Jurassic Park Family Fun

I had another installment in a long line of Jurassic Park-related dreams that goes back many years last night. These dreams tend to be frightening, but I always really enjoy them anyway because let's face it- dinosaurs are just freaking awesome, even as they try to eat you, lol.

There have been many variations, from random extra sequals to ones that were set up like a video game, in which I would die and find myself back a level and have to figure out the tricks to get past a repeat of what had just killed me. I even had a recurring Jurassic Park video game dream that stayed consistent for the year or two that I was working my way through the levels of it, which I eventually won in the end by beating the velociraptors to a reactor thing, which I then set to explode, escaped to a helicoptor on the roof and then flew off the island. But I digress.

Last night I was in Jurassic Park 3, which yes I have actually seen multiple times. It started off the same, with the hang gliders crashing on the island and one of them getting eaten and all that, only it was me, both parents and my grandmother that were going in to rescue them. Instead of a plane we drove over a (really long) bridge to get there. We discovered the nasty mostly-eaten guy (thanks Hollywood, I really appreciated that inspiration there), but then it went off on its own storyline, in which our rescue party was exploring and trying to figure out what had gone wrong at the facility. We forgot all about the hang-gliding thing, and instead were poking around inside this information museum/lab room trying to learn more. One of those not-yet-a-dinosaur Triassic period squatty animals came in and we got up on the furniture so he couldn't get at us. This isn't so bad, I was thinking. There's no way this one is going to eat anybody.

While we were up on the tables a velocirator showed up, like the movie version, not a real-life smaller one. And I was like, oh crap, because velociraptors are smart and fast and agile and full of I'm-eating-you-now win. My family members weren't too concerned, and I quickly realized that the velociraptor was putting up an illusion that it was human so we wouldn't realize what it really was until it was too late. This is a little difficult to explain if you haven't seen the anime Wolf's Rain, which my brain basically stole it from. In Wolf's Rain the main characters are actually wolves, but they have a magical ability to put up an illusion so that humans look at them and see humans instead of wolves. So this velociraptor apparently had this ability, and looked like a teenage girl, but I could totally tell what she really was by the way she was moving. She was holding her hands up next to her chest and leaning forward and walking on the balls of her feet. She also didn't blink at all and held her eyes open really wide like a dinosaur would. It was very creepy, because she also had this dino-esque fixed wide grin. She came up behind my grandmother and put her long hands on her shoulders. I managed to signal everyone without her noticing and when she had wandered around to the other side of the room, we all jumped up and grabbed onto the warehouse-like metal beams in the ceiling and got high enough that she couldn't reach. We stayed up there a long time after she finally gave up and left, too afraid to come down.

After that we found about 30 people trapped in a big room who apparently needed rescuing. We freed them, and then kept all getting split up, but luckily I had a handheld person sensor thing (like in Stargate Atlantis) on my iphone (there's an interesting app for you, haha) that even had everyone's name next to where they were on a map, so we started trying to round everyone up. I was getting frustrated at this task, and increasingly worried about dinosaurs eating us before we could escape with everyone, but then I woke up.

In my personal opinion, it was a little light on the dinosaur action, but I think the Wolf's Rain inspired velociraptor girl is awesome enough to make up for it. I drew her today in my class during a break and I think she just might make my character list. If I have the energy I'm definitely going to draw and color a nicer reference for her, and I'll be thinking about a name.

I actually felt pretty good today. I definitely think the lower dose is helping. It also helped that my class had a long break in the middle of it so I had a chance to rest between my midterm and learning new material. I also got to spend quality time with my dog and went to dinner with my mom, who I haven't seen much of for a couple of weeks. So all in all I couldn't ask for a better day.