So finals didn't kill me after all...

But they came dang close. And let's not forget the other bizarre and generally awful circumstances that helped them out, such as an injured hamstring (no running for an entire week), strange up-and-down temperatures (allergies!), and a lot of friends going through some serious crap. The weird thing is, all this started on the same day - for everyone. How odd is that?

So...I'm not even sure what to write. For a week straight, I didn't get to bed before 1 am, and two days were closer to 4 am. Some of this had to do with school. Some of this had to do with the fact that I am a writer, and therefore, more easily able to put myself into another's position. But oh well! For right now, everyone seems to be doing alright, which is a relief. I keep bracing myself for backlash, though. Call it paranoia, skepticism, preparation...

I've realized how much I like sleep - to be precise, I've slept for 10 and 9 hours the last two nights, respectively. It makes me feel better than 5 or 6 hours.

Okay, all I"m doing now is rambling, so I shall shut up and say hasta luego. Just wanted to reassure everyone I'm alive.

Huh?

I had an interesting morning. Let me explain. My XC team was supposed to have practice at 6:30 this morning. I did not get to bed until 11:30 last night, exceedingly late for me. Alright, rather late. Exceedingly late is past midnight. I mentally slapped myself about eight times when my alarm went off at 6:10. I laid in bed for another minute, debating whether I should say to heck with it and purposefully skip practice for the first time. I decided that, since this was the first official practice since the season ended a couple weeks ago, I should drag myself out of bed.

Berating myself for staying up so late, I crawled out of bed (technically, out from under my bed, but that's another story), and turned my phone on as I slouched into the bathroom. My phone beeped. I checked the text message.

"Practice has been cancelled because of the rain, if you're on campus, you can meet to run at 6:30."

Operative word: can. Not 'will' or 'should' or 'must'. I said a prayer of thanksgiving, shut the lights off, crawled back into bed, drew up the covers, and promptly fell asleep.

And had a rather odd dream.

In this dream, the father (who I've never met) of one of my classmate's had the codes to set off nuclear weapons, and planned to direct them at some other country to start a war between that country and the US. I somehow knew about all this and got scrambled copies of all the control codes. Somehow my grandfather used an old military cipher to find out the code that would disable the bombs.

Now the part that still makes me grit my teeth a little. I thought that this classmate was clueless to his father's evil scheme, and was in some kind of danger. In real life, this person is rather intelligent, and he was in the dream too...perhaps just naive. So I tried protecting him, only to find out later he was freaking working for his dad the whole time. The only reason he was being my friend was to find out if I was the person who intercepted those codes.

So...um, at this point I punched him. Knocked him out, actually. And called him something I've never said in real life. Perhaps it was a bit like this dream, because most times in dreams, something weird always happens, and I can't do what I want to. Nope. I totally knocked this kid's lights out. Eventually I managed to defuse the bombs or something like that, and I woke up, wondering what the heck I just dreamed, and what it meant, if anything.

Because I have to say, if there was any person I might want to punch at some point in the future, it would be him.

I just reviewed the whole post to make sure that if this person decided, after this long, to read my blog, he would not be able to tell to whom I am referring. 'Cause that could just be bad, you know?

Insomniac?

Maybe not. The thing is, I'm tired, but I don't want to sleep. I do, in a way...am I just rambling here? Something in me doesn't want to surrender the day yet. *siiighs*. It's been a long week. Highs. Naps. Lows. Naps. Laundry. Study. The Iliad. A Presocratic reader.

Right, the Iliad. It's the next assignment for one of my classes. I wasn't sure what to expect - I've read Rick Riordan's modern-day take on the Greek gods/goddesses, so I do have a background, in a way :-) (If you haven't read the Percy Jackson books, get to a library. Or a bookstore. They aren't super-high reading level, but they are so fun.) The Iliad is interesting in that it's Greek poetry translated into English. It has a completely different feel to it; alien, almost, but beautiful. In sometimes a violent sort of way.

I am so sore. It hasn't been an easy week on the cross-country team. At least tomorrow is an easy run, but it's followed by weight lifting, which does something to nix the 'easy' part. Ugh. That's another 6 am wakeup. How about 9? or 10? What a lovely thought. As it is, I'll be squeezing in a 45 min nap between Spanish IV and Shakespeare (grooooan! Julius Caesar is a favorite play, but we're covering a play a week...) If I skip lunch, I could make it a bit over an hour nap, but food is just one of those things runners do poorly without. *passes out, nailing forehead against Norton's Shakespeare Anthology*

Hmm...tempting, except the book's already a headache.

My eyelids keep sinking, and I'm typing this sentence blind. Not too hard, actually. In a strange way, I can picture the screen and the words dancing across the page as I type them into existence.

Wow. I am tired. As I drifted toward sleep last night, I started playing with a vague concept I've had for a while, about music and instruments and the rainbow. If I get the time, and the sleep, there will be a forthcoming story. Maybe not even a short - probably a wee bit longer.

Buenas noches!