Forgetting oneself, and camping

i've been forgetting to put up posts these last few days, so here goes.
thursday- at least i think it was thursday, was interesting. i finally woke up on time after my battle with the time change (I won, kind of). In fact, i was so successful that i woke up four different times on thursday: two, three thirty, five thirty, and six-ish. ugh. i think the deal is this: i have this wierd quirk where i can, if i really want to, tell myself when to wake up. the only problem is most days i don't want to. all i really do is before i fall asleep that night, i tell myself something like 'i'm going to wake up at four' or 'i'm going to wake up at noon', and usually i do (although granted i don't have to tell myself to wake up at noon- i do that naturally). the only problem thursday was, i tried to be smart. i told myself hey, if i'm getting up at half past six because my body thinks it's an hour earlier, i'll just tell myself to wake up an hour earlier than that- 4:30 aka 'much too early'. for some reason i think my mind took the latter interpretation, thus the very odd wake-up times.
On the plus side, friday went off without a hitch. i woke up nice and early, showered, and ate while watching an episode of Ghost in the Shell (classic sci-fi anime) before going to school. i have to say, for all the trouble i go to to actually make this project work, when it does it's one of the more relaxing things i've done. for once, this past week i've actually been awake for first period. admittedly, going to bed at ten each night is a drag, because i'm essentially a night person, but i try to comfort myself with the fact that i make up for the time lost with the time gained in the morning.
This weekend, i was up at Riverside for UCR's discover day. and actually just yesterday [saturday], i submitted my SIR to there, so that will, one day, be my alma mater. yay! anyway, i'm proud of myself because, as is my custom, i stayed up late friday night (in this case, till 12, my norm for weekdays :D) but despite that got up promptly at- i think it was around seven? unheard of for my weekends. of course, that was partially because if i had slept in, i would have missed the welcome breakfast, and one should never pass up the opportunity to indulge one's gluttony on food one has not bought oneself. today, however, was more my typical wake up time- 11:30. oh well.
so by now you're wondering, 'okay, he mentioned camping in the title. where's the camping??' i'll tell you. it's right below this sentence.

The reason i mentioned camping was because i've finally figured out that feeling i get in the morning when i'm getting ready for the day and it's still black as pitch outside. it's what we used to do when my family went on trips. in order to hopefully get ahead of traffic, we'd all wake up before dawn and pile in the van, which we had packed the night before, and then take off. i have several fond (i'm wierd, okay? don't judge) memories of waking up in the van on the way to arizona or some such other place, after having fallen back asleep, and seeing the sun rising off the distant low hills out the right side of the van. i'm not sure why it's the right side, it just is. so anyway that's the feeling i get-- like i'm getting up before everyone and preparing myself for some grand adventure that'll take me to new places.
then i go to school. :(