Another hour, more or less...

It's been a pretty normal night, with the major exception being that I'm not fighting sleep the way I usually do during the last couple of hours of a shift. I don't know whether to attribute this to having gotten some sound sleep yesterday, but I'll venture that's the way to bet.

Cheers...

Sleep evades me...

One thing that increasingly begins to bug me about night shifts is how screwed up my days become, because unlike those days of youth, when I could fall asleep at any time for any length of time, it's hard to pull the same stunt at my age.

Some of it probably has to do with my mental state upon waking, which brings me up from slumber into your standard "fight or flight" mode, as I wonder about that next job, that next invoice. And as I hinted yesterday, I need to make sure I'm fully awake before responding to any inputs.

Yesterday, for example, while checking voice mail (and there was a bunch of it after I got up), I apparently listened to a message from the previous week, which made me think I was being offered a third week of night shift work (to which I would have said no, thanks). If I had thought about it, I would have realized it was an old message.

Then again, I should probably change my options to announce the time and date of voicemail, except that the last time I used that feature, the typical announcement would be: "Next call... from...... two... one... two... five... five... five... one... two... three... four...... received...... Friday...... December first...... two thousand six...... at...... four...... thirty-seven...... pm......," which was glacially slow to my ear.

Anyway, I've gotten 5 hours of sleep today (I'm going to try for a couple more starting around 7:30 pm), and the big news is an impending assignment to London, leaving on Monday. Needless to say, I'm jazzed about the job, mostly because the assignment is part of a larger package, more about which will become clear as time goes on. As far as going to London per se, if you consider that I'll be spending my days indoors interpreting, then on a certain level, the job may as well be taking place in Duluth. Still, hope springs eternal... maybe I'll make the time to take advantage of being in the UK, past sampling the libations at your corner pub.

(Heck, I'll bet there's a web site devoted to "what to do in town if you're only here on business for a day or two." If not, maybe I should start one!)

Cheers...