Couple nights ago I dreamed I was training in Afghanistan for military intelligence. I was with the others in a sizable hall, where I was given handwritten instructions. However, the lights were off and the light coming in from the window on a cloudy day wasn't enough for me to easily read by. I was told not to take the instructions anywhere, and when I tried to take them outside for better light, my instructor stopped me and said I had to read and destroy them there. I eventually did, though I don't remember what they said.
Later I was outside with the others, and we had changed from uniforms to plain clothes. We were standing near a building, which I was facing. Behind me and to my right I was aware of someone's approach. A couple of my colleagues to my left recognized him as a colonel they knew, so they saluted him; I played it cool, knowing this was a bad move, as the colonel then reminded them. Apparently that was all part of the training.
Then I was given some printed instructions, and I went back into the building where I was training previously, which was now being used as a mess hall. Some salad dressing was spilled on a table, and someone asked how I could tell how many oils it contained. I said that would be difficult without sampling it for lab analysis, but my friend Bob Blumetti was there and said it was easy. He threw a piece of paper over the spill and it self-chromatographed, resolving into about 10 brightly colored components.
I had the option of a transfer back to the USA, but had to think that over seriously since I didn't know what assignment I'd get and I'd lose whatever advancement I had already in Army Intel.
As I awoke, I was a bit miffed by the fact that in waking life I'm a biochemist, yet in the dream my non-scientist friend was showing me how to easily do chromatography. When I told my housemate, also named Bob, that I didn't understand what chromatography was doing in such a setting of intrigue, he reminded me that such skills might be valuable in intel in cases of possible poisoning.
Last night I dreamed I was living in a larger house in the middle of a yard that was a small pitch-and-putt golf course, and I had to cut the grass for it. I was doing that, but then had to go into the house, where I newly received our club's football schedule, handwritten. (Lots of handwritten notes coming up in my dreams, it seems.) Then I was visited by some strangers -- one woman, one man -- and felt ashamed at how messy the house was. It was communicated to me somehow -- possibly by my housemate; the visitors were silent -- that they wanted a copy of the football schedule, but I had to tell them it wasn't printed yet but they could hand copy it off mine. I went and got them paper and a clipboard. They left afterward, seemed very snooty, especially since they didn't say a word.
Then I went back outside and someone involved had decided the grass was too hard to maintain, and turned the yard, except for a few scattered bushes, into a two-level sand trap. There was a natural limestone wall, about 5 feet high, with a stairway cut into it that one level was at the top of.
