NyQuil Anyone?

I hate not being tired when I need to get some sleep.  It’s kind of a roller coaster of emotions for me, though.  While it’s fun to feel like I am breaking some kind of unwritten rule by staying up later than I should, I am going to be paying for it when my alarm clock goes off at 4:00 AM (t-minus three hours and 39 minutes from now).

Lately, I’ve gotten into somewhat of a sleep slump, and it’s starting to catch up with me.  I find myself more and more needing a half hour pick-me-up nap sometime in the early afternoon just to get back to even for the day.  At least I plan for it to be a half hour, whether or not it stays that way all depends on how hard I hit the pillow.  For example … Saturday I got off work at about 9:00 AM and fell asleep around 9:30 on the couch, which isn’t abnormal.  What was weird was waking up at 3:00 PM in my bed and having absolutely no recollection of waking up and walking from the living room to my bedroom.

Sometimes when I’m that tired, the last things I remember are the crazy ass thoughts that run through my head just before I fall asleep.  It’s hard for me to explain this ordeal, and I am really banking on the possibility that I’m not the only completely crazy person reading this and hopefully you can relate to what I am about to explain.

The norm for me when I lay down to go to sleep is to just kind of let thoughts run rampant through my head while I drift off.  Usually I start thinking about things I need to get done the following day or things still in my head from the previous day.  Then as I get more and more tired, these thoughts progress from normal to … (for lack of a better phrase) really fucking weird.  Me and some of my friends refer to this phenomenon as being “sleep drunk” because it’s kind of the way you feel being blackout drunk.  You don’t even realize how weird your thoughts are until you stop and think about them.

I was going through this ordeal the other night and then snapped out of it to get up and use the bathroom, and for some reason in my sleepy stupor, I decided to write down my thought process at the time.  The fact that I wrote it all down really helps me because I am now able to remember pretty vividly what I was thinking about and subsequently reflect on those thoughts.

It started out as I laid down and I was thinking about what time I was going to golf the following day.  After a few golf thoughts, I started wondering what the weather was going to be like.  I thought of the ideal conditions and hoped for a warm, sunny day with low humidity and just a slight breeze.  Then I let those thoughts wander into the possibility of mosquitoes.  I remember thinking that too much wind makes for a lousy golf experience most of the time, but too little wind opens the door for mosquitoes and various other bugs to plague the outdoors.

Then things started getting weird.  I remember thinking that I could just put on some bug spray if the bugs were bad.  But then I started to worry about the bug spray not being strong enough, and what if the bugs were superior and impervious to any kind of repellent.  In no time, I had this vivid mental picture of giant ants roaming the golf course while 8-foot mosquitoes swooped down, picked people up, sucked their blood, and dropped them back down into a lifeless slump of flesh and bones.

I kind of snapped out of it and thought more than once about the possibility that I am completely bonkers for thoughts like this, but then I realized that I’ve been having those kinds of bedtime thoughts as long as I can remember and I haven’t been locked up in the paddy wagon just yet, so maybe I’m okay.

So, I guess the whole point to this post is to ask you, the readers: can you relate to any of this?  Not the ants specifically, but the whole concept of sleep drunkenness.  I’ve always had somewhat strange sleep habits, and I could go into about a 1,000 word spiel about it, but we’ll leave that for another post.

What I want to know is how concerned should I be about this crap?  Because this is far from an isolated incident.  Like I mentioned, this has been going on as long as I can remember, and I’m sure as soon as I hit the sack tonight the same thing will happen with just another set of weird thoughts.

A few other random thoughts that I’ve been toting around for the past week or so:

• Why does it seem like whenever you’re in a relationship everyone around you is single, and then when you’re single everyone is hooked up?  This is how I feel all the time.  I recently got out of a three year relationship and the whole time I was with her, all I felt like was that everyone around me was single.  Now that I’m single, seems like everyone has themselves a significant other.  It’s not that I am looking for someone, but this is more of an observation than anything.

• I finished the main story line in Grand Theft Auto IV late last week and I’m torn.  It’s cool to be done, but I didn’t want it to end.  It was honestly the coolest game I’ve ever played and now I know I have to wait at least two more years before the next GTA hits.  On the bright side, there are enough twists and turns in the game that I can go back and play it again, but by doing a few things differently, it can be a somewhat different game for me.  At least it will hold me over until Tiger Woods 09 comes out on the 24th.

• The fifth season of “Entourage,” one of my absolute favorite shows, starts up again on September 7th and I couldn’t be more ready.  It was supposed to be ready back in the spring, but the writers’ strike pushed everything back because they were unable to film the entire season in one swoop. Needless to say, the DVR is set.

• Summer is almost over and that makes me really sad. I have one stinkin semester of school left, and then I am never, ever, ever, going to step another foot in a classroom.  I have way overstayed my welcome in college, and I am ready to be done.  Everyone keeps asking me what I am going to do for a job after I graduate, and for now I plan to stay at Fed Ex.  The money is good, the benefits are incredible, and I’ve got a great opportunity to advance.  On that front, I was recently offered a promotion after only four months of service, which I gladly accepted.  Not a whole lot is going to change as far as what I’ll be doing, but I’ll be making roughly 30% more per paycheck and working one day less per week than I am now.  How the hell would anyone ever say no to that?

• The PGA Championship starts Thursday, and my DVR is set.  We’re getting down to the nitty gritty for the playoffs and with Tiger sidelined for the year, it’s really going to be fun to see what happens.  For once, there isn’t an absolute favorite to take it all.  It’s truly anyone’s trophy to win.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not anti-Tiger in the least.  I am really doing my best to savor being able to watch the best golfer of all time almost every week (until the injury of course).  It’s just that with him completely out of the picture, there is that added excitement factor for true golf fans who know that it’s going to be fun watching a bunch of Davids go against one another without a Goliath in the way.

• Is there ANY chance this whole Brett Favre thing will just go away within the next few days?  No?  I didn’t think so.  I have officially gone into anti-ESPN mode, much like I did after the Mitchell Report was released and after Ohio State lost to LSU two years ago in the National Title game, and then again lost to Florida last year in the title game.   I also go into mini strikes against ESPN when Skip Bayless is allowed to talk for more than 20 seconds at a time (honestly, the man knows less about sports than my 6 year old cousin).  And on that note …

• Is there a worse sports show in the history of television than “First Take?”  I feel like that show is the underachieving black sheep of the ESPN family, and the only reason they keep it on is because it makes shows like “SportsCenter” and “Outside the Lines” look much better by comparison.  Seriously, I tried watching a little bit of FT this morning, and in less than five minutes, they had two camera miscues, they showed the wrong corresponding reel of highlights during a segment, and Jemele Hill was MIA when her segment was on and had to be called on stage, while the camera continued to roll of course.  I am trying to figure out what kind of niche this show has carved out for itself.  We can turn one channel away and get actual good sports commentary on SportsCenter, so that isn’t it.  PTI has cornered the market on one-on-one sports debate that FT tries to offer with its 1st and 10 segment.  The blatant douchebag quota is filled by Jim Rome, so that’s not it either.  Seriously, this show could be yanked tomorrow and only about nine people would notice.  And mark my words, if I EVER had the opportunity to inflict bodily harm to Skip Bayless, so help me God I would do it without thinking twice.

Well I officially have to wake up in two hours and 53 minutes, so I am going to try to get some sleep. It’s been nice getting all this stuff off my chest though, that was much needed.  Have a good Tuesday!

One love,

10

My Very First Entry

To say I am new to the blogging world is an understatement. Ever since I started reading a friend’s blog about a month ago, I became really interested in it, and so here I am.

So anyone who knows me knows I am a perfectionist about things that probably don’t matter. This being said, I have been sitting here thinking for about 10 minutes now about what my first blog entry should be. I would talk about the primaries, but I haven’t been following them as closely as I should be, and everyone else with two eyes and mouth has already chipped in their two cents and frankly, I have never been much of a fan of beating a dead horse. I would talk about Roger Clemens and the steroid scandal he is going through, but as any sports fan can tell you, that would be like beating a dead horse with a nuclear missile.

I was talking with my roommate today and I told him that I have been purposely avoiding ESPN and its affiliates since after Super Bowl Sunday and yes, that may be a personal record for me. The reason for this is two fold: First, I hate Eli Manning and if I never see his face again it would be too soon. Second, if I have to sit through another hour of SportsCenter in which 40 minutes is spent talking about steroids and HGH then I am just gonna snap. I don’t want to know about what Roger Clemens’ wife’s gardner’s next door neighbor’s cab driver’s cousin’s attorney thinks about the whole ordeal, nor do I give a good God damn about the events in question to begin with. People cheat, they always have and they always will. We’re in the middle of a war and on the brink of an economic recession and Congress has nothing better to do than get together and talk about the possibility of someone sticking a needle in Roger Clemens’ ass? I just sit around wishing something in the world of sports would happen that is so big that for 60 minutes of my stupid life I can sit down and enjoy Scott Van Pelt and John Anderson give me the rundown without having to toy with the idea of stabbing myself in the eye every time I hear about steroids. Maybe if Randy Moss allegedly beat up some lady or some NHL player took a skate to the neck then they would have something else to talk about. But it’s not like either of those things are going to happen anytime soon, so I guess it’s all just wishful thinking.

Well color me a hypocrite, because I said I didn’t want to talk about Clemens and his goings on and I just spent 400 words doing exactly that.