Blood and Sand

So, once again, I find myself awake at 4am. Why do I do this? Sometimes I get distracted by work. If I’m writing or orchestrating or whatever, I’ll sometimes notice that it’s midnight and decide to work just a little longer before I go to bed. Then suddenly it’s 2am…then 3…then 4. And at 4am I just have this sense that there’s not much point in going to bed. I’ll either not sleep much at all, or sleep until noon (or later). Basically, by that point my sleep schedule is already fucked up. I know if I sleep ‘til noon that I’ll have a hard time getting to sleep by any sort of decent hour that night. So it makes as much sense, or more, to just not really try to get a night’s sleep. That way, maybe I’ll be tired the next night and be able to sleep.

But there’s a problem with that too. It seems that once I stay up all night, I’m more likely to do it again a few nights later. And that’s what’s happening now. I stayed up all night a couple of nights ago when I was working on an older show of mine. It’s something I orchestrated on a program I don’t really use any more.

I recently bought a new computer and was transferring files from the old computer. I didn’t see much point in transferring those files for a program I no longer have, but I didn’t want to lose the work I’d done. So I downloaded a trial version of the program so I could open those files. I’d intended to just print them out and later input all the info into the program I do use: Finale. But the trial version of the other program wouldn’t let me print. It did let me save the files as MIDI versions. So I did that and opened the MIDI files in Finale, then copy and paste them into a new Finale file. It took a lot of tweaking and detail work, but I wanted to get it all done before the trial version expired (in 15 days or so).

Anyway…I stayed up all night, slept maybe half an hour that morning, then went to bed by midnight or so. But I didn’t feel fully rested. It takes a few days to catch up. Unfortunately I took a nap for a few hours tonight around 7 or 8pm.

Tonight I’ve been staying up watching Spartacus: Blood and Sand. It’s an original series on Starz. I watched it this spring instantly on the netflix, and loved it. I kept it in my instant queue, thinking I might watch it again, and I just saw that it will only be available for several more days. So I decided to watch it again.

Often if I start watching something late at night, I’ll fall asleep with it on. But this series is actually very good. I especially liked certain plot twists that happened about half-way throughout the season. I suppose this time I’m watching in anticipation of those moments, which keeps me watching and waiting for the next and next and next episode. Also it’s nice to see the various details which I’d forgotten.

If you've not seen it, and like gritty historical drama, I recommend it. It's a lot like the Rome series on HBO a few years back: violent and sexual and graphic, and well-written.