Overheated and too much caffeine

Last night we went out to The Basement for a concert with friends of ours – Ric and Cristina. It was a concert I was really looking forward to and knowing that it was The Basement prepared by taking a nap in the afternoon – concerts there start at 10pm and finish at 1am. I wanted to last the night. Oh yeah – we were watching James Morrison and Emma Pask performing there. Both Australian icons and fantastic performers.

I took a nap which surprisingly lasted 2.5 hours – much longer than I had anticipated. I fell asleep quickly enough and then jolted awake to discover that it was close to 5 in the evening. I had slept the afternoon away.

Steve got home reasonably early, in time to lie down for 5 minutes before the concert.

We got dressed and headed out.

As we were going out the door Steve asked if I needed a wrap in case it got cool. I responded that I didn’t need one ‘cos the dress I was wearing had three-quarter sleeves (there is a point to the length of my sleeves in this story, really!)

Off we went.

When we arrived there were a mass of people ahead of us – not a good sign to begin with.

As we were checking in, I discovered that they had NOT printed out an invoice for the night for me and try though I did to get one throughout the night, it was all for naught. Sorry Ric, you’re going to have to do the taxes with a few missing tax invoices.

We were then led to our table and the maître d’ kept walking and walking and walking – this being a small-ish space I was starting to wonder where he was going to put us. Turns out we got the farthest corner table in the entire place. Tucked just in front of the sound booth with a ceiling fan whirring above (I should have seen the ceiling fan as a sign), the only table further away was the table for two behind us which was actually squashed INTO the corner.

I was not pleased with our table location. I had gotten used to being right in front of the stage. Unfortunately, last night the front of the stage was dominated by large tables of 8, 10, 12 people. The place was packed!

After being seated, we ordered our food and drinks and that was when we noticed the heat. It was HOT! In fact, I think we got the hottest seat in the house and I mean it literally. No wonder the sound booth had a ceiling fan whirring above it. It was boiling in that corner.

As the evening progressed, we got more and more uncomfortable. I had to borrow a hair tie from Cristina to braid my hair back. Ric and Steve were both suffering from the heat and had developed a fine sheet of perspiration across their foreheads. Cristina spent most of the evening during the performance fanning herself and Ric. Steve took the opportunity before the concert and during the break to head outside for a bit of fresh air.

Have I mentioned it was hot?

I asked for a glass of ice several times to chill my diet coke in an effort to cool down. Which leads me to the diet coke … did you know diet coke has caffeine in it? I had forgotten that. In fact, I forget that often and unfortunately in the evenings. Someone as sensitive to caffeine as I am should NOT be drinking diet coke at night. Unfortunately for me, I did forget about the caffeine. I drank two glasses of that stuff … you know where this is going, don’t you?

When we got home Steve went straight to bed. He’d had a long, tiring week at work and it had been a long night out.

I thought I’d go directly to bed but to no avail.

I ended staying up, sitting in the dark and playing on the computer. Please don’t ask me why I was sitting in the dark. I do not know why I was sitting in the dark. Maybe I thought that if I sat in the dark, I could trick myself to get tired and then be able to fall asleep.

At some point, I put in a status update on facebook: Deanna Lang is wondering why the heck am I still awake at 2:45am? Steve Shipley is going to be so cross with me.

I stayed up in front of the computer to about 3:30am. I read Google Reader subscriptions. I responded to the ARRA message board. I checked out the nook and Kindle boards on facebook.

I finally gave up and went to bed where I stayed, lying AWAKE for the next hour to hour and a half before finally falling asleep close to 5am.

This morning I woke up briefly at 7:16am and then promptly went back to sleep. Jolted out of bed at about 10:15am realising it was really, really late and we had errands we needed to run. I hustled, still groggy from sleep to get dressed and out the door for our trek across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for a morning of visiting Ray the Butcher (best butcher in Sydney) and other errands.

I’m awake now … but just barely.