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This & That and a Bag of Toast

Well, today's post is meant to be a bunch of lists....

1. I am feeling much better. The antibiotics I have been taking since Saturday have really kicked in well and for most of today I have felt very, very good. It is interesting that I feel so good, especially since I was very fearful of how I would feel this morning.... I had a horrific time getting to sleep last night. Although I am very much a night owl, I usually go to sleep around 1:30am or 2:00am and get up between 6:00am and 6:30am, last night was one of my very rare bouts with insomnia. It may have been due to the looming deadline of the grant I was writing, especially since I worked on it late last night until roughly 1:30am. But, when I went to bed, I kept tossing and turning, and felt utterly wide awake. I could not trigger sleep at all. It was frustrtaing, for I knew I needed to get up early to begin the final cleaning and editing of the grant, and would need to spend as much time as possible today editing and preparing the grant for a 3:30pm electronic submission deadline. So, by 3:30am, I was utterly frustrated and no closer to sleep. I was still tossing and turning in bed like a fish out of water. I went downstairs and did something very uncharacteristic for me. I purposefully went to the refrigerator and quickly drank two bottles of beer, and then sat and read two chapters of a novel I have been working through. I thought the combination of the beer and the book would quiet my mind enough, and pull me away from the thoughts of the grant so that I could finally fall asleep. I crawled back into bed at 4:00am, and reset the alarm for 7:00am. Although I tossed and turned a bit, I did fall asleep in a relatively typical time frame during this second attempt. When the alarm went off, I reset it and allowed myself to sleep in to 8:00. Fortunately, at 8, I felt good and set of a bit later than desired to head to the U to finish up the grant effort.

2. The final day of writing and fussing over the grant went pretty smoothly. As is typical this time of the semester, I had a myriad of students stop by with grave concerns over their performance in my courses, but I was able to handle their concerns relatively easily, and spent a good amount of time writing. I even went to our journal discussion group at lunch, I felt so comfortable in the time frame.

3. I submitted the grant with roughly 15 minutes to spare on the deadline.

4. A very pleasant and unexpected surprise occurred when I arrived home. My wife whisked me away and we went to our local bookstore and meandered around for a while just perusing the new titles. Then she suggested we go out to eat dinner. We arrived at the resturant, and lo-and-behold, she had invited my siblings to meet us there for an impromptu celebration of my birthday (we celebrate birthdays when we can, near the date, but not always on the exact date). It was an evening filled with fun and heartfelt laughter and conversation. I thank my wife for orchestrating such a beautiful surprise.

5. One of the surprise gifts I had received from my wife was a book about mosaic tiling as art, and also a starter kit to build a clock from mosaic tiles. Even though it may seem a surprise to many, I have a creative, artistic side. To me, I really think that science is ART in a similar way to painting, sculpture, etc. I have always loved pursuing a variety of different forms of artistic expression, and mosaic tiles were one avenue that has sparked my curiosity for several months now. I cannot wait to delve more deeply into the book and the project piece itself.

6. I think I shall sleep easily tonight, for I do not have any looming worries or deadlines at the moment.

7. To conclude my previous story about the hunting trip... the buck I saw while sleeping in the tree was a fabulous beast, likely a 9 or 10 point buck. I had very good sight on him, and I feel I could very easily have made a strong accurate shot and downed the beast. But instead, I chose to not aim my rifle at him. The reasons are not that I am some sort of "softy". Nor am I in any way, shape, or form anti-hunting. In fact, I think that if a person chooses to eat meat (which I do, albeit infrequently, and when I do it is primarily chicken or turkey), he should be willing to go through the whole process of obtaining the meat for consumption. I have bagged a few deer in my day, specifically to live this particular belief. The reasons I DID NOT shoot the deer this time were a) I really do not like venison. In years past when I bagged a buck, I found a way to donate the meat to friends, relatives and needy food banks and shelters, b) I did not feel energetic enough when I saw the buck, to want to go through the effort of getting the beast, bringing it back to camp, and gutting and dissecting the carcass. Again, do not get me wrong... I think those steps are something everyone who eats meat should be willing to do at some level, and I have done these steps in my life. But, I was just not in the mood for it that morning, and c) this year I was really more interested in the camaraderie of deer camp itself... the eating, drinking, smoking, card playing etc. So, perhaps a bit lazily, I decided to NOT take aim at the buck and instead laid back down and slept a while longer in the tree. When I awoke again, I cralwed down, and walked back to camp and continued to relax and have raucous fun up until I left.

8. At dinner tonight, I ordered fajitas, combonation fajitas... meaning I had a mixture of seasoned chicken AND seasoned steak along with grilled vegetables, guacamole, pico de gala, and other fixings for my meal. The last time I had beef of any sort, I believe was probably almost two months ago. It was interesting to try the combination form, but I would have been happy with just the chicken fajitas, it was not worth the extra price to have some steak strips as well as the chicken strips.

9. Our U library has a free paperback novel exchange program that has been going on for several years. I stopped by there today following journal club and found a book by James Blish. I have not read the author before, but have been told he is a science fiction author of the variety I typically like... traditional, with a penchant for writing about societal ills and/or corruption. If anyone has any further knowledge about this author, please let me know.

PipeTobacco