Chelsea Charms!

This was a first. I'd never had a dream about Chelsea Charms before.

In this dream, my wife and I were doing the traveling and tourism thing. Restaurants, hotels, that sort of thing. At one point we were walking into town and we saw a convertible drive by with the top down. There were 5 occupants, and the one in the middle of the back seat was Chelsea Charms! Instead of sitting on the seat, she was sitting on the rear deck with her hands back leaning on the trunk lid. I seem to recall that we'd seen her go into town like this a couple times already.

Once in town, we happened to run into Chelsea, who was quite friendly and not the least bit stand-offish. We weren't drooling over her, just treating her like regular folks. I wasn't asking stoopid questions about her boobs, although at one point my hand bumped off one of her boobs. I thought to myself, "Aha, so that's what they feel like." She didn't seem to notice that I'd bumped her, which was fine by me.

At one point, it was just my wife and I having a chat. She said, "You know, Chelsea told me that I look pretty good," and I said, "Oh?" She went on, "Yeah, she said that maybe I should consider working at a strip club." I perked and said, "Oh realllly...?" She said, "Yes, realllly!" and smiled. I was jazzed.

At some point Chelsea, myself and my wife were each planning on getting cleaned up. There was a shower stall nearby which wasn't completely private. Chelsea asked if we were going to get showered. We said we were. She said, "Well if you like, you can join me, maybe scrub my back." We thought, cool! There was no sense of lecherousness, just a sense of being extra friendly.

At one point the three of us were sitting on a couch chatting. Even though Chelsea was quite busty, she wasn't as busty as she seems in the photos of her that I've seen. And even though we'd avoided talking about her boobs, she decided to broach the subject. She said that it was about time for her to get them filled up again. I pondered this. I told her that in all honesty, I wasn't a member of her fan club, wasn't subscribed to her web site, etc, but that I'd certainly heard plenty through the rumour mill. I told her that what I'd heard was that her breasts were constantly expanding, and that she had to get them drained periodically. She just gave that notion a dismissive wave of her hand. I said, "So you need to get them topped up periodically, eh?" which she confirmed as casually as anything.

All in all, a very cool dream. Possibly inspired by my wife's declaration yesterday that one of two things was going to happen in the near future, and if it isn't going to be the one, that it'll definitely be the boobjob! :-D

A test and a game

I meant to write about this one earlier this week, when I actually dreamt about it. So needless to say, details are even fuzzier now than they were then. :P

I was taking one of those 5-day professional courses for enhancing skills. It was the last day, and I don't really recall having learned much during the week.

Then the instructor handed out a quiz to determine what we learned. The quiz turned into a practical skills test. I found myself working on what seemed to be an archaic version of SunOS. I wanted to ping an arbitrary site online, so I tried "ibm.com", which failed to resolve. So I tried to ping "www.ibm.com" and that failed as well. Puzzled, I looked around for /etc/resolv.conf but couldn't find it. Somehow I got the IP address for ibm.com and added it to /etc/hosts, then tried again to ping. This time it worked. Then it sank in that this version of SunOS predated any implementation of the DNS stub resolver library. I actually drifted into semi-awakeness at this point, hearing myself giving someone the technical explanation as to why it wouldn't work. Then I was back asleep again.

Next up, I found myself in an antiques shop. It was actually pretty crowded with furniture. The stuff they had was nice, but... wow, so crowded it was actually difficult to move around.

Then it became evident that a game of some sort was about to start. The furniture, it turns out, was arranged on some chessboard-like grid, except on a somewhat larger scale. Each person (or team of people) had to pick a side to start from, and create a path through the furniture to the other side. The thing is, arbitrary pieces of furniture would move unpredictably, possibly creating opportunity, more likely blocking a path you were creating. Looking at the grid, most of the squares were occupied with a piece of furniture. As in, maybe 10% were empty, if that. It was almost like playing a game of Rush Hour, only with furniture. And the furniture was trying to thwart your success.

When the game started, for some reason the first thing I thought to do was that I wanted to count the number of squares on one side, figuring that would help me determine an optimal strategy. But the furniture started to move before I finished counting, and I realized I needed to do more and think less if I wanted to get through this.

I was making some progress and experienced a few setbacks when I noticed an antique umbrella/cane stand in one of the squares, complete with some antique canes. And suddenly there was a new person... well technically, an old person, in the room. New in the sense that he wasn't there a moment earlier. He just appeared. He was dressed with, among other things, a tatty hat and a well-worn suede vest. People were being polite to him, he seemed a little put out by the activities. I asked him what his name was. He told me his first name, so I asked him what his last name was. He looked at me strangely and told me that he'd already told me his name. It occurred to me that he may be from a time when names weren't always structured in a Firstname Lastname or even a Firstname Middlename Lastname way, but that his name was merely a casual appellation which just happened to stick with him. My recollection is a bit fuzzy, but I think he told me his name was Joe.

And that's it for that dream.

Megapowerful jet aircraft

I just woke up from a nice looong nap. I dreamt I was part of a group of individuals who got to fly in some fairly high performance aircrafts.

In one case, some of them were recounting how they'd gotten to an unreal height of 25,000 feet (which in reality is no big deal) and in so doing, had achieved partial weightlessness. They were even going on at how they had gotten to enjoy a novel game of golf at that altitude. I had a brief moment of visualization whereby I was on the same aircraft, semi-weightless, a little freaked out, and nicely strapped in. ;-)

Suddenly I was in New York City after dark, or at least in the airspace there. My mother was with me. We were in another high performance aircraft, one which I was piloting. For some reason, my mom jumped into the Hudson River. Concerned for her safety, I jumped in after her. We floated along, a tributary split off closer to the city which took us with it. The water sort of rose up briefly, as though the bottom underneath rose up as well. That's where we got some traction, then climbed out of the river. Just past the point you could see the water swirl a bit, as though there was a potentially nasty undertow.

For some peculiar reason, this particular part repeated a few times. We were in the aircraft, she jumped into the river, I followed her, wondering what the point of it was. It was as though she was trying to draw city attention to some sort of danger, or recent event which hadn't gotten the attention it deserved.

At one point she seemed to be in control of the aircraft, more concerned with getting back to the river than with watching out for overhead high tension wires, telephone lines and the like.

(A quick aside is in order here. Oftentimes when I have a flying dream, there's a point where I need to concern myself with avoiding overhead wires of one form or another.)

Given that she seemed so unconcerned with our welfare in the air despite me bringing it to her attention, I decided to just punch full power into the aircraft throttle. To do so had a sense of a superhero not wanting to use his superpowers if there's a high risk of his secret being revealed to anyone, but in this case it was a matter of throwing caution to the wind and taking full control of the situation. So I hit the throttle, and climbed to the heavens with great haste. Not a gentle climb, not a steep climb, but perfectly vertical. Absolutely clear of any earthly entanglements. Dark skies above, dark earth with clumps of lights below. Absolutely no concern for running out of fuel, or stalling in midair.

Eventually I eased up on the throttle and leveled out. Since we seemed to have cleared any immediate risks, I headed back down to the city to help my mom accomplish whatever it was she was trying to do. This could be where I got the sense of repeating things a few times.

Eventually I was back on the ground at a coffee shop with the acquaintances mentioned earlier. I decided that I needed to get back to Canada, so I made immediate plans to catch a bus which would then take me to the airport. There was a sense of fairly critical or urgent timing. As I was getting ready, someone asked me if I would have enough time. I stopped to think about it, figured that if I'd left immediately, it would be a couple hours before getting to the airport, then the usual fun and joy there, plus the time airborne, plus whatever at the other end, and... suddenly it no longer make sense to take the trip, so I stopped preparations.

Flying dreams usually rock. This one felt strangely empty.

Taking a test

I woke up in the wee hours, and it took me a couple hours to get back to sleep. :-( No idea why. When I finally did get back to sleep, I did dream. What follows is the residual recollection of that dream.

I was going through some old notes/papers that I thought maybe I should throw out, when I remembered that I'd chatted previously with some woman on the phone. I went through the familiar-looking paperwork, looking for her phone number. I was fairly sure I was close, but I never did find it.

However, I did notice that on one notepad, the bottom of each page had the info regarding my dad's medical practice. His name and title, and the beginnings of all of his credentials. (There was a time many years ago when I saw his letterhead, and asked him to explain all the letters of accreditation after his name. It went on for quite a while. I knew my dad had spent quite a few years in school and such, but never knew.) I was pleased with the discovery, but the paper was a bit old, and as such, each page of the notepad had been damaged slightly, in more or less the exact same place. I could see his name, but none of the letters after his name. Bah.

As I was going through the notes, I realized I needed to write a test. I found the paper, and started working my way through it. Seemed pretty simple at the time. Then someone told me I needed to relocate to the test room, so I started to head off.

Then people were coming and going, and I felt I needed to get a move on. So as I started making my way out, I passed through several pairs of automatic glass doors, where there was a conveyor belt in front of one of the doors, feeding outwards. I hypothesized that if one were to do something to the door in a certain way, the conveyor would stop, or the doors would stay open, or something like that.

I eventually found the test room, and headed on in. It wasn't big, just long and narrow. Maybe 30 feet long. There was a countertop with a bunch of chairs lined up next to it. Other people were already there. The countertop was a mess, covered with loose papers and various notes. I found a seat pretty quickly and easily, but I had to step on the discarded clothing of others, the floor was that messy. I think most of the clothing belonged to a bunch of giggly young women who weren't taking the test seriously. Everyone seemed to notice my arrival, but didn't pay much attention. I simply got comfy and continued writing the test.

I came to a question which made me stop and think. It was essentially "Write a regular expression which will match any single character, regardless of what it is, and regardless of whether it has a length of one or longer." And I thought along the lines of, "Wow... that's quite a tall order, to remember all of that. Hm... well, there's 0-9, there's a-z, there's A-Z, there are the various special characters, there's the wildcard '*', there's the single-character match '.'...." As far as I knew, I couldn't remember all that I needed to complete the question.

I woke up moments later, and realized that I didn't need all of that, just ".*" would have sufficed. :-P

Hockey, new job, martial arts competition

Last night was merely a quick trip through a few different scenarios.

First I dreamt I was in Ottawa at a kids' hockey game, presumably there because my sister's eldest plays hockey. I ended up chatting some kid and telling him that my own kids had played hockey and therefore he will likely enjoy it. Thing is, my own kids have never played hockey, although I did take them skating a few times. I suddenly realize that this kid is 12 years old, and my next realization is that he's as old as my own son would be. (I haven't seen my son in years, but that's a drama which has nothing to do with the dream. I don't think.)

Next I dreamt I was working for a new employer (which is odd, because I'm quite happy with where I'm working now, and there are some great opportunities in the pipe). At one point my manager's team had a meeting, a weekly round-table of what each of us had on our plates. But in order to talk about your responsibilities, someone would give you a handout describing the current status. We would each talk about one point, then move on to the next person. Everyone got to speak more than once. Finally there was one last subject to discuss, and I was the one to give the report on it. My new manager turns to me and asks me for an update on something called "PAS". At first I don't know what PAS is, then a flickering recollection comes back to me, as though I'd read something about it earlier in the dream. It had something to do with the status of all things pertaining to health and safety, like fire extinguishers and first aid kits. But I didn't have a paper which detailed the status and had a moment of stress. The entire group, especially my new manager, was waiting for my update. Gradually I had a realization. "Oh.... Ohhh! Nothing new to report at this time." This seemed to satisfy everyone, especially my new manager. It was as if the answer was obvious, everyone knew what it was, and they were just waiting for me to "get it".

As part of this new job, I got my own office. It wasn't huge, but hey, my own office! One of the senior IT folks was personally helping me get set up with a new PC. Oddly, the monitor was mounted on the wall about 6-7 feet up with some sort of universal mount, allowing the monitor to be pivoted in any direction. He even had to do some customization of the drywall, but once he was done, the job was immaculate. He left, although the monitor wasn't pointing downwards to my work area. I figured that I'd have to adjust that at some point.

Finally I was at a martial arts competition. For some reason, it was being held at a high school, and for some reason, this school seemed familiar to me, even though it wasn't my own high school. My wife and her son were with me. I was wearing a yellow shirt with red Chinese characters and icons on it, and red cotton pants. I knew that I was wearing the outfit appropriate for doing a demo, such as a form, but not for sparring.

My wife and I split up, her son coming with me. We wandered around trying to find the appropriate place for us to be. One of the rooms, there was a representative from that group, preventing spectators from going beyond a certain point. I wanted to get a closer look and maybe ask him a question, but didn't have time to waste, so the two of us headed off.

I knew that I had to find the right washroom to get changed in, and I thought I had a sense for where that was, but I never did find it.

Looking at the time, I knew that I had to go and do my demo, but still didn't have my change of clothes for the sparring. I thought that perhaps they would allow me to just wear what I had on, or maybe someone would lend me their uniform. My wife was already there of course. I don't remember actually doing what I was meant to do.

Somewhere along the way of trying to find the right room, I saw an actor that I remember seeing in one episode of Kung Fu starring David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine. In the episode, this other actor (whose details completely escape me) had made Caine's character a model of an ant, calling it "pismaya" or something like that. Long story short, he didn't know about Caine's moniker of "grasshopper", thinking that "pismaya" was the correct nickname. A fight ensued, this other guy won, so Caine had to accept the gift and the nickname. Years later in America, another fight occurs, Caine wins, so he declares that he is no longer "pismaya".

Anyway, I saw the actor in my dream, and he's sporting a healthy beard. He's something of a celebrity judge at the competition. I thought how cool it would be to go over and speak with him, but I didn't want to bother him at such an inappropriate time.

The limo driver

In this dream, an old business acquaintance of mine (himself a smooth-talking opportunist) asked me if I would mind being a limo driver for the evening, taking a VIP around town to wherever she wanted to go. So seeing as how it seemed like a perfectly reasonable request (in dreamland, anyway), I took him up on it.

The VIP was already in the car. The car had a strange layout, and at some point someone wanted to have a chat with her. As a result, I was looking all over for the button to roll down her window for her.

While I never really got a good look at her, she seemed pleasant enough. The only place I can remember her asking to visit was some nightclub called "Motel ______", where the 'hotel' version seemed like a common enough hotel name to me. I didn't know where it was, but called around and got confirmation that it was somewhere on the airport strip. This was near Toronto, I should add.

At one point I needed to turn the limo around, and somehow lost control of it. The back end fishtailed 180 degrees, we ended up on the grassy embankment, and the car slowly slid down the damp grass until it ended up in something like a very well taken care of ditch, just wide enough for a car, as it turns out.

Once in the ditch, the car changed directions and slowly slid backwards. The sides of the ditch became walls of buildings. The car stopped sliding just before hitting a third wall.

Resigned, I told my passenger to stay put and I'd go for help. Oddly, I didn't even once try to just drive out of there.

One fuzzy disconnect later, suddenly I'm working on a Data General system belonging to the aforementioned consultant. I'm trying to patch the AOS/VS kernel on it. The experience was fairly Linux-like, only somewhat menu-driven. The fix was subtle, but kept it from throwing false errors as it had been doing.

Someone had gotten their knickers in a twist because I'd patched that system without authorization. And yet, the system wasn't in production use. Or any sort of organized use. It was just some system parked off in a corner of a building, tagged with the name of that consultant. They were also alarmed that the patch hadn't gone through any sort of peer review, and that I would go around patching all the other systems without first getting it blessed. It's relieving to know that I know how the game is played during my waking hours.

To the consultant: RG, I know it's highly unlikely you're reading this, but I hope you're doing well.