Sleeping in

Last weekend, my brother Matthias volunteered to help Gregor and his roommates move into their new house.

Saturday rolled around, and I decided to wake my brudder from his precious crack of noon sleep by calling around 10:30 AM. No answer. Fine, I'll give him another hour to sleep in. He's known for erratic sleep patterns anyway -- Plus, we're still in Pewaukee.

I call back at noon, becoming a little disgruntled when I reach his voicemail for a second time. Half the daylight's already gone.

I make one more ditch attempt on my way to the new house, hoping I could swing by the UW campus to pick him up. Still nothing.

It took about three hours to unload everything, enjoying a cold one after our efforts. At this point, I start getting a little concerned. I try calling again, and send an email from my handy smartphone. No Matthias. It's 3:30 PM. What in God's name is he doing?

We take the U-Haul back, and I give my mom a quick ring. "Have you talked to Matthew? He said he'd help move today, but I haven't heard from him." No luck.

In all, I called five times, left three VMs and sent an email. It's now after 6 PM, and we're ordering pizza as a reward for smashed hands and sore arms.

What the hell is this kid doing?

At 9:46 PM, my phone rings.

"Hello?"
"Are all three of these messages from you? Can I delete them?"
"...Yeah. Where the hell have you been?"
"My phone died. I was sleeping. I tried fixing my sleep schedule."
"What time did you get up?"
"6:30."
"!!! ... What time did you go to bed?"
"9 AM."
"%#$@*! Umm... I don't think you fixed your sleep schedule. Anyway, call mom she's probably worried.

...Oh, and want to make tacos tomorrow?"

Eyes wide open

I'm taking a hint from my blog's title, and losing sleep.

For some reason, the past couple weeks at my home after the sun goes down, my once-cozy abode becomes a creepy, rattley, drafty, scare-the-shit-out-of-me apartment. Over the summer, I slept like a corpse. NOTHING could wake this. Even if I only got six hours of sleep, I was bright and refreshed in the morning.

It seems the cold weather made the ghosts in the attic start hanging out in my apartment on the second floor. Probably because I have heat now.

So last night about 8 PM, I started watching the first season, first episode of Dexter.

Halfway through the show, my heat starts to clink on... fine. But after a few minutes, the wood floorboard between my couch and the vent starts to creak every couple minutes -- like a creak when someone walks on it. This is just my mind getting a little riled up. It keeps happening. Then I start hearing it outside my apartment door, every few minutes. I know my friend/neighbor/co-worker Lisa is at her other PT job until late, so she's not home. Can't be her. What IS that.

I'm not really into paranormal crap. But when I'm by myself, sometimes my mind gets the best of me. I could probably handle that, but what's worse is someone broke into my friend Sara's apartment here in Fort last weekend. Nothing happened because her boyfriend woke up and scared the guy, so he fled.

Now, I've got to worry about real people, and fake people, err, ghosts?

Called my mom, talked for a little while. Forgot about it. Got ready for bed.

STILL hearing this creaking. It's already 11 PM.

I called the one person I knew would be up: Matthias.

Being an excellent multi-tasker, he continued playing his Left 4 Dead demo (for the duration of our conversation) while I told him what was up.
"So, what you're saying is someone is trying to rob you?" MATTHIAS WTF WOULD YOU SAY THAT I'M CALLING BECAUSE I DONT WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT. "Now I've jinxed it. You'll get robbed."

So the first part of that conversation didn't go well. But after that, we started talking about Thanksgiving, 4chan ("It's the Mos Eisley of Internet content"), water and zee Germans.

I was getting tired around 11:30, so I said I'd try to sleep. But, he'd be up till 3 AM or later if I needed to call back. Awesome.

Birthday presence

This Saturday my brother, Matthias, turns 23 years old.

For the last 22.8 years, I thought his birthday was on July 27. Not so. I can tell you it's on the 26th. I guarantee it.

I plan to drive up to GB this weekend for his birthday. Now, I think my visiting would be an exceptional present, but I'm afraid he'd disagree with me.

I need some ideas.

He likes playing his 360, watching MST3K, the Marx Brothers and Monty Python, speaking German, and has the uncanny ability to recall random facts about medieval and WWII history. He also likes dinosaurs. At least he did when he was eight.

Maybe I'll take him to see The Dark Knight. That's a good bday present, right? Except anytime I go somewhere with him alone, I think people think we're dating; and that's weird.

Snail mail

It costs 42 cents for the USPS to deliver a letter for you. So today I decided to send a card to my friend Amanda. It's not even her birthday.

Since becoming almost completely dependent on the Internet for paying bills, shopping, email, IMs, socializing and almost all other human interaction, I've realized that technology hinders peoples' ability to be sincere -- sans emoticons ;oD

What happened to sending a genuine, poor punctuation-laden, misspelled paper letter?

I remember when I only used to send snail mail.

Until I was 12 years old, my mom sent my brother and I up to Sturgeon Bay every summer to stay in a cottage by the lake with my grandparents. I dreaded it, hated it, loathed it; and despised my mom for sending us there. So isolated, so quiet, so peaceful. How terrible. All summer.

I filled a hot pink pencil box with stickers, pens, postcards, stationery and stamps. Twice a week, I'd sit at the kitchen table and write out letters to my friends, my mom and my dad, my other grandma. I'd mention canoing under a 5 ft. carp, why Matthias was annoying the hell out of me, my newly constructed fort in the woods, or how grandpa wouldn't let us leave the table until we finished our sauerkraut.

I would write out every address and lick every stamp. I'd even write messages on the back of the envelope, after I sealed it. (In case I forgot to mention something.)

I loved writing letters. But more than sending them, I loved getting them. Biking up to the mailbox between 1-3 PM was the highlight of my weekdays.

Funny, the chime of my inbox doesn't really have the same effect...