And since the rest of the night probably won't be interesting...

I will post about my day.

I had horrible insomnia last night. Sometimes when I had insomnia in the past I caught myself imagining that I am awake when I am asleep, but since I kept looking at the clock and saw 1:14am....2:30am...3:30am pass, I have "concrete" evidence of how much sleep I got last night. Partially, this was my fault, since my back hurt and I kept massaging it instead of staying still. At least I didn't have a dream which ended in a witch stealing children like I did last night, although the rest of that dream wasn't bad and was actually kind of pretty. I stopped trying to sleep at 7:00am, got out of bed at 8:00am, showered, dressed, and called Chris. I was out of my house at 8:30am.
Of course, the 30 bus was overloaded and passed me, so I ran down the hill and caught the 921 bus at 8:55. "Great, I'm going to be five minutes late, and everyone will look at me as I come in," I muttered in my head. Unknown to me, the 921 also does not stop in Revelle, the last stop, and the one closest to where I needed to be. My bag hitting my bruise as I quickly walked, I spot a building called "Cellular and Molecular Building East". I figured that this must be what CMG stands for, though the east made me suspicious, but this building is approximately across from Mayer Hall, where the CMG building was located on the UCSD map.
I looked at the map of the building, which displays no conference room. It is now 9:05 am. This building is huge, and nobody had told me beforehand that CMG meant "giant labyrinth of endless staircases and walkways." The map's "you are here" is unhelpful, but I got the vague impression that I had to go in a vague direction to get to where I need to be. I went in the vague direction, found another map, and tried to puzzle out where the covered walkway leading to the actual CMG is. Giving up, I asked a friendly looking elderly man coming up the stairs where the CMG large conference room is. He tells me "In the CMG, the building to the South."
Wondering why my sense of direction is such a failure, I went again vaguely to the South, stop warily for a minute and wonder if I'm going in the right direction, and what the point is now in going on since I am going to be so late. Stubbornly, I go further on, and...yes! yes! I am in the CMG! As usual, the fire plan of the building is unhelpful and wandering in a random direction does nothing except accidentally scare a couple of postdocs on the first floor, but I decide that the conference room is probably on the first floor and use the elevator. This is the creepiest elevator I have ever been in, large enough to be a forlorn, neglected room with a couple piles of random scrap in bags on the floor. I come out, and.......
I am now outside. If there are homeless serial killer people living in UCSD this is where they would be, and the scraps of paper dragging on the floor freaked me out with their sounds. I turned back to the elevator, as this was obviously the wrong place, but I can't go up: this floor needs a key to work the elevator. I stand there for a moment, contemplating what to do, and then spot a door.
Finally! The right door! Finally! Signs pointing toward the conference room! I'm standing in front of the CMG large conference room at last, twenty minutes late, trying to work up the nerve to enter.
For those who don't know, I hate being late with a passion, and was trained to think that if you're late beyond a significant period of time there is no point in showing up to the event. I got days off from high school this way.
Another man goes inside, and I slip past in his shadow. Nobody looks up.

And I've entered a lecture about...insomnia. Great.

I'll give you a lecture about insomnia, two years worth of a lecture now come again unwelcomley these past few days. It was certainly an interesting talk, though it hit a little close to home and a little bit of hypochodriacish fear. Also, the professor's voice was soft, at least from where I was sitting, and I kept accidentally observing him and his mannerisms instead of listening to what he was saying. I would post more on the technicalities, but this is long enough as is(if you want to hear about it just ask).

On the way back up to the lab, I can barely find words. "Seriously, I'm going to fall asleep. This is bad." I get teased about my "degraded neurons".

At first the argument about data storage is interesting, but then it's not. I want to pay attention to what Dr Kleinfield is saying about the pipette, as it sounds interesting, but my brain is refusing to remember what the previous word was to string it to the next one. I am desperately trying to keep from nodding off. The golden rule says that if you accidentally fall asleep on someone's shoulder, Chris has every right to not speak to you for a couple of days, aim for the table. Wait! This presentation has something to do with what you're researching! PAY ATTENTION. I screw my eyes up and miraculously manage to absorb almost everything until the end, although I wish the graphs could have registered more. When the presentation is over, I have to go.

I get some horribly overpriced chips and eat for about ten minutes, then walk over to my appointment. The building is locked, and I wait six minutes until Peter comes through the door, since he thought that he had unlocked the building already. Then I wait fifteen more minutes because a sticky situation with someone and the Dean has come up. I try to be understanding, which works out, since the appointment ends up taking two hours instead of one. I feel a lot better at the end of it.

Come home, call Chris, try to take a nap, call Chris. The rest of my day was not very interesting, involving a lot of failed napping and calling Chris, for the most part. Looked up Gunther Grass because of Ilya, who will go on my reading list besides Wagner's "I can't spell this". The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising and The Call of the Toad are the two works of his I should remember. I hate not being able to underline things.

I really wish I could see Chris this weekend. But I will be productive :). Sorry for any oscillating past and present tenses above.