Long nights...

Last night, in my dream, I was hanging out with Marko in a convenience store parking lot on a weekend night, trying to talk him into buying an exotic leather shoulder holster with his new-found SciFi writer's wealth. Why this seemed like a good place to try and have a conversation, when the only place you might find that was more covered up in noisy teenagers would be the stands of the local H.S. football field, is beyond me.

Later, I was herding a minivan down mountain roads, trying to stay in a convoy with MattG. Phlegmmy and the Atomic Nerds were in the back, and graciously not commenting on my driving. The makers of the van, apparently worried about its handling stability, had decided that the best way to keep it from flipping over was to make it impossible to make dramatic Δv control inputs and I was keeping up a running narration of complaints to Matt on a two-way radio:

"I'm trying to keep up, but this accelerator pedal couldn't be more awkwardly placed if they'd put it in one of the HVAC ducts and made you press it with a long screwdriver. And the brake pedal doesn't seem to do anything except give you someplace to rest your foot while you wait for engine braking and friction losses to bring the thing to a stop. And I'm not saying that the steering has an on-center dead spot, but you can spin the wheel through near two revolutions before the steering gear takes notice; either that or the tie rod ends fell out on that last hill..."

That's more-or-less-verbatim dream dialogue, for what it's worth.

The night before, I was aboard an Ohio-class sub where all the missile tubes had been replaced by a big seating area full of longitudinal rows of, like, fiberglass city bus seats. There was a MCPO yelling at us that the carrier group was going to sink us because people kept dropping brooms and whispering and making other noise that apparently showed up better on hydrophones than a yelling MCPO.

The really creepy dream was the night before that. There was a big stone... medieval manor? Town hall? Market? ...type building across the street from my parents' old house, where the neighborhood pool used to be. You know, a stone building with no ground floor entrances and a big old timber scaffolding type porch in front of the main entry on the second level. And there were big wooden barrels of fireworks everywhere. I think I was supposed to be guarding the door.

Anyhow, a bunch of early '70s GM full-size convertibles pulled up and parked all over the road and the grass, full of dudes that looked like a cross between the Lord Humongous's henchmen and Riff Raff, led by a Mansonesque dude that looked like a younger, more wild-eyed Ted Nugent.

They came charging up the steps and got my pistol away from me because it took me a second to realize "Maybe I should be shooting at these dudes?" and draw down, and then they proceeded to caper around setting off fireworks. I tried to slip away in the confusion, wondering why all the fireworks didn't seem to be bringing anybody to investigate, but my escape route was cut off by Ted and a couple of his henchmen, who wrestled me to the ground right there in the front yard of the house I grew up in.

I struggled and tried to fast-talk my way out of what seemed like a bad situation, and Ted was shushing me and telling me it was all right, calm down, that he was a little jealous of me because I was going to "...get to find out the truth about aliens and UFOs and angels and everything... all the beautiful things you're going to see..." and then he looked very serious all of a sudden, looked right into my eyes... "But, yeah, you're going to die."

...and then I woke up sitting bolt-upright in bed and panting.

That was freaky. Closest thing I've had to a nightmare in years.