Woodbridge High & Woodbridge Middle up for auction

So it turned out that Woodbridge High School was being put up for auction, and I went there (around dusk) with Greg and Grandma M. Almost as soon as we arrived, though, we learned that Woodbridge Middle School was also being put up for auction this same night. We went over to watch the auction at WMS. WMS didn't look at all like it really looks — for one, it had a church built into the middle of the front side of the building, with a largely black congregation. Many members of the congregation were standing outside watching. The building was fairly modern, maybe 80's-90's red brick architecture; the church portion wasn't distinct from the building, except there was an embedded tower with stained glass going all the way up it, which stuck out above the roof line a little ways.

(This is what Woodbridge Middle School totally didn't look like in the dream.)

The area where we were standing was kind of a long, raised concrete patio/walkway, and in front of us was a short wrought-iron fence (acting mostly as a railing) separating the raised patio from a lower patio that led up to the school building. From our perspective, facing towards WMS, there was another small two- or three-story brick building with a walk-around veranda on the second floor.

There was the crowd up where we were, mostly people watching the auction, and then the crowd on the lower patio in front of us, mostly participating in the auction. As the bidding started, the first person to bid was Oprah, who was facing the audience as she registered her bid. Soon after, a Muslim man in middle-eastern(-ish) garb, who was perched on the outside corner of the second story veranda of the building to our left, raised his hand slightly, registering a bid. Then two other men, standing on the patio below, continued the bidding.

For whatever reason, there wasn't anything indicating how much each person was bidding, only that each bid registered in turn was higher than the previous bid. (Seems like a bad way to run an auction, unless there's rules stating how much the price increases with each bid.)

Dream song's frustratingly false familiarity

One dream I had was, in its entirety, set to a song which was very vivid and interesting as it played. It sounded like country-influenced indie music... Maybe like Jenny Lewis. The general scene of the dream was outdoors in a western desert-arid place, outside a building whose purpose I'm not quite sure of. Might have been a restaurant or tavern or travel center. As the song played, the "camera" of the dream moved around different parts of the outside of the building, as if it were a music video.

Annoyingly, as the music was playing, something in my mind was telling me, "Ah, this song. I've heard this before. It's definitely not anything completely novel which you should be trying to commit to memory." So, when I woke up halfway through the song, I was utterly unable to recall how it went.

Escape with the apes, and taking a chunk out of a punk

I (female), one way or another, ended up being held in a skyscraper by an evil corporation or militia; also being held there were associates of mine, several chimp-like people who moved sort of like large humanoid muppets. They were smart enough to carry on rational conversations (in sort of goofy muppet-like voices) but they were completely befuddled when it came to technology. We made our escape, and later I was hanging out with them in someplace resembling a mix of a swanked out office building and an Ewok tree village. A couple of the chimp people were sitting in front of a computer (right in front of the railing at the top of a quite wide, shallow, circular ramp that led to the next floor down), shaking/cocking their heads in confusion in sort of an endearing way.

After our escape, I was outside in a semi-urban area (maybe just outside of the skyscraper we had escaped from), and I had just reached the edge of another property, an open area near a dumpster, chain link fence, and tar bike path, not far from the road. A punk on a bike (one who had tried to harass me from his bike earlier in the dream, before the skyscraper) showed up on the path and started trying to bug me. I walked along the bike path, with him keeping up, until we reached a lightly forested area that the bike path continued through. He was starting to swing at me with what appeared to be claws like Wolverine's. I looked at my own right hand as I put out my own claws of the same type, though a little thinner and rounder than Wolverine's. I hacked back at the biker punk and got a good slice in across his right cheek before I woke up.

A stop at the Johns' place

After concluding some NCIS-related business, I walked away from a nondescript one-story warehousish building, through a parking lot towards the road. Something about the events at hand had reminded me of a version of Become A Robot by They Might Be Giants and I decided I would go talk to the two Johns (from that band) about it. I crossed the side street and on the next block over from the warehouse was a small property where the Johns lived (or maybe worked) in a small lodge.

When I entered, the Johns, sitting down at a table, recognized me immediately and welcomed me warmly, asking how I was feeling. They seemed less like buddies and more like father figures to me.

Strange drum set

I was attending some concert (can't recall whether or not I played in the first act). When the second act came on, I noticed that there wasn't much to it, a very minimal setup, and, notably, no percussion. I offered to play drums and walked out into the hallways (sort of like a school building's hallways) and found my drum set in the hall. I sat down to look at it and tinker a bit. First, I noticed that there were no crash or ride cymbals, and the hi-hats' cymbals had been replaced by thick, gray cafeteria trays, which, while they made a metallic sound when I hit them, were much too quiet. I then noticed that my normal hi-hats were also present, on a second stand behind that.

The Greenland compound

I had entered some kind of compound (on the coast of, say, Greenland?), with mostly drab, gray, concrete architecture, and was walking indoors, from building to building. Nobody was around. I looked out a big window at one point and saw that the coast was quite nearby, but several stories below. It occurred to me that there should be penguins out there somewhere (okay, so maybe this wasn't Greenland), and I continued walking through different parts of the compound, staying mostly along the edge nearest the coast, trying to figure out how to get down and outside.

A few times I came across "dead ends", where the level I was on had nowhere else to go, but there was a railing and a wide open overlook to see the lower level below; there were signs indicating that I could go down, but the only way down was literally to go over the railing and figure out how to slide down the smooth concrete wall without dying. The last one of these "dead ends" I got to, I seriously considered going down, since there was a spot where I could wedge myself between two walls that were closer together than my armspan. But I think I ended up walking back some other way.

After a quick stop at a nearby restroom (in which, surprisingly, there was actually another guy in one of the stalls -- first person I'd noticed so far), I cut back around to an area where I'd been before. Now it reminded me of the entrance to a public building or school; the first thing as I entered the room was a series of steps and landings, which stretched from wall to wall (maybe 10-15 yards wide) and had three or four railings separating it into sections; it only went up maybe 6-8 feet, and then there were more hallways and rooms.

I started searching around some more, and then as I was getting ready to leave this part of the compound, a bunch of people started coming in and up the first set of stairs. I tried to push my way through them, and got most of the way to the bottom, but then I changed my mind and started going back up in the crowd. As I got to the top again and was headed towards the main hallway, someone behind me started asking "Kevin" a question. At first, I figured they weren't talking to me, since I didn't immediately recognize the voice, and I didn't really expect to meet anyone here that I knew. But I figured I'd turn around and check anyway. It turned out to be Kelly P, who was walking with Caitie R and another girl. Kelly's hair was very slightly braided on the sides, which looked nice. She was asking me if I remembered what Tywanda C or "Derrick Arins" (or was it Darin whom I met at LSA 2011?) looked like. I told her I would probably recognize Tywanda if I saw her, but I didn't know who Derrick was.

I continued walking. Kelly and the other girl went off to some class they were taking, and Caitie had somehow ended up in front of me, at the end of the hallway, at the gift shop that was there. Lots of merchandise was sitting out on a long table outside the gift shop's entrance. I walked by Caitie, but we didn't really interact (I don't suppose we have anything to talk about). I looked at some of the trinkets on the table. One really caught my eye. It was like a medium-sized glass bead, heart-shaped, with a solid white bottom, and a black dot right in the middle of the bottom layer. It reminded me of Hello Kitty when I looked at it. But the really interesting thing was that the glass was somehow structured to refract the light in a weird way. When I moved my head one way, the dot in the middle seemed to move slightly in the opposite direction. I swirled my head around, looking at it as the dot swirled around the other way.

Then I went inside the gift shop, but I didn't really see anything that impressive inside. I cut out the side door. I ended up going to a huge room, again with gray concrete walls, ceiling, floor. The ceiling here was probably 3 or 4 stories high. I went and lay down in a bed in the back corner of the room and the lights went off. There were tons of other people in the room as well, all lying in beds, going to sleep for the night. Since I had been here before, I thought I would show off a little trick. I reached my right tennis shoe (my shoes were black) and pushed a little button that was part of the rubber sole, and the bottom of my shoe became like a flashlight. I directed the beam onto the ceiling, where there was tons of graffiti, except it was more like bathroom stall graffiti, all black and legible in plain text. Some of it had quite elegant handwriting, actually. The impressive part was that most of the writing was large enough to read from the ground, so a capital letter might be as tall as I was (or taller). I don't recall what any of it said.

The bathroom aquarium access terminal

So I'm in this bathroom, which is more or less the same layout as the upstairs hallway bathroom at the Cantilever house, but slightly roomier. But the bathroom is linked to an aquarium-like facility a few floors below (I'm picturing a big, tall, open first floor of a skyscraper, with fancy shale floors and an artificial river flowing through the middle).

The bathroom mirror has sort of a computer interface to it, where I can select a species of fish and then I can examine it. So, after selecting a species, I flush the toilet, and up it comes, into the toilet bowl. It's a medium sized gray fish, maybe half the length of my forearm. I go back to the mirror and select another species, then flush the toilet again. The original fish goes away (presumably back to the aquarium). Nothing new takes its place, though.

But when I flush the toilet again, two slightly smaller gray fish appear in the toilet bowl. These ones like to jump, and one of them ends up on the floor, so I decide to transfer them to the bathtub. I have to use a towel to grab them since they're slippery. Even after I get them in the tub, one of them jumps out on the floor again. I put it back in and close the shower door.

They're still trying to get out, and when I look closely at one of them, resting on the lip of the tub up against the door, I notice that its fins are at the ends of really short proto-arms and legs, with just barely noticeable knees/elbows. I go back to the mirror interface, intending to look up coelacanths so I could compare their structure, but I guess I woke up.

Pizza runs at the schooly-mally place

Another dream involved several people trying to do pizza runs inside some huge school/mall-like building. The first time through, as everyone was getting towards the end of their runs, several things had gone wrong, and some people didn't have their goods to be delivered. I somehow went back to the beginning (i.e. back in time) and assisted various deliverers in getting their stuff. Two blonde girls in yellow fast-foodish uniforms were waiting outside a closed classroom door, but were afraid to knock and ask whether the teacher had the pizzas ready to be collected. So I barged in and asked the teacher, who was in the middle of a lesson. She said the pizzas weren't ready yet. Oops. Closed the door, gave the girls a shrug, went on to another classroom.

This classroom's teacher (reminded me of Nora England) was waiting on somebody to deliver the pizza to her classroom. Just after I inquired about it, a grungy-looking delivery guy came in with a box of sicilian-cut pizza. For some reason, he was writing down the teacher's name on a check while simultaneously slicing and dishing up pieces. Because his hands were busy, he could only write two little scratchy lines on the check where the name should be. The teacher remarked how the pizza was cut so neatly, it was the best she had ever seen. The delivery guy was using a knife and putting a huge amount of force down to make very straight, very deep cuts between the slices.

Trying to interview tragedy-stricken firefighters

Something bad happened to local firefighters (let's say this is in DC, since that's as close as I can figure). I went down to a place where firefighters would sit on the corner next to one of the columns of a building and, when there was a conflagration, the firetruck would pick them up there. I noticed a new memorial plaque etched into the column. I decided I would try to interview some of the firemen, so I waited at the column for a firetruck to come by. One did, on its way back to the fire station (only a few blocks to the left), but it didn't stop for me at the corner. I started walking down towards the station, but I also started to rethink my newly conceived career in journalism.

A building to design, a play to stage, a coat questioned, a rib cracking

I helped in the internal construction of a building in several stages. In the first stage, it seemed like I was using an ultra-realistic 3D computer design tool. But basically, I was actually there in the building. First, I helped make sure a tall wall with repetitive structures on its face was uniform in color. I made sure the bottom floor was consistent as well. I noticed an irreparable flaw on one spot of the floor, and saw it was in the shape of a heart icon, so I laid in a design inside the shallow hole and left it like that. In the building, people were getting ready to stage a play about "Mary", apparently a figure from Greek or Asia Minor or Persian mythology/history. She had two children who were both half animal. Her son was half lion, and her daughter was half rabbit. When I actually saw the kids, they appeared to shapeshift slightly towards the animal form when they felt like it, but never seemed to be totally animal, but when they were in their human form, the only strange thing about them was their coloration (the lion son was pretty yellowish). Oh, apparently, the half rabbit daughter was going to be played by Angelina Jolie somehow. Maybe only the later adult version.

On the bottom floor of the building, next to where I had put in the heart design, was a chamber that seemed to also be a gas station. My car was parked there, along with some others. A big black guy was looking into my car, looking kind of concerned and confused. I unlocked my car, and he asked whether the wool coat inside was mine (because he also had one like that). I remarked that it was a pretty common type of coat. He asked if I had my name written on it anywhere, and I said I probably didn't, but when I checked the collar tag, it was written there.

Someone at the "gas station" asked me if I was part of the "____ Project" (I forget the first word), which was really just a little sign I had put up associated with the heart shape in the floor. I told him it was really just a one-off thing and nothing was really going on with it.

In the same dream, when I came home on a couple occasions, I lived next door to a weird, hobbly old guy, sort of a cryptkeeper type, named Mr. Treflenn. He always took a while to make it around the corner on his way to his house, and I usually ducked inside my place to avoid an awkward long interaction with him as he walked up towards his porch. Then I would come out and talk with him a little about the building project or other stuff.

The second time he came home and I was there, my mom noticed there was a single rib bone in his driveway, and just before he came around the corner, the bone started cracking violently. We ducked back inside. When he finally got to his driveway, I went to ask him about the bone. He was there with a younger, but still somewhat strange, woman, seemed like they were a couple. He told me the bone was a bad sign of some kind but didn't get too specific about it. I followed them onto the porch and towards the front door. On the porch I saw a cat I recognized, and gave her a pet and a few scratches. Reminded me of Ray's cat, Baxter.

Forgetting stuff and missing the plane

I was going to catch a plane, but I kept managing to forget a few important items back at my place (seemed like it was a third story apartment or dorm room in a large building, with one or two roommates). I kept getting outside and down the street, or even all the way to the departure place and realizing I'd forgotten something. So I would rush back to my place, which wasn't terribly far away, but after twice or three times of this, it appeared that I had missed the departure time.

Not visiting the royal family of Japan

Earlier, I went to visit the royal family of Japan. Their hall was a big, fairly square setup, with normal house height ceilings. Aesthetic seemed kind of Greek. Lots of marble. There was a name on one of the walls, I think it was the royal princess's name. One of the words was Inouye, the other was something like ??kibuki. I recalled having visited the princess before a while ago and we seemed to get along okay, but I was shy about running into anyone this time, since they probably wouldn't know who I am anyway. I just kind of walked around the perimeter of the hall.

-

In an elevator, trying to get to the fifth floor, with a sort of familiar Asian dude there with me, like we'd met before but didn't really know each other. He was headed to a different floor, apparently above 5. The button light turned off as we passed 5, but the elevator didn't stop. We both thought it was weird. I pressed the button again, to catch it on the way back down. Again, it skipped 5 and went down to the first floor. I decided to get off and take the stairs. But, getting off, I was in an eating area, sort of open, food courtish, with a TGIFish atmosphere. I saw Dave K and Ben and a third guy standing leaning over a high table and they saw me and I decided to go over for a bit. (I was under the impression that this building & floor were the same general area where the royal hall was, not too far off from it.)

Two girls at the malt shop

At a restaurant or cafeteria or malt shop, with a high ceiling, whitish tile floor, booths along two sides (seat backs were black cushioned plastic or leather, medium-high). I am thinking about going and talking to a girl* across the room, but I guess I am a little unsure. I sit down at a booth, and at the next booth behind me, a girl† is sitting with her back to mine. She is a brunette, with fairly wavy hair that reaches a little past her shoulders. She is probably under 5'6", and thin but not lanky. I don't know if I really see her face until later, but she is quite attractive.

As soon as I sit down with my back to her, she begins talking to me. I can't really remember what we talked about, but we talked for a while. The conversation flowed naturally, and I detected a vague sarcasm/cynicism in her personality. By the end of the conversation, it seemed like we had made some kind of connection.

The next dream, I am back in basically the same place, and someone resembling Lynn S-B is walking around, and she mentions something about being glad her daughter† (the girl I had been talking to) had taken an interest in someone. I meet her again.

In a later dream, I am walking around outside in sort of an open grassy area, approaching a colonial brick building on the edge of a Williamsburg-esque campus. I small talk a little with a middle-aged foreign couple who are also walking up to the building (Asian? can't remember), and then I step inside.

It's sort of a welcome center. It's pretty poorly lit. I seem to be just cutting through. I go from the front area into a smaller room with a smallish reception desk. I am heading towards a side door, which leads outside again. Sitting behind the desk is (somehow) four or five girls (students) in schoolish uniforms. One of them recognizes me and says hi and waves. It was the original girl* from the restaurant that I hadn't gone and talked to. I guess we know each other. I say hi. This room is very poorly lit, and by the light coming in the outside door, just as I am stepping out, I notice that one of the girls sitting next to her is the girl† I have been talking to.

I see her at least once more, at what could be best described as the freezer/bakery section of a grocery store, at which some kind of school/community activity is going on (but that stuff is mostly happening back towards the registers).

Movie set / Limousine Ride / O Store

A semi-urban setting, near a major street by a large retail store. There seems to be a movie being filmed, and the scene had many emergency vehicles racing towards the area near the store. A little bit surprisingly, I don't really remember the emergency vehicles making any siren noise.

I made my way on foot along the street away from the store, and eventually met up with a man in a suit (and maybe sunglasses), for whom I guess I was somewhat of an informal agent. We talked a little bit about the situation, and I agreed to go back over there with him and another man, who may have been another regular agent, or maybe his personal assistant or bodyguard. In any case, he was the driver of the limo that we took to go back.

As we drove along the road, I noticed we were about to go over a series of speedbumps that more resembled the concrete curb-style stoppers at the front of a parking space (not painted, shaped like a trapezoidal prism). We went over the first one, but I was surprised to not feel any kind of bump (are dreams capable of generating this sensation?).

As we approached the store, I referred to it as "The O Store" -- apparently referring to Overstock. It had a concrete facade on the lower half, and the upper half was a showy teal backdrop with a whitish logo on it, along with some squarish decorating touches (dark, sort of lustrous, arranged in vertical lines petering out as they went down, or clusters of these lines in a squarish grid pattern).

At this point, it seemed less like the event was being filmed for a movie, and more like something real was going down, although I didn't find out what.

Lovesick at the beachside condo

Before that, a dream, which turned out to be a novel that I was reading (as commented on by Roy as the dream was wrapping up). The setting was probably a beachside city on the west coast, in the 70's or 80's. The exact background story is lost to me now, but basically, a lovesick blonde woman, probably in her thirties, had gone down to her balcony (the lower floor on a two-story flat, many floors above ground level) to contemplate jumping off.

Meanwhile, the guy she loves (seemed like some identification with my father) is coming to look for her. For whatever reason, he visits the next door neighbor first. As he's finally headed down to her, I fall out to Roy commenting on the novel that I'm reading. I catch a glimpse of the text and remember one of the syllables was "sou", and I'm pretty sure the whole thing was written in a toneless pinyin.

Bus ride to the Indian restaurant

Riding a bus to some kind of Indian restaurant with several people that I know. At some point it turns out I'm sitting next to Laurel, who is listening to music on her headphones. Oddly, I can hear the music pretty distinctly -- it's "The Good That Won't Come Out" by Rilo Kiley. I'm tapping my fingers to the beat, and mouthing the lyrics as they come up. (I think my dream state was confounding Laurel with Jordyn, since I was thinking about Jordyn more the night before... There are some points in common between the two...)

She starts to notice this, and for some reason now I'm wearing headphones myself, although I'm still hearing her music. I'm getting ready to ask her how she's been, because I haven't seen her in a long time (and I'm surprised that she's listening to this music), but then we get off the bus to go into the restaurant, which is the bottom floor of a city row-building -- it’s dusk out.

Inside, some guy who is acting as server/host begins showing dishes at a small table. Some of it is rice, one is sliced bread with gravy on the top side, a couple other things... Bay (left-ahead), Jess (opposite) and I have gathered around the demonstration table to watch, and I've had to kneel down so people behind me can see.

Because we were already there, the three of us and the host (bald African type, to front-right) sit down there to eat. Technically, though, Jess is backed away from the table opposite me, with her food set on a dresser or similar piece of furniture. Probably wanting to keep her distance from Bay. I look and see that Laurel has sat at a table behind and to the left of me, making conversation disappointingly difficult.

Lucid blast in the elevator lobby

Gonna be a rough night. First dream, a half-black girl is standing very close to me, face to face, introducing herself, with some totally bogus name starting with an E. Some kind of barebones building's elevator lobby. As soon as I realized how impossible the name was, I realized I was dreaming, but quickly drifted awake (temporarily paralyzed for 15 seconds or so... yuck). Accompanied with the shock out of sleep was some kind of quick, crescendoing mechanical hum. May have just been in my left ear.

Indoor campus

Me and Jen and Priss and Colin were hanging out in some dorm on an entirely indoor campus. We were in rooms on the first floor of this dorm, which was on the first floor of the campus. We decided we wanted to get into this dorm if Old Dominion (dorm at W&M) didn't work out. Later we took the elevator to upper levels of campus. Neil was there, too, apparently. He asked if I really liked the name "Kextrii" because he thought maybe I should put the name on a certain souvenir item being sold near the 2nd floor elevator.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or something)

Some kind of weird alternate plot for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I play a black guy with medium-high roundish hair -- I know this because I finally found a mirror in an elevator later on. Anyway, I guess I just got back from college for summer and I'm visiting with friends and stuff. A little earlier, I'm on an airplane (with stadium theatre seating?) and an old lady with some relation to me is causing a little ruckus for whatever reason. Eventually she becomes unpopular and people start clapping in rhythm as this one guy pushes her out of the room. I was still at that time pondering whether to clap along but wasn't sure who it would have encouraged.

And then I'm walking down the street, and I'm having some outer inner monologue talking about how attractive this certain woman I know is while I'm walking by. She, acting a little offended, tries to give me a soft round-house kick to the rear but I catch her leg and put it back down, and continue on. She's apparently a little impressed. We're clearly destined to be together. Onward to a laid-back restaurant where I talk with some of my friends. They're a little less impressed about something or other but I order up a round of marijuana cigarettes and this cheers them up.

Next day I'm walking down the street again and I see a random door open on a brick building and go in. I don't know what I'm looking for but I wander around. I cut through an elevator with a mirror in it, see myself, smirk, and walk out the side of the elevator into another room. I continue to wander around for a bit, find something (gosh, I don't remember what), and I go back outside. The sky is getting darker but not the same way it gets dark when night falls or an eclipse starts. A wise man next to me mentions that the darkness will start resolving into squarish shapes eventually. Perhaps these are the Vogons, come to clear a path for a hyperspace lane.

Hanging out at the Petronas Towers; pushy ice skating business

Meeting Stephanie B across the street from the Petronas, also 4 or 5 other girls (some familiar). We hang out in a random couple of smaller rooms/enclosed areas inside.

-

Indoor ice skating - ice in and outside of rink. I (and perhaps some others) are skating in the outer area (lined at parts with restaurants like DQ and others). A woman stands near one of the gates to the rink - her job seems to be to make sure people do business at some of the restaurants. A little pushy, and might not enjoy her job. It almost seems implied that if we don't do business we could get kicked out. I get a little grenade punch bottle from a smaller counter. I head over to the DQ but they are just closing up as I get there. Hrmph.