Entry: 90
11 January 2005

I'm running up a sidewalk with a lot of other runners. I don't get tired for quite awhile, but eventually I start to drag. Fortunately there is a crowd of people holding out cups of water for us at a turn in the course. My throat is really dry and I apprieciate the sip of water I get. I want more water, but dad gives me a piece of garlic bread instead. This will make my mouth dry out even more, but I do need the carbs.

I turn the corner with the other runners and we cross the street. As we run alongside various buildings, I try to eat the garlic bread as fast as I can because holding it in one hand interfers with my running, but eating it takes awhile especially since it throws me off rhythm every time I take a bite.

I see my cousins Grant, Curtis, and Adam as well as my brothers Brent and Steve enter a department store up ahead. I wonder if that's the right way since I see other runners I recognize going up a flight of stairs into a different building, but I follow my cousins. The store has many bright and shiny dresses on display, many with different colored sequins, and we nearly collide with several shoppers as we dash through the store. After a short while, my cousins realize this is the wrong way and turn around. I turn around before they do putting me ahead of them.

As we exit the department store there is a woman who wants to kiss each of us. She kisses my cousins, but when she turns to me, I hold up my half-eaten garlic bread to indicate that my breath is too foul for her to kiss me. I then run up the stairs I saw the other runners going up earlier. It leads inside a building full of steps. I see a couple runners exit out a door that leads to a patio. They're cheating by taking a short cut and don't want anybody to notice them.

I follow other runners to a room where the steps resemble bleachers and start to dash down them, but then I make myself slow up when I notice the bleachers are in disrepair and there are many poles and twisted pieces of metal sticking up that I could step on. I notice my brother Brent is ahead of me at this point. After I sucessfully navigate the rest of the steps, I find myself back outside.

I see my mom and ask her if this is the right way, since running through a building doesn't seem like it should be part of the course. She tells me I'm going the right way and points me in the direction the rest of the runners have gone. I have been dragging up to this point, but now I get my second wind, especially because I'm now running downhill and in the shade.

I then get to the merchandising section where runners are waiting in long lines to buy t-shirts and other memorabilia of the marathon. The race isn't over yet, so many of the runners are impatient to make their purchases and get back to the race. I don't care about buying a souvenior, but I do need to go to the bathroom and this would be a perfect time to do it since all the other runners are being held up.

The merchandising section resembles an outdoor mall and I soon find prominent signs pointing the way to the restrooms. The tradional male and female stick figures representing restrooms are laying down instead of standing up straight and they are both colored pink for some reason. I follow the arrows to the next sign where the male stick figure is pointing one way and the female stick figure is pointing in an entirely different direction. Since the stick figures are lying down and are both pink it's hard to tell which is the men's and which the women's, but I soon figure it out and follow the arrow to the men's room.

I follow the arrow on the sign through a store with a slick floor. I slide across the floor an improbable distance, steering myself around corners and past the cashiers, who are both scruffy men in their middle age wearing baseball caps. This must be a hardware or hunting store. I thought the restroom would be in the store, but the sign points me to a bar across the street. There, I finally find the restroom and am able to go to the bathroom.

Entry: 91
16 January 2005

I'm driving down a road when I get really thirsty, so I pull over to a convenience store. The inside of the store resembles the ski lodge at Brighton. It's after hours, so the deli is closed. There are some vending machines, but I don't want to resort to those unless I have to. There's several people milling about including an old lady who doesn't seem to be all there. When she speaks to me, I answer her politely, then move on.

I then find an old fashioned RC Cola machine which makes your soda for you while you wait. It's extremely large and has only two flavors to choose from. I find that the owners have replaced the RC Cola with Sprite. I put a dollar into the machine. The thing comes to life, making the sound of a bottle being filled up with soda. A message appears in red lights which says I have to put another dollar in to watch my drink get made. I know I won't get the drink unless I put in another dollar. While I'm trying to get another dollar from my wallet, the red lights begin a count down. It gets to zero before I put another dollar in, and I don't get my drink. The machine does return my first dollar though. I wonder briefly what happens to a drink when it gets made, but isn't fully paid for.

This time, I'm ready with both dollars and feed them in one right after the other, not waiting for the message. I notice one of my dollars is a fake since it has a picture of Joe Scarborough on it and it's thinner than a regular dollar, but the machine accepts it anyway. This time a cover lifts up and I can watch the old fasioned bottle get filled up with Sprite. The bottle is upside down with the bottle cap at the bottom. I watch through a tiny window as the neck of the bottle is filled with soda. I start wondering to myself where I'm going to find a bottle opener.

Then, the old lady pulls out a gun and holds it to a guy's head. She announces that nobody can leave and begins locking the doors and windows. She does allow me to leave, however, because I was nice to her earlier. I mouth the words, "I'll get help," to the hostages as I'm leaving through the front doors.

I'm about to dial 911, but then wonder if the gun was real, so I look back in the store and the gun does appear to be real. The old lady is still holding it to the guy's head. It's unclear what, if anything, she wants. I decide not to call for help until I'm in my car, so the old lady won't see what I'm doing through the windows. I dial the numbers on my cell phone while I'm driving away, but I must have dialed 411 by mistake or held down the 3 for too long, because I get my parent's house instead. My brother Brent answers the phone, and knows immediately that's it's me by the caller ID. "Hey, what's up? Haven't talked to you in awhile," he says.

I tell him I'll call him back later and dial 911. I know the first thing they'll want is an address, so I look around to see where I am. Then I notice that there's a police station next to the convenience store. In fact, they share a wall. I tell the 911 dispatcher this, as I pull into the parking lot and rush inside the police station.

I see a familiar looking man sitting in the waiting room. I start to tell him about the robbery, then realize he looks familiar because he's a local television anchor. I don't think I should tell the media before I tell the police, so I shut up and look for a detective. I see him in his office having an involved conversation with another man. I don't want to interupt them, so I wait outside his office for awhile.

I then think the news anchor might already know what's going on, so I ask him, "Anyone report the robbery next door?" He doesn't know, and urgently asks the detectives. I tell them that "An old lady with Alzheimer's is holding people hostage at Smith's."

I'm then in a different room sitting down at a big table. There are alot of people here. They are wearing regular clothes, but seem to be associated with the police department. In front of me on the table is a pile of twenty dollar bills with slips of paper stapled to them, as well as green slips from work I filled out with papers stapled to them. I received this pile of money and papers in the mail from my bank. It's all my financial information, perhaps meant to help me with my taxes. As I'm about to pick the pile up, a brunette woman who was standing behind me comes up and puts her hands on the money, as if she's about to steal it, but she just brushes her hands enviously over the money before walking away. I still wonder if she maybe palmed a couple twenties.

I'm walking around outside the police station when I get a call on my second cell phone (I've still got 911 dispatch waiting silently for developments on my first cell). The caller ID says the call is coming from "Nesbit" and I think it must be my old friend from grade school, Nathan Miller, although I don't know why I'd have his number on my phone. I answer the call, and it turns out it's my cousin Curtis, calling from work. I tell him I'll call him back.

I go inside the police station and ask the detective how they're coming along with the robbery at Smith's. "Oh, we thought it was a private residence." The cops are obviously in no hurry to resolve this situation. Finally, the cops and a large crowd of onlookers go next door to the Smith's. There is a large television screen covering one side of the building. There is a news reporter talking about a terrible tragedy that has just occured. The camera shows a pool of blood on the floor and gradually pans up past walls with large chunks missing to the ceiling where the grating over the ceiling lights has been blown away by a shotgun.

The 911 dispatcher asks me, "Is the floor wet?"

Even though I just saw the blood, I ask the head detective, Chris Seibert, who used to be my boss at work, if the floor is wet. Slightly annoyed, he says, "I only see what's on the screen."

I tell the dispatcher that the floor is wet. Then I realize what's on the screen is a report from Elko. I'm not sure if the city is in Utah or Nevada, but I know it's unrelated to the Smith's robbery. I tell the dispatcher, "Wait, it's in Elko... City."

I keep asking the cop if the Smith's situation is alright. I finally find out that nothing happened.

Entry: 92
6 March 2005

The poet Barbara DeCesare is showing me around Harrisburg Pennsylvania. As we are leaving a club, I notice some flashing lights in Christian Thiede's backyard. Barbara takes me back there and I see that there is a modified backhoe with claw arms attached to make it look like a scorpian. There are also many flashing red and blue lights covering it. I am told that this is a time machine, but it can only go forward in time up to seven years.

I get too close to it and it grabs me with its claws and holds me in the seat. While this is happening, I spit out a nasty piece of chicken fat into my hand. Then the machine and I disappear. I reappear with it the next day. The first thing I do is put the chicken fat in a garbage can so I'm not holding it in my hand anymore. No time has passed from my point of view, but now it's suddenly day instead of night and several hours have passed for everybody else. The poet Snow is in the backyard with Christian at this point.

At some point, Christian turns into my friend Scott VanderSteen. I go into his house. I have many questions about the time machine such as, if you can go into the future, why can't you go into the past, but he and his wife drop polite hints that I've overstayed my welcome, so I tell them I have to go. As I'm about to step out the door, he says, "Wait, you have to tell me where you live now." Since I've recently moved. I say I'll write down my phone number and address for him.

Then he says, "Everybody was saying you were gay," (because they hadn't seen me in awhile) "but I didn't care."

Then I say, "If I were gay, I wouldn't care either."

Entry: 93
23 June 2005

I'm shopping at a grocery store. Four Asian men, possibly brothers, all work there and they're waiting for me to finish shopping so they can close. I don't hurry though. I make sure I've got everything I need to buy before I leave.

Then, I'm playing with my cat Geiger. She starts biting me. I let her bite me because I trust her. I see that's she trying to dig a bee stinger out of my finger with her teeth. I can feel her biting, but don't mind. I know that if I tried to pull the bee stinger out with my fingers, I'd just push it in more, but her teeth are sharp and narrow and she does get the stinger out.

I wake up in a cabin, realizing the part with Geiger was a dream since she died years ago. I check my fingertips in case the dream was a warning and sure enough, there's a bee stinger in my left index finger. I use my fingernail to push it out. I feel it slide out of me. The stinger is about half an inch long and curves like a comma. Now that it's out, my fingertip is nearly severed. In fact, I read on a website that you can sever your finger when you pull a bee stinger out.

I get in my car. The four Asian men follow after me in their car. I am driving very badly because I'm trying not to use my left hand. When I get to the main road, I turn right. The Asians are turning left. I was going to do a U turn, but instead I immediately pull over onto the shoulder because it's too hard for me to drive like this. The Asians turn around and park behind me.

They walk up to my car and open the driver's side door. They're laughing at me and act like they're going to take advantage of me. One of them asks for my keys, which I hand over. He then presses one of them into a bar of soap to make a mold of it. I don't care because the key he made a mold of either goes to the mailbox or Pat's cabin so I know he can't steal anything important from me. Then, I realize they could vandalize Pat's cabin and think I should be mad at them. Then, they're suddenly nice and care about my well being. One says, "Watch out your finger doesn't get severed." Another says, "Sorry, we don't have any bandaids on us, but we have some back at the store." I realize they're nice guys after all and weren't really going to take advantage of me.

They leave and I do a U turn to go back to the grocery store, which is located in the woods near a bunch of cabins. When I turn around, I get disoriented and don't know which side of the road I'm supposed to drive on. When I drive on the right side, cars come at me head on, so I switch to the left side, but cars come at me head on there too. There is a computer screen above me telling me to yield to each group of cars for different reasons. After the first two groups of cars, a firetruck with its siren on comes towards me. The computer screen tells me "Yield - Firetruck" and I get out of its way. I then turn and go back to the grocery store, though I don't know why I'm going there.

When I go back in the store, one of the Asians says, "Darrell's still shopping" and I realize they were supposed to close the shop a long time ago, but customers keep on pouring in. They're annoyed at me for taking this long to shop. I'm about to tell them I've already finished my shopping when they remember I need a bandaid. One of them says he'll get me a bandaid from his room and leaves, expecting me to follow him. Another says he's got a bandaid in the cash register, which is closer, so I follow him.

Entry: 94
8 October 2005

It was Columbus Day, which is a banking holiday, so there wasn't much for me to do at work, but there was still a training session I had to conduct, so I showed up to work late. As I was walking down the street I got distracted by a large burned out area where a large building used to be. There was now nothing but ash and soot. I didn't know where I was, but looking around at the rest of the area, I realized I was at my office building.

I frantically asked a guard if this was the American Express building and he said it was. I wondered if anybody had died, but I didn't want to seem ghoulish, so I asked him if I would be dead if I was in there when it exploded and he said I would be. I was devastated as I thought about all the people who had just died, and I couldn't help thinking that if I had showed up to work on time, I'd be dead too.

The AmEx building was rebuilt very quickly and those of us still alive soon got back to work. The building was very similar to the way it used to be, but also very different. In some ways, the new building was an improvement over the old one, but in other ways it wasn't as good.

I then hear a critic talk about how the characters in the show have puzzling ways of going to the bathroom. Then I watch a scene where a guy is peeing into a toilet. He is peeing for quite awhile because he really needs to go. Then somebody knocks on the door and he stops. He lets another guy into the bathroom and tells him to go ahead, but the other guy can tell the first guy still has to go. So, the second guy suggests a sword fight. They then both pee into the toilet at the same time, treating their urine streams like swords clashing against each other.

I'm then watching the news. A reporter is standing in front of a town near New Orleans which is completely submerged by water. He tells everybody this town is called Springfield and it's where Simpson’s creator Matt Groening grew up and based his fictional town on. The town is now completely underwater.

Jerry Seinfeld and his friend Elaine are exploring the sunken city, which looks like the American Express building from before. Jerry cracks jokes about some of the things he finds in people's refrigerators. They then impulsively decide to go surfing, but when they get to the lake, there aren't any big waves. Jerry doesn't seem to mind, though. He just paddles around on his board having fun while Elaine sits on her board looking bored. When a somewhat big wave does finally come, Jerry takes Elaine's board from her and performs an impressive looking maneuver on the wave. Elaine gets mad at Jerry for stealing her board anytime there's a big wave.

Then I'm walking down the street with Pat. We are just walking, but we are going as fast as the cars that are driving. I notice we're on 7th East. I want to turn left at State, so I start to move over towards the left hand turn lane. Pat and I each take up our own lane. It's not necessarily that we're as big as cars, but rather, we're walking around a miniaturized version of the city.

As we get close to State, which doesn't take more than a few steps, Pat says he wants a shake and starts walking toward a milkshake shop. I wanted to turn at State because it seemed kind of important that I did, but I go along with him instead. As we walk into an alley, I tell him about the dream I had of Springfield being near New Orleans and how it burned down. We walk down some stairs and there's a large flat screen HDTV cemented in against the wall, placed there by the city as if it were a park bench.

When I tell Pat that Homer, Marge, and all of them were incinerated, he seems sad. I tell him all the characters were burned, but he only cares about the Simpson family because they're the only ones who cared about each other. We get to where Pat expects the milkshake shop to be, but it's not there. I know that it's just another block west, but I don't tell him. We then turn south and walk through a kind of alleyway with raspberry bushes growing everywhere. I almost pick a raspberry and eat it, but their color and shape is a little bit off, so I don't.

I try to tell Pat the next part of the dream where Fry and Lela from Futurama investigate the sunken city of Springfield, but he gets distracted by the raspberries.

Entry: 95
6 December 2005

I'm stopped at a light at the intersection of 350 E and Ft. Union. Jeremy walks up to my convertible, says something to me, then walks away. I jump out to chase him as a joke, but he's too fast for me and I'm not able to catch up to him. I run back to my car and jump in as the lights turn green.

I drive up Fort Union into Big Cottonwood Canyon. I have to pick up my car to walk up the steep part. One of the security guards from work sees me, but she thinks it's okay for me to be there. Jeremy is following me up the canyon. My car becomes a bike.

I'm waiting in line to cross the bridge. I find the water level is too high, but as I watch it, it goes down. There's a kid drowning in the water, so I take off my shoes and jump in, getting all my clothes wet. I lift the child out of the water and hand him to some people standing by. I get out of the water, thinking that my part of the rescue is done.

"Is three minutes time to give up?" one of them asks. I tell them to keep giving the heimlich manouver and CPR. Then I notice that they still have his head underwater! When they get him out he opens an eye, then closes it. They give him the hiemlich and he wakes up.

Somebody says there are sharks in the water. I don't believe them, but when I look into the lake, I see some sharks start to appear. They swim towards me closer and closer until they swim onto the land and turn into different kinds of monsters.

Everybody is afraid and runs away, but instead of chasing us, the monsters just start to clean up the mess we've made, picking up wrappers and cigarette butts.

I'm floating around the cavern area around the lake without my feet touching the ground when a guy asks me for a cigarette. I tell him, "I don't usually smoke, but I could use one now." I go around and ask other people for cigarettes. One guy gives me his last one.

"Oh, but I needed two," I say. Another guy standing close by gives me one when he hears this. I bring it back to the guy who originally asked me for one. The two of us and some other people go off into an outdoor area and smoke. At this point, I'm Fraser from the television series. The filter comes off my cigarette and I stick it back in. It's much harsher to smoke with the filter loose like this, but I choke the cigarette down quickly with much coughing.

I go upstairs four stories. The "monsters" are still cleaning. One of them says, "We'll have it cleaned in record time." I realize they do this periodically.