The sisters, husbands, parents, and Chris and I are in Maryland for Thanksgiving. (should be New Hope) We all stay over at Aunt Susan's house (should be Schenectady), and dinner is to be at a restaurant. We have to cross a bridged moat to get to the van, but Mom stays behind because she wasn't explicitly invited. All the foliage is late-summer-green but it's chilly, windy, big old oaks violently waving branches. I wasn't formally invited either, but everybody acts normal when Chris and I pack into the van. I sit next to Susan and flop around in the seatbelt web; Chris is alone in the rearmost bench seat. There is an undertone that Mom really doesn't belong anyway because the agenda is to talk about her recovery.

Chris tells how her sister's "special" school is weird: the student body spends most of the day in the auditorium, the principal mandating spankings for each student in turn if they can't answer a trivia question. I drive us to pick up Jess & Mike, and school hasn't let out for the day yet. I have to see this, I think, and wander in past the gym teachers and crowds of students who are "finished". At my age I obviously don't pass for a high-school student and in my grunge slops I couldn't be a teacher either. Inside, it's a game show atmosphere. The principal is Mr. Palydowycz or Tony Robbins, and the spanking is a token swat on the jeans-armored butt. More students are loitering around the bathrooms, and I briefly consider scoring a bag of weed. (There are so many ways that's incongruous with real life, I should have gone lucid then.) I find Jess & Mike and now Chris is Mom. She calls to me, but a short gym teacher stops me as I try to make my exit. (I can still picture his face, synthesis of my Doubleday SM and my own high-school PE teachers.) I laugh in his face and start shoving him. I'm not a student, I'm saying, but what are you going to do about it? I pop him in the jaw a few times, but in dreams there is no impact and he barely flinches, he's more bewildered and cautious than threatened, I can't get him out of my way. (Symbolism: I nearly failed one year, refusing to dress for P.E.)
Consciousness dawned with a foot cramp, and I roared, gnawed the covers, and accidentally kicked the cat as I struggled free. Sorry, Fuzzbutt.

We were all in New Orleans at a gathering, you were probably there. It was dark the entire time. We were split up all over the city, I was staying in a very strange little house with swinging doors and nothing but gas lamps and burgundy carpet. I spent most of the time trying to find people, but I kept getting drugged.

For some reason, everyone had little thumb tacks or something with drugs on the tip and they kept sticking it in my neck. Every time I went for a walk to try and find people, I got drugged and passed out waking up back at the house. I got really mad about this, but everyone else seemed to think it was really funny. Eventually, someone showed up at the house, but then he drugged me too. I remember losing control of most of my motor skills at this point while I was thrown in a car and taken home.

We all then went to my house, which happened to be a rather large mansion where my parents lived. There were several hundred noders there, most of them sprawled out on the lawn. It was about 4 in the morning and I wanted everyone to leave, you could say I was still a bit unhappy about how the weekend had went. But, everyone wanted to use the bathroom. With a few hundred people, this takes a while.

I was getting worried about waking up my parents. Some people were playing in the fountain next to their window, making a lot of noise. People were inside trashing the place and playing loud music on the stereo. I tried to hurry people up but it wasn't doing any good. Eventually my dad called me on my cellphone, asking where I was. I told him I was at home with a few hundred people trying to get them to leave. He explained that they had a soundproof room and was glad I was home.

Then I woke up.

I have no idea what this all means...

I had three dreams last night. The first two have faded and all I can remember of the second is that I ended up standing in the mailroom of Oberlin College holding a very large sausage, about 6 inches in diameter and several feet long. I was supposed to eat the sausage but it was uncooked and slimy.

The third dream went like so: I was driving my dad's car, and my dad was in the passenger seat. He had just died, and this upset me a good deal. I cried for the first time since middle school.

It was Thanksgiving break and my friends were at my house, but I couldn't talk to them without bursting into tears. So my friends and I ended up on top of a skyscraper in the middle of a large city and I was really upset. Planes flew by, barely grazing our skin. The roof of the building was only as wide as I was tall, and I was very afraid. But my friends were mocking me and I yelled at them to shutup but they continued to taunt and there was nothing I could do because I was afraid to move.

My friends began to climb down a ladder on the side of the building. Eventually I mustered the courage to follow them. The ladder led down to the tail of a plane which was now in the place where the building was a moment ago, and I was flying through the air holding onto the ladder for dear life.

My friends managed to climb into the plane with ease but I couldn't figure it out. One of them started rapping to help me figure out how to get in, and once I began chanting the rap along with him I managed to slip into the tail of the plane.

We landed in the city. Robots from space were making their second attack on humanity. We humans had learned from their previous siege and changed the way stairs were built on earth. The robots were large and boxy and they were unable to climb up the new kinds of stairs we had devised, which were less like stairs and more like inch-wide ledges sticking out of the sides of walls. I climbed up the stairs and into a Chinese martial arts supplies shop. On one side of the store was a large fighting area where the students were practicing some obscure style reminiscent of Street Fighter II. I went into the right side of the store and interrupted the clerk because I was so rushed to help fight the robots, and asked him if he had any Chinese boxing shoes. We found none.

I dreamed a story about a girl crossing the country with the one ring.

She was going over a mountain path, and had two men traveling with her, arguing over basically everything with her. She got fed up with them, and they vanished, leaving her alone. But suddenly the path before her was gone too, leaving her a view of nothing but the empty desert canyon far below her.

And she kind of despaired, and sort of bemoaned her fate in a will-we-ever-get-back-to-Kansas-Toto sort of way, when suddenly the shadow of the mountain she was on on the mountain wall to her right assumed the shape of a staircase leading down, even though nothing was visible before her.

She walked down with faith, and suddenly was swept across the desert at great speed. I don't know if she knew why, but I saw that there was a great long line of invisible giant trolls relaying her across.

They carried her to the spring that was her destination. There was no sign of the dwarves that were supposed to be guarding it, but there were a couple of human soldiers, presumably bad guys, on the watch, which she ran to keep hidden from...

Around this point, the dream degenerated into me at home deciding whether to leave to get lemonade or not, which is a rather odd thing to dream about, but hey...

Two dreams tonight:

It was some bigger happening arranged by Tampere University of Technology (where I still study) and I came late which is pretty unusual. The happening didn't take place in the premises of TUT and the place was unknown for me beforehand.

When I arrived there was a running competition going on and I saw a guy I knew was in the lead, far away from others. I was bit of upset being late because it seemed that I would have made a good result in a competition. So I run up on a big hill where was a big sauna and changing rooms. Unlike others I took a shower without spacesuit. Another rebelous act: I creased my cloths in a pile and I put the pile on a shelf next to my shower. Inside the clothpile I had a wallet and a wristwatch.

I was still behind the timetable and therefore I run the hill down to take part for the next competition. This time we had to swing ourselves from a bench to a sink with a rope - just like Tarzan with lianes. If you failed you had to wash dishes - just like Reva-Salminen was just doing. He spilled water and foam all around the place and I got my part too which was unbelievably annoying.
But I was ready to show my talent and I was waiting for the permission to swing myself over. It worked out just Perfect! I was happy for that but then I started to worry about my watch -> if it was still safe in the pile of cloths or not and I thought I should go back to the changing rooms. (Actually I was having all those cloths already on..)

---

I was abroad and buying various things that cost only small amounts of money. But for some reason I got back different currencies: drachms, francs, Deutsche marks... Still I had to buy a ticket for some entertainment happening but I hadn't enough because they wouldn't accept all these different currencies together. Luckily it was my friend Korma who was working in this ticket office. We counted my coins and it took a good while because I didn't really know their value. I felt bit uncomfortable because now others in the queue had to wait. I turned my head to check the queue and there was only one young man behind me. And luckily he was really helpful and cheerful instead of being pissed by waiting which was something I expected. Me and Korma talked English even though it went bit more slowly than it would have gone in Finnish. Then I remembered I had to have a traveller's cheque from Kilroy travel agency. That was the office Korma was working in - or rather it was only a small round stall and actually they were selling many kind of things Kilroy doesn't sell for real. Because I couldn't find the cheque at first we went through the wallet with Korma and the young man. And there it was, hidden behind the tickets of Finnish railways. I gave the cheque to Korma who put it into a machine that said I would get 3300mk for that. We all understood it was far too less because the cheque was written on £820 and that should mean about 8200mk instead! I was little bit afraid that I couldn't take the cheque back anymore but to accept the poor offer. At the same time a young man with a short beard around his jaw came riding his bicycle and the man was Korma's boss. He had heard what was going on and from the saddle he shouted that Korma should cancel the offer because it was so unfair towards me. As he passed by he was proudly advertising how it is possible to cancel offers at this point at Kilroy - would work nowhere else! I gave him thumbs up. "Back to work!" he told Korma and an older black woman who had just arrived with her bicycle; she had come here in hope to get an easier job over here. Briefly, we speculated about rush in general and about the man behind me in the queue who had mysteriously disappeared.