BEST DREAM EVER

Spell and Charms Used: Accio, Stupefy, and Expelliarmus

I swear to you, before you read this next bit of information, that it is 100% true. I am not making this up. It really happened to me- despite how unrealistically awesome it sounds. Do not be fooled by its' greatness.

Last night, I had one of the greatest dreams of my life.

I was Harry Potter. (Now lets ignore the fact that I am a girl, and Harry Potter is a boy. You know you wouldn't mind if you were the opposite sex in a dream if it involved such a great character as Harry Potter. Just bask in the glory of being so close to a famous/awesome fictional character that could only be possible in a dream.)

The dream started off with me and Neville Longbottom sitting in Professor Dumbledore's office; we were applying to be part of a school club that only great wizards and witches could be apart of. Then, all of a sudden, Draco Malfoy burst into Dumbledore's office and started to attack us! Dumbledore vanished because he wasn't suppose to be at Hogwarts, leaving only me and Neville to fend for ourselves. (I believe Malfoy had his evil friends with him when he attacked, but I'm not entirely sure... It's one of those weird dream anomalies.) But before Draco and his minions could capture us, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny appeared out of nowhere and started to battling with us. (This part in the dream reminded me of the scene in the fifth movie when Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Luna, and Ginny are fighting the Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries.)

The good part of the dream is that I actually remember casting the spell/charms accio, stupefy, and expelliarmus at our opponents. Bad thing is, I don't remember the fight scene/best part of the dream in much detail. My wand would turn yellow when I cast a spell, but that's about it. Oh wait, I do remember casting the expelliarmus on Draco's wand, and then saying "Accio wand!" and put Draco's wand in my back pocket.

There was one moment in the middle of the dream where I specifically remember Hermione and I stopped casting spells and looked at each other and smiled, like we were having fun vanquishing Draco. Me and subconscious Hermione had a great connection- it's undeniable.

Anyway, we defeated Draco and his friends and they disappeared.

Dumbledore then reappeared into my arms as the size of a lawn gnome (he actually kind of looked like the Tavelocity gnome in the commercials, ha). As I walked back to his desk, he slowly started to grow. By the time I got back to his desk, he was full sized again.

And that was the end of my dream.

I have a lot of these kinds of dreams- where I remember every single detail of it. It truly is fascinating to think about my dream when I wake up, especially because then I can look up what it means in my dream dictionary!
I think I'm going to dedicate an entire page to my dreams and their meanings!!! So then everyone can know what my subconscious is trying to tell me.

I'll set up the page soon-ish.... After I have another dream in great detail. :)

Ta-ta for now!

Medford Retirement-ies

For the remainder of my summer vacation, I decided to go down to Medford to stay with my cousins, aunt and uncle. Earlier today, I went to have "dinner" (which is really our lunch) with my grandpa. While there, I came across some quite hilarious elderly people that I thought I should share with you. So, here you go!

Otto

(One of my grandpa's friends) Otto is Swedish, 90 years old, and actually adorable. He still has a pretty strong Swedish accent, wears green suspenders with goats and flowers on them every day, and is very opinionated for a 90 year-old (At "dinner", he made a comment that pretty much encompassed all bosses in the "ignorant fools who don't know squat" boat. Of course, there was a strong rebuttal from my aunt and cousins because my uncle/their husband/dad is one of the bosses at a construction company down here in Medford.... Or something like that.). Anyway, at the beginning of "dinner", my oldest cousin, who is an optometry student, was talking to my grandpa about giving him a free eye exam. Then Otto chips in and reminds everyone that he's blind in one eye. And I quote, he said this about his eyes:
"That's why you have two eyes- so if one kicks it, you still have one other to see out of." Oh gosh, I already thought the guy was great, but this added the whipped cream on top.

Otto had also mentioned before "dinner" that he wasn't feeling very well. At the end of the meal, we got out of him that he was still dizzy/seasick feeling. I asked him if he was just dehydrated. Then, and I quote, he said:
"Sometimes when I'm dehydrated, I eat some cheese." Like I said, this guy is hilarious.

Okay, so there was really only one funny person I wanted to tell you about, but I like to think there were more in the retirement center that I just didn't get to meet.

TTFN!

Shout Out

Spell Used: Sonorus

Melanie, you da' bomb.

Zoo Run Stalker

Curse Used: Locomotor Mortis

This last Saturday I was running with a friend up in the trails above the Oregon Zoo. It was a normal run for the first three miles.... nothing special. Me and Jaymee were running our nice eleven minute pace, completely content (Please refrain from telling our coach about this). Around the middle of the third mile mark, we came to some switchbacks with berry bushes on both sides of the trail. I had just gotten done telling Jaymee about a creepy hobo who I had seen sleeping in the bushes last week, when we ran by a man eating some berries. Not thinking anything of it, we kept running.

About a minute later, I see the berry-eating man running behind us with a stick in his hands. There wasn't anything unusual about that- there are quite a few runners on those trails (of course, not at that moment though... just Jaymee, me, and berry-man). But as Jaymee and I neared the bottom of the switchbacks, through the corner of my eye I saw him getting closer and closer to us- like he was speeding up. He wasn't dressed in runners clothes, for as much as I could tell. (I asked Jaymee about this later, and she verified for me that he wasn't in running gear.) Maybe it was the fact that he didn't have runners clothes on or how he was running with a stick in his hands, but whatever it was Jaymee and I both started to freak out. He was, without a doubt, following us.

I whispered over to Jaymee something about how I was getting creeped out by how close he was getting (he was maybe ten feet behind us, if that). She said something in agreement, and we both started to pick up our pace. Still on the switchbacks, I saw him drop a little further back. However, on the next turnaround the guy had sped up again and was getting extremely close (I was trying to do the inconspicuous look-out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye-thing, because some IDIOT had to decide that staring at people was rude. Those dang Brits.). Jaymee and I started flat-out sprinting at the bottom of the switchbacks, and of course, there was an uphill at the bottom of the hill.

We could still hear the stick guy running behind us, not far back. (Jaymee swears he started sprinting when we did. I didn't notice- I was focusing on getting away from the creep.) I remember telling Jaymee as we sprinted up the frickin' hill, out of breath, that all we had to get to the road, then we would be relatively safe.

If I had the skills of Harry Potter, that's when I would have used the Locomotor Mortis curse (on the berry-man).

We got to the road, no problem. We were both dead, but we crossed the street and kept running (no way were we going to stand there and let the stalker guy get us!). We just wanted to put as much distance between us and the creep as possible.

Creepiest part: another running group from Southridge saw the same guy, except speared on the stick he had was a dead rat.

Like I said, zoo run stalker.

MFFC

Charm Used: Wingardium Leviosa

MFFC- Movie Flaw Finders Corporation

I plan on starting my own Hollywood movie editing business some day. With my uncanny ability to find movie screw-ups and the ever expanding list of new movies, I believe it would be quite a profitable business.

But seriously, there are so many movie mistakes out there just waiting to be discovered. Here are a few examples of Hollywood screw-ups that I have found:

Twilight
- Engine revving vs. actual speed of the car, which can be seen by looking out of the windows of Edward's car. (They're really going like 10 miles an hour when the engine backdrop noise makes it sound like the car's going really fast.)
- Making a two-way street into a one-way street with the double yellow dividing line still in plain sight.
- (My personal favorite) When Bella walks into the science room for the first time, the fan is already blowing towards Edward. But somehow, only when Bella walks in front of the fan does everything around Edward blow about. (The fan wasn't even on oscillation!) I think this is my favorite just because of the face Robert Pattinson makes when he "smells" Bella.
- At the end of the movie when Bella is lying in the hospital bed, in the close-up on her face and the shot of her and her mother, the oxygen nose tubes are not lying in the same place on her face. The close-up on Bella's face has the oxygen tubes over her eyelashes. The far away shot has them lower, over her cheekbones.
-Fun fact, (not flaw....) the tv in Bella's hospital room is playing Twilight. (The flash back of when her mom is telling her that she fell down a flight of stair and into a window.)

Harry Potter, The Sorcerer's Stone
- Harry's/Daniel's eyes aren't green. (Someone else pointed that out to me. Props to Linda Wang.)
- When Ron and Harry are fighting the ogre in the girl's bathroom and Ron does the Wingardium Leviosa charm on the ogre's club, you never hear the club hit the ground. You hear it hit the ogre's head, but not the bathroom floor.

Some people may say I've watched these movies too many times... I disagree. I'll know when I've watched them too many times when I can recite the movie beginning to end.