Can’t Sleep. Clown Will Eat Me.

Or, to keep the references to The Simpsons going, “Worst.  Vacation.  Ever.”

As I start to write this it’s just a bit before 5:30 AM.
I tried going to bed a few hours ago, but, well, here I am writing this.
I normally take a significant amount of time off from work for the holidays.  At a minimum, I take off the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, though I usually take Christmas Eve off as well.
This time around I took the full two weeks off.
I didn’t expect that I would do anything fun or exciting, or even anything productive, really (thought I had intended to try to do some work on the whole comic book thing), but I also didn’t expect to spend most of the time being sick.  And yet that’s exactly what I did.
I caught a doozy of a cold that at times made it seem as though I would soon become an entirely mucus-based lifeform.
Even after I finally began to recover and return to the state that I bitterly refer to as “normal,” I was still a bit out of it and found myself sleeping away my rapidly-dwindling vacation time.
This completely irregular sleep schedule – as opposed to my normal mostly irregular sleep schedule – has thrown everything completely off-kilter.
Which is part of why I’m up writing this.
In addition to my sleep schedule being wonky, my eyes have been wonkier than usual.
When I first started developing the symptoms of the cold, my Gentle Molding lenses started to bother me.  Given that wearing them while sick can lead to bad things happening – namely eye infections – and that I didn’t really have anywhere to go, what with being a leaky, disgusting abomination, I didn’t bother wearing them while I was sick.
This was problematic, as my vision rapidly deteriorates when I don’t wear them.  One night without them isn’t a big deal – my typical schedule is to not wear them one night a week – as my eyes hold their shape well enough for me to function normally.  After two nights without them, though, functioning becomes a bit more difficult, and after that everything that’s more than five feet in front of me becomes an indistinct blur.
So that means that I have to resort to wearing my glasses.
However, there’s a problem with that.
I can’t actually wear them and get any benefit from doing so until after about three days of not wearing my lenses, but even so, no matter how long I go without wearing my lenses, my vision never reverts back to being as bad as it was when I regularly wore my glasses.
So wearing them leads to headaches and nausea.  And even if it weren’t for that, I couldn’t just wear them all the time like I used to, because back when I wore them regularly that whole “five feet in front of me” thing was too far to see without them.
So if I want to be able to see something that’s not five feet and one inch away from me and have it not be a blur when I’m in that state, I have to take them off.
That gets old real quick.
After finally recovering enough from the cold I thought it was safe to wear my lenses again.
That worked about as well as pouring sulphuric acid directly into my eyes.
So, okay, I wasn’t sufficiently recovered.
I gave it a couple more days.  Same thing.
Then I thought, “Hmm, sometimes this happens when I get the lenses mixed up and wear the right lens in my left eye and vice versa,” so, because I can never remember which is which (the lenses are only distinguishable from each other by the size of the dots on them), I decided to try swapping them.
It had been my right eye that was bothering me primarily when I wore the lenses.  What I found upon switching them was that my left eye started bothering me, while my right eye was mostly okay.
(Based on how my vision turned out, though, it was clear that I had been correctly matching the lenses with their corresponding eyes before doing the swap.)
So I thought that maybe there was just something wrong with that lens.  Maybe it somehow got warped or something.
I still have my old pair of lenses, so I cleaned the right one, put it in, and success!  My right eye wasn’t bothering me at all.  But then my left eye – which had the newer lens in – started to really bother me.  Okay, so both lenses are jacked up somehow.
At that point, it was 4 AM and I didn’t feel like bothering with cleaning the old left lens, so I just took the left one out and slept with the old right lens in.
So when I got up yesterday, I could see again (even though my vision was corrected in only one eye…that’s kind of how my eyes work, or don’t work, I guess.  I don’t know.).
I didn’t feel like bothering with going to the eye doctor to find out what was up with my lenses, figuring I could deal with that some other day and just wear my old lenses for the time being.
So, before going to bed a few hours ago, I cleaned both lenses, popped them in and found that my fucking right eye was killing me again.
Not as bad as with the new lens, but even so.
It doesn’t seem to be an infection, as my eyes feel fine when I don’t have the lenses in (though they remain irritated for a while after I take them out), and I don’t have the problems I had in the past when my eyes were infected, so I don’t know what’s up with that..
What I do know is that the lingering irritation even after I took it out contributed to keeping me awake and finally forcing me to admit defeat and get out of bed.
The other thing I know is that these past two weeks have sucked ass.

Long Weekend

For no reason that I can determine, I woke up at around 2:30 this morning.
I stayed in bed for a while trying to get back to sleep before my bladder induced me to get up.  After attending to that, I got back into bed and spent some time lying in the dark before deciding to get up again and have a cigarette.
Once that was done, I did some meditation for about twenty minutes.
By that time it was around 3:30, which was only a half an hour earlier than I was planning to get up anyway, so I said, "Fuck it," got up, got dressed in my workout attire, and proceeded to engage in a workout that let me know in no uncertain terms that while I mostly feel okay, I'm still not 100% recovered from whatever illness struck me down on Monday.
Having an extra half hour to kill after finishing my exhausting workout, I sat down to watch the recorded episode of The Office before showering and getting on with my day.
While at work, my boss, in a post-staff meeting discussion, talked about some of her plans for our group, which included getting my co-worker promoted to the same level I just got promoted to, while providing some - frankly infuriating, though I won't get into that - details about the process of getting me promoted.
Her goal is for both of us to be Managers (my promotion will give me the title of "Manager," but I won't actually be managing anyone initially) and, eventually, have Analysts reporting to us.
My co-worker said, "I just want to manage projects.  Jon can manage the Analysts."
I said, "I just want to manage our internal processes."
The boss said, "You'll both shut the fuck up and do whatever I tell you to do."

****

As it was the Friday before Halloween, the office was going to be overrun by candy-seeking hordes of children at 2 PM.
Me:  By the way, I'm bailing before the kids show up.
Boss:  You and me both.

****

I decided to take Monday and Tuesday off, mostly just because, but in part because I want to stay up late on Monday and get a jump on National Novel Writing Month, and devote much of Tuesday to writing.
Because I'll be writing my latest novel, my updates here will either be even less frequent than they have been, or more frequent, in the form of excerpts from each day's writing.
Personally, I don't see any advantage to either option, so I'm not sure which one I'll opt for.

Wednesday Hodge Podge Post

I woke up this morning convinced that it must still be around, say, 6 AM, only to discover that it was actually 9.
This annoyed me because I really didn’t want to get up, but given how short my Wednesdays are already thanks to my insanely early bedtime (an insanely early bedtime that allows me to get up before 5 AM and still manage to get a lot of sleep and manage to stay awake while sitting in one spot in a dark, cold, boring room for 12+ hours), so, cursing Father Time, I got up.
I then proceeded to turn on the oven to preheat it in order to cook the breakfast casserole I’d prepared last night.
While that was cooking I talked to my mother – who is moving into a different apartment within the same complex she’s in this weekend, as it’s on a lower floor and has a southern exposure so she’ll actually get some sunlight – and then got around to eating the aforementioned casserole.
Well, part of it, anyway, because even though I’d halved the recipe I’d based it on, it was still a lot more food than I’m inclined eat in one sitting.
(The recipe as found, but not as prepared, follows:
2 lbs. pork sausage (1 hot, 1 mild)
3 c. milk
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
9 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 tsp. dry mustard
1 sm. bag Ore Ida hash browns

Cook sausage over medium heat until done, stirring to crumble. Drain well on paper towels, set aside. In same skillet, brown hash browns, over medium heat. Combine sausage, hash browns and remaining ingredients, mixing well. Pour into a well greased 13 x 9 x 2 inch baking pan. Refrigerate covered, overnight. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
Makes 8 to 10 servings.)
After eating I got around to showering and pinged Brian to see if he was up for seeing the movie today. He had to bring one of the cats to the vet not long before the movie’s start time, so that was pretty much a negative, and so I was left to decide whether or not I wanted to go see it alone.
While deciding, I worked on a tutorial for creating a postage mark.
The result of said tutorial work is shown below:



I made it a postage mark from Perdition, because that’s ever-so slightly more esoteric than Hell. Besides, there’s a Hell in Michigan, which people like to mail things from just so that it can be postmarked “Hell.” Similarly, around the holidays people like to mail presents from Christmas, Michigan.
While working on that, I thought, “What else do I have to do?” and so opted to head to the theater.
For a while I thought I was going to be the only person there, but then someone else came in, and after her a small group of teenagers came in, and, though there was no good reason for them to do so in the near-empty theater, they sat near me. Since it wasn’t as though those were “prime” seats, I assumed this meant that the Universe was just preparing to fuck with me by having these little shits behind me so that they could interfere with my enjoyment of the movie as much, and as loudly, as possible.
Fortunately they were reasonably quiet, so they didn’t annoy me too much beyond simply existing.
One of them did annoy me slightly after the trailer for the movie Lucky You – a movie that I saw a trailer for months and months ago, in the summer, I think, and which still doesn’t have an actual release date – starring Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore.
The kid said, “That looked pretty good until Drew Barrymore started crying. Then it, like, lost all credibility.”
I wanted to turn around and say, “What the fuck are you talking about? Do you even know what words mean?”
Instead I simply sighed and shook my head.
Then the movie started.
…
It was interesting, and, oddly enough it had some moments of real humor, though I think that they just stood out so prominently because they were set against such a bleak and humorless backdrop.
The basic premise of the movie is this: 20 years in the future, women have become infertile, with the last new child having been born 18 years earlier. The species is doomed, and that’s just one of the many problems in the world. In its dying throes, the ugliest aspects of humanity have come to the surface and we find ourselves visiting an England in which, much like the England of V for Vendetta, one of the worst crimes you can commit is to be from somewhere else.
Illegal immigrants – foogies as they’re called – are rounded up and placed in internment camps before being shipped away.
There is, of course, violent resistance to this state of affairs, and very early in the movie we’re hit with an act of stunning terrorist violence – the first of many.
The plot of the movie is centered around the quest to get a young foogie girl safely out of the country. This particular foogie is the most important person in the world. Why? Because she’s eight months pregnant.
The rest is all backstory and personal histories – such as the connection between the protagonist, Theo, played by Clive Owen, and the leader of the resistance group, Julian, played by Julianne Moore.
I have to say that I liked the pacing and the manner in which important information was provided to the audience (a sort of slow unfolding that inspires a growing awareness), and there are a lot of nice little stylistic touches, like the music, most notably the subtly not-quite right (thanks to the singer’s accent) cover of Ruby Tuesday.
I also appreciate the attention to subtle details. For example, in the movie Julianne Moore is in her 40s, which means she would have been in her 20s during the early 2000s, and as a mature woman she still bears the trappings that would have been de rigueur for an activist of that earlier time, such as a distinctive tattoo and a nose piercing.
So yeah, I’d say it was worth seeing. I can’t say for certain whether or not Brian would have liked it, but I’m kind of leaning towards him not liking it.
Once I got home I checked the mail and found that I’d gotten my belated Christmas present from Kevin.
I was surprised to find that it was two CDs. One I’d expected because he’d mentioned it when I last talked to him. It’s a CD called Where’s Neil When You Need Him? which consists of songs inspired by the works of Neil Gaiman, written and performed mostly by people I’ve only heard of because Neil has mentioned them in reference to the CD on his blog, and Tori Amos, who is a friend of Neil’s and who, by asking the question in one of her songs – she frequently makes references to Neil in her lyrics – provided the title for the CD.
The second CD, though, was a bit of a head-scratcher that falls into the “Uhhh…?” category, as I’m not quite sure what inspired him purchase it for me.
The CD is titled What is Hip?
It consists of remixes of songs that were popular when I was a kid. Songs by people like The Doobie Brothers and Seals and Croft (A remix of Summer Breeze that was, apparently, used in a Gap commercial, which explains why it sounded vaguely familiar).
So, yeah. I gave it a quick listen (listening to the Neil CD now), and it’s…interesting.
Still, I can see the motivation for getting me a CD with material based on Neil Gaiman’s work, but not really sure about the other one.
(In my thank you e-mail I quipped to Kevin that the only time that I think that “Jon” and “hip” will be likely to appear in a sentence together is in a form like “Jon slipped in the shower and broke his hip.”)
After I’d left the theater and turned my phone on I discovered that I had a voice mail from Kathleen, who was expressing anger and dismay at the fact that she’d gotten voice mail when calling me. I called her back and got her voice mail, even though it was already too late and I wouldn’t have been able to help her anyway (she needed someone to look up a phone number online, apparently).
Inside the box that Amazon shipped the CDs in was a little piece of paper that said, “Why worry about Valentine’s Day?”
I responded, “Exactly.”
I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but that pretty much sums up my feelings about it.
Anyway, that was my day in a – wordy and boring – nutshell.
Three long days of work lie ahead of me, and I’m sure that tomorrow night I’ll continue what has become my Thursday night tradition of only getting about 3-4 hours of sleep for no apparent reason other than that I simply will not fall asleep.
I just don’t get that. What is the mechanism that keeps you awake like that, despite the fact that you’re tired? I mean, I’m tired, I want to sleep, and I’m in bed. What more is needed to make sleep happen?
But whatever, I guess I’ll swear at that bridge when I come to it.
In the meantime, I hope you all have more interesting and exciting weekends than I’m likely to have.