Safety Fork, the

On Monday I was awake for nineteen hours; that’s a long time for me. In Starship Troopers, Heinlein wrote that “happiness consists entirely in getting enough sleep.” I agree; I don’t do so well if I don’t get at least seven hours of sleep per night.

I woke up with a cold on Saturday morning. I wasn’t happy about it, but it could have been worse, since I had two whole days with no need to do anything. The only part of me to leave my apartment on Saturday or Sunday was my arm—to get my newspaper out of the hall (which, by the way, I didn’t remember either day until about six o’clock in the evening). I went to bed Sunday night figuring I’d feel at least passable for work the next day.

Then I awoke. At two-fifty-six A.M. At five o’clock I decided that if I wasn’t going to sleep, I might as well try to get something done, so I went to work. Believe it or not, there were about thirty cars already in the parking lot when I got there a half-hour later. No one from my group, though; I had to think for a minute to remember where the light switch for my area is.

It felt kind of odd to leave before two o’clock having worked a full eight-hour day. Back at my apartment, I found myself still too restless to take a nap, and too apathetic to do anything but prepare food for Tuesday’s pot-luck lunch—which I couldn’t reasonably start until about nine. Even testing days at work don’t seem so interminable as that afternoon and evening.

But now I’ve passed the full-of-goo phase, and am into rejecting-a-lung. If past experience holds, after this I’m in the clear—hopefully before the six-day break I’m taking starts on Friday.