Yeah, your dreams sound quite typical, actually. Go and get yourself some books on sleep--not on dream interpretation either as psychology or as divination, but about sleep itself, especially sleep research--and read those. You'll find some accounts of dreams that are quite like what you're mentioning, a mishmash of familiar places and people, many quite mundane.
Some people can choose what to dream about, yes. Some people can control their dreams. I can, though not perfectly. I don't believe it takes nearly as much practice or dedication as you might need to be a yogi; it really just takes awareness of the fact that you're dreaming, and the ability to balance on the edge between wakefulness (and logical thought) and your dreams. It is fun to experiment with, but it's not particularly remarkable as a phenomenon, though it can be helpful for people with recurrent nightmares. That is in fact exactly what I am using it for nowadays; I have a recurrent dream about being stuck living with my mother, and I often use that ability to recognize the dream while I'm in it and get out of the situation. One twist that it's had on it lately is that I have my cats with me and I have to find a way to bring them with me when I go back to my own apartment; so I researched how to fly with pets, and used that information the next night to basically tell the dream, "Uh-uh, nope, you can't trap me; I can take my cats with me and you can't do a thing about it. By the way, you're not really my mother. I'm thirty years old, I'm living on my own, and my mother is several states away. Now, if you would get out of my way, I have some flying to do."
Next time I'll probably just teleport back home to my own place, and bring the cats alongside. I'm getting really irritated at that dream, but every time I have it I get closer to beating it. Maybe my brain is trying to make me practice asserting my independence, because I am quite frightened of losing my independence, and dreams (according to one theory) are often the result of your mind trying to get you to practice dealing with dangerous situations.