Depending on your time zone, you may want to forego tea, dinner or even breakfast plans if you are expecting to glue yourself to the results of America’s elections next Tuesday, 8 November.
How long a TV-gaping marathon we will endure will depend, of course, on how close a race it turns out to be. A decisive win for either Donald Trump (Republican) or Hillary Clinton (Democrat) could mean that by midnight on the eastern US seaboard - 5 am in Britain - we could be done bar the whooping, the tears and the victory and concession speeches.
Both candidates are expected to hold their election night parties - or wakes - in New York City.
Among the first states to close all of their polling stations will be Indiana and Kentucky at 7pm eastern, though victories in both states by Mr Trump would not tell us very much. (If he loses them, that would be a different thing, however.)
But watch out. Florida, where Mr Trump has to prevail if he is to hold open a path to final victory also finishes voting at 7pm. That assumes, as in every state, there are no problems on voting day, like misbehaving voting machines (or misbehaving humans), which could prompt extensions of voting hours, as sometimes happens.
Two things also to keep in mind. Little by way exit polling information will be released while the final outcome is still in the balance, to avoid influencing how people vote in the West. Also, ballots are counted precinct by precinct and it may take some states longer than others to provide enough final data to allow the TV networks to project a winner in each of them.
The Sunshine State offers a whopping 29 votes in the Electoral College. Remember, whoever reaches 270 votes in the College will be the next president. Half an hour after Florida comes North Carolina, another battleground state. A victory there for Mr Trump would be significant also. But Ohio also closes at that hour. As with Florida, a loss in Ohio, with 18 College votes, could doom Trump.
Once we get to the 8pm hour, the results should start coming in thick and fast with a swathe of states closing their polling stations, including Pennsylvania, where any sign of a Trump win could also influence the night, as well as Texas, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland.
One hour later, we will start hearing from some of those states in the middle of the country where the race has been fierce, for instance Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. New York shuts up shop then also but a loss there for Ms Clinton would indeed be a shock.
Iowa is a latecomer, with polling over only at 10 pm which is also when we could start hearing results from Nevada, another key state.
Those with stamina will then await results from western states like California at 11 pm and, at the very end, Alaska (a sure Republican stronghold) at midnight.
But by then, the outcome may already be known. But then again it might not. A very, very close election, or even a very tight loss by Mr Trump followed by some kind of challenge from him, could well take us into the next day. Or even beyond were we to get a repeat of the disputed results of the 2000 elections, thanks to Florida and its hanging chads. That year, nothing was settled for another 36 days.
