When I woke up sometime around 1 this morning it was because I was being chased/taunted by the word CONCATENATE in my dream. That's right. CONCATENATE. There were little versions of this word dangling all around me and it wasn't scary but it was definitely weird and it woke me up. I could only shake my head once I was awake because late yesterday afternoon I was having a concatenate issue in Excel and was getting frustrated that it wouldn't work like I wanted it to. Apparently popping a couple of Benadryl before bed brought that frustration right into my dreams. I can honestly say that I've never had a dream about a word before. That was a first.
I got back to sleep pretty quickly and then had a random series of dreams that involved my dad and his wife, some random kids that I was apparently taking care of, a huge department store, hockey pucks, Jennifer Aniston and Joey Tribiani (aka Matt LeBlanc, but he was Joey in the dream).
At one point in the dream I was riding bikes with my dad and his wife and we were in the desert or some sort of vast open place. It seemed like maybe we were in another country but I have no idea where. I couldn't say what we were doing there or why we were doing it on bikes but nonetheless, it happened. At one point I was watching these two kids, a boy and a girl, like maybe I was their nanny or just a friend of the family...no real idea. I just remember making them get off the train tracks when the lights started flashing and those giant arms started to come down. I think I may have even yelled at the little girl when she didn't move fast enough.
I kept wandering through hallways and various rooms in this dream, and I'm not sure where I was but it seemed like a mall or a giant store. At one point there was some sort of announcement about "The Last Goalie" and suddenly there was a mob of people trying to get a hockey puck. I sort of just watched and seemed confused about what was going on but a few minutes later there was an announcement about "The 13th Goalie" and I joined in the mad dash for the pucks.
It was about that time that a loud speaker started playing a voice over from Jennifer Aniston talking about how awful The 13th Goalie had been to her and when we turned toward a video board we saw Joey Tribiani (how I knew it was the character Joey and not Matt LeBlanc I couldn't tell you) who was, apparently, the goalie in question. He looked shocked by what she was saying about him, how he was a horrible boyfriend or something. We watched for a bit then went back to the pucks and started grabbing whatever we could.
A few minutes later the puck frenzy started again although this time it seemed to be in numerical order, like they started calling out Thomas Greiss because he wears #1 (for the San Jose Sharks NHL team in case you have no idea who I'm talking about), then they called someone that wore #2 although it wasn't the actual player that wears that. Then no one wore the numbers up to #9 which, in my dream, was Patrick Marleau's number. When they called that, the crowd went nuts and made another mad rush to the table for the pucks.
I woke up shortly after that and frankly felt exhausted. Apparently all that bike riding and rushing for pucks wore me out!
I can understand at some level why I dreamed about hockey pucks. The Sharks are in the playoffs and they sold mystery pucks before the first game on Monday (and they're selling them again tonight) and it was a bit of a mad rush to get into the building and get them the other night. I can at least connect those dots, though Patrick Marleau wears #12 in real life, not #9. But how Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc got in the picture I have no idea. I haven't even watched Friends re-runs in a while. And Lord knows where those two children came from or why my dad and his wife and I were biking. I don't think we own a single bike between us.
Ah well...it made for some entertainment in my own mind at least. Good to know I'm still crazy...
