April 2000

Apr 4 - Apr 9



April 4, 2000

I was at a large auditorium place, like a gymnasium, and there were a lot of people there. I'm not really sure what the event was but this place was packed, hundreds of people walking all over the place and seated at large, round tables that could seat 15 or so people at one table. At one such table were members of my family; my mom, Charles, and so on. Mom had made it clear to me that she wanted me to sit next to her. Across the gymnasium or whatever the hell it was, was another table and sitting at that were member's of Lisa's family; her mom, dad, maybe G, and other relatives. As I walked across the gymnasium floor to go from one table to the other, I saw Dexter sitting on the floor, Indian style (cross-legged). He had a beard and looked a bit more rugged than he usually does. He had a fifth of booze and he was taking shots from it as he sat there. I don't recall seeing anyone else sitting on the floor and Dexter just seemed to be by himself and preferring to be. He may have acknowledged my presence among the rustle and bustle of others that streaked this way and that but he didn't make an effort to really make eye contact with me, showing that he knew I was there, but he had his own agenda and was going to do it, which, apparently, was downing shots of whatever this booze was he had in front of him. I recall a scene when I was at the table with mom and everyone from my family, when I was trying to sit in a chair at the table. In front of this chair was another chair that someone was sitting in so I really wasn't able to sit in my chair and scoot into the table. Mom was mad at me and we began arguing about something. She was doing something; filling out forms or playing some kind of game, and she wanted me to participate. There was some kind of debate how what she was doing showed that she didn't care that Lisa's folks were sitting across the way and I wanted to spend some time with them as well, that I just couldn't completely ignore them, which is what mom wanted me to do. Charles, being the ever-trying Mr. Philosophical Reasoning Man, leaned closer to mom and explained to her that people live their lives and that I should be able to go sit with Lisa's folks if I wanted to, that there was nothing wrong with that. The discussion ended with me getting upset with mom not understanding that there was nothing wrong with me spending time with someone else other than her so I walked off across the room to the table where Lisa's folks were to spend some time with them instead, once again passing Dexter on the floor on my way.


April 9, 2000

I was at a place that was like a semiconductor company and apparently I worked there. There was a fab there that was surrounded by tall, 20-foot-high walls made of glass. The area was huge and there were sectioned-off places with glass walls between them. The area was dimly lit and right outside of this fab with its glass walls were the office areas where managers, techs, and engineers in cubicles sat to conduct their semiconductor engineering jobs. Arnold Tokkin was there and he nonchalantly glanced my way as he strolled his tall, string-beany body into his cubicle, which was a lone, square partitioned area with the mauve, orangeish brown walls that I remember the cubicles of National Semiconductor to have, and he made a motion that suggested he was seating himself in his chair to do some type of paperwork at his desk. The walls on his cubicle were very high as well, maybe not as high as the fab walls, but damned close. His cubicle was directly on the other side of one the glass fab walls and appeared to be 20 or so feet away from the other cubicles which were all bunched together in the typical maze of office cubicles that lots of businesses have. His space was probably away from the rest of ours, I had the feeling, because he was a manager or some other type of authority figure and, therefore, needed to be singled out. I had the feeling he was my boss in this dream and I also got the feeling that this place was actually MASCA but it had been majorly rearranged and whoever did the rearranging decided to put the offices on the lower floor right outside of the dimly lit fab area with its tall glass walls. I had been with someone earlier in this dream but I lost track of him or her now. Apparently it was time to take my smock off, although I can't really remember wearing one, and then go home. Again, this place was huge and I get the feeling that I hadn't quite become used to all this rearrangement that had gone on because I lost track of where the smock room was. The place suddenly seemed too large and overwhelming and I started becoming lost. There were multitudes of ramps and walkways throughout the building on the outskirts of the fab and office area. On these ramps and walkways were hundreds and hundreds of people crammed, walking about on them. I recall being in one part of the building where I could see across the vastness of this massive building and I got a look at numerous ramps and walkways and the many people crammed on them. It was incredible. I got the feeling that it was time to go home and these people were just lining up and walking towards the exits of this building. I became confused and didn't know what the hell to do, so, with my smock in my hand, I got into one of the lines of people and walked along with them. There was a scene I remember where I was in some kind of hallway that reminded me of the place where you wait for the monorail at the airport to take you from area to area, and at this point in time this building had the feeling of an airport; that large, busy type of atmosphere. It wasn't every crowded here and, as a matter of fact, I was the only person in this 50 by 30 foot area. I still had my smock in my hand and then I noticed two women off to my right that were near a doorway that led back inside the bowels of the building. One of the women was really cute, had long brown hair, was in her 20s, and wore tight jeans and shirt. I can't recall the other woman at all but I felt she was also around the same age as the one with the long brown hair. They started walking through the door and as they did they asked me something about if I had "gotten it yet," meaning they were wondering if I was able to figure something out yet. They laughed at me and although I now have no idea what they meant by their question, I'm pretty sure I knew in the dream what they were asking. They giggled like know-it-all women, considering what a naive, cute, typical man I was, and then they strolled away through the doorway and into an airway that reminded me of a baggage claim area at an airport. The next thing I recall is still being confused about where to go so I found a line to stand in back of that was a dozen people wide and hundreds of people long that were trudging slowly along a ramp that slightly inclined down to wherever the hell we were going. It was amazing how many people there were here. Across the way, on another ramp and 30 feet away across a gap in the floor that was 70 or so feet above the floor, stood a black guard that worked at the semiconductor place; he was like the guards that I remember working at the semiconductor place I used to work at. He was watching us walk and I could suddenly see what he was seeing as he looked over at us. He would blow a whistle every now and then and when he blew it once, that meant for us all to stop. When he blew his whistle again then that meant that about 15 people could walk on, but then he blew his whistle again and the next group of people had to stop for him to look on. This was repeated over and over again and I guess what he was doing was checking out the people one by one in groups of 15 to make sure they weren't stealing anything from the company. I could tell that when the guard saw me that he was very interested in me because I had the smock in my hand and I also, apparently, suddenly had a tool box in my hands. No one else had anything so I know I was going to get stopped. At this part of the ramp where people stopped and started up again, I was up against a wall at the landing to the ramp that led down the slope and beyond. Between the wall and the ramp railing and a surface level with my chest was a crack less than an inch wide. I was with that person again who I was with earlier in the dream and although I still don't know who it was I do know it was a guy about the same age as me. I had a wrench or some other tool in my hand and it somehow fell into that crack and sailed all the way down to the floor below which, as I mentioned earlier, was 70 feet away. The black guard saw me do this and I became paranoid because for some reason this was a bad thing to do. Even though, I didn't get too concerned over it, nor did the guy that was with me. Eventually, after winding and snaking my way along this corridor/pathway/walkway with all the other cows in the herd I came to the place where we all passed by the guard. He looked like your typical black guy, short black curled hair, he wore a uniform of some kind and he may have had a nightstick. When I came walking across that way he immediately grabbed me and started saying stuff like, "OK, alright, let's see what you have!" I was the only one I can remember him detaining and he was going to waste no time with me. He grabbed me and I gladly, calmly obliged. He was accusatory and tried his best to be an asshole and intimidate me but I remained calm and showed I was going to cooperate at all costs. I didn't seem fazed because I wasn't hiding anything. I realized now that I had a hell of a lot more stuff than I can remember having before; I now had, in addition to my smock, a large duffle bag thing and also what I think was a backpack and maybe a box, too. The first thing the guard wanted to inspect was the duffel bag I had and he told me to unzip it so he could check out what was inside. I didn't hesitate and started to unzip the bag. The bag was dark colored and inside it was an even darker colored plastic lining, much like that green bag that Eileen and I stole from our neighbor in Arkansas years ago. There was some trouble unzipping this bag, I'm not sure what it was, maybe the zipper got caught in the plastic and I couldn't undo it all the way, so I'm not sure if I ever got to open that up and let the guard check out those contents. It was somewhere along here that the guard and I finally started to become civil with each other because my friendly attitude finally won him over, and he ended up to be actually a really cool guy. We were friendly to each other after that. I also had a box of some kind that I don't how the hell I could have carried it because it looked heavy and large. It was three feet by three feet square and when the guard asked what was inside of it I explained that it was some kind of fireplace attachment that would fit where my wood stove was. I think there was a picture of what this thing actually was on the outside of the box, something that was drawn in black. It may have been a picture of a wood-stove-type of thing, indicating what was inside. Nevertheless, the guard went about pulling the cardboard off the thing that surrounded it. There may have been those plastic twisty-tie-wrap things securing the box in this thing which kind of slowed down the unveiling of the fireplace thing inside. Apparently I wasn't even sure of what was inside because when the cardboard finally came off, I leaned closer to inspect this thing. It was some type of gas fireplace thing that would take the place of the wood stove I had in my rec room now. I don't know why I wanted to replace the wood stove I had with this thing instead, maybe because I thought gas was a better way to go or something, but that's what I was going to do. This device looked smaller than the wood stove I have in place now and wasn't really much of a stove at all, just some type of device that had some orange heating element looking things inside of a glass front and a top on it where the stove pipe was to fit. I looked at the top of this thing to inspect the stovepipe opening and saw that it was slightly oval; but large enough for the stovepipe I now have to fit into. Although the pipe I have now going to the ceiling is round and probably could not fit into this hole at the top of this gas stove thing, in this dream I seemed satisfied that it would be just fine. There was a little spigot-type thing that looked like that metal, ridged, cone thing that the black gas line hooks onto in some types of engines where a gas line would be attached to when installing this gas stove fireplace thing into your home. It was at the top left of the stove and there was a valve next to it that was meant to turn the gas flow on and off. The guard turned the valve one way and when he did, a burst of air shot from the little gas spigot thing and shot into his thumb. He jerked his hand away because it hurt pretty bad. We both took a look at his thumb and saw that there was no damage, and that was fortunate because it was a helluva blast of air and could have put an eye out. There may have been a small red mark where the air hit his thumb. By this time the guard didn't see me as a threat of actually stealing anything but he was becoming so curious in all this shit I had been carrying around that he continued to check out what I had. The next item was my toolbox. It was red and was like the toolbox I have now. We lifted the lid and as he began rummaging through the contents with the top tray, I noticed a young man, in his early 20s or younger, short hair, standing behind the guard at attention. Apparently he wanted to talk to the guard about something but was sure not to disrupt what he was doing so as to not get punished or disciplined or whatever. I stared at the kid as he stood there but the guard had his back to him so he wasn't aware he was there as I was. Behind the kid were the lines of people continuing to walk along and apparently he had stepped out of line to talk to the guard, but stood at attention, not wanting to interrupt until the guard was ready to confront him. Finally the guard turned around and saw the young man standing there and this startled him. Immediately the guard stood up and smiled like a parent who had just caught their child with their hand in the cookie jar.
"Insubordinate entry!" the black guard said slowly and smiled methodically at the young man, leaning close. I guess what insubordinate entry meant was that no one was to sneak up behind the guard and catch him off guard and if they did, that was a no-no and was known as insubordinate entry. The young man started to plead his case, whatever that may have been, and I could tell he was hoping his explanation of just standing there was a good enough reason of why he hadn't approached in a better manner, as if there was one. I think the young man just wanted to talk to the guard about something but whatever that may have been, I have no idea. The last thing I recall is the guard and I continuing to rummage through the top tray in the toolbox. There were the usual things there; broken silicon wafers, scattered screwdrivers and wrenches and solder and small nails. Among this debris were some small, barrel-shaped screws that were about a quarter of an inch round and had flat-head screwdriver pots on either end. The guard held some of these and asked me what they were and I explained to him that these were screws that could be screwed inside nuts and put into place using a screwdriver, thus plugging up the hole in the nut. I don't think anything like that actually does exist and if it did, why anyone would want to use one? Good God why?

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