All Singing and Dancing, Science Fiction, Future-Fantasy, Seven Escape-Room Extravaganza!

Starting with a sliding ice puzzle and winding its song and dance routine way through; star crossed romance, rescues, tentacled maidens, mafia weddings with choreographed bridal deflowering, lost purses, exes showing off their reconstructive breast surgeries, and, in general no foot, hand or chest pains. What an exhilerating and eshausting morning.

Convoluted

The explanation started, "I was replacing the water-stained kitchen sink, just because I can't stand to look at it any more...." My anger was not so much that it was MY kitchen sink they were tearing out, without my permission, but that the person had not even come close to removing all the bits and pieces of the destroyed garbage disposal, or the water logged stuff that was stored under the sink. They hadn't even thought to turn off the water main when they discovered that the old shut off valves weren't fully shutting off.

I went out to shut off the water and when I stepped into the garage, I was suddenly not in my house any more. Now I was just furious, because I know that my improvised plumber wouldn't think to see why the water didn't shut off, and might go off to buy a new sink, though they seemed to expect me to do that, so probably not even that much. I looked around and stepped out into the alleyway between the house I just stepped out of and the neighbor's garage. I could touch both buildings with my outstretched arms. I decided to go back in, just to see if I would be back in my own house. Nope, the door was locked behind me. I pulled out my phone to see if I could figure out where I was. It wasn't in English. I could make out some of the words, as they had Latin roots, but wasn't sure what language my phone was in. I went into the settings, English wasn't even a choice. I didn't have a network connection, but that didn't come close to explaining why the phone was unreadable.

In the street, all the vehicles were three wheeled coupes that whined by with a light electric buzz. The people were speaking English, but only some of the signs looked like English to me. I was so obviously confused that I ended up being gently delivered to a local hospital. I'd apparently had a stroke that affected my memory and my reading, but not my speech and hearing. It also seemed to have affected the universe I inhabited. That's when it got strange. The doctor completely agreed with me. It seems my whole body MRI showed that I had a lot of organs in me that they just flat out didn't know what they were. I looked at them and told him the names of everything I recognized (Which was more than I thought.) He showed me what "normal" people had inside, and I was pretty sure they were some sort of androids, as most humans I know don't have nuclear power banks.

Then there was finding my home on this world's equivalent of Google Earth, and taking me there, and the place was abandoned, but the driveway looked well kept, and the hedge and Junipers were not completely unruly. There was a grassy meadow, like I'd always wanted, in place of the front yard. The inside, however was a shambles. Critters had gotten in through the pet door and everything was just piles of shredded dirt covered ruin. "Well, it looks like you have lots to do, so we'll just leave you here." And they did. The whole neighborhood looked pretty much like it normally does, except, no cars on the streets, no sound of people, just the occasional whirring noise which I couldn't locate. I managed to find my rake (The handle too dried up, it had shrunken out of the socket and the head separated the first time I tried to rake a pile of old books towards the door. The shovel was in much better condition, but I had no idea where I was going to shovel all the stuff, so settled for just getting it out of the house into the garbage cans. I didn't even know if there was still garbage service. The drapes in the living room crumbled to dust when I went to open them, I had to scrape grime off the window to see outside. My backyard looked like a combination of MC Escher and James Hubbell, but with obviously alien light sources in the sculpture. (I absolutely can't tell how I knew the lights were alien, I just did.)

There were also cats, but not my cats, though they didn't seem to mind. I started to wonder what I was going to eat, or if there was anything even to drink. I did find some of my cups had survived, though filthy, and oddly, the granite sink, laying on top of the ruins of the counters where the particle board had turned to mush. There was a thin stream of water running out from beneath it, through and under the debris, and then out through the garage along the west edge where it had cut a small channel, then pooled behind the stacks of ceramic tile and left over pavers, where it overflowed a low spot before being absorbed by the rather lush side yard. The fence was long rotted away, but the steel fence pole was still there, rusted and tilted. From the front you couldn't see the flowing brick and glass structure with its alien lights.

This was one of those dreams that had so many tiny details that I can't even begin to describe how rich the atmosphere was with the dank decayed smell of the house and how it mixed with the freshly chlorinated city water. The eerie silence and the low electric buzzing. (Like my electric clock, I'm guessing.) and even the cats and birds were almost silent. The reddish brown sunlight of the town I appeared in versus the fresh light of my own neighborhood, apparently abandoned, but somehow still maintained. (Much of the plantings were wildly overgrown, but all of the hedges were trimmed even with the walkways and driveways, and there was no debris in the street. Even my garage door was perfectly intact looking from the front.

Counting Crows, Burglary

Three different and all disturbing dreams last night in the midst of the rain and thunder.

In the first dream I was walking out in my fields with RG.. There were a large number of crows about, and RG was shooting them and counting them. I was not real happy with that, thinking there must be another way. A couple of the crows were very large, and had bits of arrows sticking out of them, I found myself rooting for them to dodge out of the way and make it to safety, having already escaped a brush with death previously, but each fell to a loud "pop" from RG's rifle.

In the second dream I awoke to a crash. When I went out to the front of the house, the sink was missing and the garbage disposal was wrapped up in the braided rug that usually sits in front of the cat door. There was a gaping hole where the dishwasher used to sit and the microwave and refrigerator were gone as well. Oddly, my TV and DVD player were still there. The thieves had also not managed to get back to the computer room. I went in the garage. The washing machine was turned sideways, but still in place, the dryer was actually at the end of the garage at the door, which was open. My car was at the bottom of the driveway, partly out into the street.

I am sure if I could remember the title I gave my third dream I would remember it. I can only say, it too, was frightening.

I woke from each of these dreams in a sweat, shaking. Haven't had a night like this in a long time. I didn't feel like I'd slept at all by the time the light went on this morning.

Wildly Variant Snippets

Was awakened multiple times last night (once by a pair of neighbors who were trying not to shine their lights in one another's homes - while simultaneously pulling out of their driveways. Unfortunately they were headed in opposite directions and attempted to drive through one another. No one was seriously hurt.) Every time I woke it was from a dream, and now, a lunch time later, I can remember none of the dreams themselves.  Just brown and loud, blue and musical, yellow-green and giggly, red-brown and nearly silent but tense, rolling thunder far distant.

I do remember thinking how wildly different the dreams were in content: the look, the sound, the color themes, the characters or lack of characters were as though my dreams were all directed by different directors with different casts, or even different animation teams - some of them were not realistic looking - very cartoon or video game like. It has made me wonder if people who aren't exposed to a wide variety of film or television or other art have dreams that are stylistically the same from night to night. 

Random with Kiwi.

There were dreams this morning of a convoluted sort with no real plot, regular theme, or even with a stable cast or location. There were lots of blue and brown, though. 

Music, too, lots of music, instrumental, mostly, and a delightful moment where I was explaining to a companion that the signs didn't really say anything because I was just dreaming. My companion turned into a kiwi.   "I suppose it doesn't matter then, you can't read any way." 

Hawaiian Shirt Noisy

    Last night's dreams were all over the map, but seemed to have one theme, they were Hawaiian Shirt noisy. By that I mean both the colors and sounds of the dreams. Sometimes I woke with the "What the heck was that?" memory, nothing but sounds and lights, bright patterns and little of anything making any semblance of sense.
    Colors were sounds, and sounds were oddly visible, the refrigerator running was a galloping blue and charcoal gray, the cat meows were bright gold and metal flake red swooshing loops, people voices were odd little checkered patterns that undulated in a variety of colors.
    I was, in one scene, drifting up near the ceiling in my front room, and there were four inch high people running around on my dining table, trying to set up some sort of stick and string tower. I remember thinking that it would be so easy for me to tie the sticks together, if I had hands. That scene, too, eventually broke into a riot of dueling colors and sharp staccato bursts of meaningless sound.

This Hat has Legs.

              Last night I dreamed but the final image pretty much drove every other thing in the dream out. All I remember is my large grey cowboy hat had legs, like a tabby cat, and was moving around on its own.

Car Dreams, Bus Dream

             I dreamed a bunch of random stuff. RB was being set on fire and about 12 people were rioting. I was driving through the area. Most of the fire and damage was on the other side of the divided road, but there was some leaking flaming fluid that was nearly burned out across my side of the road. I slowed enough to maneuver around the debris in the road and sped up to zoom through the oily burning patch. No one seemed to be angry at the little red hybrid type cars, so I was able to drive through without any hassles.

             In another dream I was in a ruined tower of stone, looking out over an overgrown orchard. I think the trees were walnut trees. I was pulling a load of rocks up the side of the tower with a rope and pulley system. I think I was trying to repair the tower, even though I knew the tower wasn't mine. We'd tried to find the owner, but hadn't any luck, even with the tax assessor.

             I was sitting on a bus, in the second seat on the passenger side. I had the seat pretty much to myself. I was leaning over the seat in front of me, talking to the person in that seat. A little girl was sleeping on the woman I was talking to. She was also holding my hand. I don't think she was my kid, though. The mom and I were talking about MMOs we'd played, from the original Net Hack Network version, to WoW. It turned out we were both on the same server.

             We had come to a stop in an largely vacant area, only some fence posts and a turn off showed that we had any civilization around. The child woke up and tugged on the bus driver's back to tell him she needed to go to the bathroom. There was no toilet on the bus as it was more of a school bus. One of the other passengers suggested the chemical toilet in the emergency kit. The bus driver vetoed that idea, instead pulling over to let us out to use the bushes. Mom and her daughter weren't the only ones who jumped off the bus and ran for the bushes. I stood up and offered a tissue from my travel pack to anyone who thought they would need it.

             Cats Woke me up several times during the night, especially during one downpour. I was actually dreaming that I was reclined in my car, trying to sleep in the cold, when it started to rain. It started to rain in my dream as well. I was telling the cats that we were fine, the car windows were up and the rain couldn't get them. They were very insistent, though, and managed to wake me up anyway. I petted them for a bit, until they calmed down and went to sleep. N's alarm went off at that point, so it was for nothing.

Random Images and Scenes N+1

       Last two nights have been so warm I have hardly been able to sleep. When I do, I sleep just a short amount of time at a stretch. My dreams have been similarly broken, mostly snatches of being at work, visiting friends, the little brat from the other night re-appeared. Sparrow Morgan, who I met at the SD Comic Convention appeared in one, with a couple of little white dogs.
       I was at M&Ss for one scene, I was eating M&Ms out of a frying pan, swirling them around and allowing the peanut and almond ones to escape over the edge of the pan back into the dish. I later tried that at work with the lid of the programmers M&M jar. It actually works way better than I thought it would.
       One image sort of stuck with me throughout the day. Purple sky, scattered plumes of indigo smoke with lightning bolts that shot through the pillar and played on the underside of the expanding plume.
       Dark almost walnut brown orange haze in the distance. Something large and triangular drifted silently overhead, lightning rippled over its surface and arced to the ground nearby, starting another plume of nearly black smoke rising towards the sky.
       I had the feeling that I was supposed to do something about it, but I had no tools and no weapons other than half a red silk shirt and a dark green canvas bag that had seen better days. There were some items in the canvas bag, an old 16mm movie reel (empty) and some other scraps of terry cloth towels. I didn't even pull them out of the bag. I think this is the dream where I didn't have any shoes on, either.
       I couldn't find my cell phone in one dream, even though I could see it sitting right on top of the book case where I plug it in every few days to charge up. I kept looking for it, even though I knew it was right there. Somehow I couldn't stop looking for it. I even stopped myself and said "Look, there's the cell phone."
       Then I would look at it, and immediately start looking for it again. Stubborn or stupid, I just can't tell sometimes.
       I woke feeling lest rested than I did when I piled into bed the night before.
       Oh, and cars, there was a dream with a pile of Matchbox sized cars, but more cheaply made, that I kept trying to move around without toppling any of them. I wanted to take them out and line them up and sort them out, but I didn't dare, they weren't mine.

Over Crowded Dream Page

       Random video segments spread throughout the dream image. Like a web page with five or six Flash movies running all at once. The dream had three different scenes in it, all running at the same time.
       One was of a bunch of leotard clad heavy women doing some sort of aerobic exercise routine. (Sweating to the Oldies?) None of the women were really unattractive, but all were heavy, or at least well rounded.
       The second set of two screens was a WOW environment (Started playing for the first time last night, no surprise to find it cropping up in my dreams.) The scene was of a marble floored temple and an Ox-like Shaman had wandered in (my character, perhaps, although the 'video' wasn't following me) and there were a bunch of gnomes and dwarves being tossed around by a large snake. As the gnomes landed, severely injured, the Shaman would hit them with a healing wave, and they would rise and rejoin the battle.
       The third moving image was of exercising women again, this time, though, they were so thin the Spandex looked loose on them. It had sort of an 80s feel to it judging by the big hair, wide belts, headbands and leg warmers. I actually found the heavy women to be far more attractive.
       As the dream began to dissolve I was trying to right click on the WOW movies to save them, but a copyright notice kept popping up instead. As the dream faded I realized they were flash images and I could copy them out of my cache if I just didn't close the page first. My brain was running so sluggish from the five movies at once that I didn't know if I could even open a window to allow me to browse my cache at the same time as the page was open.
       I think the point of this dream is that I spend way too much time on the computer.

Random Images and Scenes, Moving to VA

       Random and surreal images, nothing which remains, other than to note that several snippets of conversation and part of a TV show made it into the dream. (Fraggle Rock)
       The next dream was more normal, in fact it felt like a live and real event. N and I had moved to Virginia Beach, bought the corner house I lived in for 6 years in Virginia. The house had been burned down, however, and the replacement was actually three levels. There was a pool in the backyard, and a small three room cabin across the pool from the main cabin. The three rooms were arranged in a line so the building was all of about eleven feet wide. There was a bedroom, a sitting room and a small kitchen with a little round table in front of French doors leading out to the pool deck.
       The house in back had a woman and her two little girls living in it for the summer. We told them they could stay through the summer, since they hadn't had time to make other arrangements. They'd already paid their rent to the previous owner, and I didn't want be in the middle of a fight to get their money back, etc.
       There was a sort of moving party, KM was there, a friend of mine from school, he'd taken a job in Richmond. N had a couple of folks from her company there, so she knew some people. Her friend Bacca was there as well. He was actually working for the same company as K, and they knew one another, but didn't know that they had mutual friends until they both showed up to help us move in. Several of the neighbors stopped by, one was an older woman who remembered Mom and Dad, and us kids. Of course, the last time she'd seen me I was only eleven, so she didn't really recognize me, except to say that I sounded just like my dad. She told us that the place had caught fire a couple of times after we moved out, but the most recent one had pretty much destroyed the place. She wasn't too sure about the three level effect, but said the neighbors had been getting used to it. The house was really not 3 full stories, more like two and a half, with the half story hanging out in back across one end of the yard and pool.
       I liked the fact that the driveway was lined with dogwoods on one side and huge rose bushes on the other. I couldn't find the concrete brick pillar that marked the development entrance that used to be on the back corner of the lot, but figured it was just a few feet from the end of the small cottage. The previous owners had added a berm to the street side of the lot to help screen the pool from view. I was a little concerned about the drainage patter during hurricane season, but the inspector had assured us that it was properly graded, and there were French drains under the berm as well.
       I was feeling anxious about the move, but also depressed that I was leaving friends like S and C behind. I wouldn't be able to just call and step out for lunch any more. We'd talked about having them come out and stay in the cottage for a time, but I didn't think that would really appeal to them.