Morning star

I am pretty much a night owl by nature. When I was a baby, I would sleep from midnight to noon, then stay up from noon to midnight. At Northwestern, I was known for my late hours, often ridiculous even by collegiate standards, and my oft-quoted-by-Drew commentary on once needing to get up pretty early to catch a plane: "I should probably just stay up all night."

With that said, I really enjoy being up early in the mornings. I'm here in Seattle, as most of you are probably already aware. Since we came in on business, I figured that I wouldn't have a ton of time to do a lot of touristy stuff, since we'll likely be working 9-5 or 9-6 every day. (Granted, that still allows for 2-3 hours before sundown, and last night the sun didn't completely sink behind the Pacific until after I fell asleep, which was around 8:45 local time. But still.) However, I've been getting up earlier at home, and 5:30 Central, which is about when I've been waking, is 3:30 Pacific.

Well, I didn't get up at 3:30 today. But after a long day of travel and work, that would have been crazy. I woke up at 4:15 Central on Monday so I could get down to Midway for an 8:30 flight (which ended up having its boarding delayed by almost 90 minutes), and as usual didn't sleep on the flight. By mid-evening Seattle time, after a few hours of work, I was pretty wiped out. I was in bed by 8:15 or so, and though I didn't fall asleep right away, by around 8:45 I was gone.

A strange dream in which I was being chased down a dark hallway by a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Cheryl Ford (better known as Karl Malone's illegitimate daughter by non-WNBA fans, by which I mean everyone) woke me up this morning at three minutes to five, just before my first alarm was set to go off. I had plenty of time to take a shower and be out the door by six.

The upshot is I was able to walk to Pike Place Market, take some photos of the waterfront and a snow-capped Mt. Rainier (lurking in the background and not terribly prominent in the photos as it fades into the sky), get a cappuccino from the first Starbucks, buy Alma a present, and walk back to the hotel... and even after writing this entire blog post it's only ten minutes past seven, leaving nearly an hour and a half before I'm scheduled to meet the other two people on the trip to walk over to the office. Being up early and doing things in that time makes me feel productive in a way that really nothing else can. I don't know if I'm the kind of person who can really be "early to bed and early to rise" every day, but darn if it isn't fun right now.

Oh, and pictures on Facebook, if that might interest you.