Complex Numbers

Exit Night

With over 1800 entries in this blog, I'm pretty sure I've repeated a blog title before, though I haven't gone searching for duplicates, so I don't know when it might have happened.

This problem is only exacerbated on important dates, like my birthday or the winter solstice, both of which I tend to bang on about when they happen.

And today is the winter solstice, at 10:59 am in my time zone.

Hence the twisting of a Metallica lyric in my title today; I'm pretty sure I've never used that one.

It has been my personal tradition, for a while now, to stay awake between sunset and sunrise on the longest night of the year. I do this to remind myself that "even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise."

As an aside, I can't be certain that tonight is the longest night. The information I found goes only to the minute, and the number of minutes is the same tonight and tomorrow night (though today will definitely be the shortest daylight of the year). I'm sure I'd know if they broke it down to the second. Either way, though, the difference, if there is one, is measured in seconds so it hardly matters. I'm only pointing this out because I like to get these technical matters straight.

This staying up through the longest night thing is something I try to do but don't always have the opportunity.

Sometimes, I'm traveling, and that's not conducive to staying up all night. Well, I'm not traveling this year.

I vaguely remember that one year, I had a cold, and so I didn't do it, because that would suck. One requires rest when one is ill. But I don't have so much as a sniffle right now (which is weird, because usually winter makes my sinuses act up even if I don't have a cold or you-know-what).

This year, my excuse is that I'm between eye surgeries -- as I noted, I had my left eye done on Thursday, and the right eye is scheduled to get poked at this coming Thursday. So no, I'm not going to attempt it tonight. My sleep is disrupted enough this week, as I'm pretty sure I mentioned a couple of days ago.

But I have to mark the occasion in my mind, anyway, and yesterday, I realized that I already had. The moment of sunrise on Solstice day is like a rebirth or renewal for me -- as I've said before, quoting Doctor Who, it's the moment I know that we're "halfway out of the dark." Well, I had a moment like that on Sunday, instead.

See, before I go see a movie, I sit at the theater bar and drink some beer. These past few months, I've had to take a picture of the menu on the wall and order from the image on my phone, because the writing on the wall was just too blurry for me to read -- but I could see fine up close. Being able to read beer menus on walls is an important life skill for me, and not being able to do it makes me feel like I'm too old and decrepit to be there. ("Don't they have printed menus?" "Yes, but they can't be arsed to keep them up to date.")

Well, before I went to see West Side Story, I sat down at the bar and... I could read everything on the menu. Even the small print, like ABV and prices. Though only out of my left eye.

So yeah. I'm halfway out of the dark.