Larry's Dream Blog
A record of my dreams, as near as I can remember them the next day. Psychoanalyze what you will! |
Saturday, May 18, 2013
I was in Sweden with my boss Ron and his assistant, scouting out new locations for the lab. But for some reason we went to a museum first. Right at the entrance was a bunch of kids surrounding a concession stand set into the wall, with the usual assortment of pretzels, cotton candy, and the like. I suddenly really wanted some cotton candy, and started pulling out my wallet, when I noticed the prices. Oddly, everything was priced in quarters: like, 28 quarters for a slice of pizza, and 43 quarters for cotton candy. It took me a long time standing there to do the math, and finally realized how ridiculously expensive it was. I figured they used quarters to make everything seem cheaper than it really was. We walked down a long white corridor towards the exhibits (whatever those were), when I suddenly had a bathroom emergency. Fortunately, the men's was right there, and I dashed into the tiny little room without even telling my boss. As I sat there, I slowly realized that I hadn't converted the Swedish money into American dollars. I googled it on my phone and found a ratio of 5.50 Swedish dollars to one American dollar. So the cotton candy would only have been a couple bucks. Meanwhile, although I was able to relieve myself, the water in the toilet was almost overflowing, which meant my clothes got dirty. I tried washing it off in the sink, but just decided to throw it in the trash and get clean clothes from my backpack. Next thing I know, Merry and I are looking for apartments in LA, as that's where Ron decided to move all of us. We were walking down the street, calling up Craigslist ads, and luckily found a place that we just happened to be walking past. It was a large, 2-bedroom place with a huge window looking out over the city. We hugged each other and smiled, and in the next instant, the place was completely full of our old and some new furniture. It was already night, and we looked out over the beautiful skyline. Suddenly, it was morning and we headed downstairs to work. We realized we were right on the edge of Chinatown, so we decided to get breakfast at the convenience store across the street. There was a single aisle of generic goods on the left and a panel of refrigerators on the right. Merry immediately found some desserts that looked like red bean paste, in the impulse section under the cashier, which was actually quite a broad area that also had some baked goods. I kept looking for a dense cake of some sort, but couldn't decide on anything. Merry looked happy though. We went back to the apartment and I started to set up the computer in one of the bedrooms. As I did, the room changed into a tiny office at work, and my desk morphed into a very narrow one, barely wide enough for the computer and keyboard (of course, I didn't even notice any of this morphing at the time). I was upset since it was about half the size of my old desk, while the rest of the room was empty and could easily have accommodated a larger one. My right elbow kept hitting the wall. I decided to play some Starcraft, and when it started, the game turned into a tabletop one, with me now standing at a small table in the middle of the room. I got my "troops," which were a whole bunch of live alien bugs, neatly ordered and sorted. Not being connected to the internet, I didn't have anyone to play with and walked out into the halls to find someone. I looked into about a dozen rooms, and found stereotypical nerds in each one, playing some kind of really old video game like Caterpillar or Galaga. I realized I must be in some sort of college dorm, and went back to my room. Ron was standing there at the table, his mouth full of bugs! He started talking and jerking around as if he was possessed, like in Men in Black, telling me I needed to eat some bugs and join the alien takeover. He started throwing bugs at my mouth. I saw that some of what he was throwing looked like raisins, so I caught those and ate them, hoping to fool him. I started talking like him and eating more raisins I found on the counter. He seemed satisfied and left. A while later, Merry and I realized we couldn't stay in LA and that we needed to move back to Boston. Friday, May 10, 2013
I was reading a Facebook entry by Jayne, and she was
complaining about her boyfriend. The two of them had come up with a way to
hustle people at poker. I started to watch it happen, while Jayne narrated in a
voiceover. She said they went up to a bartender and made him a deal that would be too tempting to pass up. He would play against the both of them, 5
cards, one draw, and they would only win if both of their hands beat his. He
eagerly agreed. But once they started playing, I could see that the two of them
could switch their cards with each other, to come up with even better hands. I
thought it was totally unfair, but I was just watching something that already
happened. So I got kind of sad, but as the game progressed, the bartender
started winning anyway! It fastforwarded to the end, and the bartender had just
come out with slightly more money than Jayne and her (unnamed) boyfriend. This
is where Jayne complains: "my boyfriend couldn't stand losing and just had
to bet his ego. He kept playing double or nothing until he was out eight
thousand!" I watched all this play out in high speed. Finally, I
remembered that Jayne was married, so this must have been an old entry. Indeed,
it was dated 2008.
Afterward, Merry and I decided to go on a mini second honeymoon
to a nearby town that specializes in acting old-timey. We went to a museum, and
the office was a long room with a desk at one end and a long pile of equipment
in the middle. The ticket guy was pudgy and unshaven, but seemed in good
spirits as he led us to the stuff we needed to start the tour. There was a
large flat screen TV separated into the base and the screen, and I hefted both
of them as he took us upstairs. There, we watched an intro video, which
included playing video poker. You were allowed to set a weird mechanism to keep
certain cards once you got them, as the cards rotated through on three adjacent
wheels like a slot machine. But the order of the kept cards would never be
quite the same, so you had to figure out the pattern. After watching for 3-4
games, I finally realized that the card settings would "catch" on
whichever wheel came up with one first, and that which one it caught would
determine the mechanism for the next wheel. So you had to understand the
programming. But I soon decided it was too complicated and we moved on to the
next activity.
First, they gave us a changing room so we could get into
character as 18th century people. We then got large leather-bound books that
would lead us through a "murder mystery." When I opened mine, there
was a deep square hole through the pages that contained many strips of colored
jello. A small text in the corner said that we had to put it together like a
puzzle to form a painting which would be our first clue. Fortunately, there
weren't many pieces, so I quickly assembled it, forming a beautiful
Victorian-style painting depicting a pastoral scene. I think it had angels, and
maybe anthropomorphic racoons, leading a couple around. I can't quite remember,
but the drawing style was incredibly detailed. We went to the part of the
house illustrated in the scene and got our first clue, which I forget. By this
time, it was already 6pm, and we had a dinner at 7. So we jumped to the second
chapter (which paradoxically opened a second hole while closing up the first),
but this time the jello was cut into very thin, small strips and would take forever
to piece together. I chose the skip function, which took us through the second
and last scenes but which didn't reveal the associated paintings. It ended in a
beautiful courtyard garden, with some upbeat story about a supernatural cause
which negated the murder, or something like that.
While we were changing back to our street clothes in the
changing room, another couple came in to start the tour. I ignored them and
kept changing because I didn't care if they saw my underwear. They started
chatting with us, but since we were in a hurry, I let Merry talk to them. I
initially put on the wrong jeans, which I realized when I didn't feel my wallet or phone in
them. I briefly wondered if the other people could tell we were a couple simply
by how close I kept getting to Merry while going about my business, and whether
if she were a stranger, I'd be called for violating her private space. We then
disassembled the TV and took them back downstairs. The ticket guy took me over
to a corner computer for payment. It was a touchscreen, and built like a large
iPad. As I was entering the payment options, I noticed a large cartoonish (but
solid) dolphin wrapped around my legs! The screen showed a colorful cartoon map
that reflected that we were at some kind of Sea World that we had just toured,
and that I had largely been ignoring the dolphins who were trying to be
friendly. Apparently this dolphin had taken a particular liking to me and was now
trying to make "puppy dog eyes" to make me feel guilty for skipping
out. On the one hand I was sort of flattered, I suppose, but mostly I felt
extremely creeped out. I kind of pushed it off of me a bit, and a blast of
water came out of the blowhole, hitting the ticket guy and a number of cars
behind him. He said, "oh well, they're in here for repair anyway, so I
guess a wash would do them some good." It really did look now like we were
in an auto repair shop. I finally paid and got out of there, wondering if they
ever got any repeat business.
Home February 2002 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 June 2005 July 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006 July 2006 September 2006 May 2007 August 2007 September 2007 February 2008 May 2008 June 2008 August 2008 January 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 July 2009 October 2009 December 2009 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 October 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 May 2011 August 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 April 2012 June 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 March 2013 May 2013 June 2013 October 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 April 2014 August 2014 June 2015 April 2016 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 July 2022 September 2022 December 2022 December 2023 May 2024 August 2024 November 2024 |