Jet Lag

Ya know what jet lag is in German? Jetlag. Yup, sometimes language is easy. Berlin is six hours ahead of Boston so it's noon there. Della and Martin are prolly thinking about lunch fixins about now. While I'm happy to be home in my wee seaside cottage with my wonderful, evil, tux-clad, old kittens, I miss Berlin's architecture, sidewalks (!), trees everywhere and, of course, Della, Martin, Simba and Pepper.

With this big time shift the days ran into each other. If I hadn’t written down all I’d done and when, it’d be a giant jumble in my head. Günther Kieser's brill posters? Yeah, we saw those on Wednesday. No, it was Saturday. Ummm, it’ll come to me.

The whole jet laggy thing – I fall in with the majority of humans in that I’ve more of a struggle heading east than west. That is, when I jet to Phoenix to see Jenny, I’m pretty much AOKish on arrival. When I get there it’s night/cot time anyway so by morning I’m groovy (as groovy as I ever get, that is).

Granted Boston to Phoenix is just a two hour time difference. It's an overnight flight to six-hours-ahead Berlin. Given my inability to sleep constrained and sitting up (sadly, first class is WAY outta the budget), I spend the first day doing a brill zombie impersonation. My brain’s on autopilot and my mouth’s in overdrive. Good thing I’m not some high security clearance spy type – nuclear codes and the like would be out before I had my first dozen shots ‘o’ java.

Steven W. Lockley, Harvard Big Brain and consulting member of NASA’s fatigue management team recommends:

 if you are traveling east, you must expose yourself to light early, advancing your body clock so that it will be in sync with the new time zone. (source)

Yes, this all sounds just bloody lovely but who the fuck manages this before a big trip? Also too, I wake at 4AM anyway! Rilly, turning the lights on earlier than that is not so much EVAH gonna be a purposeful happening thing.

I know what I want – Star Trek transporter beams so's I can pop in for a day here, an afternoon there, dinner at eight.

Now that I’m home – east to west travel – I should be all ducky and with it, right? Well, if not for this wretched cold, I’m sure I would be. I’m taking another slow and easy day. Jen rescheduled my doc appointments (meeting the eye surgeon and then my annual with my beloved Beach Boy neurotologist) which means I’ve now got six whole hours that I can spend sleeping or sweating it out at the gym or sitting on the seawall watching the waves. HEY, mebbe I can do ALL three!

Sounds staggeringly ambitious. First COFFEE!