Does it still count as 6 hours if there's a 2-1/2 hour lull in the middle?
It's no secret that I don't sleep well. At least, I thought it wasn't a secret, but the looks on my friends' faces this weekend...well...I'll get to that in a minute...!
I've documented my battles with 3:30-in-the-Morning here in blog form, and I've kvetched about only getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night as a norm for me everywhere from e-mail to fanfiction author's notes to telephone calls to anyone who inquired (my ex always asks me two things when she calls me: "How are you feeling?" and "How did you sleep?"). I don't sleep well.
My usual sleep pattern has been to go to sleep around 1:00 in the morning, only to wake up at 3:30, at which point I would write for a bit and then go back to sleep for anywhere between 1 and 2 hours more. Recently, however, I've taken a different tactic in my battle with 3:30-in-the-Morning. Thanks to the fact that I was really rolling on my work on Chapter 37 of my Aftermath fanfic, instead of going to bed and waking up at 3:30 to write, I wrote straight through to 3:30 in the morning (although at times it was close to 4:30), and THEN went to bed. This continued on for several days because I've been cooking fairly well on Chapter 38 of Aftermath as well as two other one-shot fics I have planned (including an as-yet-untitled George Weasley fic that will be Aftermath-compliant...or what I plan on calling Aftermath Side-Tracks, where I write one-shot stories aside from the main plot that still fit within the framework of the main plot).
Something happened Saturday night while hanging out with The Guys that made me re-think my up-til-3:30 plan. But I will get to that in a minute.
Last night, I tried something different. While spending a good portion of my Sunday working on Ch. 38, around 10:00 PM I was feeling tired, and for some reason, instead of gutting-it-out until 1:00 as I normally wood, I saved my work, put my computer on HIBERNATE, and went to bed...AT 10 O-BLOODY-CLOCK AT NIGHT! You have to understand, unless I was sick, I haven't gone to sleep that early since...well...probably 4th or 5th grade. However, I knew I wasn't destined for a full 8 hours...didn't you see that my computer was merely hibernating? I knew I'd be up. I was planning on it. Sure enough, 3 hours later, at 1:00 AM I was up. I immediately proceeded to bring my computer back to life and continued working on my fanfic for the next 2-1/2 hours. As 3:30 dawned, I shut everything down and went back to bed and slept for the next 3 hours...and as soon as I got up and put some clothes on, I logged on to my computer and began this blog entry.
Which brings me to the title of this entry: Does it still count as 6 hours if there's a 2-1/2 hour lull in the middle? Did I get 6 hours of sleep last night, or was it just two bouts of 3 hours of sleep? I like to think of it as 6, since that makes it sound like I at least got a normal amount of sleep for once, but that long break of wakefullness in the middle seems to say otherwise. What a silly thing to blog about, huh? Still, there is that little tidbit...that ODD thing that happened on Saturday night. Want to hear about that?
No? Oh. Okay. Well, I'll be back next week with another blog entry. Until then...!
'Hawk
Okay...TOTALLY kidding!! My whole point in blogging was to describe what happened...unless you'd rather hear about the dream I had of Ron and Hermione working at the local K-Mart. Right...onto Saturday's occurrence!
As is common for me, every two weeks, I take my nephew out around 2:00 in the afternoon and we hang out with my friends (The Guys) until about 10:00 or 11:00 at night. We play games, chat about inane Guy Stuff, listen to crazy crackpot conspiracy theories from my Dale Gribble-esque anti-establishment-gun-nut friend (he doesn't want a cell phone so he won't be on The Grid!), and generally bust on each other in a good-natured way. It's fun...and it keeps The Boy (my nephew) off the streets...and better yet, away from World of Warcraft (he's addicted!!). In days gone by, my time out with the guys would run until anywhere between 2:00-in-the-morning to somewhere after sunrise...however, we're getting old, so 11:00 or Midnight is as late as we like to go these days.
This Saturday, however, something happened that had us pulling up the tent stakes and heading our separate ways before 10:00 had even hit! We were discussing something...I don't remember what, exactly. My eyes were getting heavy (around 7:30...8:00) and I'd been LISTENING, but not really paying attention. Someone asked the question "Well what do you think we should do with him?" to whit I answered "Put him in the church with the water!" The sudden quiet followed by "What did you say?" snapped me out of my reverie and brought me back to full consciousness. Shame-faced, I had to explain that I'd fallen asleep...sorry...because I hadn't been sleeping well. They were all surprised by this, so I had to explain my sleeping habits to my friends.
Now let me first off say this: I do NOT talk in my sleep. HOWEVER...if I am talking to you (on the phone, perhaps...just ask my ex!) and I begin to drift off while we are talking, I will continue to converse with you, but MY portion of the conversation will turn from whatever it is we were ACTUALLY talking about to WHATEVER I START DREAMING ABOUT! This has led to some embarrssment on my part, such as when talking on the phone with a friend of mine a few years ago, out of nowhere I said to her "I wonder if I can get away with wearing the armor across the casino floor." I had to explain that, while we were talking, I fell asleep and began dreaming that I was at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, dressed in gladiatorial armor (who knows what happened to my clothes?!) and trying to get OUT of the casino without being spotted! Another conversation with her had me bemoaning the fact that "Someone spilled the coffee in the gutter!!" because I was dreaming about...well...I guess that one's self-explanatory.
So, my friends had their first experience with me and my ability to drift off and freak people out with a complete non-sequitor comment that is in no way apropos to the conversation. I still don't remember what we were discussing Saturday, and what the question "What do you think we should do with him?" referred to, but I do know that "Put him in the church with the water" was NOT the right answer!!!
Sadly, about an hour later, my friends would have another chance to listen to my sleep-induced inanity, as I drifted off again in the middle of the conversation. I don't recall the question I was answering this time, but my answer of "I'm going out to the Quidditch pitch!" not only stopped the conversation dead but had me explaining to my friend the gun-nut what exactly Quidditch is. Doubly embarrassed, I vowed to stay awake for the rest of the night, and a rousing conversation over Alexander the Great and other historic figures who may've been gay or bi (I have NO idea how we got on THAT tack!) had me awake until, finally, at 9:45 we called it quits because I was not the only one falling asleep.
So, should you ever find yourself having a telephone or face-to-face conversation with me and I start to drift off...don't be surprised at the complete non-sequitors that come out of my mouth, no matter HOW bizarre they might seem! That's just the cost of doing business when you're friends with ol' BlackHawk!
'Hawk
I've documented my battles with 3:30-in-the-Morning here in blog form, and I've kvetched about only getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night as a norm for me everywhere from e-mail to fanfiction author's notes to telephone calls to anyone who inquired (my ex always asks me two things when she calls me: "How are you feeling?" and "How did you sleep?"). I don't sleep well.
My usual sleep pattern has been to go to sleep around 1:00 in the morning, only to wake up at 3:30, at which point I would write for a bit and then go back to sleep for anywhere between 1 and 2 hours more. Recently, however, I've taken a different tactic in my battle with 3:30-in-the-Morning. Thanks to the fact that I was really rolling on my work on Chapter 37 of my Aftermath fanfic, instead of going to bed and waking up at 3:30 to write, I wrote straight through to 3:30 in the morning (although at times it was close to 4:30), and THEN went to bed. This continued on for several days because I've been cooking fairly well on Chapter 38 of Aftermath as well as two other one-shot fics I have planned (including an as-yet-untitled George Weasley fic that will be Aftermath-compliant...or what I plan on calling Aftermath Side-Tracks, where I write one-shot stories aside from the main plot that still fit within the framework of the main plot).
Something happened Saturday night while hanging out with The Guys that made me re-think my up-til-3:30 plan. But I will get to that in a minute.
Last night, I tried something different. While spending a good portion of my Sunday working on Ch. 38, around 10:00 PM I was feeling tired, and for some reason, instead of gutting-it-out until 1:00 as I normally wood, I saved my work, put my computer on HIBERNATE, and went to bed...AT 10 O-BLOODY-CLOCK AT NIGHT! You have to understand, unless I was sick, I haven't gone to sleep that early since...well...probably 4th or 5th grade. However, I knew I wasn't destined for a full 8 hours...didn't you see that my computer was merely hibernating? I knew I'd be up. I was planning on it. Sure enough, 3 hours later, at 1:00 AM I was up. I immediately proceeded to bring my computer back to life and continued working on my fanfic for the next 2-1/2 hours. As 3:30 dawned, I shut everything down and went back to bed and slept for the next 3 hours...and as soon as I got up and put some clothes on, I logged on to my computer and began this blog entry.
Which brings me to the title of this entry: Does it still count as 6 hours if there's a 2-1/2 hour lull in the middle? Did I get 6 hours of sleep last night, or was it just two bouts of 3 hours of sleep? I like to think of it as 6, since that makes it sound like I at least got a normal amount of sleep for once, but that long break of wakefullness in the middle seems to say otherwise. What a silly thing to blog about, huh? Still, there is that little tidbit...that ODD thing that happened on Saturday night. Want to hear about that?
No? Oh. Okay. Well, I'll be back next week with another blog entry. Until then...!
'Hawk
Okay...TOTALLY kidding!! My whole point in blogging was to describe what happened...unless you'd rather hear about the dream I had of Ron and Hermione working at the local K-Mart. Right...onto Saturday's occurrence!
As is common for me, every two weeks, I take my nephew out around 2:00 in the afternoon and we hang out with my friends (The Guys) until about 10:00 or 11:00 at night. We play games, chat about inane Guy Stuff, listen to crazy crackpot conspiracy theories from my Dale Gribble-esque anti-establishment-gun-nut friend (he doesn't want a cell phone so he won't be on The Grid!), and generally bust on each other in a good-natured way. It's fun...and it keeps The Boy (my nephew) off the streets...and better yet, away from World of Warcraft (he's addicted!!). In days gone by, my time out with the guys would run until anywhere between 2:00-in-the-morning to somewhere after sunrise...however, we're getting old, so 11:00 or Midnight is as late as we like to go these days.
This Saturday, however, something happened that had us pulling up the tent stakes and heading our separate ways before 10:00 had even hit! We were discussing something...I don't remember what, exactly. My eyes were getting heavy (around 7:30...8:00) and I'd been LISTENING, but not really paying attention. Someone asked the question "Well what do you think we should do with him?" to whit I answered "Put him in the church with the water!" The sudden quiet followed by "What did you say?" snapped me out of my reverie and brought me back to full consciousness. Shame-faced, I had to explain that I'd fallen asleep...sorry...because I hadn't been sleeping well. They were all surprised by this, so I had to explain my sleeping habits to my friends.
Now let me first off say this: I do NOT talk in my sleep. HOWEVER...if I am talking to you (on the phone, perhaps...just ask my ex!) and I begin to drift off while we are talking, I will continue to converse with you, but MY portion of the conversation will turn from whatever it is we were ACTUALLY talking about to WHATEVER I START DREAMING ABOUT! This has led to some embarrssment on my part, such as when talking on the phone with a friend of mine a few years ago, out of nowhere I said to her "I wonder if I can get away with wearing the armor across the casino floor." I had to explain that, while we were talking, I fell asleep and began dreaming that I was at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, dressed in gladiatorial armor (who knows what happened to my clothes?!) and trying to get OUT of the casino without being spotted! Another conversation with her had me bemoaning the fact that "Someone spilled the coffee in the gutter!!" because I was dreaming about...well...I guess that one's self-explanatory.
So, my friends had their first experience with me and my ability to drift off and freak people out with a complete non-sequitor comment that is in no way apropos to the conversation. I still don't remember what we were discussing Saturday, and what the question "What do you think we should do with him?" referred to, but I do know that "Put him in the church with the water" was NOT the right answer!!!
Sadly, about an hour later, my friends would have another chance to listen to my sleep-induced inanity, as I drifted off again in the middle of the conversation. I don't recall the question I was answering this time, but my answer of "I'm going out to the Quidditch pitch!" not only stopped the conversation dead but had me explaining to my friend the gun-nut what exactly Quidditch is. Doubly embarrassed, I vowed to stay awake for the rest of the night, and a rousing conversation over Alexander the Great and other historic figures who may've been gay or bi (I have NO idea how we got on THAT tack!) had me awake until, finally, at 9:45 we called it quits because I was not the only one falling asleep.
So, should you ever find yourself having a telephone or face-to-face conversation with me and I start to drift off...don't be surprised at the complete non-sequitors that come out of my mouth, no matter HOW bizarre they might seem! That's just the cost of doing business when you're friends with ol' BlackHawk!
'Hawk