Dream Journal: A Strange Series of Toll Roads

I'm running an errand. Once I step out of my house I realize something is off. Every road, intersection, crosswalk, on-ramp, freeway, etc. is color coded and has a label indicating price for a given segment of that infrastructure. The prices are very strange. I walk down the street to the "freeway" and end up going through three different segments of road each with a different price that makes no sense ($9, $500, $17). As soon as I step on a segment, my balance gets deducted. That is when I notice that above my head is digital display of the balance showing how much toll money I have. I start with $50,000. I realize now that this is a game of sorts. I start running like Sonic the Hedgehog through the streets of LA trying to get to my destination. I don't exactly know where I'm going but its fun going through this weird cityscape and I still have plenty of money left in the balance. Then I hit a weird loop-de-loop thing (like in Sonic). As soon as I step on it I realize I made a bad mistake. Each time I go through the loop it costs $4500. Worse yet, I get stuck and go through the same loop three times. I don't think I'm going to be able to end up at my destination.

Dream Journal: Work Lunch and Watching Over LeAnn

I find myself in a large park not knowing why I'm there. I see a number two of my coworkers, Clem and Mike Panossian. They beckon me over to a corner of the park where they have a volleyball net setup. I realize this is a work related morale event. Everyone starts playing volleyball except me because I don't like/know how/want to play. I walk away from the park and discover a mall. I walk inside the mall to find my uncle and his daughter there. He asks if I can watch over her for a bit while he looks for his wife who he has lost sight of. I walk LeAnn around the mall until we near the foodcourt. She wants some ice cream so I take her around the stations to see which one she likes. Apparently every station sells a different kind of ice cream and she does not know which she likes. Finally, I pick one at random but when I take a look at their stock it looks mostly melted.

I skipped out on the work morale event this week and probably felt a little guilty about it. Then today it is Devon's (my uncle's son's) birthday. I probably free associated LeAnn in his place since the last time I went to their house, I gave her some ice cream

Dream Journal: Trip to Cape Cod

Ngoc, Meng, Natalie, and I are on Cape Cod and are headed towards either Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. We stay at a bungalow near the beach overnight. The next morning we get ready and head towards the dock along with a group of about 20 or 30 people. I don't see the boat I expect but rather a huge yellow and blue inflatable raft in the shape of a manta ray. The inflatable is connected to a speed boat that will drag us all the way to our destination. I begin to feel a little concerned but everyone else gets on the "vessel". I grudgingly get on and then we're off.

Remnants of my Boston Trip and the other trip I'll be taking in April for Meng's wedding. The inflatable manta ray thing was something I read in the catalog during my plane trip. See below, although the one in my dream was many times larger.

Dream Journal: ELDP antics in a wetsuit

I'm in the second session of my ELDP training. We are near a large lake and they are going to teach us how to waterski. While the instructor is relaying the directions, I start goofing around and accidentally knock the instructor's wetsuit into the water. I laugh because I don't think it matters since it is a wetsuit. However the instrcutor is really pissed at me and he says that the wetsuit won't work until it is dry because it won't insulate properly. I sheepishly walk away and take his wetsuit to the back and try to dry it out. I finally succeed in getting it pretty dry and when I return to the group, I find all of them have already boarded a large boat and sailed away. I wait a while and they swing by where I am standing. I hand the instructor his wetsuit but he takes one look at it and tells me that it is not dry enough. He then takes the boat away again. Rejected, I walk to a recreation center nearby. There are arcade games and such but I'm not interested. I walk upstairs to find a bunch of ping pong tables. I see Long and we start playing. He can't seem to serve correctly so I get pretty bored waiting for him. He then says he has to go and one of the other ELDP people substitutes. He turns out to be pretty good. What makes it worse is that I can't seem to play correctly. Every ball I hit either hits the net or goes out. After a while, he gets bored and walks away.

I think the lake and boat has to do with those seniors that drowned in the lake in New York. The wetsuit is related to lake and also to a conversation I remember having with an ELDP person. With that connection, I recall a day where I asked a question to one of the ELDP speakers and the speaker told me that my question was bullshit! I think that is who the instructor represented. The ping pong table connection I can only make to something my coworker Clem said about playing ping pong on a cruise ship. Long's presence can be explained by a story Toeung relayed back to me last week about Long and ping pong. The other ELDP person kicking my ass in ping pong is probably because I haven't worked at all on the team project we were assigned and the metaphoric ass kicking I got in my dream is a premonition of the true ass kicking my other team members will give me once they find out how much I have done

Dream Journal: Dropping off Diane and Mike

I'm dropping off Mike and Diane to separate work sites. When I get to the first site (which by the way looks suspicously like my Junior High School), Diane quickly gets out of the car because she's late to a meeting. Mike realizes she has left her fanny pack in the backseat. We turn to call to her but she's out of sight. I wait while Mike goes to look for her. I'm a little nervous because I'm double parked. Just then I see somebody who knows Diane so I call out to her to ask where Diane might be. While we're talking I fail to notice that an El Segundo police cruiser has pulled up beside me and has started writing the ticket. Before I can explain he hand me to the ticket and begins to walk away. I complain that he's just taking advantage of me but he says something like it's only $9 and two thirds of it go to administration costs anyway! I'm relieved that it's not more so I drive away (leaving Mike) and go to a museum along the beach. I meet up with a bunch of kids and some tutors to begin a tour of the museum.

This is a hodge-podge of things that happened. First, Mike and Diane have had some friction due to a work related thing. Secondly, Long told me about how he recently racked up two moving violations totalling a rather large sum of money. Lastly, I'm about to begin tutoring again next week.

Another Flash Game: Hapland

This one's harder than Samorost, Polyphonic Spree, and GrowRPG, I think. The others I could finish the day I saw them. This one was over a period of three days.

Dream Journal: Reporter on the Beat

I'm a reporter for a major newspaper and I have just cracked a hot story wide open. I'm furiously trying to write the article on a laptop in a coffee shop in Chinatown. However, something weird then happens. I get thirsty. Very thirsty. So thirsty in fact that I leave my work for a minute to go look for something to drink. I walk into a liquor store and pull out a bottle of water. I look at the price. It says $15. I am in disbelief. I decide to get a bottle of orange juice instead. It's cheaper: $11.99? I won't spend that much on a stupid drink so I turn to leave. However I am really, really thirsty. I hesitate for a second before I wake up.

The newspaper dream probably has something to do with that recent article about the reporter jailed for witholding her anonymous source. The thirsty part was just me. I woke up incredibly thirsty and had to drink a nice tall glass of water. 30 minutes later, I had to wake up again to use the bathroom.