Well, I’m back! And where was I? Not just off the blogosphere, but out of the country. I was in the USA for three weeks – Kansas, specifically. I decided not to blog about the fact that I was going on vacation in case somebody local decided that it would be an opportune time to break into my house, given the fact that I live alone and had to leave it vacant for three weeks. Paranoid? Maybe, but my dad once had his boat shed looted in a similar scenario.
I’ll blog a little about the trip once Chris sends me the digital photos I took. Right now, I’m operating on about two hours of sleep, and not feeling like doing much of anything. I flew through the night for six and a half hours across the Atlantic, arriving back in Ireland on Wednesday morning. Didn’t get any sleep on the plane. A six-foot-four person in a cramped plane seat isn’t conducive to rest; about the only thing it is conducive to is Deep Vein Thrombosis. When I got home, I decided not to go to sleep, because I needed to force my sleeping pattern back into a normal routine. So, at 11.30 pm I finally tumbled into bed … and didn’t wake up until 1.30 pm the next day. That’s fourteen hours of solid sleep! Two nights for the price of one. I really wish I had set the alarm. I knew I was going to pay for that mistake the following night, and sure enough I did. I lay in bed from 11.50 pm until … Well, the last time I looked at the clock, it said 5.30 am, and I had to get up for work at 7.45. I was unable to sleep because my body didn’t need it. So I am operating on two hours of kip, and I have to struggle through the day again until it’s bedtime (and right now I’m back at work). Instead of getting rid of my jetlag, all I’ve done is move it forward a day.
I once learned a couple of interesting things about sleep. There are apparently two rules that help you get a good night’s sleep. One is to get up every morning at exactly the same time, without fail. The other is to go to bed when you can hardly keep your eyes open. This means that some nights you will go to bed earlier or later than other nights. As long as you keep the wake-up time the same, your body-clock knows what time to start knocking you out at night. Any time spent in bed whilst not sleepy is time wasted (as I can testify last night). So there you have it: the cure for insomnia.
None of that helps me right now, of course.
Darryl Sloan 
Glad you made it home. Don’t forget to e-mail those pics to me when you get them. And, next year, we’re having a barbecue!