election, schmelection ... and sleeping issues ...

So on Election Day, my shift was radically different from normal — 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., to help coordinate and produce an election extra, since the counting is never done until the wee hours of the morning here. Idiots.

I made the mistake of not sleeping in to recharge from the weekend, in which I mostly went about 5 hours of sleep or so, thanks to my reawakened gaming addiction. I got up around my normal time, which is 9:30 a.m. So, as a result, I was a bit tired during most of the night/early morning, struggling through that need-sleep haze.

And, of course, things are botched, though no more so than normal, by the government, so the final counts aren't done until about 6 a.m., which meant we had to push our deadine back to 7 a.m. This, in turn, gives me that infamous second wind — all fired up by the stress of trying to get late comments from candidates and then putting that into story skeletons and then copy editing that, along with writing headlines, checking cutlines, getting late photos input, etc.

The deadline rush, as good print journalists anywhere will tell you, is a real high. You just shift into this concentration of focused news aggression, trying to hammer things out while still being accurate and producing compelling copy and design. And there's several people on this conjoined rush of news juice, alternately meshing to an uber unified journalist and yelling at each other.

And when you're done and the deadline is met and you're dead tired and sore and exhausted — your mind still is in that overdrive mode, and it's impossible to come down from that with any kind of quickness, let alone instantaneousness (don't think that's a real word ... sue me).

It's the first time I've been awake that early and seen the sunrise since the Primary Election, but at least that was on a Saturday and I had Sunday off. So four of us go to a nearby coffee shop/diner place for breakfast. We even have coffee with our various breakfast dishes (I had a grilled egg, ham and cheese sammich and a side of french toast).

By this time, it's closing in on 8 a.m. I head home, but I still can't sleep. I game a little until that heavy pressure of sleep finally breaks through the adrenaline-fueled deadline buzz and pushes my eyelids down. I go over to bed and, unusual for me, have sleep crash down almost immediately, a little after 9 a.m.

I'm up at 1:30 p.m. I should sleep another hour or so before I have to trundle into work, but I don't.

So tonight, I should be asleep nice and early, right ... once I leave here (I'm posting from the office)? I mean, after all I've only had about a total of 15 hours of sleep over the course of three days.

Well ... there is a poker game starting any minute in Barrigada. I might be able to get there before it fills up. Last week I hit it for close to $300 and haven't had to go to the ATM in about 8 days despite all of the expenses I've racked up ... and that's always a good thing, so maybe I'll head over there to try my luck.

Or I can try to get my Night Elf up to level 22 so he can wear the new class of armor, upgrade his quarterstaff and learn some new, fancy druid spells.

---