Category: General

I was going through a co-worker’s desk looking for a pair of scissors yesterday. The person in question was laid-off and then re-hired at another department and hasn’t been here for at least a month and a half. And he wasn’t very well-liked anyway, being the most ineffective manager I’ve ever known, and annoying to boot.

I spotted a Starbucks gift card in among the paper clips, Sharpies, and (my goal) not one but two pairs of scissors.

I took the card. The barista today scanned it and said it still had $10.00 on it.

…yeah. I’m so keeping the card.

I’ve discovered something about my sleep patterns.

Let me start with the past: I tend to sleep a lot. When I’m not on a regular schedule (and even sometimes when I am) I sleep for 10+ hours before being able to get up and get moving. And getting up, even then, is hard. I’m groggy and it takes me a while to fully wake up. Ugh. I used to think that I was a borderline narcoleptic.

I would tend to go to bed around 9:00 PM, and then wake up at 5:30 AM or 6:00 AM. Just wasn’t working, which didn’t make sense. That’s at least 8 hours of sleep. What’s the problem?

But for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying something different. I’ve done a little research and found out that sleep occurs in cycles, with three different stages in each cycle. So I’ve tried to figure out how long my personal sleep cycle is, and then arranged my bedtime and wake-up time so that it falls near the end of a cycle.

Turns out my sleep cycle appears to be around 3 hours and 20 minutes (it might even be half of that – that might be two full cycles, but I don’t think so.) On my previous schedule, I was trying to wake up in the middle of a cycle, which explains why it was so hard for me to wake up. Alarm goes off, but my body is not ready to wake up yet. Three (or six) full cycles is going to be over 10 hours – and after that much sleep, my body is probably ready to just stay asleep.

So I realized, if I go to bed at 10:30 or even as late as 11:30, I can still get up by 5:30-5:45, and it will be near a natural waking point. My only concern would be: is 6.5-7.0 hours of sleep enough?

For the past two weeks that’s what I’ve been trying to determine. And it turns out, at least short-term, that is is, in fact, enough sleep. I’m not having any trouble focusing during the day, in fact, my mood has somewhat improved and my thinking is as sharp as ever. I feel great, actually!

Who knew that less sleep was the key to curing my over-sleeping problem? I love counter-intuitive answers like that.

Before I head out to my chosen celebration for… um… celebrating the Old Year Ending, I thought I’d wish the handful of readers of this corner of the World Wide Intertron a Happy New Year. Y’know… when it gets here. Which, as I post this, is still 5 1/2 hours away.

When midnight rolls around, I’ll be standing next to my favorite running partner ready to run in what will be our fastest 5K of the year (until the next one, of course), whether or not it’s cold or rainy.

…Personally, I’m hoping for “not rainy” but no matter.

Ciao, all, until 2006.

It’s late and I’m not really drunk. But I had a conversation tonight with a girl I will probably never see again, and although that’s all bitter-sweet ‘n’ stuff, the message I took away from the conversation is worth it. She was amazing, but afterward I realized that I know a lot of amazing people and I could know more if I just took a chance and talked to them. So thank you, amazing girl, for helping me through the medium of a conversational give-and-take, to see this powerful message that’s been there all along, but forgotten.

The message is simple:

Wake up.

That’s all… wake up. Most of the world is asleep, dreaming or maybe not even dreaming. Wake up, look around. Laugh, motherfucker. Cry, motherfucker. Rage, and shout, and reach, and do. Dreaming is fine but when the dream is done nothing is changed. It all goes back to the way it was when you fell asleep.

Take a chance and do something. Even if your little voice is telling you it might turn out wrong. Just wake up and try.

I could go on and on… but for now I just want that message to sink in, to become the underlying motivation for anything and everything I do.

Wake up.

If Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and Christmas Eve is the day before, then I shall call today “Brianmas Eve”.

If I feel like it, I’ll make up a bunch of “traditions” for the celebration of Brianmas. Later.

If history is any guide, though, not much happens on Brianmas. An oft-heard phrase is “well, consider this both your Christmas gift and a birthday gift!” or, rarely, “I got this on sale yesterday! I hope it fits!”

(Bitter? Yes, but only because it’s funny…)

Merry Christmas you guys! To you and your family and everyone you like and no one you hate!

I’m so frickin’ drunk right now!

I LOVE YOU GUYS!

…even the ones I can’t stand, you lying bastards! C’mere! Lemme give ya a hug?

I’m a baaaaaad, baaaaaaaaaad Santa…

It’s not often that I make a new friend and find out that a favorite author has not just one, not just two but three new-to-me books out, all at the same time. New books and new friends… Last time turned out to be a bad memory. This time will be better.

And the books? “Chinese Takeout” and “Unlubricated”, and a book of four plays called “The East Village Tetralogy“, all by Arthur Nersesian. I felt a small bit of guilt running up to Powell’s on my lunch break and buying all three, when I still have Christmas shopping to do. But I justified it by saying that even my closest friends would not know about this author, and I found all but the book of plays used, so it wasn’t that much money… and I don’t have that much shopping left, anyway.

By the way, I totally hate the winter solstice.

Short days suck. I swear, with the clouds and rain, that it was dark at 3:30 this afternoon.

I can not wait for the days to start getting longer.

I mean, technically, they’re going to start getting longer tomorrow. But I mean noticeably longer, which I probably won’t notice until late February or early March.

Yeah. Longer days would rock. Soon, please.

It’s been very cold in Portland for the past month. It’s a little unusual, but that’s not why I mention it.

I’ve discovered that, when I turn the heat on in my apartment, I have an allergic reaction. I have electric baseboard heat (I know, not the most efficient). My nose starts running, my eyes itch, I get a lot of phlegm in my throat… ugh. So I generally only turn up the heat right when I get home, or right when I get up, get the house kinda/sorta warm, then turn it back down again and put on extra layers of clothes.

When I first got Smacky, I assumed that my allergic reaction was to him, but it seems that is not the case. It’s just that I got Smacky in the late summer, and by fall and winter last year I had started to use the heat in my apartment. I connected the cat with the allergies, and decided to kick Smacky out of my bedroom as much as possible. But now I realize, not having the heat on means no allergies. Coolio.

In the past couple of days, I’ve been letting Smacky sleep with me again. I turn down the heat, and then have a warm furry object laying (usually) on my chest or around my neck, right where the blankets don’t cover. It’s awesome.

Only drawback is that Smacky is kind of an asshole if he gets woken up suddenly. The other morning I was awakened in the middle of the night by having a grumpy cat biting my arm and clawing at my nose. He actually drew blood, the little shit.

Bucky Katt has been very bad lately.