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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Making a Kim Jong Il slacker movie

I'm on vacation at a resort on the Mississippi in Georgia. It is early in the morning, before dawn. Everyone is sleeping on mattresses outside, there is snow but it's warm. I get up to move my mattress somewhere where I can see the stars better.

I'm wearing ice-skate-like shoes which allow me to glide across the snow, but the blades are huge and flexible and allow me to fly. I realize I'm dreaming and make a note to patent the flying shoes when I wake up. I'm carrying a gun in my pocket.

I'm walking on a porch overhanging the frozen river looking for somewhere out of the light to watch the stars. A naked toddler stops me and starts climbing all over me. She tells me that I'm "the one who named that cat moonshining" and that her uncle wanted to offer me a job because he thought it was creative and he wanted someone who could name things like that for him. She calls her cell and gives it to me. The uncle, who has a foreign accent, wants me to direct a movie for him. I leave the conversation knowing it's funded my Kim Jong Il but will be a slacker genre movie, will pay "12 stone" and I'll work in Hilltop. I'm unsure if he'd want me to quit my job to do it. I look up Hilltop on Google Maps and find there are three: one near where I'm vacationing, one near where I live and one on the western shore of Alaska.

I'm still on the same porch, but now I'm dragging a bundle of fire hoses across the porch, weaving them in and out of posts so it will leave places for people to walk. Suddenly, I come to a section where there is an unconnected joint in the hoses - there are cloth ribbons that seem to be meant to connect the joint, but I don't know how to do it. I hope the movie guy doesn't find out I don't know how to connect the joints.

By this time, dawn has broke and I realize I won't be looking at the stars. Somehow the dream shifts and I'm working with the movie making guy. He has a huge house, slate on the outside, wood on the inside which is both his home and production studio. He has just come back from the high school across the gully and has paid them to change their sports team's name to promote the movie. I realize he's eccentric and spends his wealth unwisely.

My job for that day is to doodle in the snow with extremely long colored pencils - several yards long. I'm by the side of the road, seeing how far out into the road I can doodle while remaining on the side. A vehicle approaches and I motion that it's OK to run over my drawing.

It's a bus covered in naked girls either taking one to have an abortion or taking her to a religious ritual to get her not to have an abortion. Either way, this is suddenly part of the movie and the characters one by one rip paper off the outside of the bus to which the girls are clinging, making them fall off the bus.

An elderly character launches himself head-first into the bus off a spring board. He falls into a steep ravine and seems seriously injured. I run to help him, he tells me to arrange a party at his place that night. I ask him if he's going to die because if he is, we could call it the "kick-off party." He says he won't die.

On the way to the party, I stop to watch the completed movie. Afterwords someone on the staff asks me what I think of it. I say that genre is fun to watch and I might pull out a quote from it a month from now, but I'm not a great fan of the genre.

A Heart concert in my livingroom

I walk into my apartment which is the lower half of a house. There is a Heart concert going on in my living room! There are very few people there, two dozen at most. Someone asks me what's missing and answers the question, "About 100,000 people." I'm angry my landlord didn't tell me my apartment would be used for a concert. I yell between songs that I'm going to bed and everybody has to leave. People aren't into the concert at all, including the band, so everyone leaves.

An old friend of a friend is there and we decide to go to Chicago. I'm in Chicago buying food from a street vendor. It is a Chicago specialty I'd not heard of - bread, lentils and bananas in a cup. My friend orders one, I don't know what to get so I ask the vendor what's most popular. He makes me the "cream" version which is in a taller cup and has cream in it. It's very good.

We are still hungry and in a grocery store. A girl I'd given my number to earlier in the dream calls and I'm excited to tell her I made an extemporaneous trip to Chicago.

I'm in the produce section and see a single Rainier cherry. As I pick it up, a man picks up a second from the same bin. They are both shaped like conical hot peppers. The man asks if he can have my cherry as all he wants is two. I tell him no, I want more. I find more but they are packaged in very large quantities. My friend suggests we just go to McDonald's. I reluctantly agree, telling her this one time will be OK. I mention we should find a hotel soon because I can call in and not work in the morning, but I have to be at work in the afternoon, so need to be getting to bed soon.

Tring to mow the lawn in the middle of the night

I'm waking up in the NC house in the middle of the night because my dad is mowing the lawn. He's also watering it with a hose at the same time. He stops to take a break and I decide I might as well get up and mow instead of him. After I'm outside, my dad has turned into a college friend who is schizophrenic now in waking life. He's putting the hose - still running - through a tear in my screen onto my bed. I run in and shove the hose back out, very irritated by now.

I return to mowing, but keep getting interrupted by my friend who is coming out of the house with signed baseballs to play catch with. I have to repeatedly send him back in to get a non-signed baseball. I'm becoming very frustrated. A neighbor is also mowing his lawn; I tell him things have been really bad with my friend since he burned my money two weeks ago.

I notice my friend has left another mower running on the other side of the yard and walk over to turn it off. I walk by onions I planted a few years ago that are now gigantic. I see there's not much mowing left and just want to get done so I can weed around the onions. My mom comes out of the house and tells me I should stop because my friend is trying to sleep. I tell my mom my friend needs "an intervention", meaning he needs to see a psychiatrist. I demand it.

I return to mowing again and this time am interrupted by a neighbor who tells me I have to stop because a church down the street is having a yard sale. I start to tell her to have therm call me when it starts and I'll stop, but I'm almost done but decide to go talk to them myself. I approach a priest and politely explain the situation. He's a total jerk, saying three people live there and we should be able to find a better time to mow the lawn. I think about arguing with him, saying my parents are elderly and I work full time and volunteer, but just snottily ask what denomination the church is. I don't understand his answer, but a woman tells me it's "Vespers" as I storm off.

Back at the house, I examine a monopoly-like game I've been playing with my family and friend. In the game I can collect income and am examining how I can earn a lot of money so I can send my friend to a psychiatrist but I can't understand the writing on the card that tells me what my occupation is and how much I make.

My mom says since I've gotten little sleep, maybe I shouldn't go into work - she can write me a note. I think about telling her I don't need a note from her if I need to call in to work, but don't. I decide to go back to bed and stay home from work, then remember my bed has been soaked with the hose.

Missing a lot of great pictures

My brother's family and my mom and dad are visiting me in an unfamiliar apartment, but my bedroom is the one from the Ohio house. My brother's family have brought a dug and two cats with them. I'm sleeping in my bed and pleased the pets join me, but I wish they'd snuggle closer to my face.

When I wake up the next morning, everyone is packed up and gone. I'm sitting on the front porch looking at puddles of water with a beautiful oil sheen on them. I go into get my camera and realize my brother has taken mine and left his, which isn't as good. I'm trying to figure out how to use it and missing a lot of great shots of insects riding around in leaves on the water like boats. There are also common looking birds - sparrows, robins - but they have outlandishly long necks. Some are normal size and some are insect size.

As I'm missing all these great pictures, a sports car like tank pulls into the driveway/ It's about the size of a queen sized bed but has a fully functioning turret. My boss climbs out and I remember he's my roommate and has been off at school taking a class. A graduation procession follows - most people are dressed up in Margi Gras like costumes, but one is in a red and yellow jack-in-the-box costume several stories tall. I wonder if the person wearing it is at the top or bottom or is actually several stories tall.

I wish I had my camera to record all this stuff.

Wearing a sheet that is too small

In the dream, I'm dating a coworker. We're hanging out among many strangers having a comfortable and casual conversation.

Suddenly, I'm dressed in a sheet that is just barely large enough to cover my genitals. I'm trying to hide them, but doing so just exposes my butt more. I'm trying to escape the situation.

Then I'm fully clothed again, talking with strangers with my girlfriend who is now someone I don't know.

Keys to the apartment complex, a military train

I'm coming home to an apartment vaguely like the one I'm in now. There's an enormous pile of keys by my door. I place them in a plastic bag, but miss a few. Near me, there's two men who seem to be making a transaction. I realize one is buying the apartment complex and think I should tell them about the keys. However, a male stranger enters the scene and non-verbally communicates for me not to.

The men finish their business and I call to the new owner that he better not forget "that" as I motion towards a handgun near a stream by my door. He walks to get his gun, walking right through the water. I'm able to make a single step across the shallow stream without getting wet at all. The man picks up his pistol and starts walking off. "How about showing a little love?" I ask. The man gives me a wad of cash. The outermost bill is a $5, but it seems like a lot of money.

The guy who motioned me not to give them the keys is my coworker. We're painters at the complex and he tells me we have to paint a room at my waking job today.

I'm walking to work along a country road. I keep my terrariums by the road. I haven't fed one in a long time and collect things from people's gardens and gar5gage for feed. In the vivarium, I have frogs and several species I'm unfamiliar with: tiny turtles and two lizards. I see the largest of the lizards has dies and is decomposing. I think that's a good thing because it's produced flies for the frogs to eat and meat for the turtles to eat. I'm not sure what the other lizard eats, I think it's vegetarian and have brought it lettuce and carrots.

I continue on towards my job, but stop to watch some pranksters prepare to screw with a Tea Party protest which will be marching down the road. They are facing the direction the Teabaggers will march from and are dressed like Mr. T, a Native American, all sorts of crazy costumes and crazy signs. They're trying to out crazy the crazies.

They have to get out of the road for a train to pass. It's a military train - camouflaged and every dozen or so cars has anti-aircraft missiles spinning around defensively. The missiles have tons of coats of sloppy white paint covering up rusty parts and cracks. I figure they must still work well though. I get some good ;pictures of the train.

Watching a video, working

I'm watching a Эдуард Анатольевич Хиль video, but it's really good and in the Burt Bacharach vein.

I'm at work, programming, and the language is just numbers and periods. I find it odd and interesting I'm programming in a language I don't know.

Gardening, growing nail plants

I'm waking up. I'm living with my parents in a completely square stucco building. I get out of bed - it's still dark and I'm not sure whether it's morning or evening. I'm very thirsty and go outside to drink from a garden hose. I turn it on slowly, being careful not to make noise so I don't wake my parents up. The water tastes like a hose and I would like to drink out of a device next to it which filters the water, but it has been covered with stucco.

I go back to my room to visit my indoor chili pepper garden and frog terrariums which in the dream, I'm keeping side by side under the same lights. Next to the wall but within the light from the frog/chili pepper area, I've started a bunch of vegetable seeds to grow outside. I've just thrown tons of them them into labeled plastic cups and added water. They're all sprouting and I take them outside to transfer into soil. It's dawn now. I dump the sprouts into terra cotta cups and cover them with soil. I realize I've lost track of which seeds are which and am disappointed in my sloppiness, but decide it doesn't matter because usually, as in waking life, I don't label my seedlings anyway.

The house is in a downtown area with no yard. I intend to grow my plants in containers. I'm thinking about all the other places I can plant my seedlings and as I have many more seeds than I can put in good places, I'll plant some in small patches of soil by the sidewalk and even in the middle of the intersection immediately in front of the house. If they grow, they grow, if they don't, it's no loss.

There are several friends and coworkers around the patio now. My boss has a container of "nail plant" seeds - the produce of the plants is nails. Some of the seeds have already started, others are still in what looks like hard chocolate chip cookies, the seeds being the chocolate chips. They are packaged this way, with two or three bean sized seeds in each cookie so gardeners are assured at least one plant will start from each cookie. I decide to grow some and pick out enough to grow six or 8 plants. I choose a combination of cookies and seedlings that have already started and hope my boss won't think I'm taking too many even though he said everybody could take what they want.

I'm transplanting and planting the plants and seeds into more terra cotta cups, thinking the unfamiliar plant looks like it will be a vine and I'm thinking about what I'll use to support the vines. A friend asks my why I want to grow nails, and I reply that I don't have any need for nails, but it won't hurt having them on hand and I'm sure I'll eventually find a use for them. And it will be cool having nails I grew myself.

My mom is now up and around. I'm planning on growing my plants in containers and tell her I think having some tomatoes on the roof will be great because they'll get a lot of sun. My mom warns me that the roof is made of paper and I reassure her I'll be careful to just step on the supporting wood beams. I've been on the roof and ask her if she has. She says she has, but I wonder if she really has as you can only access it by climbing a precarious ladder with rungs very far apart.

Sleeping in a cot outside and carrying around a formica tabletop

It's nighttime near the Ohio house and I'm going to bed in a cot on the sidewalk at the end of our street. I know there's a new neighbor I've not met in the house next to the sidewalk. I can't sleep. My mom wants us to meet, he's the son and about my age. While I'm trying to sleep, he comes out and introduces himself, giving me a gift of three pill bottles. I open one and spill all the sleeping pills out into a puddle of milk on the sidewalk. As I put them back in the bottle, I take several pills that have begun to crumbles in the milk. I worry I might have taken too many.

I wake up in the cot which is now on the side of a parking lot. There is a computer game I've been trying to play - the object of the game is to press a button as soon as a squiggly line on the screen changes. I make a version of the game out of a pile of white powder by dividing the pile in half and dropping a penny to complete an electrical connection between the two piles in lieu of pressing the button. There are people getting into their cars to go to work and I hide my game so I won't have to explain what I'm doing.

I'm at "work" which is more like a high school. I'm carrying around a formica tabletop. There is a new employee, an attractive redhead. She is talking to me about how she's disappointed that I don't trust her and I'm trying to explain it's only because I just met her and she can't expect me to trust someone I don't know. We part and I go to an underground cafeteria where I realize I've left my table top. The new neighbor is there and as I look for the tabletop, I explain the encounter with the new employee to the new neighbor I'd met earlier.

I see two women examining my tabletop along side an almost identical tabletop. I explain to them that one of them is mine and they ask how they can know it's mine. I have them look at the under side where there is writing and geometrical figures drawn in magic marker. I'm looking for where it has my name on it and I find it, but my name is spelled wrong. Instead of pointed out my misspelled name, I point to the name "John", which is my dad's middle name and tell them, "That's my dad's name." They accept my explanation and I walk away with my tabletop, telling them I intend to spray paint over all the writing and write something on it that clearly indicates it's mine.

Lost on the way home from vacation

I'm on a two week vacation with my mom and dad. We had first gone to Georgia and are now visiting aunts and uncles. We are at a particular aunt and uncle's house and everybody is there. I am able to fly and carry my aunt around the house. I joke that I want to show the Pope how I can fly and that will be one of the miracles needed for me to become a saint.

There is a lot of eating and bustling about going on. My uncle catches an enormous fish in a river in front of the house. I am flying around throughout the dream but few pay attention and some, including my mom, don't want to believe I'm flying. My cousin who is a stylist in the dream agrees to give me a haircut, but decides not to once we sit down to do it. My other cousin says he'll do it and as he's cutting my hair I'm afraid he'll give me a mullet. When he's done, I discover he's braided dozens of white thin pipe-cleaner like wires into my hair but only on half of my head.

We are sleeping on cots in the living room. I wake up at sunrise and become concerned that I'm using too much of my vacation tim on this trip. A chirping frog wakes up my mom and dad and I ask them when we're going back home. A family of migrant workers picks vegetables from a field which comes right up to the back of the house. I realize that this aunt and uncle live in the same city I do and I rhetorically ask, "So I could get my car now and go to work tomorrow if I wanted?"

We are leaving, walking on foot. Two of my aunt and uncle's dogs follow us. We walk through a shopping mall with the dogs. A few blocks on the other side of the shopping mall, we send the dogs back. I admire how disciplined they are. My mom or dad notices they're going down the wrong street, I run to catch them, but they are lost around a corner. I run back to the mall looking for them.

I'm in a densely populated area of large stone walk-up apartments on streets laid out like a snowflake. I lose track of where the mall is. I'm having to climb high up on gutters and railings to get to the direction I think the mall may be. Nobody will tell me where the mall is. Throughout the honeycomb-like development there are many kinds of neighborhoods - some run down and some upscale, but all very old. I get glimpses of what I think may be the mall through the rooftops, but I can never get to it.