In Romeo and Juliet

It's Christmass Eve and I'm with my family. My brother and dad leave for Christmas Eve service, I wait to go with my mom who needs to get dinner in the oven first. I fall asleep and wake up in an hopur or two - I ask my mom what time it is, she repliers she's glad we missed the service.

I remember that I'm in a production of Romeo and Juliet that night. I ask my mom if she remembers what time it starts. She says she doesn't think it's till eight or nine. I have a small part in the play, but we haven't rehearsed in months and I don't know my lines. In this production, we wear regular street clothes and it's OK to read from the script, but I can't find my copy. I go to a Barnes and Noble to pick up a copy, feeling a little rushed.

At the store, I remember that I need three settings of silverware for my part, so I pick out some cutlery. I notice some really cool plants - some sort of low-light succulents that seem like they'd do well in my vivariums and I buy some of them too. By this time I know I'm going to be late fort the performance so I buy another Shakespeare play instead.

I arrive at the theater which is a theater in the round made4 iof stone. The cast is taking the curtain call. They walk through the audience towards me, nobody says anything about me not showing up although everybody is aware. The director says we can do a run at the theater.

Boxing horses, wrecked hotel

I'm staying at a hotel with three other guys I don't really know. I wake up to find one of them has done hundreds of dollars worth of damage to the room and shades in the halls. I'm explaining to the others that if we con't call the cops on the guy ourselves the hotel is going to make us all pay for it.

I'm outside the hotel, looking up a hill. There are cowboys wrangling up wild horses and low flying aircraft. The horses have very strong hind legs and I think about how I told someone in waking life my body aches felt like I'd been kicked by a horse. The horses can use their front legs a bit like arms and two of them are having a fistfight.

I'm wrestling with the guy who wrecked the hotel room. I hear a particularly loud particularly low plane that seems to be approaching from beyond the hill. As I wonder if it's going to crash on us, it comes into view - it's not an airplane but a giant blue dumpster. The guy who I was going to call the cops on is holding onto me as if he would rather die with me, crushed by the dumpster, than be arrested.

Rescuing a drowning boy, setting off fireworks

I'm in an overcrowded swimming pool. A toddler is drowning right in from of me. I take him out of the pool, his body is limp and flat like an uncooked pizza crust. I try holding him a few different ways to get the water out of his lungs and succeed at getting him to breathe by laying him on his stomach and turning him over once it seems most of the water is out.

I have a cardboard box of fireworks that is set off, perhaps unintentionally. They all go off more or less at once. There's a second metal box of fireworks. An alien sets fire to fumes coming out from the closed box. The fumes burn like a blowtorch for several seconds, then the box explodes very powerfully with a single crack of military explosives and blinding white flash. As the smoke clears, I look to see if anyone near was injured. It seems everybody is OK.

Working at an amusement park church

There is some sort of religious ceremony in which I'm taking part as a behind the scenes worker. It's a regularly scheduled event, like a service offered throughout the day at an amusement park. There are three tube-like structures running up a cliff. At the top, there are organically shaped rotating yellow rings. Their purpose is to reanimate or crucify people during the service. My job is to make sure they are in working order - I have to climb the cliff to make sure they are working.

Shaved off my beard

I'm waking up, realizing I drank so much I blacked out the night before. I've done a horrible job of shaving my beard off while I was blacked out.

Getting back from a hiking trip

I'm in a house preparing for a few days hiking in the Appalachians with friends. My hiking companions don't know about hiking and are horsing around.

We're back from the hike and there is a big mess in the room we were preparing in. There's a laundry bag full of my dirty clothes. Someone's mom is watching as I dump out the clothes and find a bunch of food in the bottom. We were supposed to take the food on the hike but it got left behind and rotted.

A keyboard

I'm in a room with many musical instruments. I see a vintage keyboard I'd purchased and forgot about. It's shaped like a mini grand piano and has sliders all over the soundboard. Most of the sliders don't change the sound much. I see a price tag on it listing it at over $1400. As I start to tell my boss I only paid about $600 for it, I notice the price tag is attached to another keyboard that mine is sitting on.

Jumping down a chute

I'm with two male friends or coworkers. We're going somewhere and have to fall through a lung chute to get there. All three of us jump shoulder to shoulder. We accelerate faster then gravity - I look at my companions and we all seem to be surprised but not afraid.

Plants and frogs

My frogs are in a house with no roof and only hints of walls in places. I'm growing potted plants inside the house. I notice one is not doing very well and remember I haven't fed my frogs in a while. As I look closer at the unhealthy plant, I( notice what I thought were shriveled up leaves are actually tiny swarms of insects.

In a crowded market with men gambling

I'm in a crowded market or similar public space, many people seem to be tourists. I come upon an open room packed with South Asian men. They have fist fulls of cash and appear to be gambling. They all have very similar facial features, including over-sized unblinking saucer eyes. Somebody asks the men where they're from and one repliesw, "With names like Bobo, Hoho and Homo you can't tell?"

I'm the bass player

I've joined an established band as a bass player. I think my influence on the music is really good and wonder if people listening will recognize my influence.

Pet shrimp

I'm in shallowly flooded backyard. The backyard is flooded because of the frog vivariums I'm keeping there. I see a shrimp and it occurs to me it's unusual to see a freshwater shrimp. I pick it up looking for a container to put it in. As I don't know what it eats, I resolve to keep it in water collected from the lawn. I see tiny swimming animals and wonder if any are shrimp of the same species which may breed with my shrimp.

As I'm looking for a container, a young couple drives up. I hide behind a fence, not wanting them to see what I'm doing because I don't want to explain it. I eventually find a fiberglass bucket type of thing which I've affixed a shirt to with tar. As I'm peeling the shirt off, the backyard becomes a video game I forgot I was playing. A gigantic dinosaur character appears and in the game, I throw many tiny animals at it to try to kill it. One animal makes a relatively small hole in it and I hope the hole gets infected and kills the dinosaur.

Neon fish

I'm on vacation with my parents. We're sleeping in a tent outside a hotel. I'm awake in the middle of the night and decide to clean the car's windshield which has a lot of hard, thick dust on it from the previous day's drive. It's very dark and I realize I'm cleaning the windshield of the wrong vehicle. It begins to downpour; I return to the ten which floats away in a flash flood.

I'm dangling a hook and string in the water and catch many tiny fish. The tent comes to rest at a facility that is something like a miniature golf course and something like a stocked fishing pond. It's very crowded. Almost immediately I catch a large fish with a huge dorsal fin. It's fins and edges are decorated with living material like a neon sign.

A girl I meet at a wedding wants me to be her pimp

It's the present day and I'm back in North Carolina marrying two friends who are married in waking life. The ceremony is in a church - I'm in a ambulatory balcony that doesn't seem to be connected to the sanctuary at all. I'm watching all the people gathered for the wedding wait for me to show up.

It's after the wedding and I'm in a room with a woman I met earlier. I'm sexually attracted to her. She wants to be a prostitute and asks me if I'll be her pimp. She says it's easy, you just have to have sex with people. She is showing me how easy it is by 69ing with a customer who wanted to pay extra to have someone watch, so I'm watching. She tells me some people might want me to join in and the scene turns into her 69ing with two men. I tell her I'm not sure how one would go about 69ing with four people. She says, "You just get a bunch of balls in your face." Now both men are penetrating her and their balls are in my face. Their scrotums are each a torus, uncooked rings of sausage attached where their scrotums should be . I tell my friend I'm still not sure what she wants me to do. She tells me to lick them.

Party frustrates my plans

My parents are having a party. I want to masturbate, but there's nowhere private to go. My frogs are getting out and I need to pay attention to my vivariums but †he guests make it impossible.

Sean Hannity writes about me

I'm in a magazine store. Someone I don't know is explaining that when he used to start collecting comics there weren't so many of each issue. He gestures towards rows of new comics telling me that so many are printed these days that they're not worth collecting.

I see a magazine with an article by Sean Hannity that mentions my first name in the article title. I'm pretty sure it refers to me and I think about telling others about it. I look at the display copy - each page is onionskin and has eyelets that hold the page open on a cast-iron spike. It's very arty. Scanning the article, I discover it's actually not about me.

I'm talking to someone about traveling across the world. As we talk, a three dimensional globe illustrating our thoughts helps us communicate. I talk about possibly visiting Uruguay and as I think about being inoculated, the globe spins to show details of Uruguay including a cloud of mosquitoes.

A deformed Boston Terrier

I'm in a big box pet store to buy a Boston Terrier. I tell the clerk I better look at the dog before committing to buy it. The clerk brings the dog out and it doesn't look like a Boston, but I like it. The dog jumps on me and licks me a bit. As it walks further from me I notice it is grotesquely obese belly but has a pencil-thin chest and see3ms thin like a sunfish. I'm glad I said I wanted to look at the dog before buying it.

A slam dunk contest

I'm in my high school looking for an English class I'm supposed to be in but have forgot about all semester. When I find it, I'm given the results to a test I don't remember taking, I had to make a wild guess at every question. I'm having a sexual relationship with the teacher who looks at me disappointedly and knowingly as I look at my results.

There's an escalator which is very difficult to navigate in the hallway. When I arrive at the floor below, I'm on a basketball court taking part in a slam dunk contest. The coach doesn't think I'll be able to jump high enough, but I easily jump so high the rim is at eye level. After performing another dunk, I try to do a 360, but spin way off and don't even come near to the basket.

Assassination

I'm watching a man aim a rifle into a crowd in an outdoor amphitheater from a grassy area at the read top. Others are walking by either not noticing or perceiving it as normal. Two other men carry parts of a complicated parabolic sound dish to where the man is standing and assemble them. The sound dish is actually a disguised rifle, the men fire it twice at their target, disassemble it and calmly walk away.

Dead frogs, meeting John Lennopn and Frank Zappa

I'm hiking in the Appalachians with a hiking partner I don't know. We don't have enough supplies or money, I have 2 $20 bills. I give one to my partner and tell him to say we're both down to our emergency $20. We have to climb vertical escalators clogged with people staying in a fancy hotel. There is some sort of music festival going on, it's my job to film it. I meet Frank Zappa and John Lennon.

I'm to present a film of the concert at work. There was software on the camera that allowed you to search for objects it recognizes. I've put together a really great movie and realize I could make it better by superimposing transparent images from a found film I have. I wonder how or if I should credit the filmmaker of the found film and decide not to even credit myself for the movie asa

I'm coming back from vacation with my girlfriend. My vivariums are all full of junk and a few of my frogs have died. Some of my fruit fly cultures are over producing, so I have a lot of flies to feed the survivors. As I'm feeding them, I discover many dead frogs and discover the windows were open. I think the frogs must have frozen to death, but also find some of my frogs outside in the cool fall weather.

Kissing cousins

I'm at a family get together with very distant relatives, sleeping naked in a common area. An attractive jewish looking girl asks me if I want to be kissing cousins. I try to find my clothes so we can go outside and make out.

Driving with a kitten

I'm driving in my car with a kitten I must keep with me all day for the foreseeable future. I wonder if it would be OK to bring it in to work with me. The sunset is striking, I slow down to photograph it.

A polar bear with the neck of a dragon licks my face

I've arrived back from vacation and have returned to a pet store that was keeping my frogs for me while I was away. They've multiplied and there is a new frog with blue and white rock patterns the same color as blue and white China dishes. There are also salamanders and another kind of amphibian with identical coloring. They are crowded into a small Tupperware box and some escape when I lift the lid. I'm trying to catch one of the salamanders which was very fast.

A pet store employee lets a polar bear out of a huge Pyrex container. It has a long serpentine neck and teeth like a dragon. It's barking and snarling, the young man is having trouble controlling it on its leash. It escapes.

The polar bear has fallen asleep and snores gently on top of me. The employee says he'll call the police, who I assume will bring a tranquilizer gun. I successfully try to relax, thinking the beast will sense it if I'm tense or afraid. The employee starts balancing empty beer bottles on me. I'm upset and tell him to stop, thinking the police will think I passed out drunk.

The polar bear wakes up and licks my face. The employee is amazed we're friends and a small boy wants to pet the bear but is afraid of it. I am glad the bear likes me, but am also wary because we have not been friends very long and am worried it might turn on me. It has very long sharp teeth.

Beer tasting

I'm at a beer tasting at my junior high school. Several brands are showcasing their beer and I start with Summit. There are six full size bottles of beer in my sample and I drink four that are new to me very quickly. Among the two remaining beers are their India Pale Ale, my favorite beer they offer all year around. I want to drink it but realize I'm getting too intoxicated to drive. I realize I don't have to drink the whole thing and start to sip it slowly.

Coming across friends moving

I'm walking down a street parallel to a river among what seem to be warehouses with my dad and niece. We come to an open area, perhaps an unused parking lot, and I launch a kite. I'm surprised to find the kite is actually 100 separate kites stringed together in rows of 10, each kite numbered in red digits. The kites catch the wind quite powerfully for seconds, then fall to the ground. I relaunch the kite several times.

I've walked further down the street alone, I'm carrying a guitar, a satchel and a tiny blue trunk with my girlfriend's kitten in it. I come upon friends I haven't seen in years loading up a moving truck. There's a lot of stuff sitting on the sidewalk, carried out of the building but not loaded yet. There are a few empty aquariums and some broken aquariums housing saltwater fish. I want to find out who they belong to as I want to offer to buy the empty aquariums.

My friends seem uncomfortable acknowledging my presence, I wonder if they have been living in the city for years and haven't contacted me and are now moving. I now know this city to be Washington, DC and am unsure if my friends think I live there or know I live in Minnesota. I ask to the group, "So who's moving where?" My question is ignored.

One friend and I separate from the group and walk to find a restaurant. We pause in a foyer and I notice scabs on my penis. I unzip my pants and pick off two scabs. I notice my dad is beyond a door and it seems like he thought I was having sex with my friend.

I realize I left the trunk and kitten where the rest of my friends were; my friend and I begin to walk back. On the way, I ask him who is moving where and he doesn't answer. I find that someone has let the kitten out of the trunk so it can breathe, I find the cat and place it in the trunk without closing the top. I again ask the whole group who is moving and add that I don't think it's a big deal, but I have a right to know. An obese man with sores on the inside of his arms displays the sores to me and says he's moving because he has cancer. I talk with him about his aquariums.

Moving from school

My parents are coming to help me move after finishing college. It's pre-dawn and I've been drinking, but don't feel drunk. I need to load up my car before my parents arrive but I've no idea where I've left my car As I'm searching, I realize it could be anywhere within an area of many square miles so I start running, thinking this way, I'll get some exercise too.

The sun comes up and I'm still running, looking for my car. I've become lost myself. I'm surprised I'm not at all fatigued from running, lack of sleep and drinking.

People are starting to be out and around. As I'm running up stone steps towards a large marble building, I'm stopped by a young man who asks me if I'm going to take care of his friend's truck. Suddenly, I remember that months ago I'd borrowed someone's red pick-up and lost it while using it. I'm aghast that I've completely forgotten about losing someone's truck and feel a great deal of anxiety - I was never able to remember where I had parked it so couldn't even say whether I thought it was stolen or not. The young man can't answer any questions I ask about the situation. I get the truck owner's telephone number and leave a message. I continue running. The truck owner calls me back right away and tells me he reported the truck stolen and the police couldn't find it, but he's purchased a new truck and is not concerned. He tells me he's paying for the truck with money he earns by working overtime. I'm more upset about the situation than he is. I continue running.

I'm still lost and think it must be well past noon. I worry that my parents have been waiting for me for hours.

I come upon a large parking lot with large household appliances and stand-alone wardrobes parked in the spaces instead of cars. I recognize a group of objects as the thing I've been looking for, but it's not a car, rather two wardrobe closets and a large machine of some sort. The contents of the closet are in disarray and contain a lot of junk I'm not interested in keeping. I decide to move what I want from the closets to the side of the parking lot, hoping to avoid allowing my parents to see the mess. As I'm carrying come clothes to the side of the lot, I come upon my parents. I'm surprised to find it's only 10 am and they haven't been waiting at all.

My parents start helping me sort through all my junk. There are a lot of cigarette butts and partially empty cigarette packs. Eeven though I've stopped smoking, I want to keep the cigarettes and try to gather the unsmoked cigarettes while trying to make it look to my parents as though I'm just cleaning up the butts. My mom shows me some clothes I've forgotten I owned.

As we're carrying things from the closet, I realize my mom has started to disassemble the mysterious machine and is carrying what seem to be a pair of telescoping arms. The arms are dangerous and I tell her to stop and not move because they may hurt her. I run back to the machine to try to find some instructions or documentation. As I'm trying to read a piece of paper glued to the side I notice the entire parking lot is clear of all appliances and wardrobes other than mine. There is a menacing redneck driving a red truck. He gets out of the truck and starts walking toward me. I arm myself with telescoping arms I've removed from the machine.

A devil fetus with infants inserted in its anus

I'm in the barbershop I went to in my childhood. There are several stylists there now instead of just the one there was when I was there before. I'm moving in to the shop which will be my apartment. I survey the grounds outside and am excited that there's lots of room for gardening next spring.

Inside, I'm carrying out most everything, but leave some unusually shaped old guitars attached to the wall. Some of the hair stylists are playing music in the corner; I dislodge a guitar from the wall and strum along with them.

A group of two or three people enter what is now my front door. I'm upset to realize they must walk through my apartment to get to their own and I wish to complain to my landlord. The people are growing a devil fetus in my closet: it has red skin and budding horns. They feed it by inserting an infant in its anus; the devil baby absorbs the infant's body. They are removing a "spent" infant and inserting a fresh one. The old infant is shaped like the devil fetus' colon.

A parade in Asia

I'm in an asian country walking on an empty road. I come upon a hoop handing over the road with vines hanging down from it. I want to take some clippings for my vivarium and notice that the individual vines are different species of vines grafted together. As I begin to take pictures of it, a parade comes by with a float commemorating a U.S. invasion of the nation. As the parade goes by, the vines are rolled up to let the floats pass.

After the parade, I'm a guest in the house of a local. I'm getting something to eat in the kitchen. There's some sort of food that is very juicy - something like melon on a bone - that I'm preparing over a wate bin. I realize the waste bin is leaking so try to carry it across the kitchen to another bin, but make the situation worse, creating a trail of sticky goo across the floor. I want to clean it up without the lady of the house finding out - I try to mop the mess up with paper towels, but it doesn't help much.

The residents of the house come into the kitchen and the woman starts to clean up my mess. She doesn't say anything and I can't tell if she's angry or not. I ask one of the males if they can unfurl the hoop of vines again so I can get better pictures. He does with a remote control, but it was made to look nice and be rolled up once - it is kind of mussed up now.

A letter and gift from Julia Child

I'm walking down a street on my childhood paper route. I see two men knock on a door and pull out guns when the resident answers. I'm many yards away, but suddenly I have one of the men's gun in my hand. I point it at them, my hands shaking. A dozen or so other people with guns show up and hold the men at gunpoint. Police officers take away the two men and I overhear something about a $60,000 reward.

There's a concert going on at my junior high. The junior high band is practicing a Christmas carol, I walk out of the practice room into a large hall when an all black orchestra is giving the concert. I talk to one of the musicians and someone in the audience, telling them that Julia Child once wrote a letter to me about my fanzine - which interviewed musicians about food.

I'm in another room at my junior high with coworkers. One has received a musical keyboard he ordered from eBay. I play a console organ with him. I notice the organ is damaged in a corner, but the damages although severe seem to be only cosmetic.

I'm in a hall, still in the junior high but there are lines of people waiting in grocery store checkouts. A young man gives me a small cheap fabric badge for assisting is arresting the criminals earlier in the dream, the award I understood to be $60,000.

A coworker and I enter a room that's supposed to be my bedroom with the understanding we're going to have sex. We're naked. There's a vinegary smell in the room but the window is open. As I'm thinking the vinegar smell will soon clear out through the window, my coworker closes it, saying she feels cold. I don't feel comfortable with the situation and to avoid sex, I suggest we put sunscreen lotion on our inner arms and armpits.

I'm at a dinner party in an opulent mansion. I'm again telling the story of how Julia Child wrote me, when I discover she's actually at the dinner party. She shows me different sets of fine wines that I can order for $0.69 because I know her. When she asks me which set I'd like I tell her I'm appreciative, but can't really judge that any wine is a higher quality than another once the price gets over $20 a bottle so maybe she should chose for me. She seems a bit condescending but polite as she walks off to find a collection of mustards she says I'd probably prefer.

Back to school carrying metal scrap

I'm entering the Asheboro high school through some sort of sewer entrance. I can hear a rock concert going on inside. I have to climb a fire escape without railings and chose a path to one side or another of a red ribbon to get into the building. Both sides of the ribbon smell musky and sweet.

Inside the door, I approach a cafeteria line. They seem to be closing. There are tobacco alternatives for sale. I ask a worker which one is like the smell to the side of the ribbon closest to the wall. He shows me and I ask for between 1/2 and 1/2 ounce of it, unsure how much it costs or if I'll have enough cash to pay for it. I also need rolling papers but he hurries off carrying something as he closes shop. I turn top another employee to pay, but he tells me to just take it. I unwrap it and find it to be made of course red thread.

I walk back towards the sewer entrance and notice the band playing is Venison - a Minneapolis band from the 1990s. A girl with a troll like smashed face stops me - I don't recognize her. She says we've known each other seven years. I calculate that we must have met during college, but can't place her.

In the parking lot, I find myself carrying a piece of scrap metal several yards long on my shoulders. I'm with my dad and a few other people, some of who also are carrying large pieces of scrap. Nobody knows what to do with them. We try to pile them in a way that they'll support each other but they dangerously swing like a mobile. I worry that someone will get hurt as I realize kids are getting out of classes and have to walk near the pile of scrap.

Pushing a project towards offensive

I'm part of a team doing a project for work. A very pretty girl I knew in elementary school is also on the team. I've made some content for the project that's pretty extreme and offends the girl's parents. They are in a room talking to her and the managers taking her off the project. While the rest of the team and I are waiting for her to come out, I'm in a lon hall with a crowd of people and tell the rest of the team that her parents wouldn't let her date until later in high school. I wonder if her parents will let us still be friends. A boy in bleachers dances for the crowd, springing from wall to wall.

A line of people start coming out of the room. I find my friend and hug her.

Car stolen on vacation

I'm on vacation in Wilmington. I'm staying with a friend who lives in a large, old house with mant housemates. I've brought some of my frogs with me. I'm alone while everybody is at work. I sleep in and am woken by people who say they're friends of someone who lives in the house - they need to come in to get something out of their friends room. I'm unsure if I should let them, but as the door was open, I figure they would have come in even if I wasn't there.

I go to a sort of street fair with bands playing. The main events are across a moat - one has to take an underwater bus to make it the short distance across. I lounge, mull around and nap across the moat from the bands. There are some interesting local frogs I'd like to take back with me. I walk back to the house as people start arriving home from work.

I ask people if they have a container suitable to keep frogs in. Eventually I find a 5 gallon restaurant bucket. My girlfriend and I go to the water to catch some frogs. When I open the container, some of the frogs I've brought with me are already in it - the bucket is almost full of sand leaving little room for the frogs. I tell my girlfriend I have to return to the place I'm staying to get some more containers for frogs. On the way back, I see many of my frogs, some of which seem to have dried up and splintered into many tiny frogs. I grab as many as I can carry in my hands.

As I arrive back at the house, I notice a woman is in my car - she is looking at a tall stack of CDs which aren't mine. As I open the door to confront her, I notice there are many people around my car and a large man is working on the engine. I approach the man and see my engine is gone. As I'm speaking to the people around the car, I realize the man has been disassembling and stealing my car part by part. Pretending not to realize this I surreptitiously dial 9-1-1 and say things to make the dispatcher realize my car has been stolen.

A police car soon approaches and the man tries to run - I grab him in a bear hug and subdue him easily although he is quite a bit larger than I am. The police are familiar with him as he has stolen cars before. They haul him off and tell me to come in and file a report tomorrow as they're getting off work soon. After they leave, I realize four teenagers were carrying off the car parts for the man. I grab two in a bear hug and call to the police, but the police ignore me. I let the kids go.

I realize I've left my girlfriend by the water - the ordeal was over an hour long - and I rush back to apologize for leaving her there and to explain what happened. When we get back to the car, even more of it is gone - all that's left is the chasis and wheels and ignition. We get in the car which surprisingly still works. As I begin to drive it out of the parking lot, I realize it's clamped to the side of a tow truck and this is why it seems to still, work. The tow truck driver explains that the car is actually not drivable. I realize I'll, have to fly back.

There is an in-flight movie about World War II. I am blown away by footage of a large formation of US bombers dropping bombs on a massive formation of Japanese bombers below. As the bombs hit the place below, the formation falls apart like a huge thin wafer flaking apart in the sky.

I'm back home and have driven to the police station that has arrested the man who stole my car. There are no police officers or clerks around, only other people waiting. My mom is there too. I'm wondering if I'll have to still pay for an expensive part a repair shop had ordered for my car. I leave my mom at a set of doors and go to a room where a friend lives. She's sitting in a chair naked and I lay on a could on the other side of the room, also naked. The friend tells me there were many times she would have liked to have sex with me. I remind her we did have sex, and she explains that she means having unprotected sex and getting pregnant. She says she would now, but she's having her period so couldn't get pregnant. Her roommate walks in and says she'd like to have sex with me too and is also having her period, but doesn't mind having sex on her period. I motion that she can come sit on the couch with me, which she does. I realize I recognize her from somewhere from the tattoos on the front of her thighs. She has a deformed, impish face but I find her oddly attractive. I explain that I'd like to have sex with her but have a girlfriend and the girlfriend is actually in the building. We lay together and nap.

My mom walks in the door and I remember I'm there with my mom, not my girlfriend. We return to the police station. There are many seniors sitting in school desks and still no police officers. I yell, "Where the fuck are the cops?" A voice comes over a public address system that I am considered hostile and that everyone must lay on the ground. Everybody does and on the way down gestures at me with their hands in the same way and makes their eyes large and round. After a few minutes, I point out that I was right: there are no cops around to even arrest me. I basketball bounces out through a door and a young player walks by me to retrieve it. I sarcastically remind the kid I'm hostile - he shrugs it off, saying "I know."

Eventually a cop comes and leads me away. He is very offensive and vulgar - everyone around him, even his coworkers is disturbed by him. Someone else waiting to be processed says he's not the type of person he wants protecting his community. I say that the guy probably has rescued kittens from trees at the same time the cop says the same thing, This makes the cop like me and he lets me go.

Hiking, unable to communicate in a cafeteria

I'm hiking in the New England mountains by myself early in the morning. I make good time walking down from a peak I had climbed the previous day and stop to take pictures of a valley. It's a rural residential area. I wonder why I came back down the way I came and decide I must have wanted to hitchhike from the road to a more interesting part of the trail.

I'm among many people who seem to be attending a fair. My old band is playing, I'm glad to see friends I haven't seen in a long time. I have to fill out several pages of paperwork for an unknown reason. I drop the paperwork off at a long row of folding tables and sit on a toilet which is one of many in a line parallel to the row of tables. An attractive woman finishes next to me, it takes me a long time to finish and I have to wipe with leaves.

I'm now in a cafeteria beyond the row of tables. I realize I only have $11 and this must last the rest of my hike. Nobody in the cafeteria speaks English. The cafeteria is closing and I'm having difficulty communicating that I need to buy something hardy for little money.

I'm walking outside the cafeteria in a war zone. The narrator is explaining that it's thought the bomber from an ethnic tribe infiltrated a rival ethnic tribe as he shared physical characteristics which could pass as the rival tribe and filled out fraudulant paperwork.

Watching myself crash on a plane

I'm on a plane returning from a business trip with a coworker. The plane seems to be crashing but I'm not sure. The plane then tilts so I'm sitting at a 90 degree angle and I'm sure it's crashing. My coworker and I are suddenly in sleeping bags on a sidewalk as if we're camping out in a line for tickets, my coworker is asleep. I see the plane that we are also still on diving towards the ground in the distance. I quickly try to wrap our sleeping bags around us to protect us from impact. The plane crashes in the distance and I sit up and put my hand on my coworker's back to see if she's OK. I realize I'm dreaming.

A photo with Sarah Palin

I've left school to go to the mall for a bit. Sarah Palin is sitting at a table and I decide to talk to her as people have said she's smart and friendly and I want to be able to say from personal experience. I quickly find her very personable, but not intelligent. There are people lined up to have their picture taken with her, I walk with her to go first.

There are several backgrounds I can chose from. The process is to get your picture taken, take a number indicating what background you want and wait for it to be printed out and signed by Palin.

My parents unexpectedly show up. My dad explains my my has been diagnosed with cancer and we're going to England for her treatment. I'm very concerned and want to look up the cancer on the Internet. I also realize I don't have my wallet or keys, and am glad my dad is there so I can borrow $30 to pay for the signed photo.

There's something wrong with my picture with Palin, again I get to cut in line to get it retaken. This time, I'm given a choice of a paper costume to wear. I chose a frog. The pictures are again screwed up, this time every picture looks like it was taken in a fun house mirror. Someone working at the event apologies and tells me they'll give me the more expensive video version at no charge. It ends up the video version is a Teletubbies-like animation with my head and Sara Palin's head pasted on.

End of the world cult, kidnapping

I'm at a religious event in an indoor stadium, it has something to do with the prediction of the end of the world by nuclear war which is happening in 2017, after a period of global harmony starting in 2012. Everybody is buying bulk food to store at the end times. I realize I have to do the same as the rest of the world is going crazy.

After the event, my dad says those who didn't attend should ask for forgiveness. "I came only because it's intellectually stimulating to observe," I respond.

I'm with a girl I've been dating, we walk to me parent's car who we're riding home with. When we get to the car, I'm surprised irritated to see two of my nieces in the back seat. The absolute most the car can fit is six and my brother has a friend that needs a ride too, for a total of 8. I walk back to my brother, standing outside the doors of stadium with his friend. I explain the situation.

I'm back in the car and explain that there are enough cars to fit everybody going back to the town we're going to, but we have to wait to make sure everybody knows the arrangements. I go back to the area outside the stadium. I see my dad drive the car around the outside of the parking lot towards us, I point it out to my brother. He takes a wrong turn but eventually gets to us. I scold him for leaving where he was, telling him in situations like this it;s best to stay where everybody knows you are. We get in an argument - he claims that the problem is a timing thing and he and one of the nieces are the only ones who got it right. I argue that the problem was he brought more people than the car could fit. I ask my brother to explain the situation to him, but he doesn't.

We're driving away, everybody seems to be in the car. I have a device that is both a phone and a very famous electronic basketball game, I've hardly used the game. My brother says he knows the people who originally designed the game in one May. I think about saying it was clearly based on the handheld basketball game from the mid seventies, but my mom announces she's made it to the tournament. I'm surprised she's played at all.

We're stopped, waiting to make sure the rest of the people from our town have rides. My brother has walked back to the stadium to make sure. I'm standing in the street. My dad suddenly drives by in a car he seems to have stolen. I look back at the car and notice two men seem to be trying to kidnap the rest of the people in the car - my mom, girlfriend and nieces. I run down the street hoping to find help. I find a baseball bat on the sidewalk and pick it up to use as a weapon. I decide to stop cars and make people help me. The first car I stop is a delivery truck, I point to the car and tell the driver it's a kidnapping. I notice the driver is a young teenager who wouldn't be much help. There is a schoolbus parked in the opposite lane, so I tell the driver just to stay there so I can gather up a posse from the cars that will have to stop behind.

I'm a terrorist or something

I'm at a concert and have a lot of plastic explosives. I place a small amount on top of some sort of shelf, perhaps a large speaker. I expect it to make a huge explosion, but it is hardly enough to bather anyone. I'm on the street and realize I could get in a lot of trouble for setting off a bomb.

There is violence in the streets - I have a gun and am picking up ammunition off the ground. I'm collecting so much of it, I'm carrying it around in a basket I've improvised by holding out the bottom of my tee shirt.

Moving back in with my parents

My parents are making modifications to the NC house in preparation for my moving in. I've just discovered there's no way to get into my semi-private part of the house without climbing a ladder. I'm angry, but walk to a far away detached garage that will be mine to make sure I'm correct before confronting them. As I walk back, there's a man with a remote control garage opener trying to get it to function on a door adjacent to mine. He is wary to walk closer to the door because something criminal is going on, but I can't tell if the man is afraid of the criminal activity or is part of the criminal activity.

Back in the house, I tell my parents what a terrible idea it was making it so I had to climb a ladder to get into my room. I explain how hard it will be carrying groceries up a ladder.

Later, I'm in front of the house with people who are my friends. It's just before dawn. Several groups of many pinpoints of light fly across the sky. Three large spaceships appear quite near the ground. I rush inside to turn the lights off so I can get better pictures of the craft.

Shopping

I'm shopping in a store with a childhood friend. I have an anatomically correct plastic stick figure toy in the cart and my friend is getting a lot of old porn mags. We come upon my mom who wants to buy our purchases for us. I don't want her to see what we're buying.

A few buildings down there's another store. In it, I find many old tiny romance books high on a deep, disregarded shelf. There are too many to carry at once, but I want to buy all of them for the woman I'm dating. I carry as many as I can hold back to the first store and return for more. I realize I walked out without paying and notice I'm wearing a yellow and blue vest that makes me look like a clerk. I wonder if I should just walk out with more books.

I come upon a friend who has been on some sort of hiking or hitchhiking journey and hasn't bathed in weeks. He's standing on a street corner among a large amount of rotting mushrooms.

A giant crab like insect will eat the wooden rafters

I realize I've owned a motorcycle for years but have forgotten. It's near an aunt and uncle's house in front of where a neighbor's house and huge pile of dirt used to be. Almost all the dirt has been removed and there is a different and rundown house near by. My motorcycle has a self-diagnostic test, which I run. The cycle jumps onto the neighbor's porch. A man comes out to see what's going on. He's a motorcycle mechanic and tells me the sensors for the diagnostic tests are lose, so I have to get them hooked back up before I can find out if anything is wrong.

I get on the motorcycle and am joined my a friend - perhaps a cousin - who has a woman I had previously met with him. He asks if I want to come with them, I agree, thinking maybe I'll end up hooking up with the girl.

We ride the motorcycles to a house which is supposed to belong to a grandmother I never met. My cousins and other people are inside laying around playing games. I have a yo-yo but am not very good with it.

In the front-yard is an entrance to a underground sewage pipe or utility tunnel of some sort. I crawl into it and travel steeply down for several hundred yards. I come out at the bottom of a hill. I have a sack of old belongings which I throw into the rainwater sewer - old pictures, an incomplete Scrabble board, an old pillow. I feel like I'm polluting because I am.

I travel back up the hill, this time outside of the tunnel. There is a strip cleared for power lines and houses on either side. Many people are walking down the hill as I go up. Close to the top, I stop and greet a policeman who enters the utility tunnel with me. We walk back to the entrance I originally came in through - now there is a complicated and dangerous looking turn-style on the exit. I'm afraid it will crush my legs as I go through it, but it just pushes me out a little faster than I would have normally walked.

Back inside my grandmother's house, an aunt is smashing a giant crab like insect with her hands, exclaiming that it will eat the wooden rafters if it's not killed right away. It's body is three or four feet long and has eight legs which are more like tapeworms than legs. I know the scientific name of this creature and look it up in an encyclopedia.

Filming a movie, buying shoes and trying to get breakfast

I'm in a large room with a huge geopolitical globe made of ornate wood flying a remote control toy plane with a camera on it. I have to shoot the opening sequence of a film, which pans across the Costa Rica part of the map. The whole dream takes place in a gigantic room, which must be a movie set.

I'm waking up in a sleeping bag. There is someone sleeping in a sleeping bag next to me. Much dust and tiny insects are hanging in the air, lit up by early morning sunbeams. A large and colorful caterpillar/sea slug is crawling through the air eating the insects and dust. It's very close to the person next to me and rather creepy looking.

I have to get up early to go buy shoes. A friend I used to date is coming with me. I buy some outlandish red shoes and wear them as we walk to breakfast. It's very early and the restaurant is just opening. One must climb a precarious wedge of bent and polished wood to reach the door to the restaurant - I'm having trouble keeping my balance. A waitress comes through the door at the top and swings to me on a red satin rope, handing me a second red satin rope when she reaches me. I'm supposed to swing across the space to reach the door, but also have trouble doing this.

The room is now a large artificial canyon with limestone wally. I see a missile hit the wall near the top of the canyon - it's not a real missile, but a model for the movie set. It knocks down a water tower at the top of the canyon. The water tower is supposed to be in Gaza or the West Bank. I worry that the water tower may come collapsing down on me.

I have a penis growing out of my cheek

I'm waking up in my Ohio bedroom - an erect penis has grown out of the side of my face. I masturbate it to try to get it to go away, but it doesn't work. My parents are getting up and in the hall outside my room, I try to hide the penis from them but they see it. We go across the street are standing in a neighbor's driveway. I'm trying to wrap a sheet around my head like a ghutra to hide the erection. I'm carrying a pornographic booklet printed on newsprint. A woman is taking notes on my behavior.

I'm in an emergency room to see someone about the erection on my face. There's a long line and many people waiting. I'm naked and trying to wrap an invisible towel around me. I try to explain that my case is very odd and needs immediate attention, but nobody will listen to me. As I leave the emergency room, I meet a nurse I find attractive. She asks if she can suck the penis ion my face, I tell her she may not. She asks if she can see me later, to which I agree. She tells me I should go top another hospital to get attention.

At the next hospital, I'm standing in front of a garage door that seems to open into a chasm which seems to contain doctor's offices. A doctor is just getting off work and returning to her office - I stop her and point out my unusual condition. She reluctantly agrees to see me then. In amazement, I complain to her that I'd have thought doctors would be scrambling to treat a case such as mine as they would certainly be published in a medical journal if they treated it. "It's like I have a hand growing out of my leg, or a second hand growing out of my wrist!" I exclaim. The doctor responds non-nonchalantly that it's "actually a bit weirder" than that.

As the doctor is shuffling papers, doing paperwork, I'm scrambling not to fall over a cliff just inside the garage door.

A friend's wedding

I'm at school in North Carolina. It's near graduation and I can't remember if I had a required class that I stopped attending or not.

A friend is getting married extemporaneously. The ceremony will be on the border of North Carolina and Virginia on the coast - a four hour trip. My friend's father is giving several of us a ride in his pick-up truck. I complain that it's a bad idea that my friend is getting married - I say that he can get away with staying in a hotel a few nights and not paying for it, but he won't be able to get away with skipping out on all the bills related to a wedding.

I realize I'm very uncomfortable sitting in the bed of the truck and dread the four hour ride. I have my friends dad stop the truck as we are entering a highway on ramp. He meets me on the driver's side in the middle of the road - there's a cop with it's lights on coming and we're blocking the police car's way. I explain that I don't want to ride all the way in the bed of the truck and am going home and riding my bike up.

Walking back to my house to get my bike, I realize there's no way I can make it to the ceremony in time. I think about stopping by the liquor store.

Inheritance sabotaged

There's a round old oak kitchen table I'm inheriting from my parents. I visit them to find they've cut out bullseye circles from middle. I'm hurt and furious as this is the only piece of furniture I really want to inherit.

Hungry at a party with frozen food

I'm arriving back from vacation with my family. I'm following everyone toward a long case of concrete stairs on a steep hill. My dad has turned around and is hustling up the stairs. He lands wrong and injures his ankle. I help him walk as I scold him for pushing himself too hard.

My extended family is having a part on a big deck. Along the rails are open-top freezers of food as one would find in a grocery store. I'm hungry. My brother walks onto the porch with a small barely warm steak which he says is mine.

A gondola ride along a river

I'm in a stadium carved out of rock with my family. We're under a ceiling of rock - there is no event going on, but jumbo television screens are showing a sports ceremony similar to the Olympics opening or closing ceremony. Suddenly, a security guard to the side of our section starts firing into the crowd. Nobody panics, not even everybody takes notice and those who do don't see it as unusual that the crowd is being fired upon. I leave.

I'm driving down a steep hill in an unfamiliar car. The brakes don't work well and I'm unable to make a turn at the bottom of the hill. I crash through a guard rail into overgrowth. I've had a few beers and don't want to call a tow truck or have the police find out. I fold up the car like a tent and carry it through the woods by the road. The road runs parallel to a river - the area between the road and river is a public park. I walk over a large hill of gravel and see an area of the park beyond a fence which requires a ticket to access. I crawl under the fence, nobody notices.

There is a roller coaster/train/gondola type ride running parallel to the river. There are grapples on cables passing by - passengers/riders are attached to most. I take a place on a line and immediately realize I've gotten on a line intended for small children. I have t6o switch to the adult size quickly as the line is approaching a narrow vertical chute - the child chute isn't large enough for me.

I get off at the end of the line and meet a friend walking toward me on a path through the woods. The dream shifts - my friend and I are the engineers responsible for keeping the ride in working order. My friend wants a cigarette - they are sold in packs of four at concession stands along the route. They're very poor quality and my friend complains. We grumble that if we quit our jobs, the owners would have to pay a lot of money to get someone who could figure out how the contraption works.

End of the world

I have a view of a beach from the sky. The shadow of an alien spaceship creeps across people on the beach and everyone knows the world will end.

I'm running towards a building in a crowd of people; I think everyone is going there to spend the last few minutes of their lives having sex, but another crowd of people is rushing out of the building in the opposite direction. We engage in sort of a reverse tug of war where we try to push the other group back.

Gathering frogs

I'm with my family on vacation. We're packing to go home. I'd brought my frogs along and many have escaped. I'm picking them up all over and am finding more frogs than I had brought along including species I don't keep. I see two or three in the floorboards of my brother's car and tell him it would be easier to get them if he got out of the car. I pick up fistfuls of frogs which are getting quite dry. Before placing them in a vivarium, I run them under watch which is too hot - they all die. There are frogs crawling in the grass - I'm picking them up left and right and running out of places to put them. They are escaping from the buckets and vivariums I'm putting them in, but when I catch them I always get more than have escaped. I think I see a particularly rare frog in a pocket of my niece's back pack, but it ends up being a mouse. I pick up what I think is a frog, but see is a salamander when it pierces its tail deep into my finger.

I'm walking with a woman who is perhaps a friend's mom. We're listening to someone tell a story about how they volunteered as a UN representative's servant in Africa. We walk over railroad tracks - a horse with wings traveling on the tracks almost runs us over. The woman tells a story about a movie she watched about a young rich Indian boy who was very interested in living in nature. The punchline of the story was that she was watching it in Norway and it had the exact same plot as a British movie she had seen in England. We cross the street in front of my high school.

Victim of attempted genocide

My immediate landscape is a series of large rooms. Conservatives are leaving civilization, taking everything useful and killing many people on the way out, planning on returning and rebuilding after liberals die. Most of us left behind are afraid and concentrating on not getting killed; I notice many useful things and things which could be used as weapons have been left behind: long files, knives, shovels. I say we need to not give up but fight back and point out the conservatives have been sloppy in their attempted genocide.

Someone suggests we go live in an abandoned Amish community. It seems like a great idea and I head off with a group.

Won a lottery

I'm in a stadium at half time. There is and Irish-American rights demonstration. I know they're going to kill someone as part of the demonstration. I leave the stadium.

I'm walking with Emily Haines. We stop to make out every once in a while. I feel guilty because I'm dating someone but can't remember who.

I approach a second stadium and get in line for tickets. When you pay to get in, you get a raffle ticket. Mine is blank. I'm told that if you have one of the blank tickets, you've won one of the prizes but won't know what until prizes are drawn. The whole time, I'm trying to have a low profile because I'm not supposed to be there and it's dangerous.

In the President's cabinet, horribly burned

There's a military air operation going on. A plane with a jointed nose is slowly flying towards me, looking for something on the ground. It shoots out a stream of flames and I get seriously burned. I'm taken away in a stretcher along with five others - there are two of each of the six of us and we're hidden from the plane behind a wall because we're in the President's Cabinet.

Table turning and in a flying car

I'm hanging out with coworkers - one is leaving to take Jason DeRusha's job as a reporter at WCCO, who had made the change due to budget cuts. We're in a huge room with many tables which has no ceiling. For some reason, I have to hook several electrical extension cords together so they run from a door to another at they other side of the room. We're sitting at tables waiting for something. I try to perform the "table turning" parlor trick.

I notice a sliver in my chest, driven straight into my flesh. It comes out easily. It has fins like a dart - I realize it was from a sheet of small adhesive labels and fetch a sheet like it so I can show everybody what was in my chest.

I'm flying in some sort of vehicle which is more like a car. I stop to observe a black vortex forming in the clouds, many people are watching it. I take a few pictures. I call the phone company to report it.

Eating at three restaurants in a row

I'm at a restaurant with a girl I've been dating. We're just finishing a meal, getting up to go to a second restaurant to meet my folks for dinner. I guzzle what remains of my beer. At that restaurant - seemingly the Leaning Tower of Pizza, I order what I think will be a grilled tuna sandwich, but I get a loaf of bread torn in half and a little canned tuna spread on top. I think about complaining, but look at the menu again and see what I ordered is called "SOME BREAD WITH A BIT OF CANNED TUNA".

We all drive separately to as third restaurant. I'm walking towards a swinging bridge that leads to the restaurant. There are high school athletes leaving the building after a game. A team of paramedics is going in with a stretcher. I'm worried that it might be for my dad, but it ends up being a player who was injured.

Hiding a baseball

I'm playing in a H.S. baseball game, an umpire makes a controversial call on a home run by the opposing team. Suddenly, I'm in the outfield as the call is being judged; I agree that the ball remained in play, making it a home run for the opposing team. I secretly find and pick up ball in tall grass. It's red and has a dent in it. There is a line of trees and house in outfield, I seems that this home run is some sort of record - seemingly the 400th home run to hit the house or go into the trees - and the ball is valuable.

Everybody is looking for ball, I'm trying to find my friends and avoid a guy I think suspects knows I have the ball.

There's some sort of catastrophe or military attack that causes the school to go into lock-down - nobody can enter or leave the grounds, but it seems to be enforced arbitrarily but with deadly force. I have all my belongings at the school and somehow roll everything up into a rug and can carry the bundle on my bike. There's a wall people are climbing over, I hoist my bike and the bundle over the wall. On the other side, I overhear that "They're only concerned about vehicles with red letters on their plates." My car is in the lot - I look at the plates to see they are red. My bike has black lettered plates.

Late for school

I'm in the Ohio house getting ready for school. I dump a bunch of cigarette butts into the toilet and flush. It becomes a bit clogged. I flush again and it overflows a bit.

I'm in the kitchen fixing a bowl of cereal. There are a lot of insects around and it's difficult to keep them out of my cereal bowl. I'm at the table eating with my parents. I'm late.

We're in a school bus which is also a boat. My dad is driving. There are very steep snow-covered tracks the boat races down. Here and there, there are posts marked "Jew" - a Jew is a very fast boat that has special passing lanes.

A toddler is sitting in my lap. His dad is driving the boat-bus. The child has to pee. His dad asks someone to pass a special container the child pees in to me. He tries to explain how to set it up for the child, but I don't get it right. The dad reaches over to arrange things and I put a had on the wheel to steer. It seems we are entering onto railroad tracks and I try to veer away. The boat-bus plunges into a gully and wedges against a tree. I'm now the only one driving the bus. I realize I must shift into reverse very quickly to get the bus out of the ditch. I successfully do so and notice there was only one lane of train tracks on the street I was trying to avoid.

In a classroom

I'm sitting at a desk in a classroom.

Missed a concert, playing cards with friends

I'm supposed to attend a concert at the fairgrounds with a friend, but he doesn't call me as planned. I go to the fairgrounds at midnight to find the concert is over. I see my friend leaving but don't speak to him. My home is right net to the fairgrounds - I go home and call my friend to tell him my feelings are hurt.

My parents call me before dawn. Both are on the phone and ask me if I have AIDS. I get furious at them and don't answer.

I'm with an ex-girlfriend, we're going home to where we lived. Her friends live next door - one of them comes outside and invites us in to play dice. He goes inside and locks the door. We knock, her other friend comes to the door and lets us in - I notice there's no glass in the door window and I could have reached in and let ourselves in. Our friends are playing a dice game with so many dice they're piled on top of each other. I sit down and suddenly we're playing cards. My friend starts to pack a bowl of marijuana, our friends get up to go to bed. I stop them to ask about a terrarium full of moss. The response is that the moss is so delicate, there's a sugar plantation at the tip of each leaf. I notice there's insects inside. I offer him a frog to keep inside even though it is too hot for it. I ask if I can take a lump home to put in my frog vivariums.

I smoke marijuana out of a long peace pipe with my friend. I'm anxious as I haven't smoked pot in a long time and don't know how it will affect me.

Swallowing goldfish and preparing for a hike with a friend

I'm sleeping in a bed at my brother's apartment. I'm woken by children pulling my sheets off and using them as robes. A dried bat or rodent leg falls from a grilled trap door in the ceiling. I open the door to discover it's a Murphy bed folded into the ceiling. I play piano quietly to myself as children and strangers mull about in adjoining rooms.

I'm walking past a Civil War monument on a college campus. "Southern Rights" advocates are demonstrating in front of the statues and counter protesters in identical dress are counter-demonstrating in front of them, holding hands in a single line facing the statue. I pat the head of the last protester as I ride between the Southern rights demonstrators and protesters.

I'm still on the campus with a friend from high school who attempts to swallow live goldfish. He puts ten or twelve in his mouth, but can't swallow and spits them out on the sidewalk. I see that he was trying to chew them. I tell him "You're not supposed to chew!" and swallow the few that don't have any teethmarks.

I'm back at my brother's apartment - my parents and brother have left for a vacation by the coast - I am to meet them there later. Both my friend and I need to leave at 2:30 for separate destinations. We both miss our trains. I'm bragging about hiking to people in the train station. I wonder if I should extend my vacation and hike in the Appalachians.

Back at my brother's apt, I see it's been sublet to a group of drag queens. A man violently pushes a woman below the floorboards into a hole, I help her get out. I find my brother's backpack.

I'm walking with my friend who is also wearing a backpack. We're carrying no supplies, but our packs are heavy - my friend is struggling. I see that he doesn't have have his hip belt fastened - I explain that one is supposed to carry the weight on the hips, not the shoulders, but he continues to trudge along with the hip belt flapping.

I wonder if I have enough money to buy supplies for the hike.

Fed rotten soup

I'm hungry; a friend gives me an extra-tall - like a 16 oz beer - Campbell's tomato soup can to eat. The lid is recessed into the top so the volume of soup is similar to a regular can. I eat it right out of the can. After several mouthfuls, something seems funny about the soup. I notice it expired in 2006 and had my friend tells me it's been open a few weeks and she got food poisoning when she ate it. There are green and brown chunks in the soup.

I'm in a large, open bathroom trying to make myself throw up. I can't and move from toilet to trashcan to toilet. There are bidets in the room too. Eventually I'm able to vomit a little into a pit with feces and urine sitting in it.

I get in an elevator from the second floor to go to my apartment, which is on the 4th floor. Someone is already in the elevator going to the first floor. The first floor is a mall, I get out. Some sort of event or festival is going on. I visit a record store, but can't find anything I want to buy. There's a section of dinosaur-like plastic toy monsters that have movable tails and horns in fantastic shapes like they were made with a 3-d Spirograph.

Jumping over oncoming cars

I'm in a room with many dogs. Several are very long and yellow and identical.

I'm standing on a highway jumping over cars. I can fly a bit, but not as much as I would like to, just enough to be able to hover and let a car pass below me.

An inadequate buffet

I learn that somebody else has figured out an ActionScript trick or technique and has gotten an award or wrote a book that gained them recognition. I'm upset because I had figured the same thing out years ago.

I'm traveling with a male companion. We pass a pavilion with six or seven rooms, all demonstrating or teaching some sort of yoga or martial art.

I'm walking near the shore of the Lake of the Woods to meet my extended family for a meal. The sun is setting. I stop to take pictures of it. I notice the wind is blowing patterns on the calm water, rippling the surface into different hues and textures of blue. I'm intending to cut the photos into shapes and assemble a picture from them.

I'm late for the dinner. Hardly anything is left: just two hamburger buns and a little bit of sloppy joe meat. One of the buns has a bite taken out of it.

Owed pot, street party

I'm with an acquaintance who in the dream I had given money to to buy marijuana years ago. We go to his house and are sitting in the kitchen. All o0f his roommates have wheelchairs.

I'm alone with one of his roommates who tells me everybody else went to buy pot. When they arrive back, my friend won't give me any pot which I think is unfair. I tell him I'd rather just have the money I gave him anyway. Everyone is smoking pot, I don't want to. I think about asking my friend to just give me a little bit in case I want it later.

There is a commotion outside. Everybody goes out - there is a large party at the neighbors house that has spilled out onto the street. Police are on the opposite side of the street with their guns drawn - everybody that came out of the house shows their hands to the police. I cross my arms and show my hands and want to go back inside, but don't want to move quickly.

One officer shoots someone in the street - immediately after, the rest of the police lob tear gas into the crowd. The teargas doesn't seem to afftect us. We go back into the house.

Huge alien machines in the sky, meeting god

I'm in the front yard of the OH house with my brother late on Halloween afternoon. Giant machines - miles wide - appear in the sky, leaving slow trails of smoke that eventually obscure most of the sky. I run inside to get my camera even though the event is so huge I know everybody will have pictures of it. I can only move in slow motion.

When I arrive back outside, one of the machines - the "bad" one - has turned into a giant grub. A new machine appears and shoots a slow motion laser into the animal. This ends the alien invasion.

God, a retirement age man, rides into our driveway on a large cow. He's drinking a Coke. The spectacle seems to have been a publicity stunt by the Coca-Cola Company. I'm too shy to ask someone to take a picture of God and me, but I put my cheek next to his and try to take a few pictures holding the camera toward us. He remarks to me that it will take a long time to develop the pictures, implying I may not ever have proof I met him. I'm surprised he doesn't recognize my camera as digital, but I say nothing.

I'm inside the house, my family is cooking dinner - many from my extended family are there. I go to my room to transfer the photos onto my computer, but I've installed a new operating system and am having trouble. I try to restart the computer under the old OS, but am called to dinner.

My mom tells everybody not to have pancakes if we plan on having ice cream out later. I chose to just have spaghetti. The spaghetti is not cooked well - it's clumped together and there are wildly varying sized chunks of low quality meat in the sauce.

We are all in a van driven by my dad - he seems to be driving recklessly fast, but the speedometer shows a reasonable speed for the road. We pass gigantic warehouse-like buildings. We come upon a gigantic mechanical elephant in the road - my dad can't stop before it picks the van up with its trunk. The elephant dumps the van in a huge bin in its back labeled "expenses" and drops everybody in the car towards a gigantic toilet foll of green water - also in its back - labeled "garbage". We all miss the toilet and fall to the ground, unhurt.

We're ushered into a dirty high-tech alien research lab. People with large sores on their bodies are walking around aimlessly. The researchers only care about babies and toddlers who are dipped in tanks of green water. The scientists, giant humans, are ignoring me. I feel like I'm trapped there forever and start to hum the bass line from a Devo song. I notice a wooden door to the outside and walk through to find most of my extended family immediately outside. I receive a text message on my cellphone which is blank. I try to call friend to ask if what I'm experiencing is real.

My cousin's husband has stayed inside with their babies, we know he and their babies are gone forever. I hug her. She sobs on my shoulder.

We are sitting around a pit with giant, dirty humanoid aliens. A child disturbs the alien sitting next to me and the child falls into the pit when the alien brushes him away. An alien in the pit swings an axe as if he is going to chop the child, but stops just short every swing. He throws child up towards my foot. I can't move out of the way quick enough - the child hits my foot hard and falls back into the pit and I feel guilty as if I kicked him into the pit.

Great art material

I'm playing guitar in front of a large audience. The strings are all screwed up and one of them is very rusty, but I'm making sounds one would never guess came from a guitar.

Later, I'm in a large warehouse full of art supplies. I'm working with a light brown material which is somewhere between oil pain and modeling clay. I'm making intricate designs on a gigantic canvas. The material is very flexible - with it I'm making both tiny delicate designs and large basalt-column like sculptures. An elderly woman is working with the same material - she takes a stick of it and flings it in the air, creating a sheet that forms fantastic patters and shapes, then boomerangs back into her hands.

A historic home run

I'm at a baseball game in a basketball gymnasium. I'm coming back to my seat, walking across the court when a baseball that went into the crowd rolls by. I pick it up - a historic home run was hit with this baseball. I make a mental note to get the hitter to sign the baseball with the date on it so I can prove it was the baseball involved in the historic home-run.

Alien invasion

I suddenly have to take shelter. I see a rock outcropping/shallow cave and run in. Inside is a movie theater, I'm sitting with a friend who cuts my hair watching the opening sequence.

There's no dialog throughout the entire movie. A lizard/amphibian-like alien attaches itself to a naked woman's genital area while the woman is standing on her head. After a moment it detaches itself leaving a smaller but morphologically identical offspring attached. A few other women have the same type of creatures feeding off them - the rest of the women seem to have been infected by spores. The aliens develop as parasites, attached with clamps. Their heads are cobra-like. The parasites make the woman feel affectionate towards them - they cuddle and nurse the disgusting creatures as the develop.

In the next scene, I'm watching the movie from withing. I'm on the edge of a steep cliff with a body of water below. A few men are in a watercraft - one of them falls overboard into the crocodile infested water. The crocodiles aren't harming the human, but he seems in danger. A man standing next to me who doesn't know how to swim heroically jumps in to try to help the man overboard. The water is absolutely teeming with crocodiles - there is just as much or more crocodiles in volume as there is water.

There is a swifter moving crocodile-free body of water separated by metal bars. A gate in the barred wall opens and a few crocodiles cross over. I know this is a serious situation and think about diving in to shut the gate, but see the aliens have melted the latching mechanism on the gate to it can't be closed.

I turn my attention back to where the watercraft was. There are half a dozen or so mesh cages with gigantic living human heads inside floating in the water.

Visiting a friend's neighbor on The Lake of the Woods

I'm at the Lake of the Woods with my dad. Before arriving at our friend's cabin, we stop at one of his neighbor's houses. I want to just walk in, but my dad thinks we should knock. We both give all sorts of reasons for our positions, but I just walk in, thinking my dad will follow me. As I'm walking up stairs, my dad stops in the foyer to make a phone call.

On the second floor an elderly woman is exiting the den and meets me in the kitchen. "I hope you don't mind I just walked in, I'm a friend of your neighbor." The women enthusiastically responds of course it's OK to just walk in and goes back into the den, followed by a white dog. I follow her.

A second elderly woman sitting on a couch asks me, "This is quite different than your friend's place?" Indeed, it is - it is very plush with a shag rug, 70's decor and a modern TV - our friend's cabin is just that, an old wood cabin with bunks. The woman who greeted me has gotten into a pink heart shaped whirlpool and the dog is laying under water with her.

I suddenly feel awkward as the women are just watching TV and I don't know why we're stopping by anyway, it was my dad's mission. I think about asking if they live year round or go south in the winters. I can hear my dad talking on the phone and turn around to go get him. There is a young teenager who seems like he could be a boy or girl doing homework in a beanbag in a large cupboard in the kitchen.

I prepare to joke to my dad that it's probably less scary to find someone walking into your house and announcing themselves than noticing someone's talking on the phone downstairs, but he walks by me into the kitchen. There's now an older man in the kitchen. My dad picks up a phone book and says he'll prove we know their neighbor, but the man says "Good Lord, we know you know him. Your grandson (me) told us." My dad tries to present photocopied correspondence with our friend but the man starts some small talk - something about being from the middle of the US. My dad replies that most countries are shaped oddly and wouldn't balance on a stick if they were placed on it in the middle. The man says Canada's problem is it's being overrun by trees. My dad looks at me and I give him an "I guess so" look.

I'm looking out over the trees and water imagining that biodiversity probably would increase if one cut wide bands through the thick forest.

Shaking Obama's hand, flying with a device strapped to my head

I'm driving home from vacation with my dad and a childhood friend. We stop stop at a hotel to find our reservations have been canceled. I find out a celebrity bought out the whole place. As the celebrity gets out of his limousine, I confront him to complain. He offers me a stack of cash which appears to be all $100 bills. I spread it and it's all ones and fives in the middle. I ask for more money and he gives me more. I split the money with my dad and friend.

We drive on to another hotel and check in. My friend is disappointed a Wolfgang Puck restaurant in the complex is closed. Each guest at this hotel gets a Seguay. Obama carrying stuffed giraffe. On the way to our room, I see President Barack Obama. In the dream, he is known to be always carrying one of his children in his arms, but now he is carrying a stuffed plastic giraffe, holding one of its hands. I tell him I'll hold the hand so IO can shake his. We shake, and he doesn't let go of my hand for an uncomfortable amount of time as he walks on.

Our Segues have turned into headlamp like contraptions that allow you to fly. My friend and I fly throughout different amazing rooms in the complex which is like a mall/amusement park. We fly outside over a canyon with a mighty river flowing through it. While I go down into the canyon several strangers I'm carrying doubt my skill and are afraid we'll plunge into the water far below.

Outside our room is a sea which rolls in and out of a residential area. Most people are afraid to enter the violent current, but I jump in and the sea entirely recedes. While waiting for it to come back I wonder how all the people get to work as their driveways are frequently submerged in the sea.

Again, I'm flying by the device strapped to my head. We fly by a fireworks display being set up and I worry the fireworks will shoot off and hit me. We notice what seems to be huge stacks of hamburger buns in the distance and fly over to investigate. We're surprised to find they are just a dozen or so of gigantic hamburger buns. We land and I'm propositioned by homosexual. I ignore him and walk on, taking to the air again.

We decide to return to our room. The batteries in my device seem to be wearing out, I'm having difficulty staying aloft. I find that I can keep in flight just barely if I heep the "headlamp" adjusted with my hand, but I go slow and can't control my direction very well.

Cat-sitting, Scarlet O'Hara extinguishes a fire

I'm cat-sitting for a friend. I'm plating a set of mini-CDs, each CD has one song on it and is packaged artistically, I'm finding it tedious to listen to an album this way. One of the singles has fallen behind a bookshelf - I tip over the bookshelf while trying to reach it.

Now, the spilled books are in the bathroom and the shelf is in the bedroom. A friend is helping me put everything back on the shelf. In the bedroom, I see a round piece of glass with a frog under it - it looks like one of my frogs. I lift up the glass and catch it.

I'm walking to my vivariums with the frog in my hand. I see another frog in front of me - it hops under a plant growing my a mailbox. I move a leaf to find my hand full of thistles. There's a group of old men sitting in lawn chairs around the mailbox - one says to me. "That's what he calls the old $2.01 treatment," motioning towards one of his companions standing by a red old fashioned gas pump that can't display a price per gallon greater that $0.99. The man doesn't speak English, but pantomimes to me that bark from a tree down the road will help me re3move the thistles.

The houses on the block have chasms instead of front yards - the front doors are reached by swinging bridges. When I near the tree, I see it's growing up out of the chasm with no way to reach the bark. Suddenly, the tree is gone - and so are the thistles in my hand.

My vivariums are lined up along the edge of a roof of a tall building. There are way too many frogs in the vivariums, especially some of them. I place the frog I caught into one of the less crowded vivs at the corner of the building. I get some frogs from an overpopulated viv to move to the less populated one on the end. When I return to the corner of the building, there's a small fire beyond the aquarium. Blue flames roll over the aquariums like rubbing alcohol is being burned off. I successfully blow out the fire, which I now notice was the bottom of a wooden flag pole burning.

Suddenly the dream shifts into a movie I'm watching. Scarlet O'Hara just blew out the fire and a male character from Gone with the Wind has just come upon her. They decide the best thing to do is throw the charred flagpole into the Mississippi, which runs to the side of the apartment building. They throw the flagpole over the ledge but it veers off course and lands on a cement basketball court below.

Television crews bother me

I'm walking on a bulkhead along a calm sea. It's chilly out and I see an extraordinary amount of garbage floating under the surface - the water is foul and cold. I fall in up to my thighs. The nearest building is a hospital in the distance - I walk towards it intending to get warm.

As I pass by bleachers, a news news crew breaks away from interviewing my mom and dad to interview me, making it sound like I'm seriously injured and it's a news story. They get my dad's name wrong as they explain they're going to interview his son. I don't want them to interview me - the first thing I say is, "I don't even know who Charles is." 'Charles' is the incorrect name they called my dad. They go back to interviewing my dad saying, "He said he doesn't even know you, your response?" My dad starts saying how I was a bad kid all along and it doesn't surprise him.

Stagehands and makeup artists are preparing me to appear on what seems to be a live entertainment show. There is choreographed dancing and I'm to follow the host through two spirals of dancers and I intentionally screw it up. This part of the dream loops a few times.

I'm on the bleachers, climbing up precarious stairs. I fall a great distance, but am not hurt.

Suddenly everyone standing under the bleachers is propelled back to prehistoric times. We are the only humans on earth. There are aliens in the distance. They've launched a floating stick to our group. The stick sprays powder on some people individually - this will alter human evolution.

Borrowing an iPhone

I've borrowed an iPhone from someone I just met in waking life. Its batteries are low. It's sitting on a table and a young man sitting across from me is blowing onto the screen - the screen is showing a blowtorch responding to his breath and there's also a blowtorch coming out of his mouth. I'm wondering if he's trying to recharge it.

In another part of the room, I see frogs - I think they are mine - laying eggs and letting them roll down leaves of wide-leaved grass. There are small piles of gray powder on the floor resembling insect dusting powder I recently spilled in waking life. I'm trying to remember what use the powder has.

Inheriting a coffin which was a gift to Lyndon Johnson upon Geronimo's death

My frog vivariums are outside near a lake, but "outside" is also inside a bus being driven by a coworker. The only other two people on the bus are two preschoolers - they are messing with the tanks and letting the frogs out. I become furious with the bus driver - yelling at him for not watching what the kids were doing. Some adults get on the bus and also start opening the lids letting my frogs out, I'm beside myself with anger.

I'm walking along a path parallel to the shore of the lake. I come upon a coffin which I know my mom and dad own. It was a gift an organization gave President Lyndon Johnson when Geronimo died. There are many interesting old books around too. People are walking by and I'm showing off the coffin, explaining what it is. "My parents have a list of furniture that goes to me and my brother when they die or they have to give up the home. I've always said, I only want the round oak kitchen table but I'm taking this too." I point out Lyndon Johnson's signature on it and also a shipping receipt that values it at over $100,000. "And that was in 1967," I add.

My dad is fiddling with the coffin and peels off the sticker with Johnson's signature on it. I continue down the path with my dad asking him why he peeled the sticker off. It's warm out, but the lake is covered with ice. A group of wild dangerous animals is out on the ice. A tiger is running towards us - we flee. My dad is carrying me in a metal rickshaw for a while, but I get out, knowing he's elderly and it must be very hard to run the rickshaw.

The dream shifts back to me being angry about people letting frogs out of their tanks. I turn around to go find the person who was driving the bus, who I know is in a dorm beyond the place where the wild animals were.

I reach the dorm which has an open wall several stories high. I'm running up stairs to confront the driver of the bus. As I near the room I know he's in, I come across a co-worker I don't know well who has borrowed my camera without asking and broken it. I'm suddenly confused in my feelings, wondering why I'm not angry at the person who broke my camera but furious with the person who let the children let my frogs escape.

Collecting my vivariums and taking them to my uncle's house

I'm walking up a driveway and realize my frog vivariums are scattered all around outside - "outside" is also a large department store. I decide to gather the vivariums into one place. I come across clumps of mowed grass and lift them up to find many offspring of my frogs. I'm catching many frogs and putting them into vivariums.

I'm carrying a vivarium to my uncle's house, which is an ultra-modern structure with an expansive patio. The vivarium is very heavy and I have to pause to put it down and rest frequently. In the dream, my uncle is married to a Chinese woman who speaks little English. I place the vivarium on the patio and my uncle shows me a huge pump the former owners - an elderly gay couple - used to power many large saltwater aquariums.

My uncle leads me down a steep fall-off on one side of the patio onto top of the massive pump. I wonder if I can adapt it to use to power waterfalls and misters in my frog vivariums.

A miniature Tyrannosaurus rex on a treadmill

I realize I still have my ball python and haven't fed it in years. I also have a baby albino python that turns gray in parts occasionally. I don't have anything to feed it either, but I let it out to hunt flies in my apartment. I decide to go get food for them and put the small snake back in the tank. When I put the cover on, it doesn't fit because there is a man sleeping inside, I don't know who he is, he might be me. He adjusts his position and the cover so it fits snugly.

I go to a Target in a mall which has a large pet section. They have no mice, but some crickets. I wonder if the baby snake would eat crickets. There are a lot of amazing reptiles for sale: a bright black and rainbow colored snake and a metallic snake.

I'm looking at a tank that has two lizards that are miniature Tyrannosaurus rex. One if them is jogging on a treadmill. They're not too expensive and I think about buying one, but decide not to because I don't keep reptiles and suspect the store may be unethical in the collection of wild animals. I stop a clerk to ask if they are carnivorous or vegetarian.

In an abandoned hospital

I'm in an old abandoned hospital that some people are squatting in. Some friends are with me. We enter the second floor and I'm alone in an apartment full of lush fabric. I curl up with a blanket to take a nap. The residents come home, and I apologize and leave.

I'm in a difficult to navigate stairwell. I make it to the second floor. I go into a room where a musician acquaintance lives, he has it set up really great. We're out on a balcony where I find an old violin-like instrument. It has two "strings" which are flat pieces of plastic. I find it quite easy to play and enjoy what I'm playing, but my friend says I'm pretty horrible and makes me give the instrument to him. While we're chatting, it comes up that the second floor is dangerously haunted. Alarmed that my friends are still there, I rush to go warn them. The stairwell is even harder to navigate. When I get to the second floor, I can't find my friends.

Acting in an animated movie with Jason Lee

I'm in a movie starring Jason Lee, myself and three other actors. It's 3-D animated, but the characters are drawn to look like we actually are. The movie is a series of shorts, each parodying or mimicking a famous movie. The first is a Pulp Fiction style thing - the driver of a convertible we're all in drives up a stairway to pick up a glamorous girl.

The shorts switch very quickly, one second we'll be doing one thing in one character, the next we'll be in different characters in a different scene. Even we don't know what the next scene will be and we have to improvise as we figure it out. In one scene, we're cops, in another, we'll be the criminals. In a particularly surprising scene, we suddenly find ourselves hovering in mid-air as bees with long striped appendages where our penises would be. We figure out that they are a weapon and we're superheros flying around catching criminals eluding the cops.

The final scene is Star Wars, Jason Lee is Darth Vader and I'm his invalid right hand man - the other actors have to stand up at attention when Vader enters, but I just flop on the ground as I have no control over my body.

The credits start scrolling up the animated road we're standing on and I'm talking to the actors about the scenes we were in - not all of us recognized the movies that were being mimicked. Suddenly, the credits stop and a surprise scene starts in which we're running down a wildflower covered hill. Then the movie is really over. Nobody is sure what the last scene was supposed to be - someone guesses The Sound of Music, another The Wizard of Oz. I disagree with both, but add that it may have been the book version of The Wizard of Oz.

A dog on stilts and a two headed priest

I've just returned from vacation to the Edina house, where I lived in my parents' basement. I'm trying to watch TV and notice the table the TV sits on is far out from the wall with the TV balancing on it and resting against the wall. I try to push the table closer to the wall, but it all falls down - the TV splits open and is on fire in places. I successfully blow the flames out, then decide to spray it with the fire extinguisher just in case. My parents come downstairs and see what happened but don't mention it or even seem to mind.

I go into my bedroom - there are several plates of food on the floor I left out before going on vacation. Strangers come in my room and start eating the rotten food. I'm crouching naked behind my bed and tell them to leave.

Back in the downstairs den, a dog on stilts and wearing pants comes up to me. I know this to be my brother's family's' dog. On the way upstairs I come across a pet armadillo with red stripes which form a moiré pattern with the scales. I wonder how intelligent armadillos are and if they make good pets. Fuzzy spiders start crawling up my legs, I'm grossed out am am trying to brush them off. Someone tells me they're very nutritious, I'm horrified. The speaker assures me that you only eat the babies which grow like tiny mushrooms.

I'm back in the basement and notice that while I was on vacation, my parents have sold or given away boxes which had toys and other items from my childhood in them. I've very upset and start to cry. People who I first think are my parents, but are strangers come into my room. I start to explain why I'm upset when a two headed priest - one black head, one white - approaches me and pinches my nipples. Horrified, I ask them if they think I'm possessed or a witch. They say yes, they do. I ask them if I'm dreaming, they tell me yes, I am.

Living atop a skyscraper

I'm living on the very top of a skyscraper - from my bed I can look down on some of the tallest buildings in the city. I get a sense of vertigo.

There doesn't seem to be a way of entering the dwelling, only an exit, which is a roller coaster-like downhill ski area. The dream loops back and forth several times between me going down the extremely steep ski jump and being in bed looking down on the city.

Attending a convention

I'm checking into a convention that I'm actually attending in waking life the next day. I ask a woman where to go - she gestures towards an outdoor amphitheater area, then a steep grassy slope on the far side of it saying, "World famous celebrities sit there (the amphitheater) the rest of you go there (the slope)."

I'm walking down the slope which is riddled with recently excavated holes and piles of dirt. The woman catches up with me and accuses me of sneaking into the convention. I tell her I must have misunderstood where she told be to go.

Sex event

I'm entering a small stadium to attend some sort of an event. A worker is registering me and taking down a lot of information about me. I become confused with the questions about work and salary because I'm an 80% time employee.

Inside the stadium, I find the event is a swinger party where the guys get strapped into roller-coaster like chairs in a circle on the outside and the girls the same on the inside. The wheels spin around and stop based on the information given when registering. The women perform oral sex on the men.

Fishing

I'm om The Lake of the Woods with my family. We always went there in waking life with a friend of the family to fish, but this time we're not fishing, just boating to the cabin on the islands. I tell everyone I want to fish.

We stop to fish and the owner of the cabin suggests live worms as bait. I'm very exited to fish.

Instead of taking the leader's advice, I put a rubber wiggler on my hook. I don't have a pole, but a gun with fishing string coming out of the barrel. To everyone's surprise, I catch a walleye immediately.

Woody Allen dies, hunting butterflies

I'm preparing to hike the Appalachian Trail with someone who is a friend in my dream. The friend has to first give a presentation in a town near the trail. As the friend's dad is driving us there we discover she hasn't saved any money for the trip. Her dad asks me if I know if she has a credit card - I don't. I think about asking her dad for traveler's checks so I don't end up paying for my friend.

We arrive in the town where she is to give the presentation. In the building I learn that Woody Allen has died and that my friend will be reciting haiku in a group. The leader of the group says they thought about having me perform too but didn't think I'd be very good. I'm asked what stage experience I've had - I say I've done everything. The leader asks if I've shown worms being born and I reply, "Yeah, that was on the Johnny Carson Show - they were black worms," knowing that I had only dreamed of this.

While my friend is performing, I go into a yard next door - we had been planning on collecting six plant or animal specimens each day on the trip - I'm trying to catch one of several butterflies on a wooden fence. The owner of the house comes home, I explain what I'm doing and ask if it's OK. She tells me to leave, but in a very inviting way. As I start to leave she tells me she meant I could stay. The butterflies are gone. Her son tells me he'll check to see if they've gone into the basement. I return to the other side of the yard.

I see something slithering through the grass. I step on it - it's a Canadian goose with a brick and board on its back. I don't try to catch it as I don't like Canadian geese. I catch a butterfly on a woodpile, but it disintegrates when I place it in the bag.

Preparing for a hike

I'm in the Appalachians outfitting myself for a hike with two people who are friends in the dream. We're near the trail and I'm hungry - the small town has an open-air food court with only American food - several burger places, chicken shacks, a rib joint. I'm in the mood for Asian noodles.

We visit an outfitter - my companions don't have the basic hiking equipment. While they're looking for backpacks and sleeping bags, I'm trying on a denim jacket that has eyelets like a shoe. I have difficulty lacing it - I'm using frayed electrical wires.

Late for school, cuddling a blue sloth

I'm late for school and disorganized - I have sandals on even though I know I'll be running and have forgotten my wallet. I'm hungry and am thinking I'll have to borrow money for food. As I bumble along my way, I notice I put my wallet in my front pocket.

I'm in the cafeteria for breakfast, there's hardly anyone else there and most of the food is gone. I order the only thing I see I want, hash-browns with cheese. The cafeteria worker convinces me to take the two last slabs of ribs too, they're huge. He makes me memorize what they're called to I can tell the cashier. I want some fruit, put down my tray to get a cup of fruit, but can't find the fruit. This happens repeatedly, I feel dizzy and intoxicated. Someone eventually helps me put some fruit on the plate. I'm having a hard time keeping the food on the plate at all, I drop a few ribs.

I'm now in a commons type area, police are taking away a student for fighting. An extremely attractive girl is climbing in and out of a window and likes that I notice. Two files of students walk down stairs and I recognize one as being the class I'm late to. I try to file in line, but end up sliding down a very steep hill. At the bottom, my feet work like ice skates and I gracefully glide to the end of the path where I wait for the rest of the class. The gym teacher says I look healthy and well rested and doesn't mind I missed a lot of class.

There is a water-ride like chute we're to take. I step in first. At the bottom of the ride is the gym. Outside, the teacher is demonstrating a laser/energy beam gun. He gets interrupted and has to go speak to someone. He hands the gun to me. After I play with it a while, it turns into a baby blue sloth-like creature hugging the weapon. I cuddle with the animal and feel very relaxed.

For some reason, when the teacher returns I get to run laps inside while everyone else stays outside doing something less fun. There is a group rehearsing for a musical in the gym. Sometimes I need to run in between the actors and their only prop - a plush yellow couch.

Running into an ex-girlfriend

I'm walking slowly through a crowd of people, perhaps a street fair. Suddenly I come face to face with I girl I dated a long time ago and haven't seen in years. I have no bad feelings but nothing to say and feel awkward.

Riding my mom home from the hospital on the handles of my bicycle

I'm looking at my frog vivariums. There are a lot of other animals in there - a ball python I owned in college, baby birds, large and small insects. I realize I must have forgotten I owned the snake for decades and it must be very hungry. I go out to buy it some mice to eat.

The pet store doesn't have any mice. They have a lot of mushrooms to put into tanks but not much else. They are brightly colored and stacked symmetrically. I think about getting some bird seed for the baby birds, but the store doesn't have that either. I return home to find my mom lying on the kitchen table. She has a notebook over her face with large indecipherable letters on the cover. She says she's sick - I see sweat beading on her throat and feel she has a fever. I say we need to go to the emergency room.

At the hospital, there is a doctor assigned to us, but he stays behind a fast-food like counter. He is preoccupied with paperwork and other tasks as he says my mom's symptoms are too general for him to do anything. I'm angered and unsuccessfully suggest he could at least prescribe something to make her feel better.

We return home, my mom riding on the handles of my bicycle.

I'm going through a box of my old papers and find a folder I don't recognize. It has color photo copies of me in my football uniform and has many official looking certificates in it, with many signatures. It seems to be an honorary or gifted membership in an elite club. Many famous people are listed including President Reagan and retired governors. It seems to be a membership packet to some sort of beer tasting salon. It's dated two years after my high school graduation, but I just don't remember it at all. I show it to my dad, asking him if he knows what it is. He indicates he does, but doesn't tell me in detail, just says he knows who the people who signed the certificates are. I'm frustrated he won't explain the packet to me.