Well we successfully made it through this week’s sleep deprivation experiment. I managed to get through it without driving off the road, making any technical blunders, or getting short with anyone. (Although I did have one minor issue with my camera at 3 AM on Sunday morning…)

This time we added a twist to the experiment. I really didn’t have to work all that many hours this weekend. They just all happened to be at night. And I learned something.

I must be getting older. (Oh, there’s a shocker!)

It used to be my motto was “Anytime – Anywhere.”

Now obviously that motto wasn’t original with me. Google the two words and you get nearly 50 million hits. Some of them I’m sure you don’t want to click, if you know what I mean.

But when I was younger that pretty much summed up where I could sleep if I decided to. Sleep was never a challenge for me. My dad would probably tell you that I acquired that skill at an early age. I remember a little friction many of my teenaged mornings when he insisted I get up before I was awake.

My time in the Navy only reinforced that special ability. Spend 6 months with your bed about 10 feet directly underneath JBD number 4 and you’ll be able to sleep through a hurricane. (Check out How Aircraft Carriers Work if you want to know what a JBD is.) Heck, I even slept strapped in an ejection seat. More than once! (Makes you feel safe, doesn’t it, knowing folks on the pointy end of the spear might be asleep on the job!)

Of course I still remember the noise sequence of a typical launch.

First there is the relatively quite jet engine noise of the plane taxiing into place. Then there’s the whine of the hydraulic motors lifting the JBD behind the plane which ends in two dull thuds followed by four loud clicks of the locking pins being driven home. Next you have a rush of the seawater surging through the cooling pipes. Shortly after that the whole room will start to shake as the plane runs up to full power, but can’t yet go anywhere. Then after a few seconds, the shooter will fire the catapult and the engine noise rushes away forward. The sea water stops. The four pins click and unlock. The hydraulics whine as they lower the JBD. Finally there’s the two dull thuds as the JBD comes back to rest on the deck.

The whole process takes about 2 minutes and then starts again.

I remember all that from 1992!

But my point is that I never had any trouble sleeping through that insane racket. Yet this weekend, in a very quiet house, with the boys not bothering me at all (they were very good), I couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours during the day. And this even though I was totally exhausted!

Why does getting older have to mean having trouble sleeping? I’m not digging this aging process!!

Hope you have a great day and sleep well tonight.

Enjoy!

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It’s time for another sleep deprivation experiement.

The time is now slightly after 2300 hours, or slightly before departure for work in Jacksonville, FL (approximatley 2.0 Hours driving time).

I’ll check in somtime in the morning. Gotta love being first on call when wierd stuff happens.

If you are going to be on I-95 in the next several hours, don’t forget to wave. I’ll be the one with the coffee IV drip…

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Why did God set up the day with only 24 hours in it?

As if that would be anywhere near enough time to get done all the things I want to do on top of all the things I have to do.

No matter what we do, the clock keeps ticking. Time is one of the places where everyone is equal. And while we may each be allotted a different number of days on this planet, every one of us is given the same 24 hours each day.

Right now my schedule has gotten a bit nuts. This past weekend I did nearly a month’s worth of work in three days. I am still digging out from under the paper work. I have a meeting in less than an hour with a guy and I am not completely prepared for it. Gorgeous is heading out of town this morning and won’t be back until after I leave on Saturday for a few days.

I want to keep my blog here up to date. The neighbors would appreciate it if I cut the grass before I leave. My car needs washing and Gorgeous’ needs some maintenance. I want to do some computer work to support a couple of projects Gorgeous has going.

And somewhere along the way I should actually go to the Y. (Apparently I can’t get into shape just by cutting them my membership check each month. I have to physically go there and exercise. I don’t remember reading that in the fine print!)

Oh, yes. And my body still won’t let me skip the whole sleep thing.

And we don’t even have kids! I truly can’t imagine what life would be like if that dynamic was added in.

So we are all restricted to 24 hours in any given day. It doesn’t seem right.

But maybe God knew that we needed limitations. Maybe if he gave us even more hours, we’d keep going until we exploded. Perhaps the whole sleep thing was built in to force us to take some down time to recharge so that we could keep going through an entire life.

All I know is I am late for a meeting (again) and I have to get moving. I am looking forward to the day that I step into eternity and have all the time I need to do the things I want.

Not that I want to get there today, mind you.

Enjoy!

You may have noticed some changes around here. We’ll work on going through what’s been updated here after a while.

Gorgeous is out in St. Luis with her companies national training conference for the latter part of this week and into the weekend, which has given me an opportunity to stay up waaay too late and do some research on various things.

I am looking at taking the blogging thing to the next level. It would mean moving away from a (free) Blogger platform to something which would have to be paid for. Since Gorgeous keeps us honest with the budget, I will have to come up with a way to pay for my hobby. Wise woman, that Gorgeous.

That is why I’ve put some ads on the site. I’ll experiment some and see how it goes. I checked my account and I’ve made exactly one penny since last night. At that rate, I’ll be able to afford to upgrade in about, oh, 10-15 years!

That’s OK. I’m learning a bunch about this whole blogging thing and it seems to be a good fit for me. Tomorrow after I get a good night’s sleep, We’ll get back to our regular postings.

The boys are getting a bit obnoxious because I’ve let myself get sucked into the computer screen here basically since Gorgeous got on that plane. I get the feeling that they may be anxious for her to get home. What do you think?

Well I did the math after I woke up this afternoon. In a little over 50 hours I managed to get exactly 2 hours of sleep plus two cat-naps in the car of about a half our each. On paper going in it didn’t look like it would be that bad. But then, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, as they say…

Of course by the time I got home this morning, Gorgeous was getting ready to head off to Atlanta for some meetings and an overnight. I tried to stay up and chat with her but apparently I was babbling a little incoherently because she eventually stopped me with, “Chris. You really need to get some sleep now.” Ah, the wisdom of the fairer sex.

I did learn some good lessons from the whole experience, though

• It is amazing what the human body can put up with

I’m a sucker for survival stories. Get caught in a blizzard on Mt. Everest? Lost in the Sahara desert? Find yourself behind enemy lines? Or maybe you got trapped out in the wilderness by yourself and had to cut off your own arm to survive? I could sit and listen for hours. It is fascinating what people do to survive. What is the difference that causes to someone who makes it through when others don’t?

My little work induces exercise on staying away is incredibly tiny compared to those stories. But going through things like that, even on a smaller scale, helps give you a measure of what you can do. It helps build your belief so that when you face the next challenge in your life, you have some perspective and are more able to conquer it.

• One difficult person can really complicate things

Where to begin on this one? Well, on merchant ships, the Chief Officer is normally responsible for the cargo. Since most of my work involves issues with cargo, he’s the guy I usually have to deal with. And we see all kinds. They come from all over the world. The overwhelming majority are highly competent professionals who have a heavy responsibility and are used to getting things done.

But not last night. Last night I had to work with what a pastor friend of mine calls an “EGR” for “Extra Grace Required.” One of the fist things I noticed when I met him was that he absolutely stank of alcohol. Now I was willing to cut him some slack on that account because alcohol and seafaring has a long tradition behind it and the ship had been at anchor for a couple days before it came in. It is not uncommon for mariners to hit the bottle from time to time.

But it sure added to my frustration as he continued to make a sting of decisions that made all of our jobs harder. He was belligerent too, pretty much yelling and screaming at most of the crew, including the captain. At one point he even started in on me as if I was responsible for things taking so long. The bottom line is this guy basically single handedly turned a 24 hour job into a 36 hour job.

Then finally at the end of the operation he created a situation where I couldn’t realistically even do what we were hired to do.

I was not happy.

But it made me think. How many times do I complicate things for the people around me? Hopefully I’m never as bad as that guy was! But it is amazing how just one person who’s not pulling in the same direction of the rest of the team can wreak absolute havoc and keep the objectives from being met.

• Pets are good value

I get the feeling that the boys knew I was zonked because Low Rider curled up beside me on the bed while I slept today and didn’t bug me at all. That’s unusual for him. Big cuteness points. Then, after I got up, Fat Boy came in for some lap time. Since it’s spring time, he’ shedding like crazy so I started brushing him. He started purring really loud and I could tell he was loving it. But I actually laughed out loud when he started drooling all over my shorts.

Somehow a good bout of uncontrollable drool seems to always signify contentment.

I think I’m going to take a nap, maybe even drool on my pillow…

We had a great small group last night, mostly talking about the message a church which was about that verse in Matthew that I’ve been going on and on (and on and on and on) about.

Of course just when the discussion was getting the most interesting I had to leave to go to work. Nothing like being out on a marine terminal on the Savannah river until 2 in the morning to make you appreciate sleeping at night!

But that’s OK because I got called back out a little after 4. And this job is going to go like that straight through ‘til tomorrow morning sometime. Life in the maritime industry. Lovely.

So no heavy thinking for me today. And once again I apologize to the neighbors about the grass. (sorry!)

I’ll check in when I get some sleep.

Enjoy!

Tag: Sleep Deprivation

It was another early morning around here. I’m not quite sure the order of events, but in the end all the CREEtures were awake by about 4:40 AM. I was the last one conscious. My guess is that Low Rider is to blame. He’s our early riser. Fat Boy is much more compliant. He keeps the rules on this one these days.

Saturday is often the one chance I have to sleep in. Today I have to drive down to Jacksonville for a job, so it wouldn’t have been an option anyway. But I still want to know why we even need sleep in the first place.

The “getting up” rule is pretty simple. The boys are not to get up before the alarm goes off. If they do, the rule is that I scoop the violator up by the scruff of their neck. A cool feature of cats is that they go stiff and stop all resistance when you pick them up properly by the scruff of their neck. Gorgeous taught me that and she would know, having been a Veterinary Technician in a past life. Then I drag off the offender to a penalty box, either a bathroom or bedroom at the other end of the house. That way we can’t hear the door shaking as they paw at it while we go back to sleep.

Once the alarm goes off all bets are off. I figure it’s not their fault if I choose not to get up after the alarm goes off. So I don’t penalize them for jumping on me once the alarm sounds. It does add a physical element to the waking up process. Somehow they know exactly when that alarm is going to sound because the moment the radio starts, Pounce, usually right on the bladder. It helps expedite the waking up process.

When we first got Fat Boy he quickly developed a routine. Once the alarm went off He would jump on me, head butt my chin and then jump back off. He did this twice. Somehow a 10 pound cat can exert about 70 pounds of force when jumping on or off a snoozing human. I am sure there is a law of physics that explains this but I’m not studied up on it. If he hits your bladder I think the force goes up by a factor of approximately 1.3 (the bladder coefficient being 30% higher and all).

If I didn’t get up after the second time, he’d go over to the spring door stop, pull it back and let it go with a very loud “Boioioirrng” sound. That got me up every time. I knew what to expect and there was a gradual escalation which I could turn off at any time by simply getting up and feeding him. It was a good system.

These days Fat Boy lets Low Rider do his dirty work for him. He seems to just lay back and watch. I get the feeling he’s thinking, “Knock yourself out pal.” He knows he’ll get fed just the same so why risk being dragged off to the penalty box? Low Rider is smarter and less compliant. Not to mention he is skinnier, faster, and black so he’s harder to catch in the dark to haul off to the other end of house.

Anyway we’re all up now. And I’m going to head off to Jacksonville for work.

Enjoy!

There are some mornings when I feel particularly violated by the alarm clock. This morning was one of them. There I was minding my own business, blissfully unaware, and suddenly I was smacked upside my consciousness with some radio announcer. I was too groggy to make out the words but it seems like he was saying something about finances. A double whammy.

Usually it feels a little less hurtful if it goes off in the middle of a song so the first thing I hear is music. Somehow that brings me around a little more humanely than having someone talking at me even before I awake. I mean even if my work cell rings in the middle of the night, at least it has the courtesy to give me a heads up before someone is talking to me. (I won’t go into the years I had a Nextel and would get walky-talky calls in the dead of night. I’m glad that’s in the past!)

I’ve lost the option of the snooze alarm too. Smokey, our Low-Rider kitty, is always there to pounce on me the moment he hears that alarm go off. And then he plays the Jump-on, Jump-off game until I get up. It’s an effective tactic. I usually end up out of bed in about a minute. I still dream about the days when I could hit the snooze button and get a full 9 minutes in. Sometimes I even hit the snooze button so fast I wouldn’t actually wake up until 9 or (oh, yes) 18 minutes after actually I set the alarm. The beauty of that was it was an automatic extra snooze situation because I would think that it was earlier than it actually was. (I know, that’s a lot of wases for one sentance first thing in the morning.)

Those days are gone, thanks to Low-Rider. And just to make the morning complete I should note that he has the uncanny ability to hit my bladder more times than not. (I’d give him a bladder accuracy ratio of about 65%.)

I used to resent those folks who wake up quickly and have a smile ready to go as soon as their eyes are open. Now I am just amazed by them. My Gorgeous wife is one of those weird morning people whose most productive time of the day is before lunch. I sometimes envy her ability to function so well so soon out of a sound sleep. I usually try to give myself an hour or two head start so that we’ll be somewhere near the same plane of civility when she gets up. Of course that approach means that by the end of a given week Gorgeous has about an extra whole night’s worth of sleep on me…

I mean why do we even have to sleep anyway? Wouldn’t it be a much more efficient system without sleep? How much more could we get done in our lives if we didn’t need sleep? Think about it. If the average person sleeps 8 hours a day (what the medical people recommend) then by the end of the year we’ve slept for about 4 months. By the time we’re 65 we’ve slept for nearly 21 years! How much could we accomplish if we didn’t need so much down time?

I don’t get it.