John Umland
July 05, 2016 9:07 AM
I have no need of your human sleep, I have caffeine. by John Umland
John had hoped he would be able to relax between the end of the Science Club telescope night and the beginning of the hour at which he normally went to bed. John’s brain had not proven willing to cooperate. It had already been aware that astronomy was highly relevant to Potions, it had read about that in the Potions books, but at some point during the proceedings, it had started to think about the fact that Potions was not a completely solitary discipline….It was all Mercury’s fault, he’d thought as he’d added a solution of coffee, sugar, and milk to his oats at breakfast instead of just a quantity of plain milk. He assumed, based on the theme naming of the other planets, that Mercury had been named after the Roman messenger, but through a telescope, it was a little grey disc, and that had reminded him of an image of the element mercury he’d once seen in a book. Mercury, quicksilver, hydragyrum. The only metallic element that is liquid at room temperature and pressure. You don’t get gold just by combining it with sulfur in the right proportions, but the ancients called alchemy the Way of Mercury….
It could have gone only a little further than that. John was fascinated by what he knew about alchemy, but the school did not really support such endeavors and he knew he was not going to get his hands on much more information about it than the non-magical population knew until, at earliest, he got unrestricted access to the Restricted Section in the library. Since he wouldn’t have that until, at best, next year, he wouldn’t have stayed up so late if his mind had stopped thinking at alchemy. Unfortunately, it had kept going, reminding him of astronomy’s importance to alchemical and potion-making endeavors and then from there, he had remembered that all the magical disciplines were part of a puzzle and from there, he had wandered into his work and before he’d known it, it had not been late at night anymore, it had been early in the morning and he had been using the most colorful language he could come up with at the time to decry that fact.
Caffeine, though, made it better. Caffeine could turn down the noise in his head when he got carried away and started trying to think multiple things at once and could remove the grit from the corners of his eyes when he got carried away and focused on one thing at a time for too long. If he’d had any ear for poetry – and he didn’t; his mother had tried so hard to teach him that, wanting him to be a truly well-rounded and accomplished person, but he wasn’t wired that way. He could appreciate some poetry, but he couldn’t produce it, and he usually found well-presented arguments more beautiful than most poems anyway – he would have written a song of great deeds with caffeine as the hero. That was why he did not despair of his job, but rather brewed his tea double-strength, with nearly twice the usual amount of honey in it, and added coffee to his oats. It all tasted fairly horrible, but his eyes were wide when he’d finished it, so he knew the caffeine was probably going to be able to keep him from getting fired before he finished his shift in the library.
Probably.
By the time he got to the library, he was feeling steadier on his feet, though the muscles between his shoulders and in the small of his back were still sore and it did feel as though his veins were recently-agitated guitar strings running through him. That wasn’t entirely pleasant, but he found that he didn’t mind much, and not nearly as much as he minded the sore muscles. Those were going to be irritating, but it was a poor specimen who couldn’t work through a few aches….
He had gathered later that his unusually affable-toward-basically-strangers mood and willingness to play bizarre games with Theodore at the last Ball had been a result of being something akin to drunk at the time. Between the mood-raising properties of the caffeine and the fatigue lingering just behind that, he felt much the same as he had then as he wandered up to the desk and checked the bin for any books that needed to be checked back in to the library. His thoughts as he checked a couple back in were fragmented and off-task, grouped around his breakfast time idea that caffeine deserved its own epic poetry. The great molecule, he hazarded, our emperor Caffeine, hath for seventeen full minutes been inside my brain, it has passed the blood-brain barrier and antagonized all the adenosine receptors save…the one that goes to my back –
He stopped what he was doing for several seconds to try to reason out which substance, if Caffeine was Charlemange, was supposed to be Roland. He really needed to do some research on the chemical components of coffee, he guessed, he actually knew nothing about it except that it had caffeine in it and that it didn’t taste good, maybe it was interesting…. He forgot about that, though, when movement caught his attention from the corner of his eye.
“Good morning!” he said, and at that point he began to suspect he might have actually achieved the impossible and consumed too much caffeine. Inadequate sleep was something he was kind of used to, this was not, and he suspected he had just over-medicated himself. He had spent half his life silently(well, usually silently) resenting Joe's ability to convincingly utter the phrase ‘good morning,’ after all….
OOC: John’s, er…for lack of a better word, ‘poetry’ loosely parodies John O’Hagan’s translation of the opening lines of the Song of Roland.
16
John Umland
I have no need of your human sleep, I have caffeine.
285
John Umland
1
5
John Umland
July 05, 2016 7:52 PM
...Okay, maybe sleeping occasionally would do me some good. by John Umland
John had hoped he would be able to relax between the end of the Science Club telescope night and the beginning of the hour at which he normally went to bed. John’s brain had not proven willing to cooperate. It had already been aware that astronomy was highly relevant to Potions, it had read about that in the Potions books, but at some point during the proceedings, it had started to think about the fact that Potions was not a completely solitary discipline….It was all Mercury’s fault, he’d thought as he’d made his tea. He assumed, based on the theme naming of the other planets, that Mercury had been named after the Roman messenger, but through a telescope, it was a little grey disc, and that had reminded him of an image of the element mercury he’d once seen in a book. Mercury, quicksilver, hydragyrum. The only metallic element that is liquid at standard temperature and pressure. You don’t get gold just by combining it with sulfur in the right proportions, but I think some people used to think you could....
It could have gone only a little further than that. John was fascinated by what he knew about alchemy, but the school did not really support such endeavors and he knew he was not going to get his hands on much more information about it than the non-magical population knew until, at earliest, he got unrestricted access to the Restricted Section in the library. Since he wouldn’t have that until, at best, next year, he wouldn’t have stayed up so late if his mind had stopped thinking at alchemy. Unfortunately, it had kept going, reminding him of astronomy’s importance to alchemical and potion-making endeavors and then from there, he had remembered that all the magical disciplines were part of a puzzle and from there, he had told himself he was just going to look one thing up in a book and before he’d known it, it had not been late at night anymore, it had been early in the morning and he had been using the most colorful language he could come up with at the time to decry that fact and the fact that he found it extremely difficult to sleep in past his usual waking hour, no matter how little sleep he’d gotten before it.
Caffeine, though, made it better. Caffeine could turn down the noise in his head when he got carried away and started trying to think multiple things at once and could remove the grit from the corners of his eyes when he got carried away and focused on one thing at a time for too long. If he’d had any ear for poetry – and he didn’t; his mother had tried so hard to teach him that, wanting him to be a truly well-rounded and accomplished person, but he wasn’t wired that way. He could appreciate some poetry, but he couldn’t produce it, and he usually found well-presented arguments more beautiful than most poems anyway – he would have written a song of great deeds with caffeine as the hero. That was why he did not despair of his whole day, but rather brewed his tea double-strength, with nearly twice the usual amount of honey in it, and added coffee to his oats. It all tasted fairly horrible, but his eyes were wide when he’d finished it, so he knew the caffeine was probably already working enough to keep him from doing anything unspeakably bizarre or anti-social in publi...il it took full effect.
Probably.
By the time he got back to the library, thinking that since he was awake he might as well do some of his duller pieces of homework until he was awake enough to do something more interesting, he was feeling steadier on his feet, though the muscles between his shoulders and in the small of his back were still sore and it did feel as though his veins were recently-agitated guitar strings running through him. That wasn’t entirely pleasant, but he found that he didn’t mind much, and not nearly as much as he minded the sore muscles. Those were going to be irritating, but it was a poor specimen who couldn’t work through a few aches….
He had gathered later that his unusually affable-toward-basically-strangers mood and willingness to play bizarre games with Theodore at the last Ball had been a result of being something akin to drunk at the time. Between the mood-raising properties of the caffeine and the fatigue lingering just behind that, he felt much the same as he had then as he picked a table,. His thoughts as he stacked up his textbooks were fragmented and off-task, grouped around his breakfast time idea that caffeine deserved its own epic poetry. The great molecule, he hazarded, our emperor Caffeine, hath for seventeen full minutes been inside my brain, it has passed the blood-brain barrier and antagonized all the adenosine receptors save…the one that goes to my back, that’s still achy –
He stopped what he was doing for several seconds to try to reason out which substance, if Caffeine was Charlemange, was supposed to be Roland. He really needed to do some research on the chemical components of coffee and tea, he guessed, he actually knew nothing about coffee at all except that it had caffeine in it, smelled good, and tasted horrible, maybe it was interesting…. He forgot about that, though, when movement caught his attention from the corner of his eye.
“Good morning!” he said, and at that point he began to suspect he might have actually achieved the impossible and consumed too much caffeine. Inadequate sleep was something he was kind of used to, this was not, and he suspected he had just over-medicated himself. He had spent half his life silently(well, usually silently) resenting Joe's ability to convincingly utter the phrase ‘good morning,’ after all….
OOC: Edited because I failed reading forever when reviewing the library helpers' schedule before the original post. John’s abysmal poetry still loosely parodies John O’Hagan’s translation of the opening lines of the Song of Roland.
16
John Umland
...Okay, maybe sleeping occasionally would do me some good.
285
John Umland
0
5