Why am I awake before 5 a.m. on a Saturday??

...or in this case awake just before 3 a.m.?

While I'm a long time sufferer of stress induced insomnia, this isn't that.  How do I know?  Well because I'm going for my first manicure in over 5 years.

I'll wait while you try to see where that's going.  No it's ok - I need another cup of coffee.

....

give up?  HA  As some of you are aware, I'm a twice quit smoker, stress eater, stress insomniac, and perhaps don't know but habitual nail biter.  That is unless things are going smoothly.  Well I will still be twice quit on the smoking with hopefully the brains not to try and resurrect my long love affair with nicotine.

Amazing how much stress can be relieved by a simple job change.  Amazing how you learn to cope as the pressure increases and increases until you almost get used to it.  The atmosphere of anger and dissidence becomes - if not tolerable then the norm rather than the exception.  The daily hate spewed talk radio blaring from across the hall becomes oh so much background noise for the stress and angst and anger fueled conversations.

So - the photo above is from Virginia Beach this year back in June.  I see this photo and I want to think "it was a dark and stormy night" but things are sometimes not what they appear.  It was dark.  It was stormy.  It was mid-morning and the last of the windy weather front was finally dissipating.

May we all find blue skies ahead during these dark and stormy times.