Road Trip

I dreamed that I was on a road trip with three cars, and only two drivers. So we would drive half a day, then go back to get the other car. Little Red was making the trip with both J and myself, so I was essentially driving three times the actual distance. We were shuttling other folks in the two bigger cars, and I don't know why none of our other friends could drive, just that they absolutely were not allowed to take the wheel. The groups of friends who were taking each leg of the trip also changed at every other stop it seemed.

At one of our stops we were staying in a living room. However, our hosts had not mentioned that they were going to have a huge party the next day. We awoke when the first group of about a dozen women arrived. We were sleeping on the couch, J in her jammies and me, in not so much. The room with our clothes was being used by women who were preparing themselves to perform for the rest of the party. It was pretty tricky trying to move around in just a thin blanket until we could get into the room to get my clothing, all while more and more guests were arriving.

Lights Out

Woke up this morning to the normal light coming on, but rolled over and dropped right back into a dream. I was talking to M from KPFM, we had bumped into one another in a comic book store. Suddenly, the lights flickered, and with a small snap, went out. People were a little panicked because it was pretty much pitch black. I suggested that perhaps someone with a cell phone or tablet could turn that on so we could find our way around without bumping into one another like M and I just did.

In a mirror of my evening, I didn't have my work phone. Neither did any one else. It was then that I realized that my alarm light had gone out! I shot out of bed, fed the cats and packed up to get out of the house, already late for work.

I thought. It was exactly my time to leave. It appears that my alarm light has burned out, and my brain, still in a semi-dream state, just wove that into the plot of my dream. I've wanted to try out an LED lamp, so perhaps this is the silver lining.

Druid Civilization Game

I dreamed that about a dozen couples had gotten together for a long gaming weekend in a secluded park area. There was one main cabin, with lofts and four full bedrooms, so a couple of couples would have to share the pull outs in front of the large fireplace in the sunken living room. We got ourselves settled in and I retrieved a card game. It was a civilization building game, that had a Celtic or Druid centric theme.

The goal of the game was to build a series of villages and then to link them up in a way that made them, as a whole, self sufficient. The world you played in was different every game, as there were cards that determined the layout of the world you had to settle. It was a competitive/cooperative game, as there were certain thresholds that needed to be met by all the players in order to survive the sorts of catastrophe's that might be pulled up out of the deck. We played a round, then everyone went outside to enjoy the woods and the various rocky hillsides nearby. As we were exploring the area, several of the people pointed out that the layout of the rocks and hills and cabin and little stand of woods was very much like our game. We decided to play a live action version of the game so broke up into teams of four. One team took the stand of woods near the house, another a nearby hill, and our team took the stand of rocks and the rocky caves in them about three hundred yards from the house and hills.

We used our cell phones to show the other teams the challenge cards, and ran back to the house to get new hands when needed. The first game went pretty well. So well we decided to do a second game, even though it was coming up on sunset. When everyone got back to the house, I collected up the cards to shuffle them up and redistribute them. I dropped them into one of my bags accidentally, and we started to gather them back up. Multiple hands in a tupperware tub at the bottom of a small bag made the process far more difficult than if I'd been allowed to do the task alone.

Sunset was rather faster than we anticipated, so we ended up working from flashlights. The cards had swollen up in the humid air, and the stack seemed to be nearly twice the size it was earlier. Fog started rolling in, and the group decided that we were hungry. I noted that there was a nice fire pit near the stand of rocks we'd taken as our village in the previous game, so we agreed to gather there and heat up dinner over an open fire. I decided that sitting around an open fire with greasy fingers wouldn't be good for a card game, so started packing the game up. The swollen cards wouldn't fit back in the box. I ended up taking my breakfast cereal out of its bag and using that to hold the box and all the extra cards. I agreed that we might need to find a different printer to make the next set of cards.

I remember next to nothing about the actual play of the game, other than the cards controlled resources, messengers, and challenges. The number of cards in your hand was based on the population of your village. In the live game, the players took the messenger and resource cards from group to group across the actual countryside. (Which is why we decided not to play after sunset.)

White House Road Trip

Had this dream several nights ago, but thought it would be appropriate for the day after the State of the Union Address.

J and I had taken a road trip across country, stopping in several places in the west and mid-west before shooting across the Mississippi and forging through to Washington D.C. Once there we got up bright and early one day for our tour of the White House. It was a lovely tour, and the antiques just fascinated J, re-igniting, I suspect, her desire to collect. At one point the President actually stopped in the hallway to say hello to us. We joked with him, and J and I managed to make him laugh. We finished our tour, and ended up the last of the crowd to go into the gift shop.

In the gift shop, J was looking at miniature versions of some of the famous antiques, and was chatting about re-furnishing her dollhouse, suggesting we make a White House replica. While she was talking the store emptied out, except for four secret service guys, and the President. The President waited on us at the checkout stand. I thought it was amusing that he needed help getting the cash drawer open.

Game Bunnies

I dreamed that I was showing several of my games at a convention, and I had employed several attractive and friendly game "bunnies" (of both genders) to manage our demonstrations. At one point J and I returned to our rooms in the evening, and when I opened the door, my "bunnies" were mating like, well, bunnies. I quietly closed the door and told J that we might want to make more noise coming up to the rooms so they had time to get to their bedrooms instead of bouncing all over the living room of our suite.

Dreamlands Zoo an Amusement Park. Dimension Doors.

Night before last I dreamed I was with some friends at the Dreamlands Zoo, which is really as much an amusement park as a zoo. As we were strolling around, we noticed people suddenly convulsing, and then collapsing, then rising again with classic zombie features. Some of them threatened to go into the enclosures after the trapped animals.

We decided that wasn't going to happen, and rather than running away with the rest of the crowd, we went after the zombies, and used ourselves as bait to lure them into one of the ride enclosures. The ride operator helped us out by starting the ride after we got the bulk of them in the loading area. We hopped on a car, and were able to jump off of the roof of it onto the control booth as it went by. It was a rather long jump, about eight feet, easy for me, but for one of our shorter members we ended up grabbing her by the arms as she fell just short of the roof. She lost her shoes to the zombies below. I told her it would be okay, as there were plenty of shoes in the gift shop.

I carried her piggy back to the gift shop, followed by more zombies as we went. In the gift shop I had to tell her to just pick all the ones her size she could carry, as the zombies were getting close and she didn't have time to pick her favorites. I had to toss the shoes out of their boxes into a bag and then pick her up to get out of the store before we closed the zombies in by lowering the security gates. We found ourselves in a little back stage area, going through shoes. She found a pair of sneaker boots that fit, but they weren't a color she liked. Bright red, so I liked them. I told her to grab any that fit which were the color she liked, and we could take them with us. I figured the boot top sneakers would be better at stopping ankle biters. We joined the others with five or six pairs of tan shoes in a large theme park bag.

There were about twenty of us, warily eying one another, waiting for the telltale symptom of impending infection. Victims' heads would pop off, turn over in the air and land back in place, but transformed by a greenish tint. Then the convulsions and collapse would happen. Anyone who was near when a head popped off might get splattered by goo and become infected. Amazingly, no one had been bitten, and the zombies, once they were rounded up, were remarkably docile. I was glad no one had panicked and started killing them. I was pretty sure that there would be some sort of magical cure, eventually.

I climbed out onto the roof of the building and looked out over the theme park and zoo. Several of the keepers waved to let me know they were okay. I asked if there was enough food for the critters for a couple of days. They indicated that there was. Then I took off into the air and headed for the center of Dream City to find out if there were some EMRTs available. (Emergency Mage Response Team) The dream just sort of fell apart at that point.


This morning's dream was suffused with a dark and brooding atmosphere, amber tones and deep purple and blacks in the sky. There was a haze that blocked out any sign of stars or moon, and diffused the pale amber lights from inside the house.

I entered the house, and there was no furniture in the front room. The carpet was threadbare, a path worn between the front door and the kitchen, and, oddly, between the left and right walls of the room.
As I stood there, pondering where I needed to look next, a man, very similar in build and manner to myself, stepped through the wall on my left, running, and into the wall on the right. I checked the walls, they were solid enough. I thought perhaps it was a ghost. Just to be sure, I entered the dining area and turned down the hallway to the right, checking to see if the apparition ended up in the front bedroom. No. There was a musty curved front chest, a ragged shag carpet (dark green from moss or its original color I couldn't tell) and the remains of a bed frame, six slats and two long rust marks between a collapsed footboard and a headboard with rotted fabric and hairlike stuffing on its face. The headboard was leaning back against the wall, where water stains showed it had been in that place a considerable time.

There were no signs of traffic through the room other than myself. I retreated back to the kitchen and began cleaning up the place with brooms and mops that were in much better shape than the rest of the house.

The house was essentially nine squarish rooms:

Bath and Hall to backyard, Kitchen, Master bedroom
dinette and hall, dining room, hall and closet and Master bath
Bedroom, front room, Bedroom with round front chest of drawers.

There were only two exterior doors, one in the front room, and one at the hallway between the kitchen and bathroom. The kitchen was a very '50s looking affair with white and chrome appliances that had rounded corners. Once I had everything cleaned up I moved a table into the front room and covered it with the best tablecloth I could find in the linen closet. I then set out a number of food items and drinks.

The next person who burst through the wall almost crashed into the buffet. They stopped and noticed me, and it was an awkward hemming and hawing. Yes, we had the same name, too. I could feel some sort of connection and he took a snack and excused himself, promising to come back.

Another pair of people shot through the room. They went around or leaped over the table. While both exhibited the same uncanny resemblance to myself, one of them was decidedly female. It occurred to me that I might want to discover why they were running. The last pair had left wet marks on the walls they had passed through. When I touched the water, I noticed that it didn't feel right. I pushed my hand into the wall, and then through it. I looked at the direction they had gone, and decided to go after them, rather than in the direction of whatever was where they were running from. I crossed the room and pushed my way through the wall, a green glow filled my vision as I pushed through. I stepped out into a bloody red sky and blackened ruins. There was a solid chunk of wall behind me, and no indication of where the folks who were ahead of me went. I turned back and pushed myself through the wall and ended up back in my place.

The woman was waiting for me. She was snacking and perched on the end of the table. Her presence was a little unnerving, she was both me and the opposite of me at the same time. Her height was about four inches less than my own, but her hair and eyes were the same, her expressions so very much like my own, just a little softer, and rounder. "You're like a sister, one I never knew I had."

"Closer than that. I'm your X chromosome doubled. We are nearly genetically identical."

"Then the men..."

"Closer that actual twins."

"Clones?"

"Not exactly. Just other...possibilities."

She then took me on a quick tour of the other possibilities, except one because, "things are a little hot there, right now."

There was essentially a path out of each room of the house, except the dining room, as it didn't really have its own walls, the front room passage was the quickest to navigate, and went between their party house and the ruins I'd seen earlier. "We don't know what happened there, and we don't spend any time there, it's even creepier than here."

"Thanks."

"Just calling how we see it, your house just feels wrong."

I have to admit, I felt much the same way about it. I was pretty sure I didn't actually come from this place originally.

"How many of you...us?"

"Eight, though one died, and then there's you, so...nine." She looked around the blue green world we were in. "Odd, we really thought there was just one per room in the hub, your house. But then there's you." All of the homes we'd traveled through, except the ruins, had indeed had eight or nine rooms, not all of them were square, though, some were linear, or two lines, some "u" shaped, and one was two four room apartments connected by a breezeway.

"Maybe I'm not one of your eight," I suggested, but immediately knew that wasn't true. "Or there are nine.

She agreed that nine was probably the right number, but wondered if that meant there was a ninth place we could travel to. I wondered that, too. "That has to be where you are from, though!"

I hadn't thought of that, but I didn't have any idea how to get us there. At least, I didn't until I noticed the round front chest of drawers sitting in an overgrown part of this house's yard. I walked over towards it, and as I did so, it glowed slightly, and made a noise like my cell phone alert. A low whine and then vibration. The glow strengthened and then faded in time with the alert.

"Never seen that before," she said.

Another one of us showed up, sandwich in hand. "Thanks for the grub," He wiped his palm on his pants and we shook hands. There was a nearly electric jolt went through both of us. "Wow, he's like us, only old."

"Thanks," I coughed. I did then note that all of the others had also been mid twenties looking.

It wasn't long before there were half a dozen of us, including another female me, but with long red hair. "She dyes it." the first woman wispered when she noticed me looking at it.

"Interesting, my hair used to be reddish like that when I was in my twenties," I had quite the clear memory of my image in a large vanity mirror, and indeed, the me of the dream, now white haired, had once had reddish brown hair.

"Oh..."

"Told you."

We turned back to the chest of drawers, I could feel it pull at me, and the glow was more pronounced. I gestured towards it, and the drawers started to open, flooding the yard with a greenish light. We all gestured towards the bulky piece of furniture and pulled, until there was a wooden frame filled with a bright green glow.

"So, who's first."

I was, but I just ended up surrounded by cats and staring into the alarm light next to my bed. No other me around. (Probably a good thing, that would have freaked me out.)

Sleepover Dreams

Sleeping away often results in a different sort of dream, because the rest is different, I suppose. Had way too much tea before bed time, so kept having to get up to recycle. Being in an unfamiliar place requires a lot more being awake to navigate, so the dreams are usually quickly forgotten, or merge with dreams from other days.

In one snippet of dream J and I were vacationing in Julian, staying in a wooden cabin with a loft and a bed in the loft/dormer. Everything was cold in the cabin except the little loft area, which was located above a little wooden stove, which had a kettle on. Everything was working and we were both content to snuggle and watch the weather outside, a misty swirling drizzle that was threatening to turn to snow.

In another tidbit, we were on an island, but not a deserted island, an island like Long Island, or Manhattan, only with not quite as many buildings and more forested areas. The buildings were several stories tall, not all bunched together, and some of the trees between the buildings were nearly as tall. There were cable cars or zip lines all over, too.

There were other pieces of dreams, but too fragile to hold on to.

Courthouses and Castles

Two great tastes...

The new RPG from...

Interesting evening last night. There were many and varied dreams but two of them had a bit of plot to them, and stick with me, even after a full day of work.

In the first of the two, I was at work, plugging away at sending out emails telling folks they forgot to push the "Publish" button on their sites, when one of my co- workers came down from upstairs with a couple of huge envelopes. Each one looked like a US Post prepaid envelope, but stuffed with what had to be a full ream of papers each. It was obvious that they had been opened and the pages rifled through, then put back, but. like many things, they didn't quite fit properly. Both envelopes were from the District Court and both had instructions that I was supposed to read the material and appear at the appointed time if I wanted to be present for the arguments of the cases. The nearest date was for half an hour from the time they landed on my desk, but at least there was a week before the next date. I showed them to my boss and ran out to the car, one ragged and inexpertly taped together envelope under each arm.

When I got to the court, the judge was standing by our president and attorney. She looked at me as I rushed in asking "Why are you late, sir?"

"I got these..." I set the envelopes down and pulled out my phone, "Forty six minutes ago."

"Well, you missed it, then."

"That was fast."

Our attorney explained that the other side had offered to settle, stipulating that everything we'd claimed was true, but not, somehow, admitting any malice in the events as detailed. I wasn't sure that was going to play so well for them, as it only left incompetence and stupidity to blame, not altogether a better characterization of them. (In the dream I knew what all this was about, but I can't remember now.)

The judge wanted to know more about my envelopes, and if I had received them in the condition they were in now. She then indicated that they hadn't gone out of her office like that, and had been sent over thirty days ago. She called her administrative assistant and they verified the return receipt had been sent back, three days after they had been mailed. It was my name on the receipt, but most certainly not my signature. I even pulled out my driver's license so they could compare them. The judge didn't look very happy about that, and gathered up her bailiff and assistant for a quick consultation. The bailiff left the courtroom at a run, talking into his radio.

Our attorney was smiling a very satisfied looking smile as the judge and her assistant vanished back into her chambers. "So, do you think they photocopied the whole thing?"

I shrugged, "I don't know why they would, wouldn't they have a full copy of everything, too?"

"Their attorney's would."

"So why wouldn't they get copies from them?"

Maybe it was someone who wasn't supposed to have them. I looked at him, thinking 'how was that even possible,' when he pulled out a document that was an order from the court not to discuss the contents with any outside of the governing board and our attorneys.

"Oh..."

The bailiff instructed the attorneys, who'd apparently not made it out of the building to sit back down, when they looked over and saw me, and my ragged envelopes they just rolled their eyes and both of them started calling people on their cell phones. I thought that was interesting, as they clearly weren't expecting to see me here.


In the following dream, it was another one of those where I was involved in playing a game, but somehow it was also happening at the same time. Sometimes I was traveling on my little brown pony through a deep, dark forest, and sometimes I was standing over a very detailed map, looking at a yellow meeple on a brown Lego horse. J and several others were at the keep as we adventurous few loaded up our supplies and mounted our mounts, my chocolate brown pony, TC on a white draft horse, like an albino Clydesdale, and our third member, whose identity kept changing, on a Dorse or Chocobo like critter. (The miniature for it was a keyfob, I think.)

We left the keep, waving goodbye to our companions and set out for the Castle of Perilous Perils on the the other side of the Mostly Impassible Forest. The dice were with us as we traveled through the forest, nothing of note was encountered, and finding myself the smallest of the group, no more than a meter tall at best, I was disinclined to go looking for trouble. During the forest travel the dream had shifted into the first person mode, so by the time we arrived at the Castle of Perilous Perils, we were dirty and smelled a great deal like our mounts and oiled leather mixed with week old Cheerios. In other words, not pleasant. As we rode directly up to the gates of the first tower, I offered to scout around the perimeter of the castle. Oddly enough, the castle was entirely made up of the one tower, and the scouting trip was so short that each of my companions repeated the journey, just to make sure I wasn't playing some sort of practical joke on them.

We considered for a moment that we weren't in the right place, I mean, a tower is not a castle, and a castle couldn't really be just a tower, right?

The game master, frustrated that we might just go merrily on past this place blurted out that the castle was mostly underground, then fudged up some knowledge rolls to say that I knew that. And so, suddenly back in the first person view, I said, "hey, I remember that most of the castle is underground."

My companions seemed completely unaware of the GM interaction and we dismounted to check the door for traps and to see if I could pick the lock. I had to remount to do that. Once inside there was a quick encounter with a couple of ghouls, each with a burlap sack full of limbs and mildly interesting loot. I peeked out of the entry room, and suddenly had a quick flashback of another adventure, the rooms to the right, I remembered, had been full of creatures well above our ability to handle, and the left had been nearly an empty and straight shot to the widget we needed. I asked my companions to hush and wait while I snuck out into the hall. I looked down the cooridoor to the right, more ghouls, and something in the distance flitted between the corbled walkways in flickering torch light. I could hear the clanking of metal on metal and deduced that there were many heavily armed and armored foes in that direction.

I looked to the left. The halls were pitch black, I waited for my eyes to adjust, I could just make out a sort of dim outline, empty halls, nearly a mirror image of the halls full of enemies opposite.

I reported what I had seen and we decided to head left. I think I am the only one who heard the disappointed sigh. We found a largish room down the ramp that could be barred shut, and the shifting character and myself barred ourselves off from the rest of the dungeon, er, castle, while TC took a heavy crossbow and a large shield and struck out based on a sketch I'd done to see if there was a path to our objective. I warned that it wasn't a good idea to split up the party, but TC promised that he would run back at the first sign of trouble.

We waited a bit, then I got fidgety and went outside to bring our mounts into the tower...castle. I used all of TC's extra shirts and pants to tie makeshift pads to all of the animals' feet. Stopping to admire my handiwork, and picture how TC would look when he found out, I listened intently to see if the coast was clear. As I did so, I stooped low around the corner to see what the critters on the right side of the corridor were doing. The ghouls were munching on whatever was in their sack lunches, and the armored patrols were patrolling further along. They'd obviously seen and heard nothing.

The four of us snuck back into the barred chamber. SCV (currently playing our third adventurer) asking how I managed to get past the bars. I just shrugged and carefully took off the rags, folding them neatly and putting them back in TC's saddle bags just as he came puffing back into the room.

"I got it, the McGuffin of Enormous Worth, let's get.... How did our horses get here?"

I grinned.

"Well, good, I might have angered a small mob back there." Sure enough, I could hear voices shouting in the hallways in the distance.

We mounted up and raced out of the basement...castle. I was falling further and further behind, my pony being significantly less long-legged than the others' mounts. I waited until the pack was on my heals and then shot down a side path, hoping they would follow me and allow the McGuffin to be ensconced in its receptacle and thus solve the problem of the un-dead once and for all. By this time, however, the GM had begun tossing dice into the "shame" pool, skipping over the penalty box entirely. So he declared that they "didn't even see your diminutive form on the tiny pony" and raced after the group.

I stopped, and turned around, where I then began thinning the mob out one at a time from the rear with my Wand of Wondrous Webbing.

Even in the first person mode, I was sure I heard swearing and laughter coming from the sky. J's giggle was clearly audible.

Now that was a fun dream. I loved how even in first person mode, I could sometimes make out the grid lines on the forest floor or in the Castle. If virtual reality were like that, I don't know that I would ever want to leave.