People Are Awake This Early???

I Don't Do Mornings


I'm a night person. Always have been. Probably always will be. Ever since middle school, I've hated to go to bed earlier than I wanted to. My philosophy is that whenever you're tired, you should go to bed. The only problem with this thinking is that my body clock seems to operate differently than the rest of the world.

In an ideal world, it would be socially acceptable to go to bed at around 4 am and wake up at 2 pm because this is essentially what my schedule is like (it's 4 am as I'm writing this blog!). When I'm not obligated to do anything the next day (work, appointments, etc), I take it upon myself to stay up until I'm tired and get up when I'm not. This results in the aforementioned 4 am-2 pm sleep schedule. Some people frown upon this because it isn't "normal" or maybe they don't have the same schedule. Well I say "What's normal??" If my body says that its not tired until the wee hours of the night, then why should I fight it? It's gotten me this far. People tend to say that I'm "wasting the day away" by doing this. To that I respond "but I'm making up for it during the night". Just because nobody else is awake at 3 am doesn't mean that I'm just sitting there twiddling my thumbs. No I can't really go outside during these hours but am I really going to be out and about enjoying the morning if I were up at 8 am? If I did wake up at 8 am, I'd probably be doing the same thing that I do at night, which is watch TV or go on my computer or read or any other activity I find entertaining. I'm an only child so I definitely have learned to entertain myself (not in that way you sickos!). So to all those who wake up early and go to bed at 10 pm, I say you're wasting away the night! :)

Ok so now that I'm done ranting and defending my lifestlye, I'll get this blog entry going. Contradictory to all that I've just said, I'll be talking about how I attempted to wake up early to "See a sunrise (not from the night before)". TRUST ME THIS WAS NOT AN EASY TASK...

I made a trip up to Santa Barbara to visit Marcella, with no intention of waking up early any morning. I had the weekend off and was looking forward to just relaxing and spending time with my wonderful girlfriend. Well, she was wonderful until she casually mentioned that we would both be getting up early Sunday morning to see the sunrise. If I'm normally used to waking up at 2 pm, you can imagine that it would be a little difficult to all of the sudden change this and wake up 8 hours earlier! Additionally, just because my waking up time would be getting earlier didn't necessarily mean that my going to bed time would be getting earlier. Remember that whole body clock thing I talked about earlier? Well Saturday night, I regrettfully stayed up until around 3 am watching episodes of Lost online. (One of the other tasks on my list is to watch all of Lost since the final season is coming back soon!) I did this knowing full-well that I'd be getting up a few hours later but I decided to just push that fact out of my mind haha.

The night before, we had looked up the time of Sunday's sunrise and were slightly surprised to see that it was at 7:02 am. It was later than I expected but I wasn't complaining. So Sunday morning, as much as I fought it, with only a few hours of sleep, I got up at 6 am and took a shower. Another thing about me is that I MUST take a shower when I wake up. I need it to wake myself up and I pretty much refuse to go out in public without a shower. For all those people who take showers the night before so they can just get up and go the next day, I will never understand and I do not plan on trying to anytime soon. Anyway, continuing on with our early morning adventure, when we went outside it was slightly light out, which perplexed us. The sun was not supposed to be rising for another 15 minutes but there was a slightly blueish color in the sky. So we raced to get to the beach in time (maybe went a little too fast, eh Marcella?) and parked the car near the Campus Point bluffs. There was no sun out so I guess the light was just trying to trick us. Nevertheless, we had made it and were excited for the sunrise! When it made it's first appearance it was really cool the way it came up through the clouds and poured out over the ocean...


Santa Barbara Sunrise pictures courtesy of my new Droid






The view was awesome and I must admit it was kinda cool being awake when barely anybody else was (not to mention the fact that it was a Sunday in Isla Vista where there were probably people still drunk from the night before haha). So I'll eat my words for the moment and say that I'm glad Marcella pushed me to get up early and complete my task to

#16. See a sunrise (not from the night before)


But that's not the end of our morning...


Since we were already awake and out in the world on such a nice Sunday morning, we decided to make the most of it and go out to breakfast. We drove to State Street and read some good reviews on a nice little breakfast place. We actually got there before it was open so we had to wait a little bit. That's a first for me I think haha.

This new restaurant was called Tupelo Junction Cafe and is one more on my list to

#81. Eat at 25 new restaurants (3/25)






The cafe was a quaint little place, the service was good, and we ate an awesome Southern-influenced breakfast! I mean they served fresh squeezed orange juice in freakin jam jars!!! To add extra excitement to this breakfast, for an appetizer we ordered Cinnamon Apple Beignets with Creme Anglaise! I had never tried beignets before so that's one more addition to the task

#82. Try 5 things I’ve never eaten before (2/5)


They were like lighter versions of doughnuts and when you dipped them in the creme anglaise sauce they were sooo good:




For my breakfast entree I really stepped outside the box and ordered Dungeness Crab Cake & Potato Hash with Avocado Salsa, Poached Eggs & Lemon Butter Sauce...




Doesn't that sound and look amazing?? Granted it was the most expensive thing on the menu but it just sounded so exotic and definitely something I couldn't order at any regular old place. The whole meal was really good and it was such a cool little place to eat. Next time I go there, I fully expect you to be working there Marcella!!

And thus concludes this excitement-packed Sunday in Santa Barbara! Needless to say we both passed out once we got home from breakfast but it was well worth it :) I had a wonderful time with my amazing girlfriend and hopefully we'll have just as much fun this weekend...