Christina: Polyphasic Day 5

OK, things are getting better in terms of tiredness. Apart from the 4am starts which can sometimes be brutal. Those seem to alternate daily between more awake "oh look I'm blogging at 5am again" and "holding one eye open is the only thing that will help me stay awake because both eyes refuse to open at the same time"-types of tiredness.

This morning I heard the alarm go off, and wondered what that sound was. I mumbled something at Brendan. The noise faded from consciousness. Eventually I was roused from a warm and fuzzy state by Brendan shaking me and saying, "Come on, Tina." I said, "Why? What's happening?" I had completely forgotten that we had to get up! Luckily we are both doing this - I really think if it wasn't for him waking me up I would have definitely overslept.

Also, as Brendan helpfully mentioned in his last post, over the last few days I'm developing a tendency to dread the naps. I'm getting pretty good at falling asleep now, small chihuahuas howling next door notwithstanding, and I inevitably wake up tired and stay tired for around 30 minutes, rather than refreshed. I'm changing my nap times down to 25 minutes, and that seems to help. Brendan thinks this is a good thing because I'm repaying my sleep deficit - for him, naps are still a huge incentive to look forward to.

I'm almost always freezing cold in the morning and whenever I wake up from a nap - I have various blankets draped round me at the computer. Yet the temperature gauge on our A/C shows the usual 79 degrees F. What's happening, I wonder?

I also felt that I achieved a lot more yesterday by taking advantage of the time as much as I could (rather than sitting there in a sleep-deprived blur and just reading various newspapers). I'm not playing Warcraft (3, not WOW - as much as I think it would be very cool, I want a life) anymore, which is a good sign. I did lots of job-getting-related stuff - I've realised that I really need to find out as much as possible about the PR industry here to avoid making any major blunders, and to work out how to go about my job-searching. I've talked to a few people now about this.

Structurally, the major companies here seem to divide job titles up differently, and I need to discover which roles mean what, and what I will actually be able to do best. So, to that end, I have an informational chat on Monday in San Francisco with one of the San Francisco IBM Comms managers, which I'm very pleased about. (And no, Brendan had nothing to do with this one!) I can't believe how kind people are! now I've really got to organise my business cards!

I also felt productive enough to go to the gym around 6.30 and do some interval training again for the first time in months - I was going to be lazy and get on the bikes, but then I found I wasn't as tired as I thought. High-intensity interval training is much more intense than just going to the gym and plodding away on the elliptical trainer for an hour a la what Brendan and I used to jokingly refer to as the "weight-loss chickies" at the Vic gym.

Interval training gets great results in more like 10 minutes four times a week and is apparently the best way possible to get fit (and lose weight. because your muscles stay active for a full 24 hours afterwards. (We were doing it to gain cardio fitness, but the unfortunate side effect was that I lost too much weight to fit into my wedding dress properly.)

So, overall a good day. But by around 5pm, I was pretty tired. And there was an interesting phone call which I really should have given to Brendan to deal with cos I was so tired, not even something like that could make me excited. More on this later.