I went to visit my cousin Dan for a month in Chicago. We visited an enormous sports facility (of which I remember only going up a giant, gleaming white escalator) and I bought a one month membership for climbing. Afterwards, we went home. Merry was there, but we weren't married, so she decided to go bed on a little couch in the hallway. I tried to sneak her into my room for the night, but other families members saw us so we went back to our own beds. I woke up and saw Merry next to me, and slowly remembered that we're already married in real life. I felt very grateful and relieved.

In the next dream, the sports complex had billed me $1500 for six month's of membership. Merry and I were both upset, though I was feeling lazy and didn't want to get into too much of a fight. I called the bank, which refunded me the first month of $350. After a while, I got angry enough and flew back to Chicago to get my money back. I briefly considered that the flight cost was counterproductive. Anyway, I arrived and this time it looked from the outside like an enormous, blue and red circus tent. Immediately inside was a bar and bowling alley. I continued on, noting the cartoonish colors of all the walls and furnishings.

Finally, I got to the bouldering area, and I started trying a few problems. They were insane! The easiest ones had no footholds to start on, and I had to campus my way up. I was feeling pretty good, but I fell off quite a few times before topping. It turned out to be a competition, and in a short period of time, I had somehow finished even though I only remembered doing one. In any case, I had topped everything so I was pretty confident. The result flashed up on a holographic screen in front of me, and I was in last place out of five! It turns out that although I had topped all 10 of the problems that I had done, I had actually started on problem number two, so I missed the first one completely. Ugh.

I then entered a small room with a very long ping pong table. I had a badminton birdie and a heavy wooden racket, like the really old tennis ones, but in the badminton shape. I was serving overhand and really smashing the birdie, though my opponent, a classmate, was doing well. A large group of jocks and cheerleaders from high school came into the room, and suddenly I couldn't serve anymore... I couldn't even hit the damn thing! I must have tried at least ten times in a row with no contact. I gave up and started walking down the length of the table. People stopped watching. I decided that it must have been performance anxiety, so I tried another serve now that no one was looking. I smashed it! So I got back into place on the other side of the table and started playing again. But now that people were interested again, of course I missed it six times in a row! Since I knew other people were waiting to play, I finally headed for the exit.

The hallway was dark and old, and there was a long slat on the top of the opposite wall where I could see the floor of the car park. There was some yellowish mud being pushed through the slats, but I ignored it and quickly walked to my right along the repeating hallway. Finally, I reached my car. But the place was packed and it was very difficult to navigate. I got about four cars away from the booth when the taxi in front of me started backing up! I didn't have time to check my mirror and started backing out. Fortunately, I didn't hit anything. But the taxi backed straight into the side of another taxi, leaving a dent. I was waiting for a fight. But nothing prepared me for the second taxi backing up, then revving full speed and accordioning the back of the first taxi. Suddenly, loud gunfire was accompanied by bloody bulletholes opening up in the fence. On the back of the second taxi was "President Killer" scrawled in thick black paint. I panicked and jumped out. I suddenly realized I left my keys in the car, and like and idiot, I was torn between going back for them or finding cover. I hesitated a long time, close to the gunfire, before finally slinking down the grass ahead. It was an enormous and wide, empty dip of grassland that forced the parking lot into a narrow bend. It offered no cover other than the grass itself, so I tried to stay low, all the while panicking like crazy. When I woke up, my heart was pounding and I let out a sigh of relief.

posted by Larry at 3:05 PM