Volcanos are erupting, private spaceships are completing multiple sub-orbital flights, and Billy Joel is getting married.

What I'm doing right now is very, very similar to all of those things.

Wait, no. What I'm doing right now is called "lying." It's very similar to actually doing things, but takes much less energy and a little more memory.

Work has been going well. School has been going...okay. I've been having a difficult time paying attention in class. If I had to guess, I would say it was because I haven't been sleeping much. No, that isn't accurate. I've been sneaking off and sleeping under a desk during my lunch break at work pretty much every day.

I haven't been sleeping much at night.

I find my mind wandering. Instead of paying attention to the mysteries of the Kreb cycle in biology class, I was planning out defensive strategies in case ninjas broke into the classroom. I had successfully planned up to scenario #4, which was a frontal assault by no more than 5 ninjas but at least one robot when something my teacher said penetrated the dense fog of my imagination. "There was a man who made very complex devices to perform simple tasks," he droned. "I believe his name was Goldstein or Goldman-"

I jerked up. "Goldberg!" I didn't quite shout, but a lot of heads turned in my direction. "Rube Goldberg," I added weakly. I sank back down into my seat.

In a few moments my outburst was forgotten and the class was caught up in their precious Kreb cycle. My mind began to slip away and I found myself devising very simple machines that would have to perform very simple tasks. My plans were flawless, but my machines were unnecessarily complicating everything, mostly by stopping for fast food or trying to get one of the other machines to do it for them.

I called my machines "Humans." I decided that I didn't like the name and resolved to think of a new one for them. Just as soon as I can find the time.