Interesting toothpaste.

I was using some kind of product that enhanced my feminine traits. ... Physical traits. Particularly in the bosom area. I was hanging out/jogging with Cassi K at a running track next to a grassy hill, remarking on how we'd both used said product, and comparing results.

Then I was trying to remember where I had put the stuff. Then I remembered it was on my nightstand. It was a nondescript tube of Crest toothpaste, with the big red stripe going down the length of it. But, in big white lettering in the top right corner, it said "For Women".

Eh? A beard? AND a mustache??

I was outside in a small treed park near a house. A few friends and I were hanging out, idly bouncing and floating with fairy wings. A real, fairy-sized fairy with blond hair, with whom we seemed to be acquainted, came by and was wondering out loud how we were staying aloft — apparently she was only capable of flying in short bursts, more like assisted jumping rather than hovering.

She set out to discover if it really was as easy as we made it look. She bounced one or two feet in the air and fluttered her wings with all the power she could muster, and doing so she managed to hover in one place for a few seconds before dropping down again. If we had known in advance the adverse effect this would have on her, we would have warned her in advance...

She came to a rest lying sideways on a large green leaf, and we were astonished to see that she had aged greatly, but in a very strange way. Besides being exhausted, she looked fairly normal, her hair was still blond — and yet, she now had a pointy grey beard and a mustache. She herself was also incredulous. "Eh? A beard? AND a mustache??"

An unexpected pregnancy and a mark of doom

I was hanging out with Andrew M, and he was recounting to me how he had just found out he had gotten pregnant (... somehow) from a woman he made love to in his living room. Which was all well and good, but then it turns out he also got in the way between two old women who were trying to shoot each other with pistols (which didn't exactly shoot bullets, but gave the target only a short time -- perhaps days -- to live). They were running around the back yard of a suburban single family home, sniping from behind corners and such. Anyway, Andrew got hit by one of them.

So I was hanging out with him at a restaurant, and we were talking about that stuff. We were hovering around near some tables in a covered outdoor seating area. A group of girls was getting up to leave and we went to sit at that table, but then one of them looked like she was trying to figure something out. She looked down at a piece of paper (folded together into half of a polyhedron shape), and one facet of the shape had "Reserved" written on it. In fact, one such paper polyhedron was sitting on each table, with things written on each side. Unfortunately for us, it turned out that since the paper was sitting such that the "Reserved" side was perpendicular to the table, it meant that someone else had reserved the table.

But then, I think we already had the table next to it, and it wasn't reserved. Weren't we just sitting there? Oh well, now I'm confused.

Bungee horses

I was with a group of people in the woods, near a medium-sized pond or reservoir. Next to the water was a framework tower, maybe three or four stories high. Two people from our group were playing a weird sport where they each were mounted on a horse, and around each horse's midsection was tied a bungee cord. Both horses, with the guys on them, were dangling from the tower over the water, slowly bouncing up and down (it was a rather springy cord) and swaying back and forth. The idea was to knock your opponent off his horse, and the two came close to each other a few times and scuffled. I can't say I recall either one falling in the water.

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.

"Mason mama"

I came to a facility in the wilderness where I was supposed to train in survival skills. I followed a course that had me sneaking quietly around, behind, and through small fir trees in this sparsely wooded property. Apparently a primary goal was to not alert wildlife to my presence.

I finished up and headed out. I saw a woman from another special agency just arriving to take the course as I left. My exit route took me to a long indoor bridge with glass sides for looking out. It dipped towards the middle like a rope bridge. Looking out, I saw only a vast body of water and I recalled that the facility had been on a small remote island.

At the same time, I started thinking of the song "Take Me Home, Country Roads", and thought of Jenny Lewis singing it. I started to sing it like her. It seemed that the song was being dedicated to my wife, who lived on another, more populated island, yet had never really gone to the sea or left the island (thus, "stranger to blue water"). The line "mountain mama" was changed to "Mason mama" (Mason being pronounced "mass-un"), Mason being the name of her hometown.

(In my mental map, the facility island was in the southwest corner, the island/group of islands with Mason was towards south-center, and halfway up the map to the north started a landmass that covered most of the north half of the map, and may have been "West Virginia".)

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.

Father Chuck Rogers and conc jumping

At a large, open, mall-like building called Metro Center (not that I saw any evidence of a subway), which, from the outside, had a very interesting shape. I would say it was curvy, made mostly from off-white concrete, and its profile somewhat resembled the shape of Iowa. More interestingly, an edge along the sides and roof (the outline of the building, from my perspective) had a moving track around it, like an escalator railing, and attached to the track were curvy futuristic chairs which held a single person and had them traveling (facing backwards) up the side and over the roof, tilting somewhat awkwardly up and down as the curve changed.

Inside the building, I passed by a guy who was sort of a mix of Mister Rogers, Chuck Norris, and a church pastor. He had a perfect memory for everyone he had met, and as he walked through the crowded concourse, he greeted most everyone he passed, including me.

Later, as I was headed back the other direction, trying to get somewhere, I saw him again, and I figured he might have spotted me too, but I felt like I didn't have time to say hello again, so I hurried off (perhaps not running, but certainly walking fast) towards my destination, and put quite some distance between us. But apparently, Father Chuck Rogers cannot be denied interaction, and he made like a doberman, charged after me and caught up so he could say hi.

Later, outside the "Metro Center" in daylight, I walked over to a flat, grassy, sidewalky park area. A few random men and women were there on one stretch of grass, practicing conc jumping (like in Team Fortress Classic). I decided to join in, and we were practicing choreographing our jumps with lines sung from the song I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire by the Ink Spots (featured in the game Fallout 3). Specifically, I watched as one of the women tried to time a jump to the word "fire". Her concussion grenade went off at about the right time, but she slightly mistimed her jump, so she was only lifted three or four feet in the air.

Two (or three) towers

I had lost track of a girl I was with earlier (with medium length dyed redhead hair). I was walking through a sparsely wooded park (reminiscent of Rock Creek Park in DC) in autumn, along with some friend of mine. Off to the side, in the distance, but not too far off, I spotted two massive light gray towers, sort of castle style with battlements, but maybe the size of the steam stacks at a nuclear power plant. These two towers belonged to a complex, and a third tower, a little bit separated from the other two, was also present. I decided to take a picture, but even at this distance, I could only fit the two towers closer together into the picture.

I believe I later went over to that complex, and possibly found the girl from earlier in the lobby there. But I can't quite remember.

English bus driver in Japan; restoring the school's sign

Mom, Dad, and I were riding a bus towards my new workplace, in semi-urban Japan. I asked the bus driver where our stop should be, and she turned back and told me to hang on a second. The bus driver was a gray-haired Englishwoman, probably in her 60's, and she was in the middle of a conversation with someone to her right, near the front exit (come to think of it, the driver was on the left side of the bus, American style, which doesn't make sense for Japan). I was wondering if she would respond to me in Japanese if I talked to her in Japanese, so I thought about how to start the conversation. "Sumimasen" just didn't seem like the right way to get her attention, but I couldn't think of anything else.

We got off the bus at a covered, semi-outdoor pedestrian mall. The first thing that we noticed was that all the people standing and walking around were not Japanese. Some looked more central Asian, some Indian, some European. Didn't ever quite figure out why that was.

Somehow I had gotten a large rusty-red rectangular sign off the bus and took it to the local school it belonged to. The school had a two-story brick façade maybe 10 yards from the road. The outside of the school wasn't in very good shape (but then, neither was the sign). There was a brick sign-holding structure right next to the road, perpendicular to it so that each side of the sign could be seen when driving past in opposite directions. I don't recall exactly, but I guess the sign had white neon lettering that said something about the school (in fact, I recall the sign saying two different things, one possibly being a memory of what it used to say). The opposite side had white neon lettering in cursive that said "Go! Go! Go!" and then a little subtitle below that.

Talking to Priss about twelve-string Beatles songs

Priss and I were walking along the sidewalk along some main road. We were going downhill towards a traffic light and then banking around to the left. While we walked, we were listening to music. I was pointing out which Beatles songs made use of a twelve-string electric guitar. The two prime examples I remember from the dream were "You Can't Do That" and "I Call Your Name"; I thought I named a third song, but I forget which one.

Elected to Senate... I think

I've been sitting in on a lot of Senate sessions recently. I've noticed there is at least one seat that is always empty. Finally someone decides to have an emergency vote for a new Senator to take that seat. Out of pure whynottitude, I volunteer as a candidate, and before you know it, they've voted me in, even though nobody particularly knows who I am.

I go home that night and check Wikipedia to see if it says that I'm a Senator, but I can't find anything mentioned. The next morning I drive in and look for a parking spot near the congress building (didn't particularly look like the Capitol). I can't really find any non-reserved parking. Some guy comes up and asks who I am and I tell him I'm that new Senator, but he's drawing a blank. I wonder if my memory was faulty and I had really been elected a state senator, and decide I should drive over to the state's assembly building and check.

Yoko Ono, the newly drafted bicycle racer

Yoko Ono was kidnapped from someplace in England by a rich, powerful Jewish sect who owned their own island. Sue Gromm (? news reporter, not a real person) managed to make secret contact with Yoko and got an interview with her. Apparently they had Yoko doing bike races on the island, possibly sitting in secretly for other competitors? (Cue the high-angle camera shot, from the air, of all the bikers racing on a track.) Anyway, the captors found out about Sue and cut communications.

Dad's reunion with The Monkees

Dad, in order to protest "the war" in the 70's, joined The Monkees. In the Wikipedia article, he is mentioned together with some other guy who was also only a minor member of the six-man band. I was naturally surprised that dad had managed to keep this from us for all these years.

All six of them, along with some family, were sitting around outdoors in chairs, which were arranged in an L-shaped pattern around/under a large oakish tree, at some kind of banquet event. I went and loaded up on stuff out of the buffet.

Hiding from The Man in semi-apocalyptia

The world was semi-apocalyptic, and this dream was set in a western, arid area. I (female) was trying to avoid some military force (possibly a remnant of the national army) that was sweeping through the area. I found a spot where an opaque chain link fence was wrapped around in such a way as to create an inconspicuous pocket the size of a small room where I could hide. Unfortunately, there was another guy who showed up there, kind of a simpleton, and I was getting kind of annoyed standing around there dealing with him.

It then occurred to me that there was a McDonald's not too far away (semi-apocalyptic -> fast food chains still exist), a little ways up the hill (with short natural red rock walls to either side) from where I was. I went there and found it to be suitable for use as a fortified hideout. A few other people were there too. We figured we could hide out there comfortably for quite a while.

Fancy tech elevators, hopping into the yard, swimming with a drift

I guess I was going through some kind of multi-part technology demonstration. At the beginning of each part there was a sort of spiral elevator thing - a small circular spinning compartment with a green ceiling and grated floor, slowly descending while spinning, along a vertical spiral track. I nimbly hopped out of one of the elevators while it was still moving and ended up outside at dusk, in the side yard of a house. I had to hop over some large trash cans and wade through some holly bushes to get out into the open, where the people who had taken the elevator were coming out the front door of the house and down the porch stairs.

The last elevator, in which we noticed all the writing was in Korean, led to a large swimming pool. We went in (apparently here I was with my dad and Neil and possibly Greg). I decided to practice my overwater swimming technique. I usually have a hard time hitting a groove and breathing correctly, but this time I was doing great, except I couldn't see in front of me because of turning my head side to side, so I ended up drifting left.

Icy hot Ethiopia

I and a few others (I forget who, exactly... Neil? Rachel? Crystal?) were getting ready to set out the next day for a little spot on the Ethiopian border which had apparently been continuously inhabited by humans since forever. The people there looked kind of like Boa Sr of the Bo tribe.

The spot was situated along a small river, on otherwise reddish-rocky, barren looking land. It sat between two sheer rock walls, perpendicular to the river, at least 30 or 40 feet high, and the land at the base of the walls sunk down.

For some weird geological reason, the temperature in that spot could range from normal summer day temperatures (70-80°F) to sudden, short-lasting drops into the -40°F range. In our preparations, we had to make sure we had clothes to cover most of our skin, but didn't chafe, since too much friction or movement when exposed to that temperature could cause serious skin and joint damage.

Q the kidnapper, Wolverine the rescuer?

Q (who had apparently been stripped of his powers temporarily) had kidnapped four or five crew members (or someone?). He was showing "us" over Internet (or something) the screen on his computer as he was manipulating an image of the kidnapped people. He was square-selecting each of their faces, copying them, then going to paste them in a separate image, except each time he went to paste the faces, random objects appeared instead of the faces. We eventually surmised that he was using a multi-slot clipboard and messing with us, but that perhaps the random objects pasted in place of their faces signified something about where we would find the kidnapped people.

Later, Wolverine has gone to intercept a smallish (FedEx-shaped) truck which Q is driving (possibly in NYC), to see if he has the kidnapees there. At first, he stands on the back bumper as Q drives around the city, up hills, through a tunnel, etc. Q finally spots him, and rather than be shaken off the truck, Wolverine goes inside the back storage area. There, Q's assistant, a beautiful young dark-haired white (slightly Asian) woman, sees Wolverine through a side window in the storage area and tells Q what is happening. She goes inside, and Wolverine threatens violence in a few different ways before finally deciding that she isn't interested in fighting (he even tries punching her once, at which point she temporarily transforms into something that looks like a svelte version of the Thing from Fantastic Four, then reverts. Wolverine at this point "reverts" back to a paler, less muscular form, saying "In case I die." -- apparently he wants to be in this form as a corpse, for identification or sentimental reasons. Q starts beating the back door with a hatchet.

- Some background on Q's assistant: Back when Q was at his "home" in the "continuum" -- which, my brothers and I comment, is fully consistent with the way it looked in "the movie" -- the home seemed to be made almost completely out of thin, sheer, empty silky/clothy "puffs", maybe 3'x6' each and each one colored a different pastel color, stitched together in rows to make walls, floors, and ceilings, such that you could see all the way through the house from above into the water below -- the house was over a lake on the edge of the land. Anyway, back when Q was at "home", his wife had some kind of illness and was on the verge of dying. Q, for whatever reason, created the assistant, who was "unobjectionably likeable" (or some such) by all. Q follows his wife home to show her (his wife is going home on a motorcycle).

[forgotten events omitted here]

Somehow, Wolverine and Q's assistant have gotten away, and float ashore on the beach of an ocean coastline at an unknown location. [Note: They get married in the next dream.]

Electrical zaps in the courtyard

In an intervening dream, possibly taking place after the welcome center, I am walking/climbing/wandering a grassy area filled with various row houses and apartments, with decks and back stair complexes and the like. I climb up to the near top (third?) level of a set of back stairs and suddenly on the other end of the courtyard below, near another staircase/set of houses, electricity strikes diagonally downward/inward from two perpendicular directions towards a single spot on the ground, ending in a ball of electricity maybe the size of a beach ball which disappears when the bolts do. It makes surprisingly little noise. This recurs a few times. Somebody's voice is explaining the phenomenon to me, but he is not there with me. I explore some more.

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).