Of course....

I can't sleep. I had a day off, and now I'm out of whack again, and I can't sleep. Of all the humans on earth, I must be among the very elect few who can lay in bed for two hours and NOT fall asleep, and then sleep through the alarm for two hours.

This is why I've always been nervous about having daytime jobs, and why I'm glad that I only have two days left of getting up at 5am. Then my regular workday will start at 3pm, which is a much more pleasant time for me. In the meantime, I have two alarms set, plus an alarm on the computer that goes off very loud.

I am addicted to webcams right now. No, not what you're thinking! I mean webcams that are perched in various exotic places around the world, and that update every few minutes or so. I guess the appeal is that it's like you're there - witnessing the weather, the traffic, or whatever, in almost real time. Among my favorites - Barrow, Alaska (the northernmost city in the US. It is very dark and snowy there right now) and the Mount St. Helens webcam. You can find webcams like that everywhere - from Baghdad, to Stalingrad, to some dad's bedroom in North Carolina. No, I don't sit and stare at webcams for hours - I just like to check in on them from time to time. Try it - it's fun.

I have to do something about my water situation. I live in town, albeit in a very sparsely populated one. We don't have such a thing as "city water" here - it's all well water. My well is a "shallow point" well. That basically means that, once upon a time, somebody took thick pipe with a perforated point on it, and pounded it in to the ground until they hit water, and then hooked it up to the house. The average well is about 70 feet - mine is about 20. Anyway, my water might be safe, but I haven't risked it. It smells a bit like wet leaves - like what you'd smell alongside a little creek. And it has a tinge of yellow-red to it, and it is VERY HARD. The first time I used it for bathing was after I'd been here for a week or so - I had to install some new plumbing and a new pump to get it flowing, and then I had to repair all the seals in the bathtub/shower combo (it was gross.) Anyway, I've always used bar soap in the past - "body washes" just make me feel unclean, and bar soap is dependable and doesn't tip over. Well, I don't use bar soap anymore. My water is so hard, that the soap just sort of curdled - it didn't foam at all. My skin felt burnt, and after the shower there was a layer of cottage-cheese-like pellets of soap all over the bottom of the bathtub. Anyway, I compromised and gave in to using body wash, but I picked a manly kind called "Suave for Men". And I had to give up on showers, because it was like being pelted with hot snow pellets, so now I take all baths with a bit of Calgon mixed in (which is a water softener). I don't mind that too much, because I love baths.

But as far as drinking the water - nope, never going to happen. I've been lugging in water for two months now, and I haven't got a good system yet. I've thought about going for the whole "Culligan man" deal and having it delivered, but it's not cheap. But neither is buying a gallon at a time. Norway Spring is an option - it's an artesian well in Norway which just bubbles up through a rock formation and out a pipe, and the water is very good and everyone drinks it. But I never remember to bring jugs, and soon it will be frozen up.

Blah blah blah, as I try to make myself ready for some sleep.

Today was beautiful, but I think that's a sign that winter is heading in. It was 52 degrees, sunny, and just pleasant. Tomorrow is supposed to be snow with 40 mph winds. We have already had some snow, so it just seems like winter is going to be early this year, although they are saying it should be milder than normal. One nice thing about this area of the UP is that, though it is colder, we get less snow than along the shorelines. When I lived in Negaunee, which is about 80 miles north, we got 300 inches of snow one winter. Here we only average about 80 or so. Some of you are probably gasping - it sounds like a lot, but it kind of settles and packs down. Even still - that winter we had the 300 inches in Negaunee, the snow along the roadways was probably 8 feet deep, and I had to park in my front yard, so I shovelled EVERY FRICKING DAY and my car was basically parked in a tunnel by February. It snowed from October all the way through April - almost every day. I don't miss that. But I must say that I love a good snowstorm, as much as I love a thunderstorm. I wish we had more of those here.

Time for bed.............have to be up in six hours - wish I had some Ambien.........