MadMup.com

I can't sleep. I thought I was tired earlier, but after lying in bed for 20 minutes staring at the ceiling, I figured I was lying in bed - lying to myself about being able to go to sleep. I don't know what the deal is. I don't drink any caffeinated beverages or anything else that would be doing this. I can't remember the last time I had raspberry tea.

My new thing is water. I can't really drink a lot of "regular" water, though. The taste of it bores me enough that sometimes I kind of feel like I'm gagging on it. I discovered, though, that Target has these wonderful flavored waters that I absolutely love. They have all sorts of really weird flavor combinations, and I've discovered I don't like many of them (like "spearmint" - it sounds good, but it's nasty), but I do like the lemon/raspberry and especially the blueberry/tangerine. So good! In fact, between that exclamation point and the beginning of this sentence I nipped downstairs and got myself one. I don't understand how they can add flavor to the water without adding anything else, but all of the Nutrition Facts are at zero except for sodium, which clocks in at a paltry 5mg.

I'm actually thinking about going into work. If I knew I could work a regular shift, just shifted a few hours forward, I'd do it. I'd go in right now, work until 9:30, and then come home and sleep. You can't call your boss at one in the morning and get that okayed, though, and I'm fairly certain I couldn't go in now and work until 3 p.m. like I'm supposed to.

I started reading In Cold Blood the other day. I'd never heard about it before the Capote movie came out last year, but once I stated hearing about it, I got interested in it. The only other "true crime" book I've read was Helter Skelter, about the Manson murders, and the style of this one is completely different. Frankly, it's really sad. I'm only a quarter of the way through it and it's making me sad. I had to stop reading tonight because I couldn't take it. Probably part of the reason I'm still awake is that by the time tears get to your ears, they're cold and feel weird.

Earlier today I finished watching King Kong (it took me two sittings to get through it). It was about 2/3rds of the way through that I realized no matter how much I rooted for the CGI monkey, he wasn't ever going to win.

I've had a real craving to buy a video camera lately and there's no good reason for it. I imagine myself making little movies and editing them together on my computer and being all creative and stuff, but I know that's not going to happen. And there's only so many movies you can take of your cats ("Look! Now she's sleeping!") before someone calls the state to have you placed into custody.

The air conditioning in my apartment decided to break on Friday night. I slept on the couch downstairs and actually opened a couple of windows a bit to get some air into the place - that's how bad it was. I never open windows. Frankly, I never open the blinds. I couldn't take it, though - it was too stuffy. I called and left a message with my landlord on Saturday morning, but never heard back from them. I went over lunch to pay my rent and mentioned it again just to make sure they had it, and when I got hom from work, the guy was actually there, just finishing up. He said he'd been there about three hours, so he'd been sent before I made my second plea. Turns out the main AC unit, the thermostat, and the ... thing outside all had shorted-out parts - he suspected there was lightning damage. So now I've got a spiffily working AC unit that's even doing a decent job cooling the upstairs plus a new digital thermostat. And if you know me at all, you know that I am a firm believer in all things digital. Digital > analog by a long shot.

I was balancing my checkbook over the weekend and got to the entries from Canada. I only used my debit card a few times up there, but I had originally entered them in the Canada-given amounts. Well, of course, my bank made the conversions automatically, so my statement had the American equivalents instead. I had to change each of the entries and it turns out my Canada trip cost me approximately $7 less than I thought. Wooo!

Even though I own Guitar Hero it's still fun to play it at the demo station at Best Buy for some reason. I was playing it there this weekend and a lady started asking me questions about it. I answered as best I could while Hendrixing out on "Spanish Castle Magic," and she ended up buying it for her kid. That's not the first time that's happened to me, either. I think I should be getting some sort of cut on these sales. Or at least a free copy of Guitar Hero II in November.

I wish I had an answer for everything. I've got a couple of friends going through some really, really hard times right now, and I wish I knew the exact right thing to say to each of them. My brain knows that sometimes people just need to know other people are available for listening, but my heart wants to fix everything for them by saying that one perfect thing that will make them say, "Oh! That's it exactly!" and go from there and be happy forever. Sure, it's not a realistic wish, but I call realistic, attainable wishes something else entirely: "goals."

The cats are weirded out by my being up this late. It's like I'm upsetting their sleep schedule somehow.

Note For Future Scientific Study Purposes: First yawn was at 1:41 a.m.

And, actually, with that yawn, I'm starting to feel like maybe I could sleep a bit. I shall go try. The alarm doesn't go off for another 4 hours, so I should be fine.

Labels: apropos of nothing