What are you doing today?

Alli said:
Who in their right mind wants to wake up at 6 a.m.?!
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I used to be more of a night owl than I became once I started commuting up here, and then eventually keeping a garden in the season to do that sort of stuff. Years later I do enjoy getting up way before six, at least during the spring and summer. This time of year, not so much, although I still tend to do it out of years of habit. Once I've had my coffee, I really enjoy that quiet time of early morning to read and think for awhile, even during winter.

Today what I'm up to as usual for the season is looking forward to the time after the solstice, when not only does the sun start setting a minute or so later each day, the laggard thing also finally starts rising a minute or so earlier each day as well.

Tonight btw is the time when the sun sets earliest of all the year -- 4:27 here-- and stodgily sits there doing its "lights out!" call at the same exact time for another six days, even as the blasted sunrise continues to get later. All so we can then finally have a suitably dramatic run-up to the shortest day of the year with some fanfare, I guess. I call these the weeks from just this side of hell for all the darkness. I mean 9 hours of "daylight" is not even really that when it's grey and cloudy fore and aft of (and during )the so-called day.​
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I distract myself from all that with Advent calendars, download music and streamed movies. I do make my Film Movement subscription worth it in winter, by prowling through a lot of short films and foreign offerings that I tend just to flag in my mailbox for most of the year.​

Meanwhile I'm perusing winter recipes -- or cooking some of them up for the freezer-- and in the daytimes finishing little gfts of sewn goods or rummaging through the back pantry to make sure I haven't forgotten to re-up on anything I might depend on having once the deep winter sets in and deliveries can become a dice-roll.

I was a real innocent about keeping a winter pantry when I had first bought my place up here, even though I lived in similarly rural and mountainous areas as a child. Big surprise one weekend, arriving up here rather late and rather tired on a Friday night in light snow, but waking up to find 7-foot drifts around the house, a VW bug completely buried in an unshoveled driveway, and not much past a half-gone pound of coffee and the odd can of tunafish, sardines, beans, tomato soup or whatever in the cupboard. I'd completely missed the upstate forecast for an 18" snowfall with ferocious winds sweeping into the area in the pre-dawn hours.

Hah. No bread, eggs, milk... I had figured I'd go shopping for all that stuff and more on Saturday afternoon. Visions of my grandmother's orderly inventory of staple goods flashed through my mind that weekend, bank on it. It took me about five years to get up to speed and not run out of anything I tend to regard as essential. Grandma always sounded so casual when asking one of us to fetch a can or jar of something from "the back pantry". Never occurred to me then to wonder how she knew whatever it was would actually be there.
 
Alli said:
I stayed up until 10 last night (unusual for me), and I woke after 9 this morning. I keep waiting to hit that age where you need less sleep, but haven’t gotten there yet. My body wants 11 hours, and will always grab it when possible.
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Especially in deepest, darkest, dreariest, winter.

Eleven hours? In winter, in Deceber, mine would cheerfully grab 15 hours if that was somehow possible.

Ulenspiegel said:
I am premature in this respect. Can't sleep more than four-five hours.
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Summer, maybe.

In June, if it is sunny, yes, you'd be amazed - well, I have been amazed - at just how little sleep you can get by with.
 
Alli said:
I stayed up until 10 last night (unusual for me), and I woke after 9 this morning. I keep waiting to hit that age where you need less sleep, but haven’t gotten there yet. My body wants 11 hours, and will always grab it when possible.
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Mine wants 6.5 - 7. Any more than that and I feel a bit hungover for a couple of hours. As long as it stays in the 11/12 - 6/7 range I will be OK. But can't start going to be at 9 and being up at 4. That will not work for me. :)
 
Scepticalscribe said:
Ah.

Thank you, @Pumbaa.

Might I risk revealing my ignorance and actually ask @Apple fanboy what the expression "AW" in this context means?

Consider my confusion......added to.
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Apple Watch. It’s always raising the challenges each month. But I’m slimmer than I’ve ever been which is nice. Maintaining a nice healthy 11 stone. Literally 2/3rds the man I used to be.
 
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