This afternoon I took a nap. Lots of cool dreams.

I was going to some concert. The Xiongs/Yangs/whatever they're called, now were there. So were Dawne and Jason and their kids and Ma and Heather probably. I could hear the music as I was walking up to the building. It sounded really cool. Lots of strings. Inside, the room wasn't very big. Maybe the size of the room we have physics in. The 'orchestra' (it was a bunch of cute little robots with miniature instruments) was on top of a raised platform that took up about the front third of the right side of the room. The people on the left end of the room were doing something unrelated. I walked in and sat down and was listening to the music, but then it was over or something. Maybe some guy came on and started talking, or maybe we just had to leave. I also remember having wide, tan shoelaces, and maybe trying to tie them.

I was playing SMB3. Or something like it, anyway. I've had dreams like this before. It has a very superficial resemblance to the actual game, but the dream version is full of crazy secrets that I've never seen before, and are totally awesome and a bit creepy because they have so little in common with the real game, superficially or otherwise.

Anyway, in this variant of SMB3, you could place 'old city' tiles on the world map (using the map editor, which of course was included with the game). When the player came onto one of these, he would go into one of these places with lots of gold bricks and coins, and doors and warp pipes that would take him out of the 'normal' world and into the weird dreamy alternate side of the game, which, in addition to being relatively dark, unfamiliar, and reminiscent of some long-forgotten game data from the '60s, was probably a lot larger than the happy, original side of the world that everyone knows so well.

This 'alternate versions of well-known video games' business is a common theme in my dreams. I love it :)

Fizz was sitting at A-Day's computer playing Age Of Empires II. OK, it resembled AOE2 even less than the previously mentioned dream resembled SMB3, but supposedly it was AOE2. In this game, there was a world map with roads and cities, and then you could also go around inside your cities. Fizz was sitting in one of his cities with a cannon trying to fire cannonballs across the country to hit Joh's city. I was surprised that you could do that, because I didn't think the city maps were physically connected to eachother. But we got to see things from the view of the cannonball. It was all in 3D - we were flying over hills and trees and could see out into the countryside. But there were some weird rendering glitches as we flew farther and farther from Fizz's city. Parts of the view expanded more than they should have until a piece of bark on a tree that should have looked tiny filled half the view. I never saw it actually approach another city.

As I was walking back down Greenwood and came across this big parade of people. Well it wasn't so much a parade as a line of people walking back and forth in a big loop like so:

    _______________
   |_____________  |
    _____________| |  road
 . |_______________| . . . .
        sidewalk

I think they were chanting or something. I thought these people were all being very silly. And as I was walking by, A-Day walked right up next to me. He was walking in the line, which happened to be going the same way I was where it went along the sidewalk. Fizz was in it, too. I asked what they were doing, but I couldn't hear the answer, or else A-Day wasn't even trying to tell it to me.

Then I was going around campus and admiring all the cool structures that don't actually exist. Lots of bridges and slides and ladders and things that TOGoS the hamster loves to play with. So I was running across bridges and going up and down the slides. Meanwhile I think I was looking for someone. And it was like some guy was giving me a tour of all this and talking about it as I wandered around. And I was getting stressed because I couldn't find who I was looking for. But there was a parking lot that reminded me of a dream...

I was driving around with some friends. Holly had done something constructive with my wrenches and a piece of threaded rod. Like it was holding the wheel of my bike on. I thought it was cool that she had done that.

And I was in a car, driving on Midvale/Verona road where it goes under the beltline. Some local news anchorman was driving. And he almost crashed. I was thinking how funny it would be if he was talking and totally flipped the car over violently but then he just kept on talking.

I was on the verge of waking up, but before I got to the point where I was actually awake, I realized what was happening, and purposely stayed asleep. I was standing next to my house, across Hammersley from Pacific Cycle headquarters (more pics). I don't get a chance like this very often, so I wanted to make the best of it. First I was taking off my shoes and my coat. Which was kind of a pain, but I got them off eventually. I was thinking things to myself like "you know, this isn't going to work", but then I said "shut up, you idiot. I'm trying to have a fantasy". I wanted to fly, but I couldn't. So I settled for jumping across Hammersley. Which I didn't manage, either, though I did manage to get across in only 2 steps. Standing in the parking lot of Pacific Cycle, I once again tried to fly, but I could only manage to jump sort of high. But I did manage to do some really cool cartwheels off the curb, but still, no flying. I noticed these 2 really tall trees over by the beltline. They were really neat looking. The one to the left is illustrated here, and the one to the right was taller but had a less interesting trunk.

Then everything became quiet, except for this errie regular beep every second or so. I looked up to the bridge, and saw some stars aligning in the sky. The pessimistic me said that this indicated that soon the day will have passed. I really ought to get up and do some work, rather than lying around dreaming all day.

"Yeah, I guess so" I said to myself. Within about 2 seconds, several things happened:

• I opened my eyes and pulled myself out of bed.
• I looked at the clock and saw that it was 5:31, time to go to dinner.
• A-Day pulled himself down out of bed.
• Fizz IMmed me and asked if I wanted to go eat.