Weird Dream(s)

[JoeP]

Because she's stopped having dreams about you.

[Dingfod]

I was only babysitting in my dream. Sheesh!

[JoeP]

I'm only sore because I haven't had any dreams about you.

[ceptimus]

I dreamed I'd written a book about a girl being raised by two lesbian mothers - one of them her biological mother. And she has a pretty good childhood playing with her nieces and nephews and having the usual sort of growing up adventures. When she gets older she finds out that her father is also her uncle - he's the guy married to the sister of her mother. The lesbians loved their nieces and nephews so much that they decided the man must have good genes and wanted him as the biological father of their own kids too, so they talked the sister and his husband into becoming the father.

Anyway, all that is incidental really as the dream was about my literary agent telling me that my book was no good as the story was just some thinly-veiled copy of an already famous book by another author. I protested that I'd never read that book or any other of that author's books. Then he said I must have seen a film version of it, but admitted that, so far as he knew, there had never been a film version made. We got into a big argument with him insisting that I must have read the book and me telling him that I was absolutely certain that I never had. And I told him that it didn't really matter if the story had similarities with this other one, but he said that we might be prosecuted and that the publisher was refusing to publish it just in case.

I've never written a book and of course I don't have a literary agent - so I've no idea where that dream came from.

[S.Vashti]

I dreamed I was "Oueen Bee", but actually was just a BeeKeeper, having had my genome altered to include a wide variety of worker bees that I could produce out of pockets in my back, fully grown. Just drink a package of chemicals for a certain type of bee, and my back would hatch them out. (We were colonizing another planet, everyone was altered in some way to do multiple tasks.) My former navel would hatch the queen bee. Combining them together would produce a small colony that would help protect and pollinate our plants.

I could combine chemical packages to produce hybrid type bees, and I did, since the first bees I hatched were too small for the tasks. The second batch were bigger than carpenter bees, the workers about as large as my thumb, and incredibly hairy. They came in absurd colors, black, yellow, neon green and fuchsia.

They were earth diggers, and we needed them to attack the organisms living in the hollow volcanic dikes that ran through the landscape we were colonizing.

[Saxatilis]

I dreamed I had some cardiovascular disease, I was out of breath and slightest exercise got me a bit shaky and sweaty. I don't know if those are the symptoms of cardiovascular diseases but "you have a cardiovascular disease" was the first thing that I remembered when I woke up.

Somehow, I also moved in a painful slow-motion in this dark blue and shiny space which had block-like terminals sticking from the ground and my cousin, who I have not seen in years, was making some sort of practical jokes and traps on those terminals, which I fell into, because he was not moving in slow-motion. He was just tapping one of the control panels after which a rat hatch would open before me or a laundry basket would fall on my head. This all was fairly embarrassing seeing all my face expressions were changing with a lag.

[Dingfod]

I dreamed I was on vacation in Texas in and around Big Bend National Park and points further down the Rio Grande. When I was in Laredo I received an email on my phone that said my phone usage charges had exceeded $500, some sort of self-set limit I think. I looked at the usage, and it had international roaming charges amounting to almost $600 on it. My phone was using cellphone towers in Mexico. Could that happen?

[JoeP]

Yes

If you have coverage from towers in another country and for some reason lose coverage from networks in your own, international roaming will kick in, because the phone doesn't know where you really are and tries to give you connectivity. At an international cost. Subject to service blocking like turning off international data.

A classic situation: BBC News - Kent village paying French mobile call charges

[Dingfod]

Note to self: stay in the middle of the country.

[Janet]

It happens quite often in Detroit. In downtown or midtown it's not unusual for the nearest tower to be in Canada. My niece has to keep a strict watch on her phone to avoid huge roaming charges.

[JoeP]

Don't all phones have the ability to turn off at least data roaming?

[Janet]

Yes, which is what she does when she notices. But she doesn't always catch it.

[JoeP]

How often does she need data roaming enabled though? Why not just leave it off all the time?

[Dingfod]

Joe, you don't know how crappy internet service here. Many times the WiFi available is on some slow-ass DSL connection, so I use data roaming so pages with lots of content will load before timing out.

[Miisa]

Isn't roaming just using data on a network that is not your own, so typically abroad? Mine is off all the time, I still get mobile data via my own provider domestically.

[JoeP]

Yes, mobile data or 3G data (or 4G or 2G or HSDPA or EDGE or GPRS or any number of other terms) on your own mobile network is definitely not roaming. It doesn't relate to roaming away from your wifi network but away from your mobile carrier. This always happens when you are in another country (unless you have an enlightened mobile operator that has "home" networks in multiple countries ), but may happen in some deprived countries like Ghana - and possibly the US - where any individual mobile network might have zero coverage in a given area and no "home equivalent" agreement with another.

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by Miisa

Isn't roaming just using data on a network that is not your own, so typically abroad? Mine is off all the time, I still get mobile data via my own provider domestically.

From where I live to Laredo, Texas is like the distance from Helsinki to Copenhagen. We don't even have nation-wide networks in the United States. There are vast areas with no cell coverage at all. But, that's because there aren't many people in those areas.

[Dingfod]

Today, I was awaked from a dream...

I was a crew leader of a team sent to assist with wheat harvest in Eastern Ukraine. We were in a convoy of trucks hauling combine harvesters purchased elsewhere in Europe. We were driving in an area that I can only describe as looking much like Kansas, flat, nothing but fields and fields. We got stopped by a military truck blocking the highway. They were supposedly Ukraine military. They detained us, first inside a camper trailer we were hauling, then overnight inside their military truck. Another vehicle arrived in the night with their superior officer. Then they took us out three at a time for questioning. When they got to me, they accused us of being spies or saboteurs. I insisted we were merely there to assist with the wheat harvest. I showed them papers I had that indicated that. We had an interpreter with us, but they took him out first and didn't bring him back, so I was dealing with people whose English was bad, but not nearly as bad as my Ukrainian or Russian. During the detention, a couple of the Ukranian soldiers became very friendly. They shared cigarettes with those that smoked and vodka from their plastic canteens. Their command of English was good enough it made me think they actually were intelligence trying to get information that way instead of more severe methods. Nobody was tortured, or even threatened. About daylight they said we could go, back not further forward. But we had to leave the trucks. So, we started walking down the highway. They shouted out that we could take the oldest of the combine harvesters. We unloaded an old faded red one, one without a cab. All of us, 11 in all, climbed aboard and made our way back down the highway at 12 mph.

[Dingfod]

I awoke from a dream in which a friend of mine stood to inherit his recently deceased father's estate. No, not his money, his estate, mansion and grounds. However, the estate had been seized by the government because his father was accused post-mortem of running a human trafficking ring. In the dream I was aware that my friend's father had been involved in arranging adoptions for a fee. Apparently, the infants and children he was adopting out were not all orphans, many had been purchased from the parents or from kidnappers. It was a great scandal for the family. I visited the estate to console my friend. I entered the massive gates and was walking toward the house. The grounds were overgrown. I saw a golden retriever dog come out of the bushes, wagging its tail. It was followed by a full-grown African lioness, which swatted at the dog's wagging tail. The dog and lion ran around play-biting each other. My friend came out of the house and told me I should not be walking the grounds by myself, there were other lions out there, some of them not so friendly. It was then I noticed he had a rifle on a sling over his shoulder. That was the end of the dream when my alarm went off.

[ZEZOZE]

I had a dream. It was an awesome dream. There were people in a park playing games in the dark. It seemed like some sort of masquerade. Then from beyond a wall I heard this voice crying out: "Say you. Say me..."

[LadyShea]

Last night I dreamed I was working 4 jobs and had two meetings in 2 different states first thing this morning, so was calling people trying to set up conference calls and plane tickets.

Real life is a chaotic juggle right now, so why did my brain have to keep the stress going while I was sleeping?

[Dingfod]

Yesterday morning, I awoke thinking of an article I read, but I was not sure it was in a dream or real life. The article was about the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn selling four Chrysler Imperial automobiles to Imperial Sugar Company for $4 million, a 1927, a 1939, a 1955, and a 1964. There were even pictures of each. When I got up I googled this to see if I dreamed it or it was real. Apparently it was a dream, no such sale has been made. However, my googling turned up the fact that the Henry Ford Museum auto collection does indeed include 1927, 1939, 1955, and 1964 Chrysler Imperials, as well as a few others, a 1940 and a 1957. Weird. I'm not sure how I knew that.

When I was a teenage filling station attendant, there was a regular customer with a 1966 Imperial. When I called it a Chrysler Imperial he quickly corrected me. From 1955 to 1983, Imperial was a separate make. It was Chrysler-powered with a Chrysler drivetrain and had all Mopar parts in it an under it, but it wasn't a Chrysler, it was an Imperial. However, prior to 1955, from 1926 to 1954 it was known as a Chrysler Imperial. And when the model was revived in 1990, it was once again known as a Chrysler Imperial. Imperials had several automotive firsts, padded dashes, center consoles, electric windows, air-conditioning, hydraulic power steering, front disk brakes, four wheel disk brakes, and solid state transistor radio.

A 1966 Imperial like my customer drove:

[Janet]

1966 is the gold standard for Imperials, mainly because Black Beauty from The Green Hornet is one.



I might be slightly biased, however, as I spent a fair amount of time riding in one while in the womb. I'm convinced the engine vibrations went right through the amniotic fluid and into my soul to make me love the car forever.

[ShottleBop]

Mrs. S woke up this morning having dreamt about how stupid many songs are. For example, have you ever considered the ramifications of a song like "If you were the only girl in the world, and I were the only boy"? You've lost your entire family, and civilization has collapsed, but you're HAPPY because now you have this person all to yourself?!

[S.Vashti]

I dreamed I had circle skates on my feet and I could skate on water.