• My last post was published on the last day of my sleep study. On the two nights before that post I went to the sleep lab at 9:00 p.m., did a breathalyzer test (which I had never done before - .000 every time, baby!), spent about an hour and a half getting electrodes glued to my head and legs (it sounds horrible, but it wasn't that bad - I watched Cinderella Man as they glued me up). I then slept from 11:00 p.m. - 6:00 a.m. while a tech monitored the readings from the electrodes all night. (Good news: I don't have sleep apnea, I don't grind my teeth while I sleep, and I don't kick my legs around when I sleep. It's hard to know these things when you are a bachelor.)
On the last night of the study, however, I had to arrive at the lab at 6:00 p.m., get the electrodes glued on, and then sit under red lights from 7:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. while they took saliva samples every thirty minutes to measure my melatonin levels. This too was not nearly as bad as it sounds. A lot of people in the study, including my roommate Seth, complained that the night seemed interminable, even though they were allowed to watch movies or read (I loaned Seth my DVDs of Pushing Daisies and he watched the whole season in one night).My night of sleep-deprivation, on the other hand, positively flew by because my roommate Peter loaned my his Nintendo DS with the remake of Final Fantasy IV, one of my all-time favorite games from my childhood. (Peter made the offer while we were at an activity at the institute building and my reaction was waaaay too enthusiastic, causing every head in the room to turn to me. I don't feel embarrassed very often but I did just a little bit in that moment.) I actually had a really fun time in the sleep lab, and I slept incredibly well despite all the electrodes on my head. The only real unpleasant part was picking all the leftover glue out of my hair for the next few days, but the nice wad of bills they handed me on the way out the door made up for the glue.
Besides the money, I was hoping that the sleep study would help me get into a better sleeping schedule. During the ten days that I had to keep a strict 11:00 - 6:00 sleeping schedule I felt incredibly productive and responsible. Two weeks later I can honestly say that I have improved my sleeping habits tremendously. I'm not keeping the same strict sleeping hours (the study only allowed me to sleep 7 hours a night and I learned that I really need 8 hours of sleep), but for the most part I have been getting to bed near 11:00 and getting up at 7:00 or 7:30.
• I got a flat tire last week on the way to a friend's recital. I bought my tires at a Sears in Massachusetts during one of my New England wanderings last August, so I put on the spare tire and headed down to the the Ann Arbor Sears location. Unfortunately, when I got there I learned that Sears stores do not share a computer network, so the Ann Arbor store had no record of my tire purchase. I couldn't even remember the name of the Massachusetts town where I bought my tires, but after a bit of Googling I found the number for the Lanesboro, MA store and soon the Ann Arbor store hooked me up with a free tire. Good thing I paid for the road hazard coverage or I would have been out a couple hundred bucks.
• Our temporary roommate Nick has actually had quite a bit of free time while he has been here doing his plastic surgery rotation. It's been fun just to hang out and watch football/baseball with him or take him on Ann Arbor rites of passage such as the Zingerman's Tour de Food. He had all of Saturday off so he even spent a few hours helping Seth, Peter, and me with a major apartment cleaning/organizing project. Our apartment had long been out of control with junk sitting around everywhere, so Peter spearheaded an initiative to minimize clutter around the apartment. The results are amazing and I no longer feel like the apartment belongs to the junk and we are merely the junk's tenants. We had a Brian Presents: that night (The Lady Eve) and it was so much more comfortable than the previous uber-cramped Brian Presents:.So there you go. This ended up being longer than I anticipated, so I think I'll wait to publish tomorrow's Sesame Street Tuesday post until a little later in the day so that I can get to bed on time. I hope you enjoy the waning moments of your Columbus Day.
2 comments:
Nice post. I've been trying to get to sleep at 11 or 11:30...I've been starting to wake up at 6:30 out of a cursory habit to check the time. It's good when my alarm doesn't go off. It's bad on the weekends.
You have inspired me to try harder to fix my rotten sleep schedule! (It's a little rough when you only have to get up early one morning a week!) Congrats on the apartment clean-up! It did seem a little more open at Brian Presents:! (On a side note, I looked for "The Lady Eve" at the GRPL, but while the catalogue says it's there, I can't find it on the shelf! It's a mystery...I'll keep looking though! Meanwhile I got the movie "Gaslight" to tide me over.)
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