Visiting M and S

        I dreamed I drove to M and S’s new house (well, remodeled, really) and was surprised, when I arrived, to find that they had built a hill under it. There was now an ivy lined walk up two flights of stairs to get to the front door.

        “This is a pretty extensive remodel” I commented.

        M shrugged it off as nothing much.

        I am going to see M for his birthday tomorrow, and so it is easy to see where this came from.

        Not so much on the other dream. I was with a few friends, and we were making plans to meet up after the convention dealer room closed. Somehow, I got turned around and instead of getting into the science fiction venue, I found myself in some sort of climatologists symposium. I was in a panel about arctic observations when I noticed some errors on the main slide. (Mathematical errors, and what I thought were some fuzzy assumptions as well.)

        During the question and answer session I asked if there was some sort of typo on the slide (to ease the impact of the question.) I knew there wasn’t, because the figures presented were used in all of the rest of the program, and in many of the presenter’s calculations.

        The panel was in an uproar, especially since the data was now in disarray, and the conclusions they had come to were actually contra-indicated in some cases.

        When I asked my follow up question about the source of their assumptions, and whether they had taken any sort of historical data into account (more than five years) the panel just sort of dissolved. Several folks came to me afterward and asked if I was available for dinner. I tried to explain that I was just lost, and not a climatologist or even a real mathematician. Just an interested onlooker. I was sure that other folks had spotted the errors and would have brought them to the panel’s attention if I hadn’t been called on first.

        Still, several of them insisted on joining me and my friends for dinner. I wish the dream had included that part, having real climatologists to talk to during dinner would have been a very entertaining evening for some of my friends.

       

        In a little tiny snippet of dream as I was waking this morning: Penelope was scratching at the back door, looking quite frightened. I wasn’t sure I wanted to let her in, as she’s been dead about eight or nine years now. The other cats had all run from the room when she started putting her claws to the metal door frame. Part of me kept repeating “Don’t do it,” as I went to the door. I knew I would let her in, I can’t say no to an animal in distress. However, I did shut the bedroom door first, so she wouldn’t be exposed to the other cats, or really, so they wouldn’t be exposed to her.

        It took several minutes to shake the feeling of impending doom when I finally did climb out of bed.

Ad astra per technica,

FF