Dreams

My dreams are not fully back to normal yet, probably partially due to the flux that my apartment is in at the moment, so that’s likely thrown me off a bit — it feels like I’ve been packing up to move out, and I sleep in fear of bedbugs (not really, none of them have gotten on the bed as far as I know, but I do keep a light shined on me while I sleep to keep any potential bugs at bay, so that probably throws my deep sleep off a little).

Anyway, dreams. It’s interesting that I had two separate dreams this week about impromptu decisions to go on travel. My subconscious wants to go back on the road…

Nov 30 2021

• I dreamt I took a bus to Las Vegas with a friend, who started out as Valerie when we boarded the bus but turned into Satinel about halfway through the trip. The bus trip cost $65, and it was a very impromptu decision — we were passing by the bus terminal on a Friday evening and saw the bus, and decided to take the trip, ignoring all our weekend responsibilities and despite the fact that I had only just returned from my USA trip that involved a Las Vegas stop. Valerie/Satinel really wanted to visit a book shop/book sale there after I had mentioned visiting and buying a book from on my trip, just as we were passing by that terminal.
• Not counting the driver, there were only 7 seats on the bus, and we took two side-facing single seats near the front door on the right side of the bus. There was a clump of four front-facing seats (two double seats) on the left side of the bus that four guys took, and one single front-facing seat on the back right side of the bus that a girl had taken.
• The two guys seated on the back double seat on the left side of the bus had also apparently spontaneously boarded the bus like we did, as one of them exclaimed that they were going to Vegas! And it only cost $65! He told us that he hoped we had brought money to gamble with. I didn’t, but I had my credit card anyway if needed. I wondered how I was going to find time to write my blog and if I was even going to mention this in my blog or if I was going to omit it and keep it a secret.
• Once we arrived, the bus itself turned into a gambling room and I started to play a game located on the windows across from us, which involved a card being drawn with a number on it from 1 to 120 or something, and I had to pick whether the next card would be a higher or lower number, and keep a streak going as long as possible. I immediately lost the first game because one of the guys’ heads were blocking the card display and I couldn’t see it. He apologized and moved to another seat in the room.
• I then played again and did really well on the game. I even accidentally clicked Higher when a 112 was drawn, but the next card came up 114 instead, and everyone was impressed that I had gotten that correct. (I clicked Lower after that, and the next card was 111).
• Satinel had not gambled but was wandering the hotel after having visited the bookshop/sale to purchase a couple books. She went back to the hotel room and then sent me a message on Discord saying dgp8, which I apparently parsed as her saying that the Games Done Quick charity event was running and they were speedrunning one of the Di Gi Charat computer games on stream/TV.
• I told her to enjoy her vacation here instead and that I was looking forward to playing some slot machines with her because I didn’t get to play them at all the last time I came to Vegas.
• While wandering around, I found and opened some chests of different rarity levels, but there was also a regular rarity chest that I was standing in front of when a kid came up to the side of the chest and opened it at almost the same time as me, barely beating me to it, so that I got an error that the chest was already in use. I was annoyed at the kid for this and “flipped” the chest (not physically, but I reset it somehow), which force-closed the lid that the boy had open and also messed up the contents of the chest so they weren’t neatly stacked inside. I didn’t actually need the items from the chest, so I left it to him anyway, and walked away feeling vindictive.
• Snippet: At some point I was playing a top-down game in the style of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, but on a very rigid and visible grid. I had my castle and a few resource mines around me, and my enemy was somewhere to the west/northwest and was not posing much of a threat at all. I had two Logistics items that increased how much I could move per day, and there were also two buildings just to the northwest of me, a few squares out from the castle, that gave me an even larger movement boost as long as I visited them every week, since the buff expired weekly when Monday arrived no matter when I picked the buff up that week.
• Because my movement range was so large, the computer-controlled enemy to the northwest of me was just sitting in his castle and not venturing out at all, since I could otherwise basically waltz in from the vicinity of my castle all the way to his, and take the castle without a fight, if he ended his turn outside the castle. I didn’t push this though, and proceeded to visit the resource nodes south of me to collect some resources.
• I also bemoaned that a dwelling on the map next to the mines, that was producing the Tier 5 unit for my castle, was not upgraded to Tier 6 and producing my top level unit, knights, instead. I had missed out on this upgrade somehow either from some event or because I didn’t get to loot/upgrade my resource nodes in time before the upgrade expired. Anyway the unit was still producing cavaliers or champions or horsemen or something, the Tier 5 unit for my castle, although it was also producing peasants that generally took care of the horses in the dwelling, but occasionally came along with the horseman unit when I purchased it.
• Snippet: I was wandering through our old 4012 home looking at boxes of photographs, but there was a poltergeist attached to me who would occasionally flip or throw something when I entered a new room, and there were also coils of rope around my ankles for whatever reason so I could only shuffle around and not walk or run. In this case when I entered the main room of the house, two boxes (one of photos, one of papers or something) got tossed and scattered toward the front door, though about 2/3 of the contents of both boxes were still inside once I shuffled over to where it was. Mom and Dad were out of the house for a couple hours still, so I started to repack the items before they returned. The photos really were assorted, I remember seeing many little photo albums of assorted family and friends, including in particular photos of Wela from high school (except these were taken when she was on a trip with friends post-high school) in an envelope.

Dec 01 2021

• My dream involved travelling to a neighbourhood in a city that I was visiting, and making an appointment to have crab there in a fancy coffee shop-style restaurant with two friends. The restaurant was very strict and you had to make your reservation there to be able to dine — there was a notepad in the shop and you had to be there in person to book. You also had to check out once you were done.
• The shop itself was located next to a really large, rural, peaceful road that ran next to a river or drainage reservoir, and I arrived first and waited for the others, as I wasn’t sure if it was the correct shop. The owner/chef was talking to another group as I stood around waiting for the other two, and I overheard him telling them that there was another similar restaurant nearby (without such strict rules but without as high a quality and experience as well).
• At that point, the restaurant was packed, but there were only two slots taken out of the 6-8 slots or so available for the 6:45 pm time slot that was coming up next. However, I wasn’t sure if my friends would make it, so I didn’t book a slot. When the current group was done, they all stood up and queued up in a line for the notepad to check out, and I joined the back of the queue with one of my friends who had arrived. In front of me was a girl and she chatted something to me in Japanese about the shop, which I only partially understood but laughed politely, which was the correct response to what she had said.
• By the time we got to the front we found that all the 6:45 slots were taken up, apparently by some of the rich businessmen who had just checked out but who also wanted to dine for another round. But that was fine, since our third friend wasn’t here yet. We instead put ourselves down for the next available slots, the 8:15 one, and then texted him to tell him the situation. He said to please put up signs outside the shop with arrows pointing at it that could be seen from afar, so he could figure out which was the right shop and wouldn’t get lost.

Dec 02 2021

• I had recently finished some sort of surgery, and had a dark blue health book returned to me from the doctor’s office now that they had finished the post-surgery report as well. The book was fashioned after Singapore report card or health card books, with each page being a double-sided plastic sheath that printed pages were slipped out of and into.
• Although the previous pages had reflected my gender and name change, this latest one listed my male name as my primary name, then my female name below it, and the nurse/secretary apologized and claimed that she was afraid that this would happen when she filled in the form and submitted it for review, because the perosn typing in the form was not familiar with or didn’t care for transgenders. She didn’t offer a way to fix it though, so I figured I’d have to go through the hassle of contacting some central health agency to fix it when I had more time.
• For now, I went home to rest and recuperate. Home in this context was our 4012 home, and Mom, Jon, and Kel were both there as I rested in an upstairs bed, although the upstairs level was one large attic-like floor instead of the usual 4012 layout. The downstairs was more or less accurate, however, particularly the front and back doors and yards, although the front door was on the left side of the house instead of the right. My family members were all circa 2005-2010 age-wise, too.
• Mom said we needed to do some snow-shovelling to prepare for Dad‘s return, and she took Jon and went out of the back door and yard after a conversation about it being a guy’s job to help and about how shovelling now would make for less work later. They went about 100m away from the house and started to shovel a piece of sidewalk that I thought was city property though, for whatever reason, instead of the area directly by our house.
• I stayed in the room/attic with Kel and we chatted a bit, and she brought out several Tigeys which we fawned over for a bit. I feel like at some point here I noticed a letter about some sort of event that I had taken part in before, and actually recognized that that was referring to a previous dream that I had been involved in, but that didn’t trigger any sort of lucidity.
• Dad then returned through the front door, and we went down to greet him and told him that Mom and Jon were out shovelling snow. The front yard didn’t seem to have snow, but that didn’t register while we were in the dream.
• I suggested that he open the front blinds and wait there for Mom and Jon to return, and he did so for a bit, but eventually decided to open the door and stand outside on the path leading up to the door instead, with his hands on his hips. We waited a while but there was no sign of Mom and Jon returning.
• I then went back up to my bed and looked outside the window, and saw that they were returning through the back door instead. At the same time, Dad was tired of waiting and had come back inside. From my vantage point, I managed to snap a good and rare picture of the two groups, Dad/Kel in the living room and Mom/Jon in the kitchen, walking toward and about to meet each other.
• I went down to join in the reunion, and saw that Kel had set up 8 Tigeys (all the white variety) on the living room table, which were all facing my reunited family. My original Tigey was there, as was a Tigey which I knew was the second one we picked up because his pink nose was uniquely lopsided, and then six more after that that I didn’t know the history of.

Dec 04 2021

• I was in a large gathering of people in some building. It felt like a mix of people from work and from somewhere else but I don’t specifically remember anyone being there except for my work boss, Ronnie.
• It was nearly evening and we were owed/being served dinner, and the group was divided into two groups, with the “adults” being ushered over to the kitchen and a long dinner table there, whereas us younger ones were left out in the open at another long dinner table. Both Ronnie and I were in this latter group, but it also contained a lot of actual children.
• The people in this younger group complained, but the organizer who was doing this noted that the kitchen was going to close in less than an hour from now, so we did not have time to have both groups take their turns eating in the kitchen. Also, eating out here would mean that we could take our time and eat, unlike the adult group which would have to finish within the hour.
• After finishing dinner, the group disbanded and we all went our own way. Among a variety of things, I remember telling my boss that I was going to go out of the country for travel again for a couple of weeks. I then went to the airport terminal, which looked like a train station partitioned into several rooms. I had no idea exactly where I wanted to go, I just know that I wanted to go travel.
• The first room I went into had a Departures board, as well as ticket costs, and I became really excited as I noticed that there were several really cheap flights, including $1 flights to Alaska, to Tokyo, and to a small village southwest of Tokyo.
• I decided the first one was a bad idea due to Covid, and so I wanted to go to one of the Japanese cities. I was hesitant, however, because it was Saturday and the tickets were for Monday, but Monday was also when the bedbug treatment people would be coming to my house, and it would be risky to not be there for that.
• A guy from Ontario entered the room and tried to chat me up, trying to inquire as to the origins of an antique clock I was lugging around with me. He said he just had the one quick question at first, so I answered him and he left the room, but then he reentered with more questions, and I noticed that he was obviously trying to flirt with me. He asked what part of Ontario I was from, and I said I was from Edmonton, Alberta, two provinces over. He opened a digital hologram map on the floor next to him, with a map showing those two provinces and a travel path between them, and went “Oh.”
• A nearby woman looked at the map, and remarked that oh, that’s just five minutes away, isn’t it? I had to explain that they were two provinces apart, and they looked close by on the map because it was zoomed in in a way that was very much not to scale at all.
• Editor: Actually three, but in my dreams Manitoba didn’t exist.
• Anyway the guy backed off and said that he hung out at the airport a lot and was practically a worker here, except he wasn’t formally one, and had no job and all his possessions were on this really low skateboard-with-bicycle-handlebars thing that he sat on and drove around the place slowly.