We were at a fancy, tropical resort nearing the end of our vacation.
Apparently said vacation had also been combined with a scout trip, which was now over, but some of their equipment had been left behind for us to bring back because we had rented a van that had lots of room. Still, it wasn’t something that I was looking forward to because they needed to be broken down in order to fit in our van – for some reason, they had big sheets of glass that needed to be cut and a couple of chairs that we needed to take saws to in order to make it all fit.
We stalled at the resort for a while because for the last night of our vacation we’d gotten put in a really nice room with a huge hot tub, and it was right next to the tiki bar, so you could hear the band playing Jimmy Buffett music from pretty much anywhere in the suite.
I really wanted to just lay around and relax because the last week had been spent doing stuff every day with the scout group, but we couldn’t afford to extend our trip by another day, so eventually we begrudgingly left our swanky resort behind and headed back to where the van had been left to deal with loading it.
But not before stopping off at Toys ‘R Us to kill another hour or two, of course!
So now we’re driving in LA in separate cars – I’ve got my wife and kids in my car – and traffic is really heavy, so we pull up to a light and I look out the window to surprisingly see Paul Rudd on a bike like I almost hit him.
After struggling to get the window down, I finally asked if he was ok and if he wanted a ride, even though the car was completely packed and there was no room for him or his bike. Instead, he instructed me to follow him and we drove a short ways down the street before pulling into a small parking lot with several large tents setup in it.
It was only then that I noticed he had been dressed like a pizza delivery driver and had several boxes of pizza on the back of his bike.
Following Paul into one of the tents, it was there that he revealed that the whole stunt had just been promotion for his new movie in which he played a bicycle delivery driver. The tents had several catering stations in them and we were invited to have some food. Dominos was a big sponsor, so there was lots of pizza and wings and some other dishes that they were experimenting with, along with candy and these giant peanut butter cups that cost $5.15 a piece and just all sorts of stuff.
We explored and snacked for a while until eventually it started to rain and we realized we really needed to get back to work because I was worried that it was going to take a lot longer than we thought to pack everything up.
Before we left, I wanted to get a picture with Paul because I thought that it would make for a neat Instagram post, and someone pointed out where other people had started lining up for pictures. Unfortunately when we got to the front of the line, Paul was nowhere to be seen and instead we took pictures with Dave Franco who was apparently promoting his own movie where people hung from ropes with their feet off the ground and whoever was the last to touch the ground won a car or something.
We all hung from pipes and other things in the ceiling of the tent using these ropes that the staff gave us, and I could barely keep myself up for the picture, so it quickly became clear that I wouldn’t have been able to win the car anyways…
This week I’ve been relying heavily on Vicodin to help me sleep while trying to pass a kidney stone, which has resulted in some particularly lucid, albeit still pretty weird dreams…
I had been watching an episode of The Game Chasers when I noticed something that seemed a little familiar.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until we went to visit my Grandpa later on that day and at random, I asked if anyone had been through the neighborhood recently asking about old video games.
I expected a quick dismissal, but instead he admitted that a couple of guys had been by the other day, and he took me into the back room where I quickly recognized the trim on the wall from the same that I’d seen in the video!
Although the guys had gotten an old school NES top-loader, thank god they hadn’t gotten everything because what was left was AMAZING!!!
It seemed like there were just stacks upon stacks of NES games everywhere – on tables and falling out of cupboards.
There were old systems and piles of controllers – where Grandpa had come up with all of this stuff, I had no idea!
My cousins had always been into Sega Game Gear, so at first I thought I’d just found their old handheld system in its case, but upon closer inspection there were three or four other units in this much larger display case like it was some sort of demo unit for a bunch of add-ons that had never even made it to market.
My luckiest find, though, was this unopened cart in a shiny, metallic purple box that I knew just from looking at it had to have been some sort of rare import, however while I fumbled to look it up online, the game box changed into a metallic purple VHS tape box, almost like those hologram cards where you could tilt them at an angle to make a crude animation of sorts.
I struggled with what to tell my Grandpa because it quickly became clear that he wasn’t just going to give all of it to me, but I made sure to mention that he shouldn’t sell anything else without checking with me first and at least he agreed to that! 😉
This week I’ve been relying heavily on Vicodin to help me sleep while trying to pass a kidney stone, which has resulted in some particularly lucid, albeit still pretty weird dreams…
The day started out in my office, which would’ve been fairly ordinary except that somehow I had an office much bigger than the cubicle that I actually have at work!
It was the size that’s usually reserved for directors and above. I didn’t have a door for some reason, but I had multiple desk areas and lots of room to spread out, to the extent that apparently I very much had because there were dirty clothes all over the floor.
As I was working to clean things up so the cleaning people at night could vacuum, a former co-worker with a fairly high-pitched voice was there chatting … I have no idea about what.
* * * * * * * * * *
I was a senior in high school, or possibly just graduated.
We were going to a party – hosted on a rooftop – and also strangely attending a wedding that one of our parents were hosting at their extremely elaborate home.
The first party was fairly uneventful, except that I noted finding it satisfying to actually be accepted by the popular kids by association with my friend who was more one of them than I was.
The wedding, on the other hand, was amazing namely for the cakes because instead of only having a single wedding cake, one of our other friends who ran a cake company brought her entire company to the wedding, with the couple getting to pick their favorite cake on the spot.
…and being our friend, we got to pick out some treats before even the wedding couple did…
The most notable was the frosting, which was just to die for, and I stalked the various dessert cases for several minutes as the crowds began to gather before finally making my selection(s)!
* * * * * * * * * *
This same weekend there was also a camping trip with the Boy Scouts that I was supposed to go on.
It was my first outing where I was old enough to go as an adult leader, so I wanted to go up after our parties even if it meant being a day late.
Hitching a ride with a semi-truck driver, we drove over a very questionable bridge into the UP that was honestly amazing that we even crossed, considering the end of the bridge had this disconnected incline where the driver almost had to jump the truck up a ramp and then wiggle the rest of the truck behind us across.
I had one or more of the boys with me, so when we reached this small town nearby to the actual campground, we stopped at this tourist shop where we had been told that they were doing customized t-shirts for everyone who attended.
…themed around The Simpsons???
Anyways, we stood in line with quite a few other kids who were also late, but when we finally got up to the front, the clerk just shrugged us away and said that they’d run out. This really bothered me because they knew in advance how many shirts to order and the mistake was clearly on their part, but he didn’t want to admit it. The best he offered was that we could come back in a week and he’d have some more, which was ridiculous because I explained that nobody was going to drive two hours out into the middle of nowhere to get a stupid t-shirt…
When we finally arrived at the campground, we ran into my Dad who told us about everything that the kids had been doing.
I mentioned that two friends of mine were there, and they’d been posting on social media that they’d been having a blast … and also noted that they both happened to be in the middle of transitioning – one from female to male, and the other the opposite.
His response bothered me, as he just chuckled, “I’d like to see the looks on the other boys’ faces when they find out…”
To which I quickly interjected, “…because you’d step in and remind them that they’re all Boy Scouts, right???”
When he didn’t respond, I just added, “That’s ok – that’s why I’m here now…” looking down at the Assistant Scoutmaster badge that I wore on my arm.
The rest of the trip was surprisingly uneventful. I met some of the staff members who were from Canada, and we talked politics and I asked in particular what they thought of our current events, and if they could help us out!
This made them laugh, and we all shared stories of earning our highest rank as youth and what it meant to be leading a new group of boys now.
At one point another leader from our troop showed up with even more late boys in tow, and it was surprising how true to character he was … always strict, yet he’d go well beyond the extra mile for any scout in need, even if it meant driving him two hours into the middle of nowhere on a Saturday night so that he could catch the last few hours of a group outing.
This week I’ve been relying heavily on Vicodin to help me sleep while trying to pass a kidney stone, which has resulted in some particularly lucid, albeit still pretty weird dreams…
Tonight’s dream sequence focused a lot around moving to Florida in various stages, beginning back in my hometown where I found myself getting ready to rent a uHaul truck to make the big journey down south.
The uHaul dealer that I visited also featured a number of areas aimed at cleaning your old place, so while I was there I decided to run a load of laundry – presumably of random items that I would need on my trip. I also wasn’t exactly sure which size of truck that I needed and was torn between renting one and somehow trying to “borrow” a van from the warehouse where I worked, so I ended up leaving the dealership to ponder this while my laundry continued to run.
* * * * * * * * * *
I ended up acquiring a van from work and was driving it around town when I ran across a couple of people who I follow for doing videos and podcasts about Disney World. I parked my van and rode around with them for a while, talking about Disney trivia until they finally had to get going back to California and me on my way to Florida.
It was pretty early in the morning, so I decided that I wanted donuts before I headed out.
Driving back through town, I was reminded all the more of why I wanted to leave because the city had since been built out in a very bizarre and somewhat confrontational way. With all of the houses at the interior, followed by small businesses, then industrious ones, followed by Walmart and almost a wall of sorts at the city’s edge, it felt very clear that my hometown wasn’t welcoming to new visitors at all. They had even built this elaborate water play area designed like a castle, which would’ve normally been very cool, but for some reason it was blocked at the street level by all sorts of other businesses so you could barely see it, which just seemed very dumb.
Anyways, I pulled up to sort of a makeshift Dunkin Donuts that was setup as a stand outside, but before I was able to order, one of my old scout leaders from my childhood approached me and said hello … which was very disturbing because he’d been dead for many years!
We talked for several minutes in which he attempted to explain what had happened and calm me down, until finally I was pulled aside by one of the Dunkin workers who had gotten a soda for me in a nice, big travel mug.
At least, I thought this was a nice gesture until she tried to ring me up for $14.99 for the mug and soda. And for some reason they didn’t have any donuts, only breakfast sandwiches. We hung around for a sandwich anyways, but ended up leaving about 10 minutes later when they still hadn’t managed to finish making our order…
* * * * * * * * * *
Fast forward to being on the road – I was traveling with Sara and we had just pulled up to my cousins’ house in Ohio to surprise them. We only stayed for a few minutes because it was Christmas morning and they had other guests – also friends that I knew – and all of their kids were getting ready to unwrap their presents underneath the biggest collection of decorated Christmas trees indoors that I had ever seen.
During our stay, there was some talk about our plans once we got to Florida. Somehow we’d left rather sporadically, so much was up in the air regarding places we’d lived and whether our belongings were still there to go back to. It wasn’t clear how long we’d been gone, but it seemed that we left without dealing with our house or the apartment we used to rent, so we both wondered if they were still available or the banks and landlords had put them back on the market again.
Walking back outside, a fresh layer of snow had fallen on the ground and covered the black sports car we had been driving … which was particularly low to the ground and very claustrophobic.
The status of our relationship together was unclear, as I suggested just driving on to Florida instead of turning around and heading home, to which Sara mentioned that her kid might not be too fond of that.
* * * * * * * * * *
I made it to Florida – by myself – and had settled in to my first day on a new job that seemed rather nice and flexible.
I still wasn’t sure where I was staying that night, but at lunchtime I ventured out to find something to eat and ended up at a HoneyBaked Ham store only a few blocks from my new office. Looking forward to a sandwich that I’d grown accustomed to getting elsewhere, I quickly found that their menu was completely different and I ended up trying a thai salad instead.
A particularly intriguing part of ordering was when the cashier asked if I had a Disney MagicBand with me because instead of using their loyalty cards, a lot of customers just got their points added right to the band so that they could spend them over at Disney World instead, which seemed very cool to me!
I sat eating my salad and thinking about how I was going to blog about my first day in my new city until eventually I had to get up to use the restroom. When I returned, I strangely found that my salad bowl had been emptied, but left on the table, and when I asked the guy at the next table what had happened, he told me to talk to the girl behind the counter who admitted that the manager had told her to clean my table.
I got mad because I wasn’t finished eating, so I demanded to speak to the manager who was very rude and explained that I’d been there too long and other customers needed my table, so it was time for me to go. I asked for a refund, which I was quickly given, but was more disturbed by how unconcerned they were about upsetting a new customer. The guy I had been sitting next to had been told he had to finish up and leave, too, but because he stayed at his table and hadn’t gone to the restroom, they otherwise just left him be.
I left vowing to write a letter to their district manager, however what happened next somewhat distracted me from that mission…
* * * * * * * * * *
After parking my car, on my walk back into the office I managed to get my pants unsalvageably dirty. Despite having all of my belongings there in my car, I didn’t have a second pair of pants, so I ran over to a nearby clothing store to see about finding a replacement.
They didn’t have much to offer, as they sold mostly women’s clothes, but as I left I found the saleswomen pushing dresses and jewelry on me nonetheless. As I tried to walk out the door, I suddenly found myself being dressed in their clothes just the same, with the clothes having some sort of witchcraft in their labels that proceeded to sew themselves into my skin so that they couldn’t be removed … a shiny, blue dress, some dangly jewelry, and even a long, brown wig.
I was speechless as I walked back into the office, yet my female boss gave me a look over with a raised eyebrow, then just shrugged and pointed me to my desk, as they were getting ready to begin a presentation. Looking around the room, a couple of other men had also fallen victim to the same clothing shop across the street, and nobody said a word about it.
* * * * * * * * * *
After work I ended up going home with the same guy from the salad place, whose wife said it was ok for me to crash with them for a few days until I figured out my bearings. They had some pinball machines in their basement which were a fun release after kind of a weird day, although eventually I just went to bed after I realized that my playing was keeping them awake upstairs.
This week I’ve been relying heavily on Vicodin to help me sleep while trying to pass a kidney stone, which has resulted in some particularly lucid, albeit still pretty weird dreams…
I was a member of Aerosmith!!!
…sort of…
I was visiting a group of friends at college and trying to find someplace where I could take a shower. They had these big, community locker rooms / showers, so I waited until everyone had left, borrowed someone else’s towel and shampoo that were left there, and did what I needed to do.
Later on that night when we were front and center for a show, somebody with the band pulled me aside and told me that I could be a big help to them, on account of how much I resembled lead guitarist Joe Perry with my long hair and all.
I stood out on the stage for a few minutes with one of Joe’s guitars while they adjusted lighting and whatnot, and when they were done the same guy asked if I wanted to work with them full time!
It felt like I’d been picked to be a part of the band, and for the next six months I toured with the group and stood in for Mr. Perry whenever he was too busy to be bothered with setting up shots and whatnot himself. It was amazing and I felt like a rockstar … even though I never actually played a note myself, despite standing in the shadows of giants seemingly every single night.
Eventually, though, I realized that my dream wasn’t really to be Joe Perry, but to be a famous musician like Joe Perry, and so reluctantly I handed my mantle down to another fan who sort of looked like the star to instead focus on actually making music myself.
If it turned out that I still sort of looked like Joe Perry doing it, then that would just be a bonus.
It wasn’t clear exactly how I knew, but somehow doctors had pinpointed that my heart was going to give up and I was going to die that day.
My mood, I suppose, could be best described as quiet and nervous.
I walked around mostly in a stupor, trying my best to interact with all of the people I saw on a daily basis who didn’t know, yet with this sunken feeling that any moment … any footstep or spoken word … could easily be my last.
I hadn’t told anyone because I didn’t want them to worry, and yet myself I was completely petrified at my fate. I wanted to tell the people that I loved, but how does a conversation like that even start?
As the day grew on and I grew wearier, I began to mention my results to a few people, who walked around announcing it more like an interesting factoid than something so personal.
“You know, Scott was supposed to die today, but he hasn’t yet.”
Though at first I just went about my day, eventually I slipped away and just quietly walked around, with each step almost feeling my heart rate increase and being deathly aware of not wanting to provoke it in any way.
Then I began to wonder how my life would change if it didn’t happen like it was supposed to.
I wanted to talk to my doctor for answers, and I wanted to talk to my wife.
At one point I ran into a guy who was like a knock off version of one of my old supervisors at work, which was kind of weird. He made a joke that wasn’t really funny, but was almost immediately forgotten.
I didn’t end up dying, and yet by the end of the dream it didn’t really feel like I was alive anymore, either.
I’ve had a couple of this sort of dream lately – not sure why, but for a guy who lives on computers they’re almost more scary than things that creep in the night!
Somebody had hacked my computer.
They knew exactly the moment that I logged in because they messaged me vague threats about being watched every single time. It made it hard to troubleshoot, particularly once I started getting comments about my family … did they somehow have access to more than just my computer after all???
At one point I tried digging into the problem at work, enlisting the consulting advice of a few co-workers, but somehow the result was the same regardless of where I plugged the computer in. I briefly contemplated the steps to changing all of my passwords simultaneously in hopes of somehow locking the hacker out of my accounts, though ultimately I didn’t really even know what they had gotten access to aside from my Windows account itself.
Eventually I decided to wage a trap and turned the PC on back at home, with a handful of friends and family, along with a police officer, all there for support. The hacker wanted to chat with me – namely to intimidate me again, making comments about the safety of my sons, to the point where I realized that they must somehow be nearby. We all stood at our posts around house looking out into the yard like sentries around a castle wall until someone saw a figure moving in the distance.
It was then that I killed the power to the house and reassured the kids that everything was going to be ok while another person ran out and tackled the person lurking in the yard.
Who turned out to be a girl who I’d worked with a few years prior.
She made a lot of excuses about how she never meant to hurt anyone, and how looking around it was clear that “we lived in luxury” and probably had this sort of thing happen to us all of the time.
Somehow she even gained a little pity from several of the family, who gave her food and whatnot while we waited for the officer to arrest her.
Before that took place, however, I walked to the front door and noticed a strange car waiting outside. Realizing it was her getaway car, I sent someone over to take a look and the car suddenly bolted.
It turns out that her mother, of all people, had been her accomplice in our harassment.
When the officer finally asked what I wanted to do, I considered all of the trauma that we’d been put through and insisted on pressing charges for blackmail and stalking.
I was sitting down to work on my next piece. And I wanted it to be BIG. So big, in fact, that I could already see the title card for the animated feature in my mind…
WILDFYRE
But what … was … Wildfyre???
Was it a place?
Was it a person?
No.
As I pictured the opening sequence, I saw something big come crashing over the horizon … with whitecaps breaking against its bow as the music of a thousand men men rhythmically chanting rang out.
Yes.
Wildfyre was a ship!
A massive ship – with a huge, stone mast and massive sails that carried a crew of crusaders back to their people in glorious victory. They were hunters, and they had just finished up a successful harvest that would keep their tribe hearty for another year.
But there was a catch … as there always is.
Because these proud hunters scoured the land for exotic animals, and unbeknownst to them the animals that they took were the last of their kind.
They were about to find out the consequences of their pillaging in a very unsavory way.
It was a bizarre cross between a cub scout meeting and a D&D game, and we were trying to solve some sort of puzzle.
There were other groups “competing” at the same time as we were, but after a few steps of rolling dice we came to learn that the puzzle wasn’t solved by the results of each step, but simply by taking a step back to look at the steps themselves and how they related to each other. When we finally came to realize that “the answer” was Back to the Future, we ran upstairs to tell whoever was running the puzzle, only to find that it had all been a facade and we were lost in this strange, urban area once we left the basement behind…
* * * * *
For whatever reason, I was grocery shopping when the power went out at the store, and no one really knew what to do. All of the employees had randomly disappeared, leaving just a handful of us alone in the dark, empty store with things in our carts that hadn’t been purchased yet.
After much deliberation, I decided that the things I had would spoil either way, so I reluctantly walked out of the store without paying for them, only to be confronted with a very large, billboard-sized sign in the parking lot citing that food taken when the store had been abandoned was still stealing and considered to be a very bad crime.
By the time I had everything in my car, I was being chased by several police cars as I zipped through the darkened city, desperate for a place to hide. Eventually I came across a row of miniature compartments – not like houses, but akin to the mailboxes found at an apartment complex, only large enough to fit inside. So I did.
As I was stashing a few items away in the back of the locker and stuffing my pockets with anything that would fit, Lisa Simpson appeared and asked if I’d like some help carrying the rest of my items home.
* * * * *
We were canoeing in a tropical area and suddenly came upon many sharks in the water, all no more than probably 4 – 5 feet each. Though they were mostly harmless, our guide reminded everyone to keep their hands out of the water as we cautiously glided among them.
Eventually we came upon another boater whose boat was filling up with water, which made everyone nervous because he himself was in the water and dangerously close to the sharks.
Just then – a hundred or so feet away – a much, much larger shark took down the larger guide boat that had brought us all out to the area.
I paddled away as fast as I could, following the shoreline that soon became cluttered by all of the discarded boats that had come before us and too had fallen for their trap…
* * * * *
We were moving into a new home that was much smaller than the apartment where we previously lived. It was going to be tight quarters, but it seemed all for the best as we struggled to find places for our essentials and get rid of the excess that we didn’t need and frankly didn’t have room for.
We still had one load of larger things (which we didn’t have room for) left to bring before we handed back our keys, so I was trying to shuffle things around to make some space. As I was sorting through the small bedroom that was to be shared by the kids, I was interrupted by a large, older man who proved to be our new maintenance man. He was friendly enough and seemed to already be taking to the kids when our neighbors suddenly began playing their music very loudly.
Without a second thought, he walked over to the bedroom wall where there was actually a door dividing the two rooms and pounded on it to prompt them to quiet down. A moment later, someone opened the door and showed that it wasn’t another home on the other side, but a store of sorts. The maintenance man and the store owner chatted for a few minutes while I looked around and saw mostly displays filled with candies nearest to our door, with one of our other neighbors eventually walking by inside the store with an armful of candy telling me, “You’re really going to like it here!”
After the maintenance man left and closed the door, I noticed that it could only be locked from the store’s side and looked around for something I could put in front of it to help remedy the situation. There were pieces to one of the boys’ beds nearby, but all were too light, so instead I considered an old, ornate dresser that had been left behind.
Opening its top drawer, I found the inside scrolled with seemingly satanic rituals, and began to wonder why the last family had left it behind.
It’s no secret by now that one of my most recurring dreams typically involves my move to Florida, however this one was a little different in that apparently I had already moved and this time had simply returned to retrieve the rest of my bulkier possessions – something that I’d actually planned to, but was never able to do in real life and instead got them over time via UPS and visiting friends…
As is often the case, I started back at the warehouse where I used to work, however that didn’t seem to last long because after a quick calculation in my head of what they were paying me to work on the side, I decided that it wasn’t worth sticking around to make a few bucks and I was probably better off just packing up and hitting the road instead.
So I returned home to start loading up a rather large pickup truck – no idea who it belonged to – with a trailer attached, presumably to help haul the bigger stuff like the speakers to my PA system … which in fact have never made it down to Florida in real life. There were a lot of people around to help – extended family, friends of my parents – and the whole thing was much more of a group effort than just me carrying bags and boxes out to my car like it had been in real life! 😉
Also as a strange aside – throughout the entire packing, I found myself uncomfortably exchanging text messages with a girl back in Florida who I was presumably dating, though it wasn’t clear who she was or whether she’d for certain be waiting for me when I got there.
When it came time to go, I looked out to the truck and found that my sister had stowed away in the back seat of this truck, more or less buried up to her eyeballs in my belongings! After acknowledging that she could make the trip with me, I explained that 24 hours on the road would be a long time to be buried in stuff, and so we worked to reorganize a bit so that she’d actually have an empty seat to sit in for the ride down!
One item that got left behind – a red mattress like what you’d see on a cot at summer camp … in this dream, an aunt had bewilderingly gifted it to me, though we all agreed that I didn’t like to go outside any more than necessary and thus there was really no point in trying to bring it along. As it is, we had boxes of magazines, huge speakers and guitars, buckets of fish from my aquariums, Lego sets and video games – pretty much all of the random, non-essential stuff that I’d deemed unnecessary to cram into my car for the first trip down.
Leaving home, there was an unmistakable urge to get away as fast as possible – something that didn’t occur in real life, mind you – and after sending one last text message … a picture of my old home in Michigan … we hit the road in this gigantic rig of a pickup truck, eager to hit the highway and put as many miles behind us as possible.
