Ah, but I did get called again... I was there from 23:30 until 03:00. Then I got up at 07:30 and went to work. Needless to say... tard. I got home at 18:00 and I went to bed about a half-hour later... almost asleep when the phone rang... it was the hospital, of course. I got dressed and I was pulling out of the driveway when my pager went off... it was the hospital... the person that called me didn't realize that there was another tech there that was able to do CTs. So I pulled back into the driveway. But of course, I couldn't get back to sleep. Since then, I've had four phone calls, each one as I was on the verge of sleep. I wanted to get some sleep in, because the guy that can do CTs goes home at 23:00, and I'm pretty sure that I'll get called again tonight... it is, after all, Friday, and just after the first of the month, so the government checks have been delivered... as they say, "The Eagle has Flown". Much of that money will be spent on cold beer tonight, and much more government money (yours and mine) will be spent on medical care for people who can buy booze but not insurance. I'm sure glad that nobody is grading my sentence structure. So, I think that I'll take a nice long shower and get all cleaned up and go back to bed, and just hope really hard that I'm wrong about everything... Well, not everything, but just about tonight's potential. I have discovered something about being able to stop smoking... today and tonight have been particularly hard on me, requiring a great deal of fortitude to keep from smoking. Because... I'm really tired. I think that this is what made all of the times that I tried when I was working nights impossible... I was always tired. This isn't really a new discovery... I'd been told by one of the pulmonologists that i'd never be able to quit while I was working nights. This just really confirms that fact for me. Way, way back when, probably in 1985 or so, in one of the first classes that I took on smoking cessation, an instructor told us, "Don't get too tired, too hungry or too angry... these are things that will crush your will." It seems that there was something else in there, but I can't quite remember it. For some reason or another, I've been thinking about fate tonight... about the fact that being stupid will get you killed, but being smart won't necessarily keep you alive. I've been trying to think of a clever way of saying that, so I could go down in the history books as having invented a phrase. So far, I've come up empty. And no, please don't tell me if you immediately come up with the perfect way of saying it. Ah, I'm all clean now, gonna see how long I can sleep...