After yesterday’s adventure, I went home at noon.  I went to bed at 1 PM or so.  I woke up the next day at 6 AM ready to attack a pack of wolverines.   Normally, I’m a light sleeper, but slept through two doors in my room being replaced.  Nice.

I drove 800 miles.  With Tardbagel.  We passed Hickesville, and got passed by a cop while doing 80.  I ran out of podcasts.  And started listening to a reading of De Rerum Natura by Lucretius after dropping off Tardbagel.  I woke up and I was home.

After the incident with the magically shrinking air mattress I used a hiking pad, a few extra pillows and a pile of really soft comforters to make a new nest to temporarily occupy until I had a real bed back at camp.  All went well until about 1 AM when our dog Max kept trying to sit on me or push me off my nest.  I got up to let him out to tinkle and he just stared at me.  This repeated about 3 times until he wandered off.  I woke the next morning to brother.
Ryan: Terry
Me: Yes…
Ryan: Give the dog back his pile of used bedding, I just washed them and he likes the smell of Downy.

Such fleeting victories.

After the incident with the magically shrinking air mattress I used a hiking pad, a few extra pillows and a pile of really soft comforters to make a new nest to temporarily occupy until I had a real bed back at camp.  All went well until about 1 AM when our dog Max kept trying to sit on me or push me off my nest.  I got up to let him out to tinkle and he just stared at me.  This repeated about 3 times until he wandered off.  I woke the next morning to brother.
Ryan: Terry
Me: Yes…
Ryan: Give the dog back his pile of used bedding, I just washed them and he likes the smell of Downy.

Such fleeting victories.

I’ve been trying to find a better way to nap.  For the longest time I had a silent egg timer that only made noise when the alarm went off.  Most egg timers make annoying ticking noises which makes napping nigh impossible.  I’d been told about Pzizz a piece of nap software that generates mp3s of specific times for naps.  Normally I’d include a link but I think this is something you should avoid.  Anyway, I generated a 20 minute “Energizer” nap and discovered by they named it that.  The piece starts off with soothing music and a guy telling you to relax which is fine for the first two minutes.  About five minutes later, the same guy comes back and effectively yells at you to relax.  He then yells at you approximately every four to five minutes keeping you on edge and quite “energized”.  After 13 minutes of this I finally nodded off and didn’t wake up for two and a half hours and this is why:  The voice that tells you to wake-up is quieter than the narration voice.

Each Tuesday and Thursday, I have a 3 hour break at midday between two classes and it doesn’t make much sense for me to go home, so I tool around Temple, hit up Turkish Lunch Cart #2 or Greek Lunch Cart #4 (combine them and you get Cyprus, oh!) for a wicked gyro (they like that I don’t pronounce it JI-rho).  Today, I ate my gyro and promptly fell asleep in the Speakman study area.  For some strange reason, when I fall asleep on the train or at school, I don’t move around nor make much noise compared to my normal heavy breathing when sleeping.  Today was an exception.

I woke up with my arms flung out to the size of me my head back, mouth open and somehow I was in the exact middle of the aisle of 10 partitioned desks in the study area.  Apparently I’d been like this for some time, as the aisle  dead-ends and to the right of me all the chairs were full while those to the left were empty.  Temple follows the urinal rule of only using every other desk space when possible, I’d clearly broke that up.  I went to the restroom and I had sleep lines on my face like I’d rested on something, yet I had no jacket, pillow or bag on which to sleep.  So I think someone’s got an odd story to tell about a man stealing their jacket to use as a pillow, I hope that person comes to school on Tuesday and tells me.  Hopefully I don’t fall asleep.

I was sitting at my computer today setting devious traps with explosives in Team Fortress 2 when I heard a screech and a car slam into what I assumed was a telephone pole as the lights went out.  It took me a minute to realize that was actually the case as every device from my modem to my computer monitor is on battery back-up.  The power wasn’t on after a few minutes and thinking to past experiences I decided to go to bed at 8:00 PM as usually it takes hours for PECO to respond.  I was later awoken by my dog that had to pee and glanced at my clock versus my watch.  The power came back on less than 3 minutes after I went to bed.  I was so angered by this I slept for a total of 16 hours.  I wish I got angry like this more often.

New Year’s Day messed up my sleep schedule and over the past two days have had trouble going to bed at reasonable times resulting in a continual hypnogogic (2nd def) state.  Yesterday I played Team Fortress 2 for three hours to go to bed and covered it by saying I had a cold and going into work early.  Today, I’m now messed up from waking up late yesterday and dealing with a professional Scouter whose mere presence sent me into rage preventing me from sleeping.  So, I started updating the SuburbanAdventure archives from the old site.  I can now barely keep my eyes open.

I haven’t gotten as much sleep as I’ve wanted.  This hasn’t interfered with much but I fear my work performance may be dropping.  Today when documenting failure modes of plastics under stress I wrote “banerked” instead of “break”.  I hope my boss doesn’t notice, if he does I’ll tell him I must have banerked the keyboard.