I’m going to geek out a bit on you now so stick with me. Do you remember Star Trek where the captain would begin an episode by setting the time frame of the episode? It would be something like, “Star Date 2072: The crew has been stuck on planet lame for three weeks and food is running low and illnesses are starting to spread, if we don’t fix the flux capacitor on The Enterprise we may all die!” (I’ll apologize now to all the true Trek fans and Michael J Fox fans who are offended by my mixing pop culture.)

That’s a long setup to share the Austin journal for February 15th, 2011.

Star Date 2.2011: It’s been twenty three days since our family has slept through the night. It’s not clear what the cause is but it’s clear that our youngest tribesman is trying to kill off his elders through a series of covert special forces tactics of sleep deprivation and germ warfare. It has come to the point where our canine companion is even protesting the assaults on sleep. At this point there’s nothing we can do but hope that our young assailant tires of his efforts and submits to normal human-like sleep patterns. We’ll wait out this storm with teamwork, patience and extended prayer sessions. We’ll be sure to report progress if that day should ever come.