I had some interesting dreams last night. I'll provide some highlights. I was in junior high school, on some kind of road trip with my family. Our giant RV was broken down somewhere outside of the grand canyon. My mother was yelling angry car-related accusations at my father, who hung his head in futility. "Just try and call my office," he said to me. I opened the side door on the RV and hoisted a massive portable phone (my family never had an RV or a portable phone, by the way). It crackled in my ear as I tried several times to get a call through. Nothing. Then finally I managed to get the operator. She bubbled off some company introduction and then said, "this is Stephanie, how can I help you?" I recognized the voice. "Stephanie," I said, "Stephanie Geerlings?" "That's me," she replied. "Hey, I know you!" I said. "You do?" she asked (obviously she didn't know me). "Or, well, I guess I know you like ten years from now," I said, "I'm having a flashback." That seemed to clear everything up. "Ohhh," she said. She continued: "hey, what do you think my middle name should be?" I replied: "Isn't your middle name 'Anne'?" "No, I don't have a middle name," she said, "but that one sounds good. Thanks and have a nice day." She put me through to my dad's office, which somehow fixed everything and got us on a magical plane home.

Then I was with some friends driving around in what appeared to be the wilderness outside of Jackson, Wyoming. They decided to knock off a convenience store while I was waiting in the car. They came back with some candy and soda and we sped off down a back mountain road. We heard sirens so the driver veered off into some sort of steamy swamp. For some reason the car handled well in the bog (I think the bog-driving feature is a luxury add-on). Then I said, "ditch the car in that lake; we'll do better on foot in the maze!" We forgot to get out of the car before driving it into the lake, and in the confusion we all became separated. I wandered into some ominous mountains which quickly gave way to the creepy rooms of an enourmous Bavarian castle. I ran between ornate, empty rooms for what seemed like hours. Then I came into a big banquet hall where some kind of German holiday party was going on. I tried to blend in, when I realized that there was a cop in the room. He finally caught me waiting in the line for spitzbuben. I think I would have run, but I woke up.