INSOMNIA
What’s more fun then not sleeping? Well um, hmmm, more fun then not sleeping? Is there such a thing? Insomnia is something I’ve been dealing with for a long time. It can cause quite a disruption in one’s life. Last night was awesome then it sucked. I talked to my sister (the awesome part) who lives halfway around the world from me, actually 3 quarters since she is 17 time zones away. I took one of my drugs while talking to her then battled staying awake for 45 more minutes. Hit the bed, opened up suduko and it seems I filled in 6 numbers then fell asleep…..with the light on, none of which I remember. About 3 hours later something caused me to awaken. About 4 hours later I started to drift back to sleep. 15 minutes after that my alarm cat started to nuzzle my face. About 5 minutes after that he went off. My cat is, well, vocal. And fat, but more vocal then fat.
So after having obligations that kept me out of the pool Sunday, today was a bust as far as training. I did get a ton of errands done so there is the silver lining. Now I’m a few days behind my original testing schedule. Quite frankly I was glad not to swim yesterday, this is a huge amount of swimming for me for the winter and lots of it way, way faster then I’d normally swim it. I was dragging ass yesterday from all the swimming.
So tomorrow it’s back to the pool! Tonight though, it’s time to make some orzo with stir fry vegies on top and a beer.
Here is a pic of the noise machine for you cat lovers. He talks a lot, is crate trained, fetches and comes when he’s called. Not too bad for a cat.
Triathlon & Stuff 
December 23, 2008 at 9:47 pm
And the cat’s name is…..?
December 24, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Hello Brian, (Desert Dude)
Thanks for testing the wetsuits and publishing the results.
Many years ago when I was a pilot for Northwest Airlines I participated with my crew in a study to see if taking a nap on long transpac flights would aid the mental and physical abilities of the pilots on destination approach and landing.
In addition to my crew of 3 including myself, we had two researchers that stayed with us for 5 days or so.
One researcher was from Stanford Sleep Center and one from NASA.
The procedure was for each of the pilots to get about 10 electrodes inserted and glued into our scalp at various locations and then the wire leads were fed down our neck and under our shirt to a small recording device about the size of a wireless mike transponder on our belt. When we went to the head we put our hats on and unless the passengers saw the lump of the box on our belt or the wires running down the back of our necks (making us look like robots) none were the wiser. The recorder was an electroencephlograph that recorded our brain waves.
During the flight at cruise altitude we would be given various tests – some with a box like a hand held computer that had blinking lights and numbers to identify and extinguish with the reaction time being recorded.
We would allow about an hour extra at our departure hotel to get wired up and then using acetone to melt the scalp glue about another hour at our arrival hotel to get unwired.
The two researchers were runners and we ran with them on our favorite trails in Japan, Korea, and China so we got to know them fairly well. The Stanford Sleep Center at that time was researching and treating patients with insomnia.
We were told that about 60% of insomnia could be ‘cured’ with a regime that was called ‘sleep hygiene’.
It consisted of preparing the sleeping place. Cool, dark, no phone, no TV, no pets, no food. (No sex?) All that could be done there was uninterrupted sleep. Then the subject would do a ritualistic routine each night of dressing or undressing for sleep (same way always), washing face, and so on and getting into bed.
We were interested since we would cross time zones and need to sleep off our home schedule.
They assured us that even if we just lay in bed relaxed and awake we would get about 80% of the benefit of REM sleep.
At that time there were patients at the Sleep Center that could not be ‘cured’ of insomnia and they did not know why.
On the final leg into Los Angeles we were running about an hour late due to a mechanical on departure.
Our two research buddies were going to miss their connecting flight to San Francisco and home if we went to the hotel to unglue our scalp electrodes. I suggested that we go to the public men’s room as soon as we cleared
customs and just yank them out. All agreed and after landing soon we were in a corner of the men’s room on the concourse right outside customs.
The NASA guy was wearing his white doctor coat with the NASA logo and yanking electrodes from our heads when a passenger came up and asked me what we were doing. I swore him to secrecy and told him our mission was to record the brain waves that aliens in flying saucers were using to communicate with us over the Pacific Ocean.
He immediately ran out into the passageway and told the other passengers to come in and see the ‘secret’ operation.
You cannot trust anyone. Soon we had a crowd watching us.
I watched for a time be never saw our story in the ‘National Inquirer’.
Now get some sleep.
Cheers,
Neal