Robotic Girlfriend

I was in a neighborhood somewhat like Harlequin Lane in Severna Park, MD. It was a neighborhood of large and fancy houses. I was walking around it a bit, and I think I was going through people's yards or something. This neighborhood was in another dream that I can think of right now, but I'm pretty sure that I wrote down.

Anyway, I eventually wound up back at Paul's and Marilyn's (my in-laws) house, but it wasn't quite theirs. It belonged to "my family", but I can't really place any of the people. There was A mom and A dad, and something about A brother, sister, or both. It was also a little bit like the neighborhood that Mike (former boss from Papa John's) lived in at Savannah Georgia on Vickery Lane. I think the house was even more like his than it was anyone else's.

While walking around through the neighborhood, I came across this girl that I knew. She had dark hair that was a little shorter than shoulder length, and it was brushed back and let fall naturally. She seemed very perturbed, and nothing seemed to kick her out of the mood. I think she was supposed to be the girlfriend of a brother or friend, but I'm unsure who it was.

We went into the house, and my family was in there and we spoke with them briefly. I think they left the room, and I was left in the front sitting room with the girl. She was still very quiet, seeming somewhat angry, but I couldn't place what in the world was wrong with her. I think I somehow figured out that she was a robot, and that her anger stemmed from the very fact that she was one. I realized that I needed to tell someone, but I knew that something terrible would happen if I did that. I'm not sure what that "something terrible" was, but I knew that no matter what, I couldn't let her find out that I had told anyone. I couldn't seem to get out of her presence, though, to let anyone in on it.

Pleasant Valley of the Butchers

I don't quite remember how things started out, or even what came first, but I think I was at Pleasant Valley Church first. I was down in the basement for the youth group meeting or Sunday school or something. Helen and Robert (youth group leaders when I was in middle school) were in charge of the youth group again, and I had gotten there late. I think they were disappointed to see me there late, but they were pretty busy, so they didn't really say anything about it.

I passed Helen when I first got downstairs, and then I went past what was supposed to be the youth room (the first room on the right that used to be the college age kids room) and the other kids were working on some sort of projects. I kept going down the hall, and that's when I passed Robert's office. I popped in briefly to say hi and let him know that I was there, but he just gave me a quick look of disgust for being so late.

I was carrying a book, so I set it down in the doorway, although I didn't want anyone to see it. It was a red Vampire role playing book. I'm not sure why I had it with me, but I had evidently decided to bring it along at some point.

Anyway, after going around and working briefly with the youth group, trying to make an effort to show that I was there to do the work just as much as they were, everything was done. (I think it was some sort of crafts or something, but they had to be done by a certain time, and that's why there was such a big push) Anyway, after that, I grabbed my book and went upstairs to the sanctuary.

The back of the sanctuary seemed to be open, like there were no walls on it that closed it off from the Narthex. I went over close to the right side and looked for a seat. I saw lots of people that I knew, and while I wasn't worried, I just had a feeling that I didn't want them to find out that I had that book with me, lest I start hearing all sorts of ridicule. I mingled around for a bit looking for a good seat, but I think that it turned out that the service was over.

I wound up getting up and walking around a bit more. I think I found Victoria (wife of coworker Doug) there in the crowd. I walked off with her and talked for a little bit, but when I next looked up, we were no longer in the church. We were in her apartment. Little Ethan (their son) was there, but I'm not sure where Doug was. It was almost as if he wasn't there, and that I had come by myself to see her. I went over to her in the kitchen and gave her a big hug.

The apartment was strange in that it was very large, and seemed to be made of old brick on the interior. It had a very artsy feeling to it, like it should have been an art studio instead of someone's apartment. There was a big room that had a lot of what looked like record shelves like they used to have at music stores, and that was the living room. The kitchen was kind of a hole off to the side that wasn't very well lit. I left the kitchen and went over to the far left end of the closest record table. They were a bit more now like roll-top desks and butted up against one another end for end. The one I went to was the farthest back in the room from the front door (it was even with the kitchen) and I opened it. Their laptop computer was inside of it. I started to get on there and get online, but I don't remember what I was looking for or what I actually did at that point because I woke up soon after.

Fires and Fajitas

Somewhere in the first part of the dream, there was a quite a bit of driving around. I was originally in someone else's car, and we were driving around in some city, and there was something about a big fire out on the highway. I think we either saw the smoke or heard about it on the radio, but either way, even though it was supposed to be a far way off (several miles) I saw it almost as if it were in front of me.

After we finally parked the car, I decided to go checking out for myself. I got into my car, and I took back roads, I think, to a point farther south than the fire. I then got onto the interstate and started heading north again. Sure enough, over on the south lanes, there was a place over in the field where there was a fire. There didn't seem to be any fire personnel there, and while the fire didn't look huge, it was putting out a lot of smoke that was blowing north along the interstate and making it hard for people to see where they were driving.

I don't often smell things in my dreams, but this one time, I did smell the burning grain, because it was some grain that was on fire in a field. It turned out that now I was on I-81, and I was nearing my exit at Weyers Cave. People were driving like idiots, especially some of the tractor trailers. I forget what happened, but I guess they were all whipping around and changing lanes really fast in front of people, and me, and they were even driving over on the shoulder of the road.

I finally got over to my exit, and I got off the interstate there. I turned left and went down to the gas station there. (I think it's referred to as Dino's). I went in, and the place was set up a bit differently than usual. The cash register area was in the middle of the store instead of at the right side when you first walk in.

I went in, and Kathy Lee Gifford was manning the register. I talked to her a bit about some fajita recipe I was supposed to be getting from her. After talking for a bit, she decided that instead of writing it down, she'd instead talk me through making them. So she turned quickly and threw something, and it turned out it was supposed to be two very large fajitas, and they landed over on a large flat griddle behind her.

We were now in a house instead of in Dino's. I went back to the griddle, which was almost in some sort of little windowed nook area of the kitchen. The people that I was with originally were there, but I still don't know who they were. I was supposed to be cooking these pre-made fajitas, which were more like folded over pancakes with a bunch of strange stuff in them. Peppers and blue berries, and stuff like that. I was cooking them, and they were sizzling quite a bit, and I had to flip them at one point, and while I seemed to be having some trouble with them, I did manage to finally do so.

Mercedes: Keeper of the Gates and Aqueducts

I started out in Em's parents' car (the Pacifica) . We were on some sort of fairly long distance road trip, and we came up through this small town, similar to one I had been through on some other trip in Virginia. I forget where it was in waking life, or who I was actually on the trip with, but it was the town that I was dreaming about this time around. (Perhaps it was the time that I took the house floor plans for architecture class over to my teacher's house for my final project in waking life)

Anyway, on this detour, we decided to go see this famous cemetery that was in the town. We drove there, and as we neared the gates, we came to kind of a drive-thru sort of area outside of this building that was next to the cemetery. As we pulled up, a woman came out, and we told her that we wanted to go see the cemetery. She charged us a fee, and she went inside the building to get us a pass. The pass, as it turned out, was a whole lock and key system. Specifically, it was a ignition cylinder for a Mercedes. (part number 202 760 00 79, the one that we have to hammer in the plates) I instantly recognized it, and I also realized that there were plates that were sticking up on it, even though the key was in it. That meant that it was put together wrong. I told the woman that it was wrong, and that I knew because I worked there. I then requested to go inside and fix it. She said okay, so I got out of the car and went in.

The building was on the left (driver) side of the car, and the front of the building was plain beige brick with a brown roof. There were no windows to be seen. The area where the door was that the woman passed through was set in a garage sized indentation in the side of the building. I went in, and when I was inside, the door, I found, came in roughly where the second key room normally is, between Ron's (supervisor) office and the lock storage room. I went in, and Jay (from Mercedes) was there at his desk. He was surprised to see me because it was my day off. We chatted for a moment, and then I continued in towards my lock setting station, which is on the opposite side of the key room from where I came in.

As I went across, other's said hi and noted to me that I should be off. I told them that I was, but I needed to fix that lock so I could go see the cemetery. Someone (I'm unsure who) told me about a new procedure that had started up where the keys now needed to be sprinkled with baby powder because it helped them go in the key easier. I thought that was really strange, and I wasn't going to do it at first, but as I got to my station, I found that I had my own bottle of baby powder on my desk.

I started tweaking with the plates, but as I was doing so, I noticed another difference. I found out that our springs that we use for the plates were no longer made of metal. Now they were made of bright yellow plastic. I thought this was really strange, and I think I asked Roy (team leader) about it. He was busy helping Phil (shipping supervisor) with lock setting, but he told me that they were the new springs that had come in, and we were supposed to use those now. I was really surprised, and I even noted out loud that I had only been gone a day, and all of a sudden there were all these changes. I think Roy chuckled about it, but I kept working on my lock.

Finally I realized that the lock itself was actually okay. It turned out that the key had just not been put in all the way. Once it was in all the way, the plates laid flat like they were supposed to. So I said goodbye to everyone and I left again. When I got back out to where the car had been, it was no longer there, but I didn't really notice at the time that it was gone.

Em was there waiting for me, and so we walked the couple hundred of feet to the gates of the cemetery. I think we put in the lock and turned it and opened the gates and went in. After entering, though, something a bit strange happened. Some sort of ethereal being showed up (kind of like a big faerie, but not really) and started to show us a guide to the cemetery. She was showing us a map, but the map kept moving around, almost like the points on the map were stars, and they formed a galaxy that kept spinning around. But at the same time, it was almost like the being was making it move around, almost like she was saying, "You can look at it this way, or do it this way, or this way, or even like this."

After a short bit, we left off from there and made our way through to the back of the cemetery. There was a gate or road at the back that we drove out through. We now seemed to be in a car, but I was driving, although I think it was Em's parents' car again. I followed the road out through the country a bit, and I finally found a familiar road. I recognized it as a road that ran between Staunton, VA, and Fort Defiance. It was labeled as 377, which is a fairly major road here locally in Texas.

When I got to that intersection, I couldn't remember which way to turn, so I went left at the last moment. As we continued down, I was saying that it didn't look familiar down this way, so I must have never turned down this part of the road. Eventually we got to a neat looking area that dipped way down, like it was cut out of the land, and there was a train bridge that went over top of the road.

At the time that we saw this, we were no longer in the Pacifica. I'm not sure what happened to it. It was just like we were walking the whole time. To the right of the road, also passing under the bridge, was a tunnel that was about six feet wide. At first it looked like a cave, but as I was trying to figure out what it was, it started looking more flat, refined, and man made. We walked under the bridge on the road and glanced around the other side. The road seemed to empty out into someone's yard. It was like an old plantation sort of house an yard. It had big shady trees and felt very summer like, but it was cool at the same time.

I went back to the other side of the tunnel and turned again to look at the smaller tunnel. I noticed that there was a sign that said it was an aqueduct. I thought that it was odd, but accepted it. As I looked in the aqueduct again, I saw that there were people in there. There were step like formations on the floor of the aqueduct, but the first one was about three feet down. I stepped down and talked briefly with the people. They were splashing water around from puddles on the floor. Each person was on a different stair. I also realized somehow that the water in there was put there by them for the purpose of splashing around.

So I jumped down onto the first stair and started jumping and stomping around. I splashed more water than everyone else and got everyone all wet. I wound up "winning", I guess. That at least seemed to be some sort of consensus. After that, i turned around to get back out of the aqueduct, and I saw that on the next step up, almost at table height (which was strange because I thought i was on the top step before being out on the ground), there was a whole bunch of cards laid out. I started looking at them, and I realized that they were Harry Potter trading cards.

As I looked, I saw that they were all grouped in some way, and if there were any duplicates, they were stacked one on top another. I had Em to come over and look at them, and she was excited. I asked her if there was any that she didn't have, and she said that she didn't have Snape yet. I looked around, but didn't see him. It turned out that he was a rare card anyway.

In the place that his should have been was a card of an old lady from back in the 1920's or earlier. It was a black and white photo, and I somehow recognized it as Professor Trelawney's great grandmother, who had been a real seer back in her time. Em saw it, too, and said that she wanted it because it was rare. I looked closer at it, picking it up and reading it, and I saw that it talked about her on the card. It also had some information about the status of the card. It said "Status: Active Trading". I realized that this meant that it was not as rare as Em thought because people were actively trading it around, so it wasn't so rare that it couldn't be found very easily. I decided that Em didn't really want that card, so I put it back down. I was going to tell her about it when I got out of the aqueduct, but as I got out, the dream ended.

After-Sword Party

I was on a small journey of some sort. I was with a group of old friends: Andy , Stephen (from school and church), and some others that I don't remember anymore. We were kind of all in a van or a bus, and we were traveling through a fairly heavily wooded area. Even though it was wooded, there were stone walls on either side of us, and we passed places that had ironwork gates, and they were supposed to be like driveways or something to large and fancy houses.

I seemed to be having a hard time having conversations with these people. I felt like they kept interrupting me when I tried to start to say anything, and I didn't want to butt back into it. They were also passing around some pictures or a magazine or something. When it came to me, I realized it was a porn magazine, and it was full of these typical looking skinny blond girls. It turned out that these were pictures of the girls that we were going to be seeing. We were heading towards a party that was being thrown by these girls, and we had these pictures of them, but they didn't know it. We were all having a good giggle about it.

We finally got to the house where the party was being held, and we got out of the van or off the bus. We were standing around beside the swimming pool, which was kind of to the right end of the house just past the end of the driveway. It was behind large amounts of shrubbery and black iron gates and fences. We had drinks in our hands and we were dressed up somewhat. I was finally able to at least tell Andy about what I was going to say on the way here.

I told him that yesterday there had been a sword stuck in my head. He gaped at me a bit, and voiced his doubt, but I stood by what I had said. I said that there really had been, and I started to recount some of "yesterday's" events to him.

Soon after this, I woke up, but I realized that the two separate dreams (and they were separate, because I had woken up and gone to use the bathroom between the two of them) had taken the time of a weekend. How odd!

Sword Head

I started out outside of grandmamma's house, but I'm not sure what I was doing out there or why I was there. I seem to remember a brief moment where I had a katana in my hand, and I fell over to my right. As I fell, I manged to get the katana stuck in my head. I was out in the area of the yard by the bank at the "road" end of the garden, although there was no garden there anymore. I had gotten up, and I was thinking fine and everything, and I realized that the katana had gone in the right side of my head just above my ear, and had come out the left side of my head closer to my temple. That gave it enough of an angle that I could persistently see the tip of the sword off to my left because it pointed forward a bit. The sword was an even distance through my head such that there were equal lengths of sword sticking out of either side of my head. The biggest thing about all of this was that I didn't feel any pain. I was fully aware of the situation, and I knew that it was supposed to be really bad.

Em wound up calling the Weyers Cave Fire Department because they were the closest thing to us that was considered a medical emergency team. Even though we knew that they were really close to us geographically, it seemed to take forever for them to get there. I guess in real life it would have just been people showing up in their vehicles, for the most part, with the truck arriving later, but in this case, it was like even though they were close, they all went to the firehouse first to get all prepped and get the truck all ready and then bring all that stuff over. It took them over 30 minutes to get there.

I may not have fully realized what was going on until the fire department had gotten there. It seems a bit fuzzy before that, but I wound up reaching up and feeling the sword right after they got there. I didn't recognize anyone on the squad, although in waking life I would have. Anyway, I wound up touching the sword, and they stopped me. They told me not to mess with it. I knew that shouldn't mess with it at all, but I was really in awe with how it didn't hurt at all. I also felt my head just under the wound on the right side above my ear. Not only did it not hurt, but there was no blood. Yet, I knew that if I messed with the sword, it could end up doing terrible damage to me, if it didn't kill me.

I went down to the road where they had parked the fire truck and got on the back of it. A couple of them were up in the front of the truck, and others were in the back with me. They were keeping an eye on me to make sure that I didn't do anything funny with the sword. Part of me just wanted to pull it out and see if it hurt or if anything actually happened to me, but the rest of me [thought that it] knew better.

After a short ride, we wound up at the fire house. It turned out that they were having some sort of dance or party there. I realized that this was part of the reason why they had been so late. We all went in, and I was expecting them to administer immediate medical attention to me, but it didn't seem to work out that way. We wandered around quite a bit through the crowd, and each time that I went through a doorway, I had to be careful not to just walk straight in. Instead, I had to turn a bit to the side to make sure that the sword didn't get caught on the door jambs. I bumped it once or twice, but I was worried enough that it would do something to me that I quickly learned what I needed to do to walk around.

The place seemed fairly dark, and it was loud with music, but I didn't really recognize anything that was playing. There were lots of people mingling, talking and dancing, and no one seemed to notice my condition. After walking through a couple of doors and following the fire fighters around, we got out into this larger open area of the firehouse that had a set of stairs and a balcony or catwalk or something up along one side of the room. There were other rooms up there, and I think that we went into one of those.

Water Problems, Dead Clocks, and Handmade Bedding

I think I started out at work, and I was doing my usual lock setting at work. I seemed to be up and about quit often, but I'm not really sure why. I looked at the clock several times during what seemed to be a long expanse of time, and it didn't seem to move much. I realized that the battery in it had gone dead, so I went and told Ron (supervisor) or Roy (team leader) about it. I don't think that anyone else was really noticing that that clock had stopped or slowed way down. I think one or two of the other clocks around the place had done the same thing, but they weren't noticed either.

I think that I after I brought it to someone's attention, I went into the key cutting room to get my next batch of locks. When I came out of the key cutting room, I realized that I needed to use the bathroom. I didn't want to take the lock orders into the bathroom with me, but I was already almost there, so I spotted Loy's (guy from work) cart for going around and gathering stuff from everyone for packing, and I decided to set them on there. While I was in the bathroom, I thought that Loy might see them and try to staple them, thinking that they were keys instead of locks. I hurried in the bathroom and went back out. Sure enough, he had walked off with the cart, taking the lock orders with him. I found him in front of the key cutting room stapling the locks. I got them and told him it was my mistake for putting them there, and I should have put them on my desk. I was a little annoyed that he didn't check what he was stapling before he actually did it, but I figured that he wouldn't.

So I got them and went over to my desk and removed the staples from all the ones that he had just closed up. While I was sitting there, something caught my eye. I looked over in the direction of the clock again, and I noticed a bit of water along the wall and on the floor. I looked up, and there was a large wet and brown spot on the ceiling above the clock, about a foot away from the wall. It had been raining outside (and I think it still was at this point), and we wound up springing a leak. I think things went a bit haywire for a little while, but finally things calmed back down, we finished up, and I left and went home.

We were living at the apartments in Las Colinas again, but things were a bit switched around. I came in the front door, and instead of the main room being the living room, it turned out to be our bedroom. I noticed that there was a new knitted or crocheted cover on the bed. The bed was against the wall where our computer desks had been. Our living room stuff was now in the bedroom.

Anyway, the new cover was a dark red, kind of like a ruby/burgundy red. It was very pretty, although it was just slightly small for the bed, and it seemed a little thin. Em was there, and I think she helped point it out to me, as well as a small gift that was there for me on the bed: A small hand made lace bookmark. The bookmark was the same color as the new bedding. It was in a box or envelope sort of thing at first, and I pulled it out of that. I thought that it was perfect because I could use it right away. I had a book I was reading to put it in.

I went into the "living room" to ask my mom about it. She happened to be there, but it wasn't quite like she was visiting. It was almost like she lived there with us. I think I had assumed that Grandma Beddows had made them for us. After talking with mom for a moment, she informed me that Grandma Beddows had passed away, so they couldn't be from her. She then told me that SHE (mom) had made them! I was surprised. I didn't realize that she could make things like that, and I thought it was great that she had done so. I think there had also been something else to come with the bedding and the bookmark, but I forget now what it was.

Home Improvement and School Labyrinth

I started out at Mike's House. I was there with Em's parents. They had come to visit, but while they were there, Em's mom kept going around and trying to "improve" everything. I think after the initial "Hello" and such, we suddenly found Em's mom outside the back door (by the new kitchen) and up on a ladder. She was scraping away at the stucco on the siding of the house, claiming that it wasn't smooth enough. I didn't think that was a good idea at all because it wasn't my house, and I knew that if she kept doing that, something bad was going to happen, such as pulling off all the stucco, leaving the wire lathe exposed. Even though the door was shut, I think that if we spoke loudly enough, she could hear us, because I think that we were yelling to her to stop what she was doing (We, meaning Em and I. Paul was just watching and grinning, kind of like "Hey, would you look at that!")

It took a bit, but we finally convinced her that whether or not she liked it or thought it looked right, she needed to stop, and so she did. She wound up kind of walking or hopping the ladder away from the side of the house. I guess she gave it too much "oomph" because at one point she started to go too far backwards, nearly falling back, and when she did so, the ladder folded up under her (no longer forming the A frame shape) and the far legs caught the ground closer to her, actually knocking her back harder, and caused her to fall right back on her butt from about 6 feet up. We knew that she was alright, and we were snickering about it.

Then after that I went outside, and I was going around the perimeter of the yard. I was going around by the back corner of the yard where the neighbor's trailer used to be (around "the swamp") and looking at the plants growing there beyond our mowing boundary. I found some of those "poke" plants that have the purple berries on them that stain your fingers when squished. I think Em picked some first, and then her mom did, before I could even get a chance to tell them not to because of how it would stain their fingers. Em looked at her fingers and was kind of like, "oh, yeah... I see". I don't think that Em's mom had any response to it.

Then I left that area and I walked down through the middle of the yard by the end of the chicken house and the garage. While I was walking through there, there was something being talked about that I don't remember. We finally wound up walking around to the front of the house to go in. Just as we were ready to go in, someone said something about "the dead dog". I didn't know what they were talking about, but I knew that the people living in the trailer recently had a dog to die out in the yard.

I thought they were talking about that at first, but then Em pointed out by the road and said, "No, that one!" There was a little tan chihuahua out by the road that was turned over on it's back and was attached to a pink leash. It was quite dead, and the neighbors in the house didn't seem to know about it. I think Paul (Em's dad) went to go tell the neighbors and see what they wanted to do about it. The other three of us went inside.

After we got inside, Paul finally came back, and he said that he wound up having to bury the dog in the middle of the front yard. I thought that was great of him to do so, and I felt bad that he had to do it rather than the neighbor doing it.

Then I went inside. When I got in there, things were quite a bit different. It was as if I was coming out of this huge hallway, almost like a mall, and going into a very small store, but the store was actually a military style (as far as I can tell) bunking room. There were minimalist bunk beds in there, but only about 5 of them, and they were on the left wall, with only a little bit of room to walk past the foot of the beds on the right side. I was told that the first bed on top was mine. That was the "guest" or "newbie in training" bed. I accepted it and somehow set up my stuff around/in it. The room was very dark. It pretty much seemed that the only light coming into the room was through the open end of the room that went into the hallway. There were other people in there that I knew at the time, but I don't remember now. I think I may have taken a brief nap there just to get myself settled in, but then I was up shortly after, and we all went to the bathroom.

The bathroom was set up very similar to the bunking quarters in that it was small and narrow, and had about 5 toilet stalls on the left side. The first one, again, was mine, and so I went in. When I stepped in, someone had put one of those big rolls of toilet tissue (the cheap ones that are a foot in diameter used for public restrooms) down in my toilet. I had some sort of stick or rod there to get it out with, so I picked it out and flung it up and over the left hand wall. There was supposed to be a big trash can just on the other side of the wall, but as I flung it over, I got sprayed with a lot of toilet water.

After getting all disgusted, I looked down and realized that whoever had been there previously had not even flushed, so I got drenched with quit a bit of urine, too. I came out and was trying to dry/clean myself off, and a couple of my bunk mates were commenting to me about it and asking if I was okay. I think I wound up going back to the bunk to change, and while I was there, the person in charge (Sergeant?) came by and told me that after I served out my "testing time" and got to be accepted as a permanent member, I would be able to have someone move into my bottom bunk who would be my significant other. I said, "Oh! Good! Thank you!" and he left.

I then left turned right and headed up the hallway to the end of the facility. At that end was where everything was happening. There was a cafeteria, shopping, and this large maze or obstacle course where people were competing to finish it and do it in the quickest time possible. I watched this going on for a while. There were people inside the labyrinth that were part of it all, and they were supposed to do things like ask trivia questions or physically block the passage of the person going through the maze. Each person had a number of "misses" that they could take, one for each letter of the alphabet, and tally was kept by labeling it as a/z or f/z or x/z, showing that they were at letter 'x' out of 'z', or 26. I finally decided that I was going to go through it.

So after the main meal time, I got ready and went upstairs to the beginning. Loy (from Mercedes) from work was there, and I think at first he was actually going to do it, but then I was kind of taking his place. We talked briefly, and then once enough people were watching, I started. I went through these glass doors and into this hallway that only went right. It was like walking through the customer service dept. of JCPenny's or something. There were people just sitting by the walls with their knees drawn up. Some looked like they were sleeping, but mostly they were waiting for their turns at the maze. I then went got through and started meeting my challenges.

I made it through the first few, answering the questions or getting by the physical obstacles. It was almost like a huge church at this point, all junked with lots of marble statues, dividers, pews, candelabras, and all sorts of stuff that looked like it was from an antique store. I started getting tired of taking every challenge, so I quickly started running past and around all of them, avoiding everyone I could. I soon made it to the end with a score of y/z, meaning that I only had one chance left. (all that skipping of stuff hurt my score and took my "misses") I wound up in this room that still had a bunch of stuff in it, but the only person there was Mrs. Yager(biology teacher from high school). She had the final question for me. I had to answer it correctly, and if I did so in a timely manner, not only would I win, but I'd be the one person who got through the labyrinth the fastest.

It suddenly got dark outside, and somewhat inside, too, and I said a couple of times, "Pleeeeeease be something I know." Mrs. Yager just smiled, asked if I was ready, and then asked the question. She gave a little bit of background, saying that a certain bridge (golden gate or Brooklyn?) had been built in a certain year. Then with the changes to peoples traffic patterns because of technological increase caused the need for another bridge to be built, and to connect to the end of the previously mentioned bridge. It was to be called the Keystone Bridge. The question was, "What one thing would have to die before the bridge could be built?"

I was stumped, but I thought long on it. I asked her a few questions, some she could answer, and others she couldn't, while I looked outside the windows. I was way up in the mountains of New York, and it was all forest, streams, mountains, and a couple of smaller roads and then the first bridge mentioned. I was almost watching as the keystone bridge was being built. It was night time, and the lighting was all pinks, oranges, blues, greens, and yellows, depending on the area and source. No white light.

Somehow I had gotten out of her that the Death of Meat was part of the answer, but I couldn't see how a butcher shop would fit into the answer. I thought and thought, and eventually I woke up, still thinking about it, and I still don't have an answer...

Freddy Kreuger, Harry Potter, and Aliens

I started out at a theater, and I was with Doug (from Mercedes) and Emily (my wife), and we were watching one of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies. I think that we were actually late, and had only gotten there to see the tail end of it, but I'm not sure about that. Anyway, I remember seeing Freddy Kreuger there on the screen, and his gloved hand was going nuts, stabbing him over and over. It was a bit like the arm of the first giant robot in the Incredibles. He was just going around himself, stabbing into his torso over and over, very quickly and repeatedly.

The next thing I remember was that we were leaving the theater. We were talking about the movie a bit in the lobby of the theater, and then we went outside. While we were out there, we were looking around for Doug's car (the Q) I think it took is a little bit to find it, because it wasn't where we had originally parked it.

After we found it, the next thing I knew was that we were back at our house on Indigo Ridge. It was night time still, and we decided to go for a walk down through the unfinished part of the neighborhood just down the street. They had just framed the last few houses on the right side of the street, and there were a few framed straight ahead on the left side of the bend. (we were walking south on Indigo Ridge) As we were walking, I realized that Em was no longer with us, but Teresa (aka "Pete"), from work, was.

While we were walking along, I was looking up into the sky ahead of us. I started seeing stars and such moving around all strangely, and in some places they looked like they moved in a shower like formation, and other places they burst out from a central spot, and other times they spiraled around themselves, hundreds at a time. I said something about that meaning that there were aliens there in those areas of the sky. Doug and Teresa just looked at me like I was nuts, but I realized that they hadn't looked up into the sky at all. They were walking in front of me, and were now facing north, away from the light display.

I pointed up in the sky in front of them (about a 45 degree angle from the horizon) and said, "Look! There!" They both turned around and looked up, finally seeing what I had been seeing. They were amazed, and somewhat scared, I think. We continued walking, though. We went down to the end of the street, watching the stars moving around all the way down there.

We got to the area between the curve in the road and the stop sign, and we decided to go look in one of the houses. I think we may have even split up and decided to each look in a different house. They were all two story houses there. I think that at the last moment, I didn't really go inside of one of the houses, but I stayed outside, watching the stars, and Doug and Pete went into two houses that were side by side. After a minute or two, Pete came back out the house she was in, and we waited a short bit for Doug. He didn't come back out. We looked in the house, or through the house, since it was all still just framing, and he wasn't in there anywhere to be found.

Pete and I decided to go to the stop sign and turn right, heading north on Sierra Ridge Lane. As we got back up to the area where people were living near the north end of the street, I think we heard some sort of radio going. It was saying something about the aliens, I believe, and we thought that Doug had been nabbed by them while looking in the house. We rounded the corner at Tuscan View and turned right. We were talking, but I don't remember specifically what we were saying. We were talking about this whole thing with Doug, but that's about all I know. At one point, I think Doug just magically showed back up. He said that he had seen one of the aliens, and he went and hid. He described the alien to us, and in usual dream fashion, as he described it, I saw it as if it were there.

He said that he saw it coming for him through some of the framed walls of the house he was looking at. It was completely black, and had a completely spherical head that looked like a black marble bowling ball, and it's right hand was just the same. It looked human otherwise, dressed in a black body suit that allowed all the muscles to be seen. I think there was something about it's mouth being on the sphere of the right hand, and even though there were no features on the head, there was some sort of appearance of anger, like the ball had ridges in it that made it look like a grimace or something. Then, while seeing this, the whole description turned into a top-down view, as if I were looking at everything from 50 feet up in the air.

I was over the framed house, and it looked like the original Zelda game. Link came up from the bottom of the "screen" and into the room that the framed house created in my view. On the right hand side was the alien, but now it was shorter, more squatty, on all fours, and it's head was much bigger. I think that Doug was actually supposed to be Link, and he went up with his sword and his bow and arrows, and he wound up dealing the alien/monster a quick defeat. Then he went through the door that the monster was protecting and went into the next room.

Suddenly everything was back to normal perspective, but I was in a completely fantasy setting. We were now in some stone tower, although I was no longer with Doug and Pete. I was now with Professor McGonogal, Neville Longbottom, and Hermione Granger, and, I think Harry Potter. There was something about a giant wool blanket there, and someone, or some monster was coming for us. We were supposed to use this blanket, allow it to get sucked into this large opening in the wall that was about waist high to head high, and about 6 feet wide, while we held onto the edges of the blanket, climb into the pocket created by the blanket in the opening, and then allow it to carry us away from the tower. I think the monster was a cross between a life size version of the squatty alien and Lord Voldimort.

For some reason we kids didn't want to get into that blanket and go anywhere. We didn't want to leave the Professor there (and another adult that was there, like maybe another professor, but I'm unsure of who it was) to fight the monster that was coming. Also, we had never used this method of travel, so we didn't feel comfortable doing it. Professor McGonogal urged us to do as she said, and I think one of the other kids guessed that this form of travel was a variation of the Flu Network for larger group travel. The professor told the guesser that they were correct, and to please hurry.

So we got into the blanket in the opening, and we allowed it to take us. But we had other plans. We decided to only allow it to suck us up about 6 feet into the whole. There, we waited for the monster to show up. It finally did, and I remember getting out of the whole, and seeing everyone firing magic at it to try to disable it or even kill it. Despite the fact that we were supposed to be gone, and yet here we were running around this giant round room trying to help destroy this monster, the professors didn't seem upset at us. More over, they seemed happy that we had stayed to help fight because they couldn't have done it themselves otherwise. Either right before or right after we destroyed the monster or we ran away out of the tower without destroying it (I'm unsure which), the dream ended.

Vampire Tapes and Planetary Sea Lab

I started out in Weyers Cave. Something had happened to 256 heading towards Weyers Cave from Grandmamma's house, and part of it was shut down or just very slow moving. There was a huge amount of traffic on it, and I think I wound up trying to follow it on a bicycle. I kept getting caught up in the traffic, so at one point I turned around and went back the other way to go towards Grottoes.

I went a little ways past Grandmamma's house, about a mile or so, and then turned around and started to head back towards Weyers Cave again. The point where I turned around was kind of like the steeper hill area where Mountain River Farms was (I was kind of on top of the hill), but it was like I could see all the way back to our intersection. As I came back, I passed some people that I knew. I think I mainly saw them after I turned and went down past Grandmamma's house and the Garber's farm. I saw Sue (mother of kids that went to school with my brothers) walking along the road on the sidewalk(?) and stopped to talk with her for a short bit. I may have talked to her husband, Mark, and a couple of other people along the way.

Eventually I wound back up at Grandmamma's house, and there was something about needing to clean up the place or the area around from vampires that were there. I went out to the back porch and got up on this loft sort of area to begin. I was up on this platform that brought me up near the ceiling, and there were these groups of vampires coming at me.

There was a bit of a wall in front of me that I could see over, and beyond it, the ground was lower, like it went down a story. I had some sort of weapon that in order to use it effectively, I had to charge it up. As I looked out from where I was, even though the area over the wall went down a ways, beyond the actual porch, it dropped down a couple of stories. I was up fairly high. I could also see that I was in more of an urban type of environment, like I was in a nice classical and posh sort of city.

Anyway, these little vampires that were about the size of large rats or even nutria were scuttling in on all fours from the right in the area below. They knew where I was, so I had to act quickly to get them before they came and got me. They had red glowing eyes and white fur that looked all wet and matted. They reminded me a little bit of the balverines in the game Fable (which I haven't played for a couple of weeks now) but much smaller.

Anyway, I had this weapon that I some how had to charge by pulling back the trigger half way. The longer I let it charge, the stronger the shot would be. It was like some sort of little phaser gun. Anyway, I seemed to do rather well and was able to get them all in that area before they came to me. Each one left behind some sort of Cassette tape that was just full of it's own screeching and howling. I put them all into a box that was like a large shoe box or even some sort of double sided tool box. I went around the corner that they were coming from and went to hunt out more. Doing so took me down into this court yard area where there was an opening into some sort of crypt or cellar. I went in there and wiped out a bunch of vampires as well.

When I came out, someone that was a cross between George Lopez (the comedian) and Marco from Sealab was there. He evidently worked in the kitchen of the estate that I was on the property of, and it turned out that the vampires that I just killed, he had claimed as his, and so he was angry about my killing them. He wasn't acting very angry, and he wasn't really directing anything directly at me, but he was complaining, or even whining, to someone else that was there. I think that someone else was like Deb from Sealab. I felt a little bad at first, but then I realized that he just wasn't really aware of how bad these things were, and something had to be done to take care of them.

I wound up leaving, and the next little bit is somewhat fuzzy. I think I went around this big estate killing off more vampires. At one point, I was in front of this building that was long and tall, and had a tall tower going up from the middle of it. I eventually wound back up at Grandmamma's house and I cleaned up a bit. I went into through the kitchen, leaving the tapes outside on the porch, and then into the living room. It was getting to be night time at this point, and the kitchen was dark when I went into it, but the dining room light was on. I went straight into there. I talked to someone briefly in there, but I'm a bit unsure who it was. It may have been Grandmamma, or Em, or even my mom, but either way, it was a female (or two?) that I talked to in there. Eric may have been present as well, or that may have been earlier that I talked to him. I'm not sure.

Anyway, I don't think that the ones I was talking to believed me about the vampires, so I said I'd go and get the tapes. I went back out onto the porch, and I found out that it was almost like a game, and going back out on the porch was like resetting the game, and it caused the tapes to disappear, and the vampires started coming from around the right hand corner again one by one. This caught me a little by surprise, and I was unable to use my weapon correctly for a short bit. This allowed the vampires to show up a little more tightly bunched, and they even started to come up onto the balcony area I was on. I tried firing my gun/phaser, but I hadn't let it charge up enough. I was trying to fire at them quickly, and the shots were just ricocheting off of the safety glasses that were strangely poised in front of each one. The glasses were almost as big as they were, and usually they weren't even on their face. They just sat in front of them facing me the whole time, no matter which direction the vampires faced. Finally I started getting in a couple of good shots, but I was still having trouble.

The next thing I know, though, the area is clear, and it turns out that the balcony that I'm on is in a space ship. Captain Murphy from Sealab is in the room with me, as is Deb. We were all talking, and Murphy was doing his usual complaining about stuff. I think he was looking for a key to be able to get out of that room, and while he was complaining, Deb and I snuck out and locked the door behind us. It turned out that she had the keys hidden on her the whole time, and she wasn't going to let Murphy out. We then suited up with Marco and got into some sort of little escape pod and took off from the ship. The keys were SO tiny, being only a millimeter long, and looking more like a block with two nubs on either side of it than a real key. I think there was also a second piece to the key, but I'm not sure what that looked like.

Anyway, we headed out from the ship, which wasn't all that big anyway (about the size of a smallish house) and the pod we were in was only about the size of a small bathroom. I think I mentioned something about how I didn't really like the thought of leaving Captain Murphy on the ship and locked in the back/center room, and she said that he'd be fine, and that if we let him out, he'd be really pissed at us. I figured she was probably right, and I didn't want to see him all pissed, so I let it go.

We didn't go far, and we eventually wound up in this really strange place. It was this huge room, like the size of a large gymnasium (it reminded me the most of the gym at Weyers Cave elementary school), and it had all the planets in there. The light from the sun in the middle only shown in one direction, and that was up. All the planets seemed to be floating on this invisible planet, and on top they were lit, and on the bottom they were dark. There was a ceiling above us, but below the plane below us, there didn't seem to be a floor. It just dropped off into nothing. We had the ability to float, and though there seemed to be gravity that pulled at us in the normal downward fashion, we could basically fight gravity just by thinking it, and keeping afloat.

We went around in this big room looking at the planets. I think I started out at Saturn (which may be the general area that we were in on that ship anyway, and we grew and grew until we were big enough to see the planets as being hardly any bigger than basketballs, or at the largest, papasan chairs (about 3 feet or a little more in diameter)

Anyway, Captain Murphy came in through a double door on the left side and "stood" in the space area with his arms crossed. He was there to oversee things, and it was as if he had forgotten that we had left him locked in the space ship. We went around exploring all of the planets, looking at the light side of each one. Then, at one point, Deb said something about "going below to look at the dark sides." I didn't really think that was a good idea because I was afraid that we'd drop off into the nothingness that was below us. I thought the invisible plane that held the planets in place did the same for us, and if we went below it, we'd just keep falling. But, we went below anyway, and we still managed to just bob near the surface. It took a bit more concentration, but it wasn't that difficult.

On earth, which was in the opposite corner of the room from where Murphy came in, you could see the city lights on the dark side. I went around, and I went through he rings around Saturn and Uranus. I noticed that not only did the light not really travel down there (but everything had this kind of black light faint purplish glow) but the chaotic sound of the light side didn't come down here, either. It was quiet and somewhat serene. I eventually brought myself back up to the light side. I went over to earth, and I had something similar to the key that Deb had used earlier to lock Murphy into the room. It looked somewhat like tiny little Lego blocks.

I realized that they represented buildings. I had a stack of two, and I found a place on the surface of the US near California to put it, and I put it down into place. I wanted to see what would happen if they freaked out on earth and realized a super tall building was there. I watched, and Deb and Marco watched with me, and they said, "See? They just take it down!" and sure enough, the top two blocks looked like they were being carried down by some sort of tiny invisible force. It was bizarre and funny at the same time.

Then I went over to the area of this "gym" where the stage would have been, and there was this angled piece that went down into the dark side. It was kind of like a roof.that shielded out the light. I bobbed around underneath it for a short bit, and there were these little translucent balls that reminded me a bit of atoms that were kind of bobbing around under there with me. I had the urge to smack them so they traveled down along the roof and then out into the lighted area, but I didn't.

Then a bigger ball, about the size of a beach ball, came up by me. It was Deb, and she was going to go to sleep. Evidently this required the ability to keep yourself under the roof, but because of the tilt, and because it wasn't all the way against the back wall, she kept going up and up and then slipped past the roof and floated upwards to the top of the room. There was a little area just big enough for her to fit in that was like a trench in the ceiling. The top side of the trench was slanted just like the roof, and it had a bit more light in it, but not a huge amount. It was mirrored in there, and she was pissed at first. But all first-timers had that happen to them, I think.

Anyway, another ball came bobbing up next to her, and Deb responded with something like "Ew! Get away!" and from it came this woman's voice saying that it was okay, and it turned out to be "Black Debbie" from Sealab, also in ball form.

Em Joins the Army and The Electric Villain of X-Men

Em (wife) was telling me that she had decided to join the Army. I could not figure out for the life of me why she was going to do that. She told me it was to lose weight. I told her that I thought it was a silly idea to join the Army only to do that. She wouldn't listen, and she left for boot camp.

Evidently two or three weeks passed by(!) and she returned home. Home was in Grandmama's old house. I was in my old room downstairs, and her dad brought her in. She dropped off her bag of clothes and belongings that she had taken with her and ran over and gave me a hug. I was thrilled to see her, and she looked great. She had lost about 50 pounds (in two or three weeks?) and was toned and muscular and in shape. I was very happy for her because she was so pleased with how she looked, but at the same time, I was sad that she had taken the military training path to go and accomplish her goal.

Besides the fact that she looked great, I couldn't take my mind off of the fact that she belonged to the Army now. She could get called back at any time to active duty. While she was unpacking stuff, she was telling me about some of the stuff that had happened in her "dorm", as she called it, where she stayed with the other girls. In listening to her talk, while she was still Emily, her body was not the only thing that had changed.

She was very different. Almost too bubbly and outgoing, almost like a cheer leader. It's like she was still Em, but she wasn't. I felt incredibly sad to see how much she had changed mentally. I was happy that she was so happy, but it's like there was something more that was different, too. I believe that shortly after her returning home, we went out shopping or to eat or something. It seems that I remember going out with her somewhere, but I don't remember where we went, besides some sort of mall that reminds me of the Annapolis Mall.

I think that it was soon after this that I was out at night in a city. It had been raining, and there was something going on. I remember seeing a big fight of some sort between some super hero type of characters, and the bad guy was defeated, but not completely. His mind and soul wound up getting away through a charge of electricity. I remember seeing him be flat against the wet road, like a shadow, and he shot off towards some sort of store or something. It seems that I somehow thought that this had to do with X-Men 3. (Note that as of this point, I know of no plans to make an X-Men 3). I've had another dream somewhere with a similar sort of character that was made of electricity, but I don't recall anything else about it right now. Anyway, this guy went into hiding for a bit, and we didn't hear from him for quite some time.

Soon after this, Em and I were in a drugstore, like Walgreens. Originally I was buying stuff for her to surprise her. I think I was trying to get her something for having come back from the Army. I was getting things like markers and other arty stuff from the stationary aisle. I also picked up some other stuff and looked around in some other aisles, but I don't remember what those things were or where I was looking.

Then all of a sudden, Em was there with me, and we were at the cash register. We thought of some other stuff to get from the stationary aisle, so we left the line and went back to look more. I still couldn't get my mind off of how Em had joined the Army just to go through the boot camp just to lose weight. It made me angry and sad at the same time, but yet she was happy. I remember writing a check for the stuff when we got back into line, and we left.

When we left, I believe we briefly ran into Pete (Teresa from Mercedes) and she talked to us for a moment in front of the store. I don't remember what she was talking about (Perhaps something about parking and now looking for her truck?) but I remember looking around, and where we were reminded me quite a bit of Virginia. Specifically just outside of Farmer Jack's grocery store. We were under kind of a glass awning, and again, it had been raining outside. It was chilly and rainy enough that Em and I were wearing jackets, but Pete wasn't. Pete then went out into the parking lot, and right near the front, kind of under some trees in a smallish parking area, there was her truck. She got in and left, and Em and I went looking for our car.

The next thing I know, it's night time again, and Em and I are out in that dark and rainy part of town again. We see the Electricity Villain go flying along the road and right into a laundromat. From kind of behind a wall of washing machines or something, almost as soon as we get in there, we see a bright flash and heard a small short yell, and we know that he had just electrocuted someone. I noticed that when he had gone by us to go into the laundromat, he had a "sound" of firing electricity which sounded nearly exactly like the ships flying around in the Matrix. (kind of like an electrified hum).

After that, Em and I got into a car, and started driving off to the right of where we had been looking at the laundromat. We were going down a long and narrow street that had some cars parked along the side of the road. There were 5 or 6 story apartment buildings on either side of us all the way down the street. I saw us coming up to the end of the street that was blocked off by a wooden fence. All the way down, we were kind of following the Electricity Villain, but he was way ahead of us. When we saw him get to the fence, he went right up under it.

At this point, my view changed. It's like I was still in the car, but we could just pass right through buildings, and we were kind of flying. We were up and to the left of the Villain, watching him soar like a shadow along the cityscape, and we were pacing him. We didn't know where he was going or what he was going to do, but we had to keep watching him. It was almost like the end of a movie. It even almost seems that I was hearing some sort of closing music and closing narration describing the situation and where we might go from here.

Mike Dies

I had been driving home from the north, coming from Harrisonburg or a little farther away, and I had gotten to Grandmamma's house. Em and I were walking up the sidewalk to the back porch. Just as we got to the back porch, my cell phone rang. I answered it, and it was mom. She asked me something about whether or not I had heard about the accident on the news. I told her I hadn't, and she said "Your dad was in an accident and died." I think I may have asked her, "My dad?" implying that I wasn't sure who she was talking about, and she clarified by telling me that it was Mike (former step-father).

As I was walking through the back door into the kitchen, I asked her what had happened. She told me that he had been going for some job interview to be a guard somewhere, and the woman that was interviewing him had been driving him to and from the interview. They were going across the Blue Ridge mountains, and evidently had some sort of freak accident where they ran straight into a vertical portion of the mountain, broke through, and feel several thousand feet into the depths of this hollow mountain. I saw it in my head as she was describing it.

They were in a nondescript car of some nondescript dark color, and the road took a sharp turn as they were going up the mountain. The mountains were very steep compared to how they are in real life. They were almost like they were in a video game. They were very tall, and extremely pointed near the top, almost like they were perfect cones or something.

Anyway, I saw them hit the mountain head on, and they broke through the mountain surface. Both Mike and the driver were thrown from the car and I watched them fall into the mist below. The inside of the mountain was illuminated, and I could see trees and large rocks near by, but the farther down it went, it just turned into mist, which I saw Mike fall into. I wasn't particularly sad, but I knew that Eric and Matthew (brothers, Mike's sons) might be. I also thought briefly of Carol (Mike's current wife) and their two kids (Robert and Elizabeth). I wondered, also briefly, if it hadn't been Carol that had been driving Mike to the interview, but I realized that if it had been, mom would have mentioned that, too.

Evil Comes Knocking

I was with Emily (wife) and one or two other people, and we were in a car that had just pulled up to the outside of this little tavern or motel. We got out and looked around. As I looked around, I saw that the area was pretty heavily wooded, and we were up on a mountain. It almost seemed to be on the Blue Ridge mountains heading over to Charlottesville in Virginia. Things were very green, and it seemed as though it had just rained recently, and not only was it still wet out, but it was also foggy. It was kind of cool out, almost as if it were early spring or late fall, except the trees were in the perfect condition for mid summer. Maybe it was just a very cool summer day.

The road was in front of me (behind the car) and I had gotten out of the back seat on the driver's side of the car. I'm not sure who's car it was, but it wasn't one of ours. I'm guessing it belonged to one of the other people. Anyway, as I was looking out across the road, I noticed that to my left, the road went downhill, and to my right it went uphill. Across the road there was a steep rise in terrain, and there was a large mansion up on the side of that hill. One of the other two people (not Em) were talking about the history of the area. They were talking about how that mansion was named "Old Trinity" or something similar.

Anyway, there was a second building there, too, either like a guest house or a garage or something. The person doing the talking was saying how this mansion was the beginning of the town there. The mansion was originally the one named "Trinity", but once the second building was added, it officially became a town, and they now called it "Old Trinity". The town adopted the name of something like "Trinity Crossing" or "Trinity Creek", but the second part of the name actually began with an M, so it was "Trinity Mossing", or maybe "Trinity Meek" or something really strange like that.

After looking at the mansion from a distance for a bit, the four of us went in through the motel/tavern place that we had pulled up to, and we went into the back where there was a barn. I forget what we were looking at in the barn at first, but the barn itself was huge. To my right there was a lot of old machinery and a lot of the high storage. In front of me was this area where there was this large 10 foot wheel turned on it's side, and it was up about 8 feet in the air. It had cogs on it that hung downward, and these were supposed to be to tie horses to so that they could go around in a circle and make the big machinery of the place work. I think that either I was imagining it working, or I pushed it and saw it in action, but either way, I followed the large shaft that came up out of the top of the wheel where it connected to 45 degree angle gear (almost looked like a big drill bit) and that was connected to another, so that together they made a 90 degree turn and ran a bit along the ceiling. That connected with another bigger gear, and that came down at a 45 degree angle, and that connected with yet another bigger gear that was actually connected to some machine. The very first shaft came out of the top of the original wheel was about 6 inches across. The final shaft that was connected to the main machine was over 18 inches across. It was huge!

Anyway, we continued on after the machinery stopped, and I came across this large piece of a broken aluminum cylinder that was laying kind of squished on the floor. I assumed it was from one of the shafts, or maybe from the smoke stack that went up out of the top of the barn. The aluminum was reddish in color. It wasn't painted, but it was actually a faded red, kind of like the colored aluminum that you see rock climbing hooks/latches made out of. I wondered what had happened to it to cause it to be laying here in the middle of the floor under all the machinery that was high above. The lower edge of it was all serrated as if it has just blown off or been ripped off the rest of the stack. That was to the right. The upper edge of it was where the stack had been professionally finished and folded in and riveted into place.

We eventually left there, continued out the back, and finally found the houses that were associated with the motel/tavern for the guests to stay in. As we walked through the yard, off to our right was a cemetery. The headstones were all white with moss growing on them, and at one point an old black car drove down through there. We went into our room through the closest door, which was actually the back door. It was extremely bare inside, as if no one was meant to live in there at all. Things seemed a bit dank and dark, and there was nothing around. Not even carpeting. I didn't think about this at all, though, because hardly any sooner than we had gotten inside, Em had turned around and looked out the door that we had just come in. She yelped something, and I turned to see what was going on.

At about this time, I got a memory that came up, and I saw a young hick type of character coming up to the side door of the house we were in, only it was supposed to be of an earlier time before we had ever visited there. I saw him come and knock, and as he did, there was a fire behind him in the yard. I somehow knew that this was his way of getting people out of the house, and that he was actually Evil in disguise. I knew that he would come again and try to get us out, but we had to resist. I was brought back out of this by Em.

I turned and looked at the stuff she was seeing, and she was yelling something about the house of the neighbor behind us. She was saying that their back door was on fire, and that was a sign of either Evil or the KKK (which isn't very different, ha!) Then we year a knocking on the front door. We turn around and go to the front door, passing a kitchen and a bedroom on our left. We answer it, and it's the hick guy there in overall and looking all shy and sheepish. (he looked like a younger/smaller version of the pirate with a wooden eye in Pirates of the Caribbean) He said something, but I don't remember what.

I saw the fire outside of the house, just past the porch. I panicked and grabbed Em. I knew that we weren't supposed to let him in, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with us getting out. We ran off the porch and jumped across the fire. The fire was only about a foot wide all the way around the house, and only about two feet tall, so it wasn't anything big to jump over. As we do, we tell him that he cannot go into the house. He says something about how we already let him in because "evil cannot go where it's not invited."

He transformed quickly into an older and bigger guy with long black hair and wearing a black robe or black shirt and pants. He dove off to the right side of the porch, landing on his arms and chest area, almost as if he slipped and fell, but he was able to keep himself propelled, and kicked his legs up into the air behind him. He got to the end of the porch and did a quick maneuver that caused him to loop around the edge of the porch and dive underneath it, heading up under the house in one quick movement. Seeing this happen scared me and woke me up.

Mall and Faire Shopping With Em's Parents

Emily (wife), Matthew (brother), and I were walking around in this really big mall. I think that originally it was supposed to be in New York or something. It was full of all these expensive "fashionable" clothing stores and not much else, but it was still fun to look around and see all the tools shopping because they thought they NEEDED these stupid "fashions".

We got down to one of the ends of the hallways, and there was a set of doors there that led to the outside. I could see the parking lot out there. To my right, just inside these doors, was a big store that was labeled as "New York, Paris, and [some city I can't remember]" At this point I realized that we were actually in Paris. I made some comment to Em and Matthew about "Hey, they really DO have these stores in New York and Paris!" Neither of them seemed very impressed.

I'm not sure what happened next, but eventually I found that I was walking alone. Em had gone off to look at something that I didn't feel like looking at. I was feeling a bit miffed about that for some reason, and I knew she was, too. As I walked around, I ran into Em's parents. I found her mom first, but I can't remember what she was doing exactly. I think she was messing around with some display that was up, getting a bit more involved with it than I thought she should. I left her mom and went and found her dad.

Her dad was sitting down at the end of this main intersection area, and he was watching the kiddie train go round and round. The walls here were very tan in color, and there seemed to be all sorts of stairs and levels around here. The kiddie train area was even down about 6 feet or so below normal walking level.

He was down there just sitting on a bench. I think I wound up telling him that we would be ready to go soon. He got up off the bench and looked around, adjusting the waistline of his pants, and then we went up and found Em's mom again. Em's dad got her to stop what she was doing and come with us. I think it also took us a little while to find Em since she had gone off shopping. She was still a bit miffed at me, and she didn't seem to want to talk to me. We all went out and got into their Pacifica. The parking lot was actually a dirt and grass field surrounded by a row of trees. We got out of the lot and drove down a dirt road a ways.

Eventually we wound up at this place that was a lot like a Renaissance Festival. It was really interesting, and we looked around a bit. We finally made it into this one shop that had a ton of different stuff in it, but not much of it was renaissance related. It was just kind of like a general store, but it sold some really strange stuff. I spent way too long looking around in there, and that in itself was getting Em all antsy at me.

Then I started picking out a bunch of stuff to buy. That just peeved her off. At one point I made one purchase. I went up to the counter, which was at the far right of the store, and handed over my stuff. There was a woman who was also at the counter that had several kids running around and she was buying them a bunch of candy. After she was done, I did my purchasing. I don't remember what I bought the first time around, but I had a good bag of stuff. After that, I decided to look around a bit more. This was just too much for Em, and she left with her parents to go wait outside.

I went out with them at first to try to get Em to stay in there with me, but she wouldn't. She thought it was stupid that I was still shopping in there. So I went back in and looked around some more. I realized that something that may be making her mad is that I hadn't bought anything that was strictly for her. So I looked around for something specifically for her, and I found a green suede wallet. I, for some reason, though this would be perfect.

I got out my blue ballpoint pen and wrote something on the wallet front. It was something along the lines of "For my dear, sweet, and loving Emily". I took it up, with a few more nik-naks and made another purchase. When I did, I saw that my first purchase was wrong. The receipt listed about five or six items of candy that I hadn't bought. I showed that to the lady at the register, and I told her that those were items put on my receipt by accident because the lady in front of me with all the kids had the candy, not me. She took those things off my receipt and refunded my money. I then purchased the rest of my stuff.

On my way out, I saw a computer monitor that caught my eye. This was some sort of super nifty monitor that had some strange built-in stuff to it. I think it had a built in "terminal", as in Rxvt or Xterm that normally runs under Linux. Also, the design around the outside perimeter of the monitor was really neat. It was $799, and, for some odd reason, I thought that was a great deal. I went up to the register to buy it, and I found out that it was actually a monitor that I had ordered, and they were holding it there for me. I thought, "How odd... but great!" I purchased it, and just as I was ready to leave, I saw that there was a gallon of milk on the receipt that I had not actually bought. I went back and got that straightened out. I felt bad because I thought they were thinking that I was just trying to get away with all this free stuff (candy and milk), but I showed them that I didn't have any of it, so they had no choice but to take it off.

I left and found Em sitting with her parents on a bench under some sort of gazebo type of structure. We left and came home. Em asked me on the way home, "So, what was it about this monitor that we should have been looking for in the first place?" In other words, if I really liked this one, why did we get my previous one. I just told her that I didn't know because I knew that she wouldn't understand the details of it. As I looked at it all wrapped up in bubble wrap, I realized that this was a 15 inch monitor! I was pretty upset because now that "great price" no longer seemed very good, but I was stuck with it.

I brought it home to the Villas apartment and plugged it in and started up Windows. The monitor did some cool stuff, but everything was really small and cramped on the screen. Then when I tried to shut down and restart my computer, it just kept going immediately into Windows. It wouldn't let me get into Linux. I was pretty miffed now that this "great deal with awesome features" was turning out much worse than I already had, and I had spent so much money on it.

After this, we all went to bed. The bed was in Matthew's old room at Grandmamma Miller's house. Em's parents were actually the ones sleeping in the bed, and Em and I were sleeping at the foot of the bed on the floor. I woke up first, and I wound up getting all the stuff I had bought together. I found the green suede wallet with my writing on it, and I got it ready to present to Em. She woke up, and we talked briefly about how I was sorry that I went on that shopping spree. She was still a bit upset at me, but she forgave me for being such a stinker about it all. I pulled out the green wallet and showed it to her. She looked at it distastefully, thinking I had gotten it for me. I flipped it over and showed her the handwriting. She realized it was for her, and before I could see her reaction to it, the dream ended.

Beach Dugouts

I was at a beach, and I was with Eric, Matthew, (brothers) Em, and her parents. Mom may have also been there, but I don't remember for sure. I was sitting on the beach watching the waves, and most of the rest of the family was off to my right. As I was watching, I could see the little bubbles coming up out of the sand where the sand crabs were. I looked closer around me, and I could see where there were some that were pretty close also.

I'm not sure what caused it, but eventually I was sitting in this area that was dug down into the sand that was about two feet deep. It was kind of like my own little sand bunker. I think, actually, at first, I was not in it, but Matthew was. Matthew was pretty young ( eight or nine years old?) and he was acting all depressed or whiny about something, but he wouldn't tell anyone what it was that was bothering him.

Eventually we traded places, and he was back behind the dug out, and I was in it. I was looking around, and I realized that there was a little storage area that ran all the way around this thing on the inside. The sand above it was only about six inches deep up to the surface, but it seemed to support the weight of anyone that walked or sat close by. Just to my right, there was even a little area that was refrigerated. There was a two-liter soda and a gallon of milk in there, and it was poorly hidden behind this raggedy dark red or black cloth that acted as the "refrigerator door". After looking around at this for a bit, the dream ended.

Ping Pong Hijinks and Butters on a Bike

I was at work, and it was break time (I think it was supposed to be second break, around 4:45 to 5:00) and I was heading down to the main break room where the ping pong table is. As I passed the front office area, I saw Brian (a guy I used to go to school with that was into tack launchers) there. He was working for some third party company that was hired to come in there and do something.

As I walked by him, I said, "Hey, Brian!" not really thinking that he'd recognize me because of my weight gain. He saw me, and he got this quizzical look on his face and said, "Hey, Jeremy!" I just kept going nonchalantly, almost as if I saw him every day. I don't think that I wanted him to know that it was such a big deal that we recognized each other, for whatever reason. I think the main reason was because I wanted to get to the break room and play ping pong, and we didn't have much time to.

I finally got into the break room, and Phillip (from Mercedes) and I played a bit of ping pong. After a bit, though, Brian and the other guys he was working with was came in and had to dismantle the table to take it out. Phillip and I were bummed about that, and we thought, "Oh well, no more ping pong for a while." After they had gotten the table out of there, I realized that we could still play a little bit. There was a tape measure that we left behind (the coated cloth kind, like a tailor or seamstress uses) that we decided to stretch out on the floor. We both sat or lay down on either side of it, and we tried playing like that.

It turned out, though, that something had happened and the ball that we were using was suddenly broken. It was all dented in on one side, and cracked along the other. So we took our paddles and got up and went back into the Key and Lock site. Right as I got into the work area, I saw that Don (fat guy from work) was moving around the lock setting stations. He was scooting them around different ways, trying to make more room for him over at his station because he thought that it was too much up against the wall. Doing this wound up pushing mine so far against the opposite wall that I couldn't even sit down. I tried moving things around myself.

Cynthia's (Don's friend at work) desk was against mine, so I switched them both around so that instead of the desks being back to back, Cynthia and I sat back to back. I realized, though, that we were still too close, and we'd wind up bumping into each other all the time, and I knew that would piss her off. Then Don got another bright idea. He took his desk and slid it up against the wall where the windows are. He then took the next desk that faced his and did the same thing. He stopped to ask what we thought of that. Cynthia was okay with it, but I wound up realizing that the sun coming in through there would be really hot on sunny days. I mentioned this, and all I got in return was kind of a blank stare. (which is funny because in real life, Don is all about staying cold. He sets the Infrared room to 55 degrees if I'm not in there)

Shortly after this, I wound up leaving. I was on a bicycle, and I was riding along a fairly busy road. The sides of the road were switched for driving, so it was like being in England. The two sides passed each other on the left instead of on the right. Anyway, at first I was on a dirt road area off to the left side of the road. Then, for some reason, I decided that I needed to get to the far right hand side of the road. I pulled across, and realized that it was probably a bad idea to do this through the traffic (even though there really wasn't anyone coming)

Just as I was getting over to the other side, I saw a motorcycle cop there parked along the side of the road. I pulled up in front of him, almost as if I were coming to talk to him. I think I was even considering asking him about something, but he wound up pulling away and leaving before I could, almost as if he never even saw me park in front of him. At this point, I was a mixture of myself and Butters from South Park. I had lost my teddy bear, and I needed to go find it.

I continued on around to the right and got onto a dirt road over there. I was peddling along pretty fast, although I was feeling very out of shape, especially when I hit the various hills and whatnot. I peddled up this hill heading away from the road. The ground leveled out, and the road made a sharp turn to the right. I went around it pretty fast, and I was surprised that I didn't wipe out doing it. I then peddled down a hill and up another. I eventually wound up in this underground cavern area.

The floor was completely covered in water, and I was no longer on the bike. The water was about knee deep, and I was sneaking around looking for my teddy bear. At one point I was huddled into this little side cavern area while I was watching the main cavern. This giant teddy bear monster came tumbling along looking for me. It just looked kind of big and scraggly and mean, and it's eyes were a bit cartoonish looking. I'm not sure if did something to try to get its attention, or if it just happened to see me, or if it just got pissed that it couldn't find me, but I saw it turn its head in my direction, and it's eyes went from being mean looking to being damn scary.

They got bigger, filling in the area up to it's eyebrows, and they went completely white. I think there was a moment that it looked away, so I quickly ran and went to the right. Just to the right was a door to the outside, (which was where the only light coming into the area was coming from anyway) and I made a run for it to get out. As soon as I was outside, I found my bear. I quickly grabbed it, got back on the bike, and high tailed it out of there. I was relieved to have my bear back, and now I could go back home. I think there was some sense of my parents (Butter's parents) telling me that it was useless to go after my bear, but I think I was planning on getting home and telling them that I did it and showing them my bear.

Images of Exorcist the Beginning

Towards the beginning of the dream, Em and I were at a movie theater. (this theater had a feeling of one that I had been in before, something about sitting around an arena area near the top of the theater, but the seating was round) We had come into the theater from the top instead of at the bottom. We sat near the back, and, I think, the movie was even showing on the back wall instead of on the main front wall where the screen normally is. The room we were in was an otherwise normal theater room.

Anyway, I guess I didn't know what we were there to watch, or I had forgotten, but it turned out that we were there to see some sort of preview pictures of Exorcist: The Beginning. I saw the first picture or two, which were mainly the front cover of the DVD (the reddish face all blurred and screaming, but looking a little demon like). At this time was when I really realized what was coming: a slide show of some of the scariest images from the movie. I didn't want to see any of this, so I hunched down in my seat next to Em and closed and covered my eyes. Only a few seconds later, though, I became horrified. I realized that I was still able to see the images. I realized that it was because Em was watching them and "transferring" or "transmitting" them to me without meaning to. I think I tried to leave shortly after this.

Eugoogly

The dream started out with being at Em's (wife) and my new house. There was some sort of odd feeling about it. I don't think it was in the area where it's actually supposed to be north of Fort Worth. I think it was actually in Virginia.

Anyway, I was in the living room in the late afternoon with Em, and things looked a bit dusty or dirty, but the sun was shining in brightly, actually illuminating the dust floating around in the air. Now that I think about it, I think it was supposed to be somewhat like Grandmamma's house combined with Em's parents' house. The room that we were in reminded me a bit of the "formal dining room" of their house, but still not quite. It was bigger than that, and there was something open at the end of the room heading off to the right.

Anyway, it was our house, and we were commenting to one another about how happy we were to be there in it. We were in the process of unpacking (hence the dirt and dust ???), although things actually seemed fairly unpacked. After a bit, we heard about someone that died that we needed to go to their funeral for. I'm unsure if it was a family member or someone famous, like perhaps the Pope (who just died last week or so) I don't really remember the funeral, but I remember being with a group of people, and we were all running down the main aisle of the church in the direction of the parking lot. We were jumping, hooting, hollering, and laughing. We were trying to turn the funeral into a celebration, even though we knew that all the other people there wouldn't understand it. Actually, now that I think of it, it didn't look like anyone else was there. I didn't see anyone as we were running out, but I think they were supposed to be there anyway.

Anywho, we ran out to the cars, and it was obvious that we were some of the first to leave. There was me, Em, an older guy (the dad from Donnie Darko?) and a couple of other people like Eric, Matthew, Mom, and others. Just as we got to our cars (there were 2), I quoted Ben Stiller from Zoolander, and I said really loudly, "Or did you not know that I knew what a Eugooogly was?" Everyone laughed harder, and I really surprised myself because of how much my voice sounded like Ben Stiller. I was really amazed, and found it almost disturbing that I had done such a good job of it.

We wound up getting into the cars and driving away. We were parked in the middle of the lot, facing the left of the church. The church reminded me of something a bit like Pleasant Valley, but it wasn't in that location at all. Our cars were facing a bunch of trees at the edge of the lot. We pulled out of the parking spaces and turned left towards the main road. As we were traveling along the far edge of the parking lot, it turned into it's own little single lane road. Someone was driving towards the church on that road, and looking at us all meanly like we were doing something wrong. I thought at first that maybe we were going the wrong way on the road, but then I saw a sign with an arrow (or maybe the arrow was painted on the road) that was pointing in the direction that we were going, and I knew that we were the ones that were right. I did realize, though, that I had to turn right into a fast food place parking lot (Sonic?) because the road did not continue out to the main road.

As I turned and went into that parking lot and went to go around the building, I could see the people in the restaurant looking at me, again, as if I had done something wrong. The one that sticks out in my mind is this early-40's woman with large blond hair. I can almost see her looking all disdained at me, but I don't know why. I think that I thought in the dream that she didn't have any idea what was really going on and decided to judge me on a wrong opinion. Therefore, I didn't care.

Mall Blastoff

I was in this big place that was a bit like a mall. I'm not sure what mall it was supposed to be like, because it wasn't really like any particular mall that I've been in. Actually, it was more like it was kind of like EVERY mall I've been in. It was just very generic. It seemed fairly upscale, unlike the Marley Station Mall.

I went into this one store that was a bit like a cross between a clothing store and a Discovery Channel store, and there was a stern black woman there. She had her hair in lots of little braids, and it was pulled back at the sides and hung loose in the back. She had glasses (I think) and was wearing kind of a tan or cream colored business suit. She stood at the middle of the front of the store by a set of display tables that were to her right (I saw them on the left as she was facing me). She was fairly stern, and I think she seemed a bit peeved with me that I wasn't buying something in the appropriate manner. Maybe it wasn't me that she was peeved at, but someone else that was nosing around with the merchandise but not buying it.

Anyway, some time later, I found that the mall was actually some sort of space station or space ship that was going to be blasting off soon. All the merchants were instructed to leave, and they did with the exception of the black woman. She refused to leave, at first it seemed because she was just stubborn, but it turned out that there was actually a good reason for it, although I don't think I ever found out what it was. Either she was in charge of something, or she knew about the space ship thing all along, or something like that.

They eventually shut down the entire mall and has us moving towards the main bridge area for the remainder of the flight. I was walking through the mall and checking things out, and making sure that everyone's lights were off. There were some lights around in different places that weren't part of the stores that were on, just enough to give light to the area where I was walking through. It was almost like walking down a city street at night time. There was one store that I passed that had the lights on still, and that was the one with the stern black lady in it. She was tidying up and getting ready to head up to the main bridge. I think I talked with her for a moment before she was done and we both left. We wound up in the restaurant area, and I think that she was helping out with part of the serving or cooking or something.

Jumped by a Tractor

Em (wife) and I were at our own house, which was basically Grandmamma Miller's house. The outside of the house was that one, but the inside was very different. Anyway, Em's parents were in visiting for a while, and it was creating a bit of stress. I kept getting upset with Em because she was letting her common sense get away from her. There were a few times earlier on in the dream where I was naked, but I was in one of our bedrooms. Em came in, but she left the door wide open, and her parents were outside of the door and they could see me. I snapped at Em to think about what she was doing and to please shut the door. I think that originally it had to do with her mom telling her to leave the door open, but I don't know of the reason. It wasn't that she wanted to see me in there, but she wanted to keep an eye on Em to make sure that she was okay.

Em took a little offense the first time I snapped at her, even though I didn't do it too badly. I did it in more of a "surprised" way, trying to make it more like "Whoops! Don't forget the door, hon!" I think there was a bit of trouble with keeping the door closed, so eventually I moved off to another room.

The new room I was in was a bit smaller, rather bare, and had a closet off to one side and a window on the far wall that was completely uncovered. Event though it was uncovered, I didn't care even though I was still naked. But Em came in again, and once again she left the door wide open with her parents hanging around right outside. I think I yelled at her to shut the door that time, and she got pretty upset about that, and may have even started crying. I tried to explain to her that when I'm in there changing (even though it seemed to be taking me forever to do so) I NEED her to shut the door when her parents are in town. Even though I tried to explain it better, she was still pretty upset about it.

Finally I was able to get dressed, and I went outside. I went out the front door, across the road, and up the corner of the embankment into the little parking area where Aunt Irene used to park her van when she came to visit. Just after I got over there, I heard Em and her family yelling, and I heard an engine roaring. Just as I turned back at the house to see what was going on, a tractor hit the embankment, and jumped right over me, missing the top of my head by only about a foot as I crouched down to miss it. The tractor was red, and had big front tires that were similar but smaller versions of the normal tractor type of back tire. It landed, turned sharply, and drove off down in the direction of Garber's farm just down the road. I think Em and her parents yelled something about how it almost hit me, and how I was lucky that I ducked when I did.

After convincing them that I was fine, I also turned and went down towards the Garber's farm. I think my original reason was to find out who was driving that tractor that almost hit me. I walked down the road, and eventually wound up in front of the Garber's house. Right across from the house was a large gravel/dirt area where there were lots of things going on. To the immediate right of the area was a big barn. In various places in the middle of it, there were sheds, ports, and whatnot where various farm vehicles were parked. There were also piles of tools, debris, and other things, and there were a number of workers all around doing different things. I walked over to this gravel area, and went in the direction of the big barn.

As I got back near the back part of the lot and the far side of the barn, I found Erwin (from Mercedes). He was working there on the farm, and so I went up to him to talk for a bit. There seemed to be something that he was all uptight about that related to his farm work, but I don't know what it was. I tried to talk to him about the tractor driver, and that just got him even more uptight.

He walked around a bit, and he was going along the back end of the lot. There were trees there, and even a fence of some sort that marked the edge of the gravel lot boundary. I walked along with him for a short bit, and I eventually came across a bicycle that I knew belonged to Evan (boy from school who lived down the road). Erwin didn't seem too keen on my picking it up and pulling it along with me, but he didn't stop me from doing so.

About 50 feet or so away from the barn, I saw a break in the fence, and saw a home made wooden ladder there. I looked at it, and saw that the ladder went down, not up, and went to the bottom of this 20 or so foot cliff which sat at the edge of the lot. I saw that this was where all the trees were growing from, too. There was a pathway below, and I decided that I needed to get down there for some reason. Somehow I managed to hang on to the bike, and I tried to go down the ladder. One odd thing about it, I didn't try to get to the other side of the ladder first. It was right up against the cliff, so I couldn't go down it the direction I was facing because I was on the top side of this cliff. But I got on this side of it anyway, and when I did, saw that the ladder wasn't put together well, and it didn't look like it would hold my weight.

I tried to pull myself up a rung, and the rungs that I was holding on to and standing on snapped under me, and I fell back. I caught myself so I didn't fall down, but I realized that I wasn't going to make it down the ladder. I think I decided to throw the bike down the cliff and onto the path. There was a pile of junk or something on the path about 50 feet out, and I guess I thought I could get the bike onto that. Just as I swung it around and chucked the bike over, Erwin saw me, and got very upset with me for throwing Evan's bike down there. For some reason, I really though that it needed be down there, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. I wasn't trying to be mean about it. I was just "putting it back".

[One thing to note is that this pathway below was like another dream that I had one time about going along a very similar pathway through the woods, and I wound up having to go through tunnels in the pathway in order to continue.]