Cardboard Car, Lingerie Party

       My boss and I were on stage presenting a brown cardboard vehicle “of the future” to a large audience. The car was so small, that to get into it, I had to open the whole front end and then pull it closed around me. My boss and I got in and tried to drive off the stage in it, but the front end dropped open again. I pulled it back up and inserted a tab or flap into a slot just behind the door post. “That should hold it.”
       With that we took off, hoping to hit that 120 miles per gallon mark. (I wasn't sure we could do that as I once had a motor scooter that got 115 MPG, but only when it had one person on it, and that person only weighed 125 pounds.) I kept looking for the control pedals, but I was in the passenger side where there were none. I kept thinking that I should at least be able to put my feet out the bottom to help stop it, as I was sure the brakes weren't designed for two people. Even while I was dreaming this I found myself wondering why I thought that it even had brakes, that made me even more nervous. We drove out of the theater and onto the street. Heading downhill we started to pick up speed. It was then that we realized there was no steering mechanism.
       My boss jumped out. I don't know how as there was no way I could see to get out without opening the thing up, but he managed. I continued to roll downhill, picking up speed, without any controls at all. I tried to slide over to the drivers side, but there wasn't any difference. I was essentially in a box with a window on either side and one in front. I looked out the front, there was no front end to the thing, just a flat box. That was odd, because inside, there was a little are that my legs and feet fit into. I looked back behind, trying to see if I could reach the engine compartment, hoping to pull the plug or something. There was no engine compartment. I was, from the outside, in a cardboard box with three holes cut in it.
       I rumbled down the road a while longer, shooting through an intersection, where the traffic signal was fortunately green, and then as the road curved, I didn't. The box bumped and banged over the curb and then down a hillside into a small stream. As soon as the box hit the stream, it got soggy and fell apart. I managed to recover the engine by ripping open the back of the passenger compartment and ripping the motor off the soggy engine mounts. I carried the thing out of the car over my head and waded to shore. The engine and fuel cells weighed quite a bit, and they weren't made out of cardboard. I hoped I would be able to use them in a new vehicle, not made out of cardboard, and not without controls.

       Later, I dreamed I was shooting photos at a large party of college women. It was some sort of lingerie party, so things started to get pretty racy after a while. I found myself wishing I'd brought more memory sticks. I knew that I wasn't supposed to overwrite the photos I took at the start of the party, as those were the ones I'd been hired to take.
       After the party I was editing the photos into a show, and mixing it in with the video I had shot. The video had been burned directly to DVD, and I'd had plenty of video at the end of the party, it seems. I had to be careful while video editing, as I was in a “public” editing suite and people seemed to be walking by and looking in on me at random times. When I was done I had two shows, the lingerie party I'd been paid to record, and a sort of “Lingerie Girls gone Wild” that I was sure would be a much better seller.

Driving Discoveries

       I dreamed that N and I were driving through a city that had seen better days. We were looking for a gas station, as blippies were near the bottom of the display. The “need gas now” light hadn't come one yet, but was certainly threatening. As we rolled through town we finally spotted some old gas tanks. The price was just a bit lower than we were used to seeing, but high enough for us to figure the place wasn't out of business or something.
       As we rolled into the station I heard a ding and a woman ran out to offer to pump the gas. Full service at a cheap price. We were so stunned I accepted her offer to check the tires and wash the windows for $3 more. N and I went across the street to an abandoned looking building that had once been a shop. We explored a bit. The empty display cases had some retirement village brochures tossed about on them, but nothing else. I could see several rectangular dark marks in the felt of the display case where the felt had not faded. Whatever had been in the case had been there a long time.
       I discovered an awning covered pool. N checked it with a nearby pool kit and declared that it was well balanced. I could see the algae, though, and the smell was obvious though not offensive. Playing around the water had made me need a restroom. The only one we found was not finished, and the restroom was open to the public street, so I decided I could hold it until we got back to the gas station.
       I walked out into the fenced back yard. There was a 4 high rack of painted hubcaps, mostly red, white and blue themes, but a couple had mountainscapes painted on them, one had an eagle and there were four or five with ducks. I heard quacking, so turned to the sound and discovered, behind a split rail fence holding up a lot of old rusted car bumpers, a small pond. Several families of ducks paddled about on the surface. I could see large fish below the water, and there was a family of squirrels darting around in the pepper trees on the other side of the pond. There were also several walnut trees and a couple of orange trees as well.
       “Oh, do you think this place might be for sale?”
       “We'll have to ask. I didn't see a sign, and I didn't see a foreclosure notice. Maybe the gas girl knows.”
       We headed back through the shop and there was an elderly gentleman there. We startled one another.
       “Sorry about that. We were wondering if this property was for sale?”
       “No buyers out here. No kin to even give the place to. Even the Y didn't want it. Was going to abandon it and give up on retirement.”
       It turned out the old man was the owner, and was going to just give up and try to find a place in the city to live on his SS check. After some questioning, we discovered that he really wanted to buy into the retirement condos in the brochures we'd spotted earlier. I asked how much that was. It was far less than we had expected to find a new home for.
       “How about if you sell us this home, with rights to survivorship, and we pay the mortgage on your retirement condo?”
       “For this old junkyard? I'd feel like I was ripping you off!”
       “Make us the beneficiary on the condo, then it's more than even.”
       Eventually we worked out a deal where we would by this place outright for the price of the down payment on his condo, thus fixing a new and lower tax rate. We would then transfer the bulk of the cost of the condo into a trust that would automatically pay the condo off until it was paid in full or he passed on, which ever came first.
       In the middle of negotiations the gas girl came over to see if we were OK. GG was delighted that she was going to have new neighbors, even if we weren't going to re-open the art store/tobacco shop. (Although I was thinking that we could have some sort of shop in the front shop area, I figured I could still write while sitting at the counter of a nearly empty shop.)

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Brass and Steel Chess Set.

       I dreamed I was playing chess in a large room with dozens of other people. The chess sets were made of Steel and Brass. The Steel sets were highly polished and the Brass were dark with tarnish, while still having a coat of highly reflective varnish over them.
       There were naked women painted on the squares of the chess boards. Whenever you captured a piece on one of the squares, that woman would remove an article of clothing.

Yellow Vial of N

       I dreamed that N and I were in a mouldy old woods, the mud was an ashen gray, and the undergrowth was a sickly yellow green. The trees also seemed diseased, but not enough to prevent them from nearly blocking out the sun. As we made our way over the swampy ground I heard the sounds of footfalls and heavy breathing behind us. Suddenly we were set on by half a dozen large wolf-like creatures.
       We were both badly mauled, but N was so bad that she was certain to die. I couldn't do anything about it there, so held a small square glass vial to her lips. She exhaled and her spirit became trapped in the vial. I patched her body up as well as I could. I then sat a bit and summoned a spirit to animate her body. We raced through the pungent woods and out onto a plain, wherein I found a road, and then to the outskirts of a small village. I left N's body and its animating spirit to find a healer.
       I returned with the healer, who fixed up N's body, and then I opened up the vial under N's nose, while thanking the spirit for helping me get her here. There was a little bit of a struggle, as the summoned spirit didn't really want to leave. I made it clear that there would be no corporal revival while the spirit was in N's place. The spirit returned to my soul bag while the yellowish glow of N's spirit infused her body. The healer revived her and set about fixing her minor wounds.
       When the healer was done, she turned to me and started healing me. The pain was intense, and nearly drove me into oblivion. It seems I had been dead for quite a while, and I was, in fact, animating my own corpse.

Pastoral Bliss

        I had a dream where I was wearing knee breeches made of some fairly stiff material, and a white ruffled pirate sort of shirt. I was in tabbies (Japanese split toed shoe/sock things). Some of the time I wore a pair of remarkably comfortable wooden sandals under them. There was a trio of cat carriers next to a picnic blanket. I was not really doing much in the dream. I set up a telescope. It was obvious that this was my place, as there was a wooden deck, in a state of benign neglect, around three concrete stands for the tripod legs. I played with a couple of our cats (Teddy and Ember) in the long grass, watching them romp through the wild flowers chasing bees and butterflies while Little John, completely white around the muzzle, slept on one edge of the picnic blanket. I know Marvin was also sleeping somewhere near Little John, I just didn’t see him.

It was the sort of dream that, when you start waking up, you try to keep the dream going because you know what is waiting for you is nowhere near as pleasant.

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Bridge to Undead Dinosaurville

        I dreamed I was in an area of deep ravines and heavy forests. I was with a group of people working on building a pair of bridges. A narrow pedestrian bridge and a larger vehicle sized bridge. The pedestrian bridge was replacing a rope and plank bridge.

        We managed to get the rails in place and were installing the trusses that would support the road bed when we took a lunch break. I was on the far side of the bridge with some of the native workers. They were trying to teach me some of their language as I was showing them how the trusses worked to spread the load of the road bed to the large support beams. Suddenly they all stood up and ran, pointing to something over my head.

        I looked back up the small cliff face (about 10 feet over my head. There was a chalk colored dinosaur, a raptor, with bones showing through its flesh. An undead raptor. I backed myself against the cliff. The crew ran across the bridge, shouting. The dinosaur jumped down after them, but turned back to me as I lunged for it. I pushed myself off of the cliff face and slammed my laptop case against the undead thing just above the arms, hoping I was far enough above the center of gravity to knock it over. It was much lighter than I expected. Not only did I knock it over, but knocked it back over the edge of the ravine. It snatched at the edge and I used the case to knock its claws loose from the dirt. I plunged silently over the edge, shattering on the rocks and then falling in pieces into the brown water below the rocks. I scrambled back to my laptop and threw it into the now damaged bag then headed to the other side of the ravine after my crew.

        The crew hadn’t stopped running. I turned around, and saw that there were three more of the things on the cliff overlooking the bridgehead. I froze, and the things began to scan the area, looking for movement. They didn’t seem to recognize me as a target. After what seemed like forever, but was likely only a couple of minutes, they continued along the ridge line, vanishing into the forests.

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Live WoW, Small Home Missing Sean

        I dreamed I was running around in a live version of WoW. I was trying to cast spells like a mage, but found that I just couldn’t get to where I needed fast enough (Dream Lag?) and then when I did get to a darkened room with a shadowy presence, I couldn’t actually get the spells to work. There was a ring of orange but no fire. The thing in the shadows, it didn’t have any problem casting its frost nova and locking me in place while it blasted me to bits. This was all rather reminiscent of the game last night, where I kept getting one and two shotted by the 70’s attacking Tarren Mills. I figured if they were blowing a couple of Global Cool Downs on me, that gave our level 70’s three more seconds. (And acted like 1200 to 1700 points of damage absorbed.) Can’t figure why they would focus on me, I was so much lower level I couldn’t have been worth any HK to them. They resisted nearly everything I cast at them (thus the dream, I think.) You’d think they’d let me be an afterthought to the AOE. (Judged and Sealed by the paladin for 1780 who was dead on top of me 5 seconds later.)

        In the next dream N and I were sitting in our crowded little kitchenette, N was rummaging through the grey and bronze colored tea cart (like the one my sister had when she was a kid) with increasing frustration.

N pulled out a couple of small stuffed toys and wailed, “Sean is gone!” Her voice was not that of someone who’s car broke down or who lost a toy, but of someone who has had a loved one die. It was like Domino or Chloe all over again. Only thing was, I couldn’t figure out who Sean was. I also knew that I didn’t dare ask. All I knew is that I wished I could find her Sean for her because it was painful to see her in such anguish.

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