Perchance To Sleep

I thought it was twice as far, probably because the new apartment is a lot closer. But not that much closer. Anyhow, I was at the sleep clinic an hour early. Which gave me time to relax in a very comfortable bedroom in a lovely leather chair and read my Kindle. I think it's something from the same author as Water For Elephants, but I can't remember. It is very well written, and has the same excellent character development.

There was also a questionnaire, the whole first page was a notice that I accept that if my insurance doesn't cover the service their attorneys are required to remove one kidney and their choice of fingers on my left hand. Since this is via my HMO and is prepaid, they really should have left that page off. The next two pages were asking what Dread Diseases I have and what medications I am taking for them. And the final page was in 30-point type, with checkboxes for allergies to latex, vinyl, rubber and fetish clothing. I only had to initial that one, the others had to be signed.

The tech was a pretty woman named Rochelle, and we had a lovely chat while she was organizing the Rig Of 1,000 Wires, and slapping gel-coated contacts onto various parts of my anatomy. I was surprised by some of them, such as the pair which went on my legs. One on the calf and one on the quads. A pair for each side. The ones for the right side had red wires, which gave me a chance to tell her how that's a sailing thing - "Red on the right returning". When you come into the harbor, there are red marker buoys and green ones,  with the red ones marking the right side of the channel. Okay, starboard. The wires for the left leg were not green, which kind of watered down the analogy.

There was a band to go around my tummy and another for my chest, a contact at th corner of each eye, and a vinyl tube to shove into my nose which had a useless metal prong in front which got in the way when I tried to sip a cup of water and take my meds.

The rig was about 8" long and 5" wide, in a carrying bag with a shoulder strap, and this attached to the monitor with a single coax-width snap-in/snap-out cable. It was hung on the headboard and I was told to lie down on the queen-sized bed and  she went through about 10 minutes of monitor-checking exercises with me, like hold my breath for 20 seconds, blink each eye 5 times, move one leg then the other, and a couple of other things I forget.

The bed was very comfortable. I asked what Rochelle thought about my taking the Ambien which the doctor had prescribed, she said to try for an hour without it. She said it would totally knock me out. With all the wires and the oxygen sensor on my index finger it was hard to get comfortable, and also this was 2 hours before my normal bed time, but after an hour I felt like sleep was a distinct possibility, and decided to make a restroom run and try for real. Rochelle was in the room in a flash to help me figure out the disconnect routine, and helped me rec-connect when I was done.

In half an hour I was asleep, and though I woke up maybe 6 times during the night only once was to take a leak, twice to hydrate. Two times I woke up speaking the last lines of th dream I was coming out of, and I remember one of those was "Well, that's cute!". I'm pretty sure the comment was about a clever way to use all 5 battery-backed up outlets on my new UPS. I also know I dreamed about Rochelle. And why not? She is pretty, has a nice figure, very intelligent and laughs at my jokes. Even the one where I pointed out that to me she was New Rochelle.

I was fast asleep when she came in to kick me out. 6:20 am. They told me to expect to be out the door at 6, but I was happy for the extra sleep because it was not a night of restful repose. After she unhooked me, hanging each wire on a custom rack on the wall as she removed them from me, she handed me a washcloth to get the gel off the arms and legs, but there was a slab of gel across the back of my hair which needed a shower. And then there was another questionnaire, mostly asking how many times I thought I woke up and how much less well I slept than I do at home.

Before I left she helped me find the make and model of the mattress - I'll be trading my 1987 Sears special for a Sealy Posturepedic Real Soon Now. I will not be buying it from Sleep Train, their ads have annoyed me for decades. And not Costco, they don't provide a bed frame and sometimes not box springs either, and they charge extra to haul away the old one. I'll be doing some shopping this weekend, probably.

So, home right about 7 am, Domino was waiting at the door. Undressed, showered, took my meds and packed snacks. And off to work early.

Halloween

A weird start to the day, at the sleep clinic, still dark at 6:50 when I drove home, had to undress and shower to get the gel out of my hair and wherever else it needed soap & water. Put on a clean shirt and the same jeans I'd worn at the clinic. Took my morning meds, packed some snacks, tried to ignore Domino yowling at me, and went to work about an hour early. I had some actual work to do on an automation script, which I'd done the troubleshooting on yesterday. I had to build a routine to create a series of users with different permissions, and also one to remove them. And then the automation program threw me a curve and decided each one's log-out variable was different. It was pretty simple, but annoying, because it depended on the order they were logged out. The variable for the first one was Logout, the seconds was Logout2, and so on. So I had to build a loop which tried each one till it got a winner.

At 11 I found ABC TV's live feed of the Giants victory parade, which sucked because they don't know squat about relaying a signal. Went to lunch just before the parade got to the civic center. Sizzler, senior price for the salad bar. I watched on their TVs but they had the sound off.

Back at work I remembered that I have live streams from all the cable channels available at my desk, so I tried KRON, but that was a FAIL because one of their sponsor ads was at face level in the not quite upper not quite left of the screen. I think CBS was the one with the best signal and non-intrusive ads. I watched that in super-high def on my 16:9 monitor, and enjoyed it very much. I was impressed at Mayor Lee's baseball knowledge, and his very energetic speech (he is kind of The Great Stone Face most of the time). The crowd was HUGE. And vocal. And responsive. Many of the speeches included a crowd-participation cheer and the response was overwhelming. I loved that every one of the speeches credited the fans with a major role in the win. I also loved how no single member of the team, right up to the GM, took credit. They were all about how everyone pulled his weight. The Spanish language play by play announcer said he had been given a math lesson: in school they taught him that 5x5=25 but the 25 men on the roster taught him 5x5=1.

I suppose I wasn't as surprised as most when they trotted out Tony Bennett for the finale. It was so effing cool to see these World Series champs all jockeying for position to get him in their cell phone camera sights. 86 years old, and still singing. Wow. The final photo op, though, with the whole team in front of the trophy had me laughing out loud. My first thought was "what a bunch of misfits". My next thought was "No. What a bunch of fits."

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After the ceremonies it was back to work, another automation project where it will take me a day to fix my scripts because they made a change to the GUI which IMHO was uncalled for. Grrrr.

I only saw two people in costume at work, one was worth the price of admission. Our DDG Russian engineer was wearing a velour Renaissance-ish dress with some vampire accouterments. The dress fit her like an hourglass, and showed off her endowments beautifully. Sigh. 

Home, just enough time to give Domino some treats, turn off most of the lights and drive to the Starbucks near the theater. I may see a movie later, but mostly just wanted to not be around in case there were trick-or-treaters. The new apartment has some children, not nearly as many as the last one, but unlike the last one they don't have any organized event for the kids. The neighborhood is not residential, across the street are a Zen Center and an Asian church. Fire station net door. No nearby schools.

Picked up a small package at the apt office, the last set of coin holders.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
??? maybe put my foreign currency into the sleeves I just bought. And maybe do the same with the coins.