To sleep, perchance to dream

So, last night I dreamt that I met up with my friend Rob, whom I have known since sixth grade but haven't seen for over twenty years, although we stay in touch in the intertubes.  We were waiting for the express bus from Brooklyn into Manhattan, and while we were waiting I was telling Rob about two dreams that I had had. The first was a recurring dream I was having about forgetting to implement a whole new program or course at school, something having to do with maritime work; the other was another work dream, about someone from another department asking about some computer procedures in my office, which was confusing because the person asking had as much or more computer access than my admin and should have been able to do all that and more. After I told Rob about the dreams, we got on the bus, which was huge, like twenty feet across, with a full three-person token booth in the front. Rob hightailed it somewhere into the recesses of the bus as I fumbled with the fare machine, trying to get it to take a ripped twenty-dollar bill.

Anyway, the dream is not all that hard to interpret: Rob often blogs about his commute, so the appearance of the bus is no surprise; the forgetting-the-program dream is just the dean equivalent of the showing-up-for-the-final-of-a-class-you-forgot-to-attend-all-quarter dream (and I am launching a  new program right now); and the computer stuff probably reflects some issues we have been having over dividing administrative responsibilities for new program.

No, the noteworthy thing about this dream is that the dreams I was telling Rob about in the dream are actually dreams I have had on other nights. So dream-Walter was telling dream-Rob about real dreams real-Walter had had, not dream-dreams that dream-Walter had had. I am quite sure this is the first time my dreams have ever been cross-referenced. I have had repeated dreams, similar dreams, and even sequels to dreams, but never once have had a dream called out in another.

Spooky.

What's even spookier is that I used the word twenty three times in the first paragraph without even knowing it. That's gotta be some kind of sign...