All DJ Entries

Four from the night and two from an afternoon snooze.

fragment
1103: D. Traveling as a drug mule. With daughter of the drug boss. It's actress Kristen Bell, as I recognize her from Deadwood.

Cooking Emergency at Work
1233: C. Emergency at work and Myra has to cook something quickly. Something with noodles in it. She will miss her wedding party because of it. Everyone feels bad for her but she's so self-sacrificing. Then I'm in the back seat of a car. Joe R is driving with Myra in the passenger seat and Lance also with me in the back. Joe is dropping Myra off while he is going to the airport. He's talking about how airports around the world are all the same because they all have the same familiar noises. I think he's going to Japan.

The Ig Fish
1317: B. At a Japanese restaurant. Want to order a simple fish dish, salmon I think. The waitress is a middle-aged Japanese woman. She doesn't hear me right. She thinks I order a really rare and poisonous fish called Ig. I point to what I want on the menu. She asks "are you sure?" a few times. She finally accepts it.

Skip to several minutes later. A Fedex package has arrived at the restaurant with the fish I ordered. The waitress shows me the package and says "Look, we had this very rare Ig fish delivered for you!" There are two fish in the package, each wrapped in plastic. This isn't what I wanted but since it was so much trouble I might as well go with it. I hand it back to the waitress with my approval. She sends to it kitchen to be prepared.

I see a young woman at the next table eating the same Ig fish dish. The fish is colored with dark red and blue strips. It has many feather-like fins all over it like a coral lionfish. It's propped up on thick fins underneath, almost like feet. The woman says something about how she can't eat all of it and she likes to cut it a certain way.

fragment
F. I recalled this while writing down the previous dream. Something about making tools for, Google, and Chrome.

Database Cleanup
1811: C. In a house with my mother and two people from high school, Chris and Brian. We work from Frank? He arranged a promotion deal with a satellite TV company. Chris inserts some data in our database but he did it wrong. He's leaving for somewhere so it's left to me to fix it. Brian is trying to explain the situation but he isn't technical enough. I need to actual list of accounts that need to be removed from the database. I look for my mother, hoping she knows where that information is. She is asleep on a couch the kitchen. The kitchen is a bit like the SAV house. The room is mostly dark and there is a very noisy fan on. I wake her up and apologize for doing so. I ask her if she knows which accounts need to be deleted. I turn to Brian and he's dressed like a Boy Scout. He's about to leave for a meeting.

fragment
D. Feels like a documentary about the wild west. Reminded of Deadwood and Red Red Redemption. Something about the development of the Bowie knife. Hunting wild rabbits near a road out in the desert wilderness.

I planned to not record my dreams this night. I just wanted to get a solid night's rest. So no recall in the first half (the usual reason). And for the first couple dreams I didn't write anything down. By the last two, I realized the dreams were worth writing down so I did so.

"Do Nothing"
Lucidity: C
Vividness: C
Control: C
~0800: No written notes, so this is spotty from memory. I don't recall how I became lucid. The first thing I recall is doing a nose plug RC. I'm sitting at a campfire circle. It's dusk. It seems like I'm in the giant doorway of an abandoned factory or airplane hanger. A few other DCs are around the fire. They look like migrant workers. The scene made me think of movies like The Motorcycle Diaries and Mi Mejor Enemigo. I remember my plan: "Do nothing", practice reality checks, focus on all 5 senses.. For taste, I lick a rock on the ground and it tastes like dirt! I vaguely recall that I did things for the other senses. I think I had double vision and that frustrated me. I try to talk to the DCs but I don't recall they said anything.

fragment
~0915: C. No written notes, so this is from memory. First thing I recall is a false awakening. I sense there was more before but no detail. I'm in my own room. I get out of bed and look at the time: 1:30pm. Crap, it is really that late? I get up, take off my Zeo headband and dock it in the bedside unit. It gives me a sleep score of 42. Really? I thought I slept better than that. Wake up for real. It's only about 9. My Zeo score for the night ended up at a more respectable 83.

Unfocused Lucid
Lucidity: C
Vividness: C
Control: D
1100: Just a few notes so this is mostly from memory. I'm in a classroom. It's a art or shop class so all the students are standing at work tables. In the dream, I seem to be distracted or sleepy. The teacher is a woman and there are one or two girls sharing my table. The first thing I recall is the teacher scolding me for not paying attention. So I become aware of what we are supposed to be doing. We have a piece of paper with a drawing on it. On top, we have a piece of tracing paper and we are supposed to trace the drawing under it. The drawing is an architectural sketch of a colonial era boat, I think. So I start tracing but there is a time limit. The teacher is nearby, watching me. She thinks I won't finish in time. The other girl at my table is done and she is also watching me. I feel nervous but I act confident. I think we do two tracings like this. The next task is to trim a large piece of meat. It's really thin, more like a the hide than the flesh. The tracing paper has become butcher paper. I move to a larger table and spread this gross sheet of meat over the paper.

Skip. Now I'm outside in what seems to be a school campus but it's unfamiliar. I'm walking up a grassy hill. There are many other students around. It's bright daylight. I see a girl who I recognize as a high school classmate, Beth. I'm not sure but I think this must be what made me lucid. Her hair is weird, kinda like dreadlocks but also kinda like bananas. Anyway, her face is recognizable. Lucidity and control are low at this point. I don't RC or stabilize. I just march up to her, say hello, and demand a blow job. She starts doing it but soon turns into a weird creature and I stop.

I walk away and I'm starting to get my wits about me. But lucidity, vividness, and control are still pretty low. I try to think of my tasks. The only one I can remember is flying barrel roll. I hesitate because my recent flying has not been good. But I can't think of anything else to do so I jump and spin. It works! I'm able to hover horizontally a few feet off the ground and a spin multiple times. (Wikipedia tells me that this is actually an aileron roll, not a barrel roll) I fly around spinning for about 30 seconds. Maybe I popped out to third-person a bit. My lucidity was fading away.

Skip. Now I'm in a building. The school gym or theater maybe? Maybe I lost lucidity for a while and then regained it here. A troupe of clowns is performing a circus-style act. I am in a corner back stage, near the exit. I see a door but I want to try walking through the wall. I try a few times but fail. I try to convince myself that I can do it. I know this is a dream and that I can walk through the wall. But no luck. Dream ends. In retrospect, this attempt at control was too forced.

Dream Within Dream
1130 C. This was a combination of false awakening and false memory that made it feel like a dream within a dream. I sense that I am out of town for work (this is the false memory). I'm staying in a hotel and I'm sleeping and dreaming. In the dream, I am in a WWII-esque battle among the ruins of a bombed city. I'm with my childhood friend Collin. I only have a tiny pistol in this big fight. I see an enemy across the way and fire a few careful shots. The gun is very inaccurate but I manage to hit him in the head. Everyone is happy and celebrates me as the hero.

I have a false awakening in a hotel room. In the dream, I think that the war scene was a lucid dream and I remember the two real previous lucids. So I congratulate myself for 3 lucids in the night.

Skip. Now I'm back in my apartment. Combining the war dream, the false awakening in the hotel, and the false memory of traveling for work, this all creates the dream within the dream phenomenon. So anyway, I'm home in my apartment but it looks totally different. I sense that, as I returned from traveling, my roommate has just left. I see that he has left a bunch of books and devices about lucid dreaming. He is just starting to pratice having lucid dreams. I go in the bathroom and see that the faucet has been left on just a drip. But over several days, the drip has flooded the room with an inch of water.

Unusual circumstances on this night. Took B-Complex in the evening, about 5 hours before sleep. Didn't get to sleep until I was really tired. Woke up after just 3 hours of sleep to drive roommate to the airport. Was out of bed for about an hour total. Returned to sleep and had the lucid, technically in my third sleep cycle. The rest of the dreams were all very random, but more exciting then my usual boring dreams.

Rooms, Sprinklers, Flying
Lucidity C
Vividness B
Control D
0730: The beginning is jumpy and difficult to recall. I don't seem to have a dreambody, I'm just watching like a movie. It's in a house at a fancy dinner party. A few old people are talking about arranging to meet at a restaurant or country club. Then it's like a commercial. A young woman in a formal dress and hair styling peeks into the room and recommends watching a TV show. Someone asks, which TV show... Buffy? Then I recognize the girl as Alyson Hannigan from that show.

At some point, I sense that I have a dreambody and I am in the house alone. But maybe it has changed into my work office? I step into a room with tall windows all along the far wall. Sunlight is shining brightly through. The floor is grass instead of carpet! The grass is overgrown and spotted with weeds. I think to myself that someone in the office should maintain the grass. I think the new employee should have to do it as an initiation.

I walk out the side door of this room. It leads outdoors and now I am in the side yard of my old house on Daisetta. It's a narrow concrete strip that leads to the backyard. I walk to the backyard and it's fairly familiar. Except there are a row of short fake palm trees lining the lawn. They have big plastic bananas hanging from them and I think it looks really tacky. The sprinklers are on and they are really strong. The water shoots about 6 feet high and is soaking the whole yard, not just the grass. I start to think this is weird. But I don't want to get wet so I turn and run back into the door I came out of. In the Daisetta house, this should be the garage but it's still the room with grass. I notice the size of the room is about right for the garage though. Now sprinklers are on in here too! Ok, I really must be dreaming and I tell myself to do a reality check. I run through one more door to be out of the water.

I plug my nose and confirm I'm dreaming. Yay! I remember that it's been a long time since being lucid. I had a scene in mind but I'm not sure how to get there from here, so I go outside and just start flying toward the horizon. But my flying sucks! I can only hover a few feet off the ground and move very slow. Then I remember one of my cues to invoke the Superman schema: Lois Lane is in trouble and I have to save her! My flying gets a bit better. I'm flying faster and higher but still not great. I try to focus on where I am going. On the horizon, I see an ominous factory on top of a mountain. Lois must be trapped inside! Smoke is billowing out. Then I see an explosion. I sense the urgency and danger and try to fly faster. But it seems so far away. Discouraged, the dream fades.

Family and Old Acquaintances
0849: C. Very jumpy and random. At Daisetta house with the whole family. Mother hands me a book about politeness and etiquette. She says my father read it but doesn't follow it. I'm supposed to go to work but I'm staying home late. I'm dressed in a blue stripped shirt with matching shorts, which I think is weird. I remind myself to change into pants before leaving for work. Then talking to my sister and one of her friends. Then I get a message on my Xbox from someone with initials C.C. I struggle to think who that is. At first I think of Sean, but that's way off with S.F. The closest I can think is E.B., Erinne from high school. I turn and see her in the room at an impressive desk. She's dressed nicely and looks like a lawyer or executive. I ask if she knows who C.C. could be. She asks me what her own phone number is. I'm confused. Do you mean your non-cell phone number? I pull out my phone to look. See calls her own house and talks to her housekeeper. Then my mother brings a big slice of ice cream cake. My sister and I eat it with our hands.

Saving Private Ryan
1012: C. In a war setting. In a small troop, looking for someone like the movie Saving Private Ryan. We find him and he's really shaken up. He's the only survivor of a big battle. I let him use my phone to make a few calls, but no one answers. Then my phone rings with an incoming call, but it's a wrong number.

Speed Racer, Secret Mission, Rugby
1123: C. I start as a racecar driver. Feels a bit cartoonish like Speed Racer. But it's just my cover for a secret spy mission. I'm in a team of spies with me, Hugh, Leonardo DiCaprio, and maybe a couple other people. We are in some third-world country. I am reminded of the movie Spy Game (but DiCaprio wasn't in that one). Leo comes up to a fruit stand to make the secret exchange, pretending to buy a basket of fruit. But something goes wrong and we have to abort the mission and run away.

Then it seems to be years later. Hugh and I have returned to the same place. This time, his two younger brothers are with us. Maybe we have come to avenge Leo? We go to the same fruit stand. Some of our faces and Leo's are on "wanted" posters. So we send in the brothers because they are new. The vendor at the stand starts arguing with them. Things seem to go bad again.

Now I'm in the middle of a game that's a bit like rugby, but not quite. I sense that I am not good at this game. I'm on the team to fill a spot and I shouldn't interfere with my better teammates. But the ball comes to me and a run and kick a field goal. We win and I climb up on the uprights, which look like the big arch in Chinatown.

I Thought I put in a good effort this night, but no lucids.

Spooky
0328: C. Typically weird first cycle dream. Trying to become an actor? Playing DDR-like game with the arrow keys of a keyboard with my left hand. Images of playing cards. The game is hard and I can't keep up. As I miss the notes, the screen gets distorted and starts playing really spooky wailing noises. I feel frightened, like I've offended some evil spirits. Just a dream... Just a dream...

Fighting the Soviets
0652: C. Small troop in the army. It's me, childhood friend Ashwin, a random third guy, and our commander is my apartment building manager. There's a military stand-off with the Soviet Union. Something about railroads. We sneak into Russia on mini-trains. We are wearing USC hats instead of helmets and that seems to fool the Soviet army guards. We fight and win two small skirmishes. A woman thief has been stalking us. She can turn invisible. She steals all the coins out of Ashwin's pocket. I see her and ask to stay and help us. She is familiar but I can't place her. Long black hair and tan. We settle down in an abandoned train station to sleep.

WBTB+MILD 10 minutes

Random School Scenes
0800: C. Not sure of the order of events here. It was probably the reverse of my notes. Going to junior high during the summer. My PE coach is Gordon Ramsey. I'm in third person. Looking at myself I'm wearing blue jeans and a white polo shirt, the same as Gordon. I look really buff. Then in math class. A friend, Chris, is sitting behind me and gets called out of class to the office. He asks me to watch his backpack. When class ends, I leave the backpack with the teacher. But I forget the teacher's name and am embarrassed. Then in a giant bathroom with many trough urinals like a sports stadium. Most of the boys in the bathroom are much younger than me.

WBTB+MILD 60 minutes, read DV, B-Complex vitamin, water and piece of bread

Ice Cream and Being Locked Out
1000: C. This might have been two or three dreams connected with hallucinations or short waking day dreams. At a strip mall looking for something to eat. Pass through a Weinersnitzel. Find an ice cream stand. Get a medium cup of strawberry (residue from a few days ago).

Now at home. I live with Lance? I'm in my room and hungry again. I leave to get some ice cream across the street. Forgot my keys and locked out. Find an open gate in the parking lot which leads to a bunch of maintenance access tunnels and ladders. I follow these and they lead to a trap door in the floor of Lance's room. He is watching TV. I apologize for intruding and explain what happened.

Now I am back outside, maybe the next morning. I sense I am well dressed. I lay down on a mattress that is lying at the curb of the street. The street is dirty and the area is a bit sketchy. I am near an intersection. A man walks out into the intersection to block traffic and starts taunting a guy in a van. Another man in a pizza delivery car gets out of his car and yells at the guy in the street to move out of the way. The guy apologizes and says the man in the van he is taunting is his friend. The pizza man returns to his car but he has locked himself out. He pushes his car out of the way.

Still laying in the street on a mattress, I notice the building next to me is one of those payday loans places. A few really hot women step out of it and walk near me. One steps over me in a skirt. It seems like they are trying to get my attention.

Thief with Powers
1127: C. I'm in a sketchy part of a city. I climb along rooftops and I can slip through water drains and air vents. I use these powers to sneak into a donut shop and steal all the money from the cash register. For a while, I continue to stake out this shop. I am watching for the reaction of the people and waiting for another opportunity to steal more.

Elusive First Cycle Dream
0430: D. First cycle. Once again that strange feeling in the first cycle of having slept for a long time. When I woke up, I was a bit upset that maybe I had slept through the whole night without any recall. But when I looked at the clock I realized I'd only been asleep for about 75 minutes. By this time, the vague recollection of my dream had mostly faded. This is what I wrote: No plot recall. Just feeling of missing something. Feeling of change. Chasing to recover something lost. In retrospect, maybe the feeling was about the dream recall itself, not within the dream. Or maybe the feelings from the dream spilled over into waking. Anyway, moving on.

Girlfriend in India
0630: B. This is likely some residue of a conversation I had with a friend about his Pakistani girlfriend. I'm in India living in a cheap apartment. I'm dating an Indian girl. She looks like the contestant from MasterChef. We're fooling around in the bed and she wants to go further. I don't want to or maybe I'm just teasing her. Suddenly I'm wearing my sleep mask. She pulls it off and tells me to stop acting silly. We end up just cuddling and seem to drift off to sleep.

I wake up in the hallway outside the apartment. The girl is gone. Hugh lives next door. He's exiting his apartment and locking his door. He notices me and stops to talk. He's heading off to work and he's wonder why I'm sleeping in the hallway. He leaves.

I stumble into the apartment but now it's where the girl and her parents live. I'm trying to figure out how to turn on the A/C and hang a "do not disturb" sign for the maid. The girl and her parents are talking around a small kitchen table. The mother is concerned that her daughter is dating a boy. The father is proud of the job he has done raising her. Then an air raid siren goes off. The mother tells the girl to go tie up the reindeer.

Just Weird
0755: C. I live in a house is feels familiar but isn't recognizable. It's really hot and humid. At school, there's a contest to do something with two sheets of fabric. I guess I won and I bring home two blankets. I talk with my mother and sister about where to put them. Suddenly, instead of two blankets, it's a colorful table placemat and a frozen packaged crab. The placemat is white with blue and orange stripes. The crap is bright orange and the package says it's from Mexico. I decide to put the two items in the dining room where there is a very long large dining table. But I guess we barely use this room. There's a spider web above the table and a live crab walking across the table. My sister breaks the spider web and the spider falls near her. She and I are both freaked out and run out.

Practicing Dream Control
0905: B. A short WBTB where I used the bathroom and had a few slips of water. Practiced MILD suggestion going back to sleep. I sense there was more plot earlier in the dream but don't recall, so I pick it up as I'm in a nice quiet residential neighborhood cul-de-sac. It's a sunny autumn afternoon. All the houses are two-story with nice lawns, trees, and Halloween decorations. I enter one house in the middle of the block. Inside it's a crowded house party. I walk up the stairs to the second floor, stepping sideways through the crowd. I see a guy who I recognize as Nick, a friend from high school. I'm confident I'm dreaming and I'm ready to execute my plan. I continue walking through the upstairs of the house, walking with purpose and determination. I'm looking at my hands and rubbing them.

My first task is to touch and pick up a few objects, which I do as I'm walking through a bedroom and then a hallway. I think I picked up an empty can of peas. I'm looking for a window that overlooks the front of the house. I find one and run and jump through. It's a small window so I hit the wall as well but I go right through and hover gently down to the street. I don't recall hearing a crash so I don't know if I smashed through or if I passed through, but it's satisfying enough to count as my task.

So I'm back out in the middle of the cul-de-sac street. I'm feeling pretty confident and ready to try my next task. I want to summon a girl from work named S and then teach her to fly. So I'm looking for a door. The house on the corner catches my eye. I walk up to the front door of the house and I think, yup, this is S's house. I picture her opening the door and then I knock. A woman opens the door but she's not right. She has many of S's features and her voice is similar, but she looks about 50 years old. I roll with it. "Hi, you must be S's mother. Is she home?" She replies: "Yes, come on it!"

The house is a bit dark inside and decorated with oriental rugs which kinda makes sense. I ask, "Is she upstairs?" I look at the stairs, expecting her to be coming down. Again, there is a woman there but she still isn't S. Again she has similar features, tan and pretty with long black hair. She looks about 35. The girl I'm looking for is supposed to be about 25. The mother says exactly what I'm thinking: "Oh, that's her older sister." I try one more time. "Could you call S down?" Once more, another S impostor comes walking down the stairs. This one was pretty close. Her age and height are right and her voice is right on. S's Turkish accent is probably the most distinctive thing about her IWL. But this girl isn't as tan and she has freckles on her face. Hmm, my confidence is a bit shaken. I talk to this girl a little, I forget about what. I give her a hug and a couple of friendly kisses. I decided to leave and move on.

I walk outside. I'm a bit discouraged. That didn't go as planned. I recall the earlier part of the dream and, come to think of it, my lucidity is probably only average. I'm thinking of what to do next. Meet Dream Guide? Hmm. I look at the house at the far corner of the street. It has the most Halloween decorations on the block. I try to imagine opening the door to see my Dream Guide, who I imagine is Yoda. But on the heels of the less than perfect summoning, I decide to do something else. I resolve to spin to a new scene. I picture my office and start spinning. As I'm spinning for about 10 seconds I still see the neighbor scene around me. Hmm. I slow down. Should I close my eyes? What if that makes me wake up. I tell myself, don't think about closing your eyes! Of course, I close my eyes and wake up. Ah! Rookie mistake. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Missed Lucid, Facepalm Worthy
1125: C. I had trouble falling asleep after the last dream so I got up and read DV for a while and then got back to bed about an hour later. This dream might as well have been a giant light in my eyes screaming "Dreamsigns!" Yet I blew it. I'm walking in a bright outdoor school yard. The buildings are familiar to my high school. It's lunch time and it's crowded with students. Everyone is wearing the navy blue uniforms from my junior high. I think, hmm, if this were a dream this would totally be a dreamsign. I look around to see if a recognize anyone. I see a group of people that I didn't like in high school that often recur in my dreams. Yup, that would be another dreamsign. I walk near them through the crowd, hoping to overhear their conversation without them noticing me.

I continue through the crowd and see a white soccer ball bouncing toward me. I think, now see if I were lucid, I'd probably kick this soccer ball. I kick it but I still don't clue in that I'm aware that I'm dreaming. I actually feel disappointed that I'm not lucid and any amount of lucidity or dream control that I might have had fades away. I decide to leave. I walk to the parking lot but I don't find my car where I expect it. I get a little worried. I wander around pressing the lock button to trigger the car horn. I finally hear the horn on the far side of the school, which now is only one building that looks like a hamburger stand with some covered benches near it. I walk to my car and recognize it. End.

Yet another LD cut short by my self-doubt about stabilizing. I've rehearsed my stabilization routine so many times that I think I've developed a fear that it won't work. Next time, I think I need to shatter that doubt. I'll say "This is my world and I can do anything." I will be bold and confident.

0010: Sleep. I daydream of Never. I think maybe if I take a nap in Never then I might enter the dream world. Nothing happens but it's pleasant.

0256: C. I'm in the SAV house. Mother and sister are with me. We are talking and worried about money. I'm planning to start college. In fact, I've missed the first day. My classes are already scheduled. We decided that I should go. Then we are folding laundry, but they don't hang my pants the way I like. I say this, but quickly thank them for their help. Sister tells me something about "action opportunities". I ask if I should accept the offers on campus to join research experiments for free pizza or money.

Then suddenly there are a few unfamiliar men in the room talking. One is old and dressed like a cowboy with a cowboy hat and long white beard. He talks about how he's such a good salesman. I explains that power is more important than position. If all you have is position, you are vulnerable.

0436: B. I am on my old college campus. I get there really early for the first day, before anyone is awake. I'm not really dressed or prepared. I have on an undershirt like I wear to sleep. I sneak into a dormitory to lay down on a couch in a common room. A guy down the hall recognizes me but I don't recognize him. His hair is messy from sleeping and he has a scraggly beard. He looks for a video tape in a pile. He says I made it years ago and it will prove that I was here before. I don't believe any of this and leave.

I keep looking at my blackberry where I have the times and room numbers of my classes. My first class is in a building called "NAS-ISI" but I don't know where that is. I don't have a map. I wander to the center of campus where there is supposed to be a big map. It's a cloudy, foggy earlier morning and there are lots of DCs walking around campus. A pretty girl, maybe the student body president, is talking on a megaphone to welcome people. A lot of people are wearing the same plain off-white hooded sweatshirt. I think there's a street vendor selling this sweater because it's cold (like selling umbrella when it's raining).

I can't find the campus map and I have enough sense to think this is weird. But not enough sense to become lucid. Instead I start wandering through buildings hoping to find it. I know the general direction of the engineering area so I think I'll probably find it. The buildings don't have hallways, just rooms. So I'm walking through classrooms where classes are taking place. In one, I accidentally bump a guy in the back of the head. I say "oops, sorry, very sorry" and continue walking. I hear him mumble, "you're not really sorry". I walk through a few other rooms and reach a dead end so I turn around. I go back through the same room and the same guy says something sarcastic trying to be funny and calls me "Smith". I say sarcastically back "You're funny" and keep walking. Again, I here him mumble "you don't mean that either." I feel so clever.

In another building I pass a classroom and see an old high school friend Chris. He wants to talk but I don't want to stop. I tell him I promise we can catch up another time. He says "we have an understanding" which I recognize as an allusion to an email I had sent him. I feel bad for not being friendly, but I keep searching for my class.

Yet another building is labeled as a church. Inside, a bunch of DCs are dressed colorfully and holding musical instruments. Through that building I reach an outdoor area that I think is the engineering area. The fog has lifted. I look around for a campus map again with no luck. Again, I think this is strange. I just stand looking around as people walk by. I feel hopeless and embarrassed.

0630: C. This was after a WBTB of about 45 minutes. I ate some bread, drank some apple juice, read, and journaled. I'm driving with my father on 2-lane highway out in the middle of nowhere. We come upon two wrecked cars in the opposite lane and stop. Maybe we hit something too? Father is looking at our own car. I walk over to the other cars. One is a old beat-up muscle car and the other is a like bank security van or maybe a military APC. It was a head-to-head collision and both cars' front ends are wrecked. An oldish man who looks like a trucker has the hood up and he's replacing the spark plugs. I think that's strange because it's not really going to help the situation.

Three or four DCs come walking up to the scene along the side of the road from the far direction. I think they must be from one of the crashed cars and went looking for help. I ask "Are these your cars? Did you go for help?" They say no and keep walking by. Scene fades.

False awakening. I open my eyes and I'm in bed. The color of the sheets is the correct brown but the light is coming from the left when it should be behind me. Also I don't have my sleep mask. I'm pretty confident I'm dreaming and am about to RC but I hear a voice that startles me. I look around the room. It looks like a hotel room. It's mostly dark. It seems bright outside but only through a think crack in the heavy window drapes. There's a man in the room. He looks like he's in the mafia. He has greasy hair, a tight black shirt, slacks, and a gaudy gold necklace. Have I been kidnapped by these men? I try to refocus. I can't move my left arm. I don't panic. I look at the ceiling and notice the texture. I feel the bed below me. I sit up and nose-plug. Things feel a bit better.

The man sees me get up. He's to my left near the open door. He looks like he's about to leave. I think I see another man, similarly dressed, in the hallway outside the door. The first man warns me not to leave. I say I'm just going to use the bathroom. I get up and I'm only wearing underwear. I walk to the bathroom to my right while the man leaves and locks the door. I touch the walls. The dream is moderately stable but I'm worried I will lose it if I don't do more to stabilize it. In retrospect, it was probably the worrying that was causing the instability.

I'm in the bathroom and close the door. I say "stabilize, sharpen, clarity." It seems to be working. I think of what to do next when the shower catches my eye. I imagine warm water running over me. Would that help stability? Or would that make it worse? Maybe it would get foggy and blurry. (I wish I could go back into that dream just so I could slap myself in the face.) I decide not to shower. I start to walk out of the bathroom but I have no plan. I only feel the worry about stability. Dream fades. Tried to DEILD but no luck.

0945 C. I think this dream was longer but I don't recall the first part. This is obviously some residue from the day when I watched a Dane Cook comedy act where he did a bit about The Price Is Right. I'm in my own apartment in the middle of the day. I'm watching The Price Is Right but I notice the set looks wrong. The backgrounds are dark blue and The Big Wheel is smaller and also blue. It looks like it has glitter all over it. I remember thinking this was strange, but not enough to become lucid. A woman spins The Wheel and wins a bunch of money. She gets excited and jumps around. On the set near The Wheel are two soda vending machines, one Coke, the other Pepsi. The woman pushes a button on the Pepsi machine a few times but nothing happens. The show cuts to commercial.

The commercial shows a futuristic Pepsi machine. A hand gets a cup, fills it with soda, then holds it under a spout that shoots out cold bubbles. A male narrator is talking over the images. I don't remember everything he said but at the end, it's a Coors ad, not Pepsi.

Wow, what a crazy weird night. I recalled 5 dreams from all 5 sleep cycles, all non-lucid. This is the second night ever that I've recalled a dream from the first cycle. Maybe I have broken through that barrier.

These dreams are irregular for me. They have scenes and characters that are familiar but I've never recalled dreaming about them before. It must be because of the book I'm reading "Dreamgates." And there's more weirdness that I'll note along with each dream.

0155: Sleep. Before falling asleep, I was in a very imaginative state. Zeo reports 20 minutes of wake before dropping into light sleep. It wasn't a dream and I don't think it was hypnagogic hallucinations. I didn't see any sensory imagery, just internal visualization. I was just day dreaming but it was very easy maintain the dreamplot. It seemed to flow on it's own. I imagined other characters and they seemed to speak and act without my influence. I was looking for a path or portal into the dream world. I met two French girls, Juliette and Maire who I invited to follow me into the dream world. We wandered around, asking people where to find the portal. But we didn't find anything. I remember I was still awake when I changed positions in bed and I no longer felt I was in the daydream.

0350: B. First cycle dream. It was blurry and jumpy but extremely personal and emotional. This is the first time I've ever recalled dreaming about Jen (ex-girlfriend of two years) which is odd because she was such an important part of my life for so long. And there's the whole father drama. I work for some company. The workplace is a house. It reminds me of my godparents' house. My sister, Dave work there and also... Jen?! I don't think I even saw her but but I strongly feel her presence. I am slacking off from work. I show up late. I'm unreliable. Dave is sitting in a wide hallway with a big laptop on his lap. He's waiting for my father but he hasn't arrived and everyone is worried. I feel disgusted. So typical. I think it is because he is unreliable too. Then I learn my father is a key witness in a criminal case and the criminals are hunting him. I still feel no empathy. He's in a car chase. My sister is listening to the radio or TV for news updates.

I go to the kitchen and lay down on the tile. Two cats (or dogs?) come near me. I grab food out of their bowl and pour it on the floor in front of them. Jen's workstation is in the kitchen but she isn't here. I sense she is out to lunch. I look over some papers laying on the floor that she was working on. It looks like geometry homework. I see a bunch of triangles that are paired in twos to form quadrilaterals.

My sister says my father wants to get into police custody. I think "Good, so he can go back to prison." But he actually wants their protection. Mel warns me that he may have been killed but that hasn't been confirmed. I wake up but it takes me a while to realize where I am. I'm feel strong emotions. It feels like the dream happened hours ago and I've been in bed thinking about it for all that time, but it was actually only moments ago. This is the first time in a while that I had to remind myself that "it was just a dream" to calm me down.

0520: Back to sleep after begin awake since the last dream. I got up and read "Dreamgates" for a while to get my mind off the last dream.

0630: C. I'm in a war that looks like Vietnam-era. We are fighting against our own people in two teams with real ammunition and death. It's like capture the flag. Each team is defending an old warehouse in an area that seems like an improvised airfield. The warehouses are full of crates, barrels, guns, ammunition and explosives. Hugh is on my team. The other people on both teams are familiar but I can't put names to them. Some a definitely women. I feel upset because our team is losing. The other team keeps raiding and retreating our warehouse, killing a few people at a time.

I grab a rifle and load it with explosives rounds (but later they don't explode). It's a bold-action clip-feed rifle with just four rounds per clipl more of a WWII-era gun but whatever. I start kicking ass with Hugh's help. We kill everyone on the other team. Only Hugh and I are left. We stand over a dead body and look at a black and white map. It looks like the US with some states shaded in pencil. I distinctly remember the shape of West Virginia.

0810: D. I don't remember where I am. Two groups of friends compete for my attention. One group is drinking Scotch. The other is going to meet Hugh's work colleagues. I choose the Scotch. Something illegible about email? We ditch the other group by stopping the elevator and getting off on a different floor.

0850: B. Zeo shows a short sleep cycle for this one. Maybe it was kind of a DEILD from the previous REM period. Either way, this was a long dream. Some very unusual characters in this one, especially Megan who I've been trying to dream about for several weeks in a different scenario. I start out at work. I'm generating some codes. Then I go to help some girl with her computer. Chris finds me and says "You need to file an AC-10 expense report for those codes." I say, "OK, I'll do it first thing after lunch."

I exit the office. Outside it's suddenly a school yard like my junior high. It's crowded with people. An old friend from middle school (can't remember his name) comes up and hands me a wad of cash. He has short spiky hair and wears braces. He wants me to launder the money by generating codes at work. I tell him it will be harder now because of the expense reports. The crowd disperses as people go to class. The bell rings. I'm late for class but I'm not worried at all.

I walk up some outdoor stairs and walk through a covered hallway. It's suddenly raining and this part of the school is under construction. There are clear plastic tarps everywhere covering stuff. I walk through this towards my classroom. I walk past a group of cheerleaders in the hallway. They are wearing white shirts with the sleeves rolled up and black shorts. The one talking is Megan from high school. She's saying that she didn't have a cell phone all summer and it totally sucked. I walk past them and enter my class room.

The room and teacher are like one I remember from middle school. I'm very late but no one cares because I'm always late. In the row of desk near the door, I see Britney Spears and another female singer, maybe Beyonce. I play it cool and walk past them to my normal seat in back, next to Britney. Chris is sitting at the far corner of the room and I'm reminded of the AC-10 expense reports for work. The teacher hands out kevlar vests to everyone. I have no clue why. He also passes around a slip of paper with two rows of numbers handwritten on it. It's a secret code to activate the kevlar vest. The paper gets pass to me by Britney next to me. I look at it. It's long. Part of it looks something like 1120621. I say obnoxiously and playfully loud: "Holy shit. How am I suppose to memorized this? It's got all kinds of one's and two's." Britney and the other singer laugh and look at me. I look at them and say playfully: "Holy shit, Pop Stars. What are you doing here." I notice they are wearing the same outfit as the cheerleaders outside. They are cheerleaders and are only sitting in this class to be out of the rain.

1052: C. This is a crazy absurd dream which is weird for this time of night. It jumped around a lot too. Usually my weird dreams are in the first half of the night and the second half are more literal. I'm caring for a child. Maybe he is my own son. His name is David. He grows abnormally fast, like the movie Jack. He's a 5-year-old boy in the body of a 30-year-old man. He wants to learn about lucid dreaming. I send a post card to my mother telling her about this interest.

I have a strange encounter at a doctor's office. The doctor, male, says he isn't going to treat David any more. There's also a female nurse in the room. I have to take David home.

Now I'm with a bunch of high school classmates at a miniature golf course. There is also at least one work colleague there too and some unfamiliar faces. I think David is there, but I'm not really watching him. Everyone is playing golf, but instead of golf balls and clubs we use pinecones and dice that we roll with our hands. Of course, these things don't roll very well. There's about 20 people playing at the same time on the same hole, so everyone is blocking each other and also people are playing out of turn. But I'm pretty good with the pinecone. On the last hole, it's my turn to roll and everyone watches with anticipation. But one extremely hot girl is bent seductively over the hole. She is unfamiliar. She is brunette with a tight red tank top over a killer rack. Maybe she's wearing sunglasses. Of course, I miss my shot. I say "I was distracted."

Notes: Got to sleep early and woke up in the middle of the night. Tried for hours to fall back to sleep and finally gave up. Watched a movie and eventually returned to sleep for a few hours.

2215: Sleep

0215: B. I am in SAV. I am hanging out with Ben. He lives at the sound end of the complex. I think I am helping him move. He gets upset and I want to leave but I am still at his house. He and his older brother (doesn't exist IWL) are starting th make other plans for the evening. They want to go smoke pot? I feel left out but I can't leave yet for some reason. I keep thinking about how JavaScript doesn't have statics. I think the statements var s = 0; this.static = s;.

Now it's Dave in the house instead of Ben. He is dressed up in black and white. He's leaving soon and is looking for a sweater. He yells at his mother but she doesn't have it. She is pregnant and moves slowly. He yells "Get hobbly!" to tell her to hurry. I leave and start walking home. I pass by a playground. People are talking about how it is new. From the second story of the apartment building, there is a slide. People are saying that a slide is safe for kids than stairs or a ladder. A young girl is saying this as she is climbing a ladder.

0815: Back to sleep

1030: B. I'm in a big indoor mall. I think the whole mall is sports themed. I'm there with work people and old school people. We are at a sports bar. Somebody has a giant old typewriter in front of them at the table. Lucas is there and we are trying to avoid him. He wants to be called "Lazurus" or "Laz". I change tables a few times to avoid him. Each time I close my table with my credit card. I'm drinking beer, something pale. At the last table, my credit card doesn't go through. I look at the card as the waitress hands it to me. It's a white(?) American Express card. Something to do voting? It has some letters on it that are supposed to say how it should be used. I open my wallet and it's all messy. I pull out my green AmEx card (from the wrong slot IWL) and everything is fine.

There is a competition among some people in our group. I'm not participating, just watching. It's being televised by ESPN. The events are outdoorsy things, like chopping wood. There are three events in different parts of the mall. The whole group walks around the mall between events. My teeth keep falling out and I try to stick them back in and hold them in place. I don't stay until the end of the last event. I don't know who wins. I wander around the mall trying to find the exit. I reach a dead end, which seems familiar for some reason. I turn around and head a different way. I run into Ashwin. He was in the competition. I guess he didn't win. He asks me about the ESPN broadcast. I think he wants to be sure that his mom sees it. Then we talk about tennis.

1248: C. I go to work, but it seems like a car wash. It's just me, Frank, Lucas, and a faceless artist. They are debating with the artist about the color of a couch and some 2D images for characters that can be pieced together for different poses. The couch is in the car wash tunnel. I say nothing. Lucas suggests going to Costco to buy more couches. He leaves. Then a bunch of young kids enter the room. Frank comes up to me to confront me about missing work. We try to talk over the noisy kids. He says "You're not well." I say "No, I'm not." He says "We were comparing you before and after and you're not the same. You're dressed like a kid." I look down and see I'm wearing the company baseball jersey. Frank is wearing the same thing.

1700: Afternoon WILD nap attempt. I slept but no dream recall. It had an effect on my sleep during the night. Zeo shows that my deep sleep periods happened late in the night instead of early.

0025: Sleep

0700: B. I'm playing a computer game with Hugh. It's a real time strategy game where the map folds around like a paper origami cube.

Then some old high school people join and we start playing soccer, but we're calling "football". They aren't friends. They are the group that hated me. We are playing inside an old abandoned two-story house. The people what to punish me for some reason so they put me on the team with all be bad players. We are defended a goal in the upstairs of the house, so I tell my team to defend the stairs. The other team is trying to get the ball up the stairs. I steal the ball from a girl and body check her. She falls down the stairs. She is hurt and bleeding from the mouth, but not too bad. I'm not apologetic but everyone else is upset and confronts me. I say that a real soccer player could have handled a hit like that, so it's her fault.

We stop playing and sit on some old couches in the abandoned house. I'm sitting between two girls. The girl I hurt is on my right. She is still upset but not seriously hurt. People are talking about how mean I am. We talk:

Girl: "My problem is you and your problem is me."
Me: "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one."
Girl: "OMG, I can't believe you just said that."
Me: "It's a Jay-Z song."
Girl: "Yeah, I know that."
Me: "My problem is me. I am my own problem."


0810: C. I start with a false awakening. I am immediately skeptical. I'm in my own room. I look around and it's fairly convincing. The light outside is late afternoon. That's pretty strange. Also, the window blinds are horizontal when they should be vertical. Nose-plug-check, confirmed. Now I notice there is a girl in my bed, to the right. She is just waking up too. We are both under the covers but not touching. I see she has on a blue polo shirt. She is young, maybe 16. She has long straight brown hair with bangs. I ask "Who are you?" She starts talking but I'm not really listening. She's saying something about the neighbors. I'm just staring at her trying to notice details. She has brown eyes and freckles. I'm inching toward her, but not sure what my plan is. The dream starts to fade. I realize that I should have stabilized earlier and I just feel dumb. Dream ends.

0/3 Lucid/Recall

Notes: Went to bed really early on a holiday. Woke up in the middle of the night and went back to bed. About 12 hours total sleep.

2212: C. I work for a woman brewing beer. I arrange the beer bottles... to cool it down. The woman is upset to learn that the... in the same business. I tell her I will help.

0621: B. It's back to school. Prep is really in. All the cool kids are waring prep. I go to my math class. Matt R... Nintendo games. I refused because I have Madden 2010. This upsets him. .... borders between states. The teacher puts a bunch of crackers along a map. Everyone is class grabs them. Ashwin was the most and I am second. I have 6 total.

07:09: C. At school, Lance and I are selling pot to people. I think it's Ben from elementary school. We are talking about Los Angeles compared to the countryside. A lion follows us and it makes us afraid.

0/3 Lucid/Recall

Notes: Fell asleep drunk on bloody marys.

Analysis: Very irregular waking times for me, doubtless due to the alcohol. I usually have 90 minute cycles with uncanny accuracy. Poor recall and motivation this night. The dreams seemed rather plain and unimaginative. I observe two obvious influences from the waking day in the dreams.

2300: Sleep

0400: D. Something about new Facebook accounts and importing old friends.

0603: D. Mostly unreadable. Something about smoke alarm going off which woke me up [I cooked pork chops on the stove for dinner]. On waking up, I was disciplined enough to suspect FA and did an RC; I was indeed awake.

0850: B. I'm with a bunch of people, some from work some from high school. It's a bit like Disneyland. I have a girlfriend. She is white. I don't know who she is. We all play this game where we write personal stuff about us on these pre-made cards. I spend a lot of time in the bathroom. The bathroom is weird. People try to use the sinks as urinals [I drank two glasses of water prior to this sleep cycle]. At the end, the personal secrets are revealed. My girlfriend doesn't know me very well. At some point we're in a creek under a bridge.

Type: DILD.
Lucidity: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Vividness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Notes:
In this long dream, I became lucid once but decided to go with the plot of the dream.

I was in the atrium of my school, a large, spacious central room with a triangular roof made of glass panels. You could hold a party in the room, it was so big. The doors were all lighter teal, and the tiles on the floor were large white and tan colors. On opposite sides of the room there were three doors, each to separate classrooms. The other two sides hosted the large main door and the back door, which both had large glass panels so you could see outside. I was outside the door of a classroom, leaning almost right up against the wall, waiting for the class to end. There were students walking past me but none of them acknowledged that I was there.

There was a random borderless mirror beside me, and I looked into it. Most of my face was unseeable because there was a patch of fog on the mirror. When I moved my face to try and see it better, the fog disappeared and reappeared, again in front of my face. It annoyed me, so I stopped looking and just waited for the classroom doors to open.

After a minute, the doors opened and I saw students from the grade lower than mine come out. There was a girl slightly shorter than me and with blonde hair down to her shoulders, and she looked at me as she walked past with the other students. "Hey, can I talk to you for a moment?" I asked her. She concurred and stepped away from the crowd, which was quickly ebbing away into the halls. "What is it?" I decided to play mysterious and not give her all the details. "Something's happened, and I'm not sure I can stay friends with you. I'm hoping you'll understand." Her only reaction was a dumbfounded expression and "what?"

"I know that I'm not giving you a lot of details... I really think it'd be best if we weren't to talk anymore..." I decided to leave it at that, so I turned away and began to travel towards the front doors of the atrium. There was a set of stairs to get up to the second floor, and I was going to take them. "Hold it," I heard the girl say very sharply. "You're f***ing crazy. What's going on?" She began to press and press as I turned around to face her. She looked extremely mad, and her eyes were wider than they used to be. "Please, just go away," I told her firmly. "I'm sorry."

She then lunged forward and tried to smack me across the face, but I fell backwards, getting up as quickly as I could but rather messily. She was breathing heavily now, looking almost like she wanted to murder me or something. "Come on," I told her again, almost jokingly, "this isn't worth it." I spun around and began sprinting towards the door, not looking back. Although from inside the building it looked light outside, when I actually got out it was dark. There was white-colored illumination from street lights though, which shone on a bumpy sheet of ice on the road. There was patches of snow here and there, covering up most of the grass outside. I saw a car which wasn't mine, but I figured I could use it to get away from the frightening student. It was a pale maroon-colored 60's vehicle that looked fairly worn down, but I got inside anyways. I pushed a large white button to the right of the steering wheel, between that and the radio consol. The car turned on with a "beep".

I began to drive it, pressing down on the gas pedal to turn around (it was facing the wrong way), and began turning the steering wheel. However, the ice on the road made it very difficult to steer properly. The car slide five or ten feet to the side, and then again when I tried to back up. I couldn't drive in this thing, so I had to walk. When I got outside the car, the sky was brighter, almost as if it were seven in the morning. There was much more light now, so I got to the sidewalk and began walking down the street. Instead of apartment complexes and gas stations like in real life, there were single story houses along either side. I began to run again, and ran until I got to a juncture consisting of four small, white, modern buildings, attached together in a pinwheel fashion. The corners were touching but there was no way to get from inside one to the other without first going outside. I took refuge in one of them. There was black barbed fence surrounding them, except for a few medium-sized openings, and a few large green dumpsters. There were many cardboard boxes as well.

Inside the building I chose to enter, there was solid tan flooring, and the walls were brick that was painted white. The whole building consisted of one room, which was littered with brand-new couches and television sets. I sat down in one of the chairs, which was comfortable. Only a minute or so passed before the student appeared in the door, which I thought was impossible. I told her to "stop" and she did, then I performed the finger-through-palm reality check. I really had to push my for my finger to go through, but it did, and then I knew I was dreaming. It only took a second to realize that I've never had a dream quite like this one before, so I decided to egg the student on instead of telling her to leave.

"Keep doing what you're doing," I told her commandingly. "You're boss," she said. That made no sense until I woke up, but anyhow, she then began to advance on me. I felt my lucidity beginning to wane, so I ran at her and tried to punch her. She dodged it and my fist slammed into the bricks, creating a hole. I could see red but there was no blood on my hand, so it must have been the red bricks underneath the paint. I then lost my lucidity almost all at once, but I continued to hit her. "I said to leave me alone!" I said, rather aggressively, and managed to land a blow to her collarbone. She recoiled and touched where I punched her as if in pain. "A**hole", she called me, and slowly backed away through the door, slamming it shut. I finally managed to get rid of her.

Moments later, she came back into the building with a large steak knife. I had a burst of panic, so I turned around and bolted towards a door that suddenly just appeared out of nowhere. I opened it and ended up in an alley consisting of a black dumpster, more black barbed wire, and brick buildings fairly close together. It was now daytime-brightness outside, so I could see everything. I began to climb up along the barbed wire, which didn't injure me at all. I must have been fifteen feet off the ground when the girl appeared outside, swinging the knife. I held my hand out for her to stop, but as I did, she took off my index finger. I shouted "ouch", although there was no pain. I looked at the stub of my finger and although it was flat and red, there was no blood coming out. The girl had vanished.

The next thing I knew, I was back on the ground, holding what was left of my finger. I sat down cross-legged and leaned back against the black wire, looking up at the sky because I wasn't sure what to do next. Then someone appeared; she was a woman in her thirties with long brown hair, wearing a casual dress. "Hey, what's wrong?" she asked me. I showed her my finger. "Someone attacked me."

She pulled out what looked like a finger puppet, but it was very plain; the only thing on it was the color grey. She took my finger and put it on, and it filled up exactly what part of my finger had been cut off. She took a small sewing needle and some yellow thread, sewing it on painlessly. When she was finished and I had a look at it, I could move my finger again. When I looked up, she was gone.