Last night I had a dream.

I was going to a presentation by two web geeks about some shiny new web app they’d developed. They were presenting at their house in Alexandria and there were a few dozen people attending. I walked in (behind Sunil) and saw a couple of faces I recognized (I think Corey was there). Everyone was having a drink and chatting before the presentation began, so I sat down next to Mena and Ben Trott to catch up with them.

“Hey guys!” I said. “We haven’t talked in ages, but I wanted to congratulate you on your daughter. She’s adorable.”

We talked a bit about parenting and how the work/home life balance is one of the hardest things to get right when you’ve got a kid. We discussed how parenting can be both the greatest and most difficult thing.

“It’s like Rob Base said: Joy and Pain…” and I waited for a response to my old school reference.

“Like what?” Mena asked with a confused look on her face.

“You know… Rob Base…? Joy and Pain…? DJ EZ-Rock…?” From Mena and Ben: blank stares.

At that point I woke up, feeling very disappointed in them both. That’s exactly the sort of reference I would have expected Mena to jump on.

So, shame on you, Dream Mena for your lack of 80s pop culture memory!

Is it still lame to blog about dreams? Ah, so what.

I had one last night where I realized that after six years in our house, we still were renting the townhouse in Falls Church because there was stuff there that we hadn’t moved yet. I went there for the first time in years and couldn’t believe that we still had so much stuff to move. One of the rooms was in squalid shape, with two mattresses thrown in there, clothes piled on top, and weird bugs crawling about. I also encountered a huge red spider that followed me around the house.

I told Huyen, “We’ve really got to stop paying for this place we haven’t lived in for six years. Let’s just throw all this stuff in storage and cancel the lease.” Dream Ryan is Smart Ryan.

(From the archives: this dream is kind of funny, as are some of these.)

Had a nasty dream the other night.

I was sitting in the back seat of a school bus with some middle school-aged kids. We were chatting about music or something, when I saw one kid from the front of the bus turn around and walk down the aisle. He was carrying a large gun, it was automatic from what I could tell. The kids on the bus were starting to freak out as they saw him walk past, but apparently the bus driver didn’t notice because he kept driving. The gunman (gunboy?) approached me, looked me in the eye and casually said, “How old are you?” I responded very calmly, “29.” He responded, “Well, shoooot…” and lifted the gun, pointing it directly in my face. As he began to pull the trigger, I had a quick thought of Huyen and then I tried to duck behind the seat…

And I woke up. You know in the movies how people wake up from intense dreams with a loud gasp, bolting upright and breathing heavily? That was me (minus the bolting upright). I had to shake off the feeling of panic and rub my eyes a few times to make sure I stayed awake and didn’t drift back into the dream. It was probably the single most intense feeling of dream-fear I’ve ever had. I got up and walked around for a minute or two, but my hands and legs were still shaking when I got back into bed.

Fun!

You know how you get a song stuck in your head and you don’t know why it’s there? That happened to me last night.

While I was sleeping.

Throughout several dreams, Biz Markie’s “Pickin’ Boogers” was floating through my head and I couldn’t stop it.

“Hey ma, what’s for dinner? / Go up your nose and pick a winner!”

I haven’t posted any dreams in a while. Wanna hear one from last night?

I got a call on my cell phone and the woman on the other end asked for somebody I didn’t know. “Methinks you have the wrong number,” I said.

She said, “Oh, OK,” then paused. Then she added, “Well, could you at least finish this conversation conclusively?”

I laughed and responded, “Oh, sorry about that. BYE.” And we hung up.

I looked at the caller ID for the previous call and saw, “Armstrong, Heather” and I realized, “I just got a wrong number call from DOOCE!” For the rest of the dream, I planned out how I was going to blog about the phone call and how she’d get such a kick out of accidentally calling one of her site’s readers.

Clearly, I’ve got to get out more.

Yesterday morning as Huyen was getting ready for work and I continued sleeping, she told me I was laying there with my hands clasped behind my head, like I was relaxing in a recliner. But I also had a look on my face like I had just bitten into something really foul.

I woke up as she was looking at me and laughing and told her that I was dreaming, for the second time that night, that I was FTPing files to my web site.

I don’t even know where to start with all that wildly disconnected information.

Last night I had a dream that I was talking with Chris about the big damn dam destruction coming up today in Fredericksburg. I asked whether he’d be taking his kids to go watch and he said, “Yeah, of course. But, Ryan, what are your thoughts on the issue?” And by “the issue” he was referring to some controversy about destroying the dam (of which there seems to be none—pretty much everyone is in agreement that the dam’s destruction is a good thing since it’s no longer needed and it will allow to Rappahannock to again flow freely). I felt embarrassed that I could only respond, “I don’t know… I didn’t even know about it until it was mentioned on the news tonight.”

Totally separate from my dream, the linked article above refers to people from Fredericksburg as “Fredericksburgers.” I can honestly say that in the four years I lived there, I never once heard that term. Thank goodness.

Over on the Ping this weekend I mentioned my tendency for sleeping walking and talking in my sleep. I hadn’t sleepwalked (sleptwalk?) in probably ten years, but this weekend, I did, even if it was only a few steps. And it’s just too strange not to share.

Sometime early Saturday morning, around 3am, I woke up and I was laying at the foot of our bed, stretched out horizontally. I woke up kind of suddenly, which startled Huyen awake, and I said, “What the hell am I doing down here?” I have no recollection of moving, though I suspect I must have gotten out of bed, walked a few steps, and laid back down in this weird position. I’m utterly baffled by this, but also somewhat amused.

As a kid, I walked in my sleep a few times. Once, my parents, told me, that I ran into their bedroom late at night, stood at the foot of their bed, started speaking really fast about baseball statistics, and then just turned around and ran back to my room. Another time, my mom was in my sister’s room and she saw me walking down the hall and she said, “Ryan, what are you doing?” knowing I was supposed to be asleep. I turned around to her, with my eyes closed, flashed her a goofy smile and waved.

Another time, a friend from my baseball team was sleeping over. I woke up in the middle of the night on the floor in my sister’s room. I stood up and tried shaking her awake, thinking she was my friend, asking her, “Paul, why are we in Stacey’s room?”

As for talking in my sleep, I’m a big time sleeptalker. In my freshman year of college, my roommate came back from an early morning class. I was still in bed and as he reached into our fridge to get a drink, I told him, “Don’t stick your toes in the peanut butter.” Another time I spoke French to him. During my sophomore year, I was freestyling in my sleep. And to this day, Huyen can have some pretty amazing conversations with my while I’m asleep. I’ve made up words (“Bofenus” being the best) and said some really philosophical things over the years.

I’m pretty convinced that I’m much more interesting asleep than I am awake.

Last week I had a dream I was on a bus and I was talking to pd from Apocalypse How (odd since I have no idea what pd looks like). Last night I had a dream about driving from VA to Utah to be there for Dooce‘s wedding as part of a whirlwind driving tour that was also to include Paul and Jeani’s wedding. Oddly, the drive from Utah to Virginia was done overnight and I was only planning on staying a day. In the past, I’ve dreamt of Mike and Nikole…

Watch out Vix and Sunil, you’re next!