Tag: Sleep

Attenuation

Usually when we go up to Vermont we leave as early as humanly possible so that we can spend as much time there as we can and still get home at a non-ridiculous hour. Today is a little different. I have to time my arrival to match up with his class schedule. That means I have another hour or so before I have to leave.

I was thinking about playing some guitar before I go, but Jen is working and a few minutes from now she’ll be in a meeting. Better for me to keep quiet. It got me thinking about gear though. The amplifier I am going to use for November is a Vox MV50 Clean. There are a ton of MV50 models, but the Clean is the only one that comes with an attenuator. The others have a master volume. Blah.

It’s supposed to be a 50 watt amp and the attenuator has three settings; Off, 1/10th power, and 1/100th power. So it can be 50 watts, five watts, or 0.5 watts. At 50 watts it is loud. Great googlymoogly it is loud. At 0.5 watts it’s not. It’s a nice, useable at home volume. Well… still maybe a smidge loud, but not bad. I keep it at 0.5 all the time.

But should I? I was complaining the other day about it caving in when I bomb it with signal out of one of my overdrive pedals. Maybe I should set it to 1/10th power and just keep the volume control really low. Hell, maybe I should turn the attenuator off and see if I can use the volume control to keep things manageable. It’s doubtful, but maybe worth a try?

Huh… we’ll see.

Change of subject: Last night I don’t know what I was thinking. Two nights ago I had a memory lapse and got into bed without putting my CPAP mask on. Dumb ass. I realized the mistake before my head was on the pillow and all was right with the world again. Last night I missed two things. I forgot to top off the CPAP machine’s humidifier tank. Oops. It didn’t run out, but it’s close to empty.

I also forgot to charge my friggin’ watch. I finished my 30 minutes of exercise and just forgot to put it on the charger. Next thing I know I’m dozing off and my battery is at 30 something percent. Crap. Well, if it dies it dies. What’s a red head to do? I went to sleep. When I woke up today it was at 12%. It’s good to know that I can go 24 hours without a charge. The downside of course is that it’s been on the charger for about 90 minutes and it’s only back up to 52%. It’s probably not going to be fully charged by the time I have to leave. That’s okay. It’ll be charged enough.

I still need to top off the gas tank (it’s about 190 miles each way. In my hybrid Kia, if I start with a full tank I can get there and back and still have about a quarter of a tank left. I friggin’ love science) and pick up some caffeinated beverages for the ride. After that the only question is music or podcasts? If it’s music I might go with the new live record from The Pineapple Thief. I first stumbled across them a couple of years ago and it’s all good stuff, just nothing that sets the world on fire for me. Their new live record (they couldn’t tour last year so they did one show in an empty room and webcast it everywhere. The new record is that show) does it. It sets the red head’s head right on fire. Great album. I was seeing all this potential and waiting for a record that lived up to it. The last one was close. This new one nails it. Having said that though… I’ll still probably go with podcasts. That’s just kinda where I’m at this morning.

Happy travels, folks!

Bed Time

It’s 11:30pm. Looks like the Dodgers are going to avoid elimination tonight. Here’s hoping the Red Sox do the same tomorrow.

I have three songs ready for car vocals. I was hoping to get to sleep early tonight to make getting up early tomorrow easier. What are the odds I pull it off?

Somewhere between not great and terrible, I think.

Patches is trying to move me off of my side of the bed. I’m pretty sure she’s going to fail.

Sweet dreams, everyone.

Late Sleeper

I went to bed last night a little before midnight. I woke up once around 6:00 but went right back to sleep. Next thing I know it’s 9:00. Eight hours and 45 minutes of sleep, six hours and 30 minutes of restful sleep, and a sleeping heart rate dip of 30%. That might be the best night’s sleep I’ve had since I started paying attention.

We have a scheduled FaceTime with Harry this afternoon and we’re planning a Great British Bake Off watch party too. Other than that… we’re plans free. So some TV, some World of Warcraft? Maybe some more guitar. How about definitely some more guitar.

I started watching two shows that have pretty completely hooked me. Midnight Mass and Y the Last Man. Midnight Mass took a couple of episodes to grab me, but Y the Last Man was more or less instant. There is one more episode of Titans to go and I don’t know how many more episodes of What We Do in the Shadows. Walking Dead World Beyond is on tonight. That’s okay. Fear the Walking Dead comes back tonight too and I don’t know what to think about it. Season five is still the worst season of television I have ever made myself watch. Season six started out better but spiraled right down the toilet and may have ended up worse than season five. Why am I bothering with season seven? It can’t be worse, can it? At the same time, it can’t be good either, can it?

The Red Sox are not playing today. It’s a travel day. The Bruins finally opened their season last night and they don’t play again until Wednesday. No Boston sports for me tonight. Suddenly that feels weird.

I’m having a bad time with the intermittent fasting this weekend. I thought I was going to be driving to Vermont yesterday so I stopped the fast and had breakfast. Today I slept late and did it again. Two sub 16 hour fasts in a row. I think that was the first time I’ve done that in 13 months.

So what am I getting at with all of this?

It’s going to be a lazy Sunday and I like it. Go play your guitars, kids.

Friday Morning

Friday. 8:42am. I’m on my work computer but not connected to the VPN or punched in yet. I got about 6.5 hours of sleep last night. The cat did try to steal my spot every time I rolled over or got up to go to the bathroom or whatever. She also tried to sit on Jen’s head once.

I’m going to be shorthanded at work today. At least for part of the day. Here’s hoping the customers take it easy on us. The customers… the universe… existence… you know.

I haven’t done any exercise yet. Doesn’t look like that is going to become a habit just yet.

Okay, I guess I will punch into work now. Hope you all have a good day. Talk to you later.

Awake

Still awake. I wanted to go to sleep early but it wasn’t happening. Oh well, I’ll keep trying.

I just watched the first episode of Y the Last Man on Hulu. Color me hooked so far.

I wish Major League Baseball had booked game one of the ALCS for tomorrow instead of Friday. I have all this built up hype and no where to put it.

I still don’t know why the NHL season opened on the 12th but the Bruins don’t play until the 16th. Is it a TV rights thing? The NHL is back with ESPN for the first time in something like 300 years. Figures. NBCsn streams to an iOS app. ESPN only streams to subscribers. Jerks.

I mentioned we are going up to Vermont on Saturday. We are bringing cold weather clothing to Bellana (and bringing warm weather clothes back home with us) and we are meeting Harry for lunch. I can’t wait. Weekly FaceTime calls are great, but I’m looking forward to actual face time.

Okay, I’m going to put some music on and see if I can sleep. Talk to you all tomorrow.

Long Day

It wasn’t really a long day, but it felt like it. Do I sound like a broken record? I haven’t slept well for the last few nights and I’m just tired. Really tired.

Last night when I had time to play some guitar and didn’t I was pissed off at myself. Similar circumstances tonight, but I feel different about it. I’m just too tired. Nothing I do tonight would be worthwhile, it would just be sleepy nonsense. So once again, instead of guitar we have fun with zombies. I’m up to The Walking Dead season three episode two now. The rewatch continues while the current season goes into hiatus. We’re two episodes into the last season of World Beyond and sadly the seventh season of Fear the Walking Dead kicks off on Sunday. It can’t be worse than the last two seasons, can it? Can it*?

Here’s hoping we get me a good night sleep tonight. I don’t have any meetings scheduled at work tomorrow. Here’s hoping tomorrow becomes a productive day. Who knows, I might even play some guitar tomorrow. Fingers crossed, right?

*Yes, yes it can. Unfortunately, yes it can. May the gods of the TV have mercy on us, yes it can get worse. I don’t know how, but I fear it is possible.

Describe Your Weekend

So Robert, why don’t you describe your weekend for us?

Okay. Saturday:

Sunday:

Notes: the hole in the stand hour streak on Saturday was due to my watch being on the charger. The hole on Sunday was due to being on a conference call, I think.

Catching Up

One hour of bad sleep on Saturday and six hours of bad sleep on Sunday. Yeah… it’s catching up with me. I am one sleepy red head right now.

15 minutes to go until I log out of my work computer. I’ve been logged in since about 4:00pm on Saturday and it’s 5:16pm on Monday. Well… I was out for a bit as I rebooted once this morning. I figured the lappy needed it after all the work I made it do this weekend. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

I took tomorrow off to recover from the weekend. What should I do? Besides sleeping of course. Well there was mystery*… no, that’s not right. How about well there is music. I need to do car music. I have eight songs that need singing. Actually, I have 11 songs that need singing. I added two new song ideas to the list yesterday in a very not successful attempt to calm my ass down. There is also one little music memo thing that I added to the song list but it’s not very good so I will probably drop it. So…. eight songs ready for vocal tracks, two songs that still need to have their vocal parts written. Maybe car music in the morning and then more car music in the afternoon? Is that possible?

What else? Well there’s my desk. I have made the (likely temporary) decision to keep my work day desk setup in Harry’s room, but move my MacBook back to the desk in our bedroom. I like it better in our bedroom, but I have also found I really like working elsewhere. It was starting to feel like I never left that room. Now I will definitely be leaving it for 8.5 hours a day, five days per week.

Okay, work time is up. Time to go cook dinner for my love.

*There is a song by Bill Bruford’s fusion band, aptly called Bruford, called Fainting in Coils. It opens up with a quote from Alice and Wonderland where Dr Bruford reads the passage with his voice sent through a harmonizer and lowered an octave or so. There’s some other sauce on there too. Someone else reads some narration and then the good doctor’s voice comes in louder and right up in your face and the first thing he says is, “well, there was mystery.” In my massively sleep deprived state, that’s what I was thinking of as I was typing that paragraph. There. You’re in the know now.**

**Am I the only doofus who puts footnotes into meaningless blog posts? Yeah, I thought so too.

Back at Work/Still at Work

I stayed logged in at work until midnight last night. I sent out a note saying if you need me please call me and then I plopped my fat ass down on Harry’s bed and fell right to sleep. From about 7:00am on Saturday morning through 12:00am Monday morning on one hour and ten minutes of sleep. I honestly did not think that was physically possible. I would like to thank the academy, caffeine, Diet Pepsi, and copious amounts of adrenalin. I couldn’t have done it without you folks and I do love you all.

My watch tells me I got about 6.5 hours of sleep last night (6:25 to be exact). I did not have my CPAP machine though and it absolutely shows. I woke up three times and I don’t felt like the sleep I had was terribly restful. Granted, part of that was caffeine and another part was worrying about the customer I was working with. Still, I bet if I had that mask glued to my face I would have slept straight through. Who knows.

I just gave my boss all the news from the weekend. I told him I was putting in for tomorrow off. Yeah, you betcha.

Happy Monday, boys and girls!

Addendum: Oh, I haven’t watched last night’s episode of The Walking Dead yet. No spoilers, blah blah blah I can’t hear you blah blah blah!