The downside...

...of visiting friends in the Mountain or Pacific time zones is that I'm a natural night owl and, propelled by the energy of wanting to stay up and hang out with people I see way too infrequently, I go to bed at late o'clock local time. You know, eleven or midnight, maybe a little later, like a grownup.

But then my eyes pop open involuntarily at about 0700, or 0800 at the latest because oh my lord, have I fed the cats*? And that happens at 0700 or 0800 Eastern time.

What this translates to is a week of three or four hours of sleep per night, which I can keep up for a while, but it eventually takes its toll. And I paid that toll last night, gladly, with eight hours of deep, dreamless sleep. It was glorious.


*No, it's not that I think that thought literally, but years of having the alarm clock go off at 0600 gets the body in a rhythm.

** Desmond Morris, Catwatching, p.75

*** You know how to drive someone crazy? Put in a footnote that has no referent in the text.
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