Insomnia

One of the downsides to working the swing shift is that my sleep routine becomes irregular. I don't mind the hours that I work (although I think I'd prefer to move it forward a bit to say, 6pm to 2am), but I hate being awake when the sun comes up. I don't have blackout curtains in my room, and I have a big east-facing window, which adds another degree of difficulty to the equation. So sometimes it's tough to fall asleep, no matter how tired I am. And on my nights off, it's impossible to go to sleep before 3 am, which would allow me to wake up at a reasonable hour and get things done during the day like a normal person.

Last night was one of those nights that I couldn't sleep, no matter how hard I tried. I stayed up playing in a couple of online poker tournaments with Sticky and Dougie, even winning the last one outright, but after that I was drowsy and went to bed. But sleep wouldn't come. I ended up watching some Tivo'd movies I had on my DVR (Anybody seen Four Brothers? It was better than I expected--and I've yet to see a Marky-Mark movie that I didn't enjoy. He's not the greatest actor in the world, but I like all of his films), and when I ran out of those, I endured the 36-minutes-of-commercials-per-hour goodness of Mike & Mike on ESPN2. Still I couldn't sleep.

I was very hungry at the time, having eaten nothing but leftover pasta salad and Wheat Thins in the previous 14 hours, so I put on a sweater and went to get a breakfast croissant and a hash brown. I sat down at my computer, thinking I'd write something entertaining, but I found no inspiration while sitting here staring at the 70's-era woodlands-mural wallpaper background in front of my desk. Another reason to get a laptop, I guess--I could probably find some inspiration while sitting at the bar in the Fireside Lounge at 4:00 am, sipping a Kahlua and coffee, watching the hookers blowing their hard-earned cash on video poker. Maybe I could be the 21st-century Vegas equivalent of Ernest Hemingway sitting in Sloppy Joe's churning out a masterpiece on a well-traveled Underwood, while the micro-dramas of the neon city play out around me.

Yeah, it could happen, but I'm afraid we're several years away from the Peppermill using the fact that "Hurricane Mikey Drank Here" as a tourist draw.

Anyhow, my mind was also racing due to the fact that I had planned on applying for one, maybe two, new jobs today. Both were poker dealing jobs, but I didn't have all the details about the one Very Good Job I was interested in, because that particular casino's website has been down all day, and I remember that they had certain hours/days that one could submit an application. I certainly didn't want to waste a trip, or even worse, show up and be thought of as a jackass who can't follow directions, so I didn't get to do that today. The second, and not-quite-nearly-as-good-now-but-has-more-potential-upside job would require me to immediately resign from my current position, and going back to the Extra-Board with part-time hours and no benefits is not a possibility for me right now. So the things I was thinking about and causing me a sleepless night turned out to be for naught.

I finally fell asleep around 7:00 am with Saving Private Ryan playing on Showtime, waking up around 12:30 and not accomplishing a damn thing today except realizing that 1) I can't apply for Job #1 today and 2) I probably can't apply for job #2 at all unless I want to live in the poorhouse for the next several months and I try to do the ultimate juggling act by quitting one full-time job and getting two part-time ones. Not a good trade as far as can think into it, so I just spent my afternoon drinking coffee and playing poker instead. At least I cashed in the first tournament and won the second one.

At some point this afternoon, I realized that if everything works out favorably, four weeks from now I'll have a new computer--and Sticky will be here, too! Of course at that time I'll be fully immersed in the buffoonery ofMarch Madness, so any updates might be sketchy at worst, colorful at best. I think I can coax another week or two of life out of my beat-up digital camera, so I'm hoping that a photographic record will accompany any commentary.

In the meantime, I don't have much in the way of plans for the evening. I'll probably play another online poker tournament or two, and then maybe bundle up and go sit out on the patio and smoke a fine Dominican cigar, sip a concoction made with Barbados' finest export, and enjoy the waning hours of my weekend.

Mikey