Is this normal, or an AS thing?

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That's pretty much exactly how it is with me. If I'm walking somewhere to meet a friend, I'm always thinking (before I set off), how boring the long walk will be. But I get to my friend and it's like no time has passed, because I'm in my own world the entire way.
And at night, it's deliberate. I set my my music to play for one hour so I don't have to remember to turn it off before I sleep. Last night I had to reset the timer three times.

Yes! I do exactly this. I was even doing it this morning.

I do this too and I am a more neurotypical person, but I also feel that I really don't seem to hold my own as well as others. I can't handle hostile confrontation at all and completely crumble when I feel attacked. I end up re-having the argument repeatedly in my head afterwards and only then do I get to say all the things I wanted to say. I think this is very common amongst NTs, and yet I'm always surprised by how assertive and inclined to attack they can be. If they felt the way I do when on the receiving end, I'm positive they would think twice before doing it. Even my partner does this to me occasionally and he just can't understand why I'm not more resilient and capable of fighting my own corner.

On the other hand, if it's more of a debate than an argument, and it's more rational than hostile, I can cope perfectly well and make lost of very quick and logical points. I can out-argue anyone so long as it's not too heated so I think this may be more to do with emotional regulation than anything else, where I had thought it might be more to do with verbal/visual thinking styles etc.

I tend to do this quite often as well. Sometimes I even have deep, philosophical conversations with myself. And yet, when I'm with others, it can be hard to say the right words in order to convey what I mean. I'm not shy so this really annoys me. I also repeat conversations later in my mind, thinking about what I could or should have said.

My experience appears to be different to what other people in this thread have described.

I am largely uninterested in other people, so I do not rehearse and replay conversations much at all.

The exception would be thinking about conversations/meetings at work. I want to impress people so I think of clever things to say. Also, when I have had a romantic interest in the past I thought about funny or clever things to say that would have impressed them. Otherwise, I have no interest in doing this.

I do philosophise a great deal, like amaris74 mentioned. But when I do, it is very much a monologue and not a dialogue. I would not be able to have a imaginary dialogue with an imaginary person (or with myself), this is a strange concept to me.

FREAKY.

I've done the exact same thing. Indeed, part of why I try to limit how much I watch TV and movies is that I'm prone to use the fictitious characters and settings to have new "stages" to act with.

I've never told anyone I do this...afraid of what they might think.

I have conversations with people who I know in my head. As in, they are real people, and I imagine what they would say or do. I've pretty much always done this, but I've done it a little less as I've gotten older. I assume it's normal. I'm using my mom's laptop and for some reason I can type a lot faster with it than with my laptop. *shrug*

There's actually a Wikipedia article I was reading today that I think describes what most of you are talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagined_interaction
I do this semi-automatically both as a way to prep myself for an impending interaction and as a way to cope when I haven't had enough interaction with other people. It gets a little frustrating on the seldom occasion when I can't remember whether or not I actually had a conversation or I just imagined it. My imagined conversations are almost always with specific people that I find interesting, likely because their personalities are more readily accessible to me as I've spent more time "cataloging" them, so to speak.

Oh my goodness, I was just thinking about this exact thing today because I have been doing it out loud all day every day for awhile now. I was wondering if I was weird. I have done it all my life but just recently started doing it out loud. I only do it out loud when no one else is there though but I have never not done it. It was one of my main forms of I guess you can call it "play" as a kid. I did not know it was an Autistic/Aspie thing. I am so glad I looked at this thread because now I don't feel so weird!