I have an unfortunate tendency to stay up quite late. “Around here.. we stay up very, very late…” (Counting Crows) I get involved with something, don’t notice that I’m getting tired, and soon it’s 4am. And then I sleep until it’s afternoon. And then I stay up even later, and so on. Left to my own devices, I tend to go to bed when the sun comes up and get up late afternoon. Unfortunately, the rest of the world seems to be very morning-centric.

Lately I’ve been flying in the afternoon. But Jonah works. And I when I can’t sleep, I toss and turn. And Jonah doesn’t like that. So then I get up and have to amuse myself until I think I might be able to sleep. I can’t do things like study, because I’m too sleepy. I’m probably too sleepy to write as well, but I’m probably also too sleepy to realize it.

I had my alarm set for 10am this morning. After not getting to sleep until very early in the morning, I wasn’t very happy about it going off. I figured the weather would probably be bad (the OKC TAF looked pretty bad when I went to bed), but I needed to confirm this before going back to bed. Because if it was good enough, I’d have to fly. Text weather isn’t that hard when I’m fully awake, but when I’m asleep, it’s difficult. I finally decided that even if there wasn’t much convective activity (and it didn’t look like there was), it was too cloudy. It was predicted to get to 800ft broken over OKC by 2pm. I was supposed to fly at noon. I decided that cross-country flying was probably, indeed, out of the picture. I set my alarm for 11am, checked the weather again. Less thunderstorms, more clouds. I called D., but he didn’t answer so I left a message.

My telephone rang at 12:30. A 251 number I didn’t recognize. I decided the possibility it was for me was slim to none. Being the anti-telephone sort of person I am, I sent the call to voicemail, then dialed my voicemail. It was someone calling about our overpriced health insurance that I was supposed to have had 3 months ago but which would now be effective on June 1. It’s always nice to think that you have health insurance, but then find out that you haven’t really had insurance for the last 6 months, you just thought you did. I suppose that if I never found out I didn’t have it, I didn’t need it, and I saved money…

There was also a message from D.. It seems that my phone didn’t ring when he called, only a couple minutes earlier than the insurance people. The message said, “Hey Berck, it’s Mike, I dunno if I missed you or what, I got back from my flight a little late… It’s 12:30, call me.” I called him back. He apparently hadn’t gotten my message, but he did agree that it might well be too cloudy for cross-country flying. He called back later to tell me that he was utterly unable to schedule me for Wednesday, but that I was in the schedule for 4pm on Thursday. This really bites. Flying 1.5 hours every 2-3 days is ridiculous. If I don’t fly more often than this, I might as well try to get a job.

So cleaned the kitchen. Joanna cleans the kitchen most nights, but she hadn’t been feeling well, so it was rather messy. And it needed a real cleaning. I cleaned off the counters, scrubbed the stains out, scrubbed the stove, cleaned the already clean pots which had some sort of scum in them, scrubbed the sink, found a tortilla that was now a petrified tortilla… After I got tired of that, I read cookbooks for awhile trying to decide what to make for dinner.

I’ve been wanting to make Gnocchi for some time now. I haven’t had it since I left Italy, and it was one of my favourite pasta dishes. I had, I thought, acquired everything I needed, but a careful examination revealed that I really needed a food mill. Not to mention that I needed one anyway to make tomato sauce. So I made “Spaghetti”. With all the real Italian cooking I’ve been doing lately… it was something of a dissapointment. Not bad, just disappointing. Joanna liked it, and that’s what’s important. Really.

I also found health insurance that’s costs 25% less, has a half the deductible, and no coinsurance (as opposed to the current policy which is 80/20). That’s good. Only now I have to go through all the headaches of applying for new insurance, canceling the old one and so on.

There was the hope that Joanna would get a job with benefits, but I’m starting to wonder. In spite of the literally hundreds of jobs she’s applied for, she’s gotten a sum total of zero phone calls and one rejection letter. This isn’t promising. I don’t really understand it– and it’s making me wonder just what good a college degree is after all. In fact, her current employer was worried about hiring her to work in a warehouse because she had a college degree. She’s started leaving her masters degree OFF of her resume for the secretary-type jobs she’s applied for.

There’s a position open at a local community college for a history professor that she’s well qualified for. But we’re not going to get excited.