There was a fleet phone team.
Brandon hanging out with me and returning a borrowed belt.
Diane trying to find a good place to get some work done.
A dog that wouldn't step on a giant paper plate to get some leftover meat.
A raccoon that went for said meat, but was scratching at the ground like a cat does to cover its poop.
The decision to have a holiday expo instead of going out to celebrate Christmas drunken style.

Last night I was envisioning that it was my last day of "subbing" for a job with a paper company. No doubt this has to do with the fact that I've been substitute teaching and I guess the fact that I like the show The Office?

Anyway, it was the last day, and I had become really good friends with nearly everyone in that office and we were all sad I would be going. We tried to make it a fun day by having music playing through the large stereo system they had. Unfortunately, when the boss came in to talk to us, none of us could figure out how to turn the music off. I was trying everything I could, but when I tried to turn down the volume, it would go down to level 22 and then start again from level 75! I found out a little later that I got in trouble for messing with the radio when I should have been listening to the boss.

At one point, I was really confused regarding how a substitute teacher became a substitute paper employee. When I looked into it, I found that this particular company was almost solely focused on producing paper items like fliers and brochures for a college. That almost made sense.

At this point in the dream, some of the people in this office were becoming characters from THE Office, so Dwight was there and some of the other employees were playing a strange joke on him involving a military satellite phone, which he took into the storage room. I came walking out of the bathroom, right by the storage room, when he stepped out with an angry look on his face; clearly he had figured out he was being pranked. He gave me an angry glare as if I were the one who pranked him, and for some reason I couldn't bring my arm down from shielding my face.

The bell rang and I stepped outside to leave. One of the guys from the office followed me out and we stood outside in the sun for a bit. He stuttered and stumbled, but eventually professed his love for me! hah! I didn't know what to say so I went back inside. I saw that even though the work day was over, everyone was still working hard so I decided to stay and help even though I didn't have to (because I'm a good little worker bee!)

At this point I realized I was going to leave all these great friends I had made, so I started writing notes for people with my number on them. Unfortunately, I couldn't remember most of their names. I think one of the girls, whom I liked, could tell I couldn't remember her name, so while I was going to leave the note on her desk, she asked me to put it in her mailbox. jerk ;) The last person I came to was Pam. I told her how impressed I was by her and Jim, and asked if I could give them a call later. I asked if I could have Jim's number, which caught her off guard. I said that it would probably be more appropriate to give him a call than to call her, but it seemed as if she'd gotten in trouble for giving out his number before. She began giving me their numbers at the office. Boo.


The End

PS: There was another dream in which I was home in PA and decided to take some of my friends to meet Greg Maust. When I got there and went inside, I had to apologize to his parents for arriving so late at night. Also, I realized I was standing there in only my underwear, so I excused myself for a moment and searched through my car for clothes. All I could find were purple cutoff corduroy shorts, so I put them on with a t-shirt and my sankofa shirt over that. Unfortunately it seemed as if I had grabbed someone else's sankofa shirt, which was purple instead of black. Purple fail. As I finished getting dressed, Greg came out and walked up behind me. He told me he had a surprise for me and to be careful not to drop "him" as he placed a multilegged creature on my head. I reached up, trembling a bit, to feel a large furry tarantula on my head. I didn't move a muscle and it hopped off into the trunk of my car. It was green and black and supercreepy.

The End for realz.

I was either Lee Adama from BSG or Jack from LOST just before I woke up, and Cara Thrace was laying on a makeshift island bed clutching some sort of computer hard drive. She was asleep and clearly sick. She had a thermometer in her mouth and was also foaming from the mouth. My concern for her was overwhelming. When she woke up for a brief few seconds, her eyes went wide with fear and she asked where she was as if asking a captor. I went over to her and laid a hand tenderly on her arm and responded, "You're on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean."
She chuckled a bit, with a hint of a cough caused by fluid in the lungs, and responded, "How did I know that already?"
My alarm went off.

I just woke from a very vivid dream in which I was once again working for MPI Research, but in a management position. I was in what we referred to as a "Think-tank meeting," one which could result in drastic changes at MPI. Leading this meeting was a very intense, slightly older (late 30s?) blonde woman who I knew had recently lost a pregnancy and was a bit emotionally erratic. She was a no-BS type of woman who expected respect and propriety, which I was diligent to provide. While she talked, I was walking around the room, though listening intently, and can remember looking out a very large single-paned window into the parking lot. The furniture was pretty modern and seemed to be designed to encourage "out-of-the-box" thinking, if you know what I mean.

At one point, another girl in the meeting (there were four of us total, and the one against the wall never said anything and was quite shy) asked if it might be a good idea to bring Larry (Larry Tamaccio, a semi-friend of mine from high school who had apparently come out to work for MPI as a research associate) into our "think-tank" group. The leader-lady referred to my suggestion that he'd be a bad idea because he was new to MPI and was unfamiliar with the "old ways" (by which she referred to the old Provantis version that we used before I was laid off). I wanted to step in and mention that it's been a long time since he started and he might be a better candidate now than when we first started the group, but she was talking about how he didn't even know how to clear pictures from the Provantis index file (I don't know what that means, but apparently it's a way to keep from getting in trouble).

As we wrapped up the meeting, we were all on our feet getting ready to go. The woman leading the meeting was talking to the girl on my right about something, but that girl was saying a sentence to me after each sentence the leader said to her. Eventually this drove me nuts so I turned to her and said, "Are you listening to her or are you talking to me?! Make up your mind." At the same time the leader said something along the same lines to her and she was taken aback. I remember thinking that she didn't know me very well and this would make her think I was rude, but I was frustrated at her terrible listening skills!

As we left the room, leader-lady said to notice that I had given us exactly 210, and that it was our job to figure out. I didn't even know what she was talking about. 210 minutes? 210 days? $2.10?


I'm thinking about it, and I know there was something in there about pregnancy. I think I might have been pregnant, and the date for which we set our meeting may have been my due date. I referred to a scratching clawing child working its way out of me. Weird.

Last night's dream featured characters from Lost!

A number of us were hanging out in the water at the beach, and the camera angle made it seem like we were still on the island, but then the camera pulled out and you could see we were actually just at the beach near a big city. Then we went grocery shopping, and Jack told Kate, Sawyer, and me (I was Hurley, boo) that we had to go back to the island. We met up at someone's house and were talking around the table, and then I couldn't hold it back any longer. I just began to cry and laid my head in Sawyer's lap (weird, I know). He was trying to sympathize with me while patting my back, but then he and Kate were sobbing also. Quite sad.

Last night, there were three parts to my dream, but I can only recall the last two parts.

II. Like I was/am doing in real life, I was visiting a school to observe some teachers. But somehow, while I was observing classes, I got involved in a boxing tournament taking place right there in the classroom. I won my first few fights, but just barely. I was coming up against a difficult opponent when this part of the dream ended.

III. I was walking with Krista in a park, and we ended up going into a department store that had closed for the night. I went upstairs to use the women's bathroom, and Krista went downstairs to use the men's bathroom. I think this might connect to an episode of the office in which Michael Scott uses a ladies' public restroom because the guys' room is nasty. When I came down to get Krista to leave, the lights were out, and I found her and another female friend tied up in the restroom, crying. I untied them and woke as we were heading for the door.

I sleep-freaked out last night.

I was having a dream that there was someone outside the door of my room. My dad was in my room by my closet door, and we were preparing to work together to defend against the invader. But then I realized that my dad was about to turn on me and my lightsaber was trapped somewhere in my sheets, so I grabbed my covers and sheets and ripped them up off my bed, shaking them out to find my double-sided, black handled lightsaber. Unfortunately I'm in the process of cleaning up my desk/room and all of my to-be-sorted papers were on half of my bed. This morning I found all of those papers sprawled across my floor. Boo.

A few nights ago I sleep-walked to my window and can remember thinking someone was outside looking in. So I closed my window (it's never closed!) and locked it with the lock bar. In addition to that I also closed up my blinds, which are never completely closed.

I think I might be a bit paranoid this week.

In last night's dream, I was visiting a middle or high school (interestingly enough, I'll be doing that tomorrow). I kept getting confused about whether or not I was a student there. During a break, about 7 other people and I played an interesting game, and this is how it worked: There were two spires in the room, each about 3 feet high and placed on a desk. Each player opened up a program on his or her phone which activated that phone as an armed spaceship. The goal was to shoot down ships on the other team and eventually attack the other team's spire. After we played a few rounds, I walked away and could no longer find the program on my phone. I was getting very upset that I could not find it.

I wandered around for a while, checking out the dormitories of the school, the cafeteria, the music room, etc. I met some people and saw my buddy Luke from church. Then I was walking with a female friend of mine and she got excited and ran off. I looked around and realized I was in a part of the school that just opened up to the outside, with trees and grass growing underneath an overhanging portion of the hallway roof. There were people walking dogs in this area, including a giant malamute and a smaller black lab with her puppy. My female friend had me take pictures of her laying down with the puppies, but I was having a hard time getting the pics to come out right.

I followed someone outside and ended up on a city street. I turned around and saw a woman looking at me from her front window. I was having a hard time walking and had to pull myself up the stairs with my hands. I looked at the woman in the window again and it was my great-grandmother starting back at me, looking younger than she ever did to me. I went in to visit her, gave her a hug and a kiss, and talked for a few minutes before leaving.


I think sometime in the beginning of the dream or at the end I was in my dream home. I want to be alone and people were coming in so I hid in a secret room, but thought they might be able to find me behind the secret doors.

Last night we were moving into a new, bigger, apartment located somewhere other than here. I think I was in training for something, perhaps a job, and had to move to be closer for it. The new apartment was nice and spacious with a very decent kitchen (yay!). I think Lindsy and Andrew Hare came to move in with us. Perhaps a few others did, too. Kelly and Mike came over and were sharing their schedule with me in the form of a Calendar with Chinese names of the months printed on it. Both Mike and Kelly seemed to have no trouble pronouncing these month names. They weren't being clear about what their plans were. I think they were assuming that I knew what was going on in their lives, even though I have NO idea whatsoever. I had a hunch it had something to do with grad school, but couldn't get them to clarify so that I could know for sure.

My sister came over later and while we were standing around the living room, crazy noises started coming from the closed living room closet. I said I was pretty sure it was a raccoon that must've sneaked in while the apartment was unoccupied. I opened the door that led outside so the raccoon could easily escape, and then I opened the closet door. My sister's old cat, Alysen, came streaking out looking terribly disheveled and ran right outside and off into a field.

I don't really remember what I dreamed last night, but I certainly did some sleepwalking. When I turned on my computer monitor a new Firefox window was open, and I could remember getting up last night and thinking someone was here that needed to use my computer, so I opened up that window for them.

I've had some strange and violent dreams the past two nights.

Last night I was some sort of X-men type superhero who was somehow caught along with a female compatriot. They did some sort of torture on us for a while, then threw us faaaar down below the house where we were being kept into an icy subterranean cavern, where another of our heroes (I think beast) was being kept. They had put us in something similar to blue lab coats, but I had taken mine off because it was a symbol of my slavery to my captors. But when we landed in the frigid cavern, I went to grab it to put it on, but Beast warned me against it, telling me about how the type of material would actual sap the heat from my body faster.

The icy environment took on the shape of my parents' living room, and I saw there were printed out sheets of paper with strange symbols all over the place, along with some sort of printer/fax machine. The girl hero and I instantly began trying to come up with ideas about how to use this machine to our advantage, but Beast had been there for a loooong time before us, and claimed to have tried everything already. Then the girl said, "But has anyone even thought..." and picked up the phone on the machine, her eyes lighting up. "There's a dial tone; we can call outside!" she said. I ran over to it and asked whom we should call. We didn't know who could help us, but we knew our entrapment had something to do with the company (Wyeth) my dad works for, so I decided to call him. Unfortunately, perhaps because the cold was getting to me, I couldn't remember his number and was working to remember it when we heard a door opening at the top of the icy stairs (the machine was located at the bottom of these stairs). Not wanting to be caught and desiring to avoid the cutting of our phone line, I hung up quickly and tried to look like I had never noticed the machine. Our female captor came and sat on the top step, and we slowly, frozenly, made our way up to her, barely able to even move at this point.

She began talking to us, acting like a friend who wanted to help us escape our dungeon as quickly as possible by negotiating our cooperation. As she was talking, I was pulling chunks of ice off of the banister, and she got annoyed, asking, "Do you really have to do that?" I responded, "I'm sorry, I'm just trying to keep my fingers moving so they don't freeze off in this extremely freaking cold room." She looked at me in a frustrated way, her eyes moving up to the top of my closely buzzed head, and replied, "Well, it's not my fault. You said in your survey that you had bowl cut hair." My jaw dropped, and I was astonished that she was trying to make it seem like it was MY fault that I was cold.

Slightly worried that I may be ruining our chance of escape, I ascended the last few stairs and, surprising her, grabbed her shirt at the shoulder and the waist, pulled her up and over my head, and dropped her down the stairs, where she landed and tumbled with a few sickening noises, yelling. She began to crawl away from the base of the stairs, but I came down after her. Still halfway up the stairs, I heard the female hero calling my name (perhaps Rykundo??) and heard Beast yell, "Master!" Beast continued to yell this as I preyed down upon our captor and beat her a few times, sending her across the room.

I went to approach her once more, and she grabbed a few large paintings from her side and held them up as if to protect herself with the thin canvasses. The one in front was slightly reflective, and I saw my own image superimposed over the subject of the painting and became mesmerized by how strange I looked. The captor took this chance to sweep my legs out from under me. As the camera angel switched to a view from underneath the ice on which I was standing, my body and head came down on the ice hard, and red, strangely fluid blood came out, froze quickly, beaded up, and rolled out in waves from my body.

This is when I woke up.
(There are connections here to a Watchmen poster I saw two days ago and the first episode of season 3 of Battlestar Galactica, which I watched last night)

I think it began as one epidemic, which later was met with another one.

The earliest part I can remember is seeing a youngish boy, perhaps 9-11, with an iPod playing and looking mighty nervous, as if he was attempting to avoid some sort of consequence for a wrongdoing he'd done. He was outside a doorway in an alley next to a black human cutout silhouette. He put his head next to that of the cutout as if listening for something whispered quietly from the cutouts nonexistent mind. He seemed to have been doing this a lot lately, but at last he made his decision and bolted through the door off the alleyway with his backpack following him, perched from his shoulders. He came into a dingy room, with a window set just a few feet inside the door, looking as if it were somewhere one might put in an order for a pizza. But instead he slid his paperwork over to the man, a bit overweight but only about 17, behind the counter. I think the paperwork outlined the usual information, Name, height, weight, but also a description of the boys powers. The writing on the paper was thick and silvery, as if in a futuristic type of ink. So while it seemed as if we were in an older time, we realize were actually in the future. The man behind the counter hands a card to the boy giving him his new job in the community and says that he'll be in "cooler sales" but as the boy turns around he is confronted with more people, all in their teenage years (a few pairs of teenage girls are next in line) who are waiting impatiently but nervously for their turn. He turns back and whispers a few lines of dialogue to the black man behind the counter, who is unfazed by someone who doesn't really know what to expect and offers a few words of comfort and a restatement of the boy's directions.

It seemed as if all of the people in this compound off the alleyway had begun sprouting a new power, though the only two I'd actually seen were this boy's, which was some sort of telepathy, and another in which people change pretty quickly into a younger, cleaner, golden-blonde version of themselves with a bright gold aura. These ones were becoming some sort of angels, with the ability to fly with translucent etherial wings made from these auras.

I followed someone into a large tube that looks something like the tubes used at banks to transport money, pens, and receipts between customers in their cars and bank tellers inside. The person somehow teleported into some sort of space station, perhaps on another planet. Things were getting bad here all of a sudden, and there were many people, most wearing some sort of military garb that looked somewhat like lasertag packs/guns and helmets. Lots of people were running around panicked, the tubes here were used as elevators and didn't seem to be functioning as they should be. Some people were getting trapped, some sent to the wrong places, friends stating outside with looks of horror as their friends inside succumbed to the seemingly murderous mercy of the tubes.

Things escalated in terror pretty quickly. Many people were being found with their temples blown out in a sort of charred way. When I came to someone who had not yet died after this had happened, they said something about seeing a black thundercloud appear in the room, and couldn't I see it? I knew it was a sort of hallucination caused by some sort of highly contagious virus. I was running around trying to figure out how to help. There was a pair of girls fighting about whether or not to open a door that seemed to lead into some caves. I shouted that it wouldn't be safe, we don't know if something worse would be out there. We then heard robotic chattering through the door, and pounding on the door. We knew this wouldn't be good, but the girl who wanted to exit through that door continued to pound on it. A few seconds later a group of humans, led my two women (one white, one black, both tall and thin) who rushed in wearing the same getup as most of the people in the station. They said they had arrived to help and gave each of the three of us a red and white capsule, saying it was a vaccine against the virus. But I didn't trust them so I surreptitiously spit mine into my hand, waiting to see what happened to the other two girls.

But I knew they had been poisoned and began running past the bodies of the virus' victims. I came into the back of a large auditorium and quickly sprinted down past the rows of chairs towards the stage. A moment late the group of outsiders came in through the door I'd just used and yelled that it was futile for me to try to get away. Something about how they'd stop me just at the very end, which made me think they'd all simply pointed their laser guns at the exit door for which I'd been running on the left side of the stage and were waiting for me to reach that spot. I quickly changed my course and went for the curtains at the back of the stage instead. When I changed course, they began to shoot but missed. I don't think I know much else, but I think I may have found a large group of people to help me hiding there behind the curtain.

I dreamed last night that I was a member of the office, and when Pam broke up with Jim, I was the faithful friend there to console and listen to him and keep him from making rash decisions (like selling his house). I also went with Pam to her house to help her prepare to get Jim back. She lived in an apartment with 2-3 roommates. I took out her trash.

It made me feel really good, and I don't know which to worry more about: the fact that I don't have any real close friendships like that or that my subconscious seeks one out in television characters. Somehow later we all went sailing and had a slumber party in my room. (I kept waking up, moving, and waking up Jenna Fischer. I felt bad about that)

Two dreams:

1) I was at a public pool with a bunch of people and I kept trying to jump into an inch of water on the side of the pool. I ended up in front of my mom, who was standing around with some other ladies near the pool. A friend of mine texted me regarding his concerns about sexuality, but I wasn't completely sure what he was asking.

2)Then I was following someone who was going to introduce me to my life as a spy. We went into a subway bathroom and he went into a stall. He had me watch as he stepped INTO the bowl and flushed. The drain opened up and sucked him in. That was creepy. So I went it and tried it (boooo wet shoes!) but it wouldn't open large enough to accommodate me. So a woman showed up in the opening and passed me a couple hard drives and folders and such which would introduce me to my new life as a spy. RIDICULOUS.

I had a dream that we were doing the Hoekstra wedding. All of my friends were standing up front with music stands in front of them and were going to be playing a part in the service. I had printed off small cards with all our lines on them, but when the service started, mine and Laura's were gone. I ran over to the person in charge (I think it was Mrs. Wiltse, my bell choir director) and there were extra cards on her stand. When the time came, Laura did her part and a video began, but I didn't realize I was supposed to start in the middle of the video, which I was watching and of which I was waiting for the end. So I completely missed my cue, and then forgot what I was supposed to talk about. I ended up trying to read something from a scientific magazine about electron diagrams. I stumbled, and stopped, and eventually started to cry. Laura was not only up front, but also in the audience, and the Laura in the audience raised her hand and asked to go to the men's room. Mrs. Wiltse said something funny about making up her mind, and I looked over to Helen and Jim, who were standing in the aisle. They both waved their hands at me to communicate that it was alright.

It began with me running into a couple people, a guy and a girl, my age coming into my apartment building. We talked for a bit, and decided that we should hang out. I went to may apartment first (which was on the wrong side of the hallway), but forgot to see which apartment the girl went into, but I felt pretty sure she lived across the hall. I went to make myself some veggie burgers, but for some reason one of the bagels I was using was already split in half, and one half was missing. I found another half in the toaster to replace the missing one. I remember thinking that I shouldn't have two veggie burgers because it was too many calories.

After making the burgers, I put them on a plate and walked over the the apartment across the hall. This part is fuzzy, but I think we chatted for a while, and I left with the guy on a road trip to Canada (Toronto, I think). We joined up with a group of guys our age at a place out in the country and were just hanging out, talking, and eating picnic-style when someone came out and called everyone to attention. I found a spot amidst the other guys to stand and we listened to the man in charge for a bit. Then we all turned around and faced the house with our fists held out together slightly in front of us. I couldn't maintain the position and kept falling over for some reason. I was very embarrassed about this; some of the guys were encouraging me and some were getting frustrated, but I couldn't hold the position.

Then I noticed someone beside me who was placing a needle into my arm. The needle was attached to an open-ended tube, and it was drawing the blood out of me. Apparently it was part of my initiation rites, and I had to stand at attention and allow the blood to flow until they allowed me to stop. I was very upset because my blood had gotten all over my nice khakis. I realized that while the draining of my blood made for a good excuse for my inability to maintain the attention position, it was my own weakness that actually caused it.

I was with my mom and Granny at Granny's house (which, of course, didn't look at all like her real house). We were getting ready to leave and were getting into the car but realized we had forgotten some things inside. We went back in and were in the kitchen, but everything seemed to be distracting us. My granny made me some muffins, some of which I dropped on the floor. Her dogs were running all around us. I looked over to the oven and saw a face through the window. I thought I could just barely hear the person inside whispering things, but when I asked my Granny who was in the oven, she didn't see anyone and didn't know what I was talking about.

We finally left and went to the beach, but I was fearful because I didn't know how to swim. Another guy was hanging out with me there, and he pushed me over playfully, but I fell into a deep part of the water and immediately began to sink. I could see the surface of the water drifting farther and farther away from me and began to worry that I might drown if no one helped me. At that moment something grabbed be and pulled up to the surface and into the air. It was a blue water dragon!

While the dragon was saving me, someone snuck into the water and stole her two eggs, the surface of which was translucent so that you could see the developing baby dragons inside of them. I took off after the men who had stolen the eggs, but woke up while I was chasing them.

Fortunately, when I fell asleep again, the same dream continued.

I was now running through the desert, and my dad joined up with me to hunt down the egg thieves. Somehow they looped around us and went back the other direction, so we turned around and continued to follow them. While running through the desert, we found some 5 foot long propeller blades, which we took and planned to convert into swords with which to fight the egg thieves' army.

We stopped in at home, where the Pepitone kids, Lauren and Shelly were waiting for us. They were staying with us for a while, and I felt bad because I didn't have time to keep them entertained and knew they would be leaving soon. We ran inside and I went to my room, which I had a hard time finding. Once in my room, I began collecting every piece of arsenal that I had, including my sais and my sword. I left the blowgun because I didn't want to risk hitting someone on our own side in the battle to come. I found a smaller, sharper set of sais that were meant to be thrown, but left those, too. I also found two more swords, which I left. I decided it would be a good idea to change out of the dress pants I was wearing and into jeans. Dress pants are no good for fighting a battle! I was confused that my beds (there were two of them and they were both about four feet high) seemed to be unstable and worried that they might collapse.

I went to the wood paneled door of my room and was about to slide it open when I realized I wasn't ready to go yet and became highly distracted like we had in my Granny's house. I could hear my mom and sister talking about preparing dinner and feared they would expect my help, thus delaying me from rescuing the dragon eggs.

I woke up before leaving my room, but wish that I could have done the conversion of the helicopter blades into swords and the upcoming battle.