Sunday, April 15, 2007

Snot Pong

Have I mentioned I have a cold? About a week ago my wife was sniffling and complaining of a tickle in the back of her throat. Since she is the one that works out of the house and I hadn't felt the same yet, as usual I could depend on those same symptoms showing up in me almost a week later.

So this last sleep, the 2nd sleep, or s2, didn't go so well. I was tired already again, and as my wife had layed down for the night I decided to stay with her. So it's again early, at about 1:00am, for this sleep. But over just the last 2 hours my cold has intensified, or at least just the amount of mucus in my nose. So I lay on my right side, as I am usually a side sleeper ("achoo!"), and the mucus flows to my right nostril clogging it up, but leaving the left clear.

On the first sleep I was energetic enough to turn over to the left, effectively over a few minutes draining the mucus to the left nostril. The trick is to suck most of it back before it gets to the left nostril. You may think that is disgusting, but it kept both nostrils clear for the duration of the sleep, and allowed me to "focus" effectively on getting to dreamy thoughts.

But this time I really wanted to sleep, so I stayed on my right side. Then the pressure increased in the right, but this uberman stuff is about being tough right? So I stay, even though I'm bouncing around a little bit I think because my uncomfortable threshold had been topped. I didn't focus very well, and so I didn't get much sleep this time. I had even restarted the 25 minute timer again after I did feel drowsy when it was at 5 minutes. But there seems to be a window of opportunity to this thing, like being in the bottom of the 90 minute cycle, and I started to feel more active again. I got up before the second timer setting, probably only totalling about 35 minutes at least altogether.

So while I'm not drop over tired after wasting the last sleep, I will be glad to get around to 3:00pm sleep.

I am going to find a better timer program. I would like to find one that starts the timer on a button press. I think it is a good idea, at least at this beginner stage, not to start the 25 minutes until it is clear I am on my way to sleep. But then again there appears to be a window. I'll be experimenting.

I am also going to start using an eye pillow to anchor the sleep times down to it. My wife looked up eye pillows for me because my current one is getting kinda stretchy and found one that can be plugged into an i-pod. That would be great to plug into my PPC phone so I don't wake her up. It was a Brookstone.

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