Blessed by the Potato

I went to bed last “night” at about 5 am. I have no idea why I do that sometimes. Way back in the day, when I used to pound back Jolt colas daily just because my heart had gotten so used to the constant caffeine bath that it would stop a little here and there without it, I used to stay up all night sometimes because the workload in UofT physics was a little insane sometimes. Even on my days off through the summer I’d stay up until about dawn, with the appearance of the ball of fire in the sky a serving as my reminder* to go to bed. I was my most productive after midnight, getting all kinds of stuff done on crazy timetables. Lately, however, my most productive time seems to have shifted a few hours earlier, to about 9 pm – 2 am. Anything after 3 am is a waste these days, nothing gets done. I sometimes wonder if I fall asleep in my chair, since last night I didn’t get a single thing done (not one sentence written, and I didn’t even watch more TV!) after about 3 am. I have no idea where the two hours between when I stopped working/reading/watching TV and when I actually climbed into bed went.

They certainly weren’t spent cleaning.

Anyhow, so tonight I have to go to bed substantially earlier because I have a meeting at 9 am tomorrow. I had my dinner and everything, and was in bed by about 11:30. Not too shabby.

Then a little after midnight I find I have to go pee. So I untuck all my covers, stumble out to the bathroom, and do my thing. Three minutes later, I have to go again. Ok, fine, off we go. I don’t even get my breathing settled and my hands re-warmed after crawling back into bed before I have to go a third time. Sighing at myself, I stumble back out to the washroom… and there’s nothing left.

“Ok,” I say, actually out loud, which seemed a lot less crazy when my cat was around and I could talk out loud to her “fuck you body, I’m going to go surf the internet until you make up your mind and let me sleep.” So I go off to see if John Hempton’s got anything new for me, since he’s wide awake on purpose down in Australia time. Sure enough, he’s got short post up about Jim the Realtor and some funny business in house pricing. I watch the video, and man, somebody take Jim’s video camera away. I have no idea how video blogging became such a “thing”. Audio podcasts I find annoying enough that I subscribe to exactly zero, but I can at least see the utility of being able to consume them in an environment away from the computer (e.g., on the train). But most video bloggers are not using the medium very effectively. Take Jim the Realtor’s post there: 9 minutes to get to the point. Nine, monotonous, hand held shaky, minutes. We would all have been better served by Jim trading in the video camera for a still camera and a keyboard. We could have skimmed through the comparables with their pictures and gotten to the point in about a minute (depending on your reading speed) and wouldn’t have had to listen to him talk.

Anyhow, that’s 10 minutes gone, and I’m starting to return to normal, so I decide to finally finish an idea for a post I had last week. I had a presentation and wore a shirt with buttons on it (and a collar!) which is pretty fancy attire for a grad student. After my presentation, another student commented on my dress-up day: “You know, you look so much better when you put some effort into dressing up! People say that your whole outlook and attitude is shaped by what you wear, and if you dress for success you may find it. You should wear a power suit on Monday!” And of course, this is what went through my head:

* – Seriously, I just forget to go to bed sometimes — my tired reflex is broken. I used to forget to eat sometimes for 12 or 14 hours at a time too, but now I’m fat and can only wish dieting was that easy.