And a happy New Year to everyone!

I never really took to coffee — I love the smell of it, but I don’t really care for the taste all that much. But for many years, I drank several cans and/or bottles of caffeinated pop a day. Very caffeinated. It didn’t take long before caffeine didn’t have much effect on me anymore — I never had headaches or trouble sleeping. In fact, I learned to fall asleep within minutes of laying down, something that I’d never managed during my insomniac (but almost entirely pop-free) youth.

I stopped drinking pop entirely, except as a special treat, several years ago. I thought the caffeine resistance would fade, but I never noticed it doing so — whenever I indulged in it, it still seemed to have no effect. So when I got the rare urge to drink one, yesterday evening around 8pm, I didn’t think twice about it being caffeinated. One twenty-ounce bottle of my favorite pop, sipped and savored over about two hours, made a lovely accompaniment to an enjoyable and productive session of programming.

I went to bed when GoddessJ did, around 1:30am. I wasn’t feeling tired, but that rarely affects my ability to fall asleep. Except — you guessed it — I just couldn’t seem to do so last night. I tried most of the tricks that had served me so well in years previous, such as a late-night banana, self-hypnosis, clearing my mind, counting from ten to zero repeatedly, and creating a peaceful fantasy world. After those failed, I tried a couple that I’d heard about since but had never attempted, like tensing all my muscle groups to the point of pain and then releasing them, and concentrating on how good it felt just laying there. But it was no use: Morpheus, the ancient Greek god of dreams, was apparently having too much fun at whatever near-New-Year’s-eve party he was at to put in an appearance. I finally gave up the attempt around 6am, catching a brief nap in the late morning to keep me going.

The moral of the story: Elvis lives on in our hearts, in his music and in a trailer park outside Milwaukee. Um, no… don’t get hooked on drugs, even caffeine, or you’ll regret it one morning? Well, it’s better than “Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy but socially dead.” 😉

Well, at least the fastest one I’ve ever had.

GoddessJ and I had a Christmas party for a small group of friends and family, including one of her cousins and his wife and one-year-old daughter, on Christmas day itself. The cousin didn’t mention that the daughter had the stomach flu until that evening, after she’d had a chance to infect everyone there. Two days later (on Thursday), we were both incapacitated by it, pretty much for the entire day. I’ve never “driven the porcelain bus” so much in one twenty-four hour period before… ‘nuf said.

After a good sixteen hours of broken sleep and fever-dreams, it seems to have passed, so I should be back to my normal blogging schedule starting tomorrow.