9 August 1997: Light Lifting

Saturday, 9 August 1997:

Light Lifting

Ever since I arrived in Madison for grad school back in 1991, my sleep schedule has been screwed up. Left to my own devices, I tend to sleep 9 hours a night (which is actually more than average), but seeing as I work and hack and stuff, I'm never left just to my own devices. In grad school I'd sleep 6 hours a night during the week, and 12 hours a night on weekends.

These days I sleep about 8 hours a night during the week, stay up 'til 2 am on Friday night, and until Midnight on Saturday. I've been trying to change, but it's hard. It would be pretty neat to wake up with the dawn every day, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Point being, I was up until 2 am last night working on yesterday's entry and surfing the Web. Then I slept until 10:30 and then pushed myself out of bed because I had things to do.

First thing to do was go in search of comic books. I finally found a store with this week's books down on State St. (the main downtown business district in Madison). This week's haul included Coventry (a weird, industrial-fantasy yarn by Bill Willingham), Starman (a very offbeat superhero series), Elseworlds Finest (Superman and Batman in the 1920s), and Leave It To Chance (a charming fantasy about a teenaged girl who wants to follow her father as mystical protector of the town of Devil's Echo). Good stuff; almost worth the wait. Except that I hate waiting for my comics!

Last week I helped a friend from work move. He was moving out of his grad school apartment where he'd been for 8 years, and he had a lot of stuff. It took us 7 hours to move his already-packed boxes and furniture. This week I helped my friend Karen move. Actually, I only helped her pack, and clean the room she's moving into. She has several other guys helping her to do the heavy lifting, and I opted out of that. On one of our trips between the two apartments, I stopped off and bought some truffles for everyone to share (an assortment of 18 for ten bucks), and some rock candy for myself. Yum!

It's really damn humid today, although the thermometer is only in the mid-70s. It made the work icky, and I showered when I got home. I hope it rains tonight; I like rain.

My cats (Newton and Jefferson) have just not been leaving me alone this weekend; I think they're mad I'm spending so much time on the computer. Although when I go to the other room to read or play with them, they are only interested for a short while. Maybe they just want to be annoying.

It's only about 6 pm as I write this; I'm listening to Garrison Keillor on public radio, and will probably listen to a bit of the Brewers game later, and then go to the coffee shop and finish reading Thieves and Kings. A nice quiet evening; yeah, that's the ticket...

Michael Rawdon (Contact)