>>Just a "heads up".....it doesn't get any better as time rolls along.
>
>Really? I get smarter every day ;-)

Actually when it first hits you (as it mostly did to both wife and me when we were in our thirties), you can develop some mental techniques and it does get better for a decade or two. Then it comes back.

>Actually it is something I have been noticing lately, especially at night. There will be a dream about some old time event and I won't be able to remember the girl's name or the dog's name. And I feel I should be able to.

Words, more or less, do come to me when the context goes away. IOW, I remember it when I don't need it anymore, which may be within ten minutes or three days. It's faces that do me: I just see some known features on someone's face, or a face just pops up in my mind, or I see someone out of context (i.e. in an environment different from where we met, with different clothes, hair style, time of day, years of age) and then I try for days to remember who that was.