To Sleep, Perchance to... zzz... What?

So after last Sunday's triumphant mile-ish swim, I proceeded to piffle all the triumphant feeling away with three straight days without even a walk to and from the train station. I blame it mostly on the Olympics. And my brother. The Olympics, as we know, were shown on tape delay in prime time, even in their OWN TIME ZONE! Finally there's an Olympics where the coolest events weren't happening at 3 a.m. my time - and NBC mucks it up with tape delay and endless profiles of Lindsey's shin. I would stagger to bed at midnight or even beyond, if I stayed up for Mary Carillo and her moose. Then I'd sleep late and miss my train and have to drive to work. This happened a few times, actually.

And then I agreed to go down to San Jose Stage on Wednesday and see my brother as Jan the Czech in Tom Stoppard's Rock and Roll. On a weeknight! What was I thinking? It was awesome, but after dinner at Original Joe's, we didn't get home till almost 2 in the morning. Ouch. So I slept late again on Thursday and almost didn't get any kind of workout in. Just as the dark was creeping in, though, I whipped out my new Asics Gel Kinetics in Super Bowl Champ New Orleans Saints Who Dat! colors and went for a brisk walk-jog around the neighborhood. OK, more walk than jog, but it was brisk. I was out there by myself and I was springing down the street. Lovin' it. Nothing makes me feel peppier than brand new shoes. If I could afford it, I'd buy new running shoes every month. Or if any shoe company (preferably ASICS) would like to sponsor me...

But I was really planning to write about my problems with sleeping too late. For many years, even before the onset of Boo-Boo Kitty Syndrome, I slept a lot. Tim used to say, "You need your nine and a half hours," and he was not really kidding. I absolutely could not understand how people would function normally on four or five or even six hours. I would feel bleary with seven hours of sleep, and I might still feel wasted after eight or nine. I never, ever felt "awake" when I woke up. I often used the sentence, "I feel like I've been clubbed on the head" to describe my mornings. I once hit the snooze button so many times that a mockingbird outside the window started to imitate it. I hated, hated, hated getting up. At pretty much any time. I always wondered how much more I would accomplish if I felt better after less sleep.

Unfortunately - and I'm not even kidding here - I'm going to have to go to bed now if I'm going to get up and ride the bike to the train tomorrow morning. So this will have to be continued.

Sweet Dreams.