not yet picked a Faire site, so the stalks would get overripe and would not hold up to travel for use at the Faire once they had been harvested, and the whole point was that Sue wanted to use the wheat to give to customers.

I walked over to some tall grass and pulled up some of those hated foxtail weeds[2] - when allowed to grow full length, they look like small versions of grains. I shook them out and the seed/grain part stuck out all green and strong in all its glory. I said to them, it wouldn't have fallen apart now.

I don't remember the rest.

the dream started out with Karine and I trying to stay overnight at some house in the hills which was haunted. we were nervous about that. more to the point, though, the house was in disrepair and I fell through the deck and almost broke my leg.

I befriended some imps or other small creature, and ended up learning a little about their society. the one I befriended was a youth prominent in the clan. however it became in bad grace and was put for sale by displaying it on a table with red kanji describing it.

it got picked up by another clan, or possibly the sale was relented. there was a celebration in which we all had to dance, in sets. I didn't know what they were but then it turned out this was only a rehearsal.

everyone sat down to a big dinner afterwards. turns out one of the dinner attendees was Christopher Reeve. he had also been dancing. I thought maybe I had been out of touch and asked how this was possible. he explained that he was wearing like a wire cage, and with muscle movements in his jaw he was directing a big outside motor to move his limbs.

this morning I wasn't feeling good, and went back to sleep after the alarm, which of course made me late for work, but you know when you don't feel good, you no longer care about being late for work.

so I had a rare dream where everyone in it was a real people. it's been a full day, so here's what I remember -

there was some occasion going on, I think it was tied into Karine getting a new car. everyone at work wanted to see her new car, and Karine and Heather and I had just moved into our Fabulous New House, so all my co-workers came there too, because I was late they knew I would still be home and it would be O.K.

Maria, Alex, and a bunch of others piled into Karine's car, but they all came over. I thought Alex was mad at me, and it turned out he was not, so that was good. there was some vague plan that after they looked over our house and trooped back to work, I would go with them.

I woke up abruptly this morning and most of the dream-scape shattered. but this scene has stuck with me throughout the day:

we put a little red gecko in the spider's tank to feed her. the little red gecko had a brilliant, almost computer-generated color, and some green & yellow markings behind her head on the neck. the whole creature was about mayyybe an inch long. the edges were also sharp like they had bad anti-aliasing.

the spider eats crickets. she was Not Interested in this little red gecko.

after a day something happened. the little red gecko hasn't moved but its right rear leg broke off sort of like it was really a plastic toy. it was afraid to move in the spider's tank and was beginning to dehydrate.

Karine took it out and was going to put it in the tank with Puppy, but since the size difference between them was so huge we thought Puppy would be happy to eat it. finally that's what we did. the little red gecko looked very out of place in the earth-toned sand-filed tank with the leopard gecko.

I was in the Sav-On near my mom's house. I was just sort of standing up near the cashier's, near one of the bargain aisles. they came and restocked with a boxed baking recipe that made some sort of cake-like treat normally sold as kids junk food. there was a red and yellow superhero on the cover. I looked and it was really cheap - like 3 for 3.33. I grabbed the last 3 - an employee wanted them but he let me take them because I was a customer.

I went to the cashier and they rang up as 8.01 each. I objected and she fixed it. there was some fuss over method of payment but that's faded out by the time I'm typing this entry.

I left and started walking across the parking lot toward my car. as I neared it I saw it had some men surrounding it on a scaffold. one of them sort of winked and nodded his head that I should keep going, they were fixing my car. I laughed and started to walk towards home across the field. I could always get my car later. the guy who winked turned out to be Sean who used to be in Sales at Netcentives. so that's where he's gone, I thought.

I was in some town that was kind of a generic mid-sized central california town. it had a main drag and was large enough to have a bad part.

if you went up the main drag towards the highway, you eventually got the the bad part. off to the right. if you were on foot you would soon be asked to buy crack; you couldn't avoid the dealers. I was walking through there for some reason and toyed with the idea. if you were white you would get hassled.

in the middle of this area was a building with no air conditioning and some serious security. turns out this was the building where they were having the Earth First! trial for Judi Bari and Daryl Cherney. I was involved somehow but even in my dream I couldn't tell if I was working with the cops or against them. it was all confusing. I think I was part of, or working with, some coalition group of moderate officers and NOAA and I can't tell what their goals were. my friend Jenn was also working with them.

my brain played out a sequence of what would happen if I bought some crack, stuck it in my sock, tried to get into the trial past the security, and had been seen sticking something in my sock by some paranoid cop. I decided not to.

the group of white folks - security and white activist environmentalists - outside the building, really stood out in the neighbourhood they were in.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night, which broke the dream thread. but what stuck with me, was sitting in a car in a parking structure in some post-apocalyptic UCLA. I was with someone else, of vague identity. we had been contacted by these little UFOs that were sort of out of Liquid Sky and were engaged in some similar activity (hunting for some common earth substance which is rare for them).

I can't remember much other than there were two little UFOs, and they were on opposing sides of some far-off alien war. one side was the Neula-LA and one side was Neula-something-else. these corresponded in the alien culture to Los Angeles and soem other place. the "neula" was an alien term for post-apocalyptic.

I dreamt that I had been hired back at Apple. but this was a more goth-like company than the Apple everyone is used to.

I was hired in some sort of QA capacity. I was supposed to come by and get myself set up the night before my start day. so I was there in this big white cubical building that was mostly empty. there was a cafeteria type area in the lower floor. the chairs had those flattened-elliptical curved backs and were primary colors. I'm sure in the daytime it was quite festive, but not at night, empty.

I went upstairs to where I would be working. it looked like an empty highschool room. or maybe that was another area. there was a lab area too, which amazingly enough looked like the old Apple Quicktime QA lab (which in real life I had only been to a couple times). I got the impression a lot of people had been laid off. I picked up an audio CD in the lab and looked at it. it was really 3 albums on one CD. the first two parts were some country music thing. the last one was a few songs by the Frogs. the cover and label were brown and swirly, with black cursive lettering. I was reminded (by a voice?) that this album was wildly popular, and I should make copies for my soon-to-be-coworkers. I vaguely wondered why anyone would like it.

I dreamt that the U.S. military had to switch weapons to use them much like in a computer game. in order for weapons switch to be successful though, they all had to be in synch in one big line dance (like a Sir Roger de Coverly) with however many thousands in a row getting it right. Donald Rumsfeld would call the moves and explain it all to the onlookers; however it was impossible for one's eye to take in the entire line. when everyone moved correctly, which was not judged by a human but rather was a constraint of Nature, the weapons would switch along with that little echo-y "chnnnnnngk" sound that you also hear in computer games.

I was looking on almost from the end of the line, so in my viewpoint the guys were almost in profile.

so, I woke up, and got up, and cleaned my teeth. there were gross tobacco stains along the edges of the gums on my upper incisors. I ran the sonicaire along the edges and the stains slowly scrubbed out.

I left the bathroom and talked to Karine. I told her about my dream, that it was faded and I couldn't really remember it. but if we drove along the boulevard, then maybe it would refresh my memory.

we drove to the main drag and I explained that this is how it worked, all we had to do was turn left (although it was really veering right), and we would pass the 7-11 on the right, and then the left hand side of the street would change like in my dream, or I could at least explain what was happening.

we got in the car and followed this route, and as we passed the 7-11 and the left hand side of the road - towards the ocean - started to change, I realized, I was not awake; I was dreaming.

I was part of some group, no, I working with them, that did covert military ops. they were all skilled in one-to-one unarmed combat and despite formal military rank, they ranked themselves according to the outcomes of frequent combat contests. one of the guys in the group was Dave Cowings from my work.

we were in a field outside of a town. I was with a friend and we had to work with these folks. they were regarded by the likes of us as kinda crazy. to get to where they were I had to cross a little bridge over a gully that cut through the fields. then the camp was to the left. to get from where they were to the town, one had to jump in the air, do some sort of a spin, and then when hitting the ground spinning one would then have the power to tunnel through to the town.

our mission had to do with determining the whereabouts of Armando Hasafat. Armando Hasafat was some like Turkish dude who was a big-bad-guy but I dunno why. like number 3 dude with whoever the bad guys were. apparently it was not clear if our government had captured and were holding him, or if he was sick with syphilis or some other horrible disease and in a hospital in the town, or if he was at large.

we went into town and took some pictures of this Turkish guy with a mustache that we were sure was him. meanwhile another team also took, the same days, some picture of him back in Washington or some other big American city. so nobody knew what to think.

back in the camp, because the ops for this town were done, everyone was starting to celebrate, which of course meant that they were doing the combat challenges. I was not a part of it but it was hard to resist. I kept acting like an asshole just to see if I would be drawn into the fighting. the actual formal contests were on the "near" side of the field - i.e. not across the little bridge, and to the right of the footroad leading to the bridge.

I was walking down a street in San Francisco, and talking politics with a friend. my friend pointed out how the government had totally played up the rôle of Jews in Northern Ireland. my reply was how stupid was that, there are no Jews in Ireland.

there was a line of people in the middle of the street leading up to an intersection. this lady was there with her friend. the lady was really short with greying hair and a broad face. she got really offended at my remark and took me to task. turns out her name was Susan Stallings and she was Jewish and had been living in Ireland lo these many years. She was the author of some occasional column in the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed section. She showed me some of the article references on the web.

I dreamed we were travelling, and were staying in unique older hotels. in los angeles, we ended up staying in Disneyland's Haunted House, which was really a funky hotel behind the scenes set up for the ride. it was 5 or 6 stories and and had a weird old elevator that I had to ride.

we were staying on the 4th floor. I couldn't figure out the buttons because the layout was so weird - there were a lot of gas/propane controls on there too (that was how that elevator was powered). basically all the mechanisms that made the elevator move, including fuel tanks, were on the inside and the people rode the outside. it was round, and had no walls, like an old freight elevator. I set off some alarm and someone had to come to shut it off and figure out where the "4" was. finally, it started to move.

as it went up I realized that the only things I could hang on to were the gas lines. I thought it would be no big deal as elevators only move up and down. then it started some circular movement to the side. even though the change was slight, this meant I had to hold on or I would fly off. it was very scary but I was fine.

I was living in a crowded house (flat? loft?) with a bunch of other people. I had a room which I split with another person and they were moving out for whatever reason.

the house had my dog (a big rottweiler) and some small beagle-sized dog. which was mostly white with reddish brown markings and totally totally fat. neither dog could really navigate around the house or down the hall without knocking something over.

we were trying to get me another roommate and this girl Cathi was getting "interviewed" (if that's how you want to characterize the process). she was hanging out and we were watching TV with no lights on and I can't recall if we were drinking or whatnot but that is just a detail. it was cold.

I only remember a single scene from my dream, but that scene was pretty vivid.

I was walking along a row of smallish houses in a neighbourhood that was really green. you know, green like it gets a lot of rain, like in the South or in Ireland or something. the houses were not in neat rows like California suburbia but more like scattered around like in older areas.

Heather was walking ahead of me, and she got to one house and was talking with someone there. they were too far ahead to see who it was. as I walked closer, I realized it was Matthew Kaufman. I didn't recognize him at a distance becuase he was wearing light (white? off-white?) coloured pants like Gap khaki-style, and a white polo/golf shirt with a fat dark blue stripe across the chest.

his hair was abotu 3/4" long and he was wearing his glasses - in otherwords, he looked just like Matthew, except for the shirt. and, of course, that he was talking to Heather.

weird. I was very confused.

I dreamed that it was decided at work we were in need on some extra training on the basics. so, Vadim organized training sessions, mandatory for everyone, on spam handling technique. some girl from the BLOC with medium length straight black hair, and Natasha, were conducting them. Matt was also involved in some technical way.

the class was held during the evening, in some room in a high school or community college with those desks that are like attached to the chairs. we were gathering and gossiping like you would expect in a group of people changing from a work-task and gathering for a class. the dark haired girl was to be conducting the class first but there appeared to be a problem. for her part of the class she needed some mechanical contraption that was on the back of one of those kind of work-trucks you see carrying junk from construction areas and with a rickety frame on a flat bed. the truck was running fine but the contraption was not. finally, right before the class was to begin, a tow truck came and took it away.

I dozed off this morning after the alarm - and dreamed that I leased a white BMW 5i for $153/month. the lease paperwork looked exactly like the print with the fine print on a TV commercial.

my dream last night was pretty fragmentary but vivid. it started with a backdrop. we had just completed some sort of shakedown cruise in a low-orbit shuttle. the crew was a mixture of military and civilian. part of the crew was some sort of special ops team that I think was intelligence-gathering. not sure. they were led by joel mckelvey, who had long hair.

we had been in space just long enough to cease the zero-gee awkwardness. now it was time for a team to descend back to the ground and do something, which was unclear to me. the team was chosen by a computer using factors unknown enough to the crew that it might as well be random. I remember as tiny display with our names and white-and-tan columns with what looked like 2-byte telemetry data written in a microsoft system font. Ss 09 fF (etc). all of these were decision points, data the computer had gathered on us during the shakedown.

the computer chose the team. I was on it although I really didn't feel up to speed. I can't remember who else was on it. we descended. not sure how on that either.

while this dream was a continuous stream of images, I only recall a couple or three "scenes", sort of like a bad movie that still has some gems in it.

one scene involved a situation where there was some sort of urban conflict. it felt like a protest gone bad or some other kind of insurrection in the name of some cause. each side had command posts and had taken prisoners. I was on the "protesters" side. our command post was in an old gas station on the northwest corner of an intersection and the prisoners were kept in the public bathroom in a trailer in the lot just north of the gas station. we left them all together and took turns guarding the trailer and hoped they would say something of importance. sometimes they spoke german.

I was in a class, or attending a seminar, on the top floor of s 4-5 story white building. the atmosphere was very informal and I knew a lot of the people there. the conference room we were in only really had 3 walls and where the 4th wall should have been it opened up to a hallway with some roof supports marking the edge of the room. the carpet/decor was dingy brown sort of like the carpeting etc on the older BART cars.

the meeting broke up and we were gossiping. I knew everyone there because I used to work with them; so we started gossiping about absent people. someone was pregnant and the rumor was she would name the kid Orlando regardless of gender. I said, "well better than Armando" and we all laughed in that viscious catty way and started talking about Armando that I knew in college, who had the big hair, and how part of his problem was that he was stuck with that name. then it flashed on me that the name really did drive a lot of his obnoxiousness.

there was a security camera in a corner of the room, near the front; the corner to the left of where a podium would be, the same wall which wasn't a wall. all our laughing had some sort of shrill quality to it from nervousness about the camera.

for whatever reason, the dream had to flash back to the little girl's childhood. and all the adults were standing around watching, shaking their heads. the little girl was a trmendous klutz, but like the rest of her family showed an aptitude for horse training. since she was so little the parents had decided to demonstrate this to the neighbours by taking her out and having her run a dog through its paces.

the location was on a flat green space next to a creek. across the creek was a wooded area much like the flora in the yosemite area. the little girl was stumbling but sort of shone as she took the german shepherd mix through a series of gaits more properly demonstrated on a horse.

so, it started out, that we were preparing for burning man. we had some sort of camper van and I borrowed Karine's vacuum cleaner attachments becuase they were really needed. we went to the desert and it was scrub desert (not playa). the camp was small but permament,, sort of like you'd expect trailer folks to be living in.

I came back and forgot the vacuum cleaner attachments. Karine was displeased and I had to go back to get them.

it was the middle of the night and I went to work because I forgot something or maybe it was tied to picking up the vacuum cleaner attachments. there were a lot of people there! apparently there was a change of ownership. we were going to set up in the desert. people were moving around and the place was getting reorganized. some, not many, people were leaving (involuntarily). my office was staying the same (but in my dream it was oriented east instead of north).

we were in New England, in one of the wilder parts of Maine. actually, it was the Maine Coxswain (the term being used consistently throughout the dream to mean protectorate) which was physically between what is currently the state of Maine and Nova Scotia.

we were walking down a path in a lightly wooded area. the man I was with stated his brother was taking over the entire Coxswain. then he explained further that his brother was an artist and had been painting the local landscapes in incredible detail. since this area was a newer acquisition for the United States it was good someone was doing so. my view in the dream became superimposed with a slighly smaller perspective that only captured the oulines of the hills and the blooming portion of the flowers; the view was like the superimposed automapping function in computer games like Diablo. the man explained that even what I saw was 5000 brushstrokes. so his brother's work was really going to take over.

it was a warm summer afternoon in Hollywood. there were 5 of us hanging out: me, Heather, Tim, and 2 of Tim's friends from out of town. they were a bit offbeat. I didn't catch their names. one of them looked like a twentysomething Detective Munch from the TV show Homicide.

we were comparing cities of origin and found out that Tim's friends were really from Portland, Oregon. that's when we really decided they were freakbiscuits. because, you know, Portland tries to be so crunchy granola and urban sophisticated at the same time.

we decided to get something to eat. Tim ordered this burger thing. it's very difficult to describe without using my hands. anyhow, it was like a stack of successively smaller and smaller whole wheat hamburger buns about 18" high. the bottom one was maybe 8" across, the top one maybe 2.5", all proportioned properly to be hamburger buns. there was no burger-stuff in any of them but the small one on top. the entire thing made Tim very happy.

once you ordered there was like a side bar to the left of the order window and a seating area near by, and Tim's hamburger thing floated along that til we got to our table.

I went to Oxnard and talked to Mary & Danny about getting the house fumigated. there was some problem found in the attic. I decided to put it out of my mind becuase I was on vacation or holiday.

I went with a friend to Olivera Street. as we walked along, to our left was a pavilion covered with a brown tarp. underneath was a young male dog that looked like a weimeriner/english setter mix; he had his tail, and the grey was mottled with brownish spotty markings not unlike an appaloosa horse. he really liked me. he was obviously a stray. I called him Darwin, becuase he was surviving in the streets. he answered to it.

I had to go take care of some work-thing. it wasn't very far from Olivera Street. this involved a project where we were developing a flying car of some sort. we were going to test it. 7 of us piled in this car which looked like a studmobile from the early 80's, that yucky metallic brown color that lots of 70's cars had. then it lifted up like some type of "Free Fall" ride. it zoomed to the top. I was a little dubious. I mean, the car looked like it would be front-heavy. a slingshot-like dealy flung us out into the air.

i don't remember much of this one - the memory of it came back later in the day, too...

i was on an alien planet. the impression i had was of great antiquity and decay - both geologically and archeologically. there were a lot of arid dead areas, dust, ruins, worn down mountains, etc.

i couldn't tell you if the people there were even human. they used to be spacefaring but i dunno if they still were; perhaps the civilization was too decayed. they were, however, space-aware. i was a visitor - maybe there as either a diplomat or an observer. there was some threat from above - not certain if it was a rival civilization that was still spacefaring or some entity from another planet.

the city was in the mountain, and there was a dry dusty plain to the east and north. then another mountain, with a humongous ruined terraced tower facing back over the plain.

we went in the plain. the ruler was a short darkhaired lady. we took some weapon that was supposed to fire on the threat in orbit above. it hadn't been used in some time. decades? centuries? the knowledge was lost. almost. the ruler had learned enough to fire it.

the tower across the plain, slowly came off the mountain, lurched to the right (from our point of view) and collapsed in a spectacular ponderous roar.

all I can remember is that before I could leave in the morning to take care of my Things for the day, I needed to visit, in sequence, all of the Denny's restaurants in the town I was in. I did not know in advance what the required sequence was, but as I went from restaurant to restaurant, the right order and location would become plain to me, just in the nick of time.

o, augh, everything started out all jumbled and then it resolved into a clearer storyline...

there was a sequence involving being in a town sort of like Ventura, looking for Maria's (my boss) high school buddies - instead we found a storefront in which our VP was selling authentic hawaiian cuisine - Ellen's Hawaiian Cuisine.

then I was in cubicle land, and everyone's work areas was cordoned off into little rooms. I think I was working at a place that produced computer video games. {Maria and Ellen, who are from my Work in real life, had nothing to do with my Work in this dream} my college friend Naomi worked there too.

I was travelling. we were in a very large plane, widebody maybe. well it was even bigger than that, there were aisles and corridors of people, the corridors themselves very airport-like. lots of the people were young teens, like 12-14 year olds, very exuberant and certain of themselves in life.

I think I was moving to the east coast. Crosby was on the plane too. he was in some forward compartment.

Crosby got loose and as the news spread through the passengers there. many people, especially the older people, were concerned; big vicious Rottweiler shouldn't be loose. I got worried some well-intentioned security thing would do him harm. I started to look for him; he was wandering around forward of me in other compartments.

I don't think I was meant to remember much of the dreams this morning. but they all involved searching, one fragment is remembering to use the filter portion of the Unix MUA 'elm' to search the Subject lines of email for a word... one fragment morphed that search into an ability to find stalactites in a cave... there was no urgency in these searches, but a sense of relentlessness.

for some reason, either an enemy or environmental considerations, cities were under big enclosures, not domes but some other rounded shape. I was moving through the air, flying or riding on some transport device, and arriving at one of these cities. we came down among the buildings, and where we were landing was like the twin towers in New York.

this struck me as odd - well first because of 9/11, and second because the towers looked more like a CGI-rendering of them, not like the Real Thing, and third because we were still inside the enclosure, we were coming down to these buildings, which meant the enclosed volume was huge! and these towers were not the biggest buildings either.

the buildings were surrounded by a big grassy area. we landed to the east of them. I guess it was New York as I think it was Manhattan Island. however the island edge did not demarcate the enclosure, that was way far off. becuase of the enclosure, there was a diffuse quality to the daylight and shadows.

I was trying to get my friend Raphael a job at this company, Openwave. to do so I had to go to their offices. when I went to their offices it was like the house belonging to the lady who babysat me as a child. the door faced west and there was a hall leading off to the right. there were hardwood floors.

I had to go prove that I was qualified for the job before they would consider anyone that I recommended for a screen. they took me into the 1st room on the right as you went down the hall. it also has a hardwood floor. the walls were grey and there were venetian blinds, closed, on the west-facing windows. the light filtered in and made everything look sort of dim and grey. the room was mostly bare, with two desks on the wall to the right of the door and on desk sort of in the middle perpendicular to the wall to the left of the door (that wall was the hall wall). there were 4 workstations set up in the room,
two on the middle desk. to sit at them you had to have your back to the door.

I sat at the workstation closest to the window. it was some graphical SYS V Unix pizzabox thing (solaris? irix? actually I bet it's whatever AIX graphic display there is. who knows). I looked and there was a browser window open to the web page with the job description. I re-read it, then based on that started to make a build for openwave. there was a dude there to answer all my questions.

I didn't really have any problems. I wondered what this proved about Raphael though.

okay I really wanted to get this recorded but it's one of the most disturbing dreams I can remember. so I didn't want to put any of it to display on the index pages.

I waited all day in the hopes more recollection of these would come to me, but they haven't, so here is what I remember.

the first dream had lots of work-things in it: it involved Sandy, and Samuel, and the BLOC tools - as an entity and an interface, but not as their actual functionality. there was nothing about the Internet or spam or any of that. the tools interface was used to control or bring about some event or situation in one of the not-so-good parts of LA, namely the neighbouhood around 3rd & Vermont. the time of events in my dream was about the time of reality - 3:30-4am. the dream was very clear and had a plot and thread of happenings but I just totally lost all memory of it because I got up and did things instead of writing it down right away.

I dreamed that the house and yard Karine and I have were really situated somewhere near the California border. Karine's brothers were stopping by on their way to Las Vegas. they were going to take a plane in and then public transport from the airport. one of the claimed that the best way was to take a bus that drops you off a block from Downtown. those busses run frequently and nobody takes them.

they left in the early morning - I guess Karine drove them to the airport - and I got up and rummaged around the kitchen. there was a pint glass with cactus cooler in it that I stuck a straw in and started sipping from. I decided I wanted a mocha and somehow got all the espresso and chocolate and stuff put in a travel mug. I set this on the butcherblock counter near the passthrough. rummaging around the fridge I saw there was only goat milk. I decided it would have to do. I set up this funky tube thing running fom the travel mug across the counter to the cactus cooler, which also added the steamed goat milk from over where the espresso making thingy was.

the result was a drink in the the pint glass that was triple-layered (you know how mochas separate into those nice layers of more-espresso, more-chocolate, more-steamed milk?) except one of the layers was predominantly cactus cooler. at this point Karine came home and was appalled. I put the pint glass with its layers in the back of the fridge.

a group of us were going to London, but we were going at different times and using different means of travel. prior to anyone leaving, we were meeting in some hall and having a big dinner together to discuss our plans. the hall had shiny shiny hardwood floors; the room we were in was on the 2nd floor, and had lots of west-facing windows. so the westering sun came in. I guess it was late summer/early fall. we were eating at a folding table.

I had a dog recently adopted from a shelter. it was maybe 9-10 months old. of course it could not go to London with me. it was some black&tan mutt. I was staying with some Afghani family beofre leaving for London. they were at the dinner too. the mom didn't like the dog and was not about to take care of it once I left. I think she thought it was improper or something like that.

people left singly and as small groups as we were done with the dinner. it was mostly dark before I left; I was one of the last ones left. I still didn't know what to do with the dog.

I dreamed that Karine had 4 new orchids, little ones, in those square plastic throwaway pots, lined up on the kitchen sink under the window. it was a beautiful sunny morning, and Karine went in the shower. I went to do something and when I came back into my room, there was dirt and vermiculite all over the floor at the foot of my bed near the door. the floor there was otherwise clear. Trillian was still shaking the plant and its plastic container in her puppy ferocity.

I couldn't tell at first where she got the plant, but I went into the kitchen and saw that the 2nd plant from the left was missing. I marvelled at how Trillian was able to get up to the counter and get to the plant to begin with, but in my mind's eye I pictured it much like the way she squiggles up the steps to my bed.

I went back to sleep without fixing this one in my head, but I still have quite a bit of it:

we were in some town in the front range in Colorado - not Denver or Colorado Springs but maybe south of that. Pueblo maybe? the town name didn't figure in my dream. anyhow it was night and me and my friends were wandering around looking for somewhere to hang out. we were not from there - this would ba a "me and my friends" from LA. the person we were visiting was taking us to like youth hostels and halfway houses. these were all empty. they were not like official state-sponsored things but places where volunteers watch over the teens to prevent everyone form getting in too much trouble.

we got to one and it was not empty but people were hanging out. maybe some folks were on drugs. it didn't matter. there was music, and a TV in one room. most of the lights were off. a lot of people were just laying around the floor talking, it was very mellow. we sorta settled down talking to people too.

there were three people laying on the floor talking. the woman in the middle was on her back watching the ceiling as they were talking. looking at her, I realized, this was Dale from the co-op at UCLA when I lived there! turns out she was pretty active in these kinds of houses, and managed this one. I was pretty excited over this, the person who was taking us around was surprised we knew her, and the rest of the people with me were in various states in between. none of us knew what had happened with her, but only I had actually bothered to try to find out - and fail.

so I took a nap on the couch. and dreamed...

that Karine and I and Trillian and Bohdan went down the coast to my house in Oxnard. we got there and the house was very large but didn't have many rooms that one went to. there was a room in the back that was my bedroom.

we had only been there 3 weeks earlier but it felt like revisiting from many years of abandonment. I went to the room that was my bedroom and got lost in thought. it was dark and many items were covered in sheets. a loft or some other thing was to my left, past the closet which ate into the floorspace (making the room not-4 sided). there was a desk or table within reach as you walked past the closet to the loft. it had a lamp that was uncovered. I reached over and turned it on, slowly. it was getting late, from what I could see out the window to my right.

I and this tall woman, with curly dark brown hair, were friends and co-workers. I'm not exactly sure what we did for a living. we were supposed to be at work at a certain time, but we were trying to suss out something, perhaps information from a rival company, and thought if we did that being late would be O.K.

the day moved on and it got to be late enough that nothing we did would be O.K. since we hadn't called either and so were hours overdue. my friend wasn't ready and I thought she was. she got on some BART-like transportation train, except the cars were more like trailers on a movie set; they had like places for changing clothes and makeup and la la. my friend realized she had forgot something and got off the train. but she left like a purse or ID behind on the floor. I grabbed it and jumped off the train. it had already started moving so I was surprised I was able to land on my feet.

they were filming a documentary, A day in the life of the Go-go's. the manager was this really really big guy. I for some reason (I knew the manager but only superficially) was allowed to tag along. since I had class I would only be there from time to time. they were doing this in Oxnard so maybe that had something to do with it.

at one point I was meeting up with them in the evening and they asked me into the white minivan they were travelling around in. we had to scramble to find room. all the film and lighting equipment used for the documentary was getting hauled around in a large dog crate, except for the camera in use at the time. the film (video?) looked very surreal as the lights in use were in the dog crate and threw strange shadows. they had to move the dog crate out of the van so I could get in, then move the dog crate back in.

at another point we were going through photos from a photoshoot that had taken place on a football field. there were all kinds of funky angles and legs and what not. the photos were very old and I thought they were rejects for use on the cover of their album Vacation. in my dream, I could see the images superimposed on each other and flying around, sort of how someone would photoshop them into an album cover.

I went to some place in the trees. there were people there, a much more primitive society. no; the entire everything was more primitive, and these folks just lived in the trees, not really hidden or anything.

anyhow they had been devoid of their spiritual center for a while. it has also not rained in quite a while. I think some relic or other object was missing. I organized or maybe was involved in a search for it, and it was found. that part is fuzzy but it involved relaying messages through small homely houses and leaving ones boots at the door. the thing looked for all the world like a painted-black spring for a garage door.

the village was in sort of a valley with a ridge to the west and hills continuing to the northwest. the road was to the east. the shaman took the spring thing and went to the hills. he started hopping on it like a pogo stick and doing whatever it is shamans do. he ended up hopping from hilltop to hilltop, his voice filling the valley and taking over your brian. and as a result we the clouds gathered, faster and faster. the sun was westering.

I dreamt that jk rowling came out with a new book. Uk-Muk the Duck. it was white and had orangey writing that looked like broad brush strokes on the cover. it was put in stores alongside the fourth Harry Potter volume, but was in a sealed plain white cardboard box. one would have to buy it and open it to see that it was neither the fifth Harry Potter book, nor was it related in any way.

that was how I knew she was just a money-grubbing commercial author and had no intention of completing the series.

gotta get this down now before it totally fade, I will flesh it out later

party
elevator/small room that is warm
go out side
bohdan
walking along terraces like willits
pack of 4 dogs encountering bohdan
driving on main drag of medium size town
2 cars, one driven by davinator
looking for ATM that will make quarters
ATM with 4 screens
something with a helicopter outside a castle wall
capture
main character now whatsername from emergency, the brit
she has the information
asian guy also captured
he gets tortured by some coldherted science woman
never see the torture just his face
his eyes melt from heat
brit lady finally tells
asian guy is still alive but limbs and eyes are gone, but that's OK; with modern technology he will be made whole again

so I went to a party with some friends. it was in some place that had a lot of rooms, and was maybe with wood panelling or veneer walls. there was music and dancing and a couple-three huindred people; standard private affair. I knew a decent subset of the attendees.

there was dancing in one room and then I think it went to an outside balcony or patio. on the inside the room opened up to a small hallway or something like that. the ceiling was high. I was in there with like jD and carrie and some other people. we had been dressed kind of nice, but while hanging in this room with a typical crowding level for popular parties, it was really warm and I took off my jacket.

we decided to go outside and I was left in a conundrum. I would have to put my jacket back on but I was still too warm for that to be comfortable.

we were driving in los angeles. it was summer, early afternoon, sunny, and warm.. it was along a generic stretch of like sepulveda blvd south of the airport, driving south. we were in my blue nissan pickup. I wasn't driving, my friend was.

we forgot something, so my friend over my objections turned left into a largish construction site. nobody was there so maybe it was a Saturday or a holiday. they were razing a big brick building to make room for something else. we started driving around the center hole counterclockwise. my friend would point the car at a narrow part where there were still bricks and shit piled up and then realize it was too narrow to hold the pickup and swing right to go around. this happened several times. I was nervous and reminded her that the truck is not a 4-wheel drive.

at the back of the property was like some shady passage way that connected it to a park. there were some picnic tables in the passageway? anyways the truck could have been driven through it except it was to a park so vehicles weren't allowed. we parked and called ron skelton (he's in charge of the ops team at my real job) so he and his crew can come join us.

my dream shattered into bits when the puppy woke me up at 5am having to go outside and pee. but I remember this little bit.

the dream was in an American Home Town. you know, the kind of place one Goes Back To, after having tried to Make It in the Big Outside World and finding that it Wasn't Right. and Elena went back. {now the Elena in my dream didn't resemble the Elena in the real world at all.} someone guy that Elena knew from maybe high school was there too, and they went out walking together, along a road that was lines with trees. a gentle hill sloped up to the right.

they were talking and talking, and then after passing some trees some puppies ran by. I guess the guy had brought her walking there to see them. once they did I guess it meant that Elena and this guy should be together, and they decided to get married. there was something more about bearing the puppies (sort of like bearing children). it was all kinda distorted.

I tried to set up the device that I found in the garage earlier today. in reality the device looks like the base parts to the bastard child of a plasma ball or jacob's ladder. anyhow heather was in her room but most of her stuff was moved out. her computer was on the computerdesk next to her door but there was a buncha junk in her room. I was in the hall and leaned over to just plug the thing in. Tim said no, stop stop and I realized I could be zapped and I should unpack it first.

I took it out and realized that there was a wound copper wire, about the gauge that would be in the mid-tones for piano string, that split off from the wire on the side. it was coiled up and was not supposed to be. I uncoiled it and after some thought set it so the wire on the side bifurcated it. so it could be like a v-shape, like a proper jacob's ladder. now it would be OK to plug in.

I went into Heather's room and started trying to figure out how to plug this in without the sparks or magnetic field affecting her computer. I was still trying to figure this out when I woke up.

a group of adults, myself included, were travelling to Barstow, or Las Vegas. we had stopped at a samll town on the way and were holed up for the night at a cheapish hotel. we had more then one room. the rooms themselves were more suite-like, because they had kitchens that weren't quite separate from the "bedroom".

we were partying and I remember a bunch of us ended up running around naked. I can't remember if I was or not, I think so. I remember that I was in the bathroom and turned too quickly and slipped and came down, hard, on my face. an older (40's-ish) lady who was with us said something about it being OK to run around naked because even though there were cameras in the rooms, the owner didn't call the cops even when someone murdered a child in the rooms some time ago.

this lady was in one of the other rooms we had. sometime later we ended up in her room doing something in the kitchen - food I suppose - and I noticed the camera. wasn't sure how I missed it in the previous room, it was a normal security camera dealy.

a group was gathered around a daybed in the back of the suite. I went back there too (noticing that there were cameras positioned to cover the whole place; I thought it was for porn) and saw with a shock that there was a small Mexican boy there. he was dead. I realized that she was referring to her own murder of a child when she said the owner wouldn't call the cops.

so I dreamed of a house. I was mentally changing the house around and evaluating the result for feng shui quality. let me rephrase. I was with my brain or dream-ness somehow changing the house physically. evaluating the fengshui-ness involved having a little black screen with a gray grid - almost the colors of this blog. in each of the outer 8 parts of the grid, a picture of a head shot of a person would get pulled up to indicate the personality of that room or area on the grid.

we went through many iterations of this and then I realized, there were stairs. this house had an upstairs floor. so we went to evaluate that to see how it should be changed. so a new grid was pulled up. this time the head shots were all of the same woman. she was an older lady, at least in her mid-fifties, with hair like tammy faye bakker used to have in the 80's, all puffy and hair-sprayed and dyed a bad artificial brown. she had kind of beady eyes and lots of lines on her face. she reminded me of ann landers.

it was weird seeing that face repeated 8 times. that is why this dream stuck with me.

there's an apartment or bedroom in a larger apartment, on the ground floor. it's oriented like my room when I was a wee little kid, with a short, high, long window across from the door and over a small bed. but it's bigger than my kid's-bedroom, it deviates in that the wall to the right from the door has no inner corners, but opens into two hallways where people sleep.

in my dream I thought of the layout like this:

however there were beds and people slept there so now I realize it was (really, in my dream) like this:

so I slept in one of these nooks with some guy and then Jeff (dream person vaguely generated off of this guy Jeff Carlisle I knew in college, but much cuter) was with some girl.

then we realized that we were sleeping with the wrong people. uhhh we needed to determine who was supposed to be where? this was done by this weird magnetic confetti. picture those little fridge magnets with the words that people like to make poetry from. now, instead of words, make them little yellow dots with thin black circles, red squares, blue triangles. now picture sorting through all that. somehow this determined who was going in which nook.

and I was mad at Jeff of course for getting together with this other person.

at this point, the puppy woke me up becuase she wanted to nestle down near my head on
the bed. but I went right back to sleep again and fell back into pretty much the same dream. almost....

I dreamt that I lived with my parents in this strange house that was on a large property. maybe the house wasn't strange but instead was a series of bungalows. there was a wide stepped walkway to the left of it (them?) that led to the back buildings. it had those kind of lights stuck in the ground you can get kits from Home Depot.

I guess I had been away for some time. at school maybe? I got an enigmatic email from my mom that said I needed to deliver the package by 8pm Monday night. I wasn't sure what the package was or where to deliver it. so I talked to her to find out.

there was some plot to blow up a 747. I think it was a cargo plane though. it was dark grey with white writing. to get past the security restriction they had found that the perfect detonator to use was a lightly waxed candle wick. it would show up on security scans as a piece of string, and could withstand the wind outside the plane enough to keep burning once lit. I was supposed to get the string and wax it and deliver it to the bomb makers. the bomb would go on top of the starboard wing with a wick running about 2 feet along the body of the plane ahead of it.

holy cow, I thought, I can't be sure if I do that I won't get caught. even if this succeeded, they could lift my fingerprints from the ash skeleton of the wick. I went off to think about it.

I dreamed that it was a hot sunny afternoon and I was going to use our nifty electric mower to mow the lawn. a guy came by - I knew him, maybe a co-worker? - and told me that the normal way I mow the lawn (with the mower set to cut the grass really high), was not acceptable. I asked him what was, then, and we argued.

he finally told me that the mower should be at 1/8", that was the only way to ensure you got all the foxtails. I explained the mower couldn't be set that low. he promptly started to adjust the settings to prove me wrong. while he was trying to change the setting (on my lawn mower, grrr), I explained that perhaps that height would work on a perfectly flat yard, but on one with bumps and unevenness on the ground 1/8" would mean the blade would kill the grass. I thought cutting grass that short would kill it anyhow, but I kept that part to myself.

events in the morning conspired to drive most of the dream out of my head. it was a long thread in which I was negotiating for some sort of private investigation contract - but I am not certain if I was on the private investigation agency or on the side of the company wanting the security services. that's all faded.

the part that I am able to remember involved either the agency bidding for the job or a rival agency and they fired off this demo. I have no idea how we were supposed to witness what happened next but since I dreamed it that detail was unimportant.

so I have been bad about entering my dreams, and this entry is backdated to last Thursday noon although I am entering it Monday evening. I've not been remembering much becuase of a big work-push.

this dream was sort of vague but then I had gone to a pet store and purchased some guppies. however they ended up not in the normal bag-with-a-rubber-band like when you normally buy fish from the store but in this sort of blobby-thing that was like saranwrap around the water with no air at all and no rubberband. the water wasn't terribly clear either.

it felt neat and I kept squishing it around in my hand. I couldn't go straight home and I was carrying it around as I ran errands. people cautioned me against playing with it too much becuase since there was no air and just water, so if it fell and squished, it would be the fish that had to take the extra pressure and they would die. I totally blew them off, and started bouncing it like a water balloon.

of course I dropped it. it didn't pop like a water balloon but now I had to be afraid my guppies would die.

this morning I dreamed that Karine and one other friend were kidnapped and held for some sort of ransom. but the ransom wasn't money it was either information a la corporate espionage or it was some worklike deliverable that was due.

yuck.

most, but not all, of this dream was a cohesive plot. I think basically it was working like memory. your memory isn't in a plot, it's just various episodes from your life?

so Karine and I were in a bake shop. they were preparing in the morning all the yummy things they were going to sell. at one end of the counter it opened back into a kitchen. they cleared off the cupcakes and whatnot and started setting up these big boxes that looked like doughnut boxes. a guy with a black beard came out and he had a strange gun-like thing that looked like a big glue gun with a flared end. he started squirting hamburgers into the box. I looked closer and the bottoms of the buns were already there, the gun held three patties and tops, stacked alternating. I thought this was fascinating. I realized he was doing it so they could market frozen hamburgers.

then things shifted. Karine was no longer part of the dream. I was younger and had either a close friend who may or may not have been a girlfirend. she was short (well probably not really much shorter than me) and spunky, in jeans, kinda punkrock. we had been out all night and were in a city that was like San Francisco but was a different geography. the sun was up and we were walking back to the shop; it was like a curio shop and we lived behind it.

I dreamed that Karine and I decided that the fish bowl that sits on the butcher block in the kitchen that the cats drink out of and has no fish in it, should be moved into the room Heather moved out of. we decided that it needs to go against the south wall, centered. it would sit on the table Heather left behind when she moved, which would have to be set up.

I realized we needed to set up the filter for this new location. the filter was different from the one it currently has and involved some tube that pumped the wather through an out-of-tank filter set up. I was quite concerned about whether it would splash the wall and stain the paint. I also realized that the current set up with the table against the east wall wouldn't work and had to be moved, but I thought this was less than ideal. we did it anyways.

once we moved it, I started looking for the little snail. I was worried that the snail was doing badly because of the cats drinking out of the bowl. the plant also turned a little brown from the extra light and I was a little worried abotu that too.

I had a pretty vivid dream but it really has faded a lot, to the point where the opening sequences are sort of a vague memory of trying to get some project together in an urban outdoor setting. it was night and I was wearing some sort of closeknit pullover sweater, vneck with short sleeves. there were a bunch of people, including my boss, working - well not work as in a job for pay, but working as in working on some volunteer thing - in this area surrounded by a chainlink fence. it reminded me of the few times I worked as an extra during night shoots.

I was trying to get closer to my boss, like get to know each other as people outside that stupid relationship coworkers have. it wasn't very successful. I gave up.

this is not a dream but it belongs here. I went up to Camp & Sons in Willits this weekend. and they have changed somewhat. the terraces that I remember from this crazy dream had been put on the wild hillside! maybe about 30' up from where I dreamed but otherwise in the same place. I asked, are these new? and many folks said yes they just put them in.

:weird:

I dreamed that I was working with a largish research or engineering team. I am not sure what project we were working on but it was very challenging. it was so challenging that people were wishing for the expertise of former researchers who had passed on.

now the technology to revive folks who passed on was available, but for some reason there was an aversion or taboo to using it. I in particular was against it. but the tempatation was too great, and some former team members were revived, and knowledge of this act was kept from me. [it was strange that I knew this, as the dreamer, but I did not know this, within the dream.]

I came across a grasshopper that was the size of like a thumb-and-a-half. it was acting kind of strangely. I became very curious about it and tried to pick it up. it didn't really try to get away. the way I tried to pick it up resulted in crushing the last half-inch of its wings though. I realized it was revived and that's how I discovered the technology had been put to use.

in this dream my point of view was not myself, but of a young man around 20, possibly Japanese or Polynesian. it was almost like reading a novel written in the first person. it's "I this" and "I that" but you are still really an observer.

it started while the young man was on a westward-facing gentle slope. there were trees on the slope and it ended in some still waters. across the waters was a volcano and it looked quite inhospitable. the sun was setting and there were pink clouds it was very pretty. the young man was picking some fruit, I think, maybe 10 feet from the top of the slope. the top of the slope seemed to have a wall of sorts lining a walkway running north/south.

the volcano across the water started to hurl flaming rocks. they were hurled with some force, almost hitting the young man, and setting fire to nearby trees (and making the function of the wall obvious). the man scrambled up the slope and struggled to get in the shelter of the wall without getting hit by rocks. then he ran south along the walkway towards the village. the walkway was all yellowy sandstone and ended at the east end, upslope, of the village.

on reaching the village, it was hard to convince the villagers of what was happening until they came and saw the flaming rocks too. the village was a bit out of range of the volcano.

during this I found out that the young man was very popular with the kids. it's possible he had an affinity for children because he was more sensitive than most men. I also found out there was, dormant as the volcano, an older tradition that designated that man as a sacrifice if the volcanos ever blew. the young man decided that if he was scarce from the village perhaps they would not be reminded of this tradition.

in the first part of the dream, I dreamed of a complex situation with lots of people. what the situation was is not important, but I was able to adjust events in a minor way. the end result was always the same, showing that the time paradoxes just don't hold; nature or perhaps fate took care of everything turning out the way it was supposed to. I am sure this portion of the dream was the result of my watching Boogiepop Phantom the night before.

as events progressed I emerged from the complexity and went travelling to London. I think it was a futuristic London. I didn't recognize the skyline as resembling any London in real life. I was staying in some hotel across the river from the main town, and met up with a friend who was living there. I had never been, so there were all these plans to go exploring.

I went back to sleep, and overslept and had another dream!

in this dream I was travelling with a bunch o geeks to Las Vegas. well, it was an admixture of geeks and ex-Netcentives coworkers. we went in separate vehicles. we did this on a regular basis and usually stayed in some cheap off-strip hotel with bad 70's green-and-wood decor. everyone loved the cheesiness of it.

I didn't make the actual reservation for my car and we ended up in some hotel clear across the other side of town. I was pretty annoyed that we had been put there - was this a hint? the people with me did not get it. I guess we were supposed to go cafe-hopping starting from the cheesy place, and I pulled out a map to show that one could not have found an hotel that was farther away.

so we got in our vehicle and drove to the cheesy place. ok, it actually wasn't that cheesy, it was still pretty nice in that Las-Vegas-Hotel way. it was late afternoon and the hopping was starting of course with a cafe right next door, a little to the north.

it got dark and when we walked outside there seemed to be a convention at the hotel. the parking lot to the hotel was sunk in with a grassy embankment between it and the sidewalk. as I was walking to my vehicle I looked up and on top of the embankment there were many many men standing around, with drinks, talking. they were all dressed in parti-coloured suits with tophats and cravats, all in either lamé or chequered or harlequin colours. many (all?) of the men were built like William from faire. I looked at them for a while and then decided it was all a part of going to Las Vegas, you could dress all funny and still be comfortable and fit in.

I had lots of dreams last night which rapidly dissipated whenever I woke up from a dog demanding attention. but one little dream stuck with me. I was in the backyard of my mom's house on a Sunday afternoon and decided right then that I would switch the telephone into my name instead of hers. so I called the phone company and asked them if it could be done without changing the phone number. I was on a cordless phone talking to them while watering the big part of the yard.

I got a lot of unhelpful people and they set me up to meet with some repair dude on the following Tuesday morning. but I won't be there, I said, why can't I just switch it to me name? finally I got a kindly lady on the phone who said the way to do it was to add me to the phone bill, it was OK because we have the same last names, and then after a month I could just switch with no fuss and no charge.

since the start of this month, the dreams that keep dissipating all seem to conclude on a certain style of imagery. it is sort of like medieval chinese drawings, except not coloured in, it's all line drawings black on white. the only color is a bunch of red accents.

when I am dreaming these images mean something in the context of the dream but I can hold on to neither the detail of the image nor the dream on waking up. I am only left with a fading impression of these line drawings with red in them.

wow it's early I am tring not to let this fase buit don't feel like typing it

some sort of military academy, like a space force
mew method of database information
domed lecture hall with 360 degree view of space or whatever information
learning how to use new db in shifts
early reveleation of technology
some anime-like woman commander responsible
data displayed on dome in big grid. grid is white-on-black. technology is not the grid but is the ability to display images in each cell
students (cadets?) held responsible for knowing about technology or (?) revealing it
break into big hallway that goes in a wide arc. also view of space like under all-emcompassing glass dome
standing in line for cafeteria talking about accuracy/unfairness of it all
someone needs to prove that some information, possibly on drugs, is correct, or a bunch of students get in trouble.
cageteria is to right, outside of arc; a bunch of workstations/eating area farther up ar to left.
the second to last workstation is big (physically) can can handle the search and pring out on big 4' wide paper
I go there and start searching

that's all I can remember the other details are faded

so this morning I had a dream that made sense at the time but I found was all
tumbled together. it started at Karine's house, or perhaps her parents'.
myself and a few mutual friends wer over there and she was explaining that
she was too busy to do anything becuase of the river turtles. they
were breeding and she was trying to help keep the eggs or whatever
from getting all smashed. I think they were totally rare/near extinction.

of course with a story like that duckie and I volunteered to help. the
backyard had like an overhang from the house so part was in sun and
part was in shade. at one point I bent over to pick something up and from a
trap door in the overhang an egg fell and smashed across the small of my bare
back; my shirt was short enough that it would ride up my back if I bent over.
I did not appreciate egg on my back but they were mad that I wasn't more
careful.

then it was time and a female turtle dug this long trench at an angle but
pretty much across the entire back yard and extending into the neighbours'.
she laid lots and lots and lots of eggs along the trench as she dug. the
eggs in the trench were sort of covered by dirt from the digging in the
next part of the trench. there were not enough of us to prevent predators
from getting to some of the eggs, which were not fully covered.

so my dream last night was sort of a work-dream. we were trying to warehouse the ads that displayed with red and yellow LEDs on the left-hand passenger window of taxi cabs. it was hard because whenever the taxis pulled up to the taxi queue in front of the building, Netscape would capture the URL and then convert it to some heinous long URL wrapped in their own search engine syntax so they could track it. the long URL broke over 4-5 lines. not onkly did we not want the Netscape-munged URL, when Netscape did this they changed the ad randomly.

we were trying to figure out how to solve this, by standing on the porch of a house facing the street where the taxis queued up. the house was a typical San Francisco Edwardian. we would be myself, Matt G, and Natasha. Matt had all these ideas on how to do it. he was just standing there leaning against the wall, watching and speculating.

I dreamed that instead of my nice tent, all I could find was this little puptent that was thin plastic, and red white and blue. it was rolled up in that way little disposable plastic rain hats were, and stuck in the back of my SUV.

we were packing for burning man and I did not have my shit together. I decided, fuckit, and I drove out to the playa with this guy Kevin whom I am supposed to give a ride to. he was a little wondering at my just going out there with no provisioning, his shit was all together and didn't take up that much space either in my car. I said it would be OK becuase there was enough infrastructure for me to get what I need.

we got there and went to the camp Bob had set up. there was this big shaded area that looked like an army tent where the sides could roll up. it was maybe 100' long and 30' wide. one of the narrow ends was sunward and that side was not rolled up. a low embankment ran behind it, along one length of it; the "road" ran in front of it. tables ran along the middle and people with smaller tents pitched them in this bigger tent behind the tables, so they were nice and shady.

I checked out if there was space for my puptent while Bob and Kevin were talking. there was. I pulled it out of my car and considered how irritated I was, I couldn't even sit up inside the tent, and it would blow apart in a wind. then I realized I didn't bring water, either, and there wasn't enough infrastructure for that kind of oversight. I decided the playa wasn't that long a drive from civilization after all and decided to go back and get my stuff.

so I fell back asleep, and I dreamt that Zenia came to visit, and she stayed the night. we were supposed to do something in the morning, and she got up while I was still asleep and was wandering around in pajamas that look like Karine's. she came in my room, and the windows in my room were like our living room's instead of like they are in real life. she started to clean the leftmost pane, while I was still asleep. I woke up somewhat, probably from the window cleaner smell, and complained she was a guest and shouldn't do that. she just smiled and kept going.

I was in my SUV, which was parked across the street from my mom's house. the street was a dead-end like it was when I was a child, and I was parked facing away from it. I thought I saw a rainbow, but when I looked it was a contrail.

a fighter plane flew over in a fairly tight circle. I wondered what was going on, when I noticed a red colour followed it, like it was painting the red stripe of the rainbow. I started to watch as a fighter appeared, over and over again, painting red, then blue, then purple colours. I couldn't figure out what they were doing. they were normal fighters like from the air base near by; not fancy ones like the Blue Angels were.

Heather and Tim showed up. Heather came to talk to me and asked what I was doing. I told her. she told me Tim said it was the Thunderbirds (the Air Force equivalent of the Blue Angels). I wondered how Tim knew, if there was an air base near Phoenix. we went eastward to the other side of Oxnard. many of the fields along Las Posas Road were fallow, and were getting dug up. we realized they were expanding the military facilities. there was a barracks, there was a battlements, there was a practice range, etc.

this morning the puppy woke me up by fussing next to my head. I was having a fairly coherent dream but it shattered and I don't remember it. but the puppy was not as powerful as my sleepiness and I dropped right back into it...

and I was walking down a street, and the MOMA was across the street. the sky was that late-afternoon wintry blue, and the sun was at an angle that it was right on the edge of the building. I looked up at it, and realized that the architecture was very different. the roof had a distinctive curve, and was tiled, and there was a lot of detail stonework under the eaves, with some green-painted wood in front. very fancy, very nice. I realized after thinking about it, it was Chinese.

but I know the MOMA, I thought. it doesn't look like this, it's all ugly and "modern" in a way that's already totally dated.

I looked at it some more and decided that I must have been mistaken, this really was the MOMA.

a good mix of distorted reality hit this dream, as I dreamed that my boss, Maria, was organizing some family event via email. like her big extended catholic family. she was also sort of the treasurer and was in change of everyone's investments and finances.

she was going to travel to this event with Mark, one of our techleads. Mark was her first cousin, which was hard to figure since he is Asian and Maria is east-coast Italian. they were having a discussion in email about what to do with the investments since the Market sucked so hard. Mark found this deal where gold ingots could be bought for $0.38 each. Maria ended up dumping a lot of the stocks and buying the gold ingots. I didn't trust that it seemed weird to me, but now the family money was in gold, and I didn't care terribly much since after all it's not my family.

I dreamed that I was attending a party in some penthouse. there was a mix of people there, some dressed extremely casually in co-op style shorts, tshirts, etc, some looking like they lived and breathed in formal wear. like guys in dress shirts and waistcoats, but with the tie hanging undone. I think I was in the former group, but was a little uncomfortable. there were children around, and some of them were "special" as in special olympics. the party spilled out of the penthouse and onto the roof outside, in the bright sun.

Elena's mom was there and she was pretty old. she was in charge of watching one or two of the kids. she wasn't, really. I was concerned, becuase there were drugs present, and the kids wouldn't know any better. I went looking for her. I found her sitting in the bottom of this closet-type space that reminded me of the closets in the back of my junior high school rooms, but narrower. she was staring into space, her eyes unnaturally wide. I realized she was on some designer drug like some of the formal-wear people were taking at the party. then I left and went outside. I was in a camp area near the Black Point Forest faire site. the oak trees dappled the ground in the sun. some folks were wandering around who were also participants in the party.

this morning I dreamed that I was going to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned. but the tooth two in front of my upper right first molar had gone very bad. I could look in the mirror and pull my lip back with my finger and see it was black and rotten. I could push it with my tongue and the crown would separate from the root.

I went to the dentist and managed to get 15 minutes of his time (as opposed to the hygenist's) and he looked at it. he said it was no problem to fix in 15 minutes. I was worried he would break it off and then do a root canal, but he did something and the crown and root were reattached, no problem. then I went to get my teeth cleaned.

maybe I should make a teeth cleaning appointment sometime soon. hmmm.

so when the alarm went off at 7am, the dream was very clear. I started envisioning how I would type it up. then when the snooze went off, I lost a piece of it. then the puppy fussed, and I lost more. finally, by the time I was fully awake, several 'snoozes' later, I could only remember the last image of the dream.

in my dream it was fully dark, with a line of red at the horizon. you know, like if the sun is setting with a stormy sky? there is a line of light near the horizon that is jagged and bulges where the sun is. now run that image through an Adobe posterize filter, so the blacks get really black and the number of bits per colour is decreased. I ended up with a line of really jaggedy red. when I looked closer, it started to spin around the sun, counter clockwise.

I wish I could remember what led up to that, but by itself it's still a pretty cool memory.

I was dreaming that we were in some caravan or other temporary tent environment, but not like burning man, rather something a bit more permament and commerce-related. Karine and I were there, and we ran into Carrie. she was looking for her dogs? or maybe she was looking for people to adopt these other dogs.

anyhow Karine and I made our way to a merchant or someone on the other end of the encampment and he had two dogs he was tring to get rid of. they were young, as in not-filled-out; one was blond/beige and one was black. they each stood with their shoulders at my own shoulder height.

holy cow, that's a big dog.

I dreamed that I was on a waterfront, on the ocean, a blue blue pacific ocean, the blue of cold water. the buildings went right up to the water and although it looked like open sea beyond there were no waves to mention. the buildings were at cockeyed angles, all concrete, New Brutalism architecture, separated by all-concrete spaces that went right up to the water, and were about 10-12' above the water. there were also these sort of raised concrete thingies with seats on them. the whole area was relatively devoid of people.

I sat in the sun on one of the benches, sort of facing so that a direct line to the water was roughly two o'clock from straight ahead of me, and a building was at 11 o'clock. I turned to my right and next to me was Jenn. she had gained some weight and didn't seem to be generally happy. I started talking to her and told her that position she had been unable to get at my work, Lopez got. that's a hard thing to tell someone. but she didn't mind terribly.

the CEO of my company came out of the building, and we started talking. I introduced him to Jenn, but while I told him who she was etc, I only introduced him as Enrique, and didn't bother telling her he was my CEO. Jenn wandered off somewhere up the waterfront.

I was in a bookstore of sorts. it was sectioned off and has reading rooms
with pale veneered benches and standalone closets. there were either
whiteboards or chalkboards near or around the benches. the closets opened
up and they had shallow drawers in the lower part. there were beige
carepets and not many people.

I was there with three other people. we were looking at one of the closets.
a blind man came through. he had this funky device that was like a cane
except it was telescoping to about 20 feet. it had two handles and at the
end that telescoped a flexible disk. he used it to scope out the entire
layout of the room in short order. the cane thing was noisy and annoying.
he moved around the room quickly and had many near misses with the benches
and whiteboards. and us. finally we started talking to him. he had only
recently gone blind and was looking for a closet space.

we looked in the closet space and although it appeared empty examining the
drawers showed it to be in use. a couple other closet spaces were the same.
not knowing what to do, we left.

I dreamed that I was a worker, maybe an engineer, or the equivalent of a civil engineer, in an orbital facility. the faility was round, and produced something unimportant to the dream-plot, other than the point that it was high-tech and profitable.

there was a problem with the habitat, and since I was involved with putting it together, I was trying to help troubleshoot. I was working with Samuel and Barry (two engineers at my work in Reality) on solving some integrity problem. I think they were on the ground although they came up to inspect the problem.

the facility was sort of spherical, with red metal like the golden gate bridge. lots of struts and supports etc etc like you would expect. in one section there was room for an auditorium. I am not sure if it was intended to be recreational or more to provide a space for everyone to gather and hear announcements or such like. anyhow Barry had this bright idea of basically plugging the hole with a small missile. before Samuel or I could stop him he has somehow gotten a missile punched through the hull, nose cone outward, through the auditorium part. I am not clear on how he got it to be outward. the nose cone stopped about a foot in from the outer shell of the hull.

burning man was happening again. I had all my gear and loaded it up and drove there. on the way there, as I drove down the 101, I was thinking, man burning man was only a few weeks ago. did the year go by that fast? wait I am driving south. oh yah it just a few weeks ago. becuase everyone wanted it again, they decided to have it in one of the backlots at universal studios. there was all the typical vegetation there and I wondered what would happen when there was fire. the house from psycho overlooked us, it was between us and the coast as a crow flies.

now relating this dream is hard to distinguish dream space from reality. this is because in listing directions and lay-of-the-land information such as place-names that was unspoken and un-thought in the dream just surfaces to fill in the blanks. it's also becuase (like the timing on burning man) I was more aware of the reality-space than normal.

so you entered this new burning man festivity from somewhere in Burbank. you went through these typical trees in southern california and then you were on a dirt road going towards the big circle of camps. as you entered if you veered to the right, so you were going counter-clockwise around the wheel, you would soon come to our camp!

I slept 13 hours last night. whoa. and after working really hard and reading 3 science fiction books. I had all kinds of imagery tumbling through my sleeping head.

and I ended up in Oxnard. I was helping my dad with some landscaping, I think. there was a big yellow-y truck and and SUV. we would unload stuff from the yellow-y truck. it had "three-on-the-tree", I remember that as an incongruity. it was like 8am and sunny, and I had to be in school. but I was helping out, so we used my mom's cell phone to call in and make excuses to the teacher.

there was a lot more to it, but the above is what stuck.

with some reluctance I had been convinced to participate in a bowling tournament being held in a bowling lane that I had been familiar with from when I was a teenager. the outside was all brick but the inside was very modern. we were all setting up on our assigned lanes and it was that lull before the tournament begins. the pinspotters for our pair of lanes had some problem. it looked like a rod had detached from the carraige that sets the pins back up. Lopez was the mechanic. I went to see if I could help, but although the machines were AMF they were far more modern than my knowledge reached.

then I thought about it. what am I saying. you can't make them that differently. the mechanics of the task are just so. so I walked down the lane towards the machines.

the ends of the lanes went past the machines to a little walkway behind. there was a line across them like the foul line that we weren't supposed to walk across. there were no dots for the pins becuase I guess only every other lane got pins. except from the bowlers' perspective the lanes were laid out in the normal way? maybe I wasn't walking down a lane? anyhow I got yelled at when crossing the line although I was saying I would help.

the machines stuck out over the lanes with pins, they were dark blue and the part that stuck out was sort of shaped like the narrow end of an Egg.

o my god i have been working too much. the dreams just vanish within a minute of waking.

except for this morning. i dreamt that i was using cygwin to build a 64-bit version of sendmail for windows. i had to work my way through it all using just command prompts. i didn't understand what purpose it could possibly serve but my company was going to port our software to this.

karine and I were in the back lot of a volkswagen dealer when we came across their new model. it looked like an 80's Rabbit but with different proportions. it was about 55% of the width, and about 2 feet longer. it was also taller. but the detailing and taillights and everything were the same. it was red.

karine fell in love with it instantly.

we looked inside (inside it was very different!) and as she was admiring it, and I was trying to figure out how the passenger had so much room in a car that narrow, a sales dude came by to talk to us. one of the first differences, he said, was that the fan had flywheels. we looked and there was this fan where you would expect a sunroof to be. except it was locked behind this curvy panel. karine's first jetta had had a similar fan but it was under the dash where the engine in a van would have been.

karine said her fan had been very noisy and looking at the fan with this new model we saw there were 3 places on the blades where these plastic things resembling zip ties were attached. I pulled one off to examine it and the sales dude beamed. we were suitably impressed at this exhibition of quieting technology.

lately I keep having a recurring dream, which happens two or three times a morning, but fades pretty well. here's my first attempt to record it

I need to take the BART north to Santa Barbara, which is past my normal stop. this is for some evening event. I am with a male friend, maybe big Mike, and becuase I want to see in front sitting in the car isn't good enough, we climb on top. there are little rails to hold on to, and it's OK to sit there clearance-wize except in the transbay tube, which isn't between me and Santa Barbara.

not all the ride is through tunnels and there are parts through a greeen country that is very beautiful.

we get to downtown Santa Barbara and it's more like down town Ventura. I go to dinner in a nice restaurant with 4 opther peopl, one of whom is Heather. we eat at a round table next to a wall with a staircase, near the front of the restaurant. somewhere in there I lose my shoes and am barefoot. while waiting to leave the restaurant I have my pants which are too long hanging down to hide the fact I am barefoot. when we leave we are supposed to hook up with more people and go dancing, but I need shoes. I fuss until everyone agrees to stop at my white (pickup? minivan?) and get a spare pair of shoes, they are blue keds. it's several blocks' walk out of the way, something I dislike becuase I am barefoot.

I was driving north from Oxnard to home. Trillian was with me. for some reason we stopped at the side of the road right past the first exit past the bridge over the river.

there was a fairly steep embankment leading down to a flat area, and then a lake or pond or wide slow river was there. everything was very green with reddish rock showing through on the steeper part of the embankment. it was a grey overcast day but not particularly cold. I let Trillian out the passenger door and she bounded joyously down the hill to the edge of the water. I was worried - worried that she wouldn't come, worried that she'd run past the car onto the 101 behind me. worried that she was all in mud.

I don't think I was a participant in this dream, I was just along for the ride so to speak. I knew what was going to hpapen in advance too, it was like the hwole thing was a flashback. unfortunately when I knew it in advance I had more details than I remember now at the end of the day.

so anyhow it started out with this sort of desert tableau. maybe in the middle east. at this army installation, there was this group that was sort of experimental, and they thought they were ready to face the world. the problem was they had no idea how unprepared the world was to face them. I understood this but it hadn't sunk in really, until there was this sort of late-afternoon face off between the group's leaders and the army.

I guess this group was a bunch of comic book characters, that had somehow been rendered into existence. folks who weren't necessarily human looking. it would be like if the Tick was for real I suppose except (a) it wasn't that character set (b) it wasn't all superheroes (c) these guys still looked two dimensional.

so I had this really clear dream this morning, vivid imagery, almost a clear plot. I woke up very pleased. then when once I got out of bed, it faded out but the dream from the day before came back really clear. so this is it.

I was at burning man (again?) but it was being held in late October, and instead of at blackrock, it was in this other place that was nevertheless desert, but more like scrub. maybe more like out near Palm Springs.

it was no longer beating-down hot and on the day of my dream, it was overcast too. it was the last day of the festival and some people were packing up and others were having some sort of parade or procession, complete with improvized floats etc.

I was with a large gathering of people, at some low wooden house in the hills. I think I was 8 or 9. the area was very very green, with a clearing around about half the house. the clearing was terraced.

I think there was to be some sort of wedding, and we were set up as participants. we all lined up outside to form some sort of procession into the house, and there was to be some sort of ceremony then celebration. I was near the end of the line; I think it was organized by height and I was one of the youngest in the family.

I was given some sort of flag to wave around, or two strung together perhaps. a lot of people had them since this was sor