Sleep and TV: Two of the Main Pillars of My Existence

Well, for those of you who read the last blog entry, no, I didn't quite make it until 7 or 8 PM before crashing... Actually, it was more like 4:30 or 5:00, but I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. My dad, having apparently read about my shift-changing woes here yesterday, called about 6:30 to offer sympathy and/or support, but by that point I was already dead to the world. I didn't even hear the phone ring. (If you're reading this, Dad, hiya, and thanks for the thought!)

Anyway, it seems to have more or less worked. I woke up once, a little after midnight, and while it felt like I was awake for quite a long while, I did eventually fall back to sleep. When I woke up the second time, it was 6 AM, and I figured I must surely have had a more than adequate amount of sleep in there somewhere, plus I was starving, so I got up. I guess that now puts me on a day shift, though my poor body honestly has no idea now whether it's actually night or day. Not that that's exactly a new thing for it...

I did, indeed, spend a goodly chunk of my waking time in front of the TV. In case you're wondering what my staying-up-for-24-hours-plus video playlist is, here's a list of the stuff I watched between sleeps:

Friday night's Farscape, which I've already wibbled about in my customary way. Of course, by that point, I'd only been up for a couple of hours.

Lord of the Rings. I watched this in the small hours of Friday night, while I was still wide awake. It does lose something on the small screen in terms of visual detail (particular in the widescreen edition, mutter, grumble), but even on fourth viewing I'm still overwhelmed by what a damned good movie this is. I'm reluctant to say things like "This is so good I'm never, ever going to get tired of watching it!," because at the ripe old age of 31 I've finally started coming to the realization that you can get tired of pretty much anything if you live long enough. But if anything is likely to live up to that description, it's this movie. Assuming parts 2 and 3 are just as good, of course, but I have every confidence.

All the extras from the LotR DVD (except the ones I'd already watched last week). These were actually kind of repetetive, with bits of the same interviews played over and over on the various extras. And I'd already seen A Passage to Middle-Earth when they showed it on the Sci-Fi Channel before the movie came out (not that that stopped me from watching it again). Still, the behind-the-scenes stuff is always interesting.

An episode of Deep Space 9. I know, I said I was going to go for "mindless," and I'd be the first person to get upset it someone referred to DS9 as "mindless," since in my view it's easily the most intelligent and sophisticted of the Trek shows. But this was a Quark episode ("Prophet Motive"), and thus just the kind of lightweight entertainment my poor sleep-deprived brain needed. Though it did have an interesting B-plot featuring Dr. Bashir that, while not all that engaging on its own, does take on some fascinating new dimensions when you look at it in light of stuff we only find out about Bashir later in the series. I'm actually rather proud that I was still awake enough to pick up on that, even if it was probably only about noon-ish by that time.

The Mummy (yes that's the version with Brendan Fraser). And it did, indeed, fit the "mindless yet stimulating enough to keep me awake" bill perfectly. And was just as good as I remembered it being when I saw it in the theater (twice!). Just a really, really fun action/adventure/horror romp. And the visuals are so good that I was really making an effort to keep my eyes from shutting so I could watch 'em.