I said in an earlier post that I would write an entry later on and, for what may be the first time, I'm actually following up on that.

I'm not the kind of person who can lie in a bed and fall asleep almost instantaneously. I'm more the kind of person who, throughout middle and high school, often went to bed and started aimlessly at my ceiling for hours thinking about completely inane and useless things. It started getting a bit better over time (and, by that, I mean I became better adapted to sleeping less), but problems cropped up again last summer where I could only fall asleep for 2-3 hours at a time, so I was relegated to, roughly, five hours per day for about a month and a half. I generally go through these kinds of periods every summer, actually. Last summer, I ended up getting into a system where I just went to the gym at 6am every day, did homework until class at 10am, went to class, came back, and then slept for a couple more hours. The summer before I ended up being able to get to sleep fairly easily early on and just woke up at 4-5am, played games for a while, and then went to where I worked (the ever-exciting job of being some kind of prettying up some space thingy's readings into a program). It's just a fun little cycle.

The reason I bring up what may, in fact, be the most uninteresting side-tale-of-Trent ever, is because once I'm on a sleeping schedule, having to alter that schedule is like some kind of dark, Satanic ritual which should only be performed under the most dire of circumstances. Those circumstances happen, of course; however, I do get mildly annoyed when I get random spurts of drowsiness out of nowhere. One would think that taking a day off from all kinds of fitness/workout activities would be the kind of day where I have an excess of energy, but dammit, one would be wrong. That'll teach me to let my body relax.

Anyway, I figured I'd give the "going to bed early" thing a shot. It was 12:30am (my normal sleepy-time is roughly 3:30-4:00am) and I was feeling frisky in that oh-so-drowsy rebel kind of way. So, there I am, initiating pre-sleep preparations -- brushing my teeth, changing into sleep clothes, setting two alarms (I don't have trouble waking up, I'm just paranoid one won't work), and turning my fan on (it's my favorite brand of white noise). Now, the sad part of this tale is that the moment after I brushed my teeth and sat down to update all my various away messages and IRC nicknames... I was awake. Don't doubt my knowledge on this fact; a Trent just knows. So, was all like "Aw, hell." So, I cut up a lime portion, whipped out a Corona, realized that lime-cutting with dry and cracked hands was a painful process, and sat down with some awesome music as I watched one of my best friends play through God of War (for the third or fourth time) in my room. Then I started up Word and began work on this entry.

Currently, I'm slowly making my way through Arrested Development again and I'm enjoying it even more on a re-viewing. It truly is one of the most well-done comedies I've seen since the good 'ol days of Seinfeld. Maybe it has something to do with Julia Louis-Dreyfus being in both series... But given what I've heard about The New Adventures of Old Christine, I think that may just be nothing more than a coincidence. Either way, though, Arrested Development is simply fantastic. There are so many subtleties that I never noticed the first time through that really add to my ever-increasing love of the show. Plus, Jason Bateman's delivery for some of his lines is just awesome.

For those of you that rely on this site for musical information -- and if there's anyone actually under this category, I feel sorry for you -- let me update you on an artist I've long loved: Joshua Radin. Anyone who watched Scrubs would be very familiar with at least two of his songs, "Winter" and "Closer," as they were both used in a couple of the show's most tear-jerking moments. I just recently found out that he finished his first full CD and it has been released on iTunes. His music is all acoustic, folk-type stuff, and it's all very, very awesome. If I could link all my readers to one song, in particular, without legal ramifications, I would do so. Though let me just say that his song "Only You" is, without a doubt, one of the greatest romantic songs I've ever heard. I listen to the guy's songs so frequently that, despite only having 5-6 songs from one of his EPs up until recently, he was in my top ten most-listened to artists on my Audioscrobbler profile. It's damn good, if somber, stuff.

If you missed it, I uploaded and wrote a bit about my progress on Chapter 2 of Paradise earlier today. Though, to be honest, if you don't plan on reading it compulsively (and I'm surprised by the people that actually do; thanks to you guys), I would recommend just skipping this particular update. Waiting for the first full draft would be a way better way to go. I'm really enjoying working on this project, though. I'm going to get two or three chapters done by the end of April and it's going to be my primarily project aside from classes throughout the summer. It took me about a month and a half to get the first chapter to an acceptable first full draft, though, so I wouldn't really rely on me speeding through the writing process. I'm enjoying my incremental writing sessions method far more than my old process of just sitting down for an entire day and pouring out a long piece, which is also something I did when I wrote the chapters for my programming book (though, to be fair, I had spent weeks working on the actual programs which were contained in the chapter). Incrementally adding and editing is helping me really come up with far more polished, readable drafts.

I think that does it for the night.

all i needed was the love you gave