An Expensive Meal

I don't eat at many expensive restaurants but when I do I always try to order the least expensive foods off the menu. I think the restaurant I dined at last night in Little Rock was by far the most expensive meal of my life.

As I looked through the menu, I found the prices were ridiculously high. Eventually I asked the waitress what the least expensive meal was and she told me an item that was on special for $30. I accepted. All was well through the meal with my friends. All seemed to be well after the meal. I handed my credit card to the waitress and signed the bill for $30 when she brought it back.

The next afternoon I received a call from the restaurant saying there was an error with my payment and asking me to stop by the restaurant. When I got there the waitress went over my order again and told me I owed $7,000. I was outraged and began arguing with the waitress who told me it was because I paid with a credit card instead of cash. The menu said the price was $7,000 but the meal was on special for customers paying cash. Her comments didn't make me feel any better. I continued arguing and refusing to pay. Then the manager came and told me to calm down. But he told me the same thing she did.

I told them I was going to call some people and that I knew a lawyer. Then I walked outside into the hot summer air and thought about what I was going to do. Seven-on-your side maybe? Legal fees would cost just as much as the bill itself. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't in much better shape when I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning to realize it had been a bad dream -- a bad dream it took a while to recover from and fall back asleep for another hour before I had to get up for work.

What strange and annoying dream will I have tonight?

Sleeping at the Wheel

It was a dark night as I headed home, driving down the highway. There was some traffic on the road but not a lot. My headlights lit up the road before me and beside me. I couldn't see very far and my eyes were growing tired. I knew I should pull over on the shoulder and sleep or at least wait until daylight to continue the journey. But I was in a hurry; I wanted to get home to sleep in my own bed. I kept driving. My eyelids became heavier and heavier, eventually I could barely make out the road in front of me. A little time passes and I find myself thinking how amazed I am that I am still on the road. There haves been curves and I can't even make out what is grass and trees and where the road is. I'm driving blind. I open my eyes and see my lights shining straight out into the grass and find myself in a soft bed in my house, happy to know I hadn't truly fallen asleep at the wheel of my car.

I have had that dream or similar dreams multiple times in the past. I'm driving; I fall asleep and somehow the car drives itself or something. According to dreammoods.com, driving a car within a dream signifies "ambition,drive and ability to navigate from one state of life to another...Overall, this dream symbol is an indication of your dependence and degree of control you have on your life." It says sleeping may "denote a peace of mind." It could also symbolize ignorance or similarly to death, "renewal and new beginnings."

In the past I have looked up some of the symbols and they were much easier to interpret and try to figure out what the underlying causes are. This dream isn't so easy.

The Non-existing Memories

 Science was never one of my strongest or favorite subjects.Don't get me wrong, it is interesting and I like to learn how things work. I think the brain is probably what fascinates me the most. It is intriguing to think about how it works and even its digital equivalent -- computers.

I don't understand how a bunch of 0s and 1s can equate to a colored image of a certain dimension to appear on my screen. I don't understand how I am connected to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who then provides me with access to the International Network "Internet" and the World Wide Web.

Similarly, I don't understand how the electrical impulses in my brain equate to memories. What intrigues me the most are those foreign, often physics-defying places my brain takes me at night. I gave dreams some thought in college and what causes them.I wanted to try to control my dreams. I wanted to have a dream in another language, specifically Spanish. I don't think it happened during my college career.

When I lived in Spain, I finally had a couple of dreams in Spanish, but most were silent nightmares, most likely brought on by my real-life fear of heights. Being in places that made me face my fear was a frequent occurrence in Europe. Most of the dreams involved me climbing to some height, usually on a building, and then realizing I didn't have anyway down. Usually I would let go and wake up.

A few weeks ago I dreamed I was passing through border control in an Islamic country. I had never been there before. There were were several weird parts, but nothing made the dream special. Two weeks later, I revisited that dream within another dream. And then last night, I revisited it again -- I even had more success crossing the border having learned from my previous adventures. Somehow in my dreams I had memories of the previous dreams.

It was pretty interesting how my brain would remember other dreams within a dream -- a memory that didn't really exist. I didn't look any of those three dreams up in a dream dictionary, but it somewhat makes since for the dreams to be symbolic. I wonder how much we could really learn from our subconscious minds.

Terminal A to G

I've heard that eating right before bed affects a person's dreams. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that or not, but I do know I have had some strange dreams the past week while taking an antibiotic that requires me to get up in the middle of the night to take it -- with food. On the bright side of things, I made it back to Spain.

It was my final day in Spain before my trip back to the United States. I had a flight to catch at 2 p.m. The weather was nice, sunny and warm. It was a nice relief after the long overnight bus ride in to Madrid. I pulled my two bags behind me as I wheeled through the airport terminal. I am about 8 hours early. It was more or less a routine trip, except the airport was new (rather, nonexistent . The airport was huge, with multiple runways and seven different terminals. My bus had let me off at terminal A.

I don't know why I was stressed; I wasn't short on time, but I had no clue where to go. I pulled out my ticket and saw Terminal G. Then I found a map of the airport. Terminal G was at the opposite corner of the complex, which included the other side of multiple runways. So how was I going to get  from Terminal A to International Terminal G? By this time I have about 7 hours before my flight, and I know I have to get there, check my bags, and make it through security. I begin looking for an airport employee, an information center, anywhere I can ask how to get from A to G.

When I finally find it, I have a discussion in Spanish. But they tell me most of the airport's ground transportation is still inoperable, but there will be a bus in about 15 minutes, and there will be another bus at 2 p.m. Definitely not what I want to hear at that point in time. The bus picks up at the other end of the crowded terminal I am in. If I don't catch the bus now, I am likely going to miss my flight.

Running through an airport is never fun, especially when you are carrying two bags, both packed to their max. I'm dodging people and objects as I fly through the airport trying to get down to where the bus will pick up. As I arrive to the bus stop, I see the bus about 10 feet away -- already pulled out into traffic, headed away from the bus stop. I sit down outside for a minute to try and gather my wits before getting on the metro and going elsewhere in the city. I get off a few stops later at a bus station and find a taxi.

Through all of the excitement I end up getting to Terminal G a few hours later -- about 3-4 hours before my flight. I'm on time at this point I think. I go check my backs and get to security. When I arrive to my gate I realize that I left a bag at the security checkpoint. Thirty minutes until boarding. I arrive back at the security checkpoint and describe my bag. They haven't seen it. That is when it hits me that I was only carrying two bags with me--both checked before getting to security. I hadn't had my third bag the entire time; I must have left it on the bus. With 15 minutes left until boarding and six hours since I got off the bus, I didn't have much chance. I didn't know what to do. In fifteen minutes, my ability to make phone calls to Spain would almost disappear. If I didn't make the call now, I may not see my bag again. I hope that someone will see the name and address written on it and somehow it will make it back to me in the U.S.

I woke up at that point so I don't know how the dream ends. I could make something up but it simply wouldn't be as interesting and crazy as the dreams tend to be. If only dreams could "to be continued..."

Mixture of Strange Dreams

Strange dreams are no strangers to me. I have shared a few of them on my blog before. Usually they have something to do with my fear of heights or something to do with water. It seems that the night before I go somewhere where I have to face my fear of heights, I almost always have a nightmare involving me being stuck in a high place or falling for a high place.

In another common dream I am swimming in a strange lake which is made up of three levels. The first level is fairly calm and there is a waterfall at the edge. The waterfall is about 20 feet high and lands in the second level of the lake. Occasionally I would swim to the edge and fall into the second level, which was a little less calm and a lot colder. In order to return to the first lake I had to climb up some rocks carefully in order not to fall back into the second lake. On one of the trips back to the top I slipped and fell. Not intentionally returning to that second level I was stunned by the cooler water and the pace at which it was moving. Someone in the top lake threw a flotation device which I went for. I had to swim closer to the edge of the second level, close enough to see the third level.

About 500 feet below me the water fell into a third level with ice shards all over the place. To go over that fall would surely mean death. I was able to grab the flotation device but I was losing ground (or water) to the swifter water. I was being dragged closer and closer to the edge of the second level. I don't remember what eventually happened.

Last night I had a dream that mixed several of my strange dreams from the past with a little bit of reality. Its hard to determine where to even begin so I will start with the context.

I was camping in the hills with about five other friends. It was a rather secluded campground with a large lake below. During the night a large storm came through and the next morning we decided to pack up and leave. We drove up and down hilly roads with steep drops until we arrived at the campground exit. To our horror, there was water everywhere. The only exit had flooded and there was no safe route out of the campground. We decided to go to the campground office to inquire about the possibility of a ferry that could take us away from that place. The office had a sign on the door, "Closed due to severe flooding." And then we saw dark grey clouds moving in and decided we had to make a plan otherwise the entire place would be flooded.

We saw that there was a dam nearby that should keep the water from rising too much if we were to find high ground. But because of the dangerous roads no one wanted to drive up the hills again so everyone decided to leave the cars and walk. The scenery changed a little bit at this point and the high ground we found was the location I grew up hunting with my family. There were trees all around. There was no electricity except for a car battery. It provided enough to charge cell phones and for dim lights in the shelter. It had about three rooms and several of us were in one bedroom taking a nap. When we woke up it was dark. With heavy thunder we figured the storm had knocked out the power. We stumbled around calling for the others before eventually flipping a switch and finding that we had power.

There was still light outside. I suggested a few of us walk back to the car and bring back some food because it had been a long time since we had last eaten. Everyone agreed and about three of us headed to the door. When we opened it there were headlights coming through the trees. "There shouldn't be people going through this area," we thought. We decided to grab a few rifles before investigating.

When we went outside the vehicles stopped. There about three four-wheelers. The riders told us that they were out riding when they were trapped by all of the rising water and were just searching for another way out that wasn't covered by roads. We told them what happened to us and that it was flooded all over the place. They told us they would give us a ride to the car and that they would try to cross the water with their four-wheelers.

We arrived to the cars and they stopped the four-wheelers. The water was only about 10 feet from where we had left the car before. So we moved it closer to the office. As we did that, the others tested the water on foot and realized it was far to deep to attempt driving through. We told them to come back with us and spend the night.

When we got back to the shack, some of our friends had told us that they had gotten through to some of their friends on the phone. There was no ferry but there were more storms coming the following afternoon. That meant the dam would probably break, flooding the rest of the park, including where we were staying. So it was back to planning. We came up with several ideas for rafts. The next morning we woke up early and began constructing a raft, using three trunks as pontoons. If it worked, we would hollow out the tops of several to put the cars on and float out. But for the meantime, we placed smaller tree limps across the two logs. Three or four people got on and tried to navigate. To our surprise the raft floated, but it was very unstable on the flowing water.

It wasn't long before they were thrown off. Lucky for them it was near a flat shore and they were able to make there way back out of the water and back to where we were. We knew that the raft idea failed and we only had about four hours left. We were running out of options and one suggestion was calling the national guard to use helicopters. "Great idea. Who has the number to the National Guard?" Of course no one did.

And at this point I don't remember a lot of details. The National Guard showed up as the dam was breaking. They had almost everyone in the helicopter, but I woke up as my head went under the rising water. Who knows what happened next.

Remembering Dreams

Usually if I remember having a dream I will eventually be able to remember at least part of the dream. However, I rarely remember dreaming at all. But is it just me or does it seem like the strangest dreams or the bad dreams are the ones that seem to stick the most?

I didn't sleep well last night. I had a hard time falling asleep because of a stopped-up nose. I woke up a time or two in the same situation, with difficulty breathing. And to top it off I had two dreams which I think were actually connected. They were both strange and bad, I guess.

These dreams mixed McGyver with Narnia, Lord of the Rings and some of my past. When I was seven to ten years old, my family and I frequented an area on the White River in Arkansas called Pepper's Eddy. This is where much of the dream occured. I don't remember exactly what I did, but I did something that had the White Witch from Narnia so upset she would stop at nothing to see me dead. She ordered medieval knights (as if from Lord of the Rings) to chase me down.

I had a sword and fought one or two off, but my fencing skills are level 0. So I ran. I threw chairs and tables in the way of the knights. (Why were there tables and chairs outside, I don't know.) I ran until I reached the river. Then came the part of MacGyver... There was a dock here and because I was trapped, I needed a boat. I walked  in to the water and left only my head above. I navigated to one of the furthest stalls. The knights followed except they stayed on the dock. When I saw I couldn't make it, I decided just to swim away. The knights took a boat, plucked me out of the water and carried me to the witch.

The witch and soldiers brought me back down to the river. Mode of death: drowning. "Any last requests," she asked me and I began stalling for as much time as possible thinking someone will come to my rescue. Someone always does. But that help never came; at least not on time. The witch held me under water. I pretended to drown. Then she drug me onto the shore to check and see. As she leaned down to check my pulse I jumped up and ran, grabbing a sword from one of the knights on my way. Once again they pursued in a chase, making the witch even more angry. Once again, after a few clashes of swords and broken chairs, the knights captured me and carried me back to the water where the witch waited.

This time she tied a heavy brick to each of my feet so that I would sink. She walked into the water and to a point I could no longer touch and let me go. Heres the real MacGyver part... Some how, someone had hidden a scuba tank under the water. I used it and was able to breathe. I walked under the water, carrying the bricks with me, until I was in the middle of the river, and then the current carried me. Once I felt I had gone far enough down stream, I began walking to the opposite shore. I came up out of the water and fell down on the sandbar in the sunlight. I managed to break the chains holding the bricks to me. And then I had to figure out how to get off the sandbar which was in the middle of nowhere. But I think I survived at least!

I think I have a basis for another short story. I just don't know how I would make it make sense.

Dream with some Spanish

Me fascinan los sueños. Qué es la causa? Podemos controlar las temas en que soñamos? Si pudiera entender la ciencia, creo que la neurología sea mi favorita. El cerebro es una cosa extraordinaria.

He hablado de soñando en otra idioma más que una vez. Anoche por la primera vez, estoy seguro hubo un poco de español en mi sueño. No sé el razón.  No estaba pensando en español; no estaba hablando en español ni estaba leyendo español.

De todos los lugares posibles, estaba en un bar. Acabo de regresar de Inglaterra y estaba tratando de explicar a la trabajadora que quería beber. Cada vez estaba hablando en Ingles. Ella me miraba con confusión. Yo estaba hablando ingles. Después de realizar, expliqué, "Lo siento, acabo de regresar de Inglaterra." Entonces me acosté. Pero por la primera vez hablé español en un sueno.  Guay!

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Dreams are fascinating. What causes them? Do we have any control over what we dream about? If I had the ability to do complicated science, I think neurology would have to be my branch. The brain is an amazing thing.

I had the discussion on more than one occasion about dreaming in another language. Last night I finally had my first dream that I am 100% sure had some Spanish in it. I wasn't thinking about Spanish before I went to bed and hadn't spoken a lot of Spanish or read a lot of Spanish before sleeping either. What caused it, I don't know, but hopefully there will be more to come.

Of all places it was set in a bar. I had just returned from England after being stranded for a few days. It was late in the evening and I was trying to explain to the bartender what I wanted to drink. I kept speaking in English and she kept giving me weird looks because she couldn't understand me. Eventually I realized what was happening and told her in Spanish that I was sorry and had just returned from England. Then I woke up. But for the first time there was Spanish coming form my mouth in a dream. Pretty cool!

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

The day started off normally. I was in my grandmother's house, next door to my dad's house, visiting my family. Then BOOM! Everything started getting weird. I heard the unusually loud boom and ran outside to the front porch to see what had happened. What I see is a plume of black smoke and some trees on fire across the road. I look up because I hear lot of engines humming in the air. When I looked up there were several dozen planes in the air engaged in a dog fight. They were flying very close to the ground and I saw the tail on a few with German markings. They were old planes from World War I.



Dreams intrigue me. Science doesn't come easy to me but if I were to study it, the brain would have to be the most interesting. Most of the time, I don't remember what I dream or even if i dream or not. I sometimes think it would be cool to control your dreams and often thought maybe the last thoughts before falling asleep were what you dreamed about. I tried to think about something to create a dream. It never worked.

Yesterday, I watched Night at the Museum with Asuka. It is possibly one of my favorite movies but this time I was pointing oddities out (living museum exhibits aside) such as how Larry, the new night guard, calls Cecil during the first night. The telephone was a corded phone, with an operator. That was obviously out of the time period. Cecil was at a party and just happened to be able to answer another wired telephone. Where were the cell phones? So there were some anachronisms there. Maybe that is what was going on in my dreams last night.

After seeing the German aircraft dropping bombs and engaging in aerial combat, ran to my dad's house. There had been no warning sirens. I hadn't heard anything about the threat of war. I had to go to my dad's house to see what was going on. Why were we under attack in the middle of Arkansas, of all places. Surely that information would be available on CNN, after-all it was huge news. But I never found out; I opened the door and woke up.

When I woke up I knew I had just had a weird dream and rolled over to go back to sleep. I had hoped to finish the dream but it didn't work. I don't remember if I had any dreams after that or not.  When I got up Sunday morning I still remembered having a dream. I knew it was a weird one. But I could not think of what it was. Then my memory was triggered a few hours later when I was going to CNN in real-life. It is funny how memories are triggered.

There are many places one can go to "interpret dreams." It is said that they are actually suppressed emotions displaying themselves in our subconscious mind.  So what are some of the things this could mean for me? I took a few guesses before looking at one interpretation website. My thoughts were that maybe I was at war with something in my life-- an idea or something. Maybe in my case Spain. Another possibility was that I was living something that was not in its time.

Here is what Dream Moods had to say:

War
To dream of a war, signifies disorder and chaos in your waking life You are experiencing some internal conflict or emotional struggle which is tearing you up inside. Alternatively, the dream indicates that you are either being overly aggressive or that you are not being assertive enough. Perhaps you need to be prepared to put up a fight in some area of your life. On a more direct level, the dream may be reflection of current wars around the world and your personal feelings about it.

Bomb
To see a bomb in your dream, indicates that you are going through a potentially explosive situation in your waking life. The bomb could represent repressed desires and unexpressed emotions that are on the verge of exploding or bursting if not dealt with soon. 

There were relatively few things in this dream to even look up. But those were the two I could think of. Terms such as "anachronism," "war plane," and such did not turn up any results. The whole concept is interesting.

How what we call dreams work may forever elude me but will probably never cease to interest me.

Sueños Malos

La mayoría del tiempo no recuerda mis sueños. Anoche recordé mi sueño. Estuve en una lancha en un lago. La lancha sin un motor. Cuando me da cuenta de eso hecho, la cuerda ya ha seperado del muelle. Caminé al frente de la lancha para buscar una paleta. Cuando llego al frente, me caí a la agua. Escalie en la lancha de nuevo y este vez, la lancha se me volcó.

No importa que hice, no pude sobrevivir la experiencia.  

So, most of you don't understand this blog. That is OK. The main point was to practice my spanish a little bit. I do not use it a whole lot and it has become a lot more difficult for me to read, write and understand Spanish. The words I should remember, I no longer remember. I have to look a lot of words up. I will try to practice more in Spanish. I may begin writing some blogs in both English and Spanish, or some in just Spanish with a quick comment in English. This blog was about a bad dream I had last night.

If you ever want to know the basics of what I am saying you can use google translate and word reference.

Water

As most probably know, there are a lot of problems with too much water in the Midwest and South right now in the United States. A lot of flash flooding in late April and early May has meant breached levees and wide-open spillways trying to save larger towns. As I drive between Little Rock and Jonesboro, I can still see the white river, far out of its banks.

I had a recent dream about water. But it wasn't the flooding. It was a nice spring day. It was one of those days only seen a week or two out of every year in Arkansas. The temperature was perfect, the sky was blue with scattered white clouds. I was out riding my bike.

I do not know where I was exactly. The setting was a lot like a park in Jonesboro, but that wasn't it. The paved road was much closer to the water than that. Wherever it was, there was a small lake where pedestrians, cyclists and motorists could travel around the lake, not a hundred feet from the shore. It wasn't flooded. In fact, it was just the opposite.

There were a few puddles in the road. It had evidently rained recently. But as I road my bike around the lake, I looked out over a lot of mud. The lake wasn't nearly as big as it should be. I realized that the water was far below its normal levels. There was some water but it was quickly drying up. Soon there would be no water at all.

So what does this dream mean? I don't really know. Many places in the world do not have access to clean water. Some places in the world have more water than others, even in the United States. Even in the United States there is a redistribution of water. So what did the dream mean? Who knows. Maybe I will look into the water issue a little more.

Nightmare

As I posted a few days ago, I don't usually remember most of my dreams. But lately I have been remembering more and they seem to have to do with going to Spain in September.

The first dream was a good one. The second one, however, was very strange and not so great. Last night I had a dream about having a bad dream.

I was in the airport, waiting on my first flight. The timetables said the flight would be boarding at 7:15a.m. It was 7a.m. and the airline still hadn't checked our bags or printed tickets for any of my group. We finally went to them at about 7:10 and asked. They apologized and opened the line. But it was too late. There was no airplane.

For some reason we began walking down some railroad tracks in the dark, in the woods toward the destination of the flight we had missed. After a few hours we ran into a train. It stopped and we were asked some questions. It turns out there was some pandemic disease and they had to test us for it. We all had to get on the train-- one section of quarantine and the other section of healthy people. The way they could tell was our speech. If it was normal we were fine. If it was gibberish the person had the disease. One person in our group failed and was separated.

The train dropped those of us who were healthy back at the airport. At this point we became annoyed. We got in a car and sped to a gas station. I tore open a map inside and started pointing and asked the gas station attendant where the closest airport was other than the one in the city. I noted we had tickets for a certain flight and had to get there before it left.

At this point I woke up. I have heard that the crazier a dream is, the deeper the sleep a person is in. If that is true I must have been sleeping really well last night and I woke up this morning surprisingly well rested! But why all these weird dreams lately? 

Dreams

I don't often remember my dreams. I won't say I don't have them, but I either forget what they were about or I don't even remember dreaming. Sometimes its sad. But I guess it makes the ones I remember even more special. There are parts of the one I had last night I don't remember exactly. There are parts that make no sense at all. But it was interesting. I know the setting was Spain. I think it was in Eastern Spain, somewhere close to portugal. I also know the region was hilly, and for some reason a lot of people knew English. Here is a little bit of the dream. It kind of sounds like it could be the beginning of a story. Maybe I will have time to write after I graduate in May; I have several stories I would like to finish and maybe finally write a decent book. Feel free to comment after you read it.
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The landscape was green with rolling hills. The hotel was comprised of three small, rectangular buildings, all at different elevations on the hill. The buildings looked nice, but old. I couldn’t believe I was finally standing there, and my nerves were standing on end. I was about to check into the hotel in Spain.

“Where do I check in,” I thought to myself, as I walked up toward the first building. I entered and went to the front desk; it was empty. I walked out the back of the building, up to the second and after finding no one at the second continued on up to the third and final building. There was a porch area with screen, and a man sitting inside. I opened the door to find myself behind the counter and he motioned for me to go around, so I did.

“Do you have any rooms,” I asked the man, not thinking about the language I was speaking. He told me he had several rooms and asked me what I would like. He told me the price and I asked, “If I pay for the entire month, can I get a refund if I need to leave earlier? I will be getting an apartment as soon as I know where my job is.” He said I could and so he gave me a key and told me I would be in the first building.

I took a small bag that I had with me and walked toward building one. I used the key to enter the building and found my room. I left my bag and looked around a little. There was a large bed at the far end of the room. A long cabinet ran the length of the wall until a closet at the other end of the room. An ironing board was folded down out of the wall; it appeared as though it could collapse at any time.

“I’m going to be here for a while, I better get to know the area,” I thought. I should go back up to the office and so I left my room. As I was headed to the exit I noticed that another patron’s room was open and decided I had better not leave until I knew they were around and no one could enter the building again. I didn’t think anything of it. Then a dog came from the open room and greeted me. A few minutes later I was out of the building and at the office.

I went in and asked the manager what there was to see in the area and where the market was. Again I thought maybe I should be speaking in Spanish. His English was slow, but it was clear and made sense. I might insult him if I just switched to speaking Spanish.

Later I found myself in a truck, driving around the area. I was the passenger and the driver was driving like a madman. He went up hills and around the curves at fast speeds. “Slow down! It felt like you just about flipped us over the edge of that cliff,” I told him one time, to which he responded, “I know, I thought we were goners!”