Batch

07-17-2013 [Long, detailed, and fun. Sometimes I love my dreams.] I seem to be doing some sort of mystery shop at Circle K, and it seems to involve buying a slurpee which is poured into a cone-shaped cup. The problem is, the slurpee almost immediately freezes solid, making it impossible to drink, while at the same time it somehow slips out of the bottom of the cup, leaving the customer to only get a sip or two before it is gone. I go to get a refill, but they jump all over me, telling me that isn't allowed, which annoys me, as I want more of the green apple slurpee. Instead they throw me out, and I am thinking they're going to get a very bad report this time.

I stalk back to my car, past some guys on a football field, and as I reach it, I find that I have been working security with Pedus again, and for some reason was using one of the furry bomber jackets as a sort of a car bra, but large parts of it have been ripped off. I find one of the nearest football players with a couple of pieces of it, and he grins kind of sheepishly and gives those pieces back to me, but one of the other players has more pieces, and he refuses to give them back. I notice he is wearing a Boone High School jersey, and figure I'll try to report him to the school to see if they can do anything about it, but then I glance at some of the other jerseys, and at least four teams are represented here.

I ask who's playing, and one of the ruder players explains that the season is over, nobody is playing, they are just celebrating the end of the season ... and I'd better get out of there if I know what's good for me. I back off and start moving toward my car, but then all the cheerleaders start pulling off their uniforms, and underneath they all have body paint in team colors that do nothing to really hide their jutting nipples and neatly trimmed pussies. I enjoy a nice look as I slowly climb into my car and start to drive away.

I seem to be driving somewhere further south on a mystery shopping trip, down around West Palm Beach or maybe Lauderdale. I'm trying to figure the best route to get home, or maybe to my next shop, just driving along making turns, but things start to slowly change. The busy highway is turning more and more to a wooded path. The car is turning more to a horse, and then to me walking along the path, as things start to greatly resemble a generic fantasy novel.

Soon I find myself facing a Confucius-like Oriental wise man who is telling me to guide my thoughts, and to go backward to go forward, so I turn around and head back down the path I'd been on, looking for others involved in my quest that I might be able to help. I come across a guy who is working to fill a very tiny chest with 'valuable silver' (actually just quarters and fifty-cent pieces) and I am really not impressed with the treasure. The tiny chest is maybe 4" x 8" X 1" and I was expecting it to be more like 6" deep, and filled with gold, rather than fake silver. With such a small chest and such limited content I am thinking the 'treasure' is rather worthless, but they assure me it is still enough for the bad guys to kill us over, and send me on my way.

Soon, while walking through the woods, I come across a sexy young Oriental fighter who is on my team, and turns out to be the daughter of the wise man, though she isn't sure she believes he is all that wise. As I am talking to both of them, my very nice, very sturdy hiking boots kind of dissolve off of my feet, and I find myself standing next to a very beat up pair of leather sandals that most closely resemble a pair of flip flops. They seem to expect me to be upset about this, but I try to tell myself there might be a reason for this, and just slide on my new (to me) sandals. My acceptance seems to impress them.

There is some sort of very handsome but powerful beast that suddenly turns violent, but thankfully it mostly seems to ignore me, and attack the bad guys. Soon I am 'told' to concentrate strongly on a number, something like 4,600 or 46,000, in my mind, and it turns out we are passing someone or something that can read minds, but if I only seem to be thinking about the 'inventory' we are carrying in our merchant disguise, they won't have reason to press any deeper in my mind.

I am carrying only a very small box, and am acting sort of weak and unimpressive, but they tell me to act strong, but like dumb muscle. So I approach somebody struggling with a larger box and swap with him, then a yet larger crate, and a few moments later, I take over the lifting and pulling of a fairly large cart loaded down with huge logs, really showing my strength as I pull it up the hill to the city we're infiltrating. It has a sort of Pirates of the Caribbean vibe to it, with lots of wild folks running around the place, carousing.

Though it is not Pirates, there is a slight hint of 'jumping' the cart/boat into a slightly different 'flume' that takes me closer to where I want to go, but that sense soon vanishes. I drop off my huge load, and am paid a $5 bill, and trying to play my part, I try to act proud and excited to have 'so much' money, ready to defend myself against others who might want to steal my pittance, while laughing inside about the whole farce and just carrying on.

Now we are carrying much smaller, more valuable cargo to show to the big wigs. I think I am carrying a small but valuable snack cake, something like caviar or truffles, but a decadent dessert. The person next to me has something like compressed apples or something, really good stuff, but the big wigs are ignoring us and acting like we and our products are nothing, and nobody is buying anything. This is really annoying the guy next to me, and he suddenly throws one of his compressed apples into the water, where it causes a huge blast and shows just how good an explosive it is. He's thinking that'll teach them not to ignore us, but I just think it'll make them mad. I'm right, and soon we're all being chased again!

02-05-2013 -- I'm in the Hickory house, and somehow I am here with Juliet (Psych) and her brother (played by John Cena). There is some really odd stuff, like broiling pillows in the over or something, yet they aren't burning, but just getting very hot. I really don't know what was going on, this was the first part of the dream, and I may not have been fully into REM yet.

Soon I am at the strip mall at the corner of La Palma and Magnolia, and I am heading down Magnolia toward Peter Marshall Park, when I spot a drainage ditch starting at the edge of the street, going under Greenleaf and right into the park. I drive into it and follow along.

Soon I find myself in a warehouse I've dreamed of before. It is a large warehouse, I work there, and the bosses are particularly unfriendly and miserable. We are working the North docks, perhaps loading up trucks. There is a little kid here who is screaming for his daddy, but his daddy is off working in a different portion of the warehouse. I'm worried if the kid doesn't shut up, he's going to get he and his daddy in trouble with the bosses.

I'm kind of wandering around part of the warehouse while our team is being ordered to move over to the West docks and help with the unloading going on there, as they have turned off the lights in the part of the warehouse we've been working in. [Hints of the moving around at APAC.] I can remember the last time they did this, and I was not with the group, being hunted and chased throughout the warehouse, so I'm trying to get back with the group as quickly as I can, but I end up in just the wrong area.

I find myself standing right under the conveyor belts which are removing full pallets of stuff off the trucks, raising them to about 40 feet in the air, and then dropping them to land (hopefully in neat rows) on the floor, below. Unfortunately, I am right on that portion of the floor, so I am dodging about, trying to avoid having these heavy pallets land on me, and moving further and further south, trying to get out from under the dropping products.

Eventually I do get far enough out of the way, only to run into another problem. Here they are not unloading the trucks, but there are rows and rows of pallets that have already been unloaded, waiting to be stored in the warehouse, and instead of using fork lifts to move them, like in the rest of the place, they have large elephants wrapping their trunks around them and moving them. So me and my crew are facing a large herd of elephants that are slowly walking toward us, and we are backing away, not wanting to be crushed. The elephants are moving faster, and soon we are running, but our running is triggering a stampede, and the herd of elephants are thundering behind us.

Soon we're running into the racks of products, dodging this way and that, the elephants right behind us, when I get the idea to actually dive into the racks, climbing on top of some of the boxes to get out of the way. Problem is, the elephants turn into large bears (possibly brown, possibly grizzly) and a couple of them are climbing into the racks after me. I'm horrified, but think to myself that if they are trained to work in the warehouse, they probably can't be all that dangerous when they aren't stampeding, so I just wrap my arms around the two that have been chasing me, and start petting them, and they settle right down.

01-22-2013 -- I find myself standing in the side yard at the Hickory house, between the garage and the neighbor's garage at the Conrad place. Somehow there is a very sort of haunted house kind of feel, with monsters running around the side yard and the Conrads' house, and I am trying to save people. There are hideous creature-style monsters, and a Michael Myers-style serial killer both to contend with, while I run back and forth, trying to keep myself well and help others. It is very long, and involved, with lots of chasing and the like, but the details don't come through, so it seems like a much shorter bit when written down. Maybe slight hints of a tie-in to the spooky park scenario in roller coaster tycoon which I was playing a day or two ago.

So soon I walk into the Hickory house through the side garage door, and I am feeling kind of hungry, so I am thinking about preparing some food, but instead I just walk into my second bedroom, thinking about relaxing. Hard to do, though, as the room is an absolute mess. The desk is covered with dozens and dozens of pieces of silverware that have been sitting around for weeks, encrusted in dust and old, dried food. I start gathering maybe fifteen pieces at a time, and carrying them to the kitchen sink to soak.

Oddly, though my second bedroom has a door opening right on to the kitchen, in this dream it is never used, and every time I exit the bedroom and walk to the kitchen, it is through the other door, walking through the living room and dining room each and every time. When I reach the kitchen and try to add the silverware to the sink, it is so full that it causes the water to start to overflow, so I quickly remove the drain plug so some of the water can drain out.

Somehow at the same time I am gathering more of the silverware to take to the sink, there are also silver push pins holding letters on to a sewing project sitting on the love seat, and I seem to be removing the pins, and some of them are falling on the carpet, where I am afraid I will step on them and hurt my feet. But I continue to remove the silverware from my room in large handfuls.

Meanwhile, there is a young couple sitting in the living room making some sort of comments about there not being enough silverware in the house, and as I am placing ever more of it to soak in the sink, and going back for more, I am hinting they might want to try and wash some of it. I wander back to my room. The desk is finally silverware-free, but I find I am still finding more and more silverware on the floor in old, empty frozen food containers lying around the floor, and I keep gathering it up.

But soon I find myself out driving somewhere in Europe. It might be England, but it might not be. There is a sort of speed bump that has been laid in the road, but instead of stretching horizontally across the road, it is running vertically, maybe a foot from the curb, and it seems to be causing all kinds of drivers problems, as they keep getting too close and running up on it. It isn't causing me all that much trouble, though. I just stay a little further to the left in the lane, and I'm fine.

There are some police here that seem to be writing tickets for some people, and just helping others out, and I ask why they seem to be having so much trouble with this. The cop explains the speed bump is very new, and people just aren't used to it, yet. He tells me that I really ought to speak to the people at Prudential Insurance about it, and point me at a building. They tell me the company is located on the 8th floor, but the building only looks like it is four floors tall.

I walk inside, and find the building has four floors above ground, and maybe 16 or so underground, and so the floor labeled as 8 is actually something like 12 floors underground or something. I'm trying to work out the math in my head, but we forget to press any of the buttons, and end up on what is probably the wrong floor, perhaps either seven or nine. My friend (who is turning into Kevin B.) thinks we have the right floor, and I am almost sure we don't, but I walk off to check.

Nope. Different company, entirely. We have to go one more floor. Kevin was supposed to hold the elevator, but he stepped off it, so actually we now need to wait for it again, so we can get the final floor we need. Soon it comes, and we step back on and push the button.

So the elevator opens again, and I find myself walking into a sort of lounge or bar, and I find that the Claim Jumpers Band from Preston's is about to play. Trapper John is trading some quips with people, and as is often the case, he seems to be kind of negative about it. Somehow he ends up quipping with Kevin B. who is with me, and he ends up annoying Kevin, who bends down and opens up a case, and pulls out his trombone. He is annoyed enough that he is going to play along with the band, hoping to annoy John.

Meanwhile, the Preston's band just finished playing one of the introductory bits that the Good Time Band at Rosie's actually used to play, and a slightly hippie-looking guy is walking away from John, who announces "we have a request to play a song that goes kind of like bum, bum bum, bum bum, bum bum. Hey, we know a song that kind of starts bum, bum bum, bum bum, bum bum!" And they launch into Old Time Rock and Roll. Kevin hears the first few notes, recognizes the song, and promptly fits an odd sort of attachment onto his trombone that lets it power a set of bag pipes, and starts to play along. Very strange.

There's somebody passing around some advertising flyers, and they are annoying me, so I just crumple mine up to toss it away, but it makes a huge amount of noise, drawing attention to me. Meanwhile, Kevin has stopped playing, and is just sort of wandering around, kind of distracted. But when I ask him, he says he is fine. Meanwhile, I find myself remembering a Victor story that I got a good five or six chapters into (in another dream, I think), and wondering why I haven't found the time and energy to finish writing it yet. About this time, I wake up.

01-15-2013 -- [My first day of using 5-HTP, and though my dreams seemed kind of vivid, they also seemed kind of short. And for some reason, I could not be bothered writing them down in great detail. I had two dreams, and this is the sum total of what I wrote down: Ziva, NCIS, and wrestlers at the BPM. Tom Drick, Betty White, and clowns at new church by Winn Dixie. Let's see how well I can expand this, a couple of days later.]

I was at the Buena Park Mall, on the east side near La Palma, half in and half out of the mall. I know I was watching some wrestling, and there were some good matches with some tough wrestlers, and yet they seem to be older matches from back in the 90s, even though I am watching them live.

Somehow, one of the wrestlers is Ziva, from NCIS, and I think she is working undercover, as am I. I think we are talking to some of the wrestlers like Brutus Beefcake and Rick Rude, and trying to figure out who are the faces and who are the heels at this point in time. Oddly enough, Ziva is pregnant at the time. Odd stuff.

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01-15-2013 -- I find myself at a new Church located across the street from Winn Dixie on Orange Blossom Trail. Tom Drick is leading worship, and it isn't in place of Pine Castle UMC or Tarpon Springs UMC, but in addition to both the others. It seems he is turning into a work-a-holic, and is now leading worship at all three churches, simu;taneously.

So we're in this church, and Tom is leading songs, and Betty White seems to be speaking, and is somehow talking about working as a clown back in her early days, while Tom is running out the door, heading for one of his other services at one of the other churches. Familiar people (but nobody I can specifically identify) are running around, discussing things, and I'm just kind of relaxing.

Eventually things calm down and the service seems to be ending, and I find myself out in the parking lot. Betty White may be on a Segway, and seems to be getting ready to leave, and I think her for joining us, and what she had to say, and am trying to ask about her time as a clown, and she indicates that she was never a clown, though she may have played one on TV, and it is all very strange.

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01-14-2013 -- [Since these are short dream fragments, I'm lumping them all together in this post.] Can't remember anything earlier, but I find myself at a dry cleaners, where I need to get some clothes cleaned or fixed, or even get some new clothes. A lot of the clothes seem to be western garb, and some of it is kind of wild looking. Also maybe hints of a security uniform, though not much.

The guy who is supposed to be cleaning the stuff is also giving me advice on what might be good clothes to wear, and is telling me I should get some more fabric, and he will make some more clothes that might go well with what I am already planning to wear.

Somehow I find myself with my dad in his truck, and he is driving me to a fabric store. We're in Buena Park on Crescent, and we're just north of the nursery, and he is driving on the wrong side of the street, because he just plans to dash past the nursery and pull into the driveway at the crossing guards' house, which is where the fabric store is supposed to be, and it is a pretty short distance.

Unfortunately, there is a cop right at La Reina, so we've got sirens after us as we turn in at the house. It turns out to be a bank, and we've gone inside, and dad is pretending to be drunk and falling asleep (how this would get him in less trouble I don't know), but somehow it allows him to knock out the cop.

So we're back on the road, just going a block further, to where we find ourselves in another bank. Dad is now really drunk, and Melody is here, taking care of him. More cops come in, and they are now grabbing me and dragging me out to his truck, even though I am a little kid, far too young to drive, as dad is passed out on the table.

They lead me to the and are badgering me about how I am too young to drive and how dare I drive, and being very rude, while I haven't driven at all, and am starting to get very angry with them, and am about to start yelling at them, before just flying away in disgust.