The Hair of the Dog

Yesterday I did something I haven't been able to do in years; take a nap. I was up later than I should have been, and was dead tired the next day when I went to the nursing home. It's been ages since I've lived a Sunday without a hang over, and between being tired and a hang over I think I like the hang over better. At least a hang over is accompanied by plenty of energy. At around 3 I had depart from those haunting eyes and crash. I woke up and hour and a half later with drool trailing down my cheek. It was refreshing.



Today I went to Bird State National Park, and walked around taking pictures. My parents used to go there when they were kids, and marveled at how much things had changed. There used to be cabins there, a garden, and a large play area with train tracks running over the water where they would jump off, down into the lake when the train would come.


Now it's mostly over grown bush with trails that run in circles around the park, and down to the ocean. It's supposed to simulate old Indian trails, but it all looks more like laziness or a lack of budget. The trails are thin and steeped with trees and thickets that narrow the paths to arms length.


A few yards down each trail, and the canopy becomes completely covered in networks of webs with large and menacing looking spiders perched in them. In fact the entire park is practically over run with these things. It defiantly made me nervous to pass under them. Some of them were half hanging off the web as if waiting to strike or maybe they were dead I don't know.


You know this one is all about the work out program.

March On Christian Soldier

So I might have gotten this thing licked. Maybe. I decided to set a 2 a.m. bed time, and just sit in the dark until I drift off. At about 2:30 I had to rip myself from Lost, and move along with the plan. I'm not sure how long it took to fall asleep, but I am well rested despite the fact that my bed is like a sheet of granite. Rest? Check! Back pain? Check!

Found some new thrift stores to visit. We'll see if I find anything of interest. Speaking of sleep any one gonna see this when it goes wide release? One reviewer (well many have said, but one said it directly) that you're pretty much guaranteed nightmares. I probably won't, but I want to. One question: Why do they always stay in the house? I give it one good shot to cast this thing out myself, and if reinforcements didn't work I would find a church, dig a whole in the ground next to it, and stay there for the next thousand years.

The Wretched Bowels of the Lark

Night 4

Sleep came with even more difficulty. I am physically tired, but strangely energized. I do not want to do anything. I don't want to leave the house, but I will tomorrow regardless. I think I will set a time to go to bed. 2 a.m. sounds good. I'll just lay there if I have to. We'll see how that works.

I wish I had gained some kind of deeper insight from this experience, but mostly I've just watched Lost. It's kind of hard to get deep when you're muscles are acting on their own accord. There will be no partying this weekend.

Did you know that in England they don't eat pies like apple pies and cherry pie? They don't even have them! Weird stuff man! They have fish pies though, and my favorite pie.

Michael Moore has a new movie coming. I read a lot of the reviews, and yumpin yimminy I ain't getting tricked into watching this one. Michael Moore's films have at best a passing relationship to the truth, and are only successful because they play to the uninformed prejudices of his target audience.

If this crisis has proved one thing it's that one one has learned anything. Not wall street, not the people the in charge, not the banks, and especially not liberals. Still I stand astounded that after all this Moore completely ignores the real story, and gives us a few white faced and black suited villains, and people swallow it whole. Of course as I have said many times (and has been proved many times) try and talk to the average democrat voter about economics, and space aliens and the Illuminati are never far behind.

If I even have to elaborate on this point then go throw yourself on a bone fire.

What ever dude!

Thr33

Night three was more difficult than the previous two. Temptation came knocking. Not nearly enough to be of any concern, but sleep didn't come as easily either. I thought I might go to bed early, but it didn't work. Instead I watched 5 episodes of Lost, and then tossed and turned on the couch. I'm not sure when it was that I finally got to sleep, but I didn't end up waking up until almost 2 today.

I need a strategy. I thought I might wander out into the night and take a few pictures, but I was too tired to do any wandering, but not tired enough to sleep. Today I just feel week and cramped. Perhaps after church I shall eat, and get in a little exercise. See how that effects things. You gotta plan ahead if you're going to survive; like a tiger lurking in a buttery forest of walnut shavings. We must call forth the dogs of war and make them sleepy.

Sleepless In Seatle

Night two went down much more smoothly than its' predecessor. Fewer muscular oddities, and only brief moment of of disorientation punctuated an unspectacular night. I also didn't wake up with a headache today so I suppose that's something else to be thankful for.

I watched a few movies; Last Action Hero (I don't know why people hate that movie so much. It's hysterical), Operation Condor (rediscovering my love of Jackie Chan films), and Eye See You (a passable thriller). I then finished reading Matthew, and received the answer to a question that had been bugging me regarding Matthew 15:24-28. I toyed with the idea of watching some Lost, but decided it best to try and fall asleep since it was about 3:15.

Did I sleep? I think so. The thing is when you're just laying there with your eyes closed it's hard to keep track of when you are and aren't conscious. I do recall waking up and finding that it was about an hour and a half later (around 4:30), and the next time I woke the sun was already up. The next thing to do is to retrain myself to fall asleep earlier.

In between movies and Bible I did a little research on alcoholism and insomnia. Apparently the studies done on the subject are reasonably new, and currently inconclusive, but I did learn a few interesting things. Apparently 50 percent of the alcoholics surveyed claimed to have problems with insomnia prior to drinking regularly, and there is also a high rate of relapse into alcoholism connected to insomnia.

Since I refuse to take medication or even herbal remedies as a pact of faith that I will be healed; that and I don't want to get off of one substance as a means to getting to sleep only to become reliant on another, luckily studies seem to say that behavioral modification works just as well as medication.

So now I need to exercise in the afternoon, and set a regular hour to wake up every morning. I couldn't find much more than that as this seems to be a fairly new area of study, but I'll keep searching for some new tips. Of course if I don't get my daily helping of bangers and mash it makes me frown. And shout to the new blog added to our (the royal we) reading list. Check it out.

Speaking of magic (of which I was not speaking of) what do the Lord's prayer, some Catholic chant, Buddhism, and wearing diapers on your head have to do with Wicca? Nothing! It's the ultimate grab bag of religion and it's nothing but self indulgent nonsense.

Did you ever here the one about the....

I have not spent a sober night in longer than I can remember. Last night, and without the use of sleep aids, I did not touch a drop of drink. That isn't to say I slept at all or was comfortable. The human body is odd, and last night mine was doing unnatural things. Even while sitting up and reading different muscles in my body would spasm causing me to kick out a leg suddenly and uncontrollably or shoot out an arm.

At one point I felt like I was coming down off of LSD. My veins felt like they were coursing with poison, I felt like I was speeding forward through time, and for a brief period my hand eye coordination began to fail. I watched a movie (The Other Boleyn Girl), and did a little Bible study until around 2:30 or 3. I seem to remember hearing or reading something about how you should make small changes to your daily habits when attempting something like this. So I decided to sleep on the couch instead of my own bed. Of course the couch is far more comfortable than my bed so I wasn't making a dramatic shift.

As far as I can recall it wasn't until around 4 that I think I began to doze off. Not sleep, but doze off. My mind would suddenly shoot awake in that state between waking and dreaming. At points I could actually see myself slipping into a dream as if it was beginning to form. The best way I can describe this is that it's like if you ever you've owned an old television, the kind that takes a second to warm up before coming on, you might recall how you could see the image on the screen kind of gray and washed out before it kicked into full color. That's what it was like.

As time went on it started getting worse. I would slip deeper into this dream state, and when I would suddenly startle upward my mind would remain half way between asleep and awake for several seconds despite my eyes being fully open. It was disorienting and kind of frightening. What's more I was filled with this irrational dread that something was waiting for me just out of my line of sight. Interesting stuff.

At some point I opened my eyes, and the sun was coming up. I felt more comfortable and less vulnerable, and drifted off to sleep till my father woke up. Then I went into my room, and slept on and off. My bed is very uncomfortable since they gave my mattress top to my sister so I can sleep about an hour and a half or so before waking up and having to turn to another side. All in all I feel like I slept on a pile of bricks, and I have one of those kinds of headaches you get before you get the flu.

Still not as bad as I anticipated. I figure it'll be another day or two before I kick the insomnia. I'll dry out and keep my partying habits down to one night a week. Till then I'll just have to think of even more interesting things to do with my newly found free time.

On a positive note after a week of trying I finally got my sound card working normally. Praise God. Now here's some one who knows what it's like.

The Lost Crown

Well I charged the batteries and finally got to take my newly found camera out for a spin. I went to Fern Forrest which is located in Coconut Creek. I used to spend a lot of time down there, but I haven't done much more than pass through in the last few years. I got there 45 minutes before the park closed so I didn't have much time to explore and take pictures. Not to mention that there were these gigantic tree spiders all over the place, and their webs were close enough to the deck that you had to duck if you wanted to keep going forward. Some one said they are harmless, but I swear one of them was shooting me some stink eye.

It seems like an interesting place so I will go back. It has an odd esoteric vibe that I was trying to capture. It kind of reminded me of one of those old adventure games. I couldn't find my copy of Lightroom so I had to do what I could with Picasa 3. Not my best work by far, but I hope you enjoy some of the pictures I selected out of the bunch. Of course you can click to enlarge them if you like.


Now here's some Japanese people doing something weird and Japanese in another language... possibly Japanese. At around 5:34 the woman starts making hick-up noises for some reason. Hey wait a minute! Where did Ed's Blog go again?