I have noticed im dreaming many ways. The usual way is me just realizing it from nothing. It may sound strange, but crazy stuff can be happening, then as im walking and nothing unusal is going on, I just realize “hey im dreaming”. When I first started having LDs, I’d feel a kick in the face, a shock.
usually i don’t need to do RCs to recognise i’m dreaming, i just suddenly get hit by the feeling that i’m dreaming. one cool thing though, is i’ve anchored lucid dreaming on the way to my work, i walk there every day and thats almost like a ‘lucid area’ for me. So EVERY single time in a dream when i go near the area, i get hit by the spontaneous feeling of an LD and there hasn’t been one time where i haven’t become lucid around that area, which rocks 
I also have such “dreaming areas”, one is a street not far away from me, but normally when I am there, I’m going by bike.
If I’m going by foot my bicycle is broken – or I’m dreaming.
I had some very cool lucid dreams in that area. Don’t know why it’s especially THAT place. But it could have something to do with this: First time I walked this way by foot (because my bike was broken) I realized a lot of details and thought “Hey, when I’m rushing through this on my bike and concentrate on cycling, I miss all these tiny details…” Before this event I never had a lucid dream or even a normal dream I could remember in this area.
I usually become lucid by seeing most of my RL friends. 
But most of the time, its usually first something strange happening (in my last LD, it was me running after Ronald McDonald while he was on a motorcycle, screaming “I want to go to McDonalds too, wait for me!!!” 
) then I just blurt out “Hah, just a dream” and then I get jiggy with the lucidness! 
I know how ledgem feels. My dream scenarios are usually totally off the map of normality or even reality. Driving cars at water, defending my home from broom attacks, visiting Tokeyo in the future…
2 recent LDs that I haven’t written up yet.
In one I look out a window, and the landscape is a beach by the ocean. The beach projects out into the ocean like a peninsula, but there is a lake in it. I find this landscape so strange that I realize I am dreaming.
In another dream I am in a car with a friend going to a funeral. I talk about how I don’t feel any sadness. Suddenly a third person appears in the car. I ask them who they are. And realize that people don’t just suddenly appear in a moving car, this must be a dream 
Happens with me too!
And then it’s obvious that I really am because I am aware at the odd things happeneing.
I have a funny one:
[from DJ] …there was a virus in my computer. So I literally went into comp-land through a door and threw the virus’s into this room, they were these conniving soft furry creatures, was gonna kick em out [I guess through commanding them, not actually kicking them] but couldn’t trust them [to obey a command], as I put them through a doorway/cubbyhole I stopped and was like, wait, I must be dreaming.
Comp-land? (laughs to self)
The few ways I have become Lucid is pretty funny…the first time, I made someone’s face change and I realized I was dreaming. The second time…
I was walking through my house and saw a car in the drive way, “Oh wow! Thats impossible! I must be dreaming” and I became lucid 
… It was all in good fun. And lately I’ve been getting the help of a dream character. He seems to be reocurring, hopefully he will come to me tonight as well ^^