stoopid goals!!!

Why did I set these goals for myself! Stoopid goals. Goals are haaaard. Alright, I'm going to break the bedtime rule in order to break through my writing wall.

My Life in GOALS and SLEEPS and BALANCE

I'm going to make The Grand Attempt at a new bedtime: 3 AM. I've got 3 minutes... but I want to take a shower tonight. Still, last night I took a nap after work and went to bed at 5:30, so this should be an improvement.

On the other end, I moved myself from waking up at 1 PM to waking at noon, to get in an hour or so of reading every morning. And I'm going to move that back to 11 AM. Slowly slowly. This way when I do a day shift, it should be easier to get more than 3 hours of sleep. I made a promise to myself, when school ended, to never get less than 5 hours of sleep. (Once school ended and I wasn't doing the 3 hour sleeps anymore, and was less stressed, magically I got sick much less often. Hmmm! Plus too little sleep guarantees a big headache.)

I mostly kept that for a long time, but now as a manager I have to work at least one day shift (since everyone else has to do at least one night shift... seems fair, plus it's good to see the store in daylight once in awhile!)

The bad thing is... I can so easily function on 3 hours of sleep, that's why I do it over and over. Getting old hasn't hurt this a bit (except the sick part, and the fact that the headaches have worsened over time.) I even read of some sciencey research that said (if I remember right) that night people function better on less sleep than day people do. But when you first wake up it's still horrible.

The other goal is that, when I get home at night, I split those 4 hours before bed into:
2 hours: cook, eat, dishes, read internets
2 hours: write

I haven't gotten to the writing part yet either. One thing at a time. The other hard thing will be to stop writing at 3 AM and go to bed, if the writing's going well. We'll see we'll see...

Besides the health thing, this is all part of trying to maintain my personal goals while working full-time and being a manager again. I stopped being a manager 8 or so years ago because I would come home mentally exhausted, and then it's hard to write. This time around I'm hoping to maintain some sort of balance. Because it's summer I can walk home from work, and that helps me leave behind the Work Thoughts and start the Writing Thoughts. I've noticed that halfway into my walk my brain starts to shift gears, and I leave work behind. But I'm too wussy to walk in cold or inclement weather.

The other thing that's helped is that my initial First Love Excitement Infatuation! with the job wore off about a month ago (still enjoy the job, just not all Crushing) which makes it easier to leave it behind. And I also got a couple big projects done, so I feel Organized and Caught Up. (Like 6 weeks of manager schedules. Now I can just do one schedule a week.)

Better go. Sleeeeps!

A strange obsession took hold of her... they found her buried beneath a pile of 3for4 books.

Sigh. Well, my new goal is to get to bed by 3 AM and then stick to it. (Sometimes I get there, but then float off again.) But tonight I was sooo sleepy I couldn't resist a nap, so now it's 4:30 AM... It's just that I want to wake up an extra hour early and read before I go to work (now that I have a million more books to get through), and also to get more sleep for when I do day shifts.

I bought more books today. :-( Some more fantasies that Fernando wanted, and then the gal in the French department loaded me up with recommendations. Eeeps! The only section I avoided was Teen/9-12. I didn't dare go ask for recommendations from those staff members (though I would have bought I'd Tell You But Then I'd Have To Kill You if it had been in stock.)

I think this weekend I'll have a big book organizing party of one. I'm in the mood to clean up my bookshelves, sort out the non-fictions, and bring in more books to work if I'm not going to re-read them.

Kill-ed by books

Sometimes the bookstore where I work allows us to combine our employee discount with a promotion, like the current buy 3 get 4th free. When they do that, the staff go nutty! Me included. Though I think one of my fellow managers (and her boyfriend) are running neck and neck with me and Fernando.

We bought 36 books today... [read more]

My new art deco condo?

I forgot to mention--when I went out with Swisgirl and Pelican the other day, the restaurant was in Outremont, and it was a bit of a walk from the metro. I never get out and about in Montreal, and Outremont is soooo beautiful (I gather we were in the Hasidic Jewish area, rather than the French-Canadian, unless they're mixed.)

The yards are tiny because it was all built up in the 30s or whatever, but man are the houses GORGEOUSly old, and the trees are old. You can get some serious house envy walking around there.

And the buildings on Bernard street are from the 1900s-30s--there are no high buildings so the whole street feels a little bit like a step out of time. Ooh look, I can get a condo around here for $350 000 +


We went to Maïko Sushi. I'm no sushi expert so I can't judge, but it tasted really good to me, and they put an orchid on your plate! And it was pretty and we were in the corner with a street view. And the service was very good.


(I never remember my camera, so these pics are from online.)

Sushi and a bass guitar

I'm up to 9000-ish songs in my itunes library, which means I don't always know what I got in there. So I like to dump a bunch of stuff on my ipod and make discoveries when walking to work -- or today, while bussing downtown to meet my high school friends for another sushi supper.

Today's Discovery: "That Night in Amsterdam" - The Blue Seeds
From: Stoleded off my brother's computer.

the best of the 80s

My brother sent me this. The only mistake they made is they should have had this at the end: "And also starring Alec Guinness." Otherwise he'll throw a fit in his trailer.



And brother is right, this one is really clever: