I was visiting my freinds at a college. I must have been in my late-20's. in this dream, my friends were Kia, Meriko, Maria, and these two other women whose names escape me. they lived in this big house, with Maria's dad. they were all also in their late 20's.

I guess the dream was a sequence of vignettes that occurred with this visit. I can't remember the proper order. I think this is it.

in one vignette, Maria couldn't wake up her dad, so mixed some vile drink based on a screwdriver in a glass saladbowl, drank some of it herself, and then dunked her dad's head in it.

I was crashing in either Kia's or Meriko's bed. not sure which, didn't make a difference to the dream itself. I woke up and went through this long thought process - you know, the "I'm not home, where am I" process. I realized I was in this day bed, that had handles in the side like a mobile hospital bed, and part of the thought process was remembering, oh this is all the rage here, I hate these beds becuase you always end up with the bar pressing into the small of your back. ow.

it's the end of the day, and I am sitting quietly in my living room, contemplating that I wanted to record my dream from this morning. I remembered that there was some thing that was a mixture of the video game I was playing and work...

then I remember. there was a race, a relay race, that was along a road on the side of a hill. the course went uphill. Raphael was running in this race but really the person imaged in the dream was like my college friend Doug (which is actually more fitting 'cuz Raphael is sort of short, and Doug is lanky like a track person).

there was a team for the sparc and a team for the x86, and the race allowed a shortcut if sendmail was set up properly for each platform. I thought about it, and realized that we had what was needed to allow the shortcut for the x86 team, but nobody had told the judges. I realized I could take care of that but I had to do it before the baton was passed to the last person in the relay; the shortcut branched off from the race course shortly thereafter.

I was starting work in a grocery store. I dunno which one but they had blue uniforms. it was like my first or second day and I hadn't been formally trained on the registers. but it's not like I don't know how to operate them or ring up groceries. there were a lot of customers in line and I was supposed to take over the cash only line, #7. this register was the only that was closed.

the supervisor was counting my drawer but kept having to put it aside and start over in order to help customers. customers were mad that the line wasn't open, and moreover, at this store the way the little numbers were, it was not obvious which line matches what number. is this #6, which is lit, or #7?

a clerk came up and rang a couple customers up (the drawer in there was his). I went to the supervisor and said what can I do, can I log into that register with the drawer that is there. she said absolutely not. I decided I would go help bag for the other cashiers. however they were pretty efficient about bagging stuff as they rang, so I wasn't much use.

I was riding on the BART, reflecting about work, and dozed off. and the projects I was mulling over, morphed into tulips, that I was planting in a garden in dark dark earth outside a little house, like Hagrid's house in Harry Potter, when he was digging it up to hide treasures in it.

my dream was fuzzily dissapated by realizing I was late getting up. but it was sort of a film noir setting. I am not sure if I was one of the people or just observing. there was a couple who had been arrested and were in jail in a holding cell. she had Donna Reed hair.

their house had a couple in bed. they were friends with the folks in jail? they had done a left shift? not quite certain. but this couple were the ones that should be in jail.

I had occasion to travel to London with a group of people. I would characterize this, as loosely being the folks I would hang out with at an outdoor event. there were about 8 or 9 of us.

one of the things that was very important was to attend a session of Parliament becuase they were considering some measures very important to Mike. he urged us all to go and so we went.

I expected Parliament to be a big dark-wood hall full of people who argued a lot. we ended up going to this low-lying building that reminded me of SJSU admin buildings, and signing in, and then out the back of the building to this patio/pavilion like area, where a bunch of grey-haired British gentlemen and ladies were meeting at picnic tables. they were roughly arranged in a broad U and everyone sat on the outside edge of the U. since we were visitors/observers, we sat on the side of the pavilion towards the fence opposite the broad bottom of the U.

it was sunny, and we sat on the edge of the shade provided by the material stretched across the patio. it was all in funky picnic chairs that hooked together like a swing set. if we couldn't connect the chairs we had to leave. I sat on a chair that was connected by a bar from the leg to a chair this girl Angie sat in.

as I lay in my bed, thinking of typing this up, all was clear to me and laid out as if my brain had been dissected. I should have typed this then.

it was Oxnard, and behind my house were the fields of my childhood, not the developments and park of now. that also means these fields were beyond city limits.

I was writing a story. it was science fiction, and I was posing questions on jurisdiction to someone as if they were hypothetical situations. say I committed a crime in those fields. the Oxnard cops could do nothing about it, unless they were stopping a felony in progress, right? they would have to wait, until the county sherriffs came. the image I had here was of some heavyset lady in a NYC cop uniform pissed that she couldn't use a PR24.

somewhere in here was a badger, that was doing crimes, and was not hypothetical, but that was so incongruous it faded entirely.

writing the story was hard. I had to admit I was doing so, and my name was in some sort of chalkboard sign up thing with a list of others and reporting occupation and progress. and then, I was sort of sucked into my own story.

I was in New York with Karine and a friend (Judy's husband Doug?). we needed to vote because it was election day. the election rules had changed and you could vote at any polling place. the precinct workers had to call up your particular ballot on the computer and print it out for you. we went to this polling place that was in a bookstore/cafe in a low building. it was sunny outside.

the ballots were all printed on newsprint and you had to fill in these little squares on an answer sheet separate from the ballot questions. the answer sheet had no writing, just the little squares, sort of resembling a crossword puzzle if you looked at it from across the room. the answer sheets were paperclip'd to a 11x14 bluish thin fibreglass board. I was voting on two of them, one for San Francisco and one for Oxnard. I vote for Gray Davis, twice, and then there were questions further down. one candidate for assembly was on the SF ballot and her loser husband on the Oxnard ballot.

at the end of the Oxnard ballot were all these questions. they were not normal ballot questions. one of them was 'should the party run xxx as a candidate next election?' and another was about whether that one candidate's husband should be allowed to hold an appointed position if he was not elected. I filled in the questions I had an answer to, then realized I had left a lto blank. I started to fill in the blank ones too and then realized I was putting in the wrong answers.

so I had to go to the precint workers and get another ballot. I realized, then, that I couldn't vote for someone twice, that would invalidate the election. so I handed in all the bad ballots and got a new Oxnard one. this really annoyed the precinct people.

I dreamed I was inland somewhere, near a city on a river, I want to
say Las Vegas except in my dream I don't particularly recall desert-y.

it was evening. well night, I guess. this is hard to describe.
there were these three women and their guy friend staying in a hotel.
for now let's just say they based there, in a suite, and it was like
you would come in the door, and there was this white room. on the walls to
either side were a dark dresser, and then a low narrow bed. the bed
on your right was the womens' bed, and the bed on the left, with a lot
of clothes, was the guy's. he vaguely reminded me of Richard, the
Canadian dude. there were small windows over the heads of the beds, and
doors leading left and right into the other rooms of the suite.

the girls were famous? known. I think they were an act. it had a showbiz
feel. I think the act was stuntlike, not comedy or music; again, I think
this is Vegas.

I... sort of knew these women. I was not a part of it.

I was involved with the theatre district in the town I was in. there was a play we were trying to get set up and one of the backers was this asian primadonna with long red hair. one of the orgainzers was this guy who was like a charachiture of a real person, he was a cross between Barry at my work and John Leguizamo's character in Moulin Rouge.

the play was just an art piece. the theatres where were strange in that where you work on the stages/sets was towards the front entrance to the building, and the audience was seated towards the back facing the front. but anyhow we were having a cast & crew meeting when this backer and the Barry-like dude came in and were talking about how this relates to a play that was down the street earlier in the season.

I am not sure about all the turns of events next but what is important is that I ended up with this card, like a Tarot card, and it was powerful and Evil. I am not sure what I was supposed to do with it. I stuck it in a box of greeting cards Iit was smaller than them) between the cards and the envelopes.

I had a depressingly practical dream about porting software to Linux. it was all really easy except for one thing that everyone kept overlooking. but when I tried to focus on what that one thing was in the dream, it kept slipping away, kind of like hanging onto the title of a desired CD in a music store.

the linux port thing continues. it was sort of cyclic, the alarm would go, I would hit snooze, then drop back into the dream. it's faded already but this morning it was much clearer than yesterday.

I think the software getting ported to Linux is c&c software for a spacecraft. I want to say "the Shuttle" but that particular term is so laden with political and media connotations, and I don't remember such overtones from my dream.

there was a spiritual overtone to it too... part of software deployment was this girl holding an incense stick in her teeth and lighting it. it was brown/dun coloured incense.

well the linux dream is almost faded out. just a flash, when the alarm
rings, of a release, and Jack (from Support) tossing shuriken at people.

I had another dream, not quite a flash. this was a chinese new years
parade, and this parade had two dragons. each dragon was manned by two
people. there was a flash -- not a bomb because it was silent, but with
the same results and area of effect. when everything cleared, four people
were dead. two of them were definitely the guys in one of the dragons,
who were young chinese-american men; I am not sure if the other two were
from the other dragon or if they were spectators.

I was in this building that was like a converted bowling alley. it was night time and in some climate that was muggy/tropical. on the second floor, was a locker room, but it was like a gym locker room not a bowling locker room, all with mahogany decor and dark blue metal locker doors that were full-height.

I was in there with some group of women who were getting ready for something that was like some sort of ninja op. one of the women was like Zenia in build and humor. I did not have a locker and wasn't sure what to do. I guess it was OK for me to use the Zenia-woman's locker.

I went over there and couldn't really find it. the locker was under where a big dark beam crossed the ceiling and came down as a support. examining it, I realized that there was a mahogany piece like a table leaf, that appeared to come down from the ceiling as a support, but in reality was just disguising the locker door behind it. I opened it up and it was her locker with all kinds of street clothes.

I wasn't sure if I really should use it or not, or even what my role was with this group. I was examining the locker door construction, considering what to do, when the alarm went off and I woke up.

it was winter, and rainy. I was stuck inside with lots of people and tried to pass the time playing cards with Maria and Kim. we were playing gin rummy.

Kim kept picking up the discard stack. this didn't stop her form winning. then I recalled that in gin, you can't pick it up; you played your cards and went out. I asked, are we really playing gin? and Maria said yes.

this hand there were a lot of 7's in the stack. I calculated and I had the right cards to make many combinations of 16, which is what was needed. so this time I picked up the discard stack. when it came time to lay the cards down I started to do so like it was rummy. this made Maria mad and she said she did not have the patience to wait for me to work through it all. so the game was over.

we were in some beach resort town. I was with some group that was taking an Environmental Action. basically we were supposed to set up some embarassing situation.

I went to this building and -- damn, it's fading -- I was supposed to do something that would cause myself to get chased down the street by a winnebago? it was to lead them into some sort of embarasssing trap. anyhow it involved some lawn additive too, maybe we were trying to bring attention to the harmfulness of this additive used in this one company's apt complexes.

I ended up getting Jeanne out in the street chasing me at the head of a mob. we were heading in the planned direction, and then some trigger happened where everything reversed and I lost my temper, and was trying to chase her. of course I couldn't get her, this involved a lot of direction switches. the crowd watched and some had torches. everything was in slow motion. however this was not that large a deviation from the plan...

karine and I were walking along a street in Santa Cruz. I think it might have been Soquel, near the safeway. not sure there.

as we were walking we came across this weird wild animal that looked like a kid's toy. my first thought was that it looked so weird it was aussie. the fur was tan and curly and it had a face like a wombat. it looked to be about 35 lbs. anyhow we went past it becuase karine said we shouldn't handle it even though it was cute.

a little further and we were stopped for some reason. while we were there a black bear cub came, and sat on my feet. I said o my god how cute. I picked it up and it hugged me. its claws were ow-ey. I said to karine, how can you resist this. she gave me some spiel about feral grown bears. then she grabbed the cub becuase it was irresistably cute.

I am typing this later, but the dream was earlier than the animal one, and may even be all part of the same dream-sleep. we were at some conference, or perhaps some seminar or training. it was in a low building with all dun colours. I think it was in Santa Cruz, and I don't know exactly what it was about, but it was something to do with computers.

we were at a lunch break and I was trying to catalog my setup for Eric and Louis. I think I was supposed to hand over the admin of wonderland to Eric, but I dunno if that was a permament thing or in order for him to illustrate a point or project in the afternoon session. I was doing this cataloging on something that looked like a cross between a Palm and one of those old TI handhelds from the early 80's that could print. Eric needed a hard copy. I was listing ports that were open, and why. as I did so, there were a lot where the answer was "I dunno why but Louis asked" or "I dunno why but I remember it had to do with <fillintheuser>".

I kept working on it but didn't have a good connection/ui from the palmtop thingy to wonderland, so it was time consuming to figure it out. after a while the break was over and I gave Eric what I had, on this paper that was vaguely wider than a receipt, and we were off to the afternoon sessions.

stupid dog, woke me up, now I only remember the tail ends of both dreams.

in the first one a team of people, including me, inadvertently discovered a gladiator setup owned by the SF city government. you had to go through a tunnel to get to it. the tunnel entrance was in a brick wall, but the setup itself was in a trailer-like thing with a shade structure/dome at one end. never, ever, would guess what it was from the outside, but that was the idea. lots of people were poised to be in lots of trouble, big scandal.

in the second dream it was night, and these people were leaving in a boat in the prescribed lane. I think it was on the east coast south of New York. they were illegal or criminals or something dangerous and violent, and they were getting away with something bad that has faded from my memory. I was with someone in a boat that from the inside was like riding in a pickup truck, and we were in the inbound traffic lane leading into the harbour. suddenly I saw police boats racing to cut them off. a bunch were coming up behind and two were racing the wrong way down the opposite lane, behind us, out to a buoy and turning around so they were ahead of the bad people.

both these dreams had a good sense about them, that whole sense of things don't stay as bad as they appear.

so I was so tired after work I took a nap. and dreamt...

that I was staying in some nondescript hotel in east asia. all the floors and furniture and decor was in dark hardwood. I was with a group of people, maybe as many as a dozen, and we had several rooms, or possibly a suite, except this hotel wasn't composed of suites. the room I was in had a desk and a small old colour television. it was small and felt very close with the clime and the dark woods.

this group of friend had some internal tension/politics. I wasn't really on top of it but it involved Jack, his wife Shannon, possibly me (wasn't clear in the dream), Elena, and I think a couple others.

there had just been an Incident over the waters of the bay and it was all over the news. a plane got buzzed, and the air acrobatics brought one of the fighters fangerously close to a hydroplane/ferry thing with lots of commuters. one of them even skimmed the blue blue waters of the bay. everyone was trying to get to the bottom of why it had happened.

so some fluke of nature or awry experiment apparently moved me into the far future. I was in some urban setting not dissimilar to that in the end of the Thirteenth Floor.

I ended up involved in some ball game that was an intramural sport. it was like our sports having evolved after a couple hundred years. there was a field that was a cross between american football field and a soccer field. each team defend a soccer-sized goal. the ball was a little bit larger than a baseball but not as large as a softball, but sewn the same.

there were 12 people on each team... each team tried to move the ball down the field with plays like american football. then they try to pitch it into the goal. now get this. 1-4 of the people on each team were like little boys. 8-10 years old. they were the goalies and they had bats, of course, to hit the ball far into the field. I only found out about this when the other team pushed us back towards our goal.

it turned out that the captain of one of the teams was my coworker Mark. how he got there I dunno. he had been in that time longer than I and explained the logic of the little boys to me, it helped integrate them more into a society by having them participate on an even keep with the adults, or somesuch rot.

karine and I were at my mom's house. the little porch behind the living room was like it was befor my dad tried to panel it.

I went out there and there was a freezer there. it had a door that was maybe the top 1/3 of the thing. the lower door was further out than the top door, as if it was two stacked enclosures, the top one being not-as-deep.

anyhow I noticed a little bit of ice on the top edge of the lower door. I opened the top door and decided maybe it needed defrosting. I wondered when I would do it. I went to karine in the kitchen and she asked me to get something out of this freezer.

I took two clean towels and folded/rolled them as if to put them away, and put them in this top enclosure instead. that's when I realized there was a lot of water in there too; its leaking was why I had seen the ice on the door. when I stuckthe rolled up towels in the enclosure, they immediately soaked full of water. I called out to karine I would be coming through with dripping towels, but woke up before I had the displeasure of actually handling sopping towels full of freezing cold water.

I don't really remember what I was dreaming at all. other than it was definitely not about work.

then someone wheeled in one of those rolling white boards to prove a point. right in the middle of my dream! this was so disturbing and disruptive that I woke up.

so this is the bit I remember from a much longer dream

I was part of a group that was travelling through hostile country. I was in an advance team that was supposed to, I dunno, make it OK for the rest to follow. I think the other person was karine but I dunno, it was just my brain grabbing a convenient phenotype anyhow.

it was late night an we were in some sort of urban environment. it was multi-layered, which is what I associate with an old city. think Brazil if you want a visual reference. we descended this building, until we got to these air ducts that let out to a ledge. from the ledge there was a stone building-to-building ped crossing that was far above the abyss below. it was mostly forgotten.

what I dreamt was really disjointed. I think I was in the middle of some space-opera type thing. there were aliens over in one sector and two factions of humans at war elsewhere. I was with some team gone to see the alien ships but recognized where we travelled as a place where there had been some dogfighting a couple weeks earlier.

the ships were all funnylooking, all looked like they had been made of brown gunmetal. one was really long with fans, sort of, out of the rear fifth. there were various sizes and shapes.

we got to the sector with the aliens and they had troubles with the negotiations. the aliens reacted in (to us) an unpredictable manner and nobody knew what to do. this guy who was a major was supposed to go talk to them. however he had been recently a victim of a murder attempt. his shirt was like Captain Kirk's ugly yellow one. at the bottom of his sternum you could see the butt end of a shiny bullet casing. he insisted he go an talk to them anyhow but I thought, how will they react to that bullet?

I was in a loft in the city - I think really it was new york city. there were lots of windows that cantilevered open. I had to clean them.

I'm not sure why I had to clean them, it was like Karine already had, but I guess the edged of the panes on them weren't quite clean, so I had to redo it all. I went through the task methodically.

the scene switched and I was in my mother's bedroom. still cleaning the windows. the big window is one that slides, and the side that faced the screen, away from the room, hadn't been cleaned at all. to get to it, the sliding part had to be removed. I did so, and discovered that Karine hadn't cleaned it becuase it was shattered safety glass, held together by like the gummy part of masking tape. cleaning it would remove the gunny part and the window would fall apart.

I tried to lower the piece to the bed carefully, but some of the little pieces fell out. I decided I should just leave it. I was starting to put it back into the groove when I woke up.

our house was just too small. especially the bathroom. so while Karine was at work, I went in search of a solution. I drove down this street that was like Mission in Santa Cruz except it was part of some generic city. at a corner with an asphalt lot there was a low building that had a for lease sign. an apartment was available on the bottom floor. I took it.

the bathroom was huge. the cabinets and stuff were like that veneered pressboard shit you see like in the Home Depot remodelling section. they were the same pink as our current kitchen floor. all this pink.

my dreams this morning we all woven into a long tapestry. I don't remember how they were all connected together but here's a shot at it

I was in an house or an apartment where the master bedroom had hardwood floors. it was like my parents' bedroom but oriented in the opposite direction and totally empty. we were in there discussing plans, and drawing in chalk on the hardwood floors something that looked like a rectangular baseball field.

there was an alien invasion being launched. it would come up America's traditional vulnerable spot, up the great plains. the aliens were from a Star Trek or LeGuin universe - i.e. close enough to humans to be hard to distinguish. they were trying to recover an artifact...

this dream faded a lot becuase I went back to sleep. but here is what I remember.

I was walking along with Maria (my boss in real life) and we were going to a 10am class. it was some urban wasteland environment possibly in the future. I think it was my first day and she was showing me the way. we went down a street where the buildings got taller. they were all made of bricks.

we got to a T-intersection and the ground began to change. it was no longer concrete sidewalks and asphalt streets. at first I thought it was all just lite-grey gravel, but keeping the shape of streets and sidewalks. it crunched. then I looked closer, and it was a plant like the succulents with pointy leaves my mom used to really like. they were so pale a green that they blended in with the gravel. they were much hardier than I recall and withstood our steps well.

in some sort of science fiction universe, I was trying to send messages to our various embassies. however the messages were on "old fashioned" formal paper. this paper was somewhat speckly. the messages had some sort of authenticity stamp/letterhead in the upper left corner. it said something in a big black block caps font, all cracked & stylized. one of the messages I was setting up, which would go very far, to the edge of a black hole or some other anomaly, didn't have the letterhead, but a blank space where it should go. I was trying to use an ink jet printer to put it there after the fact.

it was night; karine came home and we discussed our options. I was remiss with these messages, they just sat and sat there. in their envelopes with lots of stamps. I couldn't send them in a special way lest they be intercepted. we went to the back of the house. there was a room there with the colours and curtains of my grandmother's room when I was a kid. a lamp with a single light bulb was in beside the bed. behind the bed, the curtain was pulled back from the right edge of the windows about a hand span, allowing someone on the outside to see us in the room, if they were in just the right spot.

I went back to sleep and although karine coming home woke me up too abruptly and the dream faded, I remember it was actually in the same universe as the last one, and it involved a training academy. I think I was teaching this time and not a student.

wish I could remember it all.

there was this big house, like a country manor. lots of people from the Government were gathered there one evening. er, this was like the 18th century. big 18th-century house and lots of men in frock coats and leggings.

outside, other men planned a coup. one of them was Ben Franklin although he was shaky. they had magical help, or maybe it was advanced technology. they were going to go in the house, with their faces blanked so they could not be identified. this required some power source in the basement, which had old-fashioned big breakers.

it was stormy out. four men went to the parlour with their faces blanked, and another team went to secure the rest of the building much like modern warfare. the consternation of the men they surprised was overwhelming. the men in the parlour looked out the window. I could see the blank faces through the window, it was like someone used photoshop blur on them.

I had to travel back east, and was staying at some house in the country in north carolina with elena and big mike and some friends. i am not sure what business it was but from there i had to go to new england. i guess it wasn't really boston but it was out in a flat field part of massachusetts.

there were 5 or 6 of us in a house which was sort of a summer house - screen doors, no real insulation. it was either spring of fall though, I think fall. crisp but not cold, anyhow. the house was sort of white - one story - hardwood floors - crowded like a san francisco flat. the back part had a yard and behind there was either a barn or a cottage - some building fairly large and dark. there was a wall from the back house that was the border between the house-property and its associated fields.

big mike and elena were still there and so were some others - these guys weren't visitors like we were. we were planning something, or hanging out, they were all terribly cool in that they were informed and belonged, and I was sort of visiting and so I was not up to date on everything they talked about, and didn't quite fit in with my california self.

I've been having a lot of dreams lately, only to have them totally blank out as soon as I am out of bed. today was the first day I remember any of them. although what links it all together is a little shaky.

it started out with a TV show getting filmed about campus life. there were two guys who were the main protagonists, and it was like a cable show so one of them was Arab-American. it was the season opener so the Arab American guy was musing on how there was a freshman starting that he had known as a child, and how was he going to react to her now she was all grown up. of course he didn't look like he could possibly be that much older than her but this is television.

there was a detail in that he now had a short beard and he didn't used to. anyhow, she arrived, and she hated him. she didn't show it too well but he found a book in her things named GEN TRAP, that was all about this sort of generation gap relationship in which one grows up and is hopelessly trapped in a crush on a person from the previous generation.

I only remember one scene from a complicated dream about the unfolding of events leasing up to a future war. I think the reason I remember it was that my brain chose to replay the scene.

I was an observer and we were observing a beach that ran along the edge of some tropical shoreline. there were a moderate amount of tourists there. I knew this would be the event to kick off the looming war. since this was a replay I had an unknown person that I said, careful watching this, you may not be able to take it.

a girl in her early teens, kinda chubby, in a one-piece swim suit, was walking along an choosing her spot to sun in. she was carrying a towel and maybe some lotion or a drink. she had shortish hair parted down the center and pulled into two stubby pigtails. she picked her spot near where the vegetation began and started to settle.

it started out where I was staying someplace that was very hot, in rooms that had no air conditioning. I was staying with heather and karine. they were out and it was the afternoon. karine came back, and had this idea, and got all the screens wet to work sort of like a homemade swamp cooler. it helped a bit.

we were sitting there doing nothing oike one does in such heat and then we saw water come in an soak the couch, what the...? and it turned out to be heather who was also trying to soak the screens, unaware that we had already done so and opened the windows.

this was a weird dream. I was in a bowling lane, and I had to work through all the directories like I do for a build at work. the character Linna from bubblegum crisis was bowling either on my or the opposing team. er, no I did not dream a cartoon, this was a Japanese girl. I got halfway through the first set (in "common" in my build structure) and encountered some problems. these worked out and I went on.

I was up on the left lane when I realized there was a spider above me. I flipped out like I normally do and Linna took a long stuck and poked at it. the stick has a bit of sticky spider silk on the end and the idea was that the spider would grab on to the sticky part and then be removed. instead the spider fell on me.

...or my PILLOW! I woke up instantly (4:28) wondering if I am dreaming about this scene because there really was a spider! eek! ...there wasn't. but my body reacted like it was a nightmare. of course it's not really that weird for me to dream of bowling with a Japanese girl...

the images from last night's dreams are all jumblied together, and I swear I was not dreaming events in the chronologial order in which they were supposed to have happened in my dream

I guess in this dream I had 2 or 3 brothers and a sister. my parents were the same tho. I, two brothers, and my dad were travelling in a Winnebago at night through the desert. I think we were trying to move. our home town was to the west of us. it was some town on a small river, so it had a water front. the architecture in the town was all old houses like old San Francisco or New Orleans, and we had one of those houses as our family house.

but, we were moving. I'm not sure of all the background in that. something happened and we had to go back to town, to our house.

there was a a part of my dream that involved finishing something on time, and two corridors, and elena. this part has faded.

then I was a passenger in traffic driving south on Ventura road in Oxnard. we came to an intersection (possibly Doris) and on the SE corner there was a restaurant. they had a sign that was three black letters in white diamonds, arranged vertically. there was writing underneath the letters that was smaller. I thought it said "S A G".

we were in a lot of traffic and it remained stopped at the light. an ad came on the radio for this restaurant, and it was a little sort of country & western ditty where I could swear they were singing about "Steak and gays and eggs". I was a bit surprised becuase I thought that was one way to get creamed in Oxnard. the person driving started singing along, though. I looked around and everyone in the stopped traffic was singing along.

I looked closer at the sign and the words underneath the letters were "STEAK" "GAZE" "CARS". the building was arranged like one of those old drive-ups where they serve you in the car. the end of the song was more like "the shady dame from seville" from Victor/Victoria than like a country & western song. then I woke up.

I dreamed that marcus was coming over from england to prep for testing rockets in black rock desert. this test was supposed to be in september. at the point of my dream it was june or late may. karine, meanwhile, felt it was her mission to make sure the rocket test fails, becuase a success would mean great evil for the world. marcus didn't know this.

I went to disneyland with karine and her mom. now, karine's mom in my dream wasn't abbie but some larger version of herself, as a soccer-mom-type. and disneyland actually wasn't anything resembling the disneyland I know.

there was a main street but where it should have let out to the plaza that leads to all the Lands it instead had an T-intersection with all the rail switching necessary so the horse-drawn cars on tracks could turn. if you stood in the T-intersection looking down main street then the corner to your right also had like a frontage road-type thing where bicycles and scooters could be (and were) parked. to the left were taller building that seemed to soar (they were probably the equivalent of 4-storeys) and the next building after the intersection had a ped walkway elevated over the street. that sort of marked the entrance to a Land (presumably tomorrowland).

all the pavement for the above was like old faded asphalt. if you think of the older streets in santa cruz, that's about what I mean.

there was this long part of the dream that involved being at two lakes in the spring and sending logs down to the ocean to float to los angeles for proccessing. I don't remember this part well at all but realized that we swam a lot and that we were faced with the healthy challenge of having to negotiate the chutes of the log runs with th unhealthy challenge of doing it when for the first time in 1000 years the rivers were swollen enough to connect our little logging town with los angeles by water.

then I was back at the house, with karine, and our parents, becuase in this dream karine was my suster. it was a saturday morning like in the wee hours. karine was sleeping and my mom was in bed. my father was sitting in the living room.

at first in the dream I took my car back down to oxnard, and spoke to a car body guy. he said it wouldn't be a problem restoring all the rusted out portions, and he would start on the part over the passenger door which is rotted very badly.

then things changed. I was in a large intersection with an unknown few others. we were in some sort of gang-like face off. the other "side" was in these three cars that looked like the old-style minis except they were painted a dull flat red. we were armed with these weapons that bore a sinister resemblance to a big dog ropy tug toy.

the cars went around us in circles, sort of like a bullfighting scenario. we were told to "go for the head and body". they were trying to hit us, to run over our feet. as they passed by we dodged and swung our ropy toys. the knots of mine would hit the windshield and body of the car as it passed by with little visible effect, but apparently it counted for something.

it vaguely occurred to me that I could swing it in through the open window and hit the driver directly, and that would hurt. but then what if the driver grabbed it out of my hand.

I woke up before anything else happened.

I'd been short on sleep, so I dreamed, thought about entering it, then went back to sleep and dreamed some more.

the first dream involved elena's husband passing on and elena, myself, and a third person moving in together. there was a feel of bringing together a group of three people for epic activities. but I don't remember the details beyond that.

the second dream, I was living with heather in berkeley, or somewhere in the east bay across the street from a marina in which we did not own a slip. there was across from us a place where one could moor a boat and say, load things onto it, or do quick repairs/inspections. to the left of it were three slips that were also for temporary use.

it was early morning, about an hour after sunrise, and I brought one of our boats about and we inspected it to see if it was suitable. heather had all these objections with details that were immaterial to the dream other than it was simply the wrong kind of boat. we had another one so I was going to go get that one.

this was some sort of reunion situation. it was like the co-op that I lived in 15 years ago was reforming, except we were the people of today and not the students of then.

I found myself in an algebra class taught by Dale. I think Eric was in it as well. but I thought I wasn't really in it, that I was just looking at the homework to see whether it was easy or not. I started sketching out the answers to problems. one of them was this number theory problem where the real answer involved drawing this complicated graph that resembled a psychadelic jigsaw puzzle.

so I was at work (which was in some strange city but the environs reminded me of polk street around the tea shoppe). I had befriended this woman who bore a striking resemblance to stephanie (cinnamon) but her name ias laiela. at lunch we went to her apartment which was a couple blocks away.l you walked down this street hurlbat, then then you were there.

her apartment was kind of big and on a hallway with 5 or so other apartments. she had lots of housemates and it was a bit chaotic with everyone's sleeping setups all around. there were lots ot christmas lights, the kind that are like inch-and-a-half round ones. there were these two plants (with christmas lights) that were positioned so you had to doge them while walking around. I thought that was bad feng shui. there were 3 dogs, a little reddish one, a toto-dog, and a larger poodly one.

I decided I was attracted to her. this was uncomfortable since we were gone from work at lunch. she was telling me how unfair it was becuase the owners were trying to eliminate dog ownership and one of the apartments down that hall had no frint door. that lady had a dog and it coudl run around. but if her dogs got out and went to play with the other dog, then she complained to the owners and she got in trouble.

I was at an amusement park with at least a couple hundred people. it was like magic mountain. someone was getting married and this was all part of it.

there was a big swimming pool there and occasionally they ran bumper boats in it. they only did this when disputes arose during large parties. the staff would take pictures of how ridiculous everyone was.

we decided we would make use of the swimming pool. I wasn't too sure of it and sat across a walkway as people in various states of formal/wedding clothes divested themselves (or not) and climbed in. some people had outfits for the swimming pool; costumes, almost, not swimsuits. I adjusted the cameras, which were mounted about 8' up on the light poles, to make sure to get some really embarassing shots.

I was like a 12 years old girl, and with my mom. we moved back into this house that had been our 'old house'. mom was remarried after my dad had passed away some time ago.

I wandered through the house - it had been painted an awful pink colour - a bit disconsolately. maybe it was an apartment not a house. there was a dining area that wasn't quite a room. if you were in it with your back to a sliding glass door then you faced the kitchen area that was more defined by suspended cabinets than real walls. it occurred to me my mom was old enough that she might die soon. I should not be unhappy at her choices.

my mom was laying there, in the dining room. I think we were both there, that's where we were to sleep. she was having problems breathing. I realized that soon might be soon and this was very disturbing. she kept blinking and I didn't really know what to do. I left.

it wasn't until after I woke up that I realized the creature lying in the dining room wasn't my mom, but karine's dog bohdan.

I and others were at some formal event. we were in this big sort of white building, and it was so big that the indoor area we were in was grass. there were many white folding chairs all neatly arranged. at one side of this area, there was like a raised pavilion from which someone, I think the Mexican Ambassador, was to give a speech. above that, in an opening the the wall, was a hallway lit with a warm light and with many doors. I could see - and I knew anyways - that there were people moving around in that hallway that I was really interested in. that's becaue the group I was with, was like a spy group.

I wandered towards the pavilion with one of the older guys I was with. he was formal and British in his manners. as we got towards it, I saw that the grassy floor sloped steeply downward towards the base of the pavilion. there was a ball of wadded cut grass and it rolled to the base of the pavilion. I bent to pick it up, and it was awkward.

the British guy was telling me that he was leaving me to it. not entirely sure waht it was other than giving a speech. the ball of grass kept rolling down the little slope, and I kept picking it up as he was talking. he and the others were going to go away, as they were not needed here. I was to give a speech to the ladies' garden party and it was a prelude to the Ambassador's speech. since everything was so conspicuous our hands were tied.

I hated this entire idea, being not only cut off from my group but also tied into giving a speech in these ridiculous circumstances. but he withrew, presumably to leave, and then I woke up.

most of my dream has been blown away by the events of the intervening day. but what stuck with me was me sitting around with a crew or committee ans trying to work out a solution to some sort of strategic problem. there was this dark haired woman who looked vaguely indian. she was slightly shorter than I and much more delicate-boned. we had recently started sleeping together, and there was no way this would stay hidden in the interactions with the others. I had been concerned about that but it turned out the problem was that I had been so long without having a relationship I had forgotten how easy it is to fall in with a partner and work both together and with others.

I dreamed that I was in some form of a video game universe. I could start as any character and then there were three random types of fighter that could assault me, with fire or cold or martial arts. I 'died' lots and would keep hapving to start over. I could restart as a different character each time. if I started as a martial artist I would reap advancement bonuses later, but had to suffer a lack of ranged attacks now. I seemed to do the best starting as the charactger who could shoot some sort of fire at assailants.

except this was sort of like a day job. lunch time rolls around, and everyone breaks. there is a variety of locations within the game framework that serve lunch. this is close to my first day and I am not sure which one to go to. there aer 8 people who I work with which is the area near the start of the game. two of them disdain the line for indian food and go to some other line. I go to one of the longer lines, it is a delusion and we quickly pass up this other guy who thought she should be in a short linel. both these lined go up an escalator or stairway into an open-air pavilion with a peaked white canvas sort of shady structure.

I was driving north on PCH near malibu except this was in some alternate reality where the geography of the coast was slightly different. I was a little confused and very distracted and taking driving directions from someone else. I think I was not facing forward on the road.

I was to go around this really sharp curve and then turn blind from a left-turn-only lane and then go up the hill (which is a bit altered from west channel road) and then I would be in the Brentwood territory. in my dream instead of being an LA district this was an area controlled by a family and if I was successful I would get to marry into it.

I reached my destination and I was in a low building that was subdivided into little rooms. the dividers were like olive green partitions in a bathroom between the stalls. I wasled down a hallway to the room that was my destination and I saw that all the girls in the family were drawn characters like stills from an animation. the older drawings were more American-style and the newer ones grew progressively more and more anime-like, and then beyond with the newest ones with humoungous eyes and quick strokes that merely suggest hair in pigtails.

I lived in an apartment with karine. it was the top-right in a 4-apartment complex, in some sun-blasted locale like southern california in the summer. I didn't sleep very well. karine thought this was funny and to demonstrate she slept on the really large black leather couch.

the complex owners lived in the apartment on the top-left. this one was very very big. they weren't there much (jet setters?). they were arriving this morning. something was going on involving a kid.

they came and we talked, we were good friends. they were missing someone and were trying to find him. they were afraid he had gotten sucked up in some crime ring or something and wanted to get to him before any cops did.

I was in the star trek universe. and I and my party were headed back to the ship. we had been investigating a threat of some sort.

we were in this white hallway, and a broad handicap-like ramp led up to a bay on the other side of the wall. it was curtained off with a dark blue curtain. we headed up the ramp, and before we went through the curtain this short guy appeared. his name was Billy and he had been part of the investigation. "you can't leave," he said.

I thought of Billy as shorter than I which means he was probably the same height. I told him we were going to leave and he couldn't interfere with legitimate ship's business. he refused to move and I picked him up bodily and set him on the other side of the rail. "Good bye," I said.

this dream faded out entirely, and only a little came back -

I had a big powerful family. the older generation was like all karine's uncles, and there was tension between them. alex baran from my work was one of my cousins. we were staying at some place that was like an ancestral home so we were unusally concentrated, so alex and I were sleeping in the same room.

alex was the keeper of the keys to this big marble building that was like the family vault, except it was a full building, not just a little room. he was charged with this task from his father. he had some duty in there every morning, so he got up before me to deal with it. half asleep, though, I noticed one of our uncles would come in and badger him with questions about it all. I also didn't agree with how he handled the keys, but kept that to myself.

I slept in this morning, and dreamt that even though I was at my house in Oxnard, I still worked for the same place. it was Monday morning, and I was too tired to get up. I should call my boss... I kept thinking, I'll call in a little bit.

finally I jolted awake, and realized I totally had to call. I called and my boss was like my god, where are you, you've been gone all day. I told her, and then I got confused - all day? it's about 10:30am - and she said don't you know what time it is? and none of the clock worked, and I tried to look outside. but when I looked out one window, it looked like it was one time of day, and out another window, it was a different time of day. I was even more confused and said, well, actually I don't know what time it is, I don't have a clue. she told me people were leaving, I had missed the entire day, and they were a bit worried about not having heard from me.

the more I thought about this the more I started to panic, how could I lose a day. and how come it's different times of day out different windows? the panic got worse and worse until I woke up. at about 10:30am.

I woke up very abruptly this morning which shattered most of the dream. but the parts I remember were, that there was some state of conflict going on, like the country was at war, and everyone was supposed to help. and that I was in a college dorm or co-op. I was getting a new roommate which upset me because I liked my current one. we were supposed to pull shifts as computer operators or dispatchers or something.

the new roommate had a cherubic face, except with freckles. she had dishwater blonde curly hair with a cut more appropriate to a 4th grader - really short bangs and the rest almost mullet-like. her nose was a button and she was very slightly cross-eyed. her name was Mary and she was a computer whiz. she started showing me how to stave off attacks.

there were these guys down the hall and one of them had a name like Kevin. he had smooth olive skin and was medium height. he used to go out with Karine but they broke up with much animosity quite a while ago. I went to an adjoining room while Mary was on the computer and he was sitting next to some other guy on the other side of a picnic table.

we started talking and it turns out he was waiting for Karine to come by. I guess they had decided that resistance was futile and they were going to get married even though they disliked each other and all the reasons for the breakup remained valid. I totally didn't get it.

the only other thing I remember clearly was Mary kept saying, don't you understand, to me as she explained things over and over. and here I thought initially that I had been cursed with a roommate with below-average intellect.

I dreamt I was about to go somewhere and I was cleaning my teeth. I had the sonicaire toothbrush in my mouth and as I looked in the mirror, my mouth was full of water. I looked closer and closer and the water in my mouth was a wide as a lake, with the waves lapping the sides. wide as the ocean.

suddenly I was cleaning my teeth one-handed. my left hand was holding me up and I was on the edge of a cliff that was made of the kind of rock along PCH near malibu. I was hanging from a projection that was out from the top lip, and there was a lot of iceplant. imagine pushing your arms up on the arms of a chair so your body is suspended in between. then only use your left arm. that was my position.

it was late morning and I was facing south. there was water on either side of me and I realized my back was to the mainland, and I was facing some sort of penninsula. about the same time I realized it would be really easy for me to overbalance and fall backwards to the ground many tens of feet below. I started to scrabble with my feet trying to get a better balance. remember this whole time I am cleaning my teeth.

this morning I was having anxiety dreams. I felt like I was trying to get this important thing done, and was going through a neverending checklist. but I was in a white room with everything padded like it was a rubber room. but it was furnished an all, just white.

I can't really remember much else.

I dreamt that I was given a quest-like task, but it was by this surfer-guy Brad from work. I was with a couple other people and they dismissed it, becuase, well dude, it's Brad.

the next morning he came to me again, and we sat on a bus or park bench and talked. it turned out that he was an angel, and that he was there to guide me, but more importantly of all, I needed to do these things. to prove it, he had combed out his curly scruffy hair to be all neat, and was wearing one of thos cheesy white suits that would indicate angel-ness in some spelling/goldberg production.

there was much more but it faded immediately.

an information-processing dream that I actually remember clearly.

I was working with a big group, and was the source control master for the entire company. Heidi was part of the company, and part of her responsibilities was communicating social events on the intranet.

I noticed that part of the area in source control that was ostensibly under her ownership had been neglected for weeks, and decided to talk to her about it. I jumpt into this weird instant messenger program to do so.

after entering the system, I found myself surrounded by grey ruins, that resemble the outskirts of Karuda in Shadow Skill. broken flagstones and statuary littered the place, which was bordered far off on my right with dark evergreen forest. the sky was a neutral grey, not overcast but more like that was just the way sky was represented in this reality. Heidi was off in the distance with 3 or 4 others, having a conversation, and I climbed over the rubble and hailed her.

I was with Karine and Mark in some store and we had these card decks that were used to play a game that was also fortune telling. I didn't understand the game at all but it also involved wire figures that were representatives of iconic major-arcana-like figures. the difference was that the wire figures also represented people in your life.

the store was closed, it was morning, and we were using one of the high counters to play. the counters in the store were pink formica and there were these islands the height of lab tables with little central shelves.

it was my deal and I didn't know what to do. it somehow involved the wire figure for grandmother which was laying on its side. I tried to deal the cards - I think Karine said ti was 13 to each hand - there were two decks, and one was the size of playing cards, the other the standard size for tarot cards. I got them all mixed up.

the full dream faded, but somewhere in the middle of dreaming about dealing art and swapping cars in Oxnard and a new burgundy-leather attache case I dreamed...

that there was a prestone bottle on the counter, and it had a momma rat living in it. she had just had babies, and would go in and out of the bottle through funky openings in its lid.

I was in my bed in my room as it is now. I looked behind the left side of the head of the bed. on the pillow on the floor were turds. I was half expecting rat turds but it actually looked like cat poos that were soft and wiped on the pillow. I thought, that's where that smell comes from. Alexander must be afraid to go past the dog.

I opened the drawer next to this pillow and it had grey sweat-clothes in it. on the edge of the folds was a discoloration, I realized it was rat piss. I opened the drawer above it, and found a rat nest. the place were there was piss and droppings had deteriorated the press-board bottom of the drawer which is what had leaked to the drawer below.

in the other room Karine looked at the prestone bottle. there's a rat's nest in here! she exclaimed. we looked at it again and realized that there were layers of old nests under the currently active one.

I had to go to this hotel, and meet up with this guy for some reason. I didn't like it at all. I kept getting it wrong - forgetting something, etc. I went in the lobby and then up these stairs to a balcony and then off to the left to a dimly lit lounge. Sandy was at the table and he kept giving me you forgot this sort of help. then I'd go back, correct it, then have to come up the stairs (escalator?) again.

finally we sat down with the guy I had to meet. it didn't work out at all. the guy was an asshole. I got up and walked out, and almost walked off the balcony over the lobby, which had no railing. now I had to turn around and walk back in, and Sandy said, "elbows". this pissed me off; he meant, since I was a girl, I shouldn't carry my coat flung over my shoulder, but have it folded over my arm.

I was on some secret team of do-gooders not dissimilar to the X-men (in the movies, not the comic strip). I had not yet mastered whatever skill or training I was supposed to master in order to be a full-fledged member. the whole context of the situation was that we were part of some larger fight against the bad guys. I'm not quite certain who the bad guys were.

we had to go to this older theatre (theatre, with a stage, not cinema) and make sure it was clear. it was late night. I was in the round control room while two others flew a helicopter around the front, and then went in. I'm not quite sure what they did, but it was nasty.

I dreamt that Karine and I got together! how rare... I don't remember much of it, other than it was in a dark hallway that had a rail on one side, we were both standing up and sliding around and under each others' legs, and that she started the whole thing out wearing red victoria's secret underwear.

I woke up and then fell asleep and had another dream, which I forgot entirely, other than the phrase non-moving parts got stuck in my head from it.

I dreamt I was with this guy friend of mine, and we were taking care of my spider. I guess it was our spider. I still hadn't identified her but we were talking about her size and longevity. he was not afraid of her.

we needed to clean out the cage and he was doing it. I was quite nervous she would get out. he said it was not a problem and I shouldn't be afraid anyhow. after all there were planty of that type of spider around.

just as he said that one as big as my hand skittered between us. I was very frightened! but he just casually picked it up and put it next to where he was sitting. after we were donee with my spider, he took a needle and injected the big on right near the front top of the abdomen. I looked closely and there was a littel pinprick of blood where the needle had gone in. I thought he'd killed the spider, but he said no. I found that I felt sorry for it.

I let this dream go too long and it mostly faded. but I remember that I was interacting with a very old couple, like in their 80s. the guy had some weird health problem, in which he would "lock up" and basically freeze in place like a mannikin. they were talking in a small sunny room when this actually happened, and he couldn't move. I started to panick, because I was afraid if I forced him to move his limbs, I could hurt him. but his wife did something, and he was able to walk again, although stiffly.

this dream also faded, but I was supposed to be working with dale on defusing some sort of bomb. it was in the middle of a hallway that looked like a high school from law & order. dale was the more experienced at this sort of thing and she was giving me direction.

I got the bomb itself defused, but it had some sort of psych effect. we all got mind blasted with this: -''--''--''--''- or that's the best I can draw it anyhow. I wasn't sure what the meaning of it was or what I did in consequence, as the alarm kept interrupting.

yet another dream poorly remembered...

I was with Karine and we were in the bottom of one end of an open-ended canyon. this part of it was narrow, then it widened out farther away. we had to be at the other end.

for some reason I thought the canyon was flooded and that we were looking at everything underwater. we had to run to the other end but hold our breath the entire time. without stopping to investigate whether or not this was true, I took off and hit the bottom running, running, along a little stream, holding my breath. Karine was calling after me...

I was living at my mom's house, but I think it held more people. Heather was living there too, with me; we were together; she was taking some classes. my parents weren't there, but this guy Virg, who was married to one of my mom's good friends, was living there, with his young kids; he was the head of the household. I am not quite sure how I stood that.

he was very patient with the children, and managed the bowling alley.

Heather was working on a class project that involved making up a film. I think she was doing the PR or something like that as she was concerned with getting the actors' bios into a database. big Mike was involved with the project somehow; I can't tell if he was the lead student or the instructor. it was Friday, and the project was late, but Heather was doing the best she could considering that the information she needed to get entered and published was supposed to have been given to her the Tuesday before. everything else was done. she was displeased without being too terribly stressed.

Heather and Mike conferred and I overheard him saying "well that's the best you can do, it's great". whew, so that was done. meanwhile Virg came home. he had a weird pattern drawn on the ass of his jeans, in blue ink. it looked like one of the kids took a pen and drew a swirly line that criscrossed itself in multiple places, then filled in the alternating pieces. (my brain took off and tried to figure out if you could draw the pattern without lifting the pen and whether it would be possible to fill it in that way with only 2 colours instead of 4.) he came to the back of the house to do something in the office. annoyed with him, I kicked the door to my bedroom shut while taking Heather's arm to turn her towards me.

this dream cut off abruptly as Karine woke me up at the last minute to go to work. but I was ablee to re-dream it to work out the details after I shut off the alarm...?

anyhow I was with a group of agents that were doing some secret mission and we were in some posh neighbourhood that was on the southern side of a mountain. it was late and to the west of us there was a 3storey victorian house with a team of roofers working on it. I was marvelling at how they could casually walk around a roof so high off the ground that was at such a steep angle.

as I watched I realized that the roof shingles (tiles?) were rotted and they gave way under their leader's weight. he slid down onto the second roof (you know how victorians often have a narrow set of roof chingles between the 2nd and 3rd storeys) and grabbed on with his hands. he was dangling there with the tiles falling as his feet attempted to find a purchase.

I was a student on a campus that sort of looked, geographically, like UCSC. the buildings however were more suited to Fort Mason or Fort Presidio. I was in the south of campus talking to this hispanic girl with short curly black hair. she told me something derogatory about Eric. I was annoyed and went into a nearby building. he was in one of the basement rooms.

I think we were exes in the process opf reconciling. anyhow we had some plan to build a nuclear program or something like that. he left and I had to wait in the room. it was all white and had a 5-6" pipe running vertically down one corner.

I got home to my mom's house and was very tired. there were many people living there, two of whom were Kim and Karine. I had my old room from early childhood; Kim slept in the hall.

it was late and I couldn't sleep; the cats were very restless and noisy. I tried to think of some way to occupy them so I would be less disturbed and more able to sleep. I came across a small container of squishy earplugs and found a jar of powdered catnip. the catnip really looked more like lime-green sugar but that's what it was in my dream.

I decided nobody would miss it if I put a pair of the earplugs in the catnip and shake it all up so the power got into the pores of the squishy things. then the cats would have a toy to occupy them. I started doing that but was somehow so tired that I ended up putting all the earplugs in the catnip jar and shaking it before I realized what I had done. oops.

anyhow I went to bed. the morning came, and Kim and Karine asked me closely how my night had been. I had to confess to my error, and it was embarassing becuase I knew they would laugh.

I was down in Oxnard with my mom and some friends. I think I was moving back in with her. I owned a sort of flatbed trailer, but it was like all metal and had a front end that resembled a boat. I really liked it.

for some reason I parked it in the neighbours' driveway.

meanwhile there was this guy who lived in the neighbourhood and he liked it too. he decided he woudl take it from me. since I was just moving he decided he would pull this move by trying to go to the DMV and registering it to himself. one of my friends alerted me to this and I went there to deal with it. it was sort of frightening beecuase he was a Really Big guy. with salt & pepper hair and a full, but trimmed beard. the entire time at the DMV there was this feeling of restrained violence. when I left I had a sinking feeling that it was not over, and wouldn't be, until he had maneuvered it so he owned my trailer.

when I left I joined Karine on a trolley that looked more like a cable car, and we rode down the street back to my neighbourhood. the sun was going down behind us.

I was at karine's parents' house visiting. the house in my dream had nothing to do with their real house. her mom was away but she and her dad were there. it was late night.

karine and I were in her parents' bedroom. there was only a little light on, behind me to my right. I wa sitting at the foot of the bed. there were papers spread about me, and a bathroom scale. I was drinking some water and didn't know where to set it, and then I realized that's what the bathroom scale was on the bed for; to provide a place to set things like water glasses. I guessed that the papers were cleared each night when her parents went to bed.

I opened a drawer and looked, and amongst other papers there was an ad cut out of the paper. it was the words (no picture) to the ad my mom had found right before she died, which showed a guy lifting 500 pound weights with his dick. it was probably the last time I saw my mom lose it laughing. the ad was old now, brown with age. as I looked at it, I realized, it was a spam.

I was with a large group, possibly a ship's crew like the Enterprise. but this crew was co-workers, and maybe also some of the ambience ambulance folks. we were masters of the universe. we built entire worlds... the process was the same as software development. the build process was cumbersome.

Eric Stromberg didn't like the way I built the stars and planets. I used symlinks in a place that he thought was wrong. while I was still in bed asleep, he called a meeting to explain to everyone the more proper way to do it. it took him a while though to erase the white boards. they all had narrow castiron bars in front of them and he had to erase around them.

he started to explain how we needed to move the stars to the right place after we built them and I woke up. I was too groggy to even pay attention to everyone who was there and I blew up at him. how could he be so stupid, I said, to think about moving around something the size and weight of a star, once it was built.

we argued for quite some time and as I woke up and calmed down more I realized that there was quite a bit of merit to much of his methodology. it would allow us to convert towards assembly line type of production. then I considered the developers who worked on this stuff, and my heart sank. he was showing me how we would move everyone to be working along this big U-shaped table-thing that looked like it used to be a restaurant buffet, and I asked, are you sure this is simple enough to win over a bunch of dead heads and bikers? this made him laugh as he finally realized why we had the process we do.

I dreamt that I went to dinner with Karine and her friend Chris. actually I think I was at a separate table with someone else...

anyhow when the check came, I paid for it. Karine and this other person sort of held their breath, since Chris almost always grabs the bill and won't even let others see it. but we sort of looked at each other and she gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

I had to explain this to Karine after we were done. that was when I realized, when the check came, I had been drinking an after-dinner coffee, quite naturally. oh shit, I'm detoxing from coffee right now, that will fuck things up I thought. but there was still time so it wasn't so bad.

I had two dreams this morning. what was weird was that I kept jumping back from one to the other.

in one dream, I was on like a school bus with others and we were travelling along Market (right near where it crosses Clayton) in San Francisco. behind me were two friends (Karine and Leslie?) and they had planned ahead for the ride. Karine had crayons and colouring books and Leslie had colour pencils. the bus seats were not like regular bus seats but has little tables that made me think of a train.

I wanted them to share, especially Karine becuase I was really hungry and I wanted to eat the crayons as well as colour with them.

I was in Japan, in some quiet grove with these ladies dressed in the traditional manner. they were sequestered; it was like they were the Japanese equivalent of nuns. I was there to learn some of their disciplines.

one of them was music, and I was trying to learn this really weird lap harp. as I examined it, the strings were really about a 3/16" split bamboo. anyone who didn't know how who tried to lay such and instument ended up with their fingertips in ribbons. then, music came from the outside.

it was the Blue Danube and I tried to play along. it hurt. and the overtones that came out were the weird minors Japanese like in their harmonics. but I couldn't do it. one of the ladies took over and played along. it was eerie. the music from the outside didn't have the harmonics and it clashed, but still sounded mystical. my consciousness gently overlaid hat of the lady's and I realized this hurt her fingers, too.

then I woke up and realized it was the clock radio playing.

my work was some generic blend of the last couple or three jobs. it was in Oxnard near my mom's house. across the fields, where the fish & chips is, was instead a store that was like a benevolent cross between the Pleasure Chest and Good Vibrations. I was living at my mom's house, with Karine, and the dogs. the only difference was that the back gate was wrought iron.

I was walking next to the good vibrations place and jack was there. he showed me, rather diffidently, this thing that looked like the "monster mouth" mini-glowstick holder, except made from blue cardboard. he asked me if I knew what it was. I didn't, really, but I said I did. then I ate it. he wasn't very pleased with me. he explained it was some sort of device for safe oral sex. I laughed. I said, :look, dude, in the first place, you are married, and in the second place, I won't sleep with anyone I distrust so much that I need a protector for oral sex:

I went back to work. I sat in a well-list cubicle hell with grey partitions. four people sa per cubicle and the partitions to the aisle were half-height. I stopped by where heather was and tammy was there too. I was surprised as I thought she was away at an art internship. she said, :no, I'm back, this is temporary: but I didn't really get it. I went to my own space and did work.

so I was part of a movie set. someone who was a relatively wealthy independent film maker was making some flick that had scenes in a bowling lane as part of the surreal experiences. we were filming at the right hand end, the high-numbered lanes. this was in the valley somewhere, maybe reseda or maybe san fernando itself.

I and a bunch of other people were all decked out to be "bowlers". most of the other folks there were just folks picked up as extras but that whole routine was boring to me, sitting around for hours in a bowling lane doing nothing. there was a low platform on a couple lanes about 20' out where the director could sit and a camera. I was on there, and when I was about to jump down, the director said watch out -- too late as I landed, bowling shoes and all, on the lane that was under 4" of water. disgusted, I want back to the approaches - they were too, and then to the bowling circles where the others were. I looked back and saw that there was a little ridge, covered in blue duct tape, that was holding the water from spilling over. a few lanes down, it went up the approach so only the lanes were underwater, and much farther down, everything was OK and they were allowing some open bowling.

my dream started in the middle of what was going on...

I was getting chased by the cops. me and this other person, he was riding a motorcycle and was trying, without slowing down, to connect me in a side car. it worked; and once the side car was attached this funky half-canopy opened up that was of light purple tent-fabric, so I couldn't see where we were going. but we were heading down a crowded road to the pier that jutted out over the water south of the city.

as we entered the pier a motorcycle cop pulled abreast of us and demanded that he hand me over to him. the guy with my sidecar made his decision and I found myself detached. the cop also tried to attach his bike without slowing down. I noticed in that detached dream-way that the wheel etc on the side car reversed itself so the cop could attach from the other side. no way I thought, they are not gonna catch me. the other guy got clean away, riding up a divider in the middle as we entered the pier, the road part sort of divided like a teardrop since it was a touisty thing. then, the side car attached, the canopy re-expanded, and the cop had to slow down because of all the ped traffic.

I realized that although I couldn't see where we were going, the cop couldn't see me, either. I abandoned the side car and blended in with the peds.

I dreamed that I was sleeping with Rocky. Rocky had something really wrong with him, which was some sort of nerve damage to his legs and feet. he could hardly walk... his toes had physical damage, and the visible damage was indicative of how well his upper legs were working. it was all very weird.

we would get into bed, and get all entagled like people do, and then... it would inflate. there were like these inflatable rubbery things that were supposed to provide support in various places. this time, though, the pump mechanism wasn't working, and the feet part wasn't inflating. it was a tragedy.

I was in a little gas station, and a big white pick up pulled up, the kind that you would expect to be driven around a ranch. while it was sitting there, I saw there was a gap between the bed and the cab, and it was shiny steel. he bed had the frame standing out of it that you see on many gardening and construction trucks, but it was also shiny sttel; also, there was steel mesh along the sides of the bed, and three chairs that match (like steel mesh outdoor chairs from a patio set). Trillian jumped into the gap between the bed and the cab, and as she jumped up I realized the fourth one was there.

I wondered why this truck held such significance, and then I found out it was friends of Heather's, she was moving back to North Carolina to go to school. they brought this truck to haul her Stuff. then we weren't at a gas station anymore, but at this place in Santa Cruz where Heather used to live with Rocky. I was pretty unhappy that she was moving so far away, but decided to be gracious and offer to help. she told me, sure, but that was OK, Tim was already loading the truck. I looked outside and Tim was loading up all these half-closed cardboard boxes into the truck bed.

I had a bunch of dreams that jumbled together. there were things going on with burning man, work, and oxnard, and I don't remember them very well. in one dream I went back to burning man and he had already burned. I was trying to help pack up the camp and there was always more. meanwhile people kept getting lost and confused becuase not only was the man and the temple gone, all the camps on the inner two streets were packed up and left.

my maverick was there too, it had been brought behind the Amb Amb on a towed trailer. the Amb Amb had been sitting in a tiny lot on the morning side of a busy garage. they pulled it out and I had to think pretty hard before I realized that there was sort of a covered pit underneath it that was just deep enough to hold the car trailer.

we hooked it all up and drove off to oxnard, but I don't remember that part very well. mary and danny were there but that's about it.

I woke up with some stress.

I was in some amusement park. in my mind it was Disneyland but the surroundings, layout, and weather marked it more like Magic Mountain. I was in my thongs with the red and yellow straps. I was by myself, and for some reason that indicated something was wrong.

I had been going around the perimeter of the park counter clockwise. I was in the "back right" corner of the park and was in this big building with stairs. it was that cool sort of hard-plaster-covered concrete sort of amusement-park-outdoor building that has openings for windows but no glass. the openings had castiron grille work. you went in and went down the stairs and went out; it was on an incline.

there was a broad landing partially down the stairs with a couple pairs of shoes there. it looked like this was a jumping-off point for a ride that was little known. the ride was on a cart that looked like a luggage cart a bellhop would use in a fancy hotel. except, it was suspended from a wire. I kicked off my thongs and jumped on it, and rode it down the wire...

I was in the front porch of my mom's house. I was looking out the windows, and wearing a bathrobe. this guy came up behind me, I knew him in the dream but outside the dream didn't figure out who it was - Kevin I met at chillits - until much later. anyhow. I leaned back into him, and realized he had a hardon. mmm. it was all very relaxed, and we considered having sex.

we went in the back room and he started to explain how he had a girlfriend, that this was going to be a one-time thing, bla bla bla, and I didn't really want to hear it, this was the now. I opened his bathrobe up and it was really weird, his penis was really white, and the head just a plain white lump, ore like the head of a mushroom than a human genital part. and, coming out of the right half of his right leg, just at the joint where it met his body, he had like a groth that was baby-carrot-shaped. this was erectile tissue too.

I don't remember much of this dream, becuase I went back to sleep, but I dreamed that I was helping to organize a new regimen of civil defense. it turned out that we had to train everyone to go underwater, the water would protect them from whatever the attack was (radiation I think).

it didn't take long for the flaw in this situation to surface, I am a terrible swimmer. so, I had to catch up this basic skill.

I can't remember the plot thread after that but it involved driving down the 101 between thousand oaks and the valley and having that part of the road be an entry point to the underwater.

I ... was working for a larger company, I guess. and I wanted to go back to school. so, I transferred to their offices in Santa Cruz temporarily. well, actually there were four of us: me, Karine, and two guys. one of the guys had curly blond hair. one of them had a lot of really curly black hair, and a mustache. I didn't know them too well.

in the offices, it was dark. the carpets were dark, the lighting didn't penetrate too well, the desks were mahogany or something of that nature. the guy with the dark curly hair sat at the end of a row of cubicles. I was standing there talking, and realized he used to work at CNET. he asked, how can I tell, and I dunno. I just could. also, it turned out I knew his older brother.

we were talking about hardware orders - I guess we were all sysadmins in my dream - and about the terrible state of the inventory. he told me about this thing his - our - boss set up. as you drive out of town, there is the exit to highway 23. take the last offramp you can, and you drive along a cliff. there is a sharp turn, and then the roadway has this computational ability.

I tried it, and around the sharp turn, the roadway suddenly resembled the section in the paper printing the NYSE results. by default it organized and gave back to you the inventory of the dealership from where you bought the car you are driving. what fun; sharp turns and an inventory. as I contemplated this, my boss showed up and did something to display the Dell inventory and prices. awesome. he decided it was good enough to show his boss and we headed back to town.

I dreamt that I had to take BART to the east bay. I was on a fairly
full train seated next to a woman who looked like jean grey from the
X-men movies. she was obviously a tourist. she wanted to
see the bay through the tube and talked about some underwater tour
she went on at some aquarium.

I told her that the BART was unfortunately not like that, it was
just like being in some dark noisy tunnel. this was just as we were
pulling out of the embarcadero. we went around the curve and
started to descend. but, right when you'd think it was emerging
from the ground tunnel into the tube, it stopped, and they made
everyone get out.

it appeared that we were in some maintenance station for the
transbay tube. there were all kinds of moving walkways and pipes
and whatnot overhead. the walkways were like a disneyland ride, but
the overhead shit was like aliens or the abyss. more
like the latter, actually, because at this depth there was still
enough light to see out the curved glass windows, into the water.

I dreamed a lot of sex, death, and a haunted castle. I was dying... I woke up. can't remember much more. I went back to sleep...

and I was outside under a clear hard blue sky. I was surrounded by a flat expanse of concrete... almost like flagstones, broken here and there with juniper bushes. there was a building off to the right...I got the impression it was a tall building, but only one storey was visible, like this expanse was up a hill from the foot od the building. the walls of the building made a broad L.

I was with several other people, and we had a big blue ball. we were playing with it... throwing it back and forth, bouncing it off the conrete ground and walls of the building. I threw it so as to go far away across the concrete... and it bounced. I ran over there, and I came to a point where I could go no further. it was like, the world stopped, but the vision of it continuing was still there.

the others were amused by my discomfiture and told me I shouldn't let that stop our game. one of them ran past where it stopped and I tried to throw the ball to him. I couldn't. it was the weirdest thing. I noticed he didn't go very far beyond where I was stopped, though

I was in Oxnard in my old neighbourhood. we were standing outside on 9th street, which looked the same except the house to the south of it had a couple of low cinderblock... possibly planters? in it. they were maybe 3 cinderblocks high. we had a large handgun and weren't sure what to do with it. it was early evening.

as we were hanging out and talking, this group of almost cartoonish people came, they were short, and wearing white, and were stealing from the houses. I think they were trying to steal weapons. they got to where we were and were running in some chaotic pattern, not quite in circles. some of them were lugging weapons almost as if they were too heavy to carry.

most of my friends ducked behind my SUV but I was offended these people were disrupting and stealing and I shouted at them, and started to chase one of them. we started running around on Ninth between the two houses, I was chasing this guy who was carrying a handgun the looked way too heavy, and a couple of my friends were chasing others. as we ran in a circle, I grabbed the handgun we'd been talking about, to see if it would do any good. it was heavy! I could barely carry it, let alone point and aim. then, another one of the guys in white showed up, and he had a semi-automatic thing. we all saw that and scattered, certain he would use it, especially becuase I was holding a gun too.

I found myself laying on my right hand side behind one of the low cinderblock thingies. and - it was not as tall as I was wide. but I thought I was under enough cover that he wouldn't hit me. then he opened up and fired in a broad circle. I heard the bullet impacts coming closer, and then they hit me. hip, side, shoulder, and then one grazed my neck, opening up my jugular. shit, I'm gonna die, I thought. the feeling of being hit by a bullet was incredible. like pow, this incredible force entering my body, which was thumped with each one.

at first I thought I would bleed todeath becuase it was my carotid, then I remembered it takes a while to bleed to death from ones jugular, if one presses above the opening, so I did. sirens were wailing in the background, and people were clearing out. in my head a little voice echoed a conversation I've had in the past: guns don't kill people, bullets do. the guns just make them go REALLY FAST. I wondered if I would make it, as I was starting to black out.

then I woke up.

I was in the backyard of my mom's house, the way it was when I was very young. I'm not quite sure what I was trying to do but I was digging or gardening in the southeast corner of it, and having the worst luck. the reason for this was that there was a bleeding, dying fawn in the corner, barely newborn. I kept trying to blank it out. someone pointed it out to me in a not-to-be denied way, and we decided to help it. we tried to get it in a sack to take it to the vet without hurting it further, but we probably did. it left a wet, slimy, bloody spot on the ground. my friend hoisted the sack over her shoulder.

then I was at a loading dock. I was talking to three people from a rival crime organization. they looked very violent and competent. vieled threats were exchanged, and then three others showed up, from a third organization. I noticed, while we were talking, blood from the fawn on the docks. we started discussing things, when suddenly they did something some strange movement like lifting their suits over their heads. and then the all three had special agent cops riding on their shoulders!

my vision switched for a little bit, to see the world through their eyes. everything looked like it was through a grainy orange filter. anyhow the cops were there to investigate some sort of killing that had gone on and didn't want to worry about the normal organized crimes, but this weird killing. while they were talking one of them noticed the blood and questioned it. I don't really remember my reply but basically they thought it was related. and it wasn't.

well I dreamt a lot of things last night, and don't remember them all. but one thing I remember distinctly is getting permission to petition God to add more time to the day. I needed like 2 hours and a minute.