The Beauty of Sleep

I, like many of you, I'm sure, am addicted to Facebook. That little social networking phenomenon has reconnected me with college and high school classmates and buddies, old co-workers and even former bosses. Not to mention providing yet another cyber-dimension for me and most of my current friends to play in. So a few days ago, when my Facebook friend and real-life acquaintance Andrew posted on the site that he had learned the value of a good night's sleep, I, of course, had to play along and comment. I not only agreed with him but confessed a bit of jealousy because I spent four days last week getting up at 3:30 a.m. for work.

The first morning I had to rise before the birds came as a surprise to me. You see, my co-worker Susan unexpectedly called in sick Tuesday morning, causing my phone to rudely awaken me at 3:30 and beckon me to my place of employment as soon as I could get there. As it turns out, Susan has fallen rather ill and ended up being out for the rest of the week; meaning every day by the mid-afternoon, I was told that I'd be returning the next morning at 4:00. For the record, I usually arrive at work at 9:45 a.m. That's a little different. Frankly, I don't know how Susan, or any of the early morning staff at work, keeps such a schedule. I couldn't even exercise for most of the week because my body clock was so screwed up.

All of this is to say that 2009 has gotten off to a bit of a slow start, as my temporary early morning work schedule prevented me from doing much. Also, some unexpected stress arose this past week. None of it is that big a deal; many, many people deal with much bigger problems than mine, but stress is stress. I did manage to join a bunch of friends to toast Devon on her last day of bartending at Joey and Eddie's in North Beach Thursday night, but I only stayed until 8:30. Am I a partier or what? On Friday, I met Bill, Kim, Terry and Suzanne for drinks at Tony Nik's, but that ended up being a relatively early evening, as well, even though it began the weekend.

And last night... ah, last night. After a late morning facial, afternoon laundry, grocery shopping, a run/walk and dinner, I had about an hour to lounge before needing to get dressed and head out to my friend Mike's birthday party. Well, that hour of lounging turned into a four hour nap, followed by an actual trip to bed about two and a half hours after that. Good times. I love birthday parties, too, and am sad to have missed the fun, but clearly, I needed the sleep and feel rather fresh this morning. Who wouldn't after a grand total of about eleven hours and a half hours of sleep?

So today I intend to be very productive before meeting Kurt and some of his friends for Sunday evening cocktails. I've become a big fan of the Sunday afternoon/evening cocktails. They're a great way to end the weekend before the grind begins again. Let's just hope I can sleep until my oh, so late, regular weekday waking hour of 6:30 a.m. this week.