Sleep deprivation week '05 continues. Monday and Tuesday nights were haunted by the rat having a little rat party in the attic and freaking my shit so bad that I actually slept on the couch Tuesday night, but not before laying in bed for a couple of hours staring at the ceiling and wondering just how much faster my heart could race. Wednesday night I wised up and put some earplugs in before going to bed rather late after working until after midnight. I'd finally beaten the rat, but not the cell phone, as angry Germans started calling me at 4 in the morning and kept me up until 6:30. Last night I rocked the earplugs again, since the rats are still hanging around (have I mentioned I'm moving out of this place soon?). I sort of half expected the phone to wake me up, but this time it was a helicopter that kept circling and circling. Susie and I got ourselves good and freaked, thinking that a fugitive was on the loose in our neighborhood, and he'd be breaking in to kill us any minute. I kept thinking of that line in that NOFX song: "When she shot that family, and moved in to their home..." Joke's on you, sucker, cause we've got RATS! Anyway, just when we were about used to the chopper, we heard a loud noise that sounded like someone was coming in. After peeing myself, I investigated and found that nobody had entered. That's when the internet saved our sanity. I googled up "Seattle police scanner" and found a live feed of Seattle PD. After a couple of minutes, we learned that the helicopter and all the commotion was for a lost 9 year old kid a block over from us. Man oh man... they really rolled out the big guns. If you're nine and you disappear, helicopter. If you're 16, "call us back when the kid's been gone for 24 hours".

We listened a little longer, since by this time the Germans had begun IMing me about a possible server problem, and learned that the kid was found. The helicopter went away and we finally got to sleep.

As I sit in bed, waiting for my conference call to start and writing this, I can hear the rat still partying above me. Go to bed, rat! You gotta save your energy for tonight!