Three days into this iteration of my American life and I’m still not sleeping.  Well, technically I am sleeping, but only in bursts of two or three hours at a time.  Not sure why I’m having such a hard time re-setting my circadian rhythms, but it is getting to be a bit of a pain in the ass.

After a long but uneventful flight on Wednesday I arrived at my South Carolina home at 6:30 p.m.  That concluded about a 22 hour door-to-door trip.  I managed maybe two hours of sleep on the plane so I was exhausted.  I had every intention of staying awake until midnight or so to get my body back on Carolina time, but at 8 p.m. I had to surrender and went to bed.  I awoke at 10:30 p.m. somewhat refreshed and definitely hungry.  So I headed out to the 24 hour supermarket to do some grocery shopping.  Came home and cooked up a rack of ribs and started watching season 4 of Game of Thrones.  Made it through 5 episodes or so, and tried to catch some sleep around 9 a.m.  Woke up at noon, and finished up GOT.  It seems every season concludes with the death of a major character, and I was pretty surprised at who they killed off this go around.  Won’t spoil it for you though if you haven’t seen it.

Fell asleep on my amazingly comfortable leather couch for about 3 hours and woke up hungry.  So I headed out to Rush’s, a local fast food chain, and ordered me up a basket of chicken wings.

Nice-uh!

After devouring that tasty chicken I fiddle-farted around on the computer until 2 a.m. or so and tried again to get a full night’s (or morning as it were) sleep.  No dice.  Woke at 3:30 and knew I’d be up for awhile.  So, I started watching VEEP, a mildly amusing political comedy featuring Julia-Louis Dreyfus.   Between episodes I baked up a batch of cinnamon rolls (well, I opened a can and popped them in the oven).  Obviously I haven’t initiated my low carb diet plan yet.  I had good intentions about doing some banking and running some errands, but I found myself growing sleepy shortly after noon, so I hit the sack for the longest period of sleep I’d managed thus far–four hours.

With Friday night looming my body told me it was time for some darts.  So I showered up and headed out to my local pub, Kwagga.  When I left for Korea back in March this was the place to be for dart action in Columbia.  Sadly, due to some personality conflicts the owner found it necessary (wrongly in my opinion) to ban several dart players from the bar.  Several others had moved away during my absence which left only me and one other guy there to play.  In fact, for most of the night we were the only customers in the bar.  I’m afraid that doesn’t bode well for the future of Kwagga, which is a shame really.  Still, the owner welcomed me back with a bucket of Michelob Ultra beer (hey, only 2.6 grams of carbohydrates per bottle!).  Dirk, the South African owner of Kwagga, mentioned he had a new item on the menu.  With his accent it sounded like he was saying “Buddha’s balls”, which didn’t sound too appetizing.  But it turns out it was more like boerwors, a South African sausage which was served on a bun.  Hell, it looked like a hot dog so I slathered it in ketchup.  Dirk was aghast and said “you just ruined it”.  He pointed to the sauce served on the side and said that’s what you are supposed to put on it.  Hell, I thought it was for dipping the chips.  Anyway, I found it quite tasty, ketchup and all.

I played darts until about 10:30 then headed home.  I felt sure that with some American beer and South African sausage in my belly I’d sleep like a baby through the night.  I stayed up until 12:30 just to be sure but alas, I woke up at 4:00 a.m.  With nothing else to do with myself I sat down at the keyboard to treat my faithful readers to this post which I believe perfectly captures the astounding boredom of my so-called life in the USA.

Once the rest of the world wakes up I plan to do a little shopping and maybe treat myself to a 5 Guys burger.

I consider this the best fast food burger in the USA.

Later this afternoon the daughter is bringing the grandkids over for a visit.  And I’ll be missing my yobo immensely.  It really sucks being here without her.

So there you have it.  As far as I know everything I’ve written above is true and correct.  But then again, I saw this article in Time magazine that says less than 5 hours sleep leads to false memories.  So who knows?