Beer blog

So last night I dreamed that 2 friends from school, Kimberly and Taylor, and I went to a bar. We had each said we were just going to get one beer each. However, when we got there, Taylor and I ordered our beers then Kimberly got up to the bar and ordered a pint! Taylor and I looked at each other wide-eyed and then at Kimberly in disbelief. (Funny how our personalities can be exaggerated or mellowed in dreams.) Kimberly didn't look at us or heed our questions at all but proceeded to down the pint fairly quickly. Taylor and I were beginning to get annoyed because of being ignored so we sat each sat down on a stool and starting to broodingly drink our beers, too.
After that, Taylor and Kimberly were supposed to go to this house in the middle of a small town out in the woods and get it ready for our vacation. I had to run by the store and grab some milk first. So suddenly they were in a car full of Wal-Mart bags full of groceries for our vacation. Apparently, we were staying in somebody's house while they were gone that was letting us chill in their house.
So I went by the store to get milk, but all of the sudden I was walking, gallon of milk in hand, when my cell phone started to ring. I was walking down a dirt road surrounded by trees, and it was late afternoon and looked rainy out, and I remember being surprised that I got reception out there. But I answered, and it was this guy from our school who used to be the dean but is now in charge of the married students I think. Anyways, totally random guy I've only talked to a few times in my life and haven't seen in a while, it was him on the other end of the line, and he was completely wasted. (Extremely out of character because this guy isn't like that at all.) So, he talks to me for a while, and in the course of listening to his slurred speech it becomes clear that it's his house that we're staying out and he's coming home early.
By the time he gets done talking, I've almost arrived to the house with the milk, and it's gotten pretty dark because of the big rain clouds that have come in overhead.
Taylor and Kimberly are out on the porch, and I barely had time to explain to them that we needed to clearn up and get out because the house owner was coming home early when he comes rumbling down the dirt road in an old beat up ford truck--some shade of green...I'm not even sure what to call it...but it was a mix between mint and hunter green somehow.
He gets out and slams his door too hard and stumbles towards the front steps, and the girls have no idea what's going on or what he's saying. And the dream ended with us all awkwardly standing there as he's clumsily trying to get first to his banister, steps then front door. The end.

A couple of observations: A lot of these dreams have had themes (beer, fish, etc.) Also, all the ones that have been set outside have been set in the late afternoon and it's always looked like it's about to rain....interesting...

Weird, weird, weird

So, as you can tell by the title, last night's dream was the weirdest most bizzare one yet. First of all, when I woke up this morning, my pillow case had evidently been violently ripped off my pillow and flung half-way across the room...I have no recollection of said altercation, but that was the first strange thing that struck me this morning.

Now, there are 2 kinds of dream consciousness in my experience. One occurs when the dream and your waking are a continuous line of consciousness and right when you wake up it's just like your brain doesn't miss a beat and the dream seems to have occured in real time and your thoughts flow from the dream state to "awakeness" with complete continuity.

The second kind of dream consciousness is what I'll call 'recollected dream consciousness' when you wake up and there is a disconnect between your unconscious, dreaming state and your waking consciousness.

I experience both kinds frequently and the first one is usually more surreal and weird than the latter, but this morning I experienced the second type, in which my dream kept coming to me in segments and I had to shake my head in amazement of the information I was receiving.

Last night, or this morning rather, I dreamed that my family and I were visiting this strange lady. She was very disconnected from the real world and she could be because she lived out in the middle of nowhere on a farm of sorts. She cultivated living things and hybrids of all kinds--plants, animals and the most bizzare of which--fishmen...no mermen, mind you, but fishmen.

These fishmen were cultivated and lived in a stream close to her house. The water was clear and shallow so that she could observe them and interact with them. She wore long, flowy dresses and skirts all the time, and she tied them up when she got in the water. She was always barefoot, too. She was very gentle with the "baby" hybrids and had a system of care for them. She let me and my family hold them, but you had be extremely careful and make sure they got air or else they would die.

The fishmen were half fish and half man. The fish half was the bottom half--the tail and half of a fish lower-body. The top half were miniature men in red and black, V-neck sports jerseys. They all had brunette hair, too, for some reason. Anyways, as they were growing, and in the water, the lady kept them in sawed-off 2-liter pepsi bottles. I know, I know...weird, right?

Evidently, they needed to live in water to survive, but they could also drown...? So, she picked one up--supporting the pepsi bottle and then cradling the fishman's torso in her other hand. Evidently, they didn't or couldn't talk either...but they could/did make noise.

Now, there was a system to keeping them breathing that I didn't quite understand even though she explained to me what to do.

There was something about having to slide the pepsi bottle up and down, like it had chambered air and it had to be opened and closed every 30 seconds. I didn't get it and the poor little guy started to choke and gasp for breath. I couldn't figure out what to do so she rushed over and slid the bottle down and released the chamber so that he could breathe again. He looked relieved, and I decided to put him back down before I killed him.

As I reached down to put him back in the water, what else did I see but my mother, kneeling on the stream bank, straining to reach into the pool to touch one of the regular little fish...which were still massive in comparison to any goldfish you might have in a tank at home. The one she was reaching for was a really pretty color--speckled with deep, royal purple and a deep aqua-marine/royal blue. It's fins were long, full, flowy and completely clear. Evidently, mom was enthralled with the little guy and just couldn't help herself in restraining her curiosity. The little guy didn't see her eager hand, stretching out to grasp him, but he lazily drifted towards the middle of the stream. She made one last desparate attempt and lunged towards him with the clumsy splash of her hand, but to no avail. He was gone and cautiously gliding away at this point.

I looked down in disbelief at her, and the lady looked down at her as if to reproach her silently. I had to chuckle at that point because of the irony of the role-reversal that had just taken place. Anyways, we continued to look at all her strange creatures until it got dark and we could see outside anymore, then we made the trek up to her house, exhausted and went to rest in her big, wooden abode. The end. Crazy, huh?

Fail

So last night I had a dream, then I woke up and thought to myself, "Oh man, this is a great one to blog." Then I went back to sleep and totally forgot what it was...no joke. The end.

Last night was a conglomerate of dreams I feel like...but they all flowed together.

So one dream is funny but requires a little background for it to be funny. A friend from school, Kimberly, and I work out every weekday morning at 8am. I live off campus so I get up at 6:50 in order to get there in time. Also, I don't sleep very well, and I don't actually fall all the way asleep until the early morning hours--even then the sleep isn't usually very good.

So there's the background. Now, I had a really short dream that Kimberly had texted me to tell me that this really important guy was on campus and that she had a meeting with him at 5am and that after that she had another meeting at 9, so we couldn't work out. This is funny for several reasons. 1. Kimberly is not a morning person and would never have a meeting with some guy at 5 in the morning anyways. 2. There is no important guy visiting CIU and 3. My unconscious really didn't want me to get up and work out so it made up this dream that I didn't have to go and 4. When my alarm went off, I really checked my texts to make sure it was a dream even though it was highly unlikely.

My second dream was strange yet entertaining. My favorite prof at CIU is Crutchfield. I haven't seen him since last week so I don't know why he appeared in my dream, but he was the "main character" besides me. We were at this outdoor stage type thing that you would expect to see back in the day when politicians used to travel around by train and address cities with their speeches. It was a cloudy kind of dreary day again, and there were chairs in front of the stage. Apparently, it was Crutchfield's church. There were a lot of CIU people there, but also people and families that I didn't recognize that were part of his church family. Evidently, he had asked me to come there and preach. That fact dawned on me as I walked up on the stage to begin preaching. So I decided that I would preach about love and how one loves per the Bible. It was starting off pretty well, and Crutchfield kept nodding in agreement and agreeing with what I was saying out loud. Finally, he just stopped me and started a conversation about what I was saying--asking what I meant by certain phrases and for more biblical support. Eventually, people started leaving because it had just turned out to be a two-way conversation. I was aware of this and felt anxious to finish my sermon, but he seemed oblivious and just wanted to continue talking...which he did until there were only a handful of people left and even they weren't paying attention but were instead talking in their own little groups about something else. The dream ended with Crutchfield sitting back in his chair as if to ponder what we had discussed then folding his glasses up and putting them in his shirt pocket, rising from the chair and walking away. Good times.

Night before last, I dreamed my old youth pastor, his wife and his two sons came to stay at our house. Our house was not the one we currently live in, and it was in a different city than my family lives in now. It was Birmingham, and we lived at the top of this paved hill that used to be a parking lot. My siblings and I waited at the bottom of the hill next to an orange hotel for them to pull up. They pulled up in a white mini-van and then proceeded to bring all their bags and stuff into our house. It seemed like they were there to stay for a while...indefinitely.

When they got in the house, I just had a bad feeling about them being there, and I sensed that my old youth pastor was a bad man. Then my parents got home and greeted them, then my dad, my old youth pastor and I went out and gave him a sort of tour of the city. All the while my dad was talking with him and I was wondering if he could tell that he was a bad man. The dream ended when we got back to the house and walked inside. I was feeling anxious the whole dream.

Last night I dreamed that I was a little boy at this all-boys academy. (Don't think I've ever dreamed that I was a little boy before.) My best friend was always getting harassed by one of the teachers there who always wore this long, creepy looking cloak thing. We would be reading or talking in our room when he would burst in and grab my roommate by the back of the collar and suspend him in the air while yelling at him forcefully. We spent our days trying to avoid him and recovering from the verbal abuse after we did encounter him. I think we even attempted to run away but we didn't make it very far off of the school grounds before it got dark and ominous and we turned back. The dream ended with the teacher yelling at him one more time and comparing him to his older brother who had been a star student and excelled in his class. The prof was being really nasty to him.

Weird, weird, weird

Iowan Wizards

So 3 nights ago I dreamed that I lived back with my family, and we lived back in Iowa (where I was born). My brother (the older of the two) and I, were looking for people to play with in our "neighborhood." Houses are miles apart because of the farm country. Mom and dad were gone and it was just he and I searching for playmates. We begin our journey...it was a dark, dreary, cloudy day, and it looked close to rain.

He and I went down the muddy, dirt roads from house to house, and everyone was at school for the day. I don't know why my brother and I weren't at school...our two younger siblings were or either just absent.

By our 4th house, we were out of hope that anyone our age would be at home and able to play. At that point, a blonde-headed, female friend of mine from college, Lydia, appeared and we continued our journey with her. We came to a house, and two kids were there because they happened to be home schooled. And they seemed to be cool home schoolers and not the weird kind (and I can say that because I did homeschooling for a year.) We went back to our house and on the way played on hay bails and anything we could find lying around. At our house we played on the hard wood floor. It gets fuzzy after that.

The next night, I watched one of the Harry Potter movies (I'm watching the whole series to be more 'culturally aware'). So that night I dreamed about holding a wand and casting spells and multi-colored sparks flying everywhere and I don't remember who was there or if they were friendly or not. I remember it being pretty fun and exciting, though, so I must not have felt in danger even if there were "bad wizards" there.

Last night, I dreamed a lot of separate dreams, but I don't remember what they were. All I remember is that my sister, Alainnah was in one of them. I remember them also being exciting and fun, which is a nice change from my usual terrifying, depressing nightmares.

Tonight I'm going to watch Shooter...I wonder if it will affect my dreams tonight...

In the beginning...

So, I have notorious, strange and sometimes significant dreams. My dream life in the past 2 years has consisted of a lot of nightmares, and lately everything has been espionage, running for my life and a lot of, oddly enough, sharks. I thought it would be amusing at the very least and revealing at the very most to write them down each day and see what comes of it.

Here's last night's...

Last night I had a dream that I've had once before...only this time, a few things changed about it. As I was in the dream, I kept thinking to myself, I've dreamed this before, and I just have to do what I did before in order to survive, but then something unexpected would happen that didn't happen last time I had this dream. Okay, here's the setup. I am a German Jew back in Germany during the time of Hitler. Hitler has just launched his campaign to round up Jews and ship them off to the concentration camps. I am with a small group of fighting Jews that are trying to protect Jewish families and keep from getting caught and taken away.

We were mobilizing from our village because the word was that they were coming. However, on our way to warn the next closest village, a huge caravan of old, hunter green army jeeps with German soldiers in them streamed down the road towards our village. We hid in the brush, and they would've kept on going down the road, except that a brand new 2010 silver jeep came rushing headlong at them at a super-warped speed (this car had a personality and vendetta of its own against the army jeeps) and visciously plunged headlong into the first car in line. The next 6 or 8 jeeps that crested the hill smashed into the back of the one in front of it. (This accident did not take place the first time around I had this dream.) After the mass-wreck, we had a problem. Formerly in my dream, no wreck occurred and they just went on to our village, but this time, after the wreck the officers/soldiers got out of the car and headed towards the village that we had just arrived at--only we had not had time to warn the families that lived there.

So we ran ahead of them to the houses...that were all connected to each other somehow. The houses inside were dark and towels and blankets were hanging up everywhere as room dividers because they lacked walls. My eyes had to adjust to the dimly lit environment--no windows. We rushed in and did a weapons check--I had one knife--a skinning knife as it were. Our leader had a bowie knife and a pocket knife--the pocket knife he gave to me. After our weapons check, we began our run-through of each "house" and warned the people to get out. Unfortunately, they did not realize the gravity of the situation and proceeded to take town the hanging sheets and began to fill them with some of their possessions.

I raised my voice and began to insist that they did not have time to pack and had to leave out the back entrance immediately. So we took a group of them and led them through a pasture and to the edge of the woods. We then came back and went to the next grouping of "houses."

We spoke to one or two families in this house before an officer and 2 soldiers ran into the room we were in. I pushed the officer when he came at me, and he fell to the ground. He was tangled in the sheets that he had pulled down with him, but he continued to jab at me with a knife from where he was laying. It was as if he was trying to cut my hand off, and if not for a rounded leather flap around the hilt of my skinning knife, he would have succeeded. We "hand-dueled" for a minute or two before my comrades could assist me in reigning back the officer. Our leader stood him up and stabbed him in the chest with a knife and a pointed knife-sharpener. Then he handed me the officer's knife, and then I had 3 knives.

After that it gets a little fuzzy, but we continued to run from the soldiers and eventually they got back in what jeeps they had left and moved on. We followed them and ran into some lost Jewish children who said they knew where the soldiers were going. They led us to an entirely wooden building where there were restrooms and a food stand. The food stand only accepted pesos as money, and there were people at this building from all over the world. The last thing I remember is heading towards the restroom. The end.

I had this dream after hanging out with a friend for a couple hours and watching The Last Song with her, so I had not been watching any war movies or anything violent. Interesting...