Trip to Hanavar, Canada

Last night I had another dream that tried to convince me that I had gotten an offer for that job I want.

I was on an airplane with my brother, and got a phone call from a recruiter/HR person asking me to fill out some more paperwork so they could run a background check on me.  Then I got excited since things were moving forward.

Anyway, then the plane landed in Canada, in a place that I think was called Hanover, but spelled Hanavar.  It was kind of a weird town that had an airport and a train station and a functioning castle and possibly royalty, but then it also had a not fantastic school district.

We were going to Hanavar to attend an awards ceremony because dad was getting one for something. Before the actual ceremony there was a buffet dinner, with an absolutely enormous line.  As in, there were hundreds of people in it.  So Kevin and I snuck out to explore the city/town of Hanavar.  We found a middle school that was open- it looked like at least parts of it were built of sticks and mud, but we went in just to check it out.  There was tons of awesome kid-artwork covering all the walls, and we ran into a really friendly teacher who told us about how awesome the teachers and kids were, but how they wished they could afford a better building/teaching materials, etc..

After chatting with her, we realized that we should probably get back to the awards ceremony/banquet. We were able to get back in line behind mom & dad, next to Aline.  Aline was there to hang out (also possibly because dad had an extra ticket, and who wouldn't want to go to Hanavar?), and had been chatting with dad about whatever his award was for to distract him from noticing that Kevin and I had run off for a half hour.  We got back in line and passed it off as having gone looking for the restrooms.

That was pretty much the end of the dream.  I feel like Aline played a bigger part in it than just holding our place in line, but I know that it was Kevin on the airplane and running around the school with me.  And I really didn't do this dream any justice with my explanations, because it was so colorful and fantastic, so I'm going to try and find some pictures that explain it better.

This is where Hanavar is in Canada.  Note that I have included my previous modification to Canada's geography in this map, so that you can keep track of where I've been.  I have also demolished a lot of Canada.

The plane was flying in, and I was sitting on the right side of the plane, so looking down on Hanavar when approaching from the south-west, the castle and most of the town is sitting on top of a mountain overlooking a lake.  The other side of the lake has mountains all around it, and there's snow everywhere.  The castle kind of looks like this one,

...if it were sitting on the little peak that's about a quarter of the way in from the left of this photo:

...and if it had a town around it and there was a lake between that mountain and the mountains in the background of that picture.

I tried finding a picture of the town/school, but didn't see anything that reminded me of them.  Also, dad was totally wearing one of those awesome totally decked out royal outfits- you know the type, gold with the red/blue sash and all the medals?  Pretty awesome.

Castle source.
Mountain source.

Scotland and Stupid Sticky Notes

Let me start off by saying that despite not posting for almost a month, I have been having a ton of dreams.  The problem has been that I'll have one, wake up when it's over in the middle of the night, think it over, and decide that yes, I'll be able to remember this in the morning.  Then I end up waking up and not remembering it at all, or remembering one tiny detail that is useless without the rest of the dream, and so not worth writing up.

Luckily, I had two dreams last night, both of which I remember.

The first one was about and epic trip to Scotland.  But a Scotland that was located much closer to Canada than England.  Let me draw you a map.

Anyway.  I was at home and hanging out with Elliott and Gary.  We decided that we wanted to do a ten day trip to Scotland, and kind of bounce around cities and sights and maybe do a little sightseeing in Canada too.  So we plotted out a route.  Somehow though, word got out to people.  And then EVERYONE wanted to go.  Let me list just a few of the people who were involved in this dream: Kevin, Erik, some more SciOly kids (mostly just the guys), Stephanie, Sydney, Aline, Sheree, some other random SWE girls, Juliana.....and there were probably another 20 people.

Originally we (Elliott, Gary and I) were planning on just staying at hostels.  But once the millions of people decided they all wanted to come, we had to switch to hotels.  But then that got expensive, so we decided that we would camp and drive around in RVs.  So then we had to gather up camping equipment and food and stuff and pack.  But my dream skipped over this part and straight to being in Scotland.

It was night time, and time to set up the tents.  However no one wanted to do it, and so it was a pain in the butt to make people do what they were supposed to be doing.  I feel like Erik was supposed to be in charge of organizing people to set up tents, but he was too busy playing with a computer, because I remember yelling at him about being distracted.

Then, once everything was set up and people had eaten, Juliana waltzes (literally, she was dancing) in, carrying a super elaborate wedding-looking cake.  Apparently it was her birthday and she got a super fancy cake* and was bringing us (Stephanie, Sydney, Aline, Sheree, other SWE girls) the leftovers.  It was really good cake though.  Then I assume everyone slept, because the next thing I remember, we're trying to get everyone to pack things up so we can all get in the RVs and go to the next place we wanted to visit.  But then people were complaining about not knowing where to put the plates and that they lost something and couldn't find it.

It was at that point I got fed up with people and woke up.


I debated getting up for good, but I was still kind of sleepy, so I decided to go back to sleep.

In my second dream, Jake and I lived in what I assume was an apartment, although it could have been a house, because we were having other people move in with us too, we had just been the first ones to get there.  We had already set up the living room to have bookshelves EVERYWHERE, and had already put most of our books on them.  Our new roommates were Aleeza and Thomas.  In my dream, I'm pretty sure Aleeza was single and Thomas had a crush on her.  Anyway, Aleeza moved in next, and claimed her own bookshelf.  Between the three of us, we pretty much had all the shelves filled.  Then Thomas showed up** and wanted to add his books to the collection, but there wasn't an empty bookshelf for him to claim, so he was going to have to spread his out on all the bookshelves and use the empty shelves that Jake, Aleeza and I weren't using.  Then I started freaking out about what if someone gets confused and moves out and steals all my books?!?!  So then I tried to find some sticky notes to label which shelves had whose books on them, but none of the sticky notes were sticky enough, and so I finally woke up because I was angry at the sticky notes not working. :(

*The cake kind of looked like this but it was square and kind of a shimmering gold with pink flowers on it and no bow on top.

**Thomas also came with some 11x17" artwork that he wanted me to frame and put on the walls, but there was like, no wall space in this room.

Miter Saw in the Bathroom?

Background:  When I was in middle school and high school, I participated in a club called Science Olympiad.  There were multiple events (bottle rockets, build a tower out of balsa wood, know everything about fossils, etc.) that tested students on their ability to build structures that met certain specifications and/or knowledge of a subject.  I was super involved and received numerous medals at both the regional and state levels.  So it was a pretty big part of my life, but I've been out of high school for a while now, and don't usually think about SciOly.


Last night, I was in a team meeting- coaches, parents, other team members.  During the meeting it was decided that the girls (myself, Aline, I think Sheree, and I think the other person was Sydney) were going to go use the miter saw to work on the bottle rocket, and that my dad would help us.  So the five of us walked down the hall to the bathroom (similar layout to my current apartment, but with an obviously larger bathroom) where the miter saw was kept.

Flash forward to Michael Kelso from That 70's Show showing up as the kid who will be participating in the bottle rocket event at competition.  He's just as Kelso-esqe as he is on the show.  But now it's just me and him and I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to teach him what he needs to know about the event.  Apparently there is some weird aviator hat with built in goggles that we have to wear, but it's got a zipper around the brim and I can't figure it out, and then it's too small for my head.  While I'm trying to figure it out, Kelso wanders off.

As I'm trying to get the hat on my head, there's some alert siren going off and the bottle rocket people (which now apparently includes me, although I don't think I was signed up for it to start with) have to report to this hovercraft thing that kind of looks like what they had in Sky Captain (near the end when the scientists are escaping), so I run up to it and jump on.  There are already four other people on it, laying down with their hands on their head, all under a sheet (guess I'm late).  One of them is Kelso, and my mom is driving the hovercraft.  There's some lady with really curly hair (maybe River from Dr. Who?) stationed at the hovercraft next to ours and she has somehow figured out those stupid goggle things with the zipper.

Then our hovercraft zipped off, Kelso made some stupid comment, and I don't know what happened next.