Adventures of the Brown Kiwi's: Vampires Have it Good

Please don't think that I am complaining about something...I'm not. I'm just making an observation of something that is nice but has made my life a little harder.
I'm talking about the summer.
Spring is almost over here and now we are about to enter summer. Summer in New Zealand is peak travel season. Time to get out, barbeque, visit friends and family, hike, bike, row and swim. Everything outdoors. I knew that these people loved their outdoors but now I see why.
Summer has some nice long days. When I say long, I mean LONG!
I can't complain about pretty, sunny days, birds singing and balmy temperatures.
I can just make a couple of minor "comments":

WAAKE UP!!!!
It is pretty hard when the sun comes up and burns a hole right thru your eyelid at 5am. I can't close the shades because it is so warm now that we have to sleep with all the windows open (Air conditioning is unheard of in most houses in New Zealand). When you rely on breezes to keep you cool you don't want any curtains or shades to be in the way! This isn't too different from when we were living in Phoenix. We had incredibly early sunrises, usually at 5-515. It makes you feel energized and ready for the day. Unless....

Is It Dark Yet?
There is a psychiatric disorder called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Basically, there are people so affected by chronic darkness and lack of sun in the winter that they develop a chemical disorder in the brain which causes them to be depressed. That must be the rarest disease in New Zealand in the summer.
I have lived in the desert in the southwest US. We enjoyed long summer days. Days where the sun would set around 8pm during the height of the summer. I thought that was a long day. Phoenix has NOTHING on New Zealand! I don't think I noticed that the days were getting that much longer. I just knew that all of a sudden, we seemed to have a lot of time off after work to go out and do things. I just thought it was because we were getting a "second wind". I found myself having enough time to come home, go to the store, cook dinner and watch a movie and it would still be light outside after all of those activities. Sometimes we would go for a walk! Here I thought we were just using our time more efficiently. It wasn't until an entire week of feeling exhausted all day that I made the mistake of looking at a clock during one of our long afterwork days.
We were sitting on the couch, after dinner, deciding what DVD to watch and I glanced at my watch. It can't be right.

Baby, what time is it?
I dunno, what does your watch say?
Its broken, it says 9:45pm but its still light outside.
Its not 9:45, the sun is still up, see? as he goes to pull up the shades that we had to pull down to keep the sun off of the TV. We'll get you a new battery for your watch tomorrow.
Ok.

What 9:45pm in New Zealand looks like....

We selected a movie to watch.
Two hours later, we are getting ready for bed and I realized the awful truth. It really is midnight!!! It really was 9:45pm!!! OMG! We had to be up for work by 6am...We were cutting into our sleep time! Now I'm really concerned because I know Mr. Sunshine likes to come up and hit me directly in the forehead at around 5:15am. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a "reverse vampire". I have to get up when the sun comes up. As long as the sun is in the sky, I must be up. I cannot sleep during the day, no matter how tired and exhausted I am. I can only sleep when it is dark. That is becoming a bit of a problem.
Now, I watch every day as the sun seems to climb higher and higher in the sky and sit there all day and most of the night. Currently, the sun sets around 9:40 pm. Doesn't get dark enough for a respectable sleep until around 10:15...that is so past my bedtime. So by default, I am tired.