A Day in the Life of a Person of Consequence

Happy Green Irish Day! Yeah, I figure we should call it what it is. Of course, if you want to be entirely accurate about that, you probably need to add "Excuse to Drink in the Middle of Week" day.

As you may guess from that cheery introduction, I am not in a great mood. In fact, my state is that of one of the worst sleep combinations (The Blogger spellchecker doesn't recognize the plural of combination. Honestly, people. We can do better.): I've got the weariness of the sleep-deprived, and the grumpiness of the just recently awakened. And considering it's 3 pm, I got some 'splainin' to do.

First, as you have no doubt noticed, I haven't posted a running update in a few days. This filled me with great shame (as is the point), and I got up at 6:00 am today to go for a run. Sadly, due to my own special brand of asthmatic insomnia, I didn't get more than about 4 hours of sleep. The run itself was great, if consequential. I nearly slipped on a banana peel, and if I was in a different mood, we'd be discussing how my life is that of a cartoon character. In my current mood, this would degenerate into a rant on how no one watches the classic Looney Tunes any more, and how children are now forced to watch the mediocre. (Look at ABC's morning line-up: That's So Raven, Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zach & Cody. Honestly, as a kid, if there was that little animation in MY Saturday morning cartoons, I'd wonder why I was being punished.)

Right, so after the run, I perform my morning ablations, write up a lesson plan for tomorrow, accidentally delete the lesson, decide that I could probably reconstruct it from memory in a few hours, run some errands, and I'm at the university by 10:00. I read and transcribe my notes for a chapter from my comp (and laugh ruefully at the pathetic standard by which I currently judge being "productive"). Then it's up to my office for a brief lunch (apple, green apple flavored licorice, and apple juice. Yeah, I don't know what happened there), and a chapter from Kafka's The Trial. When you're in an academic building, Kafka's portrayal of bureaucracy becomes less "amusing" and more "deeply depressing and existentially horrifying."

At this point, approximately 1:30, I fall asleep. I wake up at a quarter to 3. I had a strange dream, even by my standards: I dreamed I had stumbled into an alternate reality where parents were honor-bound to murder their children if they failed to achieve something the parent deemed appropriate for the child. But the values were really esoteric, like if the child had worn enough blue over the course of a year. It was basically a combination of personal aesthetics and eugenics. I remembered thinking in the dream that this would make a good short story, if I could get the style right. And then I woke up, and typed out this entry.

And there you go. One day. -ish. I suppose it's possible I may do something of interest in the course of the next 8 or so hours, but given my current urge to bike home and bury my head under the covers, it seems unlikely.

Wednesday's Run:
Title: the Needle
Distance: 11.9 km
Time: 1 h, 7 minutes.
Average Speed: 10.66 km/hr

Later Days.
PS. I'm not really this annoyed at the world in general. "Grumpy" is a fun persona to slip on, but I wouldn't want to live there.