It isn't often that I go to sleep at night and dream of the very next morning; and it's very confusing when I do.

I went to sleep last night and immediately dreamed that I was waking up this morning, and since I hadn't been feeling 100% when I'd gone to bed, I felt even worse in the dream and decided that I'd go in to work, do the one or two things I'd absolutely promised to get done, and then declare myself ill and go back home to bed.

Unfortunately, this simple plan was rather complicated by me being in a confusing dream world involving Reanimator-style zombies, a rain of fire, and (brilliantly) a nation-wide initiative to provide public computer rooms attached to all major car parks. Not sure where that last one came from, but it seemed like a fantastic idea :-) And the rain of fire had spectacular visual effects too: it occurred when lightning struck a huge tree nearby and pieces of burning tree exploded outwards in all directions and fell to the ground, some burning normally but some flaring white like magnesium. Most impressive; I wish I'd dreamed my camera.

Also I did intentional magic, which was kind of cool. By 7:30ish I was beginning to wander towards wakefulness and had realised I was in a dream, but for some reason I knew I couldn't wake up until I'd found my shoes, which I'd left at the far end of a very large and muddy field in the pitch dark (where I'd been standing to watch the rain of fire, I think). So I figured, hey, since this is a dream why can't I just alter reality by force of will? I've tried that before in dreams and it doesn't usually work; this time I had a sudden insight that the laws of physics had to basically hold while I was watching – so I stuck out my hand, sent out a mental summons, and looked away. Moments later, my shoes floated into my hand as I'd hoped, and I woke up feeling very smug indeed.

In the real version of this morning I don't feel nearly as bad as I did in the dream version, so I'll probably stay at work now I'm here…

In non-dreaming news, one of my fingers has been itching vigorously since yesterday. My best guess is that I dipped it in some irritant chemical, but no plausible recent incident springs to mind. Bah.