7 posts tagged “sleep”
Well, I'm awake, at least.
Coming home from work tonight, I immediately curled up on the couch with Evan and proceeded to fall asleep. I woke up a couple of hours later and fell asleep again about ten minutes thereafter. And then woke up at around 10:30. I tried to go to bed but ended up watching TV with Evan in there and decided I was wide awake. After puttering around the internet and finding nothing too absorbing, I settled onto the couch with my book. Evan went to bed, and after I finished it (12:30?) I decided to try sleeping myself. Couch + TV + fuzzy Kimiko blanket usually = instant-sleep mode. Not tonight, however, so I decided to try to sleep in the bedroom and listen to The Dark Tower II: Drawing of the Three (picked it up for seven bucks on sale at work on super-discount day) on my iPod. Of course, I got caught up in the story and was still awake by the time that I got to the end of the last track that I had imported. Still wide awake.
So I got up and came out here and started importing the next CD, which should be finishing shortly. I hope that by the time I would reach the end of listening to it, I will be well asleep. For now I have nothing else to do so I figured a short entry might be in order, at least maybe to get myself to stop mentally rambling long enough to get to sleep.
We're having some nasty weather tonight, but we shouldn't have to go out tomorrow for any reason, so it should be all right out there again by the time Evan heads to work on Monday. I'm off until Tuesday, which is yay, though not really; I'm only getting three days this coming week. With luck the budget will go up for the week after that, but I can't say that I'm not in the process of looking for something else. I can't really afford to stay there if it's going to continue like this until the second quarter--Evan's loans are coming in and I think mine are too. And we were already kind of just skittering by. Add the fact that he's really desperate to get out of where he's working right now (not that I blame him--it kind of sucks, and by kind of I mean a lot), and you get a bit of a sticky situation. With any luck we'll improve on all that as soon as possible.
I'm kind of hungry but I really don't want to grab anything to eat this late at night. Though the last of the leftovers I brought home from dinner with one of my co-workers is still incredibly tasty-smelling. Yay cheesefries from Outback--I think I probably brought half my plate's worth home with me, though Evan took care of most of it.
With any luck I'll manage to get an actual interesting entry up here soon; I signed up for an interesting little project on a website I frequent and I'm hoping to at least put on a good show, so to speak. It's not likely, I suppose, that too many folks would be interested in my ramblings, but a girl can dream, right?
So more bookwenchery from me in the next couple days, given that I've already devoured a whole new book since this morning. But not now; the Gunslinger calls.
No real update this morning, because I'm going to go back to bed until I absolutely have to get up now that the cat's been fed and she'll shut up and stop bothering me.
I was up until 2ish, involved in an RP that had been going on since about four hours earlier. We'd just gotten down to the meat of the problem, but everyone agreed they were sleepy/needed to go for the sake of work/school today. J will be over later tonight, so hopefully I'll still be awake enough after our weekly TV Night Number One (tomorrow is Supernatural) to finish it up. No work tomorrow, as I've said before, so it's entirely possible.
Anyway, going to go doze for a little while longer, while I can.
Another quiet morning, sunshine filtering through the living room blinds. I'm sure Mom's still freaked out that we haven't put curtains up, but for some reason I like it that way. I might also like it with curtains, but shopping for them is more effort than I feel like mustering, for some reason.
Was forcefully awakened by my favorite feline, who felt the need to communicate her desire for fresh crunchy food at about 7:45. She woke me up out of a dream that I have, of course, since forgotten.
We stayed up pretty late (for us) last night, having a friend over in the evening. We watched a couple episodes of Supernatural, which she introduced me to because I got her stuck on Lost. So far I'm really liking it, though the water-spirit death by drowning episode wasn't the best one for someone who at best, mildly dislikes water and at worst is afraid of it to the point of unreason.
It's so foggy outside right now that all I can see is the edge of our car, the silhouette of the tree and bush outside, and a bright yellow glowing mist. Very pretty.
I'm actually still kind of sleepy, but I wanted to do a bit of writing here, and also mention that the RP I got last night made me very happy indeed. Yay.
Back to bed with me, I think.
Monday is here already, much to my disappointment. It was such a relief to crawl into my own bed last night, blast the AC, and burrow into my pillows while wrapping up in my down comforter that I really didn't want to get out of bed this morning. I tried to go to bed early but ended up watching MythBusters for a while (they were doing movie myths!), and whatever time I did manage to fall asleep was definitely the wrong one.
I was in the middle of a sleep cycle when the alarm went off, which is the rare occasion that I don't just hop out of bed and instead mutter groggily and smack the Sleep button. I was dreaming, which is a sure sign of this for me, and half of my reluctance to wake is because I want to finish the dream.
All I know is that it was definitely related to being at my parents' house yesterday, because it had a lot to do with football becoming the religion of the country or something. There were nuns in very special hats (that they only wore once a century or something), and despite the fact that it was Sunday, it was my alma mater's football team playing. I don't remember the score, but I do remember that a bunch of the other team's players got thrown out of the game for ganging up on and kicking one of ours.
There was also some sort of vaguely-connected bookstore type dream where we set up giant displays for celebrations or something. And I had a room (which was a mess) somewhere in the dorms, and so did J, just like old times sort of.
Anyway, yeah, it was pretty vague and weird.
I dunno, not much else to say right now, I guess. Back to work today, though my first day back after a few off is usually pretty fast, which is nice. And I only work four again this week, so after Wednesday, I have two days off in the middle of the week, which is just absolutely lovely.
Anyway, until then.
I slept eleven hours last night. Two on the couch after my hot soak in the bathtub, and nine more when I woke up and figured I might as well just go to bed.
I hadn't realized I was so tired.
Actually, I think I've been fighting off a cold for the past couple of days, and I don't feel sniffly at all this morning, so I suppose that's something, eh? At any rate, I do feel a lot better on the overall, so it was probably for the best, even though I hadn't really planned on doing it.
It's also entirely possible that since I didn't really rest much on Monday (day off) that I still hadn't recovered from all that. This week is promising to be better, since I work today and the next two days and then have at least one day off. Compared to the neverending schedule of last week, that seems remarkably easy. I am, however, going to be working longer hours this week. Since Evan doesn't get off work until 6:30, and we're way behind on a few projects (All of the main displays of the store get changed this week, that means we have to get that out as quickly as possible. That results in all the books that were on the old displays getting piled up on a table. Plus we still have to deal with our regular shipment), I agreed to stay late and help with voids, which means taking a scanner gun through specific sections and finding all the books that haven't sold or are coming/have come out in new editions. Those get sent back, which gives us more room on the shelves, which is yay!
One of my favorite sections to void or COMP (basically reset the section so that it's all in order) is the essays/criticism section, which always has interesting books about books, which is quite possibly one of my favorite things ever. Yesterday revealed two interesting finds, a book about reading "like a professor," and one about the Dark Tower series. So I'll probably browse through those two at work today. The other book I picked up is called The Alphabet of Dreams, and is about a boy who has the ability to have prophetic dreams if he sleeps with the possession of another person. So far, so good, but I'm not very far yet, as I've given up my reading time to work this week.
I think I'm giving up on Half Life. I hate that, but by the last third of the book, the story and writing are so convoluted that I can't even begin to feel engaged. I think I'll probably put it back and maybe pick it up again later. Sometimes that's for the best.
Let's see. What else haven't I documented here in a while. The RO/RP situation is going well enough, though I haven't been able to do as much as I might like now that I'm getting five days a week at work again. I suppose it's a sacrifice that has to be made, though I don't care for it. Once I get a little more accustomed to the schedule it should be a bit easier. In the meantime, the RP I have been getting has been pretty damn good. Rachna's attained her magi-knight status, so she and her husband are starting to work on the design and forging of her runic blade. Claire and Spectrus reached another nice little turning point lately, too. I still need to work on getting some more guild RP going on there, but with so many character preoccupied with the war that's going on ingame, it's difficult.
The cat is still crazy. She sits on me each morning to wake me up, though this morning I woke up a few times before she even tried--especially at 4:30, which, given the time I normally go to bed, would have been the equivalent of my normal wake-up time. Finally, at seven, I gave in. Any more sleep might not have been a good idea, probably.
At any rate, I'm going to wrap this up before it gets too long. Hopefully I won't be tired and fall asleep the next time I want to write an entry!
This morning's post was totally supposed to be a bookpost. But I saw the QotD and got distracted! Oh, well.
I have a couple titles to talk about today; one that I read yesterday, and the other which I started yesterday and finished today.
The first, which caught my eye as I was working on the rare cart of shipment that I got saddled with sometime last week, is called Anonymous Lawyer. After finishing it, I discovered that that the blog that makes up the basis of the story is, in a way, real. It's still a fictionalized account, if I understand correctly, but that turned into the inspiration for the book. It does look like the blog has continued from where the novel left off, however, at least for the time being.
It's fairly short, sweet, and to the point, but is a nice intersection of several of my interests. Blogging, obviously, and books, equally as obviously. Also there's the added benefit of the whole law tie-in. Even if I hadn't been fairly certain before, I can now say that I'm almost positive that firm work isn't for me. At least, firm work in the way I've seen it presented by those in the know is not for me. If nothing else, it was an interesting perspective.
The novel is told completely through web-media, either in the form of blog postings, or through emails between the protagonist and his various contacts. The very last post/chapter was a little confusing, but after thinking about what was said earlier--essentially, that sometimes he would re-write what happened to make it more interesting to the reader--I decided that that's where he was going. I don't want to give away the ending if anyone's actually interested, so that's about all I'll say there.
What I will say is that anyone with even a vague interest in the subject matter would probably find it worth the time it takes to read--it's fairly short; I read it over maybe the span of two hours. A clever premise and relevant to my interests.
The other title is an unabashed bit of chick lit, which I find myself indulging in from time to time when nothing else catches my eye. I really should break myself of the habit, but I suppose deep-down there's a little corner of me that wants to be the cute, successful city-dweller with charming quirks, a well-paying job, and more interesting events than I can keep up with. But then again, I'm not really complaining about what I have, so for now I'll excuse the occasional foray as a bit of escapist brain-candy.
The book is The Thing about Jane Spring, and comes across as a sort of self-imposed Pygmalion, but honestly it was a little too superficial for my liking. Of course, when you get a story about a bare-bones, no-nonsense Spartan New York district attorney who decides to transform herself into Doris Day in order to get a man...well, I guess you're asking for it. Ahem.
It was enough to keep my attention for the bit of time it took to read it, but as it was mostly one of those 'grabbed in desperation before a lunch break' (meaning I wasn't feeling up to devoting any significant portion of my opportunity to get off my feet to finding something more interesting/intelligent/demanding/etc.) impulse reads, I wasn't holding my standards too high.
Everything was very surface-level (quite literally, with makeovers of persona, wardrobe, and home in the first fifty pages) and the characterization/reasoning behind just about everything was pretty shallow.
So, yeah. Shallow. That about sums it up, from the concept to the storyline to the message and back. It seems like the author managed to throw in the "Oh, and it's okay to be a little bit like your true self, too, as long as you're charming, pretty, and do what men want!" message (which is problematic in its own right) at the end of a paragraph about one page from the end.
With more development, it could have been better, but as it stood, eh. Don't waste your time. Pick up Kinsella's The Undomestic Goddess instead.
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It occurs to me that I have some pretty feminist standpoints here and there. I'm not sure where they came from. Agree? Disagree?
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Anyway, yay for random nighttime postings. Today was day two of six in a row for me (next day off is Monday) and I worked late today and will do so tomorrow as well. After Monday, I have four more days in a row before a day off. I'm happy about the financial benefits of a return to total full-time work, but kind of disappointed that I won't have as much time to be lazy about the house and RP as much as I'd like. I'm going to do my best to stay dedicated.
ALSO: Evan and I rent movies from BB every week or thereabouts. The ones from this week have yet to be watched, but have been added to the Movies list. Anyone have recommendations for more stuff to rent? I can never remember what I want to see.
For now, though, the best thing for me is to head to bed and rest as much as I can between shifts. So I'm going to go do that now.
How well do you know your next-door neighbors?
Not at all! We presume that he's a grad student, and he has a pretty spiffy new car that he didn't have when he moved here--the first one was a sky blue junker that he got rid of shortly after we got our new car as well. i deduced that he must have a cat of some sort, probably a kitten, because shortly after he moved in there was Kitten Chow in the back of his car. He's Asian and very quiet, and is home probably a little less than we are. He has a grill on his porch that, to my knowledge, he has yet to use. From what we've seen of his decorating, it's fairly sparse, which lends to the grad-student thing, I guess.
Our neighbor on the other side is some grass, and beyond that the laundry facility, so I don't know about the people who live on the other side of that. We're not terribly chatty anyway, so I doubt we would even if we had more--which I'm glad we don't.
I'm a little torn about my schedule for work next week. For the first time in months, I actually have five days scheduled, and in a row, at that. Granted, I'm happy I at least got my two days off together, but I'm not sure how I'll hold up to the big block out of my time when I'm much more accustomed to doing two or three days then having a day or two off. The good news is that one of those days I do get to work in the cafe, and I also am going to be opening cafe tomorrow, since one of our guys turned in his notice and then just stopped showing up. TIps, here I come! I have to be at work early tomorrow anyway because they decided to have the monthly staff meeting then, so it's not like I have to be there earlier than I would otherwise.
I actually slept all the way through until the alarm this morning, which I haven't done in a couple of weeks. I think it just had to do with my sleep cycle more than being more or less tired than normal, though. I was dreaming, again, though the most of it I can remember is moving into some new apartment/dorm type place and having to have two roommates. One was J, of course, and I don't know who the other was. When I first got there, all the stuff from the previous person was there, including a lot of really neat furniture. There was more to the dream than that, but already it escapes me. Bah.
The university here starts up again this weekend, and classes start on Monday. It's hard to believe the summer's gone so quickly, but there you go. It'll be nice and simultaneously strange to be here in town but not with the students anymore. I'm hoping that the quiet trend out here maintains, as the last thing I want is more crazy party neighbors like I had last year. Ugh. This is the first year that Evan and I both will be out of classes. I find myself hoping, mostly, that it won't make traffic too bad on the ways that we normally go more than anything. But then again, the traffic effects everything.
Don't think I've mentioned it since then, but the doctor's visit went fine, aside from some minor (and probably to be expected, given the circumstances) discomfort afterwards. I kind of don't like the idea that I'm going to be doing that every year from now on, but I suppose the benefits far outweigh one day out of 365 of feeling nervous and uncomfortable. It wasn't even the doctor so much as the environment. And the waiting! So much waiting. And stupid videos, though I'm pretty sure I only have to do that part the first time. And, of course, as Eve Ensler so brilliantly put it, "the scary paper dress that scratches your tits,"* and in my case, was a source of 'wtf is this supposed to unfold like that?!'
Anyway. I think I'm done for now.
