Early morning entertainments
Aug. 26th, 2003 04:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyI went to bed around midnight, last night. I woke up at 2:00 this morning. Not a sudden "ohmigod was that thunder?" sort of wake-up. Not a "call of nature" wake-up. Not even a "well that's peculiar, I feel rested" sort of wake-up. More of a "Macbeth does murder sleep" sort of wake-up. Minus the guilt, of course; I haven't murdered anyone lately. I was just awake, with no good reason. I wasn't tired, but I didn't feel rested. I wasn't sleepy, and I didn't have that achey feeling I get when all I want to do is sleep, but for some reason my body just won't let go and let me feel sleepy. I've got drugs for all of this, drugs to go to sleep by, drugs to wake up by, so what is this nonsense in the middle of the night, anyway?
My cat Arwen jumped up on the bed and sat in my lap and purred for a while. 2:00 in the morning is about the only time she'll spend more than a minute or two snuggling, these days. Ever since Chumley and Fester came to stay (a little more than a year ago, now), my kittens Arwen and Naomi have been far less affectionate than they used to be. Naomi won't come and see me at all, upstairs. Arwen appears to have claimed my bed for her turf, and she glares at Naomi when Naomi tries to get close.
On the other hand, Arwen won't usually sit in my lap for more than five minutes at a stretch, and oh, it takes her so long to make up her mind. She acts for all the world as if this were some sort of immensely complex puzzle that she must solve, and sometimes she gives up and walks away. She'll make a tentative move to my left, and then to my right, and then back off and approach, put a paw on my calf, then start to turn clockwise, advance, retreat, turn counterclockwise, nuzzle my arm, step back, turn back to the other arm, retreat, approach, walk over my lap, walk to the edge of the bed, turn around, come back, sit down on her haunches looking unhappy, step cautiously forward, settling down gingerly in my lap and kneading my left arm. All this time, she will have been meowing piteously, although Pamela, who's lived with Siamese cats, says that this is just conversational Siamese, and not the heart-rending pleas of a cat for whom all meaning in life has fled. Once settled in my lap, she's as like as not to get right back up and begin the entire process again, decide that it's obviously too difficult, and go and sit in the window. The least noise will send her rocketing out of my lap. You'd think we'd beaten her when she was small.
At 2:00 in the morning, though, she'll settle down with almost no fuss, snuggle up and knead my forearm while licking it, and purr, very quietly. When Arwen purrs, you can't hear it, you can only feel it. In the dead of night, she will sit contentedly in my lap until I finally have to move. My hip joints will start to hurt, or my knees, or I'll be sitting on the waterbed heater and it's gotten just entirely too warm, or I'll become too bored to endure anymore in the dark. She's lovely and plush, but she's not much of a conversationalist. When I move to ease my hip joints, she saunters away. No rocketing. But she won't be back for the rest of the night, either.
After Arwen left, probably a half an hour or so after I first woke up, I dug out my laptop and played stupid games on it. In particular, I played endless games of Spider, a solitaire game that's part of Eric's Solitaire. If you've ever bought a Macintosh, you probably know which program I mean.
I used to play Spider compulsively long before I had a computer. It's a double-deck game, and fiendishly difficult. My husband had been looking through Hoyles to find me something more challenging to play than Klondike (which I grew up calling "Seven Pile Solitaire"). Actually, he taught me a several games, and I already knew some patience games, but Spider slowly replaced all of them. (The difference between a solitaire game and a patience game is that in a solitaire game, you have choices, whereas in a patience game all your moves are pre-ordained and you can't influence your chances of winning or losing one iota. Bet you didn't need to know that.)
Double-deck games are a major pain. Shuffling a double deck takes some practice, and some skill. The thing that's the greatest impediment to playing, though, is the size of the layout. Spider's layout has ten piles across, and the stacks down can get very long indeed, and it's important to be able to see every one of the upturned cards. (That's one of my problems with my ancient version of Eric's Solitaire [1.0!], actually. It's possible to build piles so long that the cards can't be seen without moving the ones on top of them.) I found some quarter-sized playing cards somewhere, and bought them, overjoyed. They were novelty items, so they didn't have the nice, plastic coating that good bridge cards have, nor even the type of finish that an average poker deck has. Instead, the backs were slightly slick paper, and the fronts were almost unprotected cardstock. I think there may have been some lamination early in their lives, but it took about three games to wear that off. However, a deck that's a quarter of the size of a normal deck takes up a lot less room on the living room floor. In fact, it's so compact that with a little bit of care, you can actually set up a spread on the tray in an airplane.
Still, the first time I encountered a computer program that could play Spider, my heart was won over. No more sitting on the floor, aching back and hips, reaching for a card on the far stack. No one was going to casually walk across the spread accidentally destroy it. It was cat proof. I could even save a game and come back to it. Not only could I save a game, but I could restart one that had gone badly, or correctly back up to a previous point without having to worry about my fickle memory. I prefer my version of scoring to Eric's, but that's the only drawback.
How long have I been playing Spider? It just occurred to me to wonder. Almost 20 years, I suppose. I have a win percentage of 26.7%, at the moment (over the course of 156 hours of play, and I don't remember how many games -- ain't statistics grand?), of which I'm very proud. It was up to 31%, and I had actually won five games in a row, a completely unprecedented event, but luck was clearly an important part of that healthy breakfast.
The other mindless game that I play by the hour is Snood. If you don't know what Snood is, go to snood.com, and all will be explained. I certainly can't. I like it because it's like a video game from the 80s, but it doesn't have the serious time pressure. You can take as long as you want to line up your shots. Alas, this doesn't help me nearly so much as you might think it would.
Playing games on the computer is actually not a good way to become sleepy. I know that. But like many people, I have a weird addiction to games that involve computer monitors and mouses that point and click. I don't know what it is. I expect that I'd fall asleep faster if I read a book, instead. I've never been good at choosing what's good for me. Truth is, I'm self-indulgent and lazy. So there.
Around 4:00, I decided that sleepy or not, I really had to turn the lights out. I went upstairs to the bathroom, stopped for a couple of baked pumpkin seeds as a midnight snack, and went back downstairs to bed. I fell asleep somewhere around 4:30 a.m. The alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. So today I'm functioning on four hours of sleep, gotten in two blocks of two hours each. I don't really feel tired, but my stomach hurts and I've had a sinus headache all day, and I've had trouble concentrating on work. Could it be the fault of the drugs, your honor? Not enough drugs? No, I expect not. It's just that not even the best of solutions works all the time. No perfection this side of the grave. Space deliberately left blank, insert your own aphorism here.
I do hope I get sleep tonight. I've got this really raveled sleeve. I hope I don't fall over when I get home, take a two hour nap, and then be unable to fall asleep until 2:00 a.m. True, Arwen will probably come and sit with me, again. Every silver lining has a touch of grey. (Obscure reference alert: Arwen is largely grey in color. She's a muted tortie, unlike her sister who is a very dark and elegant tortie. As for the Grateful Dead reference, well, it may not be applicable but it pleases me.)
You see what happens when I'm over-tired? I babble. It's awful. Good night.
My cat Arwen jumped up on the bed and sat in my lap and purred for a while. 2:00 in the morning is about the only time she'll spend more than a minute or two snuggling, these days. Ever since Chumley and Fester came to stay (a little more than a year ago, now), my kittens Arwen and Naomi have been far less affectionate than they used to be. Naomi won't come and see me at all, upstairs. Arwen appears to have claimed my bed for her turf, and she glares at Naomi when Naomi tries to get close.
On the other hand, Arwen won't usually sit in my lap for more than five minutes at a stretch, and oh, it takes her so long to make up her mind. She acts for all the world as if this were some sort of immensely complex puzzle that she must solve, and sometimes she gives up and walks away. She'll make a tentative move to my left, and then to my right, and then back off and approach, put a paw on my calf, then start to turn clockwise, advance, retreat, turn counterclockwise, nuzzle my arm, step back, turn back to the other arm, retreat, approach, walk over my lap, walk to the edge of the bed, turn around, come back, sit down on her haunches looking unhappy, step cautiously forward, settling down gingerly in my lap and kneading my left arm. All this time, she will have been meowing piteously, although Pamela, who's lived with Siamese cats, says that this is just conversational Siamese, and not the heart-rending pleas of a cat for whom all meaning in life has fled. Once settled in my lap, she's as like as not to get right back up and begin the entire process again, decide that it's obviously too difficult, and go and sit in the window. The least noise will send her rocketing out of my lap. You'd think we'd beaten her when she was small.
At 2:00 in the morning, though, she'll settle down with almost no fuss, snuggle up and knead my forearm while licking it, and purr, very quietly. When Arwen purrs, you can't hear it, you can only feel it. In the dead of night, she will sit contentedly in my lap until I finally have to move. My hip joints will start to hurt, or my knees, or I'll be sitting on the waterbed heater and it's gotten just entirely too warm, or I'll become too bored to endure anymore in the dark. She's lovely and plush, but she's not much of a conversationalist. When I move to ease my hip joints, she saunters away. No rocketing. But she won't be back for the rest of the night, either.
After Arwen left, probably a half an hour or so after I first woke up, I dug out my laptop and played stupid games on it. In particular, I played endless games of Spider, a solitaire game that's part of Eric's Solitaire. If you've ever bought a Macintosh, you probably know which program I mean.
I used to play Spider compulsively long before I had a computer. It's a double-deck game, and fiendishly difficult. My husband had been looking through Hoyles to find me something more challenging to play than Klondike (which I grew up calling "Seven Pile Solitaire"). Actually, he taught me a several games, and I already knew some patience games, but Spider slowly replaced all of them. (The difference between a solitaire game and a patience game is that in a solitaire game, you have choices, whereas in a patience game all your moves are pre-ordained and you can't influence your chances of winning or losing one iota. Bet you didn't need to know that.)
Double-deck games are a major pain. Shuffling a double deck takes some practice, and some skill. The thing that's the greatest impediment to playing, though, is the size of the layout. Spider's layout has ten piles across, and the stacks down can get very long indeed, and it's important to be able to see every one of the upturned cards. (That's one of my problems with my ancient version of Eric's Solitaire [1.0!], actually. It's possible to build piles so long that the cards can't be seen without moving the ones on top of them.) I found some quarter-sized playing cards somewhere, and bought them, overjoyed. They were novelty items, so they didn't have the nice, plastic coating that good bridge cards have, nor even the type of finish that an average poker deck has. Instead, the backs were slightly slick paper, and the fronts were almost unprotected cardstock. I think there may have been some lamination early in their lives, but it took about three games to wear that off. However, a deck that's a quarter of the size of a normal deck takes up a lot less room on the living room floor. In fact, it's so compact that with a little bit of care, you can actually set up a spread on the tray in an airplane.
Still, the first time I encountered a computer program that could play Spider, my heart was won over. No more sitting on the floor, aching back and hips, reaching for a card on the far stack. No one was going to casually walk across the spread accidentally destroy it. It was cat proof. I could even save a game and come back to it. Not only could I save a game, but I could restart one that had gone badly, or correctly back up to a previous point without having to worry about my fickle memory. I prefer my version of scoring to Eric's, but that's the only drawback.
How long have I been playing Spider? It just occurred to me to wonder. Almost 20 years, I suppose. I have a win percentage of 26.7%, at the moment (over the course of 156 hours of play, and I don't remember how many games -- ain't statistics grand?), of which I'm very proud. It was up to 31%, and I had actually won five games in a row, a completely unprecedented event, but luck was clearly an important part of that healthy breakfast.
The other mindless game that I play by the hour is Snood. If you don't know what Snood is, go to snood.com, and all will be explained. I certainly can't. I like it because it's like a video game from the 80s, but it doesn't have the serious time pressure. You can take as long as you want to line up your shots. Alas, this doesn't help me nearly so much as you might think it would.
Playing games on the computer is actually not a good way to become sleepy. I know that. But like many people, I have a weird addiction to games that involve computer monitors and mouses that point and click. I don't know what it is. I expect that I'd fall asleep faster if I read a book, instead. I've never been good at choosing what's good for me. Truth is, I'm self-indulgent and lazy. So there.
Around 4:00, I decided that sleepy or not, I really had to turn the lights out. I went upstairs to the bathroom, stopped for a couple of baked pumpkin seeds as a midnight snack, and went back downstairs to bed. I fell asleep somewhere around 4:30 a.m. The alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. So today I'm functioning on four hours of sleep, gotten in two blocks of two hours each. I don't really feel tired, but my stomach hurts and I've had a sinus headache all day, and I've had trouble concentrating on work. Could it be the fault of the drugs, your honor? Not enough drugs? No, I expect not. It's just that not even the best of solutions works all the time. No perfection this side of the grave. Space deliberately left blank, insert your own aphorism here.
I do hope I get sleep tonight. I've got this really raveled sleeve. I hope I don't fall over when I get home, take a two hour nap, and then be unable to fall asleep until 2:00 a.m. True, Arwen will probably come and sit with me, again. Every silver lining has a touch of grey. (Obscure reference alert: Arwen is largely grey in color. She's a muted tortie, unlike her sister who is a very dark and elegant tortie. As for the Grateful Dead reference, well, it may not be applicable but it pleases me.)
You see what happens when I'm over-tired? I babble. It's awful. Good night.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-03 10:59 am (UTC)My sympathy on the awfulness of not being able to sleep when you are tired, but the babbling is delightful for those lucky enough to read it.