"The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to." ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'm seem to be suffering some sort of insomnia. I've not gotten more than 3-4 hours' sleep per night this past week, except for one night -- a night off -- where I made things worse by sleeping right through till almost morning. This is bad because I work nights here.

So I'm living that quote above. I remember once learning that if you cannot sleep, your body can still get rest by just remaining still in the dark.

That's easier said than done. There are several contributors to the insomnia -- working night shifts is a start. Also, I think as I get older I'm developing an oversensitivity to caffeine. Over the past 2 weeks I've been compensating for the lack of sleep by consuming more and more caffeine: diet sodas, coffee, chocolate...

Yesterday, because we were showing around some visitors from the U.S., I needed to stay awake all day after working overnight. So I consumed some 2 large coffees, 2 or 3 cans of Diet Pepsi, ahem, Pepsi Diet, and also this beverage called "Rip It"...and energy drink that's provided to us in the dining halls here. Really. You will see on this website that Rip It "Fuels Our Heroes"...

Then I turn around and try to go to sleep before all that caffeine works out of my body. So even though I was playing Patricia-the-Bobble-Head in the meetings -- as were our visitors who were suffering horrific jet lag, I would lie in the dark and be alone with my thoughts and frustrations.

So after my 2-3 hours sleep Friday evening, I awakened at 11pm with a resolve to go into work and not consume any caffeine during my shift.

I did not do well. It was horrible. I must have faded in and out several dozen times. I hadn't been this tired since Timmy was a baby, and I certainly hadn't felt this tired doing critical Air Force work in over a decade! I'd be sitting at my workstation, staring at weather charts, and out of nowhere it would be 10 minutes later. Did I fall asleep? Was I just staring at the computer screen? The good news was that I didn't miss any of my tasks during the shift, but I certainly looked foolish swooning all over the place...my workstation is alongside a high-traffic pathway and who knows who saw me.

(My boss here is now a Facebook friend and might be reading this -- hey Matt! Don't worry, everything got done!)

The good news is that I thought I would have had a blinding headache, but I don't. I think getting the caffeine out of my system is all I need to do, and I will stick to one good-sized coffee per day, 1-2 hours after I awaken, as I typically do at home.

I'm barely awake enough to finish typing up this blog entry, but I have about 30 more minutes on the clothing in the dryer.

Yes, I'm currently doing my own laundry. I'm living in Rose's dorm and I get to do my own laundry! As you might remember from my previous post about the laundry, although I thought I would absolutely LOVE the idea of laundry service, it's not all it's cracked up to be and I'm thrilled to get to do my own this morning.

Also, the civilian wireless connections on this base have been giving me a lot of problems, so I'm limited in my blog posts for now to e-mail only. In other words, I am able to e-mail text to my Blogger account and it posts automatically. I'm also about to set up the ability to e-mail Twitter updates, which tie into the Twitter widget on the right side of the blog and my Facebook status. These posts are also auto-forwarded to Facebook.

Anyhoo, enjoy this blog post and I hope to come back to you soon with some fresh photos and an update on Howie!