Dude! Jet trails!

In a restaurant with a group of friends (guys and girls). One friend comes in from outside the restaurant, saying "Dude! Jet trails!" It seemed like he really wanted someone to take pictures. A couple of us (including Greg) come out to see what is going on. Outside the restaurant was an interesting little area. Despite being outdoors it was almost completely surrounded by urban-relic type walls and most of a ceiling, so that there wasn't much way to see beyond the enclosed area. But in front of us, where most of the people crowded around were staring, was a long opening revealing something of an alley or passageway with another wall behind it.

I heard a droning noise, figuring it must be the plane my friend was talking about. I trained my camera on the only possible place we would see anything (the passageway), and a few seconds later, it looked like two planes, one chasing the other, passed through from right to left. I was taking as many pictures as I could (multiple exposure setting) but I only caught a glimpse of part of the pursuing plane. It was a lustrous muddy greenish brown color. Someone mentioned that it must be a "commando unit", which got them pretty excited.

We waited, and a little while later the droning came back and so did that second plane, passing through the passageway again. I didn't catch much more on the camera the second time — I was having a hard time positioning the shot through the viewscreen. But very soon after, a motorcycle came through the alley and stopped right in front of us. A military guy jumped off the bike, threw (or launched) something that looked like a grenade towards the crowd, said something cryptic, and said we had "two minutes".

My group ran back into the restaurant to say what had happened. I was going to show my pictures, when I noticed that: a) the latest batch of pictures came out in sepia for some reason, and b) even though Greg and I agreed that the military guy had come in on a motorcycle, the pictures on the camera showed him getting out of his airplane (which was smallish, and had propellers in interesting places).

We got ready to evacuate down to the basement of the restaurant where hopefully the explosion wouldn't hurt us. But we had some leftover pizza in boxes on the table from some other occasion, which we had been dragging around with us (it was mixed slices of pizza from two or three different places). I grabbed a slice of onion-studded pizza and we went off toward the basement. Unfortunately there was a bit of a line. Before we even got to the basement door, we heard voices from various places around (even some still outside) counting down... 3... 2... 1... But there was no explosion.

After giving a few more seconds for good measure, the crowd started coming back outside again. Now the military guy was standing by a bus, telling everyone to board. Two guys (the equivalent of Fred and George Weasley) were tossing rocks at the explosive, and it did actually ... barely.. explode. It went off with a low thud. I thought I saw the military guy chuckle a little.

On top of the bus, surrounded by low guard rails, were a bunch of horses (actually, I think they were Przewalski's Horses). I had a feeling we would be needing those horses wherever we were being taken. I also still felt suspicious of the military guy, and wanted to make sure he wasn't trying to get us all killed (again). So as I passed by the right side of the bus, I quickly peeked underneath and check for bombs attached the bottom of the bus. Instead, I saw a family of very vicious looking dogs. They didn't attack me, thankfully. I thought to myself something like, "Note to self: Circumprescription counterproductive. Stick to the club house."

As we were about to get on the bus, a friend of mine noted that the crowd was being organized into groups and people needed to take positions. He thought I should consider "first bass" or "second bass". I was pretty sure we already had a first bass guy, and I didn't think I was yet talented enough with bass to take that position.

Eating "stears" in the Philippines

I went to the Philippines, by boat. (Several other people did too.) I was looking at a map, trying to figure out where I would actually make landfall. I picked the central west coast of an island (which was shaped kind of like a mirror image of Japan's Honshu island), after passing by the northwestern tip of the island where many of the other travelers were going. I arrived, swimming the last short leg of the journey to the dock. I was then in the house of a host family, sitting at their medium-sized round wooden kitchen table.

There were at least two people there. There was a "motherly" type, and a "brotherly" type. I was eating some food -- particularly, fruits that looked kind of like eggplants, or elongated mangoes without a pit. I used a large knife whose sharp edge curved towards the front end, and rather than ending in a point, the front end was broad, sharp, and slightly angled. To cut the fruit open, I stabbed the broad end of the knife straight into the middle of the fruit (lengthwise) and sliced it in half.

The brother asked me if I wanted any pizza, and I said "yes". I wasn't exactly sure when the pizza would be served (either in a few minutes, or tomorrow morning). In any case, another woman had appeared, and she was another traveler like me, possibly my leader/commander. She said I should really be eating the "stears" (pronounced "stares"/"stairs") for nutrition. The "stears" were like the other fruits, but bigger/longer with orange skin. Actually, the other fruits may have been another variety of "stears".

I think the reason I know how to spell "stears" is that I saw a flash of a news show on the small TV in the corner of the kitchen where they were talking about them, with a picture and caption.

Pizza place computer care

At a carry-out pizza place (for some reason), Neil and I were trying to help Greg get his computer working. We were doing something with the hard drive (either backing it up or replacing it), and I noted that since Greg was using Windows 95, the hard drive would be the M: drive in "My Computer".

We had also brought small boxes with toys in them (my intuition tells me they may have been both LEGO and Star Wars-themed). At one point, in the busy, cramped front area of this pizza place, one of the female employees handed one of the boxes to me, as if someone else had told her to give it to me, even though I already knew it was there and that I owned it.

Meanwhile, Greg's computer was no longer there. Not sure where it went.

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.

Dad's lost (and rediscovered) Valentine's Day cake

At the Cantilever house, I am in the study, reading or hearing on the radio about holiday traditions and thinking to myself that it would be easier to stay in the United States where tradition is less strict than in Europe (Germany, for example). Meanwhile, Dad had just discovered a cake that he had made for Mom for Valentine's Day 1992, which had gotten lost behind junk in the closet and never given or consumed.

The cake was frosted roughly with a thick, uneven pastel yellow color frosting. On top of the cake was a rust red frosted helicopter, somewhat crude and thin, but large enough that its tail hung off the cake. Next to the cake was an even larger jumbo jet, also covered with frosting. All were sitting on a large grey lego platform. Dad, amazed at his discovery, wanted us to see it, since he was proud of his creation, yet embarrassed that it had gotten lost and never presented. I muttered to myself about hating Valentine's Day and not really caring to see it, but I got up and went into the family room where he was to see it anyway.

Dad asked if I wanted some pizza (there were about eight boxes on the kitchen table, and Neil was unloading some himself).

Prior to that, in the study, I was on the computer playing some mp3s for myself and Greg. Some were ones I had composed and others were random ones that I had recently downloaded. At least one was a song by a female singer-songwriter which I was now second guessing why I had downloaded it in the first place. I was listening carefully to one of the ones I had made and was realizing how derivative it was of another song I knew well. The flow of the melody for the section I was listening to was almost identical (even in the same key), but the chords behind it were different.