Nyquil Revelations: The Nature of Time Itself

I just got up after 14 hours in bed. Yes, 14. Actually, in bed and on the sofa.

I've been rearranging my spare bedrooms to store some of Trish and Brian's stuff while their house is being remodeled (see their the updates on their remodeling here). And apparently in between moving my stuff around and moving theirs in, I stirred up a lot of dust plus mixed in dust from their house. So, I've been hit with allergies bad enough that it basically took me out of commission yesterday.

With chest congestion, coughing, a stuffy nose, and a complete lack of energy, it was like a bad cold. Tuesday night I slept fitfully at best. So yesterday, it finally occurred to me to take Dayquil, but once evening rolled around, I thought it was time to bring out the big guns: Nyquil. I was ready to be knocked out. So, around 8:30 pm, I took Nyquil and went to bed.

Over the next two hours, bad storms rolled through. There were reports of a tornado less than 10 miles away. And I slept blissfully through it all.

I slept soundly through this
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I awoke after a VERY solid sleep feeling refreshed and thinking, "Cool, it must be the middle of the night now."

It was 10:30 pm. Only two hours later. Long before I'd normally even go to bed.

The rest of the night was filled with short bursts of sleep on the bed and the sofa. Yes, I moved back and forth depending on my half-asleep mood. I missed another round of storms at 12:30 am.

I slept through this too
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And ... I made a startling realization about the nature of time.

You see, each moment in time has a tiny square near the edge that when positioned just right, helps you sleep perfectly through that moment. Each moment is different, of course, so you often have to adjust your sleeping position to find that right alignment. But that's how you sleep well; you constantly adjust to find the perfect position. And so that's why I kept waking up partway, to adjust to find the perfect sleeping position for each moment. And I felt comforted about waking up a lot, because it just meant I was finding the perfect sleep moment for every second, which would help me recover faster.

Hey, it made perfect sense to me for the next 12 hours. Seriously. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Nyquil, the nighttime sniffling sneezing coughing aching stuffy head fever so you're open to revelations about the nature of time itself medicine.

Best. Headline. EVER.

From the BBC's website:

Ain't that the truth?
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Six Man Premiere: The Pampering

Jumping back to the Six Man, Texas premiere at the AFI Dallas film festival in late March, last noted in this entry...

Our premiere was that Saturday afternoon, with the red carpet event that evening. On Sunday, Tom and I met Alan and Mike at the filmmakers' lounge in the Victory Park building, near where the Dallas Mavericks play. We were to spend the day doing all the press interviews that AFI Dallas had set up. Actually, Alan and Mike were to do that (and you can see one interview here), but Alan had hoped to get me and Tom involved as well. However, they only wanted to interview two people, so Tom and I hung around the lounge for a few hours and got to learn what it was like to be a semi-pampered star.

Well, okay, not really. But we took advantage of the free stuff. One room had nice flat panels with Guitar Hero set up; unfortunately, they closed off that room before we could partake. But there were plenty of munchies, courtesy the festival's biggest sponsor, Target. Can you see their logo here?

Yes, even the Target logos are filled with candy
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Each of those drawers held a different treat, whether red hots, mint chocolate, chips of exotic flavors like Jamaican jerk, power bars, even gummi targets:

Yes, Target made gummi targets
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Of course, all the food was Target's brand Archer Farms. They also had Cokes, bottled water, and bottled iced teas. Okay, not terribly exciting, but it was fun to eat and drink the free stuff while we waited for Alan and Mike.

Then we discovered the pool hall. Well, one table. But it was early enough in the day that Tom and I had it all to ourselves:

Yes, even the pool table was branded by Target
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Yes, I'm going to start each caption with "Yes" even if it's me shooting pool
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Yes, that's the view of the Plaza outside the filmmakers' lounge
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So that was fun for awhile.

But now for some T&A. Because in the Plaza below, there was an Amazon army of shapely plant women:

Yes, plant women!!
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What a view on the other side of that window, eh?
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Are those real?
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So imagine our disappointment when, upon closer examination, we realized these plant women weren't real plants. They weren't made of ivy growing into a carefully controlled shape. The plant women are all plastic plants. The illusion was shattered; the plant women were as plastic as a Hollywood actress. Heh, holly. Anyway...

8 years to upgrade

Eight years is an eternity in the high-tech product cycle. And yet, for the last eight years, I did the bulk of my projects at home on a Mac desktop that I bought in the year 2000. That's right, when I bought my computer, Bill Clinton was still president. The dot-com bubble looked unstoppable.

There was no such thing as an iPod.

Eight years. I've never had a job at one company for that long. Sure, I eventually upgraded the processor and graphics card, but it had been long in the tooth for years even with the upgrades. Yet I'd managed to use this computer for close to a decade. And along with the computer, I had my $30 Ikea computer cart, which was perfect for my needs as someone who keeps the computer by the futon in the living room:

The ol' workhorse, my Power Macintosh
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But times change. I'd had no qualms about replacing my iBook laptop last year with a new MacBook. But when Apple finally released the second generation of their Mac Pro desktops this year, the trigger I'd set for myself to replace my aging Power Macintosh, I found I actually had a few pangs of nostalgia. Even after the new Mac Pro arrived in mid-March, I was slow to jump all in with the new system.

There was always an excuse: I need a new monitor first. But then I need a new desk, because the slanted monitor tray on my Ikea cart won't work with a flat panel. I need to install a Wi-Fi card first. Only an Apple tech can do that, so I have to wait until I haul it to an Apple Store (for the result of that night, see the previous entry). It's too much trouble to switch back and forth between computers. I haven't copied my files to the new system yet. On and on. A week after getting the new system, I was still using the old one more.

The absurdity of that finally motivated me. Michelle and I hit Ikea for a new computer desk. I got the damn Wi-Fi card installed. I used the Mac migration software to combine the files from my laptop and old desktop into the new machine. I bought a 24" flat panel monitor. I set it all up, and it was beautiful:

Only the speakers and mouse are old now
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I still can't bring myself to fully retire my faithful Power Mac to collect dust in a closet somewhere. It's still sitting in the living room, waiting for me to decide where to move it. But I do love the new system. The new monitor is like night and day compared with the old CRT. The system is smooth and fast. It's nice to have a modern system again. I hope this system ages as gracefully...