Team USA

With the NBA Western Conference playoff race and March Madness going on, I've been following a ton of basketball lately, so I was bound to have a dream about it at some point ...

I'm somehow on the court as Jason Kidd is schooling the much smaller Jordan Farmar in the ways of being a point guard. I can't tell what the venue is, since the area surrounding the court is pitch black. I think there have been many Nike commercials like this. At some point, I take matters into my own hands and start beating Kidd to the punch. A pass goes into the corner of the court, and I get a hand on it, as Jason goes for the steal and ends up out of bounds. I spin towards the basket and go in for the lay-up, but it's short. The ball comes back down under the hoop and I have to pick it up off the pine. When I look back up, I'm in a crouch, so the basket seems like it's 15 feet above me. I throw it up and it goes and goes and goes until it falls through the net. When I look over to the sideline, there is a long, white banquet table with Team USA logos on the side. The first person I see sitting at the table is Don Nelson. The dream ends before I see anybody else.

Avamar Roaches

Real Life: We are waging a war against Roaches in our apartment's kitchen.

Dream: There is a major roach infestation at Avamar. Like, major, they're everywhere. We are all fighting them with spray and various things like in an actual warzone, and then this HUGE one comes out of the Kitchen/Princeton, I'm talking about like 4ft long, 3ft high, and starts chasing me! It chases me around the perimeter of the office, in a loop outside of the kitchen/Princeton. I can't remember what happened, but somehow I got away/we suppressed the King Roach.

Very Angry Arun

For some reason Arun gave me a ride home from work (hah, yes all the way to my place), and then we picked up my girlfriend (Emily) because we all wanted Carl's Jr. So we pick her up and go to Carls Jr. I don't remember what Arun ordered but me and Emily each ordered a chicken sandwich. We got food through the drive thru and then we were on our way back towards our apartment. Emily and I were both in the back seat eating our chicken sandwiches, when we both started spilling a bunch of runny sauce from our sandwiches onto the car's seats/upholstery.

Arun got extremely pissed off about this, like so super upset, yelling loudly at us. Then we remembered that some people don't like to have eating in their car and realized we forgot to ask if we can eat our sandwiches in there in the first place. He just kept going off, he couldn't believe what we did, and just wasn't getting over it at all, even after I said I'd have the entire inside of his car dry-cleaned.

Best Department Store Ever

Another "too hot for tv" one from a couple nights back...

I'm in a Sears-esque department store, except it's got these sub-rooms off the sides, sort of like a furniture store might have. These side rooms each have 3 or 4 hot chicks in them, naked, and I'm just going from room to room taking care of business with each of them.

The Mysterious Houseguest

Another one from last week:

I don't know if The Dreamcorder's existence makes me have more interesting dreams than my usual just-like-real-life ones, or if I'm just remembering them now that there's a place to share them. In any case, we pick up the action as our protagonist is exploring a mansion ...

I decide to check out the bathroom — or, more correctly, the bath house — which is separate from the main residence. Through the entrance is what might best be described as an atrium, with tall windows on the left that look out into the garden. On the right are doors that lead into the showers, each probably the size of my bedroom. The carpet is gray, the walls are cream, and there are nice dark wood accents that give the house the feel of a luxurious ski lodge. Architecture in my dreams is also usually very modern in style.

I look into one of the showers, which is dark. Outside the door, there is a switch panel. There are rectangular, black rocker switches with white graphic labels, set in a square, beige frame with rounded corners — very European-looking, in my mind. I toggle each switch left and right to see what they do, as various areas within the shower room light up (but dimly) and hot water jets spray in various directions. Bathing here would be like standing outside at night in a monsoon.

I either did not shower, or the actual showering was not interesting enough to dream about or remember, so the dream cuts to me re-entering the mansion ...

I walk into the large kitchen only to find a stranger sitting at the dining table. I get the feeling that he's not supposed to be there. I eye him cautiously, and he gives me a quick head nod and then nervously looks away. He is gaudily attired in red, white, and blue — baseball cap, baggy baseball jacket and blue jeans, and K-Swiss shoes — and is doing something I can't quite remember (either shuffling cards or counting money).

Suddenly, the owner enters. I tense up. It's LeBron James! "Hey, what are you doing here?", he asks. I'm nervous for a moment. Have I been trespassing? I mention to him that I told him I was going to use the shower, and he seems satisfied with that response, so I breathe a sigh of relief. I turn his attention to the mystery man at the kitchen table, and he goes to confront him. I don't stay to find out what happens next.

Not sure why it's LeBron James. I think my brain was just trying to find someone rich enough and ostentatious enough to have a bath house like that.

Pancake Restaurant

This one is from St. Patrick's Day:

It was my birthday, and my sister was treating me to brunch. I went to the restaurant with a guy I knew from high school and college (an acquaintance, not really a friend, who I haven't seen in years). The building itself was almost like a modern airport terminal — high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, lots of exposed metal — and the tables were long, bench-like, and totally unadorned. The color gray prevailed. The establishment served tall stacks of pancakes, on wheeled pedestals that were rolled up to the tables by the unseen staff. I almost stole a bite from an unattended stack as I walked by, but held back. Once we sat down to the table (which was so deep that I couldn't reach over and hug my sister), I realized that the guy I was with would only have been there in a dream, so it ended.

Kimberly Fun

I got it on with Kimberly from Girls Aloud. It was a great!

Carla Cube Path

Carla's inner cubicle wall had a section cut out of it, including the desk, forming a small doorway-like opening, that you had to duck just a bit to get through, but it saved me so much time when going over to where thuy/daisy/steve/joey/sein sit. I was very happy to have this new shortcut.

Sausage Nose

Arun was on a roller coaster, he went through a loop-de-loop, and going through the loop caused one of those miniature sausages to fall out of his nose.

Working for the Dreamcorder

I mentioned this to Arun and Sean the other day, but I've been having some interesting dreams. So interesting that I think about bookmarking it in my brain for the purpose to log it on the Dreamcorder. I'm finding though, that this adds to "work" in my sleep pattern that causes me to become aware in my dream or in between dreams. All of this work to remember the dream or realize that I just had a dream may affect my sleep, but not enough to get me out of bed to actually type it up! I'm going to try and relax to the point where I can have memorable dreams, and then log them, instead of trying so hard to remember them.

Chopper Security Suite

I got a windows software security suite, which had all the standard programs, plus it came with a tiny R/C Helicopter, and a USB connected landing pad which is also the chopper's charge station. The helicopter has a tiny camera on it, which sends back real time video to your computer, from which you also control the chopper. It flies for about two minutes and then returns to the landing pad/charge station. I think it can find its way back on its own.

I was flying it around in a van I was living in with 3 room-mates, with me "living" on the "top floor" of the van, like those extended roof things that they put on some campers.

Meat Inspection Act

Real Life: I judged at History Day L.A. this morning, in the category of middle school group exhibits. Of the ones my group judged, we were most impressed by one about the Meat Inspection Act. It was an amazing exhibit, visually and content-wise. And the girls we interviewed who put it together were super on point and impressive, and learned how to use microfiche, etc, really put a lot of work into it. It spun around and even had a "window" at the bottom with a dimly lit bucket inside with various nasty-condition meats.*

Anyway so they were the winning exhibit from our group's selections. Then a coordinator asked if any of us could stay an extra 2 hours to do the finalist judging. I said I would since nobody else in my group was and I really felt the girls in the meat inspection exhibit did a great job and I needed to pull for their exhibit. It turned out there were only two finalist judges, me and this other guy, and so I was promoting the meat inspection exhibit to him (I really did feel that it was even the best in the finalists), and so we ended up choosing that one as the winner of the whole category to go on to state finals, and then maybe nationals! After that I had to leave but wished I could see the girls' reactions to winning and could be like "I was pulling for you!" I went home and took a long nap as the event started at 7.30am.

Dream: I stayed after the final judging was done, the kids all ran in to see how they did, and I got to see the excited reaction of the girls that did the meat inspection exhibit. Satisfied! Thanks brain!

*The girls are not vegetarians for the record. They said they chose this topic because they actually liked meat and were appalled that it had been so contaminated at one point.

Power Outage

This one is from a few days back:

The power goes out at my house and everything turns off except my desktop PC, which is not connected to a UPS. Even my notebook won't power up, since I'd run down the battery earlier that night [in real life]. It's the middle of the night, and I'm calmly trying to save my data and pointlessly copy the URLs open in my Firefox tabs before the system loses power. At some point, I realize that the PC could only still be on if I were in a dream, and I wake up.

Dropping Elevator Again

Me and my girlfriend are going to a Van Halen concert, and we are in this elevator at the venue that is supposed to take us up two or three floors. Instead it goes up really fast to floor 80 or so, and the door opens to reveal nothing more than a solid concrete wall. Then the door closes and the elevator drops. It is getting close to zero, and I know this is a dream. Although this time, the elevator does not go to the B (underground) levels. It just hits, but the impact doesn't really happen in the dream. It picks up after the impact and I no longer know I'm dreaming. We survived and are out of the elevator, with burned clothes, like someone blown up in a cartoon. We are at the concierge demanding front row seating to compensate for our ordeal, but thinking we might even get backstage passes.

Real Life: There is only one Van Halen song that I like.

Ash Mouth

I'm student teaching in a class, and I lean over to help some girl with her work. She is smoking a cigar, and quickly sticks it into my mouth, lit-side in. So I gotta go to the bathroom and am trying to clean out my mouth with water.

One Step Closer

Ironically, my first post is not a dream (breaking the rules?), but I ran across this today, which has been one of my future technological predictions for some time:

"One day it may even be possible to reconstruct the visual content of dreams,"

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/mri_vision

Welcome, and Good Night

In the future, we will have machines to do this for us; for now, we write.