Wee Hours

I awoke in darkness. I rolled over and switched on the bedside lamp. I looked at the clock: 9:54. Wait – 9:54? Why is it still dark outside?  Sleepy brain clicks into gear – oh, it’s 9:54 PM. Momentary confusion: why am I waking up at bedtime? Then I remembered. I drank several shots of vodka this afternoon, something I normally never do at that time of day. Usually, when I drink alcohol I do it just before I go to bed. The afternoon drinks put me to sleep. Now it’s “morning” at 9:54 PM.

So, being not the least bit sleepy, I got up. I sat at my computer and surfed the Web for a while. Did you know that lizards dream? They do. And ravens know if other ravens are spying on them. And slime mold can learn and remember, but it forgets pretty quickly, too. I read that astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson said it’s possible aliens have visited Earth but found no intelligent life here. If they visited in recent times, I can understand the part about finding no intelligent life. I sometimes have doubts, too.

I found myself getting hungry. Why am I so hungry? Oh yeah, I skipped supper. I needed a snack. So I fried a burger patty in a skillet. I put a bun on a plate and put mayo on both bun halves – partly for taste, partly to insulate the bread from the burger juices. When the patty was cooked, I put it on the bottom half of the bun and added salt and a few grinds of pepper. I put slices of onion and tomato on the burger, added mustard and ketchup and, finally, the top half of the bun. I put a spoonful of potato salad on the plate and sat down in front of the TV. I ate my midnight supper while something very forgettable played on the TV. Or was I eating breakfast? I pondered the question and made a Custer decision – a meal must be eaten between daybreak and noon for it to be called breakfast.

I finished my snack, still hungry. I waited a while, but the hunger didn’t go away. So I heated an egg roll and slathered it with Chinese hot mustard. It tasted good and my belly was satisfied – it quit sending “feed-me” messages to my brain.

There’s not much to watch on TV in the wee hours of the morning. I finished season 2 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt yesterday. Season 3 won’t be available until May, 2017, and when it’s released I’ll probably binge-watch the whole season in two days. It’s a funny show, in a 30 Rock way, but with a vein of dark humor running through the episodes. I like it, and Ellie Kemper is perfect for the lead character.

At 4 AM, CyberDave signed into Skype from Roanoke. We had just begun a video chat when don Raphael signed in from Alajuela. (Alajuela is the 2nd largest city in Costa Rica after the capital, San José.)  He joined the chat session. Two-person Skype chats seem to always work fine, but add a third person and sometimes there are problems. Not today. Skype worked flawlessly at this early morning hour, with no glitches, no dropouts, no delays – in other words, it worked as it’s supposed to work. Considering that one of us was in Central America and two of us were 180 miles apart in Virginia, it was impressive that the technology worked so well. The chat session ended just as the sky was beginning to lighten.

Dawn broke over a gray, overcast morning. The coming week is supposed to be cloudy/rainy/stormy – take your pick, they’re all on the menu. It will be a good week to do indoor stuff. Maybe I’ll post a blog. Anything is possible, they say.