Wednesday is the new Monday ...

... which unfortunately makes Friday the new Wednesday. Of course, that's not so bad when you figure that the new Wednesday simply becomes the regular Friday, and then your week is over on hump-day.

Or something.

Though I can't really claim a four-day weekend per se, as I did spend the better part of it grading ^%$#$# essays. I was tempted to do a blog last night titled "I H8 grading," starting along the lines of "Remember that touchy-feely shit I pulled two posts ago about giving thanks? Well, fuck that. My life is miserable as long as I have essays to mark ..." etc etc etc. I refrained from writing it though, as it would have become far too tempting to write out a list of student malapropisms and circuitous sentences, and I probably shouldn't be that impolitic in my blog.

ANYWAY ... one way or another, I went to bed early last night in an attempt to get a good night's sleep, and had one of those nights where you're never sure where tossing and turning ends and sleep begins, because you never get far enough into sleep to know for certain that you are actually asleep. And this is not a good thing for me, as I have a tendency to sleepwalk and have waking dreams--usually which consist of getting freaked out over something in the room, leaping out of bed, turning on all the lights in the apartment, and standing in the middle of the living room in a mild panic until I slowly come back to myself. Of course, there are the milder versions too, where I reprogram the alarm clock in my sleep (this happened recently) or something along those lines.

Last night was a winner. I vaguely remember getting freaked out ... not enough to leap out of bed in a panic, but enough to get dressed in a heavy sweater, my jeans and my socks, just so I would be ready should I need to make a dash for the outdoors. I woke up an indeterminate amount of time later, sweating madly under my duvet, wondering why the hell I was fully dressed?

I also had a West Wing dream at some point in which either (1) my cat was playing the character of Will Bailey, or (b) Will Bailey had become my cat. I'm not entirely certain what was the case.

Do you see a resemblance here? 'Cause I sure don't.

Oh, and I also became convinced at one point that a swarm of tiny red midge-like insects was coming out of a hole in my wall. I didn't leap out of bed and turn on the lights, though. It's entirely possible that Will/Clarence saved the day by doing something presidential.

It was enough that I took my temperature this morning to make sure these weren't fever dreams. And no, they weren't ... just my own imminent psychic rupture, I imagine.

I do think that this was all partially due to the wind. We've had some windy days here lately in St. John's, we have. Today there was a sustained wind speed of 45km/hr, with gusts up to 60, which the Beaufort Scale classifies as a "near gale." Hmmm. A "near" gale. My ass that's a "near" gale! It sounded like there was a banshee howling outside my window all last night, and it continued throughout today. In fact, it was so windy this afternoon that, in a further exhibition of my imminent psychic rupture, I grabbed my camera and drove up to the top of Signal Hill to get some pictures of the turbulent sea, and realized that I really need to buy some good gloves soon.

Important lesson: whatever the windspeed is on the ground in St. John's, it's substantially higher atop Signal Hill. I think I'm going to mount a small windvane on the hood of my car, so that in the future I can park into the wind. When I opened the door, with the wind coming from behind, the door was ripped out of my hand with enough force to make me momentarily fear it was going to be ripped right off.

And then I stepped out of the car and discovered that gale force winds make it hard to zip up a coat not already zipped. Good times.