The Aerie
Well it's three days into work again, and back to the routine. Meanwhile, I spent some downtime yesterday looking back at our trip to Germany.
The routine of life reasserts itself, but with some changes which I hope we can maintain. One thing that seems to be working out without much effort is that we're all getting to sleep by 10:00 p.m. now. While the kids' current 9:30 p.m. drowsiness is a jetlag legacy, I hope we can hold on to it. We've given up on watching the evening news, the TV - if it's on - goes off before 10:00 p.m. We start getting people geared up for bed by 9:30. And so far it seems to be working. This is letting us all wake up earlier, which means more time to get ready for school and more rest. By the end of last year a midnight bedtime was not uncommon, even on school nights.
It's the 10:00 o'clock news that does it. They lure you in with some hot story, and then they have you. From 10:00 until 10:12 you get news, but not the Hot Story. From 10:12 to 10:20 you get weather, with the Hot Story "next." From 10:20 to 10:32 they talk sports. And finally, for 20 seconds at 10:32, they tell you the hot story about the beagle that, ha ha! , actually sleeps on top of its doghouse!
By which time you've seen the list of guests on the Tonight Show AND Conan O'Brien, and, somehow they make Kiera Knightley's views on AIDS in Africa sound downright fascinating! And that Robin Williams, he's always a riot! Next thing it's 12:30 a.m. and the only way you could get enough sleep would be to blow off your morning meeting and show up for work at 10:00 a.m.
Meanwhile the kids have been bumping around, avoiding sleep, while you've been distracted by the TV. Or, worse, they've been watching it, and the eleven year old is asking "What does he mean when he says 'if your election lasts more than four hours, call your campaign manager!'"
But all that is put aside now, and I sure don't miss it. Today I got to work at 8:00, not that it matters, but for me that's pretty good seeing as I'm bicycling.
Meanwhile I continue to pine for the Vacation that Was. I guess post-vacation nostalgia is normal, but yesterday I found myself using Google Maps to locate the various places we had been on our journey. "Let it go!" I know, I know, the vacation is over, but I feel like a part of me is left behind there, still wandering the streets, just as a part of me still remains in Mykonos, where I travelled in 1986, or the streets of Madrid when I was 17.
I'm getting ready to pile all of my Germany pics together into a big album, so look for that change in the right-hand features column sometime soon. Meanwhile I guess I'd better get my brain back to America and get back to work...
Sigh... I think I'm really well suited for the life of an idle billionaire...
P.S. By the way, a site milestone: this is my 500th blog entry since I started doing this in January of 2000.
Posted by Albatross at September 7, 2006 12:17 PM | TrackBack