Insomnia sucks

Well, it does! I've had insomnia on and off for my entire life. Both kinds -- the one where I can't get to sleep (more common), and the one where I wake up. This is the former.

When I was in college, it wasn't so bad. It was easy enough to just cut a class, or gulp lots of coffee and crash after lunch, with no afternoon classes. But in the real world, it's a hell of a lot harder to get away with.

Anyway, my normally short attention span gets even shorter when I'm tired but can't sleep. I'll try to read (I'm currently on Barry Hughart's wonderful Bridge of Birds), but I end up browsing the web. Since I'm still new to LiveJournal, I'm spending time jumping around the community. I've always enjoyed this sort of thing. On eBay, I'll check out the feedback on someone who has bid on one of my items, then follow the chain of bids back a few people -- it's fun to see what else they've bid on, whether they buy and sell, or just buy, etc. I also browse Amazon wish lists (mine's here, in case you feel like buying me an early birthday gift); aside from giving me more ideas for my own list, it gives me the chance to get more insight into people I know (yeah, I know it's cheesy, but it's true).

Browsing through LiveJournal is sort of like that, but without the commercial aspect. I love reading other journals. But I also love, upon finding a nifty journal, seeing who else that person reads, and what their interests are, and checking out the pages for their friends. And from there, I'll jump to their friends' pages, etc. And ditto the communities. I was pleasantly surprised, upon looking up the interest "garlic," to find a good community for Atlanta restaurants showing up. Of course, I'd be having a lot more fun if the LiveJournal site didn't seem to be having issues right now. :-/

Anyway, I just spent five minutes watching our cat attack a pen (which defended itself valiantly, all things considered), so I'm thinking it's time to try bed again. 'Night.

(no subject)

Well, the great bed experiment failed. Looks like it's a night of total insomnia for me. Which means using a sick day, 'cuz I'll probably crash hard around 9 O'clock. Crap.

So how have I spent the night? Reading Bridge of Birds, of course (and may I say how much is sucks that the two sequels are out of print, and that Barry Hughart had such bad experiences with the publishers that the final four will never get written?), and playing X-Assault. It's at darkelf.brinkster.net/Xassault.asp and it's a major major addiction. Heavy download if you don't have dsl, but lots of fun. Much as I hate almost everything about the X-Men and related comics since 1988 or so, this is still a blast. It's a combination of trivia, strategy, and pure luck, and it's the best web-based game I've found. There are some Mac compatibility issues -- in 9, I can only get it to work with Netscape 6 (and who would've thought that there'd ever be anything that only works in Netscape 6?), and in X, it works, but it's slow. But it's updated pretty often, and I'm sure the compatibility will improve.

I'm also killing time by just browsing the web. Went to Nancy Collins's homepage because Creative Loafing ran a cover article on the whole Ed Kramer scandal, and I was intrigued by Nancy's role in it. I came across a page of her favorite tv shows. It's so nice to see that someone else remembers The Kingdom. It was a ten-hour (without commercials) Danish mini-series (okay, two mini-series, but it was like V, where the second series was kind of essential to getting closure on the story) that, to the best of my knowledge, has only aired on IFC over here. On the surface, it's about a haunted hospital, but that doesn't do it justice. Imagine if David Lynch decided to do an Evil Dead movie, but then got a contract for a Very Special Episode of ER (is there anything more redundant?) and filmed them both at the same time. That's what this is. With subtitles. And insane expository dishwashers (the human kind). You have to see this thing to believe it. IFC will show it every once in a while, so keep an eye out for it. Strange as it sounds, it's absolutely compelling.

Anyway, back to the book.

(no subject)

The folks at Washington Mutual suck!

Well, the folks at our branch do, at least. The chain as a whole is supposed to be great. But I can only judge based on the folks I deal with, and the people at the Toco Hills branch apparently were cutting the class on customer service to spend time fucking three-legged goats. And they then cut the class on how to use their computer system to pursue the quadriplegic goats, because the three-legged ones had gotten away (these people are very desperate). While they were goat-fucking, they managed to briefly lose $700 cash, treat us as if we were slightly lower than bank tellers on the evolutionary scale (as if that's possible), and now, after sending two check cards in my name, they claim that their computer can't file the request to get a card sent in ‘song’s name (what’s the point a joint account if both cards are in my name?). I just sent a much longer, more polite (no reference to goatfucking, as I don’t want to smear the reputations of the goats that make up the board of trustees at WAMU), and more detailed letter to the head office. I want to bank with this company, but they need to fucking overhaul this entire branch. I never had this sort of bullshit with the Emory Credit Union.

On the plus side, I did sleep for four hours or so, which is okay, since if I’d slept for more, I’d probably have insomnia again tonight. But I won’t be staying up late tonight, that’s for sure. We’ll watch last night’s Malcolm (I set the Tivo for 1.5 hours extra, so we didn’t miss it), and maybe Angel. I expect to be asleep no later than 10:15.