EDM clubbers and the pirate who can't spell

I went down into the woods near our old townhouse, entering down the hillside path near Bob's house. At the bottom of the slope, where the creek passes by, a large group of guys were having out, listening to electronic dance music. They were dressed for clubbing, I suppose.

At first I approached timidly, expecting for some reason that they would be hostile upon my intrusion. I sort of passed through, down to the left, then set about climbing some rocks over the creek to get a better perspective. A guy with short blond hair, pretty Scandinavian-looking, saw me and helped guide me in getting the right footholds to get up.

At the top of the rocks, maybe ten feet above the ground, I found what looked like a sliced-off section of a metal boat, with seating, so I sat there and watched the gathering. Somebody mentioned to me that this hunk of boat belonged to a guy nearby (sitting higher up on another raised hunk of something) who was kind of dressed for yachting -- I think he had a skipper hat and maybe an eyepatch. They noted that he lamented his inability to spell, due to being a pirate.

Thunderscream

Several summers ago, when I was living in Lake Ridge, I was in the middle of a dream (the bulk of which I can't remember) in the morning. Outside, it was raining heavily. In the dream, someone right in front of me, practically in my face, was getting ready to scream.

And just then, as I woke up, a huge roar of thunder came from very close by.

I have a hard time believing that the coordination of the dream scenario and the real world lightning strike was a coincidence — people screaming in my dreams is, in itself, a pretty rare thing, and to be perfectly timed to a very close lightning strike (also somewhat rare, though not as rare during the summer) is... Well, I think I can come up with a couple possible reasons for it.

One possibility is that the lightning struck brightly, and I registered it unconsciously through my eyelids while still asleep, and somewhere deep down, I knew there should be a really loud noise following shortly thereafter, for which my dream world constructed the image of someone getting ready to scream.

Another possibility is that I woke up to lightning and thunder, and only after waking up did I imagine that I had dreamed of somebody about to scream, but for whatever reason, the chronological order of the memory was quickly scrambled.

I guess the third obvious possibility is that there was no real correspondence between the dream and the events going on outside my window, but the salience of the experience caused me to assign more meaning to it than was really there. A good point of evidence why this could be the case: I can't recall ever having had another experience quite like this.

Friendly biker and snakes of unusual size

I was walking/jogging along the median side of a two-lane road (reminded me of Old Bridge Rd near Smoketown Rd in Lake Ridge), when a woman, perhaps in her sixties or seventies, came up behind me on a bicycle. Instead of cutting around and passing me, or at the very least signaling her presence, she instead crept up next to me, between me and the median, until we were side by side, and she kept pace with me.

I was annoyed, and I asked her why she hadn't just gone by on the other side. She seemed a little annoyed too, but she was really trying to engage in conversation with me while riding along -- probably just trying to be social, whereas I don't go out walking or jogging or biking expecting to end up in a social encounter with a stranger.

We had turned left into a sparsely built, hilly housing area with plenty of trees around. We ended up chit-chatting a little bit, as we went down the sidewalk alongside the winding street/hill. I had already had one or two songs (sung by John Flansburgh) running through my head before we met, and then something she said made me think of yet another Flansburgh song, and I had to force myself not to break into song (figuring it would be kind of antisocial to do so).

We came to a bend in the street (the sidewalk had now ended, and the street was unpainted asphalt), where the street hooked almost 90° to the left, passed alongside the front yard of a single family home, then hooked around 180° and continued down the hill.

Standing at the end of the driveway to the house was a young, vaguely punky woman in her twenties, with brown hair. We both seemed to recognize each other, though neither of us seemed really sure where we could have known each other from. So we said "hi" to each other and looked at each other for a moment before I continued on. Besides the initial confusion, she seemed to have a bemused and self-satisfied expression on her face.

In the stretch of grass delimited by the curved street, there was a single round deciduous tree with a small animal standing on one of its lower branches. Below the tree, a giant snake (at least ten feet long, and perhaps six inches in diameter) came creeping up, and then suddenly sprang up from the ground and swallowed the animal in what seemed to be slow motion. I was pretty sure the snake belonged to the girl living here.

The last thing I recall before waking up was that I had gone a little further down the street/hill, and was now either floating or being held up by a burly man, three or four feet off the ground, and a different snake of identical proportions was lurking on the ground below. I had every suspicion that it was going to go for my foot.

Technical difficulties with the cookie bike

I had a high-tech red motorcycle, and I drove it from Lake Ridge to Dale City by way of Smoketown Road. Then, I was making my way back, again on Smoketown Road, somewhere on the stretch between Minnieville and Cavalier. I had to weave between a few bicyclists on the road, and then suddenly I realized that the only reason my motorcycle was still moving was because I was pedaling it. The engine had gone dead.

I stopped and tried to fiddle with the controls. I looked at my high-tech dashboard and decided to give the operating system a reboot (it looked like a compact version of Windows 7). However, when I pressed the hard button on the dashboard to shut down the OS, it went into hibernate instead, so that wasn't going to work. Then I thought maybe I was out of fuel, so I looked at the fuel gauge, but its digital readout showed that I had almost half a tank left.

Somehow, I got back closer to home (maybe Wainscott), and my mom was outside trying to help me troubleshoot. I recalled that we were using a special fuel — basically, gingerbread cookies, though we called them something else which I can't remember. My mom had some more with her, and she took a bite of one, and I could see from her expression that it tasted kind of weird. Maybe the cookies changed over time and they had lost their efficacy.

Swim practice, desert rescue practice

Swim practice! First test - arm paddling across the pool (like Edgewood pool in Lake Ridge - other people swimming there too) while instructor lady on my back does the foot paddling. Passed with flying colors, "O" in the scorebook.

Second test - I'm not much at a pool anymore. A different instructor gives me directions to the tune of All We Have Is Now by The Flaming Lips (I make a side comment "I don't know if I'm gonna make it..." - like the song lyrics - which gets a smile) - told me to take off my overshirt - under that I'm wearing a plain white dress shirt - and a gold watch.

Anyway, I'm supposed to act like I'm in the desert and I run across someone (Min) and I'm supposed to check if he's okay. I check his pulse (it's racing) but anyway, he's talking so I go "You're breathing, you're alright," and I sit him upright. Then I'm supposed to carry him over my shoulder to the other end of the room... it's a struggle but I manage. So I'm pretty sure I aced that test too.

The halls are the roads

After a goofy gifted program meeting dream: Going back to home/class? I walked down a hall that identified with Cricket Lane, with level ground but stairs at intervals making the same slope as Cricket Lane.

Turning onto "Wainscott" which was the hall to class, I run into Mira (?). She gives me a pass and says to go to the office, and I follow her there. At some point she became Lindsay C... She told me to go to the "SADD club" meeting after I was done. I was only half listening so I asked where she wanted me to go again, ... SADD club meeting. She points to a room to the right side just before the office.

So I go into the office, not Stockdale but the other guy is there...

They didn't get me cause I was in SIGNET and they don't need me anymore. Fin.