Rot and kingfisher disease

Chilling out, sitting on the shore of a small island, not very beachy, not built up, not too woodsy either. At least Prifs and Brittany B from college are there. A younger guy I hadn't met was with us too.

We asked him what his major was in college, and he said it was something technically useless that gave him a wide range of useless knowledge, like "The leading causes of death in humans are rot and kingfisher disease."

Since we asked, he explained that "kingfisher crabs" cause the disease, and they live in the forest. I mentioned that, though I had never seen a kingfisher crab in the forest, I had caught crayfish out of a creek once [yes, that happened in real life].

Also, I had caught some fish earlier way down the coast to our right (actually on a very close separate island, where apparently our academy-like monolithic dorms were located).

House party, boozed and bruised car, awkward ninja girl

A bunch of folks were partying in the left-side (i.e. port side) driveway of the house I lived in. I was sitting in the driver seat of my car, with the car facing the side of the house next door, only a few feet away. It was nighttime.

Among the party guests was someone I identified with Zach W, who was standing between the hood of my car and the side wall of the next door house. There was loud electronic dance music playing, and he was fiddling with a stage lighting device, which was strobing and brightly shining various colors.

Even though a strip of the lights were placed on the hood in front of me, and facing me, something managed to block it from shining straight in my eyes.

There was a 24-pack of beer on the floor in front of the passenger seat, more than half of which had been emptied out/consumed. I reached and grabbed another, mentioning to Ray (who was standing outside the driver side window) that we had to finish all the beer before we could go driving anywhere. (Ray seemed skeptical.)

Later, after having spent some time inside the house, I came back out, and found (as I had already heard from others) that my car had been badly trashed (vandalized perhaps, or abused by partygoers). I looked at the rear bumper, seeing that it had been replaced by a really cheap looking, mint-green bumper that was all the wrong dimensions, and wasn't well attached, either.

I walked around the port side of the house and into the back yard, which had a tall (10+ feet) wooden fence along the back, with perhaps a small street behind it. It was mid- to late afternoon now.

As I walked into the back yard, out of nowhere a young woman comes flying over the fence and lands upright, just in front of me. She's wearing a white, decorated t-shirt or the like, and has reddish, dirty blond, somewhat poofy long hair.

Despite her grand entrance (which might have really been intended to have gone unnoticed), we don't really say much to each other, but I think she looks familiar and ask if we met once before, a while back, around this same place.

She says it's unlikely we've met before, because she lives "at Milwaukee, WI near Largo" (or something weird like that, maybe referring to a street or a metro stop in the DC area).

Batman gets "The Spots"

Batman, having rescued a woman from some (forgotten) event at the top of a high-rise (maybe the same building from the previous dream), uses his grappling hook to descend the building. He reenters into the apartment of a shadowy masked villain. He sits at his table, with Batman sitting at the end across from him. Suddenly, he does something that causes Batman to be infected with "The Spots", a disease which causes dots on the skin, resembling small moles, along with mental disorientation. Another guy standing off to the left (identity unknown) is also infected.

Batman returns to his own apartment (somewhere on the upper half of the same high-rise). Meanwhile, Robin is traveling the streets of the city, and starts to notice that many (or most) of the people driving cars are starting to have lots of accidents. Apparently, The Spots has spread quickly through the population. Robin goes to Batman's apartment, where he discovers that Batman has already recovered. Robin hasn't been infected. They figure out that an electromagnetic field projected around the upper half of the building (presumably a device used by Batman for protection or privacy) makes it impossible for The Spots to take root.

Skyscraper penthouse visit

For what I think is the second time, I had a dream about a really really tall skyscraper, the top stories of which are a place that is familiar to me and which I visit from time to time. In this dream, I think Greg (and maybe Neil) are already hanging out in the penthouse area. My usual route is to take an elevator up to maybe five stories below the top, then climbing/going up stairs for a story or two, then taking a private elevator to the top.

However, this particular time, I was accompanying a few other people whom I didn't know well who were trying to get to the roof. I took them into an auxiliary elevator on the side of the building which went straight to the roof. It was dark out. The roof was pretty spacious, with some variation in elevation, some ramps. The penthouse was placed somewhat atop the roof level (the roof being more like a courtyard or patio), so that you could walk straight in without going downstairs.

Randomly shopping while my neighborhood turns into NYC

I had gone across the street to Old Bridge Festival shopping center, to the far left where Blockbuster and Jerry's were, and walked into a random store to poke around. Most of the stuff in the store was toys and knick-knacks. On my way out, I saw a bunch of male and female action figures on a low shelf to my right, all of them topless. The female ones were particularly artificially well-endowed, and had been turned away from the aisle, presumably so as not to offend decent shoppers.

I went out to my car, but I had to wait there awkwardly as two black women were getting out of a vehicle next to my driver's side door. They were just kind of standing there talking, but I didn't want to be rude. I noticed a couple pairs of sunglasses had somehow fallen out of the passenger side of my car, so I grabbed those while waiting.

I finally got back in my car and started up the hill to cross Old Bridge Road back to Cricket Lane. When I got close enough to see over the ridge, however, the other side of Old Bridge Rd was a steep dropoff and past that was a sprawling city with many old skyscrapers (in my mind, it was New York City). I couldn't go directly to Cricket Lane -- instead I had to take an access entry to Old Bridge Rd, just 30 feet or so to the left of the Cricket Ln intersection. It looked impossible, because I had to cross two lanes to get into the turn lane and there were always cars stopped at the light blocking my way.

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.

Heart vs. Heart, and a "brisk" visit to the library

I was down in some utility area, in a longish cramped hallway, one whole side of which was little alcove after alcove. In the first alcove, I saw a technician hooking a guy up with a curious device. It was a thick cable with a connector at the end -- the connector was round, like a midi connector, but it was the size of one's fist and had maybe thirty prongs in it. The technician somehow plugged it straight into the guy's heart. The point was that the other end was connected to someone else's heart, and depending on who was more prepared, more focused, had more control over their body, their heart's beating would disrupt the other person's heart, causing them to die.

The original guy who was getting hooked up was apparently a master at this, and he went from alcove to alcove, hooking up and "winning" each round. I declined an opportunity to try it out. Anyway, dad and I needed to stop by the library on the way to work and return the third Twilight book, which I had read 3/4 of the way through but had lost the will to finish it.

We got to the library (very much like Potomac Branch), walked through the parking lot and went inside. Halfway to the circulation desk, I noticed (and so did some others, I'm guessing) that I wasn't wearing any clothes. I considered the situation. Obviously it hadn't bothered me up to that point, but I thought I might get kicked out of the library for violating their policies. However, nobody else complained, so I carried on, dropped off the book, and walked out.

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.

Murder mystery? Well, nobody died.

Possibly the opening to a murder mystery. In an old house in a semi-urban area (maybe like Utica) where several people are staying, a stocky middle-aged woman, who had been sharing a room with another woman, had been having a conversation with the other woman, and then they got ready for bed. Then the phone rang downstairs and the middle-aged woman went down to answer it. I (during this phone conversation I was more or less a "fly on the wall") hear her receiving news about some kind of diamonds she will be receiving, worth a lot of money.

Less than five seconds after hanging up the phone, she very suddenly collapses to the ground, unconscious or dead. I grab the phone and dial 911. The female operator asks for the phone number I'm calling from, but I don't know it. I start to fumble around near the phone to see if I can find it. The operator threatens to hang up when suddenly the middle-aged woman comes to. I wonder if she'd gotten any brain damage from whatever happened. I pull the phone away from my ear and ask her what the phone number is for this house. The operator, thinking I'm still talking to her, sasses me. Then I woke up.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

It was very digestious!

Greg, Neil, and I are in maybe the family room of a house, and I am looking in a large plastic bin under the coffee table, while Greg and Neil are sitting on the couch facing over the table. I see several digital cameras, and I almost think I see the one that died from falling in the Potomac River, but it turns out to be an older (and functioning) one. I check out a few others. Neil has my Nikon DSLR, and is taking various pictures (now we appear to be outside in a parkish area, with iron-fenced off areas and a street). He aims the camera at me, and I close my eyes and start walking towards him. Eventually, we end up just past where Neil was standing, now apparently the third story of a church (with very open architecture, perhaps semi-cathedralesque). We are standing at the top of a staircase, with a balcony overlooking the first floor below. I am humming something and I realize there is an acoustic sweet spot at one particular deep note, and I keep humming up to it (and some big guy on the second-story landing below is doing it too).

I walk down to the second-story landing and I have a clear view of the first floor, which is set up for a wedding. The floor is all tiled black and white like a checkered flag, and at the head of the room there is a rounded, slightly raised platform. And standing there on the platform by herself, in full wedding gown and veil, is Q's assistant, who is apparently getting married to Wolverine (or Ray now?). [Note: for Q's assistant and Wolverine's previous encounter, see the previous dream.] This seems to be the wedding rehearsal. Several people I recognize are standing off to the sides, getting ready to sing something. I recognize at least Heather D and Katie K, both off to the left side. As the song procedes, (in the key of E, although now I can't really remember how it goes), the words seem to slip from whatever they are supposed to be into commentary about the things that happened that day, very movie-musical-like. Katie K looks up to the landing and sings something to her dad about how they all went to the Cheese Shop (a tasty sandwich place in Colonial Williamsburg) earlier. The song switches into a "bridge" of sorts, sung by the dad:

(key of E major, melody notes descending) (A) (B) C# C# C# B A G# F# It was ve-ry di-ges-tious (A) (B) C# C# C# B A G# F# Al-so (ve-ry) di-ves-tive (rhythm of words:) X...x...x...x...X...x...x...x... | | | | | | |

And at that point I woke up.

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).