Last night Toney and I were watching TV, and I was struggling to maintain consciousness. I was dipping in and out of dormancy, and probably looked like Gomer Pyle in a gas leak. Finally, around 10:30 I said fukkit, went upstairs and climbed into bed.
And I was wide awake. Again. Why does this happen so often?? I was making myself miserable, fighting sleep for an hour or two, and now that I’d surrendered to it… nope. No sleep for you!
I grabbed my Kindle, and returned to the living room. Just 100% wide awake, like it was freaking noon on a Wednesday. Around 2:30 am I returned to bed, and this time it took. However… Toney starts working at 9 am, taking calls from her crazy NORAD-caliber bedroom control center, and I was awake again.
It’s bullshit. I walk around in a haze most of the time, because I don’t get enough sleep. Yet, I can’t sleep when I try to. What the hell?? Is this some kind of old man crap? It started with the weird ear lobe hair, and the long wiry balloon-poppers that erupt from my eyebrows and have to be tamed by a professional in a salon setting.
Now it’s this sleeping stuff. It’s something I never had a problem with, until the last few years. I could always sleep in the back of a dump truck traveling down Interstate 81, if necessary. And now I’m wallowing and thrashing and sighing… I feel like my calibration is way off. Maybe I need some of those questionable “supplements” they advertise during George Noory?
Toney has always had a problem sleeping. I joke that a neighbor, two or three doors down the block, could fart in their kitchen and she would sit bolt upright in bed and say, “What was that?!” She is, without a doubt, the lightest sleeper I’ve ever encountered. Andy (Ol’ Smeller) can smack his lips out in the hallway and wake her from the deepest REM sleep. It’s ludicrous.
But now she’s getting to say, “See? See what I’ve been dealing with for all these years?” I don’t care for it.
The only good thing? I’m reading a really good book, and got to spend several hours with it last night. This one, to be exact. It’s about a group of friends who are electrocuted during a thunderstorm in 2009, and wake up in late 1985.
It’s wacked-out and a complete blast to read. It’s not literature, but it’s well-written and built for fun. Highly recommended, especially if you like time travel stories. And it’s free for Kindle. Craziness. I’m enjoying it as much as I did Stephen King’s time travel book, which is another great one.
I’ve asked this question before, but I’ll ask it again. If you could travel through time, where would you like to go? Where and when? For whatever reason, I’d like to go to my hometown of Dunbar, WV during the late 1940s. The war is over… there’s optimism in the air… there’s no television yet… I’d love to just walk the streets, have lunch in a diner, and maybe drink a beer or six with my freakishly young grandfather at Ross’s Poolroom, or whatever. When I daydream about time travel, I always daydream about that particular scenario. Not the Gettysburg Address, but blending in for a few weeks in 1947 Dunbar… Weird, huh?
What about you? Where and when would you go? Please tell us about it in the comments. Also, how are you doing in the sleep department? Do you think my problems are because I’m getting really goddamn old? Let me know your thoughts, if you have any.
And I need to call it a day here. Please remember to use our Amazon links while doing your Christmas shopping, or personal shopping, or whatever. I made the mistake of checking this year’s numbers versus last year’s from the same period… We’re way off, my friends. Please try to remember to use the Surf Report links. It’ll cost you nothing extra, and help me a great deal. I sincerely appreciate it.
Now I’m going to work, where I’ll stumble around in a haze for about nine hours, and try to avoid building a chin-to-desk drool bridge. Yes, it’s quite a life I’ve carved out for myself.
I’ll see you guys again soon.
Have a great day!
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I go through that sometimes. I fall asleep hard – and then wake up. I would go to the late 1960s/early1970s.
I think that I’d pick the same time frame. Leaded gasoline. Interesting cars on the road. Street racing as it should be…
I finally got around to taking the advice of a coworker who suggested melatonin to ease the troubles of sleeping during the day, ’cause I work nights. It took me a few months to listen to her, and during that time it would take me at least an hour every day to fall asleep. But I tried this stuff, and now I fall asleep within 15 minutes of taking it every time. It’s in the damn vitamin aisle, I don’t understand it. But it works. I can’t recommend it enough.
I have fantasized about travelling to some time in the past, and making a small fortune or at least a decent living by betting on sporting events of which I already know the outcome. The early 1960s would be interesting. Perhaps visit Greenwich Village and go see Bob Dylan play at Cafe Wha?. Visiting places like Las Vegas and Los Angeles during the early- to mid-1960s would be really cool as well. I would not like to time-travel into the future. The future is scary. Yes, it sure is!
Where would I go?
I would go to Starr Pass Resort in Tucson Arizona on 2 December 2015 to stop a bunch of expensive annoying shit from happening last weekend. Criminitly this was a stupid weekend.
This weekend we had the Holiday Ball for our military installation. It’s where everybody gets all dressed up and pretends they aren’t sloppy drunks for one night out of the year. Mrs. Cycle66 likes to go so she always brings a date along that isn’t me. This year it was my niece, who has never been to anything like this.
Every year I tag along to the Resort because we already have a room since my wife stays the night. I don’t partake in the ball business though. Instead I spend the day dicking around in Tucson. This time, however, I chose to stay on the resort property and get a 2 hour “energy focus” massage for $300. Sometimes I like to do things I’ve never done before. I think I would rather chop my own head off than do that ever again. First of all, this ain’t no massage. It’s napping while somebody looks at you. For about 2 hours I laid on the table with somebody resting their hands on my head or arms. Really just sitting their hands on me. Not moving, just, like, sitting there…with their hands on me. Fuck that. Second, every once in a while they would mumble some chakra bullshit to make sure the energy was flowing from the universe through them and to me correctly. I think I was one step away from wearing a pyramid hat and balancing crystals on my pecker. If you are ever offered “Cranial Sacral” or “Reiki” massages, slap whoever offered it.
—–
But that’s not all.
My wife was over in the ball annoying me and I didn’t even know it until the next day. One of the entertainers was a “speed painter”. He paints big pictures of shit real fast. At the end of the night there is an auction for the paintings. My wife spent $550 on a picture of southwest landscape. We can quite literally see southwest desert landscape out of every window in our house. She spent that money on something that simulates a window we already have in 14 other places in the house.
—–
There was one good thing about it. My niece, a 16 year old highschooler, out here for the ball played in a senior command golf match Saturday. I teamed her up with all my bosses (two Senior Executive civilians and a bunch of Colonels). She beat their asses across the entire course. She shot 3 under par and the closest to here was 6 over par.
I love it. Every bit of it.
I don’t have trouble going to sleep but I’ve gotten in the habit of waking up around 2-3 am, spending an hour or so reading or (worse) Facebooking and then drifting back off. I used to worry about it a lot, but then found out it’s perfectly normal and stressing about it is worse than the supposed “necessary” sleep you’re missing. I’ve come to believe that the 8-hour sleep cycle is bullshit, made up by modern society to keep us working during the prime productive hours and not what we are naturally meant for. At least this is what I’ve learned cruising the internet at 3am. See http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783 and http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-sleep.html and it will make you feel a lot better about these periods of late-night productivity.
I was reading the archives from November/December 2013, when Jeff was still descending into madness an average of four times a week, and the attached video seems to pretty well document his workplace…not any particular scene in the vid, but the entire thing, documenting different departments on different shifts.
I know there are a million workplace fuckup vids on YouTube, but this one is well-compiled and under five minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VveNHLZaECw
jtb
jtb-I realize the guy on the boom lift in that video probably got hurt, but I just about busted a gut laughing at it! Thanks! 🙂
Experts say that over-stimulation from bright TVs and computer screens inhibits good sleep, if you care. The other night I woke-up, couldn’t fall back to sleep, and got hooked into watching Woodstock for like the 10th time. It’s a damn long documentary, but I couldn’t pull away.
Comedian Louis CK said that time travel is exclusively a white privilege.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87LGmm1M5Is
Try a white noise machine. Give it a week. I sleep through everything now
Caitland jenner being named “Woman Of The Year” is proof that men are better.
Better than what, dear?
Or did you mean better at? I’ll concede opening jars and warmongering.
Oh wait, this is the WVSR.
*Chills*
I’ve developed a nasty habit of waking up between 3AM and 4AM, and my brain just will not STFU and let me go back to sleep. It takes about an hour for me to go back to sleep. I don’t want to take drugs to stop this however. Maybe it’s an age thing, I’m 43.
I would like to go back and see some dinosaurs, if it could be done safely.
I have the same exact thing. 3:00 AM most nights and then just lying there willing myself to go back to sleep. I’m 53 so I don’t know if it’s an age thing or not but in any event, it’s goddamn annoying!
I’ve always loved time travel stories, but I can’t help but feel that the reality might be grim. It completely depends on how much control you have. Having said that – late 1970s or early 80s.
Earbrows and eyelobes… reminds me of Frank Zappa singing “hair growing out every hole in me.”
I’m the same as you Jeff. Constantly tired but can never sleep. It friggin sucks!
Hubster and I loved the King/time travel book when you suggested it years ago. I just visited Amazon and found this latest one for free with Unlimited. I bookmarked your link to Amazon so I dont forget to give you the spare change. With Unlimited Amazon I read free books but have always wondered if they gave you something for that? They should because we read a boat load of books and watch about that much video too.
Yes, Jeff receives 1.12% of what you pay for the free books. It’s not much of a markup, but he makes it up on the volume.
jtb
Sorry, that should read, …”what you pay incrementally for the free books.” My accounting firm Dick, Dick and Moredick would never forgive me for leaving out the part where Jeff gets screwed.
jtb
I might have been paid when you originally signed up for Kindle Unlimited. Not sure. But the authors get a little taste. Amazon actually keeps track of the number of pages members of KU read of each book, and divide a pool of money accordingly. In December so far 1238 pages of Crossroads Road have been read. Probably 100 people who read the first chapter and tossed it aside in disgust.
Count me as a 100% reader of Crossroads.
I want to travel back to 1950s New York City. I want a fabulous and affordable pre-war building apartment with walls as thick as the columns on the White House.
As to that, I’ll take the brownstone in the Village in, say, 1961. Go see Coltrane at the Vanguard. And so on.
my “and so on” would include Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and John Lee Hooker at Gerde’s Folk City, Bob Dylan at the Café Wha?, Odetta, Phil Ochs and Josh White at the Bitter End, the Rev. Gary Davis at the White Horse Tavern, Dave Van Ronk at the Kettle of Fish, and James Cotton and Muddy Waters at the Café au Go Go.
I stipulate that none of these musicians was as progressive as Trane, but aggregately, they created the village scene. There was music in the cafes at night, and revolution in the air.
John
Going to those little clubs where the women wore gowns and the men wore suits and hats. My idea of heaven! How I wish I could have seen John Lee Hooker perform.
Radio announcers used to wear suits and ties to go on air. Things have changed…
Then we would run into each other there in the early 1960s in the West Village. How cool; a group of like-minded time-travelers.
She actually *was* married when we first met. Good call.
And of course there was no way I could have made that Village scene sans time travel. But, man – Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Muddy Waters… I was so focused on jazz that I forgot about blues. Like they are two different things, duh.
I also would have liked to have sampled the New York punk scene of the mid-late 1970s, and the killer is that I was nearby and of age at the time; just didn’t have the money. After that had pretty much run its course, my parents moved into a place just a few blocks from CBGB. I’m a day late and a dollar short as usual.
Holy shit, Chill; you probably could have walked down the block and seen Debbie Harry and Patti Smith out front fighting like cats and, well, cats over top billing. They were both talented and charming in their own ways, but they didn’t charm each other. And there would have undoubtedly been some high-grade blow involved. I’m just saying . . .
I would go back to when I was a kid and take care of and save all the cool toys and collections I had…then sell ’em on E-Bay now!
And since Jeff mentioned George Noory, I would also like to travel back to either ancient Egypt or Middle America and find out how they built all that stuff without modern machinery!
On the “two different things” front, this is for anyone who thinks blues and rock are two different things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD57i8ePUSs
I also respectfully request that Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” be entered into evidence as Exhibit 1.
That’s beautiful. Thanks.
The following is also blues . . . or rock, or jazz, or R&B, or soul, or maybe early rap or hip hop. It is also timeless music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS7_e9LdvDI
John
John Lee Hooker! Man, what a great performance. Thanks for posting that.
I just got back last night from a business trip to Chicago, home of outstanding blues including both of our friends here. If it had been a personal trip, I would have been able to make time to go see whoever has taken up that torch. At least I got to eat an “Italian beef.” And ride the El, and make a quick visit to the Art Institute.
Cut back on the coffee….
Jeff, just finished In Times Like These – thanks for the recommendation, very much enjoyed it!