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.

Chilling fox and waving bear

I had just woken up (not actually, but in the dream), and was lying in bed. My bed was in the basement, but it was near a small ground-level window, out of which I could look at the back yard. I saw mom and dad in the back yard, along with the dogs. But I also saw a red fox there. Surprisingly, it wasn't doing much of anything. It wasn't scared of the people and dogs there, it wasn't trying to attack anything or run away. It just kind of stood around.

I grabbed my point-and-shoot camera, which was in my bed with me already, zoomed in on the fox, and took a couple pictures and a short video, expecting the fox to run away at any moment. But the fox never did go anywhere. It was just chilling.

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Next dream: in the back yard of our current house, near the far back gate of our tall wood picket fence. My dad was sitting in a lawn chair, facing away from the fence, and next to him was a news anchor — Brian Williams, I think — interviewing him.

I walked up towards them, and suddenly I caught sight of a large brown bear in the woods behind the fence. I waved to it, and it got up on its hind legs and waved back, with a vacant expression on its face, then started ambling towards us. I told Dad and Brian Williams to get moving, and we fled towards the front of the house. Every once in a while, the bear would get back up on its hind legs and wave again, then continue ambling over towards us.

We got out to the front yard, and headed inside the house (which now more resembled our Cantilever house in Lake Ridge).

Forest-office-Charlie-Maura-drum squares

I was working at a desk, except the office visible in front of me seemed to be more of a forest than an office (not that it seemed odd at the time). To my right, sitting on my desk, was a small, vertical mirror on a stand, and every 10-20 seconds or so I would take a moist cloth and wipe it down. Lee W came by my desk and got me to admit that it was a little obsessive to wipe the mirror so often.

I explained to Lee that something was bothering me about the coworker to my right (who was apparently Charlie Sheen), though I couldn't quite put my finger on it, so I kept glancing over at him, and then wiping the mirror to make it look like that was why I was looking to the right.

Meanwhile, another male coworker came by and Lee held out a very tall styrofoam cup and said to the coworker, "Could you get me a mug?" At first the coworker wasn't sure if Lee wanted him to go bring him a mug, but then he figured out Lee wanted to get his styrofoam cup refilled with coffee (from what looked more like a soda fountain than a coffee brewer).

To my left was another coworker, who happened to be Maura. The details evade me at this point, but somehow there was a drum beat playing (with brushes), sort of a swing rhythm, and, of all things, the snare beat had a brush coming down on top of each of our heads. We weren't particularly bothered, as it was apparently part of usual work.

By the way, in visualizing this dream, the office seemed more like a vertically stacked 9x9 square (reminiscent of Hollywood Squares, but in an office/forest setting), with me at the bottom center, Charlie to the right, Maura to the left, the other coworker possibly in the square above me. And for the most part people were facing out of the square towards the viewer.

Mostly harmless skin epidemic at band practice

Dave, Vanessa, and I went to Lou B's place, but instead of it being a townhouse, it was a penthouse apartment in a tall building. The four of us started playing "Flirting With Disaster" or something similar to it. I decided it would be a fun opportunity to experiment with my bass line a little bit. By the fifth or sixth measure, however, Lou was troubled by something and stopped us playing. He said he needed to get another person over to sit and listen, because right now we were missing a "top control" (i.e. someone to supervise and make judgement calls on the song performance).

I noticed that Dave had a blotch on his skin that reminded me of something I had noticed on my dad recently. I asked him about it and he said he wasn't sure what it was. He pointed out that I had something similar. I looked at the top of my right wrist, and indeed, I had a huge blotch, shaped somewhat like a simplified rendition of a neuron, and almost the size of my entire hand. Near the middle was a scab, which I had also seen on Dave's blotch. It turned out that Vanessa had similar blotches too. I speculated that there was something going round, and guessed that if everyone was getting it, it probably wasn't a big deal.

Lou, meanwhile, was commenting how the door to the roof (straight out to the roof, no stairs up, since apparently, the roof was the same floor as this apartment) used to be a window until he had it changed.

Then, for some reason, I went down to street level and was trying to call a plumber to go look at Lou's apartment. I saw a plumbing van parked across the street and called the number on it. They asked for the address and I gave them the building's street number, but trailed off trying to remember the suite number. They said they were busy but they forwarded me to a different plumbing company so they could take the job.

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.

Blow your nose in it...

"Blow your nose in it...
Make me miserable in it...
I don't care..."

- Anonymous

Quantum Leap, blue tail lights, Medley Times, and hat poems

There was a black guy, traveling times through bodies such as Andrew K's (kind of like Quantum Leap)... During the plot of this, we discovered there were light blue orbs attaching into people (oh my) from some unknown source, but eventually decided it was no big deal.

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I was stopped by cop on the road. He explained that some of my tail lights kept turning blue; I saw what he meant and was confused. [Hem, this was before the proliferation of LED tail lights.]

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Historical newspaper of some sort - Medley Times?

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In Mrs. Montanari's English class. We were learning about "hat poems", among other things - short poems, one rhyme, seemed to give some short advice or experience. There was a longer poem at the end: "Color brought us to the brink of chaos"?