Sleep Deprivation:
I haven't slept much in the last two weeks. I did have a dream on the
morning of the 18th (or was that the 19th?) that I was walking next to someone,
and that there were a lot of people walking behind us in a line--these people
were standing side-by-side, not in front of each other. This dream only
lasted a second or two, and then the alarm clock went off. I was really
confused because all of a sudden I went from standing up next to someone and
being followed by a bunch of people to laying down sideways and being alone.
Wow, that was quite the brain teaser for the first few moments of the day!
The Fifth Element:
The video store finally took The Fifth Element off of one-day rental, so I
checked it out. A friend of mine, the corn king, said the he thought that
I would like it, and he was right! I watched it four or so times in the
five days that I had it checked out. One of the characters in the movie
has a full-length leopard-skin suit on, and on the morning of the 11th I
had a dream where I was in a courtroom, sitting down. A bulky guy wearing
a pair of leopard-skin pants, and no top, is talking and talking while
standing in front of me, and at the same time, from behind me, a large,
silver blimp is coming in over the top of the open-air courtroom. The
blimp was like the old Goodyear one, back before they went to the current,
and possibly smaller, white/blue/yellow colored blimp. The open-air part
probably comes from watching the World Cup, and I have no idea where the
courtroom comes from.
Two dreams:
The Business Building:
I'm not entirely sure how this dream started, but I eventually ended up
running into a Professor as he started to go into the Business building.
We were talking away, and he started to go in a way that I hadn't used
before. Even though I've been in that building a number of times, I still
have an unfamiliarity with the building since the number of places I've been
in the building is limited. We went up an elevator (which doesn't exist in
real life) and then we were on a moving walkway up four stories (again, it
doesn't really exist). I kept talking to him as we crossed from Oliver
Hall North to the Business building, and I was looking around at the same
time to check out this nice view that I had never seen before. As the moving
walkway came to an end, we opened the double doors at the end of it and
happened to run into a graduate student that worked for the Professor. She
mentioned the computer that they weren't going to to buy, and I asked her
why and what type of computer it was. She told me that it was an SGI, and
of course I was interested since I work for SGI. I told her that IRIX 6.5
had just been released the day before (so the dream was happening on a
Friday, the same day I was having this dream) and it had a lot of changes,
quite possibly including the change they needed. The Professor left then,
but the two of us continued to talk. I chatted up the whole IRIX 6.5 thing
and our recent price cuts, and she started to smile was was interested that
I knew all this stuff. I realized that she probably didn't know that I
worked for SGI, but why interrupt a pleasant conversation with such things?
We started to walk down the hall and somehow an Origin 2000 computer showed
up in the middle of the floor. I took out my bag and proceeded to take apart
the computer, and show her all the inner workings of the machine. She told
me she was a little tired, and then laid down on her back, resting on a
pile of the parts on the floor. Her head and shoulders were right next to
me, so I put my hands on her shoulders and told her that she felt kind of
tense. Everything was going VERY well and then I had to leave. After
leaving the building I ran down to the library and saw a strange bus there.
I suspected that bus would take me to where I needed to go, so I climbed
aboard. It was rather dark inside and lots of the people riding the bus
were wearing dark sunglasses, including the driver. After riding for a
while I decided to ask two of the people on the bus whether or not this
bus was actually going to take me where I needed to go. One of them pulled
out a map and the three of us started to talk about how the bus would turn
north on 24, which I definitely didn't want. After some confusing map-reading,
I rang the buzzer and hopped off the bus right before it was going to turn
north. Using a clever short-cut I was home seconds later.
Potpourri:
I had a long dream this morning. I was at work, and the other company that
shares the office with us was moving all their stuff out. Right as they were
finishing this, some non-Muslim Asians showed up and delivered some computer
parts. They left, and a few minutes later, some Muslim Asians arrived.
Trouble, I thought, and I said this to the woman that was in the office with
me. I had seen these men before, and that's how I knew that this particular
group of people were trouble. This particular woman, in real life, has never
been to my office, and the last time I saw her (in real life again) was before
I took this job. However, in my dream, I knew she had been in my office before.
I hopped up out of my chair and went into the main area by the front door,
to check the scene out. They were delivering a DEC PDP 11/xx machine, with
a lot of disk bays next to it. It looked like a combination of an old 11/23
and a the back of a new HP 9000 rackmount enterprise server. We swarmed over
it to check it out, being excited about its arrival. I wanted to get out of
the office however, so I went back to my office and agreed to meet the
previously-mentioned woman back at my place. She left in her car, and I found
a pillow and hit the road. I laid down flat on the road, and put the pillow
under my chin, so that my chin and the top of my chest weren't touching the
road, but the pillow instead. I headed down the road at a high speed, using
my feet to push and my arms to both steer and push, imagine a lizard running.
I followed her closely until I was stopped by a light at the last intersection
before my place--not the place I currently live at, but the place I used to
live in northern Virginia. Though separated by a two hour drive in real life,
in my dream these two places were only a few miles apart. By the time I made
it through the light, I was hoplessly behind her and so I stood up and started
walking the rest of the distance. Though within sight of my destination, I
decided to take the Metro the rest of the way. I somehow ended up in a Metro
station a few seconds later (the closest ones in real life are a mile east and
a mile west), and while walking down to catch a train, I noticed that one of
the drivers was having trouble getting the train to restart and head out. I
knew this could be big trouble, so I opened up my briefcase and called someone
who was obviously important. It seems that at this point in the dream, I was a
Marine. Yes, that's right. I talked to the person on the other end of the
phone for a minute, and she recommended that I check to make sure the load is
even on the left and right sides, the wiring along the wheels is ok, and a few
other things. I went snooping around for a minute looking at the trains,
checking for sabotage, looking at the rails, and so on.
Now, for an interpretation: the non-Muslim Asians were Indians. With all the
talk of India exploding 5 atomic bombs over the last couple of days, it's no
surprise they would show up in a dream. The Muslim Asians were a mental
combination of Indonesians, with all the rioting that's happening there
recently, and Libyans, because I was discussing what ever happened to Quadaffi
with someone I work with earlier in the day. The DEC comes from school, and
the HP combination comes from talking about HPs recently at work. I've had
dreams before where I go somewhere fast by running on all fours--I don't know
what this means, but I first had this appear in dreams about high school. I
don't know why the woman I knew in college showed up in this dream. I've been
calling the home office in northern Virginia a bit recently, so maybe that's
why the Metro and the place I used to live in up there showed up. I was
looking at some Navy web pages last night, and the Marines are a branch of the
Navy, so I suppose that's why the idea that I was Marine crept in.
Tests:
I had a dream on the morning of the 24th that I had to take a test. I knew
the test was coming up, but I didn't realize it was today. Having no choice,
I sat down and took the test, and I was angry. The test was about the TV show
NYPD Blue, and I hadn't finishing watching all the episodes of it yet. The
first question asked me to explain the importance of their unmarked police
cars ramming into something every time they come to a stop. I can't remember
the other questions, but I do remember that I didn't know the answers to a lot
of them because I hadn't finished studying. After about 35 minutes of writing
nothing, I started to answer the first question. It was a long but not-quite
rambling answer, and I actually thought it was pretty good. By the time I
was close to finishing writing it down, there were only 12 minutes left in
which to finish the test--it was four or five pages long and I had only
managed to answer the first question. I woke up after that.
More Car Dreams:
I've had two or three dreams now where instead of owning the car I own now,
I own the car I used to own. In one of the dreams, I park the car out in a
parking lot that's surrounded on two sides by a fence and some trees. I come
back later, and the car window is smashed in. However, some of the stuff that
I had inside the car had fallen over the radio, blocking the thief(s) from
quickly ripping it out, so the only damage done is the window. In the other
dream, I'm driving around in the car, in some small town, and bad things
happen to the car and I end up at a repair place with people that are bad
themselves. Wow, talk about anxiety.
Car:
I keep having dreams that include my car. One dream had me talking to a
police officer about something, but I don't remember exactly what. I
also had a dream about driving all over the place and not really knowing
where I'm going. I'm tired in both of those dreams. I've been having
dreams that have all sorts of jumbled ideas in them recently, instead of
the usual single-subject dreams that I have. As the Beatles once sung,
"it's all too much."
Various Dreams:
I've been having some strange dreams. During the morning of 28 March,
I had a dream that I looked like I would if I didn't shave for a few
days. And in addition to that growth, I had two long grey strips of
hair down the sides of my face, from the front of my ears all the way
down to the top of my chest. I was attempting to shave these off.
Another dream I had dealt with driving, but I can't remember anything else
about that dream. It seemed that I was moving rather quickly down the
road. I also had a dream on the 30th that Cokie Roberts of ABC
news was dead. I saw it on the news, naturally, and was quite
surprise and saddened by it all. The dream didn't last long enough
for me for find out what she died of. Of course, she's still alive,
having been on This Week this morning, but for the first minute or
two of the show things seemed pretty strange.
A String That Ends The War:
This morning I had some strange dreams. First I had a dream that I was with
two other guys in a slightly under-lit, moderately fast-moving situation. We
were burying a string under just a fraction of an inch of dirt. This was
happening in a forest.
Later in the evening, I had another dream. I was near an airfield when I saw
a banner advertising that the "B3" is going to be arriving for an airshow soon.
I told whoever I was walking with to hurry up because I wanted to see this new
stealth aircraft. It was a sunny day outside, and the "B3" landed just in front
of us and started to taxi. We scampered across the runway and ended up walking
between the runway and the forest next to it. Suddenly, it became dark (a
rather sudden nightfall!) and another two people showed up. They wanted to see
where the string ended. We had to find it and continue laying the rest of the
string: that would end the war. We traveled rather quickly to the end point,
and realized that by taking the left-over string and straightening it out we
could reach our destination without having to go get more string. We started
burying it, moving forward rapidly. We finally reached the chateau, and inside
we went, still burying the string in the floorboards. Once inside, we quickly
proceeded to the fireplace that was our destination. There were several
people in the room with the fireplace, but they didn't seem to know what was
going on. We stopped for a moment and looked around, and then a minor debate
started over who would bring the string forward into the fireplace, ending the
war. I said that we all should grab it and run forward. But the slightly
loonly guy in front of me the whole time said he should do it. Apparently, no
one really objected because this guy deserved it somehow--he was a war hero
or something of the sort. He took the string to the fireplace. Once there,
we all felt the thrill of the war ending, but instead of celebrating, he
ducked down into the fireplace (the opening was about 4 feet tall) and started
to play with the gas pipes inside it. He opened the gas line, sending a blue
flame over his head out into the room. Adjusting the valves, he then started
burning gas in the pipe that went up into the chimney and the blue flame above
his head subsided. After some initial soot, all was well. The war was over,
and so was my dream.
Coins, and Airplanes: I keep having short
dreams about coins. I keep dreaming that some of the coins in my pocket
are important, and should be separated out. Of course, I keep putting
that off, so I keep worrying if I've spent the coins, and I keep checking
them to make sure I still have the good ones. Ok, here's the airplane
dream: I'm at my grandma's house and my mom is laying in the front
lawn catching some rays. (This is rather odd since there's a big tree
there, blocking the sun.) I notice about a dozen or more planes flying
parallel, each doing a big square in the sky with white smoke. I point
to them, because my mom isn't looking up. Right about then, my grandma
comes out of the house and some small planes start flying right over us.
One of them, with a banner, is going too slow and stalls out right over
my grandma's house, and it very gently hits the top of the big tree in
her front yard. No damage is done to the plane, and the pilot is okay,
but the plane then starts to rotate and fall out of the tree. The dream ends
there.
Dr. Oppenheimer: Here's the unusually detailed and
unusually long dream that I had the morning of Friday, 05 July 1996.
I dreamed that I was working for some sort of delivery service, and I had to
deliver a message to a place that also happened to have the office of Dr. J.
Robert Oppenheimer, Mr. atomic bomb himself. Of course, I was thrilled,
because then I could go and try and schmooze the guy while I was delivering a
message for this other place. When I got there, I happened to bump into
Oppenheimer coming in the door! I was somewhat confused by his appearance
however: instead of being a tall, skinny white guy with a pipe, as he appears
when photographed, he turned out to be a short black guy with a slightly
hunched back. So I said hello to him on the way in and "just happened" to
mention that I have a background in physics. Then I noticed that the place I
was delivering for was merely a front, a cover as it were. A table stretched
across the room, parallel with the front of the building. A group of people
sitting at it all kind of motioned for me to go back behind them when Dr.
Oppenheimer gave them a little hand gesture signaling that I'm in good with
him somehow. I guess they assumed that we knew each other and that he'd sent
for me to come work there.
I went back behind the table to the slightly raised section where the real work
was done. It was like a regular building from that point on. Somehow I ended
up with a badge, though I think I had that from the delivery service that I was
working with. After wandering around by myself looking pretty much like the
new guy, I eventually decided that no one had anything for me to do, since,
after all, I had just schmoozed my way into working there! In fact, I wasn't
even sure if I WAS working there. It was the usual set-up for buildings
handling classified/secret materials, magnetic strip i.d. cards, doors with
readers to unlock them, safes, etc. I was approaching the end of a hallway by
the back of the building when I decided to turn left to check out the rest of
the place. There was a copier room there that connected two parallel hallways,
and I noticed that no one was next to the copier. I figured it'd be ok to cut
through there, since there were no doors on the room and no one at the
copier (there's a guy at secret okayed copiers that does all the copying for
you and checks out all the paperwork, at least at one place where I was at.).
Right after I crossed into the room, an alarm started to go off! I caught a
security box just out of the corner of my left eye blinking away! I hoped
for a split second that it was just coincidence, but either way I decided to
leave the room by the other exit. Bad idea: as soon as I crossed that exit,
another alarm went off, and now there were two of the same alarms going off
slightly out of phase, making a terrible racket!
Looking left and right (T intersection), no one was around. Then I saw one
guy run quickly out the back exit, and then other guy appeared to the left of
me. He looked rather calm, and was smiling as he was swaggering towards me.
I said something about my badge, and I wasn't sure if he knew I set the alarms
off. It seems like he didn't, but I wasn't sure about my judgement on that.
"Where do we go?" I asked, playing the role of the new guy again. There was a
silver-doored elevator-looking exit between us. He took the elevator next to
it, but then three women then showed up and pressed the button next to the
silver-doored elevator-looking exit. I asked them if this is the way out.
They said it had to be, some rule about direct exits. Then the doors opened,
and instead of an elevator, there was a metal chute leading down a floor to an
underground garage. We jumped in it (ladies first!) and slid down for about
two seconds before landing upright on the floor of the garage.
Several people had already assembled at the delivery area. I listened to the
people talking to see if any of them had any idea what set the alarm off.
They didn't. Now I started feeling guilty about it, and I decided that I had
to tell them. A scouting party was forming in front of the building, so I went
around the front and manged to get in on the party of 5 others that went in
first. Now I was going back in where I had just entered and met Dr.
Oppenheimer a short time before. This time the lights were out, and there was
a haze present. Flashlights at the ready, they started to fan out and move
forward into the building, talking about what might of set the alarm off.
All 5 of them were in front of me when I made the pronouncement: I know what
set the alarm off. It was me entering the copy room. They were relieved
mostly, but slightly irked at me. The search ended then and they returned to
their non-stressed state. I didn't get a chance to see what their full
reactions were because I woke up right after that. I don't think they were
too upset at me, after all, it was my first day and they apparently knew that
no one had briefed me on security measures in the building.
Stories
