Nazrax

Church wierdness
I'm at home; Frank is at the computer, watching a video stream from my church. The volume is almost all the way down, but the audio is only slightly too quiet. He clicks half way up on the volume bar before I can stop him. I know that this will make it WAY too loud; it does, but it does it by raising the volume at the church. On the stream, I can clearly see everyone looking around with surprise as the speakers get so loud they distort. I quickly click it back down to where it's supposed to be.

Now I'm walking on the path that runs around the sanctuary. A group of older teen girls is waiting near one of the windows. I can hear one of the guys inside. It's a serious topic, but he's trying to ad levity to it. At the prearranged time, the girls go to the window and start making "ghost sounds." It's pretty obvious to everyone inside, and they laugh. The speaker says something about trying to fix the audio, again to much amusement. Eventually he "fixes" it and the girls stop.

Now I see a bunch of large cooking pots near the front, one of which has a burner built into its base. Something is wrong, and flames are licking around the side. Linda sees it and heads over with a giant cloth napkin. I think she's going to try to smother the fire, but instead she drapes it over the whole thing. I don't think this is going to work - the fire will eat through it in a couple of seconds - but she realizes this too. She quickly bear-hugs the whole thing and carries it over near the door.

Now there's a whole pile of large pots and pans near the door, many with fire seeping out of them in one place or another. She's trying to figure out the best way to deal with them. I'm standing nearby, trying to figure out if I can help, but not being able to bring myself to. I tell myself it's because I don't want to get in her way, but really it's because I don't want to get hurt.

Now I'm outside. My wife and I are talking to another couple. The woman is remarried after her husband divorced her. My wife makes a heated comment that she doesn't trust the woman's x-husband. I have to think for a moment to remember who it is, but when I do remember I nod my agreement.


Taking the train
I'm with my oldest daughter in the car, driving to the subway station. I have some kind of thought about rerouting the major roads to be more direct, but when I picture it on a map, I realize it won't work. We're waiting at a light inside a steel and concrete structure. The ground is a steel mesh. My daughter is excited because it looks neat, but I'm not because it's hard to drive on the stuff (you have to pay a lot of attention to make sure you keep going straight). Up ahead, the passage turns 90 degrees to the left.

Now we're on foot in a hallway, waiting for the train platform to open (a physical gate is blocking the way). There are a couple dozen people ahead of us. I'm telling her that we'll need to hurry if we want to get a good seat on the train. I realize that, since we have to wait to get onto the platform, this is clearly the beginning of the rail line, so they should park the train here for a while, meaning we should have an easier time getting good seats.

Now the gates are opening. They're sliding straight into the walls, multiple segments going different directions. It's actually a really ycool effect.

Now we're walking on the platform. I don't see a waiting train, though I do see a bunch of trains nearby at the train yard. The platform is C shaped, wrapping around two different tracks. I don't know which track we need, so I look for signs. Walking on one arm of the C, I see machines that look like coin operated newspaper dispensers, one of which has the line's name. This isn't the one we need, so we walk to the other arm of the C. The sign there shows our line.

Now the train is here, and I'm boarding; except my daughter isn't here any more, it's my coworker Scott K.

Now we're on board. I'd been planning on taking the first row, since that's what my pastor had advised; but going in, the first row doesn't look that special, and something actually turns me away from it. The last row is pretty special, though, wrapping around from one side of the car, along the back, to the other side. It even looks extra padded, in black as opposed to the gray of the rest of the seats. It's clearly popular, since a bunch of people head straight for it. A couple of people head for the first row, too, so we end up taking the fourth or fifth row. We're close to the middle of the car - there are fewer than a dozen rows.

Now we're on our way. Nearby, a group of coworkers is talking. D?? is saying something about thirteen being unlucky. I turn and say that sometimes thirteen is considered to be the luckiest number. The other guys seem a bit skeptical, but D?? laughs at the idea, saying that anyone who thinks that thirteen can ever be lucky is in for a world of hurt.


The new van
Frank is driving the rest of us somewhere. At the bottom of a hill, he has to pull off the road for some reason. The rest of us get out as well. We were in his car, an older-style red SUV. A sedan comes down the hill, slows, and continues off the road straight for us. It stops at the last moment, coming within inches of driving over my oldest daughter's foot. The driver - a woman - gets out and asks Frank for some kind of assistance. Something seems a little fishy, so Frank and I try carefully to find out more about her. In the end, we figure out the car was stolen from one of the houses on the hill. We get the owners of that house to come out and check, and the husband quickly recognizes his car. He runs a car dealership, so he knows things most people don't, and he's able to recognize his car's VIN. His wife comes up to me with tears in her eyes and gives me a big hug. I hug back, though it feels a little weird; I know she's doing it partly out of gratitude, partly out of shock from having her car stolen. Eventually, she breaks off the hug. She doesn't fully break contact, so I keep a hand on her shoulder as well.

Now I see Frank driving down the hill in a new vehicle. It's a van, courtesy of the dealership owner. It's not much to look at, being rather blocky, but it's large, so it should fit my family nicely.

Now I'm walking around inside the van. I'm amazed at how well everything is packed in here - I see a bathroom and at least four bedrooms, plus a kitchen and living area. I walk into the master suite and see that it's a number of rooms all in a row. The first room is a bathroom of sorts, with a sink, mirror, hair dryer, tiny wall-mounted coffee maker (I hope this isn't the only coffee maker in here), coat rack, and other odds and ends (but no toilet). Passing through there I come into the master bedroom proper. Past it I see a room with the toilet. I walk back out of the suite to the "hub" where all the rooms come together.

Back at the hub, I chose a different path. Now I'm in a room with two bath/shower combos side-by-side. I wish they'd put them in separate rooms with doors, but I know they were under severe space restraints, so I understand. I take a closer look at the left-hand shower. The curtain is clear, which I find odd in this kind of shared setup. Inside, it's deeper than a usual bath, going back about 5 feet. It's got some steps leading down into it. I assume there's a place inside to take off your clothes once you're in the shower (and somewhere to keep them dry), but it's not obvious from where I'm standing. There's a nice large shower-head on the wall, controlled by a normal looking shower knob. There's also a sprayer (controlled by its own knob), though it doesn't look very nice - it looks exactly like what you'd find on a kitchen sink. As I'm looking at it, I realize that water is coming out of it. It's not a torrent, but it's more than a drip. I pick it up and fiddle with it and its knob, trying to get the leak to stop, but I can't manage any improvement. I put it back down, resolving to deal with it later. I notice a funny construction on the front of the main knob and fiddle with it, causing it to shoot out a stream of soap. I'm impressed. Now I'm looking at the other shower. It's identical to the first, even including a leaking sprayer.


Arriving at the nurserey
I'm pulling into the small nursery near our house. It's not a very nice driveway - it comes off the street at an angle, going downhill, with a small parking lot to the right. I turn left off the road, swing down the driveway, then look for a parking space. The only space available is right next to the driveway, so I try to pull a tight U-turn to get into the space. I manage to avoid hitting the car next to me, but I run into a little warning flag right at the edge of the parking lot, knocking the flag off of its pole. Now I'm getting the kids out of the car. It's now a church, and some of the ladies have come out to help me. My wife wasn't able to join me today, and this is the first time I've been to this church, so I'm feeling very awkward.


Fragments
I'm sitting at a table with another man. He asks me who I work for, and I run through my usual story about where I physically work, then about how I was hired by a company that was bought out by my current company. After I finish, he starts to make me an offer. Now there's something going on in a convention center. I see some security people talking about preparations.