So what's the deal with sleep?

This post may ramble, but the same could be said for many things.

The facts are these:

1) I had a good 6 hour rest last night
2) I woke up, ran about 1.5 miles, and took a one hour nap
3) Had a fun day at work
4) Took a two hour nap
5) Had 24 fl oz of diet coke
6) Went out on the town and drank about 50-60 fl oz of Ulong Tea
7) Came back home and have not slept since (is now approx. 8:00 a.m.)
8) I actually feel pretty good right now

Something is not quite right, and I think somewhere around 4-6 was where I went wrong. In any event, my mind has not shut down. I've been reading and thinking and cursing my terrible pillow and just getting frustrated at not sleeping when I'm "supposed to". Well, if my body doesn't want it, who am I to argue, right?

So one of the things I was thinking about was time travel. I don't know why, it just crops up sometimes. I think one of the things that fascinates me most about time travel is there is no standard way to approach it. All time travel stories work differently. How they treat the space/time continuum, the speed of travel, the mechanics of travel, the paradox rules, etc.

Now for the fun part, my two models for time travel. Both different and quite nearly opposite.

The first one I've had for quite a while. It's kind of based on a story idea that sort of came from my older sister (or maybe I just out and out stole it, I don't remember). The basic model is that it's really easy to travel into the future. It's sort of just a stasis bubble where you set a timer and come out x number of years later. The story (if it can even be called that) is that a couple of 19th-cent. scientists figure this out, don't pass along their notes, and their research is lost until they pop into current day Cambridge or some such. Their basic idea was that by the time they came out, they would have access to technology that would help solve the "going back in time" problem. The joke/charm of the whole thing is that these two guys have got their acts together. They pop out in modern time amidst a bunch of slack jawed, overpaid physics profs who have no idea how they managed this thing in the first place, proceed to conduct their research and pop back in time never to be heard from again leaving a feeling of "did that just happen?" sort of stunned disbelief. Fun stuff.

The one I thought up last night I like quite a bit. The basic model of this one is that time travel is to a specific point in time. Therefore travel to the future is impossible since there are no established points in time. It is possible to go to any point in history, but the foreknowledge is that your presence in the past destroys the future as you know it. The future may be very similar, but the exact return point no longer exists. Time travel is a one way affair. I think this mechanic has some very interesting potential and I think I have a pretty good story cooked up already. Yeah, I do this every once in a while. I think "how hard can it be to write a little short story? I have the idea, right?" Then I quickly realize "Oh yeah, this is REALLY FREAKING HARD." I do really like this premise though...I'll let you know how it turns out.

So that was about 1 hour of time where I wasn't sleeping. There's plenty more where that came from.

I just don't get it.