13. August 2011 Moonlight through the window, crashing

I used to exist on 3-4 hours of sleep per night for long, long periods of time. Part of the time that was due to being on-call in one lab or another, or working evening or night shift. Part of the time it was due to other factors.
Now the primary reason I lose sleep is chronic pain. Last night was a high pain night. I fell asleep about 0100 and woke up about 0415. I tried the standard solutions, all to no avail. The Perseid meteor shower is supposed to peak tonight. The period around 0300 – 0400 was supposed to be a prime viewing time as the nearly full moon approached the western horizon. I gave serious thought to going out on the back deck to look for meteorites. The intensity of the moon's light pouring through the window by our bed suggested that by the time I woke up enough to set up even a primitive viewing station it would be too close to sunrise for effective viewing. Perhaps tonight...

the moon set was at 0638 this morning. The moon is full tonight. While I doubt that I could have read a newspaper by moonlight at 0500, the amount of light pouring into our bedroom was sufficient to navigate all through the house without turning on any lights yet with no risk of stepping on the dog or her toys.


“ The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,”


 That degree of brightness comes to mind.


Finally, after three serious attempts at getting back to sleep, I gave up and got dressed about 0615. It is going to be a rough day, staring out with this much sleep deficit. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep better tonight. The only planned project for the day is to possible mount a scope on a rifle and zero it in. I had thought that I might finish trimming around the yard but that's out of the question now.
While I have an occasional sleepless night now, they are not high frequency events. I'm grateful for that. I used to be continually on the dangerous side of sleep deprivation. I don't miss that at all.