Bedtime Adventures

I go to bed with my iPad every night, and often make it a threesome with my iPod Touch. Can't make it through the night without at least one of them. Like the iPad for browsing and reading, have practically cut out all TV watching despite getting 500 or so channels recording my faves on my TIVO.  Have got a backlog of Bob Newhart shows (both series), Mary Tyler Moore, Murphy Brown, not to mention Entourage and SNL which I always watch. (Only way to watch SNL is to record it so you can skip the ads, much of the music and all the lame skits. That said, the present cast is my favorite since the great year they had Billy Crystal and Martin Short and the Mike Meyers era). Then there's the Book Channel with plenty of great content and the NFL. Have practically cut out movies, cannot stay awake to watch one in its entirety, even my favorites from the 70's. But my iPad beats them all in bed, especially considering that I often fall asleep before 9pm and wake up two or three times during the night. Despite the fact that I'm on the computer most of the day, I rarely surf, just use it for work. The iPad gives me a chance to (comfortably) check out sites I might otherwise miss. For example, I've been checking out Joyce Maynard's site these days, unable to shake the idea of taking her summer writing workshop which seems like a week of heaven. Read a couple of blogs (including The Rent Collector) and that led me to the wonderful CBC literary site where I spent some more time and stumbled upon the accomplished writer, Stephen Henighan, a blast from my past. Years ago, I took an amazing writing workshop with him at Concordia and it brought back many fond memories, like the launching of his first book, Other Americas. I see he went on to do a Phd, write a bunch of books, travel more and is now a prof at Guelph. Ended up reconnecting with him by e-mails. The point is, the iPad can take me on a little adventure every night in bed, get me back to sleep when I wake up at 3am in a cold sweat or read without waking up my wife. Time to get back to sleep now...it's 4.49am, and hoping that a few pages of Franzen (who was actually a college classmate of Stephen Henighan) will do the trick...