Batch

07-01-2014 -- Working a shift at HOI, relieving Jim for the weekend shift on Friday night, and arrive when it is already late, perhaps 9 or 10, but there are still a lot of people running around, going in and out of the building. I stay there for quite a while, just poking around, at first, then hooking up my computer and working on it for a bit, back in the receptionist/security monitor area, but the customers and sales people keep wandering around. Eventually I find lots of people entering the place and heading back to the parts department for some sort of meeting, I decide to check the time, and it is already something like 6 AM, and I've completely lost track of the time.

People have been working and in and out of the showroom all night long, and as it is now morning and the day shift is starting to come in, I realize I had better get the security keys, which Jim had left hanging in the door lock. Actually should have gotten them many hours ago. It's still pitch black outside, and I can't decide if it is because it really is that dark, or if it is the new, super dark tinting on the showroom windows. Turns out it is a case of both. Though it is now getting on to 7 or 8 in the morning, it is that rare day when the sun just doesn't manage to get up until even later. (Once in a great while really did see days like this.)

I decide to start getting my stuff together, including packing the computer up and wrapping the power cord around the flat screen monitor (wish I had had a flat screen back then, would have been so much easier than hauling around a CRT.) The day time security guard arrives and tells me I can go, but I realize I never clocked in on a time card. I figure I will have to hand-write the clock in, and just clock out. The clock and the cards and rack are all here at the reception counter, but as I start trying to find a card, all I can find are other people's cards, which they are already using. After a lot of searching, I finally find a stack of blank time cards buried under some other stuff, and grab one. I try to fill it out, but I am writing my name wrong and messing up the letters and just can't do it. I finally give up on that card, fold it up and stick it in my pocket. Want to get another card and try again, but again I can't find the cards.

By this time the other security guard is really pushing for me to go, and he goes as far as to call his company and complain about another guard being here and not letting himself be relieved. But first off, he is relieving me early, and second off (as I take great enjoyment in telling him) I don't work for his security company, I work directly for the House of Imports ... even if only for a couple of holidays a year. I'm trying to look through the stuff where I found the last card, but the tiny ledge by the window that they were on is getting larger and larger, and soon I can't reach the stuff without climbing onto the ledge, itself. The receptionist has arrived, and wants me out of there, but is at least trying to be helpful about it, and joins the search. But it seems they are just about to switch to new cards that were just printed, and which they were going to start using on the next pay period, in a few days. But these cards are jet black, and nothing is going to show on them from the old time clock, which is the one that is still in use. So I finally give up on managing a time card at all.

I start looking for my stuff, and just can't manage to find it anywhere, so I start to wonder if, even if I can't remember it, I might have already taken it out to the car. I head outside, and start to look for the car (the old two-tone Oldsmobile I had when I was really working at HOI), but it's not there. I am starting to get aggravated, wondering if my car has been stolen AGAIN (happens all the time in my dreams, never in real life) but then I notice the sign by the road, and remember they do street cleaning on Manchester Sunday morning, and either ticket or tow cars left on the road at their discretion. Blast it! They also have heavy construction going on on the street, with only barely enough space at the driveway open to get a car in.

I head back up to the showroom, one assumes to pass on word of what happened, though it is not like the dealership can actually do anything if the police towed the car, but as I approach the showroom stairs, there are several people there screaming at Francisco and the other morning help, yelling about the construction along the road. They are a weird cross between customers, the next dealership down the road, and a news crew, and are screaming about the mess and the difficulty of getting around the construction, and demanding information about how long things are going to be like this. Francisco and the like are just the guys who drive the cars in and out and get them washed and things, so he isn't likely to have detailed information on any construction, and certainly isn't the one who should be asked. So I am apologizing to them for the idiots screaming, not that it has anything to do with me.

I end up walking down the sidewalk, heading toward Orangethorpe and eventually the 7-11, and I end up walking with the folks from the other dealership/news crew. We're dodging around construction, half climbing over small pipes and things, and the entire time the pipes are gurgling, and every few seconds, this thick, slimy, red sludge comes spitting out of the pipes. Some is all over one of the news lady's stockings, some more splashes all over my clothes, though I try to avoid it, and I have to admit it is annoying and disgusting. I keep walking, until I am on my own, and get further and further down the street.

Soon I am passing several short sky scrapers (five or six stories tall, not that great for sky scrapers, but much taller than anything actually on Manchester) and come up with the idea of calling the police. If I stress my security work enough, and sound pathetic enough, maybe I can get my car released for only $20 or $30, so I pull out my cell phone to call them, only to discover that some of the red slime got on the phone and melted the screen, and I kind of collapse to the ground by the fence separating the road from the freeway, and start to cry, as it has all gotten to be too much.

But then I start to realize it is too much. My luck is being so bad, it is absurd and highly unlikely. I glance at the sky scrapers, and realize they are out of place. I look at a sign on the freeway, glance away, and then look back, and the numbers are changing and shifting around. I hold out my hand, concentrate on my fingers, and they start stretching and distorting! I thought so ... I'm dreaming! I concentrate on my finger, and it stretches out five or six feet, and pokes a sleeping feline by the fence, an odd cross between lion, tiger, and perhaps bobcat. The thing jumps up and starts to snarl and stalk me, and I whisper soothingly to it and gesture at it with power, and it starts to calm down. I slowly start to pet it, and every time it starts to get upset again, I mentally calm it.

By this time, the scene around me has changed, and instead of being outside by the freeway fence, I am inside a building. I can remember walking in a back door that was unlocked [though I never did so, things just shifted around me] and I am still trying to soothe the bobcat. Then I hear somebody unlocking the front door and opening the office, and I realize even if they left the back door unlocked, they aren't going to like me being in here. So I bolt for the back door I entered by, and the guy coming in the front hears me and chases after me. I draw his attention by running, and he demands to know who I am. I give the false name of Fred Flores [sorry Fred], but am kind of stuttering, and he starts claiming that I said the name wrong, which indicates I am this or that, and it just doesn't make sense. I run out the building, and into the next building (heading back toward HOI) and it is a cross between the other dealership and a parts store.

I run through the place, duck under a counter, and out a back door, and I find myself on a very strange loading dock where a large crane is picking up box trucks and hoisting them into position at the dock, in the air. I am trying to get out of the way, but I just can't move quickly enough. I manage to avoid the first truck easily, and the second truck with more difficulty, but only barely make it out of the way of the third one. So I am standing there, breathing heavy and trying to catch my breath when the lighting fixtures right above me start to lower, turn into some sort of equipment, and start dripping boiling hot oil on me. It's turning into those nightmare sort of dreams where everything mechanical is coming to life and pursuing me, and I have to kind of flex my mental muscles and sort of scream "Enough! This is still a dream, but it is MY dream!" and things start to settle down ... which is when I wake up.

11-01-2013 -- Dale is just starting to arrive for a vacation ... or perhaps he is just about to leave. It's a dream ... who knows for sure. I am looking into a hotel room somewhere down around Disney, and it turns out to be the hotel from the dream The Affair and the Time Travelers Hotel, though this time it does not involve any time travel. I am looking for a cheap room, though I have no idea how I ever might pay for it. Regardless, when they quote a price that is far too high, I start considering maybe driving over to the Record Parkside Inn (a hotel in Kissimmee that I stayed at for a few days back in June or July) and trying to get a room there.

Somehow I am rolling around in the hotel lobby in an odd cross between a wheelchair and a rocking chair that I just found sitting in the lobby, though it is slightly messed up, and it can only go backward, not forward, which means I am rolling the thing around without being able to see very well just where I am going. I move out into the parking lot, looking for my car. I can't remember if I was driving the Jimmy (my car) or the Lexus (Joe L's car), but whichever one I was in, neither one is anywhere in the parking lot, which means I have had another freaking car stolen! [Never in real life, but all the time in my dreams.]

The problem is, I couldn't lock the doors, but I had my notebook computer and a musical keyboard in the front seat, and even worse than losing the car (since they always seem to be returned eventually, always in a little worse shape than when they were stolen) is losing my computer. I go back into the lobby long enough to try and drop off the wheel/rocking chair, but the problem is as I try to get out of it, the thing falls to pieces. One of the maids is kind of grumbling about it, but waves me off.

I head back out to the parking lot to look around a little more and make sure somebody didn't just move it to the side or something, and as I am looking around, I am approached by a very tall blonde woman (at least 6'6", maybe closer to 7') who greets me by name and seems to know me, though I don't recognize her, and she seems to be somebody I would remember. She says I helped her by giving her a tour a couple of years ago or something. (Since the hotel was in a time travel dream, who knows, maybe it is a couple of years from now.) Anyway, she asks me how I am doing, and I start ranting and raving about how people are always stealing my car.

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11-01-2013 -- I am in the front bathroom in the Hickory house, and am filling the sink with water. I add some soap, then start throwing some clothes in, and it seems I am trying to use the sink for clothes washing or something, but it is too small, and it is just about to overflow. So I start grabbing wet clothes from the sink, and start throwing them into the tub (which is also filled) instead. Problem is, the water is still running, and the sink is about to overflow, and I can't get it to drain, either. Especially since the drain seems to be blocked by bits of lego and stuff. Then I discover I wasn't paying enough attention, and along with clothes I was also throwing in stuff like video tapes and books and comics and stuff, none of which is likely to be improved by being dipped in hot, soapy water. I am trying to get the stuff out, hopefully without ruining it all!

Soon I find myself standing outside the house (which almost instantly turns into a hotel) talking with my mom. She plans to enter the hotel, but we're a good distance away from the door, so I am commenting on how she is going to have to walk a good ways. She says that she and the others have learned to cheat, and as I stand there and try to figure out just what she means, she turns around and just walks right through the wall as if it wasn't there. I am already shocked, but then my mind is fully blown as a group of five or six women, probably ranging between thirty and fifty, walk up. They are all gorgeous, excellent bodies, large breast, completely nude ... and they must be the 'others' my mom was referring to, because they walk right through the wall without a hesitation. I decide on the instant that if they can all cheat, so can I. I turn and try to walk through the wall. I can kind of do it, but obviously I have not practiced, as I get stuck halfway through, and have to kind of push myself the rest of the way. Then I go off looking for the lovely women. Short, but fun.

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11-02-2013 -- [This may have been anything between 1 and 3 dreams that I kept fading in and out of when I wasn't sleeping well. Very disjointed, and not very detailed.] Very Buffy-ish feeling, though I cannot specifically recall any characters from the show, just the sort of atmosphere. I am in a bedroom somewhere, and I feel like I am being watched. I turn my head, and it is like I can almost see something out of the corner of my eye, but when I look directly at it, all I see is a small squiggle on the wall. I reach out to touch it, and something just feels wrong, but if I close my eyes and touch the spot, there is something large there. I give it a solid tug, and something large and black (and previously invisible) somehow thuds to the ground. It seems to be a weird sort of camera, and between the not being able to see it, and the odd feeling to the whole dream, it is seeming very other worldly, very "They Live". I find myself awaking (or possibly false awaking) and breathing heavily, not sure if I am really waking up, or being somehow forced back into not being able to see the controlling stuff that is really there. VERY freaky.

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11-02-2013 -- I am at the Disneyland Hotel in the bar that used to be Sargeant Preston's, but is now just a generic bar, and mom and BC are here with me. We are involved in a court case (which seems to be being judged here in the bar) and Anne is trying to take C away from B. Mom is helping us with the case, and so we offer to buy her a drink, but she turns it down. She may want to keep a clear head, which would, admittedly, make a lot of sense. B has mentioned how Anne has multiple personality disorder [wouldn't that explain a lot?!?], and we are trying to trigger a switch to her very psychotic personality, because if the court saw that, there is no chance that they would ever award Anne custody.

Eventually we win the case, but even after it is all over with, mom won't allow us to buy her a drink. Meanwhile, we run into a reporter who is doing a report on the whole case, and is quoting a Bible verse about Paul, and saying it is called the second amendment. I tell him the Bible doesn't have amendments, and then proceed to explain how he is also taking the verse out of context and twisting its meaning, and he eventually stomps off in a huff.

Soon B takes C home, and I start wandering around the hotel, circling the main building. For some reason my pants are falling down, and I have my underwear on top of my pants instead of underneath, so it is really a problem. I am kind of hiding behind a large electrical transformer and trying to pull my pants up before I start grabbing bits of metal and wire and electrical parts, and for some reason start swallowing them. I find myself in a cross between a laundry room and a sort of mobile home park decked out with lots of picnic tables, and I soon find myself trying to bring back up all the crud that I swallowed without either becoming terribly sick or tearing up my innards, and find myself wondering why I was stupid enough to start swallowing all the stuff, anyway.