Tag: sleep

Sleep Logistics

I’m home for the weekend getting various things done. It works out well for my parents, who are out of town – I’m watching Mario for them. Mario likes to be wherever the people are, both day and night. During the day he’ll sit on your lap, and at night he’ll sleep on your bed. For such a tiny dog, he takes a lot of space on a bed.

On my tiny twin bed, I awoke the other night to find he’d pushed me to the side, and was spread over most of the foot of the bed. I nudged him a bit so I could stretch out my legs and get some blood flowing in them again, and we drifted off to sleep again. A few hours later, loud thump woke me, and I saw Mario on the floor looking up at me, visibly annoyed. We’ve been sleeping in the Big Bed since then.

I don’t think I’ve seen him fall off the bed before, but I can remember several times it happened to me. One time in particular, I was so tangled up in my sheets, that when I rolled over the edge, I just dangled there, suspended about a foot above the ground. I woke up hanging there, freaked out, and promptly hit the ground.

Go To Bed

Me? No, not me, everyone else. Go to bed. Or stay in bed.

I just drove across town, and there are people awake and driving, and this is upsetting me. 0400 is supposed to be the witching hour, where people have yet to leave for work, and night owls have usually passed out. 0400 is supposed to be a time reserved for a special few – those who drink coffee at a diner, or wonder aimlessly about the streets. 0300 is too early, I know far too many lightweights still awake around then. 0330 is just stupid. I’m not happy about this.

Maybe its because of Thanksgiving? That doesn’t make any sense. I was pretty sure that in addition to the common sense above I had some evidence to support the existence of the witching hour, but it seems that either I was wrong or times have changed. Either way this is not good. More to come.

No Sleep Tonight

Turns out now is not the time for sleep. Well, it is, but I guess I’m not taking part. I dunno. I don’t have anything else to do, but I doubt I could fall asleep if I tried.

On a very related note, the third Lord of the Rings movie is long. And not as good as I remember it being. I watched the first two the past two nights, and I didn’t remember this as a trilogy that got steadily worse, but that’s what I picked up this time. Oh well. I think this was the second time I’ve seen Return of the King, and I would be pretty comfortable with never seeing it again.

I’ve tossed the idea around of watching all three back to back in their extended versions. I said to a friend, “I don’t know anyone who has done it.” “That’s because it’s embarrassing!” Now I realize that watching them all is a very bad idea, not only because it would take close to a day, but because they’re not that good.

I guess I’ll go to bed.

The Case Against Beds

For about a month now I’ve been sleeping on the floor in my apartment. I couldn’t justify buying a bed that I would only use for a year, so I didn’t. I bought a bed roll instead. The only problem is that no one really knows what a bed roll is, and very few places sell them. The majority of places that carry bed rolls are selling them for outdoor use. I don’t need my bed roll to be waterproof, just comfy. The one I found was at Bed Bath & Beyond’s website. I was going to drop in and buy one, but I called first to see if it was in stock. When I got through to the bedding department, I asked and he replied “What’s a bed roll?”

One thing I’ve noticed about sleeping on the floor is that I remember many more details about more dreams. Another thing I’ve noticed is that it isn’t all that uncomfortable.

So on to the bed roll. A bed roll is like a comforter, except firmer and the approximate size of a mattress. It costs a lot less than a mattress, and can be moved around a lot easier than a mattress can. I may fold mine up during the day to reclaim that floor space. Last night was the first night I spent on it, and its really nice. And cost under $100. I’m pretty damn happy with it.

Ugh

The Arrival by Codename
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/codename2008-01-03.at4040.sbd.flac16/codename2008-01-03.at4040.sbd.d1t01_64kb.mp3]

I feel really crappy. This is a mostly worthless post, and I strongly advise skipping over it. I need to complain somewhere so I can realize how petty my problems are and cut it out. I just reread the whole thing now that I’m done writing it, and you shouldn’t bother. Its a total waste of time. This post is what gives blogs a bad name.

Lets start with Friday. Friday night was good, but after friends left my place, it got less good. I didn’t go to sleep Friday night in an attempt to get myself tired enough to go to sleep a little earlier on Saturday night, so I could wake up for something on Sunday. This is never a good plan, and after trying this many times in the past and knowing full well that it doesn’t work, I did it again. So I got to wonder around Saturday in a weird daze. I’m normally pretty good with not sleeping, but whenever I’m not sleeping, I’m usually doing something. This wasn’t the case on Saturday, and trying to stay awake with no reason to isn’t a very easy thing to do. Hence the daze.

Around noon on Saturday my dad and I went to the RV show in Hartford. The idea was to check out some floor plans of the RVs there, and find some vendors who could hook me up with parts I’ll be needing. The RV show was a really disgusting place. Really. Its in a (the?) convention center in Hartford, which is a massively long, wide, and tall building, which was heated much more than it needed to be. The RVs there were mostly disgusting, including things you should never need. I was thinking about skipping over this RV rant, but I’ve got nothing better to do, so I’ll go with it.

I think – no, I must have a different idea of RVing than the people who make/buy/use them. My idea of an RV is very functional. It has beds, a toilet and shower, a place to make food and eat, and a place to just sit. On wheels. The RV being a base camp for whatever else you would be doing. The RVs at this show could replace a house, which isn’t very surprising because they cost about the same. I know they brought out their biggest and best for the show, but there were RVs with two floors, RVs with TVs larger than any in my house, and all of it was leather. It seems to me if I had one of these RVs, I wouldn’t want to leave it. Which kind of defeats the purpose of it being mobile. I don’t get it.

Back to the RV show. So the place and vehicles are disgusting. There were some sane RVs / campers there that didn’t require a mortgage, but I’m going to forget those and villanize the whole place. So while I’m at it, the people there were…interesting. There were the people who were shopping for their new house, and taking it all very seriously. There were people who were looking for a RV for weekends and such, and of course there were NASCAR people. I don’t quite know how this works, but I guess if you have an RV at a NASCAR event you’re some kind of VIP. And then there were the people who seemed to have absolutely no reason to buy an RV. I’m tired of writing about that, so I’m going to wrap it up by saying that the floorplans were not practical for my purpose (or in my opinion any other…they were just really inefficient with their space.) and there was no one selling parts. Plus they charged us $10 a head to get into the place.

Anyway, we got home from that, and I sat around for a while, and didn’t find anything to do. So eventually I gave up on staying awake for no real reason and went to sleep around 1800. I woke up around 0030, and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I went downstairs to get something to eat and zone out in front of the TV. I got back to sleep around 0500, and woke up for good three hours later. I did more of nothing this morning, and then in a desperate attempt to busy myself, I tried to set up my parent’s mythtv box. After an hour or so of dealing with problems I had already solved a week or so ago when I last touched it, I realized that the hardware just wasn’t going to cooperate, and stopped before I smashed it to bits.

I’m not sure how, but my parents have this amazing ability to cripple computers. I can’t really blame the mythbox on them (it has larger issues), but they’ve rendered any computer the family used completely useless within a year of use. I had always chalked this up to Windows or Dell, since all their previous computers had one or both of those inherent defects. But the iMac I hooked them up with about a year ago is starting to slow down. I’m just puzzled by this, since I’ve had my PowerBook for three years now, and it works as well as the day I got it. I dunno, as long as I don’t have to use it, I don’t think I’ll try and figure it out.

So in conclusion, I feel crappy after spending a weekend doing all sorts of things I didn’t really want to do (and in case you didn’t notice, I didn’t end up going to that thing today I stayed up all night Friday for). Ugh.

6 Day Week?

Got No Feathers by Keller Williams
[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/kw2007-02-28.flac16/kw2007-02-28d2t09_64kb.mp3]

I’ve been keeping even later (earlier?) hours recently. For quite a long while I was going to sleep around 0600 or 0700, but I usually had been in bed working on my laptop. The last few days, I’ve been out in the garage, actually doing things that people who are awake do. Which somehow makes me stay up later. Yesterday I went to sleep around 1000, and woke up around 1800. I think I’ll be going to sleep later than that today (because of eBay).

Whatever the case, I’m starting to lean towards the 28 hour day (I haven’t actually done the math to see how close or far I am, but I know I’m in the ballpark). I’ve gotta say, I like it. Obviously, there are the problems with not being able to interface with people, since most of them are asleep, but I’m alright with that. I’ll go out and hang out with friends shortly after waking up, and then when they take off around 0200, I’ll just hang around for the rest of the night. Its like a normal day, but in reverse.

So since I realized how close I was getting to the 6 day week, I figured I may as well actually try it. It should be interesting, because even though I usually have no commitments that I need to make, I have one this Sunday. So we shall see how this works out.

5am

So it is really early, and I’ve got about two liters of mountain dew in me right now. Or maybe a bit less now. I’ve been slowly chipping away at it since midnight or so, and finished it not long ago.
So why am I still awake? Things to do.
I actually wasted an hour or so watching Crank on UConn’s movie channel. What an awesome movie. Still love it. That, combined with a Dew high, let me get crackin at a website I’ve been meaning to design. So I spent a bunch of time knee-deep in code, but the Rockville Rotary site is fully functional. Tomorrow, I’ll make it pretty.
I think my roommate will be up in a few hours. He gets up really early, even on weekends. I’m tempted to stay up till he awakes, just to mess with him, but those precious hours of sleep are probably worth it. I can only hope that I’ll be able to sleep through most of the day tomorrow.

Alright, thats all for now.