Here we find another pair of [remembered] dreams segmented by a wake-time. Actually this one is rather strange that way. I woke up at what I thought was a knocking on our door at around 6:25; I actually got up to investigate it for what-the-heck value after deliberating for a bit about whether or not someone would actually be knocking at our door at that hour. Of course, nobody was there, and I went back to bed (yes, even though it was the appointed time for waking). Five minutes later at 6:30 the alarm went off and I didn't rise to get it. Josh turned it off then. Before this, and after, were two dreams.
In the first dream, my friend who lives across the hall and I were living together (I think I was living at his parents' place with him, but perhaps it was the other way around) in Hawaii or California or some other sunny happy place. He got a new red convertible for some reason (birthday, maybe) and we were driving it. The car was rather weird; its steering wheel and gas pedal were in the front on the left, like any other normal car, but its brakes, and an additional steering wheel for the back tires, were controlled by the right rear passenger. This is where I sat. Of course, it was difficult getting used to, but it was rather fun -- particularly for the sheer reason that we were driving a new shiny red convertible.
He had sisters, or something, and a little brother -- I think their ages could be fairly well approximated by my own siblings in about five years -- and we had to pick them up somewhere or drop them off or some such thing. Ah, yes; I remember now: there was a movie theater involved. I don't think this was our purpose when we set out (it was school, I think), but the plot changed as dreams do and we were taking them to a movie theater. Ah, yes; it was not two sisters; it was one sister and her friend (perhaps this changed, too, or perhaps my memory is just insufficient). Anyway, we were to take them to wherever it was. As we drove away from the house, I remember surprising my friend with a bit harder brake than he was expecting, and it caused us to spin out of the driveway in a 270 (as opposed to a boring little turn). He liked it, and the next turn (from the small residential street to one of its feeder streets) was even better (as one would expect when both drivers are participating). The girls were impressed. Later on (I'm unsure about the timeline, here) they tried to drive a little and were pretty awful at it.
His brother we picked up on the freeway; he was traveling on foot and when we drove past him we offered him a ride. We sort of slowed down to a pace he could run to keep up with (and, just barely, surpass) and he jumped on board.
Somewhere around here the dream gives way to that knocking incident. After hitting bed, I had about an hour more to dream about…. my grandfather and a job hunt.
My roommate was in this one. I was looking for jobs, and was going through books and other media looking for ideas. I kept everything that looked interesting, including a news article about a company funding some conservation project on the Missouri River (well, it was the location of the Missouri River, but I think it was called something else in the dream) and some old play that I figured would be fun to work on. I presented my considerations to one of my professors, and he was a bit surprised at my interest in a liquor-transport company. Apparently the Missouri River company was a river shipping company that specialized in alcoholic beverages (mostly beer, I think). Oh, well, on that one, it still caught my interest; the alcoholic matter was just sort of a side quirk.
Also, the company I worked for several summers ago set up a location just to the west of the LeTourneau campus, and my roommate started working there as one of the data entry clerks. I was somewhat interested in an IT job with the company, and so went to him to ask about it. When I arrived he was on a break, and I used his computer to search the company documents for a specific word; I don't remember what it was now, but it was critical to the job I was looking for (or, at least, the position someone had hinted to me that the company needed). After browsing the papers at the front desk, I left.
My grandfather was visiting the house we just moved out of, and he was there, smoking his pipe and looking at some maps. I showed him my job search paraphernalia and he looked them over one job at a time -- much as my professor had. After a while he began tracing marks in the map (which had become some sort of large, uniformly colored piece of paper) with his cigar (this is what his pipe had become); I found these marks sort of attractive-looking. The way they singed the paper without actually burning through was appealing, and quite handsome. After I had gone through my job stuff (or, at least, all the promising stuff -- I hadn't gotten to the detached or "loose end" stuff) my mother came down, and asked him some questions about something -- I don't remember what. Here he slowed his cigar, and the paper began to burn -- this I found distinctly ugly.