long day ahead

other titles for this post could have included:

devotion
is routine so bad?
night biking
new year's resolve
3 x 3 = what a way to end 2009!

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i'm tired. it's only 840am and i can feel myself unable to overcome the day's sleep deprivation already. this week i'm back to my crazy experiment that needs near-constant supervision, as to not catch fire or stop working. so, yesterday i got a late start after chasing around some equipment that is now considered "stolen" (i didn't get my hands on it). the experiment got running around 3pm. i ran it until 12am. 9 hours is not bad for one day. except i needed to run it for about 12 hours yesterday. so now, in my quest to run the experiment for 30 hours over 2 days...well let's just say it's not happening.

i got the thing going this morning at 7am. if i stay till midnight again, that's 17 hours today, plus 9 yesterday = 26 hours. which means wedesday i run it for 4 hours, before cooling things and switching to the second phase of the experiment which again, needs to run for 30 hours over the next 2 days. if i get in by 9 on wednesday, run the thing until 1pm, cool for an hour, switch the solutions, get it going again by 230, and run it until 1230am, that still leaves me with 20 hours to run it over thur and fri. plus, after that's all done, there's something like a 4 hour hot water boiling period to wash out the remaining solution residues.

needless to say, work is my life for the next few weeks (i get to do it all over again next week!) this would all be a lot easier if i had help. as in, someone to watch the solutions after i put in 10-12 hours in a given day. if someone else could come in late and stick around until late, well that would be OK with me. *yawn*

i already had my oatmeal and tea this morning. and yet i'm not feeling peppy and revived. went to bed around 130am and first woke up at 530 this morning and decided, you know what, it's just too freakin' early. actually got up at 620 and got to work by 7, which for me is quite a feat. i prefer, and function more highly, on more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night.

i can't complain too much, because over the weekend i did manage to get plenty of sleep. it's unfortunate that sleep isn't more like a bank account, where you can save it up and use it when you're more tired.

so now i'm thinking about power napping. but there's no place to do so in the building where i work. and it's a 20 minute uphill ride home which has no appeal to me, since i'd have to come back down after such a short nap at home. and it's raining outside. which isn't exactly bad, but it's not ideal for biking home and back, just for a short nap.

speaking of rain. when i woke up this morning i thought it sounded like it might be raining out. but it was dark and my window is protected by an overhang, so there wasn't any droplets on the window pane. however, once in the living room i could hear the rain running down the gutter, and thought, "oh geez. it's really raining out there!" so i geared up in my full raingear attire, packed my gym shoes and some other essentials into backpack #2 (left my regular backpack at work last night, too tired to pack it up and for what?), and headed outside to brave the elements. it was still pitch black, same as when i got home from work last night. i thought to myself, "this really bites. going to work in the pitch black, coming home in the pitch black." but it's a job and i guess i have that going for me.

anyway, once geared up with helmet and lights and such, i walked my bike to the top of my driveway (enough of a hill that i never want to deal with it), and realized that, it wasn't really raining that hard. it was sprinkling at best. a little harder than misting. so maybe this biking in the rain wasn't so bad. i wasn't going to get soaked before i got to work; all my stuff was in plastic bags in my backpack so it was safe. i was basically weatherproofed, and all i had to do was pedal a short distance and coast down the big hill to work.

maybe winter isn't so bad after all. but i'm still very tired.

more later...perhaps i'll use up those other prospective blog titles!