Anya and I have been trying these past few days to go to bed earlier than we normally do. Bedtime for us is usually anytime from 11:00 - unmentionable hours of the night/morning. Now, we're trying to get to be right at 10 or 10:30.

It's kind of a weird stretching out the amount of time you're in bed. It makes my typical late night rousing a little more relaxing. Whereas before, I'd wake up and look at the clock and realize that I only had about an hour or two, sometimes minutes, left to sleep. Now, I wake up and it's some wonderful time like 2 am. TWO AM. There were some nights when I wouldn't get to bed until 1 am. So it feels like I have all this extra time.

I feel like I may have finally turned the corner on a few things about my health and well-being. For one, I'm doing some kind of workout nearly every single day. Some days it's intense. Other days, not so much. But even if I do just the bare minimum of fitness maintenance, it's still more than I used to do.

We're trying to watch less television at night. The other night, we all just hung out in Parker's room and goofed off. It was nice.

Part of my deal is that I get into these "phases." I'm in my "working out phase" or I'm in my "reading more phases," but now, I'm trying to erase the boundaries of these phases and see if I can turn these "phases" into "lifestyle choices."

So far, so good. But seriously, ask me again in a few months and we'll see.

Another great advantage of going to bed earlier is that it gives Parker all this free time to climb the bookshelves and lick the power sockets while we're asleep. You can not put a price on that.

Matthew