Pete Hornberger steps into traffic

I was riding in a car with a few people in the late evening in drizzling rain, in a city — seemed like Washington DC at first, but probably was New York City. We were stopped at a red light, with the road sloped down behind us. To our right, the cross street had a narrow concrete median (on the right side of the road), and standing on the median was Pete Hornberger from 30 Rock.

He was holding a smallish white sign with something written on it, and was peering out towards the oncoming traffic (he was facing our direction). He shouted a few times, apparently towards somebody off in the distance to our left. He kept taking a few steps out into the road and looking off in the distance, and then coming back to the median because of the oncoming cars.

I didn't understand what he was trying to do, and told my friend so, and she mentioned that he might actually be shooting a scene for the show right now. That actually made sense to me, so I stopped worrying about it.

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.

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.

Singing in the "humour" room

At somewhat of a resort/retreat. It seems like basically a normal house but has many sections to it. Late in the dream, we go outside and around the corner to a section labeled "humour" (the lettering is peeling off the wall). Once inside again, we are in a little room with carpet and a table at the "head" of the room. At the table were a few people, including someone who seemed like Patrick B. He was singing along with music into a microphone, and others were supposed to be singing along as well. Everyone else knelt/sat on the carpet.

Sitting near me were Lia M, possibly Meghan M, Karen Q, and others. Lia was writing a greeting card (maybe to Meghan or another close friend. It looked like she was working out particular years when her friend's birthday fell on a Saturday, and writing out what event they would go to on each one. (At least one or a few were Red Hot Chili Peppers concerts.) After one or two lines, she skipped ahead to 2100 or so, and then again on to well into the 2200's, implying not only that she thought they would both live that long, but that their friendship would endure that long. (I had a side dream where I was consulting a calendar app, trying to figure out really how often a given day of the year would fall on a Saturday. Obviously a space of 100 years is wrong. I scroll through years and watch for patterns, but I keep getting screwed up by leap years.)

A new song came on. It was "Esa Noche" by Café Tacvba. I realized what it was right away, saying "Hey, it's Esta Noche!" And then when I heard the words I corrected myself (esta->esa). Meanwhile, I had noticed a little (well, a little bigger than a softball) depression in the carpet. After some poking, it revealed a storage area under the floor, about two or three feet down, with the same carpet as the room above. Still, the hole was only the same diameter that the depression had been. I showed Karen as well, and had her try to figure out what items were down there.

As "Esa Noche" was ending, I realized it was a live version. The music was finishing, and one of the band members starting shouting something to the audience in perfect English.

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.

Odds-and-ends shop, "queer" sized clothes and weird instruments

Stopped into a store that carried all kinds of odds and ends.. There were clothes, crafted jewelry, lip balms, etc. After a while in the store I realized there was also a section with musical instruments. Most of the items were second hand, especially the musical instrument section. There were signs near the door stating that they carried "queer" sizes for some of their clothing, with certain larger dimensions. The only clothes I noticed with that designation were some shoddy looking sweaters.

I wandered the store for a while, ducked out, realized I had nothing better to do (plus I think my curiosity was piqued by the sign about "queer" sizes), and came back in. The guy and girl at the front desk (free spirit artsy types, probably in their twenties or thirties) cheered when they saw me again, as if I had been their best customer of all time, despite that I had never bought anything. I guess they were glad to see a familiar face from 30 seconds ago.

After some more poking, I finally caught sight of the musical instruments. Most of them were guitarish, with a few bowed instruments interspersed. There were one or two other people poking around the area too. The first "guitar" I picked up was more like a bass guitar (left-handed), dull brown colored, but the strings were really odd. The largest string looked like it was made of bamboo, around a centimeter thick at its widest point, and tapering to perhaps half of that towards one end. Plucking it produced no real respectable sound. The next string was much thinner, more like a typical bass guitar string's width, and I couldn't tell what material it was. It sounded a bit higher, but without much of a sustained note. There were three more strings, all a little thinner than the second, but identical to each other in thickness and pitch. And all equally dull. As I put that instrument back down on the chair where I had picked it up (balanced precariously against the curved, arched back of the wooden chair), I noticed a sign that said to be "conservative" in touching the instruments.

So I looked at, but didn't touch, a bunch of other guitarish instruments. Finally, one of the women who worked there came out of nowhere and handed me a Les Paul, hoping I would play a little. It was totally out of tune, so I tuned it up by ear (twice, because the changes in string tension on the first run knocked the lower strings back out of tune; people commented on this as they looked on). I was particularly taciturn this whole time, mumbling something or other when I had the guitar tuned. A mild crowd was starting to gather.

Just as I was waking up, I had decided I would play Tombstones, by Dave Klinger.

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.

Attacked by the black coil at school

I'm school-aged... maybe late elementary or middle school. Walking by maybe a bus stop, a few kids are waiting there, I take note of a sign, white with red letters, something something "but skating is allowed" or something like that. I continue on to a tar path through the woods to the right. I'm walking with my horse on the way to the school. As we approach the school I notice we're being tailed by a male horse that might have a romantic interest with my horse. I bring my horse into the school building near the front and leave her there and begin to walk away.. the other horse approaches, and I'm trying to decide whether to try to separate them...

Very long long auditorium (there are actually four of these in corners of the building). As I leave, I'm assaulted by some black long coiled wiry... thing... which came from a custodian's closet.. which enters my body. I'm on the ground, with quite an enlargement of the belly. Kids, attempting to save me, jump repeatedly on my stomach. Eventually it works, and the thing goes away.

Snowball fight and restaurant visit

Me and Raymond and Neil. We were in a parking lot having a snowball fight — all of our throws were misses.

We ended up at a restaurant with split levels:

Up = "First(s?)" — I thought to go there, but it was empty.
Down = main — good crowd — we went here.

Weird bowling, and a police ride back to the city

Near Los Angeles, or something "like" it — outside of the city, off the highway — dry land (grass & brush, not desert).

Ended up in a bowling building with 4 or 5 others. The ball was white, hard, not quite round, and light; there may have been bats for the balls. Someone almost hit me in the head with it straight on. I decided to leave, back to highway with no ride.

I was standing near a help sign with a flashing signal, like a school speed limit sign with flashing lights. A police car came, picked me up. There was a glass window between the front and back, with microphone communication.

The cop asked where I'd come from, and I explained about the complex. Cop said I really shouldn't use the signal for that, I explained it was a long way back to the city and all dry land until there — no water outside city limits.

Drove me back to city center, dropped me off. Thanked the officer and got out.